Girls School

Foul Languages

May 2006

It was brought to the attention of all staff that the perceived innocence of our

Catholic female students is under threat. Some how, some where, some one has exposed the poor lambs to the nastiness of foul languages. This was not exactly made clear to us until a very urgent, yet mysterious, staff meeting was called.

When all the staff were gathered together in one of the larger rooms we were then allocated a table. This had been thought about as we were ‘grouped’ according to language. That meant the non Chinese speakers had a table of their own. The nine of us huddled together not knowing what to expect.

Then the bombshell came. ‘Someone’ had phoned the school to complain about hearing our students using ‘foul languages’ while they were traveling home on the train, or was it bus – and who was it anyway? And who phoned? That part of the detective story is missing so we have to believe it to be true.

I use the phrase ‘foul languages’ as that is how it is used in school. It was all I could do to blurt out that foul language is an uncountable noun and, therefore, does not require the ‘s’ to make it plural. I thought better of it and kept my gob shut.

As predictable as ever the management made us discuss this serious issue in our groups with some points to keep us on track. The amount of times I have done this over the last four years is uncountable and I must send a note to myself not to make my students do it very often as I appreciate just how tedious it is! Discuss in groups, share, feedback….help me please!

To make us extra conscientious one of the top brass management sat on the English speaking table so we had to take it seriously. I felt I made a valuable contribution which probably meant I spoke too much while everyone else sighed with relief that I took up all the time so they could snooze the ‘sharing’ time away. So ended up with blather about respect, responsibility, reputation. Now this seems like I was taking it rather too seriously doesn’t it? I couldn’t help trying to give a good impression to the top brass, it made no difference to my own reputation, naturally!

Then the meeting started to get interesting. Us English speakers found that we would be expected to stop the use of swearing by our good students if and when we heard it in use. Now this stumped us. How would we recognize a Chinese swear word as between us the only words we have involve getting a taxi to stop at the right place or greetings to others in the morning (no one knew what to say in the afternoon or evening!) so identifying swear words and stopping students from using them would prove rather difficult.

We explained this and after a hushed conversation with the Big Sister a male member of staff was allocated to give the none Chinese speakers a quick lesson in swearing in Chinese. What fun! We were all moved into a smaller room. He started the lesson. He did it as if we were very young children in a systematic way. First of all he wrote a word on the board, then said it, we repeated. He corrected our pronunciation and then we tried again, in unison. When he was satisfied with that he gave us the translation (many blushes especially from him and lots of laughter especially from us) then he went on with the same system for other words and eventually progressed to sentences. We were very good students and repeated the words dutifully, trying our very best to get it right.

At the end of the lesson I was able to say ‘Go and f*** your mothers dirty c****’ which I was told was the most commonly used ‘foul languages’. Our teacher then erased the words from the whiteboard being very careful not to leave any trace of the lesson. Imagine the students using that same room and being able to still read the words!

It was a surreal and bizarre experience but unquestionably the best staff meeting EVER!

Personal Life

I exist in a bubble like cubicle in the school staff room. It is not bubble shaped of course, but it is tiny and I use the word bubble because I am encased in an English speaking world while outside of the bubble another language is spoken. I find this annoying because it means that I miss out on gossip, whoops, I mean essential news about members of staff which may be incredibly more interesting than planning a lesson on the present continuous tense.

Perhaps my presence in the staff room has now become accepted, no one gives the white woman a second glance any more and may be this means I am accepted. Recently I was included in some gossip sharing and they switched to English for my benefit. Up until now I thought the weird stuff that went on was only weird to me because of the cultural differences between east and west. How wrong I was.

One young woman told me that she had been called into the office to be told that a parent (yet to be identified) had seen this member of staff in a shopping mall. She was indulging in a spot of window shopping. An innocent pastime one would have thought? Again I was wrong. This unidentified parent had phoned the school to complain that seeing a member of staff wasting time in a shopping mall was a waste of time and that was not why she sent her precious daughter to the school. This young woman was reprimanded by the Big Sis for window shopping!! It’s not as if it was while she was supposed to be in school, this was on her way home!

Another male colleague told me that he had been called into the office of Big Sis whereupon she produced some A4 sheets of paper which he recognized as his own scribbles being some rough ideas about teaching the 3^rd conditional. For those of you who have got through life this far without knowing (or caring) what the 3 rd conditional is – basically it’s an ‘If’ sentence about an impossible situation e.g. “If I was six feet tall I would be a rich and famous model” you see, impossible as I have finished growing, upwards at least, and stopped at five foot 4 inches). The Big Sis had some how retrieved these scribbles and drafts out of the recycled bin, read them and also quite mysteriously identified them as belonging to this particular member of staff. She was right in her detective work. She had taken offence at his ideas for 3^rd conditional sentences he had written down so as to explain to his innocent charges in a lesson weeks previously. He had written:-

If I was a woman I would grow my hair long.

If I was your mother I would make you do your homework every evening.

This was then explained to the bemused, confused and bewildered member of staff, a male of approximately 30, that this type of ‘thing’ was completely unacceptable in ‘this’ school and would give a ‘wrong’ impression to the students.

Gobsmacked? Me too!

After this incident this member staff has now become paranoid about his waste paper and has his own recycle bin, in his tiny cubicle, where he collects any paper he throws away which he then takes home and recycles in the relevant bins provided which are miles away from the school.

The modern world has evaded this educational establishment. The furniture, the uniforms and the management seem to be in a 1950’s time warp. They all come from that post war age of make-do-and-mend when, even though things were a bit crap, they had to be put up with, after all, you have to be grateful for small mercies. I assume that all nuns have to compulsorily live by such an ethos, as well as chastity, other wise they wouldn’t be such a bunch of sour faced old trouts! This means that the drabness of the classrooms is not unlike cold prison cells, all discoloured ceramic tiles and rickety, flakey veneered, dark wood tables. The school uniform brings back memories of those days when ‘easycare’ on washing instructions hadn’t been invented. The white, primness of the summer dress with its buttons up the back, high waist and pleats running length wise over the bust makes the black and white pre war footage of the young Princess Elizabeth and Margaret look almost racy. The white socks which, as per school rules, must be mid-calf length, serve to make the legs look stumpy. I am not sure if it’s a rule or not but it does seem that shaving the legs is not allowed as, after some brief research, I have discovered a fair coverage on some of the older students.

After some further research into local school uniforms (watching girls on the bus going home) I am forced to come to the conclusion that all schools use the uniform as a weapon against their students. It serves no other purpose than to make each pupil look completely ridiculous as it has no connection whatsoever with what young people wear in normal situations these days. Go into any fashion shop that caters for the young. Do you find dull, drab clothes made from fabric that shows every speck of dirty, is very difficult to keep white and impossible to iron? No, its full of colour and fun and dare I say practical items. Practical in that its easy to wash and dry and very easy to iron.

I use the word ‘weapon’ because in my school the uniform is merely a stick to beat the students with. There is so much that they can get wrong it seems as if the powers that be, who designed the school uniform, thought up as many idiosyncrasies as possible so that it is inevitable that each day many students will break the uniform rules, be challenged on the corridor and issued a warning to the effect that they will be killed unless they abide by the rules. I might just have exaggerated a little about the killing part?

Of course the school is all girls so, therefore, we have no male students who would inevitably fall victim to the uniform rules and who would constantly have their shirts untucked, ties undone and no doubt have hair that was not of the regulation length. But it seems that to make up for the lack of male hormones around the place some of the girls can’t help but act in a boyish way. Yes gentle reader, we have lesbians in our midst.

Statistically having a mixture of sexuality in a single gender establishment is inevitable. In this modern, free thinking world where gay marriage is possible in certain countries, it is no surprise that the population of an all girl’s school would include some lesbians. But apparently this has come as a massive shock to the Big Sis herself. After a phone call of complaint from one parent who told of ‘tom boys’ at the school. Girls sitting too close together, girls sharing a little too much. She needed to come up with a cunning plan to stem such slanderous gossip for fear of damaging the reputation of the school and the wrath of God! After a great deal of thought and after considering this very awkward problem for some time she eventually came up with some helpful advice for all staff. She waited for a staff meeting and then announced that if staff saw students acting in a boyish way then the staff would need to remind that student to act ‘in a more feminine way’. That was it! That was the advice given to a group of professionals on how to cope with young girls who are obviously having a dilemma coming to terms with their sexuality. What’s the date again?

My trip to Thailand involved travelling and staying with the whole of my department from school. Most of my colleagues are from a very big city and have little experience of the outdoors. Most amazingly they agreed to go on a jungle hike in the hills of Thailand.

It was terrific!

Some parts of the walk were horribly frustrating. Sometimes I wanted to scream at people for their total lack of co ordination. Occasionally I felt like striding off into the distance and leaving my group of designer clad mall walkers to fend for themselves.

It was terrific because of the story I can tell.

Imagine if they had all been quite capable of walking through the jungle all properly equipped with sensible hiking boots and a ruck sack. There would have been no story to tell.

My lovely Chinese friends were just the most pathetic bunch of people when it came to hiking. The previous day they had all been told what to wear, what to do, what to bring. Everyone turned up very punctually the next morning. Obviously some of them genuinely thought that ‘stout walking shoes’ all had the brand name Gucci and that it was essential, in the jungle, to look up to the minute fashionable even if it meant carrying a few extra pounds of Tiffany jewelry as well as the ultimate accessory of a Prada handbag.

We set off as a group. We hadn’t gone far when suddenly there were cries and shrieks coming from behind me. As soon as the path started to go down hill and a bit slippery many people began to fall over. The Gucci’s just didn’t cut it that day. They became extremely tense and anxious about walking down hill and, unluckily for them, the path started at the top of a mountain and went down to a river. Every few minutes someone fell over.

Some of the more athletic and strong from the group began to help the rest. A human banister was formed to enable the most pathetic and wobbly down the slope. The nervous ones literally shook with exhaustion and fright each time they were required to pass over a small bridge or stream. When it came to very steep areas they edged their way down very very slowly. It reminded me of learning to ski for the first time. People constantly falling over and becoming tired and emotional as they began to realize that they only way out of this situation was to complete the walk. No taxi was about to come along and rescue them for a small fee. The only way to go was down hill.

This arduous walk became even more difficult for them when the jungle thinned out slightly which meant we were no longer in the shade but in bright sunlight. It is very hard to walk on a slippery path, down hill, while holding an umbrella as a shade. The shade is essential to Chinese skin, god forbid they should ever get a sun tan and spoil their clear white complexion. Its funny, I have watched a few adventure programmes recently as well as Michael Palin in the Himalayas. No one ever uses an umbrella while trekking in the jungle!!!

Needless to say the estimated time of one and a half hours to finish the walk actually took three hours. It really wasn’t a difficult route by any ones standard but if you have lived in a city all your life and have only experienced concrete pavements the sudden transition to a wet and slippery down hill slope is too much to cope with. I suspect that going from apartment building to taxi or shopping mall isn’t really the proper preparation for jungle hikes.

It’s nearly the end of term and I am beginning to feel a growing sense of panic deep inside me. I have not been moved to write about my experiences. I feel that I am on dangerous ground because it may be that I am beginning to take everything as being normal and have stopped being totally shocked and stunned by directives from above and the bureaucratic gubbins that this country just loves so much.

I love my job. I love teaching and I often have a suspicion that one day a man in a white coat will forcibly enter my classroom and take me away for enjoying myself too much. Once taken to an institution for the deranged and disillusioned they will tell me the truth; the powers that be have merely been humouring me for the last 2 years and that although I have been allowed to teach young impressionable students they have all been part of the conspiracy too. They will gently explain to me that it has all been a scam. A big scam arranged to make me happy and now its over. I have to go back to the institution to be reconditioned by recreational drugs which will lull my brain back into a sense of confusion and bewilderment!

The only thing I don’t love about my job is the money. I don’t get enough of it. Oh the joy of that statement being the other way round. Can you imagine? The only thing I don’t love about my job is the money. Yes that’s right. They give me far too much of the damn stuff and frankly I don’t know what to do with it. Bloody stuff gets in the way, very heavy in my purse and hampers my daily life so much so that I end up giving it away to bewildered people I meet on the street just to off load some of the inconvenient stuff. But no, as always it’s the lack of cash that is the problem.

I tried to convince my boss (the Nun) that I am worth more. I had a meeting with her and attempted to talk about getting more cash. This fell on stony ground and some how she managed to steer the conversation around to sex, abortion and euthanasia. During this meeting I was in a state of panic as I felt backed into a corner and some how she would get the truth out of me, which is that i I am a liberal minded pinko lefty with morals that need adjusting to suit her catholic world. Eeeek! This was my second ‘professional’ meeting with her and the last one also involved the topic of sex, to be precise, one night stands. I felt that last time I skirted the issue and managed to change the subject quite creatively. This time I was suspicious. Last time I thought she wanted to know about it or was going to tell me about them. But this time I felt a little insulted. Was she inferring that I had knowledge of such things?

The subject of my pay scale seemed to be fading into the distance and in an attempt to bring in back to the forefront I jumped in with an example of what a good teacher I am by telling her about the lesson I had taught earlier that day. Oh yes sister, I said. Argumentative writing need not be boring if the topic is interesting and I pride myself if getting my students be to be aware of both sides of the argument. The topic I had chosen for that day was ‘Should people be able to choose the sex of their baby?”
An interesting and scientific argument which involves a variety of points of view. The board filled up with pros and cons on this issue.
The Nun listened. She went quiet. Then she said “But sometimes you just have to tell the students what is right and what is wrong and remember that this is a Catholic School” .

In my free thinking head I had not even thought that I was in any way talking about religion and definitely not abortion, which is what she was inferring. I felt my finger wag at her. Probably a mistake in retrospect! “No” I said. “I was discussing the issue of pre conception, not afterwards”.

The conversation seemed to come to an end. Had she grown bored? Whatever had happened I was relieved to be let out of the room.

A couple of weeks passed. I was sulking about the rejection of not getting any more cash when my Head of Department approached me with a worried look on her face. She quizzed me about a lesson I had taught about ‘abortion’. The good hearted Christian Nun had not listened to a word I had said. I was at pains to explain the real story and could even produce examples of the finished essays. The students wrote their essays and every one of them had said it was not a good idea because nature should not be tampered with and some mentioned that God was the one who should choose. Was I saved.

Another week passed and Sister left for 8 weeks to attend ‘very important meetings’ , a subject I need to address but not now. The Vice Principal called me to sign my contract for next year. I have a job at least. But before I signed it she asked me if there had been some misunderstanding between myself and Sister? I took the bull the horns and clearly explained my side of the story. She looked quietly amused. She must be normal but I have my suspicions that she is not. Her advice was that I must remember that she is a ‘deeply religious’ person. I take that to mean that she doesn’t live in the real world, you know that one that you and me live in! In future I will avoid any type of subject matter (when I talk to her) that may be construed as anti catholic – obviously a minefield! My answer to her every question from now on will be ‘Absolutely’ and then I will keep my mouth shut!

I never venture further from the staff room or the classroom during school hours. The only break is taken inside the school and that really has become a clutter of old cardboard boxes full of papers which date back to the time when the Chinese first invented writing. We will soon be suffocating under the weight of all this precious gubbins.

Lord only knows what it is. One thing is for certain – no one looks at it – no one uses it and most of all – no one really knows what is contained in the mysterious cardboard boxes being stored for no apparent reason or purpose.

The furniture in the staffroom is circa 1950, wooden and dingy. I feel like a rat in a nest of cardboard. We are so crowded together there is no room to swing a cat. This being quite an appropriate phrase as recently the staffroom has become home to 2 cats that have been hired to keep the rats at bay.

It is true; we have rats living in the staffroom. My suggestion is get rid of the cardboard stash of gubbins then they loose their nest, but no, my advice landed on stony ground and 2 cats moved in.

We did have rather an exciting lunchtime when one of the intrepid felines chased a rat. My goodness it caused a stir. There was so many ladies standing on chairs and screaming it scared the cat away. I was half on and half off my chair and part of me was brave enough to put one foot on the floor as this gave me an excellent view of the more macho members of staff (2 of them!) chasing the dreaded rodent around the place with… you’ve guessed it.. A can of disinfectant! Excellent. Since SARS the Chinese have become very germ conscious and I can only surmise that the spraying of disinfectant in the general direction of the rat, which was moving pretty fast at his point, was to rid it of any germs. This seems a rather charitable course of action by the sprayer as the whole point was to get the cats to kill the damn thing (s).

I suspect that the witnessing of a death would have put most people off their lunch however, the Chinese members of staff do not seem to flinch at anything to do with killing animals or certainly not at eating any particular part of them. Rat on stick could be on the menu very soon!

My idea of a day trip to the beach is completely different to the idea of most of the Chinese teachers and students I work with.

To start with, my day out would include at least a short time in the sea. Even if it’s just enough to cool down and say I, at least, got wet. It really is a must when it comes to a beach trip. But for the party I went with this week, swimming in the sea was deemed to be ‘too’ dangerous. So, no getting wet. When some students, quite naturally, forgot themselves in 28 C, and sat in the breaking waves on the shore line, one of the teachers ran to tell them that the waves were SO dangerous!

The next difference is the food. My memories of picnics to the seaside when I was at school compulsorily had to include egg sandwiches, crisps, orange squash and a few melted blue ribands that my mum had packed, quite creatively, in a Tupperware box. That is what a trip to the sea and sand involves. The Chinese kids kept bringing me tastes of their own food just incase I was feeling peckish. By 10am I had had cold pork fried rice, fried crab sticks, fried fish balls, fried hot dog and an unidentifiable piece of meat which I put straight in the bin. Actually most of it went straight in the bin when the students who donated it weren’t looking. Luckily the local shop was selling sandwiches and much to my delight I managed to get a cup of extremely strong tea and a plastic ham sandwich between two slices of mother’s pride. Obviously, they knew what they doing!

Another marked difference is the use of plastic and other disposable items. The teachers and students all had their own personal supply of disposable plastic table cloths. The first thing they did when they arrived was to spread out 2 or 3 of these things, then put their bags down on them. Heaven forbid any Chinese person puts their bag directly on the floor. At school there are hooks on the sides of desks for bags. I have noticed in restaurants that people put their bags on the chair behind their back and sit further forward on their chair rather than put their bag on the unhygienic floor and risk infection! The first thing I did was rent myself a deck chair. One of those fold flat wooden ones which are difficult to assemble, the type you risk your finger tips with not to mention it falling flat as you drop your weight into it. Then, naturally, I made a small hat out of my knotted handkerchief and rolled my trouser legs up. Now that’s what going to the seaside is all about.

I am moved to write this blog because I feel the need to share my experiences with the world. I am a new teacher of English working in China. This may seem quite normal but believe me it is not. It may seem quite normal to Catholics out there but for me, a heathen, I am learning new things everyday due to the fact that this school is a throw back to the 1950's and is run by a Nun.

I had not attended Mass before starting this job. These days I have to stand up and sit down with the the students and generally listen in utter confusion to the Priest who appears to be doing something with a popudom and some Ribina?

Can anyone throw some light on this for me, a complete sinner?

As this is my first full time job for a while I treated myself to a few new outfits so that I could start the term smart, yet trendy. Modern in a sophisticated and teacherly way! Little did I know this school has a dress code which dates back to the 50's. I couldn't believe it. No trousers for female members of staff unless the temperature drops to below 11C (it does sometimes). I did not wear trousers on my first day but did fail to meet the criteria of the dress code in that M&S had designed my dress to show a slight bit of cleavage as well as a pair of shoes which did not have any backs in them, therefore, showing my .........wait for it.....don't get too excited.......heels!

How foolish of me not to realize that showing the back of my heel was against the rules.

I was not spoken to individually about these misdemeanors, instead it was brought up at the induction meeting of new staff where the deputy head went through the dress code. When he got to the bit about 'no shoes without backs' and 'no low cut necklines' he looked directly at me. I felt my cheeks colour up!

Perhaps it is a particular quirk of Chinese schools, I have little experience, but 'table manners' on the curriculum came as news to me. The poor students have to endure a table manners lesson, albeit only once a term, but they have the food technology, or is it domestic science, teacher come and teach them how to use a knife and fork, not forknknife, in the context of a western 3 course meal involving soup, bread, grilled chicken breast and pasta with an unrecognisable vegetable.

As if this wasn't bad enough the new staff also are deemed to need a lesson on table manners. This is so that we can supervise the students during their lunch break and check on their fork and knife holding skills. This does seem an unnecessary skill for both teacher and student as the students use chopsticks at lunch times. Sister Assumpta, who has been at the school since the beginning of time, conducted this lesson which involved a short lecture and then a video, circa 1970, about how not to eat. It covered such heinous crimes as using the wrong spoon, putting elbows on the table and that particularly nasty habit, but often used in China, talking with the mouth full and chewing with the mouth open. After the video I thought, so far so good, at least its over. I was feeling a little hungry and imagined I would escape and even relax. How wrong I was!

Horror and horrors! We were then served a three course meal while Sister Assumpta observed our technique. She would occasionally point out an error if she spotted one. I did put my elbows on the table at one point but I think I got away with it! However, there was a student videoing us unsuspecting new teachers during the meal so perhaps it will be analyzed later and used as evidence against us if we ask for a pay rise!

There are about 15 new staff this year. A mixture of nationalities. We were all mortified yet polite during this ordeal. We all went along with it without comment. I was bursting inside during this meal. It would have taken just one small event to set me off in a fit of giggles - I remained dignified throughout!