酷我-北美枫

I, therefore, quite reluctantly worked for one term, from Autum to Decemember, 2008 in the business school. Towards the ends of that term, I tried it again and this time successful at the department level: the director of the business school agreed to let me go, though reluctantly, and said as long as he is still the director, the business school will always welcome me back, if I want to. I said thanks, trying to be obedient, though behind his back, I had already had hard evidences of his dirty deeds, academic misconduct for instance. I decided at that time if he still held me back, I would like to fall with him: I was quite sure that I could find channels to expose these evidences and get him fall from both the academic and administrative ladder. His letting me go did good for both of us. My Juda's docility seemed to satisfy him, and perhaps the rumor that I had quite strong connections outside SISU helped him to make some remedies, even in the one and half years after I left the business school: He tried several times to get me back, saying the pay there is getting better, even better than where I stay, that there is big big room for me. I said thanks every time, with a docile smile.

Obstacles remained, however, at the university level. All went well with the personnel department, but not the president of SISU. For the first time, he said the forms were not standard since the personnel department did not have their opinions there. He scolded the director the personnel department and then asked me try it again. For the second time, he said the directors forgot to sign their names, then I tried it again. For the third time, he said, they needed a meeting to decide---. Later I figured out from my sources that his delay was partly due to his strong desire to show his authority to his subsidiaries and unfortunately, I was taken as an example. This time I was better prepared: I taped every encounter with the administrative stuff, among others, the president, the director of the personnel department. They would be quite happy if they knew that I recorded without their knowledge: the president's strong sense of showing authority, the administrative stuff's pretended compliance (including mine) were quite upclosed. For them, this could be a perfect example of being a leader and an inferior. For me, this could also be good field work with first hand data for a quality ethographic research to show how the university system works in China. Some would claim that such study is at best based on bias: a bit hatred, cynicism and a sense of guity-we were all sins. I would, however, take it as interpretive: it is my interpretation of the reality; the reality is as it is and my interpretation is as it is.

When I came back from Singapore in 2008, I suddenly found that I was put to oblivin by the place I had worked for 6 years and I was quite frustrated. Then I tried to get myself from the business school to the training department, partly because I heard the pay here is much better. The director of the training department, who was also the director of the now splited law school and training department, seemed happy to take me. We talked for perhaps 10 minutes and he said welcome. However, the director of the business school refused to let me go for a sound reason-he need me to stay for the so called national assessment that goes every five years, as it is rumored. After the assessment, you can go anywhere you want, even the moon. In 2005, when I was sent to the suburban university, they said the same thing. I plead that my mother was seriously ill and I needed to take care of her; I stayed at SISU only for her sake. Those sons of bitches refused, saying I could visit my mother every weekend and they need me. That time, I felt I had never been so important, at so huge a cost. I felt terrible and decided to get what I had suffered and what I would suffer from the bearocacy of this university in ways that could be heard and shared.

Last night, the idea suddenly came to me that perhaps I should do a research on how new members come to terms with a community, perhaps influenced by recent readings which hold a community-based orientation towards literacy. The basic idea is that a community has its own discourse and practice. Wenger (1998) would call such community as community of practice and Swales would call it as discourse community. Surely, there is a lot to say about the working mechanisms of any community, especially when it is entangled with ideology, interest, politics, etc. I think take the training department as a research site, me and some other new comers (including the foreign ones) could be ideal to unveil the multi-faceted scene of community. Qualitative methods like case study, narrative inquiry, ethnographic interview can be used to collect data such as: diaries, department documents, meetings, small talks, formal discussions, and so on.

As a matter of fact, I have been working for this department for over 8 years since I finished my postgraduate program except for the period 2004-2005 when I was sent by the municipal eucational committee to another university located in the suburb and 2007-2008 when I was in Nanyang Teachnological University. The thing is when I was away in 2008, the department split into two: the training department and international business school and I was, as rumor says, asigned to the business school. I was not notified, as always. This university is one of the most bureacratic institutions I have ever heard of: the authorities make imprudent decisions on the univerisity's interest and deliberate ones on their individual interest; and all these decisions are made behind the scene-when the average employees were notified, they have been decided, always for things in no ways good for them. One of my town fellows, working in several departments in the government and having his wife here in this university, always complains that this university is typical of Chinese beurocracy. Even worse, he added, since Chinese intellecuals are 9 out of 10 not integrated, the 1 out of 10 who are not so corrupted, are not the so called communists.

When I was in Lanzhou, my father called me, saying my brother were coming back. That was the eve of Chinese New Year! Before that I had no idea of his visit. I knew that I was not employed for almost 2 years and until recently he became a worker in my cousin's factory. Nothing more besides his several callings to me for money. This time, as my father said, as his ID card became invalid, he had to go back hometown to get a new one-his visit would be not so much for the sake of family ties than that of business. Then I came back Chongqing while he was away in hometown. He just got back yesterday.

When I got to where my parents live, my elder brother was still in bed. My father was doing some reading in the balcony, my mother, cooking the lunch while doing her self talk. As my father and I went in, my father began complaining about my brother's way of doing things: no plans for everything, laziness--- a total failure. This time specifically, he planned to go to the railstation to buy the tickets back to Guangdong, but he got up late and my mother refused him to go, getting his clothes away. My brother refused to respond to him, and to me. I kept silent, smoking. The early days again came back to me, hurting. We have been acted like hedgehogs. We could never live in peace for even a single day.

I got my brother up, dressed, out in a resteraunt for the lunch. He is still handsome, yet with traces of age in appearence. We talked over the lunch. He had not changed. He complained about the family, saying my parents ruined him, every bit of him. He still thinks he is somebody; it is just that his time has not come yet. "Men can not live with hope." that is what he said. He tried many things, worker in wine factory, boss of a casino, unemployed---. He still believe there should be something meant for him, something big. The casino worked well at first, but then he got in himself and lost all the money. He got to know many wealthy poeple and in his talk he admired them. He has been dreamed to be one of them. This I also could see: he has kept buying lottery, facying he could make a fortune. When I asked him whether he still do that, he responded," Why not? It is a way, is not it?" I was left almost speechless. I advised him to be a bit down to earth: having dream is good; expecting the stroke of luck is no fault; yet he should first of try to make a living. If I were him, I said, I would rather move forward step by step than wander about and take chances. If not, I said, he would finally come back when he get old and not fit for any employment, let's see, fifty years old, living with my parents, listening to my father's complaints and my mother's self talk. How about it? Who knows what will happen in the next ten years? He said, still hoping something real good. Again, I gave him some money. All of a sudden, he decided not to go back home, but go to my hometown again and then to Guangdong from there. I suggested at least he should get his luggage and say good bye to my parents, better tommorrow. I said no, worrying my mother would not let him go. Finally I sent him to the bus station, watching him off.

He waved to me, saying something I did not figure out.

I got a taxi back to my parents'. My mother was waiting. Perhaps because I had drunk some beer, I felt rather uncomfortable. Therefore I quickly got in the toilet, trying hard to keep food in space. This upset my mother even more. Then I lied to her that my brother was back to my hometown because some relatives there called him and assured her that he would probably come back before he go to Guangdong. My mother believed: she had no other choice. Quickly she resorted to her self talk. This time I figured out the talk was between her and my brother and then my relatives. She kept asking my brother to come back, saying that I would find a job here and he need not go that far, such and such. I was sad all the rest of the afternoon.

At 6:00 pm, I got to a resteraunt for a get-together with teachers in our department. Two teachers also took along their daughters. During the meal, the little girls kept talking, making a real display of their innocence and becoming the source of happiness and laughing. Sometimes, I noticed, they would do self talk, as my mother did. I thought my mother gradually became a kid, playing with herself since no one else actually has been her company. This is good, though thinking of this made me even sadder.

Two visits are still in my mind. Several years ago when I just finished my postgraduate program and got a teaching position in Chongqing, I went to Guangdong Foreign Studies University for a symposium. I called him for a visit. That time he was a guard in a hospital in a nearby town. He somehow managed to get a friend who was responsible of driving to pick up patients in guangzhou to pick me up. I guess that he wanted to show his capabilities by doing so but he meant well and I was very moved. We did not go to where he worked, I do not know why, but to where one of my cousins lived. My cousin and his wife rented a single room. We got one day together. We talked, they about their humble life and work there, and I, my study and teaching, but mostly, we, our early days together. They wanted to treat me well, getting meals in small resteraunts though I insisted paying the bills, lying that my trip could be sponsored by my university. We somehow wedged ourselves in a samll bed, like old times and my cousin's wife slept at other place with her friend. pity that I do not have anything more about this visit.

The other visit, perhaps two years later, he went back Chongqing during the Chinese New Year. He stayed for several days and then went back to my hometown because my aunt intended to get him a girlfriend. My parents and relatives thought it could be a serious problem for him not to get married. My brother was handsome, rumored as one of the four most handsome boys in the factory where my father was an accountant. Dozens of girls wanted him to be their boyfriend or even husband at that time. He was very close to marriage once but finally he decided not to settle down. Anyway, he was still single which added to the nerves of my parents and my relatives as time went on. This time, he listened and went back hometown. Things went on smoothly and he finally brought the girl to Chongqing. She was a girl selling beers somewhere, good looking (I guess that is what got him to change his mind). He told me, after he came back, that he was fond of that girl. I arranged a meal with the girl, her friends in Chongqing. Pity it did not work out finally and the girl even did not pay a visit to my parents. The reasons do not know. He should have been frustrated. So I introduced him to another girl, but when I went back Guangdong, he refused to keep contact.

(still yesterday)

I visited my parents partly for a reunion with my elder brother.

He was taken as a headach for the rest of my family, except my mother. When we were little kids, my father got his back broken in a car accident, and later my mother got a lasting mental illness, as a result, we kept moving to new schools, sometimes living with my mother, sometimes with my father and sometimes with my relatives. He quit school in junior high while I moved on with more transfering. He, shortly after that, became a worker in the fatory where my father was an accountant, later his got his town citizenship at the price of 5000 Yuan, a big amount of money and surely a heavy burden for my family. He worked there, earning a merger salary, from a bit more than 200 to perhaps a bit more 400 till he left for a textile factory in Xinjiang. As rumors told, he had a fight there with a director and was fired. He then went back, joining the corps of the young people in my hometown to the coastal area, specifically, Guangdong. There he lived between employment and unemployment.

I had not so much time with my brother. When we were students, he lived with my mother while I lived with my father, or I lived with my mother while he lived with my relatives---. When he was a worker, living with my father, I lived in the boarding school, seldom visiting them. Then, we were both physically and emotionaly farther: his few calls from somewhere and a couple of visits back in Chongqing, that is all.

Still, there were good memories, all about our early days. Once in my primary when I was living with my mother in the rural once, the life was unbearable: we did not have enough food and worse we did not have enough firewood to get meals cooked during the winter. I donot quite remember how I began, yet I kind of got fond of reading novels, especially warriors. That time he was living with my relative in a nearby town and came back home almost everyweek. He would brough me the novels, almost one everyweek. I read those stories. Sometimes we did not have money to buy kerosene for light and I even tried lard to get light at night. Put it in a broken bowl, make a wick, and light it with eagerness to read. He was what I expected for everyweek. I still remember one Friday eveniing, I waited and waited, and finally got him when it was very late. I even wrote a childish poem to express my emotions, cannot remember the exact words now though.

Today was a tough day for me. I visited my parents. To be frank, every time I visited my parents, I would felt sort of choke in my throat. Their life remained a bit unberably tough for me. I got my parents in Chongqing since 2000 when my father retired. Ten years! They still have not get used to the life here. I rented an apartment for them, moved three times over the years. They seemed strangers to this city: no friends made, life style unchanged---. They have not even cultivated a hobby for their life- I always wondered how they spent all the days and nights. As far as I could see, my mother, after the long treatment of her mental illness, became slow, living in her own old days. She occasionally mummured to herself, often hardly understandable by others who was not a part of her old days. For those who were a part, more or less, her self talk apparently becomes sort of nuisance. My father should have suffered a lot. This I could figure out when I saw he would buy everyday newspapers, particularly, 环球时报，军事博览, etc. Occasionally, I could pick up fragments of my early life from her self talk, sometimes nostagic, most often, a bit annoyed.

What made me extremely sad was that their life is too simple. Though my father had his retirement allowance and I gave them some money, enough for them to afford a comfortable life. My father has been too thrift for all the years. Years ago, this was understandable since we were poor: rice and pickle were his usual meals. Now, it got better, yet just a little. My wife said I should buy food and other daily necessities instead of giving them the money. That was actually what I did several years ago. I still remember the first time my wife visited my parents. I first went to the grocery store, getting paper cups, milk,---, which surprised her a lot. Later, when life got busier, I seldom did this as weekly responsibilities. Anyway, each time I was frustrated and guilty:They deserve a much much better life; I could help little.

Thanks Lake. As for your question, Yes and No: I wrote them at different places, in China. The reason for this: I wrote them on two computers, one with a Chinese system, the other English. You know, when I put them done in Word, different reminders appeared and somehow influenced me, perhaps.

Thanks, Anna. Happy new year!

Yesterday, I had the first class for students in a program preparing them for MA program in some Australian universities. The administration is far from sufficient: many students in many other programs have not got them course books yet. The sylubus was finally settled just one day before the class. They have their excuses: the winter break, so many programs, blablabla---. Nobody questions themselves. One of the directors always asked me how the common teachers would look at him. That is a tough question for me to answer for a very simple reason: we think differently and we value different things. For me, I respect others and what I am doing and I always keep looking at myself. Therefore, I know how I treat others and what I am doing. Then the question is: Do not the directors know how they treat the common teachers and their responsibilities? Sly as they are, they should know. It just doesnot matter. Do they really care how common teachers feel about them? I doubt. Otherwise, they would not tell lies after lies. They thought, perhaps, by the lies or the administrative force, they could get into teachers' mentality and manipulate for their own benefit.

02/03/2010

The new term began 2 days ago. It has been always difficulty for us teachers to get back to work, both physically and mentally. During our first staff meeting for this term, most of us talked about our winter break experiences: some went to Hainan, some Yunnan, some Taiwan. We were looking forward to another long break, right at the end of one. Qingming for some, even the nearest weekend for some others,

This winter break was, as I put in an email to one of my former teacher in NIE, is a real pleasant though a bit tiring trip.

"It is really good to slow down the pace of life, being a bit lazier, though I have been always a bit lazy. Now I can still remeber the time I played Chinese chess with an aged man in the old street of Lijiang, bathing in the a bit dazzling sun shine and the surrounding earthly hustle and bustle and when I was in Lugu Lake, sitting on the chair in the balcony or in the boat sailing to the center of the lake and waiting for the sun rising, bit by bit above the ridges, surrounded by sacred serenity and chilly fog. To tell you the truth, I would rather live in the country as a farmer if the life were not unbearably tough there; my early life in the country still remains something very very distant but beautiful in my memory, except for the sufferings; experiencing crops growing up minute by minute seems fantastic for me. However, as I have been striving for a better life in the city, I always regret that the simple, essential and lasting happiness of life gradually became distant and will finally fade out. Anyway, I think I will eventually be a farmer again. Before that, as a man from Beijing who happened to live in the same hostel in Lijiang commented, when we were both a bit drunk, I still have to move on, though deep in my heart, I am a bit resistant."

Of course, this lesure came with a price. Before the break, I kept staying late till 2-3 oclock every morning, reading and conceptualizing a research proposal, in vain. I broke down both physically and mentally: I got a lasting flu, though not the daunting swan flu, but disturbing; every time I thought I recovered, it came back to me. I dropped out the work also with sort of frustration, feeling I was getting closer and closer but always one step from getting the ideas tidy up. I wrote to my former teachers, saying sorry, promising I would keep trying it during the break and one of them consoled me, saying Lijiang might be an ideal place for me to concentrate on the proposal. He is right about the place but wrong about me. I spent most of the time, wandering around, though occasionally, driven by the sense of guilt, reading and thinking a bit.

12/02/2010

Today I read on with Casanave (2002). In this chapter, she talked about how bilinguals (Japanese & English) wrote for publication in both languages. She laid out each chapter in a delicate way: her own narrative as an introduction, followed by published studies and her case studies. Doing so, as she claimed, will give the reader mixed voices, an effect of triangulation (probably an improper word here). These voices present unity in diversity: there are common horizons among these perspectives, yet such horizons in a way resist generalization, as is done by positivist approaches. It is interpretive in nature, with a focus on individuals, yet it tries to keep itself away from too much relativism. Two things are particularly interesting in this chapter: That bilinguals have to juggle and balance “the particulars of time, project work, and connections in the local contexts of their specific work environments and of their specific professional environments outside Japan”. The second, accordingly, academics try different ways for publication. In the U.S, as Casanave’s informants describe, your publications lead you into corresponding networks or academic communities while in Japan, you have to try to, first of all, join in academic communities, build up relations and when time comes, you publish. Another scholar from Siri lanka talked about similar phenomenon there and contributed it to the non-discursive problems Siri Lanka academics face: they rarely have access to computers and network and therefore rely much on the local. Accordingly, the relationship between memembers of the local academic community become very strong and often go beyond professionality. In U. S and other advanced regions, the tie among community members may rely more on professionality.

As for local academic communities in China, I think, it is also true. You have to build up relations and then get published. Then what about it? There are few published voices and what we have is rumors. The sacred story is about how people rack their minds to write up scholarly articles and get them published and climb the acacemic ladder, from lecturer to associate professor to full professor. The sacred story however, covers up the somehow filthy fact the process of publication and promotion is filled with things not professional, but political as well as economic. That is the secret story. Now more and more secret stories are getting public as cases of plagiarism and academic dishonesty are first rumored, then spread on the net and some even squizzed into some journal papers.

2010/2/11
It got even colder this morning, 2-10 degree negative as the weather forecast said last night. Yesterday morning, my wife, sister-in-law and I went to the train ticket office around 8:00. There were already around 40 people lining up. When it was our turn, there was no ticket for Lanzhou-Chongqing available, no Lanzhou-Chengdu either. Buying a ticket around the Chinese New Year is always a suffering experience: It has been a long tradition for all family members to be together for the Chinese New Year, wherever they are; and now more and more people leave their birth place to the coastal areas for better pay and life. It is easy to get an air ticket of course, but we decided to go back to Chongqing by train, considering that our previous trip to Lijiang had already exceeded our budget plan. Therefore, we got up even earlier this morning. When we got there, still there had been around 10 people there – Some of them even got there at 6:00, with a stool. The booth was inside a bank and began selling the ticket at 8:00. As we were waiting for the ticket girl, people were chatting, more or less about their suffering experiences of buying the ticket, boarding the train, or both. People talked loudly, treading their feet, so much as to get warmer. As the selling is collected nation wide, the quicker we are, the more people would get their tickets. People proposed various plans to quicken the buying process. Ironically enough, none of these plans were eventually acted out. People talked as virtue guides them and behaved as they see benefit. Therefore, it was fortunate that nobody jumped the line-except one old lady who was immediately shouted at by other people and got away in embarrassment. It was also fortunate that this time we got the tickets for Lanzhou-Chengdu.

10/02/2010

From this on will be a tentative narrative inquiry about myself. I have always been driven by the wish to put down my past, its sadness and happiness, as I once wrote, “Life and memory has always been the themes of my writings”. Those are poems, novels, prose – sort of literary stuff, occasionally coming out of a reflective mind. Still, I do not think I had ever had the idea of reflecting on myself in any academic ways, until I was amazed by the work of Cui, which depicts how the author’s colleagues and himself learnt English and later taught English in China. My empathy grew as I read the book in the free time of my trip in Lijiang: the bumpy hours to and from Dali, Lugu Lake; the silent and leisure hours after drinks in the bar---. I did not read it through without a break; rather, I read on and off, as the trip paused, then continued. My emotion accumulated, then it was a bit interrupted, but the momentum kept-there were times when tears welled up in my eyes and when vague, distant memories of my early life zoomed up with overwhelming strength. The attention to individuals instead of groups, accordingly, individual stories instead of grand stories, got echoes, stronger and stronger. I have read about qualitative and quantitative method, and had some idea of the popular preference to statistics, the hard and objective evidences. To be frank, the positivist attitudes and methodology has not fitted me for a simple reason: I always wanted knowledge that has a connection with me. I have put my past, real or imaginary, in literary ways; and I do want it in academic ways as well. For good or bad, I do not want the stories I tell general and therefore vague as much as distinct and therefore uniquely mine. It seemed then, interpretative methods, or the qualitative ones fit me well. However, the theoretical stuff or the exemplary studies about for instance, case study, ethnographic interview, etc., somehow scared me in a distant manner- They were still other people’s stories.

(As I wrote down this, I was listening to Kankan, a singer popular in Lijiang. Her songs were played here and there in Lijiang as my wife and I were wandering about in the Old Town, simple and sentimental. We bought one disc of her best known songs in a disc shop selling music that were rarely heard. It is snowing outside though it is quite warm inside with heating on. I could see the flakes dancing around the buildings all the way down to the ground. There were occasionally people hurrying in and outside my eyesight. There was a milkman with his milk cart at the gate of our residence area. “Ding, ding, ding” rang his bell and suddenly he was surrounded by milk buyers. I put on my thick clothes, carefully the hat, took a small pot, 2 RMB, downstairs into the world of snow. The chill still hurt me as I moved on to the milkman and almost froze me as I waited there for my turn to get the milk. My mother-in-law should be watching me as she was always cautious and this time specifically, worried that I would lose my way back. The milkman was wrapped unrecognizable, with only 2 eyes exposed to the chill. I expressed my thanks to him for bringing milk here in such a cold day. He said, a little surprised, “I should thank you for buying the milk”. Here I understood life was not easy for ordinary people.)

(This seems not quite fit for this place, yet I do need a place to keep my reflections, so just forgive me: I will keep my narrative as comments to this. If anybody sees this and has some invoked motive to put his or her experiences, I will be really glad. Just a piece of caution: try to put down true stories, not faked or imagined)

Moments (34)

The moment he came back from London
He showed to me what he achieved
in three years there in a university
Lots of "fuck" in his talk
Accent caimed to be quite London
He learned real fast on that
Not from those professors
I suppose
He said he did fuck girls there
Style claimed to be quite London
He learned real fast on that
From girls there from China
I suppose

瞬间（33）

夜行其实没什么
你只是害怕自己罢
你其实从不畏惧
白天看到的人们
只是觉得他们
会在黑暗里出现
你却看不见
这并不象你发现
一个坏人
做一件善事
那么好玩
倒象发现你自己
一个好人
做一件恶事
那么恐怖