Beyond Mao’s peasantry

three ladies, hands laced behind backs,

gray hair tied back in a bun,

stand dappled in spring sunshine.

I woke up Tuesday morning with stage fright.  I had been expecting it.  We’re talking self fulfilling prophecy here.  So I made myself a strong cup of coffee, dug out the lesson plans for my Tuesday morning classes, and made sure that I had the right materials and handouts packed.

“The journey of a thousand li (miles, kilometers) begins beneath one’s feet.”  Lao Tzu.  We took a bus down into the primary shopping area in Chongqing this past Saturday.  We wanted to see how much had changed in the 19 months since we had last paid homage.  One of our favorite stops was/is the Xinhua Bookstore, sort of the Barnes & Nobles of China.  Floor 4 always has the foreign language section.  A great hidden resource in that section is the shelf of Chinese classics in English translation.  A new one caught my eye, The Book of Tao and Teh translated by Gu Zhengkun.  How fortunate that the translation benefits from the discovery of several bamboo slips on which a very early version of the verses making up the Book were transcribed.  These are the Guodian Chu slips. One might compare this find to the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Thus, in addition to getting a highly readable, English version of the book, one gets the latest edition.  If nothing else, I have corrected one of my favorite phrases, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with but one step.”

I should probably have been reading Gu’s translation rather than an essay on stage fright Monday evening.  Sometimes avoidance is the wiser policy.  But, despite some futile, subtle warnings floating through the back of mind Monday night while I read before I fell asleep, I was determined to read the last of the essay, Petrified, and with that to finish the book of American Essays.  The author, John Lahr, did too good a job in evoking the gut tightening feeling that sweeps over the body and drives rational thought off to the wings.  It brought back a ferocious memory.

I remembered a time when I was a young high school teacher teaching a summer school class in Western Civilization, a course required for graduation in my high school district.  Any teachers among you can imagine the strange mix of students one has in a summer school class.  Students from the honors track of classes who are too busy during the regular school year to fit in the required Western Civ. class because they need the foreign language and the band class.  Or they are the students who have taken the class before and failed it; sometimes failed it several times.  The disparity between the two is stunning.  You have eight weeks to cover a book of thirty-two chapters; four 55-minute periods each day.

In my second summer teaching the class I had covered almost all of the material I had prepared for the first day, and I still had a whole hour to go.  I remember sitting at my desk while I had the students writing one of the exercise question sets.  The desk was an old metal army surplus desk that the school district had picked up on sale some time in the 1950’s.  I remember looking out the window to my right and seeing my car sitting in the parking lot.  It struck me that I could escape if I just got up, took my briefcase, got in the car and took off.  That thought escalated in seconds to an overwhelming crescendo of fear my hands gripping the desk like steel claws.  I was simply panic stricken at the full hour left on that first day and the dearth of teaching/learning activities left to fill that endless time.

I think one of the things that I like about Taoism is the sense of a flowing, shifting unpredictability as one condition of life.  There is a wonderful Chinese hand scroll titled The Nine Dragons.  As one unrolls the scroll one is confronted with roiling clouds through which the nine dragons twine and swim out toward the viewer.  As I have been reading Gu’s introduction to the Book of Tao and Teh, I have often thought of the photos of the Nine Dragons I’ve seen.  The Tao that can not be described in words is reminiscent of the glimpses of dragon bodies, flexed claws, and spiky spines in the painting.

I was saved by the bell – as I remember now.  The bell for the five-minute break between the last two hours sounded.  The students filed out to use the washroom and talk with their friends.  I grabbed a last cup of stale coffee, took several deep breaths, and let the emotional overload subside.  When it came time that my materials were finished – indeed rather quickly – in the last hour, I asked the students how many of them subscribed to the belief that the pyramids were created by aliens from UFO’s.  Two-thirds raised their hands.  That led to an interesting discussion.

That was thirty years ago.  This Tuesday morning turned out to have its surprises but no stage fright.  Roll up the scroll, and put away the dragons.  Look at the feet.  Take a step forward.

Lion pillar guards no gate –

sentinal of the Great Leap.

Sapplings delicately screen

passers by from its power.

Walking to class this morning I saw an older Chinese gentleman jogging lightly ahead of me.  Ahead of him was his dog.  I watched the dog.  The dog owner moved to the street curb and out into the street.  With a quick glance, the dog also started across the street.  No words were spoken.  Several cars were coming up the grade at a good speed.  The old gentleman called his dog and brought him to heel out of the on-coming traffic.  As soon as the cars passed, the man and his dog continued on to the other side of the street and were soon weaving their way up the block.  I watched the dog keep in contact with the man.  No matter where the dog was, he frequently paused and checked what the old man was doing.  He took his cue from the man and stayed loosely on track with the old gentleman.

I was watching the dog because I recently read an excellent essay, What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell.  It’s about a “dog whisperer.”  For those of you like me who never thought to whisper in a dog’s ear, a dog whisperer is a man who understands dog psychology so well that he is able to work with the most aggressive animals so that they do not have to be killed.  He is also able to help dog owners gentle alpha male/female dogs so that they can regain control of their dogs.

Gladwell tells of some interesting research studies done on animals.  Turns out that dogs actually do better than chimpanzees at solving some decision making experiments.  It is obviously not the size of the brain nor how smart the dogs are compared to the chimps.  It seems that dogs being pack animals have learned to read humans extremely well.  The dogs check to see where the researcher is looking during the experiment and go try where the researcher is looking.  Chimps try to puzzle the problem out on their own.  So we could say that the chimps are more “lone wolf” types than the dogs.  [Audience feedback: “Groan.”]

Keeping that in mind, I have been using the dogs’ well proven path to getting along in China.  I pause frequently.  I check to see what the Chinese folks around me are doing.  I try to do the same.

This is a very interesting experience for me.  One of my longest held character traits is the strong desire – an almost chimp-like, lone-wolf bent of my nature – to reinvent the wheel every day.  I have probably never used anyone’s lesson plan for a class just the way I found it.  I never even use my own lesson plans the second time around in just the same way.  The lesson plan I teach to my Thursday morning class is not exactly the same one I taught to the Monday morning class.  I think that is not a bad character trait.  It has kept me actively engaged in life.  It has made me fairly creative in many problem-solving moments in my life. 

On the other hand it has led to wasting a lot of time on elaborate plans that when put into practice were just too complex to be useful.  It has led me not to confer well with key players.  Babs would be glad to give many instances to bolster that confession.

So yesterday we had a delightful lunch with two young couples at a duck soup restaurant.  Both couples are recent graduates from our university and former students of our Spoken English class.  I do not know much about Chinese restaurant etiquette, especially not about how one eats a roast duck swimming in a hearty broth in a large bowl in the middle of the table.  Remembering the good common sense of the dogs, I frequently checked to see what the two young women did in eating the soup.  If they took bone and meat from the duck carcass into their mouth and later spit out the bones, I did too.  If they dipped every bite in a spicy Chongqing sauce, I did too.  And when they slowed down and began eating less and less, I did too.

I had a great time.  I found that I wasn’t too concerned about whether my eating was too strange by Chinese standards.  Instead I enjoyed the conversation and catching up on what our former students were doing now.  As we got back to our apartment, Babs commented she had never seen me so relaxed with those two couples before.