While I wasn't Blogging Part VI: The Consummate Ass Returns
"The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad,and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother."
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
This is a quote I found when looking for information on a lecture on cultural differences between the US and China. Though not as bad as some, I have made an consummate ass of myself occasionally.
Last year I went to a lot of trouble to get a room for the free English group to show their movies. I had to set things up through Wendy, who had to find free rooms at the specified time, 6 pm on Sunday nights.
There was one time when I was still showing movies for the free English group, after one movie ("SWAT" I think) there was a birthday party for a member of the group, Sophia who was Mars' girlfriend. In the classroom they broke out the cake, sang happy birthday and started chatting away. A few minutes later they started throwing cake at each other. At first, I sat there flabbergasted that they would be so irresponsible as to mess up the room. Did it mean so little to them? They continued to throw the cake as I started horrified at them. I knew that this was going to get back to my boss who would no doubt be unhappy that I could not handle the students. In the least, movie night would be canceled, at the most I could be fired. Likely something in between.
Then they turned on me, and started flinging the cake on me. Of course, that was the last draw. I said loudly, "What do you think you are doing? Do you want to loose movie night? Stop this!" They just continued to ignore me, which only made me more angry.
I just could not understand what they were doing, how could they mess up that room without a second thought? How could they ignore me like that?
Afterwords I walked with Cindy and she explained how this was completely normal and that someone would come to clean up the room. Nobody thinks twice about a messy room because every night somebody comes in and cleans it. Labor is so cheap that goes unnoticed.
I really should have kept my head on better, but it was just so out of my realm of experience that I could not cope with it. Cindy and I basically had an argument as I could not understand how there was nothing wrong with it, how it was "common".
I later asked quite a number of people about this and found an interesting divide: people under 25 or so see nothing wrong with how those kids at Free English acted. Responses were "that is common" to "nothing strange". People over 30 saw it as disrespectful and immature. They said that things like this should not happen in a classroom. They should respect the school and their teachers.
I thought this demonstrated an interesting divide between the generations in China, which seems to closely related to the divide from the one child policy (1979). Might or might not be a coincidence, but nonetheless an interesting change in Chinese culture and demonstrates the fact that the Chinese don't just have a generation gap but a generation canyon.
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
This is a quote I found when looking for information on a lecture on cultural differences between the US and China. Though not as bad as some, I have made an consummate ass of myself occasionally.
Last year I went to a lot of trouble to get a room for the free English group to show their movies. I had to set things up through Wendy, who had to find free rooms at the specified time, 6 pm on Sunday nights.
There was one time when I was still showing movies for the free English group, after one movie ("SWAT" I think) there was a birthday party for a member of the group, Sophia who was Mars' girlfriend. In the classroom they broke out the cake, sang happy birthday and started chatting away. A few minutes later they started throwing cake at each other. At first, I sat there flabbergasted that they would be so irresponsible as to mess up the room. Did it mean so little to them? They continued to throw the cake as I started horrified at them. I knew that this was going to get back to my boss who would no doubt be unhappy that I could not handle the students. In the least, movie night would be canceled, at the most I could be fired. Likely something in between.
Then they turned on me, and started flinging the cake on me. Of course, that was the last draw. I said loudly, "What do you think you are doing? Do you want to loose movie night? Stop this!" They just continued to ignore me, which only made me more angry.
I just could not understand what they were doing, how could they mess up that room without a second thought? How could they ignore me like that?
Afterwords I walked with Cindy and she explained how this was completely normal and that someone would come to clean up the room. Nobody thinks twice about a messy room because every night somebody comes in and cleans it. Labor is so cheap that goes unnoticed.
I really should have kept my head on better, but it was just so out of my realm of experience that I could not cope with it. Cindy and I basically had an argument as I could not understand how there was nothing wrong with it, how it was "common".
I later asked quite a number of people about this and found an interesting divide: people under 25 or so see nothing wrong with how those kids at Free English acted. Responses were "that is common" to "nothing strange". People over 30 saw it as disrespectful and immature. They said that things like this should not happen in a classroom. They should respect the school and their teachers.
I thought this demonstrated an interesting divide between the generations in China, which seems to closely related to the divide from the one child policy (1979). Might or might not be a coincidence, but nonetheless an interesting change in Chinese culture and demonstrates the fact that the Chinese don't just have a generation gap but a generation canyon.