Comprehensive class is an amalgamation of all disciplines - reading, speaking, listening and writing - delivered by our 班主任 or form-teacher.
王老师 (Teacher Wang) is a kindly, white-haired 68 year-old ex-professor who came out of retirement
He certainly knows his stuff and broke off mid-sentence a couple of times to digress on matters such as the Anti-Rightist movement of the Cultural Revolution, or to write a poem from memory onto the blackboard.
Today Mingrui and I were joined by two Korean girls who wanted to move up from Class F. Later, 安娜 (Anna), an English girl, popped in for half a class too. Apparently she used to study at HIT, defected to Heilongjiang University, then returned to HIT after being unimpressed with with Heilongjiang's University's teaching. Jingnan didn't turn up until the second class, apparently through nothing more serious than laziness.
As 班主任, Teacher Wang is responsible for administrative duties and our general well-being. As such, he was full of concern and advice during and after class. When Teacher Wang left the room in the break 恩熙 (Enxi) - one of the Korean girls - commented that he was just like a loveable grandpa and everyone nodded and murmured their agreement. Another decent class, and another impressive teacher. I was starting to feel good about this term!
Next up, Culture class, taught by 徐老师 (Teacher Xu) - a middle-aged, balding man with bad teeth and milk-bottle glasses in thick plastic frames. For some reason he failed to give his full name. Hailing from Shandong, he suffered from what I felt was a pretty poor pronunciation for a teaching professional - all dropped final 'g's and lots of 's's substituting for 'sh'.
He landed right in my bad books by assuming I was Korean, then being entirely bemused when I told him I was from England. I went through my by now well-rehearsed explanation of the overseas Chinese distinctions. Seeing this kind of ignorance in uneducated working-class locals is one thing, but I expect a higher standard from a University teacher, especially one working in the foreigner department.
The text was on the link between religion and language. The text described a French missionary who saw the Hand of God in Chinese characters. One example was the word 船 or 'boat' which is composed of the radicals 舟 (vessel), 八 (eight), and 口 (mouths, or a counter for people). The minister believed that this referred directly to the story of Noah's Ark, because the boat's passengers totalled eight peope, namely Noah, his wife, and his three married offspring.
I'd heard the theory before and personally dismissed it as a bit silly - like numerology, the Bible Code, or seeing seeing Jesus in a cheese toastie, I've always felt that certain types of the strongly religious-inclined are more prone to detecting patterns where they might possibly not exist. On the other hand, I appreciate (but strongly disagree with) the (impossible to refute) argument that God can act in unknowable and inscrutable ways, and that these symbols are indeed a trace of the divine, put there for the faithful to interpret.
However, Teacher Xu gave a totally blinkered and unbalanced assessment of the situation, telling us that because of the development of characters (in many cases, originally pictographic representations of things like trees or people), this was totally impossible. I felt that he'd largely missed the missionary's point. The teacher then went on to criticise the foreign linguists as being dazzled by the charm of Chinese characters, characterising their arguments as misguided and ill-informed.
Something about his toothy guffaw whenever the topic touched upon the theory rubbed me the wrong way, and I found myself reacting quite strongly against his one-sided mockery. I spent a good twenty minutes trying and failing to render in my head a serviceable rendition and explanation of "God moves in mysterious ways" as a rebuttal.
Throughout the lesson, whenever Teacher Xu mentioned Christianity, he would glance knowingly over at me and Mingrui. After the fifth or sixth time, I asked him why he was doing that.
"Almost all Westerners are Christian" he stated flatly, adding "... in my experience".
"A lot of Americans, maybe, but a relatively small number of English, or Europeans as a whole, in my experience".
My Polish classmate voiced his agreement, before I added
"Actually, I believe that if anything that Korea is a quite strongly Christian country".
"No, no, no, they're mostly Buddhists" Teacher Xu shook his head.
Trivia alert: In actual fact, 11 of the world's 12 largest Churches are in Korea, and only 6% of Brits attend Church regularly. On the spot, and in lieu of hard facts, I conducted a quick, and unscientific straw-poll.
Jingnan, the Korean guy, laughed when I asked him and said that he did go to Church, he wouldn't be drawn on what his actual beliefs were though. One of the Korean girls said that she was indeed Christian, and Enxi said atheist. A 67% score for the Koreans!
Mingrui shook his head and said that he didn't know that any of his friends were Christian either, and I said strongly atheist, not knowing the words for Secular Humanist. Score a big fat 0 for 2, for the Europeans and a thumbs-down for Teacher Xu's cultural awareness.
Nothing else about Teacher Xu's teaching impressed me much either, and I caught a lot of bewildered looks from my classmates at things that he said or did. For example, he spent an age describing the pictographic characters 木, 林 and 森 (signifying wood, forest, and full of trees, respectively), which I thought was quite elementary, especially given the level of the text. Yet, he also digressed for several minutes into the technical rules governing the structure of classical poetry, seemingly more to kill time than anything else.
On the bright side, the text itself does seem perfectly serviceable, and with a bit of pre-preparation and hard work I think something can be salvaged. Culture is only two classes a week and isn't a section of the HSK so it's not a huge deal.
One teacher remaining and that'll be next Friday's Ancient Chinese!
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