Teaching English in Tibet

So this post is going to cover two weeks, because I’ve gotten a little behind. Apologies.
A truly heartbreaking thing happened last week. One of the newborn twins, a daughter of my host mother’s brother, that had been born two months prematurely about a month ago, passed away during the night. The other twin is still in pretty dire condition, but so far he is still hanging in there. So last week was filled with funeral proceedings. Their house, down the street from ours, has been filled with eleven monks praying for the soul of the child all week, and occasionally the monks come over here to eat food in between prayers. The day after the child passed away the Lama came over to pray over the body, and I got to meet him for a moment as he was rushed out of the house and into his waiting car. Seemed like a nice guy. In order for the Lama to enter any residence, a whole host of monks has to come over beforehand and make an intricate sand mandala in front of the entrance, which is very interesting.
Teaching last week was a little tough. On Tuesday, one of my 7th grade classes just couldn’t be bothered to pay attention, and I maybe I wasn’t in the most forgiving of moods; at one point six or seven students had their backs to me, several were doing homework for other classes, and others were listening to music on MP3 players. I lost it. Yelling isn’t really my style, so instead, through clenched teeth I told my students that I had come halfway across the world to give them an opportunity to learn English from a native speaker, and if they didn’t want to learn, I simply didn’t want to teach them. So I left. I was pissed off as all hell, and I sort of let it ruin my day, which I shouldn’t have. You know, there I was working my ass off trying to make possessive adjectives as exciting as humanly possible, and they didn’t even have the decency to face my direction. It was infuriating. Unfortunately I didn’t end up teaching that class again all week due to unforeseeable circumstances (Wednesday was “exercise morning”, Thursday we helped build a house for a neighbor, and Friday I don’t normally have that class).  This Monday I had the class for the first time, and they were like little angels. I later found out that my host mother had called the school about how bad that class was, and that the principal had come into the class and literally beat up some kids…corporal punishment is still very legal here. I feel a little bad about it, but luckily no one seems worse for wear.
Last Thursday was an interesting day. A neighbor of my host family is building a new house near the river, a comparatively luxurious-looking brick deal, and Thursday, for one whole day, all the friends, relatives, neighbors and acquaintances of the family came to help build. It had the atmosphere of what I might imagine a barn raising would be like. Cigarette-puffing men in their collared shirts and slacks, elementary-school-aged children, even old women who normally would spend the day on the corner spinning their prayer wheels in the sun, all rolled up their sleeves, grabbed a shovel, and started working.
What got me most were the hats. Hats are very much in fashion here. The place was absolutely crawling with hats, of every shape and size. Most of the women were wearing large, wide-brimmed floral ones, while the men were sporting Indiana-Jones, we-mean-business hats. It was a very strange sight, almost like the entire congregation of an American Southern Baptist church got lost one Palm Sunday and ended up at a construction site in rural Tibet.
Needless to say everyone thought it was hysterically funny that two foreigners would be there to help out, but after a LOT of persuading on my part, they finally agreed that it would be OK if we helped shovel cement. So I spent the day being put to shame by Tibetan women three and four times my age, who shovel cement like bulldozers, and never take breaks.  I think they might be cyborgs.
Last weekend was wonderful. My host family decided that it would be nice to go camping out in the grasslands and spend some time with the nomads there. Saturday morning I woke up to the family packing nearly everything they own into the car: pots, pans, seven or eight tents, including one large military-barracks-type one with canvas skin that was about an inch thick and smelled vile, pillows, blankets, an electric generator, light bulbs, a giant iron stove that weighed about 1000 pounds, an aluminum chimney, and a whole host of other equally random items. We drove for about three hours, out of the valley and up onto a huge wide plateau that was entirely flat and green for miles and miles. It was a surreal location – the air was crystal clear, and from where we set up camp the brilliantly green grass stretched out for probably 20 miles in every direction, flat as a chessboard, until way off in the distance a sheer wall of Himalayan rock leapt out of the plains entirely without warning; just grass, grass, grass, grass, mountain. Everything was so wide, and on such an immense scale, it was almost hard to tell where the earth ended and the sky started; it was like they were fused together, way way off.  We were in the middle of all this space, tooling about setting up tents and dragging the stove out of the back of the car, all the while looking and feeling immeasurably small.
We set up camp next to a nomad family whose yaks freely roamed the several-mile radius around us munching on grass and grunting occasionally. They invited us into their tent, which was really very nice on the inside, with beds and chairs set up around a central stove that had been built out of earth; after a cup of tea we were allowed to go outside and try our hand at milking the yaks. I did a pretty good job, aka I succeeded in getting milk out of the yak. I did not, however, get said milk into the bucket. Instead I got a lot of milk on my jeans, and very little anywhere else. Good for a first try though, I thought.
Another fun grassland activity, and a very difficult one, was mushroom hunting. Difficult, of course, because if you aren’t very quiet sneaking up on them, they’ll run away. We spent the entire afternoon at it, and although it was tough, we ended up with a good full bag of mushrooms. They turned out to be by far the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten. The Tibetans have a special way of preparing the mushrooms, which apparently they’ve been doing for thousands of years: first get a nice round mushroom cap, turn it over like a little bowl, put in some salt, some zampa (ground barley meal mixed with yak cheese, a staple food here), and top it off with a nice dollop of yak butter. Then you roast the mushroom cap like you might a marshmallow. It ends up tasting delicious, surprisingly similar to stuffed mushroom appetizers. It made me wonder whether the two ideas had some kind of connection; I was imagining some intrepid French gourmet trekking over the Himalayas in search of the perfect mushroom recipe, and discovering stuffed mushrooms. Probably just a coincidence though.
This week since we’ve been back has been mostly uneventful, teaching as usual. I’m very surprised to find that I only have two weeks left here; the time really flew by. The one interesting thing that happened this week was that Friday was Chinese Children’s Day, and the elementary school had a dance performance. There were probably 600 people there to see the kids, and as much as I enjoyed seeing the dancing, I enjoyed the people-watching most. Tibetans are so beautiful, and just being in a crowd of them was sensory overload, with all the hats and colorful jewelry and weather-beaten faces of the grandparents. Of course it was also interesting to find out that in a crowd of Tibetans I am a celebrity. Everyone wanted to meet me, shake my hand, give me a gift, a fountain pen, or a piece of chocolate, ask me where I’m from, what I’m doing here. It’s going to be a shock when I get back to the States and I’m not an attraction. Ha.

I hope everything is well in everyone’s respective locations. I miss you all. –Chris

The weather here keeps us all on our toes. When the sun’s out and it’s warm and beautiful I find that I get complacent, and I tend not to bring an umbrella or any protective gear with me. Big mistake. The weather gods, angry at my flippancy perhaps, can make the sky turn from a brilliant blue to stony black at the drop of a hat. And it doesn’t just rain. At any point in the day, and with disturbingly little warning, the heavens will begin to pelt you with every imaginable type of precipitation at once. Huge, blobby raindrops, the kind that make an audible smack on your skin when they impact, combine with snow, sleet, and, worst of all, big, painful hailstones, to create a wholly integrated precipitation experience. Almost every day I find myself running blindly through a Plagues-of-Egypt-like storm, cursing at the top of my lungs because my face and ears sting from the hail, and mentally kicking myself for not bringing my umbrella for the umpteenth time. One of these days, maybe l’ll learn.

This week we started teaching at the “middle” school down the street. I put “middle” in quotation marks because of the fact that more than half the students are in high school. Apparently, the Chinese government recently shut down all “high schools” in the region, except for two big schools in the prefecture capital, two hours away from here. That seems really dumb to me, because it makes education for nomad students who live far away and have little opportunity for transportation very difficult. To say the least, it makes me question to motives of the Chinese government.

So, we started teaching there this week, and so far it’s going well. Corey and I are the only two English teachers for about 100 miles, so we’re in high demand. I find that occasionally during my free periods I end up tutoring other teachers who want to improve their English, and the two of us probably teach upwards of 150 students combined. It certainly makes it difficult to remember everyone’s name, an already difficult task given that most people are named “Tashi Golek Zang Tenzin”, or other such names that stick in your head none too easily.

Now that I have weekends and some afternoons free, I’ve had a little time to explore the area. Last Sunday Corey and I went on a long walk to the outskirts of town. Our original intention was to find out how to get up to a monastery that was up on the side of a cliff, but failing that goal, we just kept walking in one direction until the town petered away, house by house, into a giant empty valley surrounded by massive mountains. It was a bit disorienting, actually. The fact that none of the mountains have trees, and therefore have no foundation by which to judge size and distance, has the interesting effect of making everything look miniature, and shrinking apparent distances. It was like we were walking into a beautiful, but still somewhat unreal-looking painting. We had decided to just walk over to “that bend over there”, (which in the end turned out to be about 10 miles away), and as we walked, besides the sound of our footsteps and the whistling of the wind, the valley was completely silent. No people, no puttering combustion engines. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place that was so quiet in my life. Occasionally, a pika would skitter out of its hole, and run across the grass into another one. Looking up, we saw a herd of yaks, tiny little black dots, up at the peak of a mountain, and giant eagles and vultures silently floating above them.

After walking for several hours we came upon a small altar, upon which were three beautiful, multicolored stupas surrounded by prayer flags and stones carved with intricate and beautiful mantras. Even though I know terribly little about Buddhism, the altar, together with the surrounding mountains and the overwhelming silence seemed to carry deep, real meaning. It was as if I suddenly understood what Tibetans are talking about when they chant “Om mane padme om” over and over. It was a real, all-encompassing, sink-your-teeth-into-it sort of peace, of a kind that I’d never really experienced before.

Wednesday was my 21st birthday, and according to the Tibetan lunar calendar it was also the Buddha’s birthday, and it was also a full moon, so Wednesday evening was very special all around. My host family threw me a wonderful party, and invited several teachers from the school along with several of our students as well. Another westerner, a South Afrian woman named Natalie who has been living in this area for the last two years teaching English with an NGO called The English Tibetan Project, and who had come into town to visit for a few days, also was invited. My host family, for some unknown reason, ordered about 15 different heaping meat dishes, even though on the Buddha’s birthday Tibetans are not allowed to eat meat, so I had to make a decision about whether to: A) not eat the meat dishes, respect local custom and possibly offend my hosts who had spent so much money on such wonderful food, or B) chow down on the meat, and possibly offend the several monks that were in attendance. In the end, my stomach won, and I ate the meat, which everyone seemed to understand, because they knew I’m not Buddhist. That didn’t ease the awkwardness on my end, however, because Corey and I were the only two eating the roast lamb, spiced yak tongue, and all the multitudes of other meat dishes, whereas everyone else was just eating birthday cake and cucumber. It makes me feel a little better to see that in the two days afterward everyone has been eating the leftovers.

As we ate, everyone took turns singing traditional Tibetan songs, first each of the high school kids, then our host mother. After each song, Olivia, the only Tibetan here who speaks any semblance of English, would try to translate the lyrics, which mostly went like this: “This song, it is speaking of the very happy, the crops, that very you will have many bounties in your place, and that you all the life have the happy time”. Most of the songs involved similar themes. After the eating and singing, everyone got together in a big circle and started teaching us traditional Tibetan dancing, which was very fun. All in all, it was a great birthday.

This weekend Corey and I are going to spend a night with our host brother, the monk, in his monastery, which I’m very excited about. I’m interested to see what a day in the life of a Tibetan monk is like. I’ll report back.

Best to everyone, I miss you all. –Chofu (this is how my host mother pronounces “Christopher”)

Well, I have to say that the first week here has been grueling; Corey and I have been putting in six-hour teaching days (without weekends!) to a group of nearly 50 Tibetan children ages 6-13. It’s a little much for two people to handle, especially when one of us doesn’t have any common language with the kids. Corey’s translator, Olivia, to be fair, has been helpful at translating for Corey, but at the same time she can be exasperating; even though she’s 18, she acts like a little kid, and tends to render herself just another issue to deal with.

At the moment, mostly because of lack of time to catch my breath I’m sure, I’m finding life here a little frustrating. The members of my host family are possibly the sweetest people on the planet, but here I live the life of the “eternal guest”; every cup of tea gets refilled multiple times before I’ve taken three sips, if I don’t have three huge bowls of meaty soup every evening they assume the food is awful and not to my taste, and because of the fact that I got sick during my first few days here, my heath is constantly a subject of discussion: if my lips are chapped I have a fever, if I look tired I need to be rushed to the hospital for a “shot” (which I have, fortunately, been successful at refusing so far), and so on. Compounding all this, because I speak Chinese I am the translator for all the oh-but-pleases to be relayed to Corey. On the one hand, I really appreciate that they want me to be happy and comfortable, but I feel like all the niceties are keeping Corey and I from actually integrating into family life and into the culture here. I just end up feeling exhausted, grumpy, and like I want to be left alone.

All that said and vented, the kids I’m working with are wonderful. Corey and I have them working on small skits in English that they will be performing on Saturday for their parents. Given the formidable width of the student-teacher ratio, it’s very hard to keep track of how everyone’s skits are doing, but when I went from group to group this afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of the older kids were helping keep the younger, more rambunctious ones on track, not only giving them speaking parts (even if the little ones were just playing trees or walls), but helping them out on their English pronunciation as best they could. By repetition, the older kids managed to turn a six-year-old’s initially garbled “Good morning, Little Red Riding-Hood!” into recognizable English, which put a smile on my face.

On Sunday, Corey and I let everyone out an hour early (being the only one carrying a watch has it’s advantages), and the two of us decided to climb one of the mountains that surround the town. Walking along the road up to the spot where we planned to start climbing the mountain, we met five little boys, all about 9 years old, who, curious as to who these strange pasty people were, started up a conversation with me. When they heard that we were planning on climbing a mountain, they excitedly announced that they would come with us.

Although I was initially hesitant about them hitching along, (I mean, hadn’t I already had my little kid ration for the day?), it turned out that climbing with these kids was an absolutely unforgettable experience. As we climbed up the steep, grassy slope, they raced each other, chased after grasshoppers, pondered the inner depths of snake holes, wrestled and tickled each other, and chattered away nonstop. They had a million questions for me. Why was I such a funny color, but still had normal color hair? On the other hand, why did Corey have yellow hair? Had I been to Beijing? Could I use magic? Could I turn people into goats, for example? Had I ever eaten KFC? What was that like? The questions went on and on. When we reached the pile of stones and prayer flags at the summit, they asked whether we wanted to pray, and started reciting some Buddhist prayers they knew. After that was done, one kid, who had a surprisingly good voice, sang a song out into the mountain air, Sound-of-Music style. We let them play around with our digital cameras for a while, which they found immensely amusing, making funny faces and pretending to be intrepid explorers.

When we decided it was probably time to get going, Corey and I discussed for a minute or so what would be the best route to get down. The mountain was very steep, after all, and it might be worth it to go down a less steep part, even if it meant having a longer walk home in the end. The little boys we were with had a different plan. All five of them just sat down on their butts or lay on their bellies and started to slide down the grassy face of the mountain, inviting us to come along. Corey and I started out trying to walk down, but ended up flat on our asses anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in my life. Because of the flat, smooth grass, you end up going surprisingly fast. I found myself speeding along down the side of the mountain, laughing hysterically, dodging rocks and bumps, limbs flailing all the way down to the bottom. We landed in a grassy, muddy, laughing pile of limbs, and proceeded to screw around tickling each other until a goat caught our attention, and the boys dared each other to touch to the goat, gathering up their courage, going up to the goat, then chickening out and running back. It was hysterical. The goat, curious as to what all the hubbub was about, came over to us and started nibbling clothes, turning everyone once more into a pile of shrieking gigglyness. I tell you, I haven’t had that much fun in a long time.

Next week the two of us are being transferred to teach at the local high school, and we get weekends off, which will be a welcome change of pace. And we get this Sunday off! Thank God!

Before I finish this, I have one philosophical issue that I’d like to put out into cyberspace for a moment. I feel like teaching English should not be what I’m doing here. I mean, the children I’m teaching right now can’t read or write their own language, so who am I to come trapseing halfway across the world to teach them mine? I discovered the other day that these kids can’t find Asia on a map, have never heard of Europe, and think that Canada is the capital of the United States. So needless to say I feel a little bit silly teaching them participles of English verbs. Any thoughts?

Anyway. All the best to everyone. –Chris

Greetings from the Roof of the World!

From Friday to Monday, my world turned on its head. On Friday I traveled on the T151 26-hour sleeper train from Beijing to Xining, which turned out to be fairly comfortable. My cabin completely emptied after the 19^th hour or so, after which I had the whole place to myself. I was met at the train station by a girl whose English name is Judy and her father (whose name I couldn’t pronounce correctly if there was a gun to my head) both of whom luckily spoke Chinese, so I had a way to communicate with them, albeit rudimentarily. I spent the next day and a half in Xining, which differs from other midsize Chinese cities in that it is truly a cultural melting pot. Xining has Tibetans, Uighur muslims, Hui muslims, and of course Han Chinese as well. I was happy to find out that rather than taking the 22-hour-long bus, Judy’s father had driven his SUV up to Xining to get us, so early Monday morning we embarked on the long overland journey.

I’ve never been on such a beautiful car ride in my life. I now truly and completely understand the word “plateau”. We climbed mountains, which then melted into huge flat grasslands, and then became mountains again. We climbed and climbed and climbed. The sky was humongous, and the distances between each little hamlet were huge; to top it all off we listened to the same CD of Tibetan popular music over and over probably 30 times. At parts the road was not paved, and other vehicles were pretty rare. All in all, though, it was fairly comfortable, besides my altitude headache, which still hasn’t gone away.

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My name is Chris Healy, I’m class of 2009, and I’m going to be spending the summer in what the Lonely Planet guidebook describes as “the most far-flung corner of the most far-flung province in China”, that is, depending on your political persuasion, either Yushu, Qinghai Province, People’s Republic of China, or Jyekundo, Tibet. Jyekundo/Yushu is a staggering 22 hour bus ride from the nearest large city, the provincial capital of Xining, and sits at an altitude of just under 14,500 feet.

I’ll be spending 8 weeks teaching English to Tibetan children and researching the effects of the language gap between Tibetan speakers and Chinese speakers on the local economy and culture. The literacy rate in Yushu county is a pitifully low 13%, and most people in Jyekundo live far below the poverty line.

I am descending into this summer from a unique vantage point — having spent the last 4 1/2 months in Beijing studying Mandarin Chinese and living with Chinese students, I will hopefully be able to shed some light on the current state of China from both a rural and an urban perspective. I hope you enjoy!