Didn't believe me...?

I'm sure I've mentioned to a few of you that every time we have to get on bus in China, people act as if it's the last bus out of China on Armageddon day. It's crazy how they push and shove just to get on the bus. It literally cannot be explained in words. But maybe a picture will help...

Image taken from China Smack

This really did happen in Beijing earlier in the week! Now hopefully you have a very vivid image of what we have to deal with everyday. Oooooo China!

Small Rant

Here I am fully enjoying myself in Moscow. Being here means I had to miss finals week back in Zhengzhou. Before leaving I asked the school if it was ok if I missed proctoring the exams on Jan 11th. I was told it was ok and that Caddie, our assistant, would proctor it herself. Problem solved, bags packed, off to Moscow I go!

 Here I am on Jan 10th, day before my finals that I've been excused from proctoring, I get this email:

 Hi Goda,

Sorry to interrupt you. During this morning's final exam, it seems that students have questions about the papers in each test and they have to ask the teachers who wrote the papers ( the others know nothing about the papers). In Order to make the test go smoothly, we would appreciate it if you could show up during the test (you don't need to monitor the whole test, just show up and solve the students' questions about the test).

Thank you for your cooperation.
Caddie

First, just note the grammatical errors. They are fun! Anyways, so less than 24hrs before my exams that I've been excused from, they decide to ask me to come in anyways. They don't really know I'm in Moscow (none of their business really), but regardless I've been excused from the proctoring due to personal reasons that cannot be changed. I replied telling them that due to the short notice of less than 24 hours and previous commitments I can't come in to proctor the exam. Sorry.

 Here is what I get back:

 Hi Brandon and Goda, Sorry to interrupt you. Could you please come to the AP office on the second floor tomorrow ( Wednesday the 11th) at 10:00 am? Anna would like to discuss with you two about the teaching plan for next semester and provide you with some teaching materials, which will be helpful for your next year's teaching. We would appreciate it if you could arrive punctually.

Thank you for your cooperation. Have a nice day.
Caddie

Did they not read my previous email!? If I can't proctor my exams, why do they think that I can magically appear for a meeting at 10am? This is not the first time this has happened nor it is the last. I am just besides myself trying to figure out how they think this is ok or that I can magically change time and show up at this meeting. I will never get it. And mind you, these women are full grown adults. Mind blowing!!! End Rant.

He's confused, I'm confused, we're all confused.

Fraud in China

I’ve pretty much have known for a while that China commits a lot of fraud (i.e. bootleg dvds, fake Apple products, Samsang (vs Samsung) and tons more) but I have never really truly realized how far deep the fraud culture runs in China. After reading a white paper written by a Yale and Harvard Business School grad titled “Busted: The top 5 ways that Chinese students cheat on their undergraduate applications to American School” I am truly appalled and disgusted. Below I am going to summarize the key points from the white paper for you so you can join me in being appalled and I apologize for adding my own little snippets, which I can already foresee as not being so nice and understanding.

First and foremost, I want to state that the author of the white paper, Tom Melcher, adds his own disclaimer in his writings to state that although he understands why the Chinese cheat, but he doesn’t by any means think that the ends justify the means. So as far as I am concerned, he is on my side!

The paper starts off by listing some shocking statistics: 90% of recommendation letters are written by someone other than the teacher who just signs and mails it in as if they wrote it, 70% of the applicants’ essays are written by someone else, 50% of high school transcripts are falsified, 30% of financial aid applications contain false information, 10% of achievements and awards are fake!!! These numbers are simply outrageous! What is a college application? Well it’s a compilation of your high school grades and achievements along with essays that you spent months writing and are highly thought out and written recommendations by some of your closest teachers. Throw in an SAT or ACT score and you’re good to go. So I just named off 5 things that are part of a complete application and now I am being told that the Chinese falsify 4 of the 5 parts (maybe even all 5 if they have someone take the SAT for them) and their only rebuttal as to why they do it is: Everybody cheats! *Face palm*

So ok, why is it that they cheat? Well, first they face extreme pressure from the parents. If you think helicopter parents in America are bad, Chinese parents are twice as bad. These parents were around for China’s Cultural Revolution and have grown up being told to focus on getting rich. Furthermore, they have seen millions of people get rich by “bending or breaking the rules, almost always with impunity” and therefore in the parent’s mind “honesty and fairness are naïve dreams”. In other words, the PARENTS think (and teach their kids) that cheating, or bending the rules as they call it, is totally ok! Where is the logic in that! Moral compass….. down the toilet.

The second reason why they cheat is due to agents. Since the college application process is complex, as we all know, the Chinese parents hire agents to help them and their kid navigate this maze that is college applications. These agents get paid around $6,000-$10,000 for a full year of service that usually includes test prep amongst other things. These agents also get a bonus of up to $10,000 if the child gets into a Top 30 or Top 10 University (Chinese care way too much about brand names in my opinion). As this is a lot of money to a Chinese person when the majority of Chinese live for under $2 a day, the agents will do anything in their power to make sure the kids get into great universities, no matter the means. This is when the Chinese actually get creative (first I’ve ever seen). The agents go as far as PhotoShop-ing the transcripts to look better, or to make up awards that the student won, writing essays and filling out all applications. At times, the student doesn’t even have access to any communication with the universities they are applying to because the agent set up an email account on behalf of the student and checks it every day and responds on the students’ behalf as needed. Usually, the agents do all these manipulations without pressure from the parents, but per the article, every parent they interviewed mentioned that they spent countless hours reviewing the agents work so it’s reasonable to assume that the parents are aware of all the agent’s “adjustments”. Once again, point for parents and their morality here (heavy on the sarcasm).

Lastly, the high school themselves add to cheating dilemma. Some schools are too helpful, meaning they have no problem tweaking a transcript here or there because they gain “face” and prestige by having a higher percentage of their graduating class go to American schools. The going rate of a tweaked transcript is about $15 which to a secretary that makes only $450 a month is a lot and totally worth doing. The schools that are the opposite of helpful just force the students to make up their own transcripts. If the school won’t give them one because they know the student is applying to an American school, what else are the parents and agents to do? As a side note, transcripts in China are seen as flexible documents because of the way classes are structured. This structure difference sometimes requires a “normalization” process. So since normalization is common all over China, other requested adjustments (i.e. higher grades and class rank to be sent to an American university), “aren’t seen as dishonest, they are just seen as an attempt to make the school’s students (and therefore the school) look good.” So what I basically gather from what the Chinese do, is that we should go to the inner city schools in Chicago and give all the students As. That way they all look good and all of the inner city issues that we have will be solved. Sounds like a really easy and great solution! So why don’t we do that!? Well, because we don’t lie like that to make ourselves look better! It’s just simply not acceptable! O and the kicker to this is that the Chinese only cheat on American university applications. They don’t cheat on the Chinese ones because getting caught leads to some serious ramifications. But since America is so far away, the Chinese have no problem doing it since the perceived risk of getting caught is minimal. So lesson learned kids, cheat when you won’t get caught. Can’t wait to teach my future five year old that!

And just one last point from the white paper that really just tickles my belly, then I’ll stop, I swear. So the Chinese students who apply to American universities are almost always from wealthy families, meaning they do not need financial aid. However, the Chinese perceive financial aid as an “indicator of applicant’s attractiveness to the school, and not as a sign of financial weakness.” What that basically means is that since all of the applicant’s friends know that the family is wealthy, when they hear that the student received a $10,000 scholarship, they think it’s a merit scholarship for the student being so smart! In other words, stealing money from those students who really need it is just another way for the Chinese to increase their face and look better in the eyes of all of their friends.  I’d insert a sarcastic comment here but I am at a loss for words. I hope you can see why.

So to summarize, the Chinese lie their way into American universities and they think it’s ok and justified. With the number of mainland Chinese studying in America growing 20% annually, this is going to cause many problems in the future. There are many students getting into quality universities that don’t deserve it while American and other foreigners are missing spots that they deserve. The Chinese might think it’s not fair to them if they don’t cheat, but from my perspective, it’s not fair to every other applicant from all over the world. Who’s right here? I know my answer, but what is yours?

And last but not least, all the statistical and informative data was taken from the white paper. O and any really sophisticated sounding sentences were probably taken from there to. So to give full credit to the author, please check out the link of the actual whitepaper here. Cheerio!

Ladies and Gentlemen....

All good things have to come to an end eventually. Specifically, our time here in China has to come to an end.... and in our case, the end is sooner than we thought! Folks, we have decided to come home early! Get ready to throw us a welcome home party for March 19th! :D Please play the National Anthem upon our arrival :)

USA! USA! USA!

Below, you will find our itinerary for our three week backpacking trip afterwards. So excited can't wait! That's seven flights we just booked today! Eek! :o I got a little excited and did a bit of over planning.

My little peeps

Notice the piles of books. That one pile is for one student. Also what you can't tell is that the books are copies. The school buys one authentic copy of the book, and then sends it to the printers to get copied for the children. Totally legal right?

Run in with the PoPo

A while back in the land of camels and Sahara Desert, Brandon and I met a Brazilian couple who quit work and decided to go travel around the world for a year. They have since hit 200 days of travel! Congrats! Anyways, as luck would have it, they were coming to China right when we would be here. Having stayed in contact since Morocco, we decided to go to Xi’an this past weekend because it would correspond to them being there and hence, us being able to have a mini reunion. So the ridiculously overpriced high speed train tickets were purchased and bags were packed! Xi’an here we come!

As a little side story, after having been in China for a month, early last week it was our duty to go submit our passports to the Exit and Entry Office of Zhengzhou where they would hold our passports for a week so they could fasten our residency visas inside. Easy enough right?

Anyways, we made reservations at the coolest hostel in Xi’an and proceeded to head on over there. Upon arrival, since Brandon and I did not have our passports with us, we find out that our photo copies were not enough; they also needed our visas. Ok, easy enough, we had both taken pictures of our visas when we first got them and had them stored on our cameras. Well, after having submitted that, we find out that that was STILL not enough. They wanted to see the stamp that we got upon entry into China. After ten minutes of my trying to explain to them that no one can enter the country without a stamp, so why not go ahead and assume that I have a stamp and just let me check it, I gave in and called our school foreign coordinator, Samantha, to help us out. Thankfully, she had copies of this information in the office and emailed it to us.

Great, so at this point, I have moved past the bitchiness of the woman checking us in and have settled down to enjoy a Qingdao beer while my email containing our visas loaded (world’s slowed internet at this hostel) so I could forward it to the hostel. Thirty minutes go by peacefully as I sip my beer and chitchat with fellow travelers. Then the bomb drops.  The lady at the check in counter states that our visas are expired. This was obviously news to us since we had just turned in all of our paper work to the Chinese Government and had our residency visas processed. After confirming to ourselves by checking the Chinese Consulate Website that the visas were in fact not invalid, but actually 100% legit and ready to go, we started to state our case to this now even bitchier check in lady. After an hour of this and me being on the verge of tears, Brandon over hears the lady talking to someone in Chinese basically admitting to having been wrong, but was "trying to save face" and not backing down from her original stance.

Frustration and fatigue set in and there was nothing to do other than leave the hostel after an adieu containing a few not so nice words to the entire hostel staff. Tired and hungry we went wandering looking for any place that would take in two “illegal” foreigners, as dubbed by stupid check in lady. Now, usually, my navigation skills are on par with gold medal standards, however, due to excessive emotional turmoil, I now can admit, that I lead our tired and angry little threesome in the wrong direction for longer than I want to admit. We ended up wandering down a dark abandoned narrow street on the verge of collapse. All hope of finding our next intended hostel gone, we helplessly walk up to the only people on the street: a bunch of guys sitting around playing poker. They were highly amused by our giant backpacks and giant guidebook and had no problem chatting (aka speaking Chinese to us while we stare back with blank faces repeating over and over Shuyuan Hostel) with us as they passed our guide book around trying to figure out where we were trying to go. At one point, it became obvious to us that they had reached a consensus about something since they stopped randomly saying the three English phrases they knew to us and started saying Shuyuan over and over again. Then out of nowhere, they all get up and walk out of their little poker room and start gesturing to us. Confused, we just kind of stood there and watched one of the men walk up to a car and open the driver’s side door. He waved to us to join him. Now I can say this was a bit of a scary moment; to enter a stranger’s car or not, but after exchanging the “look”, all three of us decided to go for it and hope nothing movie-like happens to us.

Driving with this guy was a whole different adventure, but I’m glad to report that I made it out alive. After being in the car with our driver and watching his turns, it came to me that I had been lost and led us in the totally wrong direction. Feeling better and encouraged that we were finally making progress, I started enjoying the crazy ride this guy was giving us. At one point, our driver stops at a red light and start fiddling with his pockets. We were ultra confused and a bit concerned until he whips out his wallet, or should I say badge! He flashes his shiny gold emblem and all of a sudden his friends hand motions and random gestures now make sense! We had gotten into the car of the Chief of Police of Xi’an! No wonder his friends kept saying FBI!

So to make a long story short, we got a ride in the back seat of a cop car to our hostel in Xi’an. Believe it or not, but I swear it’s true. I’m not lying; this stuff does really happen to me. :)

*note: we were not able to meet up with the Brazilians as they hit a few transportation problems. :( Perhaps in another country another time.

How to procure a couch in China

As I sit on my lovely, albeit not as soft as desired, newly procured couch, I recall the occurrences of my last two days.

Said couch

One would normally think that buying a couch would be relatively simple. I mean if you wanted a lightly used cheap one, you could look on craigslist or drive around town in your car scavengering the alleys. Or if you wanted a new one you could choose one of the many furniture stores around such as Value Shitty Furniture, uummm I mean Value City Furniture (hehe) or go higher end with Luxury Furniture and Lighting (Really ppl? Selling luxury furniture and that's the best name you can come up with?!). You're couch shopping experience would consist of going to the store, telling the sales person what you want, giving your address and then coughing up an arm and a leg or just a few bucks, depends on which store you went to of course, and then sitting around Indian style on your floor waiting for the thing to be delivered. And that would be it. A child could do it!

Can you spot our couch?

However, my experience was slightly different. The day started with my mother and I heading out to the whole sale fabric store. Seems like a logical start to my couch story, right? Well the fabric store did not have our desired fabric, lace, so we just for kicks walked up this escalator that hasn't been used for years to the second story, still holding on to our hopes for Chinese lace. Well, no dice on the lace, however, we did stumble upon a whole room full of furniture! Do the Chinese mean to hide such goods from us Laowais or is this really where a furniture store should be located according their ultra logical thinking?

Either way, after making a quick loop around, we found our victim; the loudest, smallest couch in the entire room that wasn't a ridiculous price. And now the fun begins. We got the price relatively easily but the delivery aspect was going to take a bit longer.

Since arriving in China, I have taken to carrying around a little red notebook in my purse to write down menu items that we like to eat in Hansi, pinyin and our own little description. So I take out my little book and start very kindergarden-ly drawing a picture of a couch and a house and then an arrow connecting the two with a question mark (can anyone guess what I'm asking with my drawing!!??). The Chinese lady who owned the couch was not having it or even attempting to understand me. Frustrated, we were about to walk away, when I remembered I have a very useful and awesome friend who speaks both English and Chinese, AND is only a phone call away (Alexix I love you!). Well I don't want to bore you but let me tell you what went down in these phone calls (there were three of them!). I would call Alexis and tell her my situation, she would them tell her coworker (who is a Chinese native), who would them talk to the shop lady. After that, the coworker would tell Alexis and Alexis would tell me. It's was a real life version of telephone! Well after three such phone calls we went from having to go down stairs and find our own guy to deliver the couch, to having the shop lady deliver the couch to us for free by the next day before10:30am. I was not part of the conversation so I have no idea how this change came to be, but I was too happy to care! I had just gotten a couch and somehow managed to get free delivery! This is what Charlie Sheen would call "winning". :)

Priceless

So the next day, at 10:30 on the button, my phone rings and I pick up my phone to hear the shop lady (I recognized her voice) screaming, well that's what it sounded like, at me in Chinese (doesn't she know by now I don't speak Chinese?). After saying yes and thank you over and over to her in Chinese, I just hung up the phone. I mean I obviously have no idea what she is saying! Brandon, Mom, and I ran down stairs and are looking around for a delivery truck to no avail. We're standing there looking and looking and then all of a sudden my Mom points to the left... And there is a little old lady with the biggest grin on her face on her adult tricycle pulling our couch. *Dramatic Pause* The Chinese deliver furniture on tricycles! Priceless moment. Oh, I also want to point out that the store was 10km away! That's not particularly a short distance via tricycle. Additionally, I am sad to report I did not have my camera on me since I had been distracted by the Chinese yelling on the phone, but I found this picture instead. It's pretty representative of what went on with our little old lady and her tricycle.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I got a couch in China.


Summary for those who don't want to read the whole post:
1. Go somewhere where no one in their right mind would expect to find a couch
2. Don't bother drawing pictures, they can't read those here
3. Always have a bilingual friend at your finger tips
4. If they say they don't deliver, just keep asking the same question in as many different ways as you can come up with until you get what you want (free delivery duh!)
5. Pay for your couch and go home to wait for it
6. Go pick up your couch from the old lady delivering your couch via tricycle.

The Great Wall of China!

Here are a few pics of our trip to the Great Wall. We went to a part of it that was not crawling with tourist so at times, it felt like we were the only ones there. It was not particularly sunny so I couldn't capture that wall that well, but we had our own fun. Honestly, the Wall is amazing! It's just mind blowing and I can't believe I got to see it!