Generation Y and the HuffPo Huff

Having read both the HuffPo “opinion article” (here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html )and subsequent rebuttals/backlash (depending on how snidely dismissive on wishes to be; for instance, here: http://aweinstein.kinja.com/fuck-you-im-gen-y-and-i-dont-feel-special-or-entitl-1333588443 and here:  http://iambeggingmymothernottoreadthisblog.com/2013/09/18/im-a-millenial-please-stop-being-a-douche-to-me/ ) on the so-called “Generation Y Yuppies” and why “we’re” all so unhappy… I had a few thoughts I thought worth writing down; if for no other reason than my own satisfaction.

I’ve shook my head in both bewilderment and fascinated annoyance at how this issue seems to have resonated with the American public – more often than not,it seems, in a fantastically negative fashion.  Namely, I mean how many of the replies, comments, and sentiments expressed by those having read the article seem to be in full support of its central claim… Perhaps I should back up a little bit.

I case you were not of a mind to actually read the article in question (it is, unquestionably, a slog), let me summarize its main points as I understand them:
1) Generation Y is, as a body, largely unhappy with their life circumstances.

2) This subset of Gen Y (which the author refers to as GYPSY– “Generation Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies”), absolutely believe that they are special and unique snowflakes, and the world should be tailored to their special and unique whims and ambitions.
3) Much of “our” frustration and unhappiness stems from the fact that our “delusional” expectations and life requirements are simply not met by realities.  Grandpa and Dad defined success as putting food on the table, but “we” require parades,rainbows, and unicorns puking rainbows [as graphically noted by the author] to even feel adequate.

The author then goes on to recommend these “GYPSY”s a) “stay wildly ambitious”,b) “stop thinking [we’re] special”, and c) “ignore everyone else”.

Alright.  Where to begin.

First off, the first central point is right on the money: The sub-40 crowd is – more so than not – unhappy with the direction (and specifically turn) of the national and global society and economy. The rationale, however, I disagree with.  The author puts forth the snide assumption – bases much of his/her entire graphical co-presentation on, in fact – that the youthful adults of today are unhappy not because our grass isn’t greener than out parents’ and grandparents’… but because out grass doesn’t immediately spring up into flowers.  It is difficult to for my calmly lay out how absolutely false this premise is, but I’ll give it a shot.

Gen Y is not unhappy because our lawns didn’t pop up in magical unicorn flowers….we’re unhappy because theprevious generations dumped 8000 lbs of human excrement on our lawns and told us to be happy they “fertilized” it for us.  I graduated college in mid-2008, having lived my entire life having been spoon-fed the notion that going to college and getting a degree – while certainly not any kind of guarantee of a better life –was most certainly a precondition. I watched (thankfully from afar) as that convenient little lie came crashing down around “us” that same year. The idea that education was a path to prosperity virtually evaporated.  But let’s be honest…it was a long time coming.  The 2008 collapse was, if anything, just the final nail in that coffin.  Since at least the 1990’s more and more menial, service-sector jobs have used education as a filter for employment.  It hardly mattered even before the Recession whether or not that education had anything whatsoever to do with the position in question - does one really need a high school diploma to manage a McDonald’s? – so long as the paperwork attesting to that education was in hand.  That was exacerbated by the crash of '08, as the market became flooded with degrees upon degrees, upon degrees… in such a situation, of course it became a precondition for a position.

This is totally at odds with what we’d been taught out entire lives – the education was the ticket out of the rat race.  Suddenly, education because a precondition to the rat race.  Moreover, the business-ization of higher education has driven the cost up exponentially in the past several decades… to the point that even when you adjust for inflation, post-secondary education is now more the 1200% more expensive than is was 30years ago in the 1980’s.  My father used to (and, on occasion, will still) relate the story of his youth: how in his first semester at university, his dad had a medical condition necessitating his parents to withdraw all monetary support for his university expenses.  And through his own hard work and perseverance, he worked his way through university, post-grad, and doctoral programs with wife and kids in tow.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally admire that story.  It is great, it is true, and I in no way, shape, or form disparage or lessen it… by saying there is no way in hell that I or any Gen Y person would have a snowball’s chance of recreating such a scenario.  There’s just no way.  The total cost of my father’s education cost him what a semester-and-a-half cost me.  In fact, the only reason I’m not absolutely drowning in debt is a combination of my parent’s saving my entire life… and the fact that I was an above average high school student who managed to get ~1/2 of my tuition covered by scholarships.  No matter how you slice it, the scale has been tipped in the interceding several decades… and decidedly not in our favor.

The second point of the HuffPo article levels one of the more tired, trite, and specious “criticisms” of Generation Y: that we’re all just firmly of the notion that we’re unique and special, and thus deserving of unique and special praise and reward for not spitting up on ourselves at lunch.  It has been made a thousand different times in a thousand different dismissive variations: “we” have been sheltered,“we” have been given participation trophies and “no one” has lost, “we” are teacup kids who will crack at the first hiccup or disappointment.  In essence, we are weak, coddled, and just generally less than any prior generation’s gumption, gusto, and bootstrapping-ness.

Bullshit.

I could give you numerous tales of my own failing, the times I was not given a participation trophy, but instead an icily silent car ride home from a soccer tournament we failed to do anything but lose in.  I'll spare you the details... they're anecdotal, and they to this day tend to rub a raw nerve.

These “previous” generations – from Boomers to Xers – rode one and all a rising tide… and convinced themselves they’d “done it” all themselves.  It’s interesting in a teeth-gritting sort of way to look back on the past half-century and note how often successes both personal and societal have been attributed to individual gumption, while setbacks or failure attributed to bad luck or factors beyond control.  The ultimate confirmation-bias.  One need look no further than the Fox News channel to see the most virulent strain of that mental virus, but it is in various strengths prevalent at nearly all strata of society: if I do well, it’s my own virtue; if I fare poorly, well obviously it’s not my fault.

The issue with the phenomenon is when the social strata collapses or otherwise becomes untenable, the “current” generation is labeled as “lesser than” or “entitled” or “yuppies” rather than addressing the actual issue – that the system itself has been hopelessly compromised by successive generations gaming it for their own benefits at the ultimate cost of the future.

This is the major problem I have with such “Y-shaming.”  We did not create this problem.  We didn’t instigate it.  We were not in Washington or on Wall Street when the markets collapsed and the economy went into terminal shock.  We are not to blame for the lack of jobs, or the business models that would bounce profits back without expanding employment.  Rather, we were and yet remain in the unfortunate and utterly unfair position of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time… and then (most damningly) having the gall to say, in effect, “Wait, this is not what I signed on for.  This is not what you told me was in store for me.  We’ve been lied to by our parents, and our government, and our education, and our society.”  And yet, how dare we complain.  How dare we expect a reasonable standard of living.  How dare we think we could’ve been better off than our parents – you know, that same “Dream” that our parents realized, and their parents, and their parents….

Perhaps we’re just unrealistic. Maybe wanting to be as successful as your father is just a sign of being “coddled.”  Yet the only “participation trophy” we collectively seem to be demanding is the trophy that yields us a living wage… an award saying “you do not have to work 70+ hours/week with no benefits or security just to breach the federal poverty line.”  An award the generations past were awarded one and all without them even realizing it…. they now scorn and mock us for demanding.  We ought to be content with what we have, the argument is made, even though it is manifestly less than what our fathers (and mothers) had at our age, and certainly what they have now.  The portcullis has been raised and the moat filled… and we are denigrated and designated as ungrateful “yuppies” for not having built our own castle from the scraps that remain.  Economic and business policy are continually reworked to make life more secure for those with a 401k or a retirement plan, yet for many in Generation Y, that was become about as rare as a unicorn.  TheHuffPo author cites a study showing that the idea of “job security” being an important factor is on the decline in America’s youth… but neglects to link that to the sad fact that “job security” is an absolute anachronism in a society where the average person under 40 will change jobs every 5 years.  Of course we value the idea of it less, the same way we do not value “intra-office anti-goblin measures” as a job perk.  Its hard to value something that is mythological.

And so, here we stand – Generation Y, the Millennials.  With little hope of achieving or breaching our parents’ standard of living, with little or no job security, working more hours for less remuneration… and told to feel lucky for the privilege.  Given the insanity and unfairness of the situation, how have we not, as a generation, gone totally nuts yet?  Because we’re wildly optimistic; because we know that we can make things better.  Possibly most importantly – because we value material wealth significantly less than our forebears. Can you imagine anyone in the 1980’s developing, polishing, and branding a commercial, artistic, or social product… and then giving it away at no charge?  Of course not.  The entire premise would have been ridiculous.  The 80’s was the decade of Wall Street with Michael Douglas – “greed is good”.  The premium, the pay-per-view, the cutthroat business model and hostile takeover.  Gen Y, on the other hand, is marked not by its coddledness or specialness…but by its propensity for connectedness, sharing, a greater good beyond oneself.  Never before in human history has there been a section of society so willing – and yes, able – to share ideas, desires, plans, and products…. often for no cost whatsoever.  The collaborative esprit de corps of Generation Y is our true foundational principle. We are the first generation raise with a fundamental connection to the larger humanity surrounding us on a global scale, and we are acute aware of that fact.  We are the first generation for whom communication, publication, and interaction have been a fundamental principle of being, and not some privileged facet of the elite.  Sharing is our common experience, and our individual experiences are shared.  That, ultimately, is our strength.  And that, ultimately, will steer us away from the myopia and self-interested nature of our predecessors’ collective political and economic stewardship.

So call us yuppies, call us coddled, call us weak.  Misrepresent us as you will: as teacups, as unique snowflakes, whathaveyou.  In fact, Generation Y has already begun shaping the societies of the world for the better, and for the common betterment rather than for just a few “winners”.  Call me crazy, but that vision seems a whole lot brighter than any the previous generations have had.
(CS) TAW Out.
I think I'll go home and mull this over

The Probable End of Chunshen Campus

As this coming Wednesday is the Chinese Tomb-Sweeping holiday, the subsequent schedule fluctuations ended up meaning that – in a once-in-a-blue-moon turn of events – all the teachers in my company had this weekend off.  So a group of us decided to go to Tianzifang for dinner, drinks, and general merriment.  Since Nancy and Caelan are still in Wenzhou, I was all by my onesies, but that was okay and I still had a good evening out.

But between the second… or third… or possibly fourth round of beers at the Thai restaurant we’d decided on, the conversation shifted to an interesting note; specifically, the still-ongoing legal limbo the company is in thanks to the intransigence and general dickishness of the now-former owners.  I’ve detailed extensively the eye-crossing stupidity of the He’s and their idiotic power play, but it’s been surprising just how much of a headache even this transparently illegal stupidity has managed to give the majority shareholder – Pearson – and as a result, pretty much everyone else as well.

To quickly recap, the He’s decided that they’d try to go ahead and get the school’s operating license renewed… without the Pearson name attached to it anymore.  This presented a bit of a problem, as they’d sold 70% of the company to Pearson a few years back.  When negotiations went south – culminating in the He’s temporarily imprisoning the president of Pearson Asia-Pacific in their office – the company responded by trying to fire them, and stopping book sales and any other material support to the 20+ schools in Shanghai.  The two parties went to, and are still in court.

Well, apparently they’ve reached some sort of arrangement: to the tune of Pearson buying out the remaining 30% from the He’s (though for significantly less than their initial gouge-tastic demand of 元50 million) and subsequently kicking them to the curb.  Dust off your jackets, and all’s well, right?  Well, not so much…

You see, the school license is to the He’s, and not to Pearson… so while the idea of buying out the former owner/manager might seem, to your silly Western brain, to automatically include such pivotal things as the license to operate… the glorious and harmonious Chinese way doesn’t see things in such a light.  To that end, apparently in order for Pearson to continue operation in Shanghai, they’re going to have to move their schools.  All of em.  They are not allowed to use the facilities they are currently in, because those are still license to “Learning” and the He’s.  Ain’t that a kick in the balls.

So what does that mean for lil’ old me?  It was mentioned that in all likelihood this would be happening in May or June.  It also means that a half dozen or so of the smaller, lower growth schools… like, say, mine… will simply be rolled into the larger, more centralized facilities.  So in my case, probably that shithole known as Minhang Campus.  I potentially could use this as a way to get to the nearby Xujiahui campus or something, but we’ll see.

In the wake of this, there are a fair number of longstanding teachers – including my direct coworker – who essentially thrown their hands up and said, “well screw that” and begun actively looking for new positions.  Psychologically, I’m right there with them.  One of the big reasons I’ve stayed in this position as long as I have is that Chunshen Campus is small, low growth, and out of the way.  I’m quite happy being a big fish in a little pond.  It excites me not at all to be transferred to some mega-center surrounded by people I’m not familiar with.  Nu-uh.  However, I’m still under contract until the end of August, so I’m not sending out my CV just yet.

I don’t want this post to drag on, so I’ll save my thoughts for the future for my next entry, which should be coming forthwith.  Stay tuned.

(CS) TAW Out.
Through white, and green, and grey

Another Brick in the Great Wall

I've mentioned before - well, more than mentioned... more like extensively laid out - my understanding of the relationship between the Chinese economy, and its government intervention.  But for the sake of those of you who may just be tuning in, I'll recap:

Near as I can tell, the government of Beijing does not really - and never has - understand the words "subtlety," "moderation," or "forethought."  Perhaps it's simply an unavoidable side-effect of locking yourself in an echo chamber of opinion, surrounded only by sycophants and like-minds.  Regardless, their policy toward the economy has been a heavy-handed yo-yo over the 62 years of the CPC's reign.  Through the era of Mao, it had several attempts at full regulation... with disastrous effects; tens of millions of people starving to death, purge after purge, brain drain... the works.

"You're welcome!"

Then quasi-midget Deng Xiaoping stepped up and said, maybe an open market isn't such a bad idea after all.  And it wasn't... in thirty years, China went from a third world cesspool, to a bustling, booming global powerhouse.  Since then, however, it's been a dance along the knife's edge for the CPC.  They, like any authoritarian ruling body, want control... or industry, of commerce, and of information and opinion.  That's completely at odds with the natural processes of a thriving market economy.  Their legitimacy and claim to power rests on continued economic growth, and their assertion that one shouldn't rock the boat, since (almost) everyone's lives are getting better.

It's been an either/or proposition... either the Chinese govt. chokes the life out of their own economy and people in a quixotic quest of isolation and control, or they risk instability and possibly their own loss of power by remaining open and allowing access to services, opinions, and viewpoints that might not be entirely favorable to their regime.  Shocking, I know.

And here's the thing:  Every time.  Every.  Single.  Time. the government lets up its economic and social choke-hold... the Chinese economy has bloomed and prospered.  It's magical... sort of like when you stop throttling a person they start breathing again.

Though now that I'm looking at it, 

it might not be so bad...

So, that being said, I'll get to my main focus here.  I've noticed a rather disturbing trend in the 4 years I've been here.  I arrive in China immediately following the 2008 Olympics... deemed "China's Coming-Out Party" to the world.  Heck they even promised they'd tolerate and allow protesters and dissenters to air their gripes about "human rights" and "forced disappearances" and "brutal information suppression."  Y'know... in an appropriate space...

"Right this way please, protesters... 

your platform is just ahead."

And largely, they did... sort of... follow through on a lot of those pre-Olympic double pinky-shake promises.  Foreign media access was allowed, western websites had fairly free reign, dissent and protester did have some (extremely limited) access to the limelight.

That lasted until, oh, April of 2009 or so... when the CPC realized that the June 4th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre was fast approaching... and not just any old anniversary, either, but the 20th.  Add to that a moderate upsurge in ethnic tensions and a hate crime or two in Muslim majority Xinjiang Provence (aka Uygheristan), and the ongoing colonization of Tibet, and the technocrats manning the towers along the Great Firewall had all the terror-fueled delusions of mass-uprising they needed to essentially shut down the entire internet for a few days.

Obviously, that couldn't last... and so they opened many websites back up to public use, minus a few pivotal ones including Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of others deemed "Dangerous."  But what to do to fill that void?  Why, clone them, of course!  Make PRC-friendly versions of each of those sites, and then have the ability to monitor, delete, redact, and otherwise "harmonize" this sanitized Pod-People Internet to the benefit of the powers that be.  Ingenious.

We foreigners cried, screamed, shouted, stomped on the floor, and threatened to hold our breaths until we passed out... and finally got around to buying custom-built VPN services to tunnel through the information blockade.

"$5 a month?!  Are you f**king kidding me!?" 

- Foreigners, ca. 2009

Finally, we got used to it... there were ways out, workarounds... as Google put it during the (ultimately futile) struggle to remain operational in China while keeping their dignity, "Better to have a library with a few books missing, than no library at all."  Except for us it was more, "better to pay money for a service and get the full library, than be a cheapskate and render the internet largely useless."

But then it got worse.  It creeped in around the peripherals, often not even noticeable until it was nibbling on you pant leg and refusing to clean up after itself around the house.  Little by little, China is rebuilding its Great Firewall... and they're not only after the internet, this time.  It seems that slowly but surely, they're slipping back into another isolationist, Mao-era.  Foreign films are being forced through a narrower and narrower channel if they want to get to the Chinese screens.  There have been at least two occasions in my tenure here that the Chinese Cinema's governing body ruled that all foreign films were being temporarily suspended... until a certain (and usually hyper-patriotic) domestic film reached a target revenue.  They literally held Harry Potter hostage until people payed the ransom for the Boy Who Lived via tickets for The Founding of a Republic, a two-hour long propaganda piece on Mao and the CPC's glorious and harmonious victory for the soul of China.

"Again, you're welcome."

Recently, my own job's parent company - Pearson - which owned a 70% share of the Shanghai school it bought out in 2008... was forced out of the city by a policy change in the Ministry of Education which made such joint ventures, apparently, no longer acceptable.

And just today I read an article stating:

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said late Monday that under the new rules, no foreign TV series may be shown during the prime-time hours of 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. and that overseas-produced shows can take up no more than 25 percent of the total broadcast time each day.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2106770,00.html

For what I can see, China's taking everything it can use from the West, Sinofying, and has the padlock in hand and is attempting to push that gate shut again.

Like this, but possibly with fewer cave trolls.

How far will this closure go?  How much insularity, seclusion, and isolation are the increasingly interneted Chinese people willing to tolerate?  Probably a lot.  They're used to it, largely... many have all but forgotten that something called YouTube or Facebook even exists.  Let's face it, if China does one thing well, it's ripping off someone else's idea and copying it wholesale for its domestic market... the internet is no exception.  But in the mean time, might I offer you this genuine Larry Viuton bag?  I give you best price!  You buy now!

(CS) TAW Out.
No dark sarcasm

An open letter to my senior management

I wrote an as of today sent this letter to the upper echelons of Pearson Asia Pacific.  Time will tell if I get anything but dead-air and/or platitudes with absolutely no followup.  Still, it felt good to write, and my coworkers are all in agreement... and some even think I don't go far enough.  So yeah.

Should I get no response, my next option will be to find the general company listserv and go populist with the message.

And so, without further ado...

To whom it may concern,

I’d like to pose my concerns regarding the efficacy of the current makeup and revenue-target model. While this has been an annual headache for myself and my coworkers, as we all scramble to account for the hours supposedly “missed” during national holiday leave, I’ve long since stopped beating that dead horse and grudgingly accepted that any and every “holiday” is more or less one extended scheduling aneurysm of 25%-filled makeups, and makeups of makeups, etc. I am not questioning this policy in itself at this time.

Rather, this year seems to have added yet another layer of needless complexity in the form of the “revenue-target” and its incentive structure, as is currently implemented. Let me lay out my own situation, and that of my campus: I am about to go into an 8-day “makeup marathon” which will compile two entire weeks worth of classes into a single stretch of time. At its worst, I’ll be actively teaching – without anything but a lunch break – from 9am until 8:30 at night. My fellow teachers face similar, if not worse, schedules.

We proposed that the makeups, rather than having to be lumped together as previously mentioned, instead be allowed to be spaced out into the first week or two of February, as both a quality of life, and direct quality of teaching issue. This has been what has worked in the past over my 3-plus year tenure here at Pearson, and I didn’t expect there to be much resistance to the same solution this year. Much to my surprise, the idea was deemed unworkable due to the revenue-target system that has been implemented. Under this structure, the local Senior Teacher, Center Manager, and apparently even the Regional Manager would all be directly financially punished if this so-called “target” were not met. This target is, to my knowledge, developed by the financial dept. and senior management, and is continually raised if met – and again, financially punished if a given school underperforms in a given month.

Given this model, for a small, slow-growth school like Chunshen, there is absolutely no room to space classes out over the next month, or for any schedule irregularities whatsoever. Virtually any discrepancy would result in the school falling “under target,” and thereby punishing the local management.

There is, therefore, active pressure on the management to meet this goal. That is understandable. However, there is no such incentive for the teaching staff to do the same.  Consequentially, there is a considerable degree of resentment at being made to compress half a month of classes into a single week.

This is doubly aggravating on a holiday like the upcoming Spring Festival… this is a holiday that happens annually; that is to say, every year. This could have been planned for, this could have been planned around; the monthly target could have (and quite frankly, should have) been adjusted to reflect the fact that the entire country is taking a week off.

And yet here we stand again, my 4^th Spring Festival at this company, now more stressed and overworked that any of the prior three, due to the shortsighted implementation of this policy, and its disregard for an annual, completely foreseeable schedule break on its teaching staff. Meanwhile, senior management will be enjoying extended vacations, with no compulsory makeups, or near-unattainable revenue targets hanging over their heads and paychecks.

Again, I’ve come to tolerate the policy of holidays merely being deferred classes, with little more than grumbles and a resigned shrug. That makes a level of financial sense, even if it is unorthodox. What I am perplexed and frustrated by, rather, is the myopic implementation of this revenue-target system, and the unnecessary additional level of stress it puts on teachers and center managers to not only make up all holiday classes – but to also do so by the 27^th of that given month. For a school like Xinzhuang or Xuhui, with their large number of classes and staff, and therefore relative flexibility with scheduling, the stress may be less. I cannot speak for them, but for a small, slow-growth school like Chunshen, it adds a completely arbitrary and unjustifiable deadline to complete these makeups.

While I hope that my words might find a receptive pair of eyes, my experience with the managerial structure of the company tells me I’m far more likely to get a nicely-worded brush-off and be promptly forgotten in the name of slightly better returns on paper, and positions above my own receiving congratulatory bonuses for effectively manipulating my and others’ schedules to make the returns looks nicer.  I hope this is not the case, and that there might be a real and serious look into the value vs. cost ratio of this policy from an HR standpoint, rather than merely a bottom line view. I simply wish to make clear my concerns and frustrations regarding this policy, and the unwarranted additional stress it places on my coworkers and me. I do not question the financial sense of requiring makeups for even national holidays at this time… but I strenuously question the sense of mandating that it be done in the same financial month, especially for a holiday of the length of Spring Festival.

It is my sincere hope that, if nothing else, future holidays may be planned for in advance and have the arbitrary “revenue target” adjusted accordingly to reflect that schedule disruption, rather than forcing teachers and administrators alike to frantically compress a large number of classes into an extremely limited timeframe, or face the punitive action of a reduced paycheck.  It would not cost the company money, and it would certainly make many employees dread national holidays a little less.  They would still be rescheduling nightmares in the name of naked profit, but they would at least be on our – the teachers’ and local-level staff’s – terms time-wise, rather than that of an arbitrary monthly deadline.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

(CS) TAW Out.
LYRIC HERE

How Not to Blackmail your Company

Imagine you own a significant share in a major business venture – let’s say, oh, 30%.  Now let’s visualize the other 70% being held by an multinational conglomerate by the name of, oh, I don’t know… “Learson Pongman”… a publishing and education company which has its tentacles in over 70 countries and has had business dealings with my own country-of-residence for something on the order of half-a-century.

What do you do?

If your answer if to kick back, relax, and let the virtually assured dividends come rolling in… well congratulations.  Your brain is officially working normally.  Let me present you with this laurel, and hardy handshake.

If, however, your answer was to resist the 70% ownership at every turn (after, y’know, selling that 70%) over a period of 3 years, and then – and this is where it gets good - try (unsuccessfully) to fire those who disagreed/were not intimidated by you, and then unlawfully detain/imprison the president of the Asian branch of the parent company, his staff and lawyer in your office for a period of hours, under guard… well, then hello to my now former general manager and welcome to my page.  I do hope you enjoy it, given that you’re newly unemployed, and may soon be facing jail time for, well, basically going off the deep-end.

In my extended stay at – let’s drop the transparent euphemisms, shall we? – Pearson, I’ve been privy to quite a few power struggles, shifts, and complete reversals of direction.  I’ve seen promises broken, words revoked, ignored, and the supposed “values” of the company outright ignored in the interest of something called “guanxi,” which is to say, “face, relations, connections.”  I’ve become accustomed to a multinational company from the UK being run in a quintessentially – and I mean this in an entirely negatively fashion – Chinese way.  The semi-corrupt, completely opaque bureaucracy that governed my work environment had long-since become old hat.  I tolerated it because, by and large, I was able to ignore it, and the upper echelons largely ignored my backwater campus as being just too darned inconveniently located to actually come and enforce everything.

And yet, as of Tuesday, I bore witness to something completely new.  And found myself utterly dumbfounded at the machinations that unfurled quite literally before my eyes.  Nancy and Caelan had boarded their train for Wenzhou, and I’d returned home to wile away the remaining hours of the day with WoW, Skyrim, or whatever else might strike my fancy.  And so, there I was doing my best not to become food for a frost troll, when my cell phone began thrumming away with a series of texts.  It was a series of messages resembling something the Enigma Machine might churn out than an official company SMS.  It came in 4 parts, crudely cut apart at random places, and then delivered in reverse order.  Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued.  I had, along with the rest of the staff, been “invited” to a meeting at the headquarters with the aforementioned President of Pearson Asia Pacific.  Now, to explain, this was very strange because I had until now never been “invited” to any function other than the annual party.  Meeting times and places were simply sent out via email and through the local center managers that “there will be a meeting at…” and sometimes that we were “required” to attend.  Further, I had never before received a text message from the company.  It was a degree of sophistication upper management had simply lacked.  And finally, the invitation was for that very day… and while I’ve long since grown used to the Chinese vagaries regarding future-planning, this level of immediacy was again unprecedented.

So I bid my dark elf goodbye and trekked out to People’s Square out of little more than sheer curiosity.  Arriving at the building, I was greeted by a few of my coworkers hailing others down with directions.  The meeting at HQ, they relayed to me, had been cancelled and the center closed entirely.  The Asia Pacific President, Mr. Dugie Cameron and his entourage had relocated to a 3^rd floor restaurant of the nearby shopping mall, where they awaited anyone who might show up.

Once assembled, he relayed the tale of sorrow and woe to us all: he had flown in from Hong Kong to try to solve a rather grave crisis of leadership at the managerial level, one which put the entire operation in Shanghai at risk.  It seemed that somewhere in the byzantine bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education, there was some mid-level official who had taken a rather intense dislike to the fact that Pearson was operating in Shanghai/China.  So much so that when the school had to renew its license to operate in the city, this person had stipulated they would not authorize any renewal if the name “Pearson” was still attached to the company.  Now of course, the “whys” of it is sheer speculation – perhaps he’d been bribed to do exactly that, perhaps he was a jaded former customer hell-bent on revenge, perhaps an alien parasite invaded his brain and turned him into a drone for the hive cluster.  Regardless, on the last day of the year the renewal had finally gone through – with the Pearson brand stripped from it.  The general managers/minority shareholders/husband-wife pair in change of negotiations had essentially promised that Pearson was going to be removed entirely from its operation in Shanghai.

Obviously, that didn’t sit too well with the company as a whole.  And thus Mr. Cameron flew in to deal with the rogue duo face-to-face, lawyer in tow.  I’m sure expected a fair amount of static, posturing, and heated negotiation.  What they certainly had not expected was to be locked away in the office building, and placed under guard for a period of hours, and denied access to communication devices.  Yeah, that’s a no-no.  I’m not sure what the Chinese word for “false imprisonment” and “kidnapping” are, but they’re definitely on the books as a general “bad idea.”  After the cleaning lady finally came along and unlocked the door from the outside, they relocated to said restaurant.

As for the mysterious text message, apparently the normal company email system had been taken over by the duo, who had managed to acquire sole administrator-level access of the system.  There were able then to monitor, and block, any mail they so chose.  Thus, they’d been able to effectively close down the primary means of intercompany communication.  Mr. Cameron had been forced to reroute the messages about the meeting through his Hong Kong office using available cellphone contact info.

But that wasn’t the end of the paranoid craziness that had seized the GMs.  After the negotiations broke down into kidnapping, they had tried to terminate several of the upper-level staff for being “pro-Pearson” and attempted with some success to intimidate the center managers into not attending the meeting.  Several had been cowed into coming out on the side of the GMs.  Talk about backing the wrong horse.  As for the “firings,” well it turns out it’s rather difficult to fire someone who doesn’t work for you.  The employees had been hired and brought in by Pearson, thus nullifying the monomaniacal purge it seems the GMs had envisioned.

From the sounds of it, the ex-GMs had been blackmailing the company, hoping for a big payday – to the turn of $50,000,000 (yes, that’s in USD) – to make them go away.  Well, now they’re more likely to be going away for quite a while… to prison.

The open question at this point is, what becomes of the company?  The license to operate was procured under false pretenses – no, the 70% multinational shareholder did not simply raise anchor and disappear over the horizon.  So there is the possibility that the Ministry of Education may follow the letter of the law and begin proceedings to close the school down.  That, however, is relatively unlikely.  For one, it seems there is only one MoE official who took issue with Pearson’s ownership in the country.  Everyone else they’ve contacted in the Ministry seems to think there shouldn’t be a problem… so it may be as simple as just resubmitting the application to someone else.  For another, Pearson is not simply the owner of Longman Schools; they own at least two other school chains throughout the country, including the giant Wall Street English.  They create tens of thousands of jobs – most of which are for local staff, rather than foreign experts such as myself.  The company’s ability to generate currency is rather substantial, and to jeopardize that would be unwise for an economy in a precarious position.  On a related point, the last thing the Chinese government needs at the moment is yet more bad press, especially when it comes to foreign investment.  With competing entities like Disney and English First having equal stakes in the ESL industry, rocking that boat could have a significant ripple effect.  Suffice it to say, methinks this will all pan out in the end.

Still, it’s been a very interesting few days – especially since the company annual party was held the day after this all went down, including the two GMs in question.  Believe me, there were quite a few people waiting for that ball to drop (alas, it never did).  In my wildest dreams, I see there being a substantive shift in company policy away from the profit-at-all-cost mentality of the former head.  But hey, I’m not fool, and I know that it’s just as likely (in fact, much moreso) that barring a new name at the top of the billing, the status quo is likely to remain firmly intact.

Time will tell.

(CS) TAW Out.
LYRIC HERE

Unsinkable: The Price of Harmony in the PRC

It was just over a year ago that the newest and shiniest of Shanghai’s sprawling 400+km Metro system had its limited opening to passengers. Line 10 was hailed as a technological leap forward in mass-transit: fully automated (able to be operated without human drivers even!), with the latest in security and safety features... and most importantly, German-designed. It was virtually impossible to malfunction, much less crash. Even direct human error would be overridden by the sophisticated computers and tracking systems in place. I was thrilled because, at the time, my family and I were living less than a block away from one of the Line 10 stations. It was a huge convenience, since the next-closest Metro line was a 20-minute walk.

In late September, two trains on Line 10 collided. The crash left at least than 271 people injured, about 20 critically. Fortunately, as yet, no one is reported as having died. I’ve long since stopped using Line 10 at all, since having moved to a different district of the city, and yet the implications – and tacit fear – hit me all the same. I could well have been riding that train… and further, who’s to say the trains I do ride might not be at risk of a similar or worse accident? More than anything, though, I simply shake my head and sigh as this latest near-tragic chapter of China’s breakneck modernization unfolds. And many Chinese, much like me, see this as a horrifying – but unsurprising – development… the cost of growth, perhaps.

This is hardly, after all, a singular occurrence. In some ways – too many ways - it rings of “déjà vu all over again.” Just two months ago – in an incident that again hit far too close to home for my comfort – a two high-speed trains on the Shanghai-Wenzhou railway collided amid a thunderstorm, injuring hundreds and killing an official “40” people (though there is widespread belief that the real fatality count will never be released). This occurred less than a week before my wife and child were planning to take that very train line down to her hometown, with me following a few days later. They ended up taking a plane, while I gulped and boarded the train by myself… a thankfully completely uneventful trip to and from.

Still, that’s pretty small comfort. I arrived in China in the immediate aftermath of the infamous melamine-milk scandal of 2008, read about the near-completed apartment complex which collapsed on a man due to shoddy construction materials, watched on the news about another apartment complex going up in flames due to – you guessed it – shoddy, unlicensed renovations, read about bridges and half-finished freeways collapsing because of… well, you get the picture. Most recently (save for the Line 10 accident) I read the sickening reports of a “crackdown” on so-called “gutter oil.” This is used cooking oil fished from gutters, sewers, drains, et al, illegally “processed” to “clean” it, and then sold to restaurants at rock-bottom prices (gee, wonder why). It’s estimated that perhaps one in ten businesses have used or are using gutter oil in some capacity. Yum.

My point is that cutting corners in ways that can lead to tragedy, sickness, and death is not just some one-off for China – it’s business as usual; a product of both corrupt business practices, and a corrupt bureaucracy of governance… but more than anything widespread societal acceptance that “this is normal.” It is simply understood that these sorts of things are the cost of advancement, of modernization. Of course, there is public backlash whenever anything goes wrong. The guilty (or perceived guilty) parties are paraded forth to deliver Jerry Falwell-esque “I have sinned” repentance speeches, and then “justice” is doled out. Be it merely losing their job or prison, or execution at a speed that would make even a Texan’s head spin, the case is closed and everyone else keeps right on fishing for gutter oil.

Why is this? Why is there no discernable shift in attitudes when these things crop up? I’ve already mentioned the cultural shrug-off of it being “the cost of progress,” but I think it’s more than that. In part, I’d say it has to do with the opaque implacability of the CCP – at virtually every level. Be it the local police force, or the People’s Congress, there is no Chinese C-SPAN (or Daily Show to help parse it) monitoring and recording what happens (or doesn’t happen) in those glorious and harmonious halls. The populace at large simply does not know, and has no way of knowing what their government is doing… and consequentially has long ago given up caring. This is completely by design.

The government of the PRC seems to have found a winning combination – the holy grail of a techno-auto-bureaucratic regime. The recipe for one-party success has deceptively few steps, but appears to be surprisingly difficult to actually balance (see: Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, et al).

Step 1) Grow the economy, always. People without jobs are people planning insurrection. As long as most of the people feel their lives are better this year than last year, and their children are doing better than their parents, they will not want to rock that boat. Under no circumstances should the economy be allowed to contract. In the event of a global financial meltdown, which would shutter huge swaths of your export and manufacturing-driven economy, force the banks to give huge loans to keep those industries afloat. Oh, that leads me to…

Step 2) Control the finances. The banks are state-owned, or at the very least a joint-venture with the govt. When Beijing says start shelling out the bucks, they don’t demure and whine about profit margins… they salute and say “How much, sir?” This works even better if…

Step 2.5) Don’t block the media, be the media. At first glance – and to many Chinese, their only view ever – China doesn’t censor. They’ve got news, they report bad things that happen, conduct interviews, and there are multiple news channels and internet outlets with different reports. There are newspapers that report more conservatively than others, and some that report things at the borders of tolerability. They’ve even got a Facebook clone (Renren) and a Twitter clone (Weibo). And they’re all owned, operated, and policed by – you guessed it – the gub’ment.

Step 3) What You Can’t Control, Remove. – The title of the previous step is misleading… China censors… big time. There is an entire massive industry surrounding the manipulation and denial of information. From the vast and seemingly-random swaths of the internet blockaded by the Great Firewall, to web forum/blog “Harmonizers” empowered to moderate, change, or straight up delete posts deemed “unharmonious” (read: potentially anti-Beijing/Party), to the semi-infamous “Fifty-Cent Party” which has nothing to do with promoting the thug life of Curtis James Jackson III, and everything to do with acting as a paid army of commentators who’s job it is to steer online discussion into government-friendly territory, and are paid by the post. You can even find their usually ham-fisted attempts to do the same in English any time an article relating to China appears on Time or CNN. Fortunately they’re pretty easy to spot as their arguments consist overwhelmingly of misspelled hyper-patriotic Chinglish to the tune of “y u westrenrs no like harmonious China? Leave glorious PRC alone evil white guizi!”

Back when the so-called Arab Spring was just gaining steam in Tunisia and Egypt, and when Ghadaffi was still sporting ridiculous floral print dresses in Libya, some Chinese netizens started calling for a similar protest movement in China, dubbing it a “Jasmine Revolution.” They called for large-scale gatherings in cities all over the country, in public places a la Tahrir Square. Naturally the CPC took a measured, appropriate response of A) deleting all mention of the protests, B) arresting anyone who showed up to the designated protest area… even though it was a KFC (and Chinese people love KFC), and C) completely blocking the term “jasmine” from the internet. That’s right – in a country where jasmine is a popular tea, a pretty flower, and the English name of every fifth girl – they eradicated the word based on the postings of about a half-dozen dissidents.

And finally, Step 4) Turn official corruption into a game of Russian roulette – Official corruption is a redundancy in the PRC. Forget what you think you know about Rod Blagojevich or Bernie Madoff… they’re small fries, amateurs. The entire Chinese economic machine is oiled with the grease of back-room dealings, black market trade, mafia money, and cutting every conceivable corner while paying the official in charge of oversight to take a 4-month bathroom break. As I mentioned before, it’s long past the point of a running joke… it’s just too blasé to be funny or interesting to most people anymore. It is the “take my wife…please!” of China. So in a system powered entirely by the unholy combination of Ayn Rand’s wet dream and The Godfather Pts. 1 & 2 (seriously, screw part 3), how can the government maintain the façade of accountability and, y’know, not being essentially a national-scale Triad organization… without grinding their economy to a screeching halt (remember Step 1, after all)?

Simple! Just turn the act of being a government official, tycoon, or wealthy person in general into a big lottery: everyone gets to make as much free black-market money as they can, become as corrupt and unaccountable as possible… and when something goes wrong, the guy who pulls the short straw gets shot and his family stripped of everything it every owned. In this instance, “pulling the short straw” means not having enough connections and strings to pull to buck the blame onto someone else, or crossing someone more important than you. And instead of being fitted for a pair of concrete shoes, or a “leave the gun, take the cannoli” drive out to the countryside, the poor Luca Brasi in question is paraded through the legal system as an embodiment of “justice” and “anticorruption” before being taken behind a chemical shed and shot. Oh, and then his family is sent a bill for the bullet. Seriously.

A good friend of mine and I recently got together at one of the only places in Shanghai that brews anything other that Budweiser-clone pilsner, somewhere between the second and fourth pitcher of Imperial Stout our conversation turned to this very topic. He’s Chinese and studied law in college in hopes of becoming a policeman, and worked in a government office for a while before deciding that wasn’t his thing. His girlfriend is an intern at a large Shanghai legal firm. Suffice it to say, what he has to say on the topic is something worth taking with more than a grain of salt. I’m paraphrasing, but in essence he said the majority of legal work, deals, and trials have almost nothing to do with case law, precedent, or evidence… but on who you know, and your (the lawyer/firm’s) relationship with the judge presiding. Though he and his girlfriend have enough firsthand knowledge to make a pretty convincing case by themselves, he went further and told me this wasn’t just the de facto situation, but what he was actually taught in school. I have to imagine the curriculum looked something like:
Chinese Law 101: It Isn’t What You Know, It’s Who You Know
Legal Ethics 215: LOL… C’mon, Seriously Now…
Trial Law 347: How Schmoozing the Judge Can Get You Acquittals/Convictions
Trial Law 401: Evidence Suppression and You

Now this is the part where I’m supposed to have some sort of grandiose solution to this list of issues: A Grand Unified Theory of Fixology. Well, I don’t… no one does. That is also by design. I’m an outsider looking in, simply blinking rapidly and marveling at the sheer enormity of the system in place and – for better and for worse – its own complex system for self-preservation. It’s a fascinating organism, the PRC: a society and government body based on the bones of a Confucian/Imperial mix of meritocracy and patronage, the organs of a Soviet/Maoist-style autocracy, and the muscles of Den Xiaoping’s “socialist market economy,” and all that under the thin, transparent skin of a “Republic.” While the rest of the Soviet bloc have long since crumbled to dust, the PRC keeps chugging along, using its own peculiar ability to adapt with the times to remain relevant and in power. And me? I’m just, for the time being, along for the ride, enjoying the benefits of being somewhere between a panda and a space alien in terms of coolness, and making sure to only buy my kid formula that’s been imported from the West. No melamine in my son’s diet, thanks.

(CS) TAW Out.

Musings of a Saturday Evening

July winds down towards its conclusion, and – save for the hellacious heat/humidity combo – it scarcely seems summer’s almost come and gone already. There was, not too terribly long ago, a drastic schedule change between summer, and those other three forgettable seasons. Now, - again, save for the mercury levels that would have Beelzebub sweating – it’s all just one relatively undifferentiated week from another.

It was yesterday that I officially renewed my contract with Longman Schools in Shanghai (I’ve been advised not to use "re-signing", as all too often I omit the hyphen, and it looks like I’m quitting). I’d made an appointment for 1:00, and soon found that apparently so had everyone else in the company. Shuffled from one office to another, and then shunted out of that because some hypersensitive Chinese teacher found my silent contract-signing too disturbing for her lilac of a student, it took a good 45 minutes to complete what would have, under normal circumstances, taken 15, maybe 20.

It’s the rare occasion that I’m exposed to other campuses. I’ve managed to carve an extremely insular niche at my own Chunshen campus, and consequentially am only occasionally exposed to the “rest” of the company. So infrequent is it that it can become all-too-easy to forget why I’ve spent the last two years doing so. This was a reminder. These people are crazy, and I’m lucky enough to have shielded myself from the majority of their nuttiness.

Still, I’ve come to the tentative decision that this may well be our last year in China (this is not, by the way, a unilateral decision). As accustomed as I’ve become to the country, there’s still a large piece of me that longs to return. This is assuming, of course, that there will be anything more than a smoking ruin to return to. That’s in large part why I signed on for another year. My intent is to try to ride this whole suicidal populist groundswell out from a safe distance. If in the next week or two the whole thing willfully goes to shit, well, viva la China. If somehow this whole default catastrophuck blows over, then homecoming is a very real option.

I’ve managed to complete my preliminary iteration of my Apples to Apples clone, and now just need to find the time to get it printed on the company’s dime. I’ve not done a page could, but 20+ full color would not be surprising, potentially double-sided… and then there’s lamination to consider. Makes me thankful I can write this off as a company expense.


(CS) TAW Out.

I'm glad I didn't know the way it all would end

Lions, and Contracts, and Beers! Oh my!

I'm in the process of "feeling out" the new MacOS - Lion... I think I'll call mine Mufasa!...Oooooohhhhhh... Do it again! Mu-Fa-Saaaa!! So far it's quite nice, and quite a good deal at $29.99. There's still a few features to get used to, though. The biggest on is the trackpad... they've decided to reverse it... so now down is up and up is down. It fits with their iPad-ization of the OS, but it's still a little disorienting. I'm still occasionally wondering why the hell the page won't scroll down... and then realize it's because I'm pushing the wrong way. Doh.

I've just concluded my latest round of contract negotiations. Though I'd been pursuing the idea of striking out on my own, it turns out it wasn't as simple as all that. Due to certain less-than-reputable individuals scamming customers and fleeing the country, the barrier to enter into the English business has increased dramatically. On a single salary, with a little guy, it's just not feasible at the moment to try to lay down all that groundwork.

So instead, Pearson and I hammered out a new deal... I got a 15-20% raise, depending on the numbers used (it's complicated), and I essentially will just keep on keeping on. We'll be moving out of Nancy's uncle's apartment in August, and so we're in the beginning stages of looking for a "new pad." I've made it clear what I require from any potential apartment:
1) rent at or below 4000/month... it can take some effort and negotiation, but it's feasible...
2) preferably at or south of Xujiahui... I wanna be close enough to work...
3) north of Shanghai South Station... but not so far from city center...
4) As close to Line 1 Metro as possible... no more 20 minute walks to and from the subway, tyvm.

In other news, I've been drawn into a family semi(not really)-competitive "cookoff" and have, as a consequence, decided to "up my game," both in terms of food I'm making, and the beers with which to wash it down. As a result, I've been discovering some of the remarkably delicious brews available to those willing to track them down in Shanghai :) It's not all Tsingtao and Suntory, after all!

(CS) TAW Out.

Hello again, friend of a friend

The Plum Rain Season

Lasting from early/mid-June through the middle of July, the so-called "Plum Rainy Season" is Shanghai's version of monsoon season. Why do they call it Plum Rain? Well, two reasons: first, because typically plums ripen in late July, right after the conclusion of these rains... and secondly, it sounds much more pleasant than the other option, the Fungus Rain Season (plum and fungus are phonetic homonyms).

The season itself is marked by wet, warm rain in grey, dull days, interspersed with witheringly hot and humid jaunts into the maw of Hell itself. Fungus rain season starts to sound more and more accurate, right?

In other news, we've been trying to send some money across the Pacific to my US account so as to pay down my credit card there. And believe you me, it's no simple, quick task. We have the money set aside, my account number, the bank's SWIFT number, will probably need my passport... ugh... I think it might be easier to affix a roll of bills to a carrier pigeon and hope for the best.

小C now has 4 teeth growing in (!), and we recently bought an "ergo gym" for him... which is a fancy way of saying a walker with lights and sounds. So far, he's more interested in trying to climb over/eat the thing that walk with it... but it's still cool to see him bipedal (with significant assistance from mommy/daddy). His "vocabulary" continues to expand and mutate. Though still monosyllabic babble, it's come to include not only his initial "doo doo doo" and "da da da," but now "ba ba" and even "moo moo moo." One of these days we'll get him to say "mama" and make Nancy happy ;D

(CS) TAW Out.

Its contents watched by Sycorax

Thoughts While Watching Chinese TV....

I've been watching a bit more Chinese TV as of late (both because I'm trying to spend more time with Nancy/listening to Chinese... and I'm just about out of new shows to download right now). In spite of the impossibly high language barrier to entry, enjoyment can be found by even a language-deaf foreigner like me... mostly by MST3K'ing these shows to myself as I watch them. And believe me, specifics of the dialogues aside, there's plenty to mock about Chinese TV...

Commercials
There's just so much to love/give you an aneurysm about Chinese commercials. Chalk it up to my jaded, savvy American mind, but they're just ridiculous. They promise ridiculous things, and paint ridiculous scenarios. They're American commercials before people realized that commercials are total BS.

Toothpaste is not only cause to throw a pool party, but turns you into a retarded manga cartoon. Every single product, including diarrhea medicine has its own cutesy, cartoon spokesthing. Beer still has the power to grant wishes... just by pouring it.

Not to mention that apparently somewhere along the chain of command, someone has made the decision that it's best to buy as many time slots as is humanly possible. In any one commercial break there are no less than 3 repeats of the exact same commercial advertising laxative tea to the elderly. When I go on the subway, no lie, every 3 and a half minutes comes on a commercial featuring a woman riding a donkey (it sounds kinkier than it is), and advertising for Ganji, an EBay clone shopping site. Added to that is the fact that each time she starts the commercial by screaming the name of the company as loud as possible. It's is because of Ganji that I bought a new pair of headphones... but unfortunately for them, not from them.

Oh yeah. And every. God. Damned. Thing. Rhymes.
Everything
Forever
And ever
Amen.

Reality Shows
China seems obsessed with reality shows... but not as we know them. It's not a Survivor clone, nor Who Wants to Be a Millionaire that seems to be everywhere (though they do exist)... but rather these banal, boring versions of Jerry Springer or the Maury Povich show.

Imagine Jerry Springer if there were no transvestite baby-daddies, cross-dressing trucker hookers, or midget porn stars. Now imagine That Jerry's final thought was the entire second half of the show, and was in fact a lecture complete with podium to the audience about whatever evil happened to be the topic of the day (today's appears to be "not beating your gal on the side who's mother of your 3 illegitimate children"). And imagine Jerry isn't Jerry, but a portly, middle-aged Chinese woman with a voice like raking gravel and a face that makes you think Mao didn't look so bad. Sternly lecturing her audience and everyone else. How does this get a show?!

Other than that, there are the near ubiquitous dating shows. Great, thinks you, Joe McForeignviewer, something along the lines of Blind Date or, hell, even Next. Nope. Instead, men are brought out one by one like the condemned brought before the firing squad... the firing squad being an extremely intimidating ring of potential mothers in law (keep in mind, at this point and through the course of the entire program there is neither hide nor hair of any of the actual prospective women to date... just the grim, stony mothers. To give these sacrificial male lambs some sliver of hope, they are presented with a montage of the photos of the women they'll probably never meet). These gargoyles then commence with what is, in effect, a hostile interrogation - aided by several separate judges and a camera crew picking apart the guy's life. Each time a mother decides that her daughter's too good for the guy, she get a chance to personally berate what she thinks are his shortcomings.

The only reason that a show as punishingly brutal as this has survived more than 3 episodes, I'm sure, is that there are just so many desperate men in China willing to walk barefoot over broken glass, arm wrestle a gorilla, or eat live spiders for a chance with a girl. My question is: Why don't they make a show about that instead?! I'd be thrilled to watch desperate guys be tasked with a castrating an unrestrained tiger for a date with a girl... but watching mothers grill him? Pass.

(CS) TAW Out.

a prison with an intellect

Time lost and futures yet to come

Where has the time gone?

That's a question, I'm sure, I'll be asking more and more frequently in the years to come... but I never intended to leave this blog sit untended for 6 months. Wait, on second thought, I do know where the time has gone... into that little poop-machine I affectionately call "wee one."

Nevertheless, I left us on a cliffhanger... I promised a part two, and failed to deliver.

But let's just let bygones be bygones, and have a fresh start, no?

小c is pushing 9 months (!), Nancy's all healed, and continues to push toward her pre-preggers figure - not at my urging, certainly (more her sisters', I'm sure)... but I'm not complaining, either.

In spite of the whirls and rush of the day to day - job, wife, kid, and all those other little things that continue to find their way into the "inbox" of life - I find myself more and more frequently (and in many ways forced) to think about the future, both medium and long term.

My contract with Longman expires in August. I will have completed 2 years there at that time, and will, in fact, be among the longest-working teachers in the company. I learned the other day from my friend and former coworker Leon that I am in fact that last person from my "crop" of trainees who's still working there.

That's not surprising, though. Most people come as the same person I was when I went to Wenzhou: coming for the experience of China, and having a way to pay the bills while they do. Some even take it a step further: they work long enough for their year-long work visa to get pasted on their passport, and then they bugger off for parts unknown.

I'm reasonably sure that I'll be getting an email soon-ish, inquiring as to my plans after this contract is up, and offering a new year-long gig. Of course, there is the outside chance that they'll thank me for my time and show me the door... but given my length of employment, track record, and that they considered me in high enough standing to give me a "Star Teacher" award at last years annual company dinner, I'd be pretty surprised.

So what then? Certainly working for this company has been stable, reasonable work, with relatively few headaches, or employers taking all the cash and fleeing the country. So that's a plus.

If I were to accept another contract, I'd have a few specific things I'd want out of it...
1) a change of campus... for more than one reason. The travel distance, the absurdly out of the way location, the coworker I'd like to strangle about half the time.
2) a pay increase, of the substantial variety. High teens, at least.
3) a trained polar bear to ride + saddle. (Alright, I'm willing to compromise on that last one, the saddle might be a bit much)

The thing behind Door No. 2... is considerably more of a, shall we say, challenge. And that is the idea of returning to Wenzhou to work part-time, while also private-teaching and building a student base to open my own school. I am, after all, eminently qualified... and I have the Star Teacher Award to prove it (even though the name makes it sound like someone a teacher should be giving to a 3rd grader). It could also be done here in Shanghai, but that seems considerably more difficult...

Anyway, I shall continue to ponder these and other mysteries of the universe.... in between nap time, burpings, and diaper changes.

(CS) TAW Out.
send shivers down my spine

2010: A Hospital Odyssey

Part 1: A Prelude to Chaos

We knew going into it that we were in for some serious hospital time in the coming months. After all, Nancy was pregnant, and the only thing more certain in pregnancy than regular doctor visits are wild, unpredictable mood swings. Little did we know, however, just how very much time and energy we’d be spending in those labyrinthine, white-washed hallways and exceptionally uncomfortable beds. What we were expecting to be a relative straightforward in-and-out delivery, would ultimately span months (and months’ paychecks) post-delivery. Months spent in the most curious, surreal, and frustrating of circumstances: a naïve Montana boy trying to navigate the impenetrable bureaucracy and maddening inefficiency of the Chinese medical system. This ongoing twilight zone is what I’m attempting to document here, for your entertainment, and the remaining vestiges of my own sanity.

We were in the final stretch of pregnancy (stomach pun intended)… when those monthly visits have shifted down to one every two weeks, and then to weekly. Nancy (and therefore, I) had wanted a natural delivery. This desire was as cosmetic as any other reason. She wasn’t sure what kind of incision they might use, and feared she might never be able to wear a bikini should they decide to give her the ol’ vertical cut. Add to that the natural inclination to want to avoid unnecessary cutting of any kind and, well, it was an easy decision to agree with.

The ultrasound technicians, however, alerted us to a potential hiccup in that plan. Now before I go further, let me explain that we weren’t able to see any pictures of the ultrasounds. No pictures, no motion, no nothing since about week 12. The reason was they were legally required to withhold the gender of the fetus to the parents. The rationale? One of those kooky side effects of a one-child policy in a gender-preferenced society. If you only get one shot at a son, for instance, you may be less than thrilled to learned your bun in the oven’s a girl… and you just might decide to start over. Though far less common nowadays – at least among the urban middle and upper classes (who can often afford the tax on a 2nd child) – it is still a very real concern… especially for the hundreds of millions of working class families for whom the cost of an abortion is far lower than paying the tax for a second flip of the gender coin.

Of course, that doesn’t really stop too many from finding out. Though doctors and hospitals face steep penalties – such as being fired and fined – for revealing the gender to the parents… there are plenty who still do. Some “black market” doctors are more than willing to “let it slip” for the right price. Or, in my case, the holder of the right passport. That’s, right, the president of the maternity ward, and one of the chief delivery surgeons at our hospital was willing to tell me (in a hushed voice, just to add to the air of illegality… in spite of the fact we were alone in his office at the time) the gender, because…well… I wasn’t Chinese. I wasn’t one of the people they were worried about doing something nutballish. Though I have to imagine the fact that ours was a boy also had something to do with it.

Anyway, as I was saying, the ultrasound technicians commented to Nancy (I wasn’t allowed in the room… or any of the testing rooms) that the baby was “big,” “not small,” and had “very long legs.” Our doctor, after dutifully taking a cursory glace over the data, confirmed that indeed we had a “big baby.” This didn’t really come as a shock to either of us. We’d been watching her belly button pop and her stomach expand past its stretching point. Long ribbons of purple scar tissue now made a kind of pinstripe pattern up and down Nancy’s poor stomach. We made the appropriate sound of interest and this “new” revelation. After all, I figured, we were paying an extra 300 yuan per visit to see this guy… we should at least pretend like we were getting something out of it, other than a slightly shorter line, and waiting rooms that didn’t double as janitor’s storage closets.

The conversation we’d figured was going to be brought up at some point… was brought up: an elective C-section. Though the baby wasn’t considered to be “too big” to try natural delivery yet, he was considered borderline. Additionally, her uterus had produced an overabundance of amniotic fluid, which was causing Nancy do swell even further. Nancy, however, stood firm. She wanted a natural birth, unless it was truly necessary to have it be otherwise. Solemnly, the doctor nodded his head. I looked closely, but couldn’t find any dollar signs in his eyes. Clearly, he’d been in this game longer than we had, and knew how to hide any disappointment he might have had. After all, it was only the 3rd quarter, and one never knows what might happen in the 4th.

That 9th-inning game changer manifested itself as the umbilical cord wrapping itself around the baby’s neck a few weeks before the due date. Though it remained loose, and after a few days unwrapped on its own (as is often the case), a big enough of a fuss was made, and enough worry was stirred up to cause us to be the ones to reintroduce the possibility of a Caesarean. By this point, Nancy was over it. The romance of pregnancy was not only gone… it had changed its phone number and email with no forwarding address. The bump in her stomach had gone from a butterfly flutter, to rampaging xenomorph ready to burst out of her chest before being hunted down by Sigourney Weaver. She wanted it O-U-T.

The solution would be twofold. First and foremost: a definite deadline. Baby’s appointed due date, as it were, had flown by. Apparently no one had given him the memo. So we decided to set a firm, but loving, eviction date. If he didn’t come out by the end of August, we were going in after him.

The second step was long, daily walks… hoping Caelan would take a note from Newton’s apple if we did enough laps around the park. Alas, gravity was booked solid at the time, and couldn’t fit us in. It would be a c-section, a 6 hours wait, and the most uncomfortable bed ever to grace this green earth that would finally see baby Caelan out of the womb and into our arms.

Stay tuned for part 2… same bat time, same bat blog.


(CS) TAW Out.

LYRIC HERE

Dr. Strange-Brew (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tea)

So here we are: November 3rd (or 4th in Shanghai). The dust has cleared, or at least settled enough to get an idea of all that happened. And oh, no! Obama Chastened! Democrats Routed! Obama Takes a Shellacking! Democrats Bent Over a Tree Stump and Sodomized! What will this mean for 2012? Does this signal a paradigm shift in the American electorate? Was the John Cusack movie 2012 right, and are we going to be swallowed up by the Earth thanks to those damn Aztecs?! Will we finally be able to believe it’s not butter?!

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!!?!?

So, in the wake of – what I could only assume from news reports – this sign of the end times, or at least Democratic end times, I wanted to pull back a little bit. Maybe it was a lingering aftereffect of the Rally to Restore Sanity… after all, nothing that weird and trippy can be without the risk of flashback. Whatever the reason, it seemed that the hivemind mentality that had seized control of most media outlets and commentators maybe, just maybe could have been overblowing this a little – difficult to believe, I know.

And so, amid the shouting matches between outlets such as CNN and Time, seeing who could make the biggest mountain out of this molehill, I wanted to find out for myself… was it really that bad??

Well… no, not really. Getting past the attention-grabbing and thoroughly sensationalized headlines (“Obama Forced to Wear Leather and Become GOP’s Gimp!”…. alright, I’m making that one up), the news organization tended to cop to the fact that, in actuality not a whole lot had changed. If played correctly, this could even help Obama by allowing him to deflect responsibility for the state of things, rather than owning all of it. Being able to say, “hey it’s not all my fault!” certainly can’t hurt when contemplating a re-election bid.

A certain CNN article called this a “rout,” which is defined on Wikipedia as “a chaotic and disorderly retreat … resulting in the victory of the opposing party, or following defeat, a collapse of discipline, or poor morale….[and] provides the decisive victory the winner needs to gain the momentum with which to end a battle (or even campaign) in their favor.” Makes me wonder which dictionary CNN was using… losing ground is not the same as being so utterly defeated that people simply break and run for their lives. I’ve yet to see videos of Democrats fleeing the Capitol building, stampeding over their fellow senators all pell-mell.

The fact of the matter is that, while it certainly wasn’t a great day for Democrats in Congress (or the White House), it also wasn’t some massive shift in power. The House was taken by Republicans, yes, but Boehner hasn’t exactly acquired a rubber stamp. 55%’s a solid majority, yes, but by no means some enormous popular mandate. Contrast that to the Senate where, thanks to the Tea Party’s and Christine O’Donnell’s kooky efforts, even the “immortal undead” Harry Reid retains his majority leader status. Both houses were the Republicans’ to lose and, well, 50% isn’t exactly spectacular. Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (oh the puns are just too easy there) can talk as much as he likes… but even he knows how little power the House has even in the best of times. Not to mention when it’s your party’s sole foothold.

But let’s take another tact: history. Is this some tidal wave of incoming Republican power, ready to sweep Obama and his “hopey-changey” stuff away in 2012? Again, not really. Look back at the midterm elections of yesteryear, and it becomes obvious that this was almost inevitable: in 2006, George W. Bush saw both houses revert to Democratic control, losing 30 seats in the House, and 6 in the Senate. Bill Clinton (in a much more apt example, given his situation at the time), saw in 1994 a 54-seat loss in the House, and waved farewell to 8 seats in the Senate. 1982, Reagan saw 26 House seat go D, and then 8 Senate seats in 1986. 1974, Ford: -48, -4. ’66, Johnson: -48, -3. In 1954 Eisenhower lost 18 and 2, but then lost another 48 and 12 in ’58. Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover…. on and on it goes. The thing to take away from this election is that it’s perfectly normal. You’d almost go so far as to call it the “rule.” 2nd year of presidency? Be prepared to lose one or both houses of Congress.
It’s the exceptions that one needs to watch out for. If you’ve suffered minimal congressional losses, you are either headed for an early exit from the White House (George H.W. Bush: -8, -1; Carter: -15, -3; Nixon: -12, +1), are about to get shot (JFK: -4, +2), or just had planes fly into buildings (2002, George W. Bush: +8, +2).

The question then becomes: why? Why is it almost inevitable that such rapid and dramatic shifts in power take place with such startling regularity? The answer is that, despite what is constantly screamed from TV, campaign ads, and the Houses of Government, or what is blared obnoxiously through your radio… America has been and remains a fundamentally moderate nation. Setting aside the frothing-at-the mouth Tea Partiers, or the equally crazy Code Pink and Greenpeacers on the Left… Stewart’s Rally on October 30th showed us that we’re not all as crazy as we sometimes seem we are. Caught in the middle of the two screaming children on either side of us, there is a vast swath of Americans who are largely ignored and forgotten by most…. even themselves. In this increasingly polarized and toxic political environment, it pays dividends to portray your political opponent as the devil incarnate… or maybe a witch, and it looks piddling and weak to say, “maybe I disagree with your ideas, but you seem like a reasonable person.”

But that vast, silent middle-child of the American public does assert its quiet will in elections; moderating the outrageous positions of both fringes… by routinely removing the ability of a government to act as a unified body. As soon as a political party comes to hold too much power, its rug is yoinked out from under it by the electorate. America is a country that, by and large, likes two things: a divided government, and blaming the people in power. These two objectives work in remarkable synergy to keep the keel more-or-less even. Far from Glenn Beck’s crazy-Mormon prophesying that the Constitution is “hanging by a thread,” it’s in fact working as intended. The U.S. Government was designed to be an impossibly frustrating Rubik’s Cube, pleasing no one, annoying everyone… and making sure no power hungry individual or group can shove too much, too fast through it’s narrow, crooked gullet. In this respect, the Government, the Constitution, and the American public are very much working as intended… or perhaps more accurately, “broken as intended.”

The one aspect of American society which truly seems to be in a worrisome state, threatening to throw the rest out of balance as well, is the 4th Estate: the media. Enshrined and protected for the very purpose of supplying an outside foil to the machinations and self-serving platitudes inherent to government, it now operates more like the sideshow act of the local circus. Let the biggest freak win! Let he or she with the most uninformed, ignorant, jingoist sentiment take all! In a media environment in which new-Earth creationists are presented as just as reasonable as the entire scientific community, or Joe the Plumber is paired against a foreign policy expert… it’s easy to see how the aberrations start to seem possible, even normal… even, perhaps, right. A media environment which simply further amplifies those who already go out of their way to shout others down… isn’t just unhelpful to the nation and its democratic government, it’s downright destructive.
A democracy’s lifeblood is the ability of the populace to remain informed of relevant information. But when the crying clowns and dancing grizzly bears are allowed to run the show, that lifeblood is quickly polluted into a toxic sludge of newspeak: where up may very well be down, and black seems just as likely as white. The irrational fear news organizations have developed of being perceived as “biased” has become the very monster it initially sought to contain. By giving the kooks and whack jobs a far bigger platform and voice than they deserve, the new has in effect distorted the perception of reality, and the ability of the public to discern what is real from what is propaganda.

So, as we move past this long, winding headache of an election cycle… in that ever-so brief period of a month or so before the babbling bobble-heads of Fox, Time, CNN, MSNBC et al begin their coverage of the next election (after all, 2 entire years is hardly enough time to effectively cover all that baseless and ultimately pointless speculation), let’s take a moment and a deep breath. No, the world isn’t over. No, you’ve not received some incredible popular mandate. No, government/society isn’t magically going to turn itself around overnight.
And during that breath, let’s resolve to try to tune out a little more of the mindless drudgery that’s come to define both American politics, and the laughable excuse for coverage the modern media provides.
No, Democrats are not fascist-socialist secret Muslims out to eat your freedom and children for breakfast and pull the plug on grandma before setting an American flag on fire.
And no, the Republicans are not looking to enslave us to corporate interests while drilling to the center of the earth and teaching that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work after the Earth was created 6000 years ago, all the while selling us healthcare that proffers us to “die quickly in the event of illness or injury.”
By and large, we all are trying to do the best we can in these trying times. We simply have very different ideas about how to go about that. That doesn’t make us bad, or stupid, or evil, or heartless… it makes us different. And it is the recognition that, while we have and always will have these sorts of differences and disagreements, it is ultimately our commonalities that bind us together far closer than any policy disagreement could wedge us apart… that ultimately defines the American experience.


(CS) TAW Out.

See the Dead ain't touring
And this wasn't all in my head.