.... uh, silence

For the fourth time I shouted, “Where is the soap?” to an unresponsive crowd of 40 second graders, trying not to watch the spectacle that sidetracked my usually trigger-happy students. To my left, the homeroom teacher was dragging (and I mean dragging), a typically inattentive kid towards the door. “The soap is near the.....” The little guy was clawing the air, meanwhile slipping out of his shirt to escape. She lets go. I saw him break into a sprint in the direction of his seat and as he got there, I watched him mull over another dilemma: Uh, what now? He turns towards the back of the class, then realizes he’s trapped. With one Vader stare from the teacher, the poor kid crashes on the floor behind his desk. “Correct, the soap is near the T.V.” He got his chair back ten minutes later. 

Several days earlier, my tenth graders gave me an uncomfortable silence in class that I should probably start getting used to. It’s not easy coming up with discussion topics in a country where anything remotely political draws artificially blank stares. 


Science, I thought, would provoke appropriate yet thoughtful conversations. Would you eat genetically modified vegetables? Meat? Do you think computers will think on their own one day? Do you think couples should be able to choose the sex of their baby? Complete yet faint consensus to answer the last question, no. Why not, I ask. “No, because boys and girls are the same,” a bright female student says firmly and pointedly. Everyone’s eyes become fixed on one location and their stares transfixed. Within a third of a second I realize: oh shit, the one child policy, male preference, its social consequences, disproportionate male-female population..... shit.

Uncomfortable classroom situations haven’t deterred me from getting another teaching gig in Shanghai. I took the job because the pay is not bad and I get to commute to Shanghai on the weekends, though there’s a catch. I will be teaching English to kindergartners.

The People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 60th birthday, so I’ll be in Shanghai for a while taking advantage of a week long holiday. 


I’ll put up another post in a couple days of English grammatical curiosities and atrocities I’ve captured so far in China. Some are ‘laugh so hard you pee a little’ funny.