Journal Entry 5 - Libraries, Scheduling and more TV

Entry One
Today’s weather was rainy, the first rain we have had since August. Combined with the sunsets getting earlier and earlier, the night came particularly early.
I went to the philosophy library today. As I explained in an earlier journal, this library has the only English copy of a book that I am supposed to read. I was almost done with it, and I should have had enough time to finish it.
Just as I was about to finish the book, the librarian came into the room. “Everybody else has left. I’m closing up.” It was still ten minutes shy of the official closing time. I tried to ask her if I could finish my book. She laughed nervously, hoping that I would give into her request-command. “If you finish it now, you won’t return tomorrow?” She agreed half-heartedly, but I gave in too, realizing that I wanted to finish the book slowly, to collect my thoughts.
I asked her whether they were closing up earlier for the rest of the semester. “No just today, because it’s raining. Returning home would be particularly inconvenient if I waited for you to finish reading.”
No matter how much you read it, it does not really sink in until it happens to you; from this example, I was able to realize how much China and Chinese society is focused not on regulations, but on personal relationships. Following the regulation was inconvenient to the person in charge, so the regulation was abandoned.
Her request was quite reasonable. Sometimes I wish America thought more about people than regulations. But is this the best way to run a modern society? That is what I am chewing on.

Entry 2
Drrrrrrring, Drrrrrring. “Oh, I am sorry,” my professor says as his phone goes off. This kind of apology would seem too perfunctory in the United States. Having a phone go during class is almost a crime for students. Most of my teachers take points off your final grade if your phone rings during class. The professor generally considers it rude and disruptive. But for a professor to have his or her phone go off, I do not think that I have every had that happen.
But what happened next would never happen in the United States. My professor answered the call. “I am in class now.” He went on to answer his wife’s questions about some issues with their house, clearly trying to get her to hurry up and finish the conversation.
Why is this so acceptable in China and so unacceptable in America? Is it because they don’t care about disturbing class? I have heard some suggests that it is a result of Chinese people historically not being used to telephones. Just thirty years ago, telephones were rare in China, and to receive a call was necessarily important. So it is important to take every phone call you get.
I was considering it as a part of the “我有事”idea. You say “I’ve got something,” because you do not want them to tell them what is more important than them, i.e. you don’t want to say I have to go to class because it would mean that class is more important than them. In the same way, even if you are teaching a class, you cannot not answer your phone because it would be tantamount to admitting that class is more important than taking that call.

Entry 3
I think I mentioned this in one of my previous email, but one of my classes was originally supposed to be taught by two teachers on Tuesday night, one teacher taking the first half, the other taking the later half. We had been told that both classes will probably end in the beginning of the second half of the semester. Today, I asked a Chinese student when the class was going to finish up. She looked a little nonplussed; she did not know, and she did not seem concerned. I tried to explain to them about the class being taught by two teacher, and the logic that both halves of the course would end sometime in November. She asked some other students, but none of them knew either. They all just said, “Ask the teacher.”
First, I do not think teachers just changing the schedule around could ever occur in America, not just for cultural reasons and our analness about scheduling, but also because student’s schedules are so controlled. Everyone in the same major takes the same classes at the same times, so a change is as problematic as the United States when everyone has different schedules.
But I also think that if it were possible, students would be certain of the date that the classes were supposed to end. That date would have been set at the beginning of classes, and most students would have known about it.

Entry 4
Scheduling Issues – Part II
So I did talk with the teacher about the scheduling issues mentioned before. The teacher who teaches the Monday class (the one that was supposed to occupy the latter half of the semester) will have his final class this week, the Tuesday teacher has decided to just keep teaching until the semester ends.
How is that possible? Does that mean that his course is in fact its own separate course? It is de facto its own course because its taking up my Tuesday night for the whole semester.
The question I want to know is why are these Chinese students so unconcerned? They did not really want to know when the class ended, and when they heard that it had been doubled in length, no one said anything.
I think the reason for this has to do with the role of the administration in the hierarchy in the university. They are not really in control of their schedule, their schedules are passed down to them from the administration or by teacher’s arbitrary changes, and the students are used to just accepting what is handed down. Thus, they are not really concerned with when the class ends. It will end when it ends. And if the teacher decides to add another nine weeks to the class, they all know he has the authority to do this. They play a very passive role in all this.

Entry 5
So I am doing another one of the tv shows. When I did the tv show last month, I noticed something while watching the program online. The three black people on the program were all kind of exociticized, especially in their introductions. Two of them were dancing to rap music, one of them did a tango. At the time I did not notice it, but someone pointed this out to me, saying the producers probably were trying to present these black guys in a way that matched with what Chinese viewers thought of black people, always dancing in crazy ways. I did not buy this person’s argument. I told him that I had been there, and that this image of blacks dancing was just coincidental. The producers had not pushed the black contestants to dance, when we were volunteering to do stuff, these contestants volunteered to dance for themselves.
But yesterday I went to the meeting with the television producers there was a South African girl, and they were urging her to do some sort of African dance for her introduction. She agreed reluctantly. They also asked her to wear colorful, African dress for her introduction.
After seeing this, I began to believe that the producer was actively trying to present the Africans on the show as exotic creatures, something out of Edward Said’s Orientalism.

Entry 6
I know you must be getting tired of reading my problems with the libraries here, but I find these issues to be important to my understanding of China.
Today I went to the library in for the foreign studies school, the school that we belong to. There was an HSK grammar book that I wanted.
The two librarians who are there everyday from 8-11 and 2-530 were there with a heater in between them, talking to each other about the cold, recommending how to keep warm, looking at things on the computer. I had to turn the computer on to look up a book. I could not find it in the stacks, so I returned and asked the librarian to help me find it.
She responded, “If it is not on the shelf, it has been checked out.”
“It cannot be checked out. It is a reference book.”
“Really? What is the name of the book?”
I told her the name of the book.
“Oh that book, it’s been checked out. One of the teachers checked it out.”
Although I questioned her further, she did not really tell me how she knew that specific book had been checked out. She said a teacher had come and checked out a bunch of HSK books, and though the book is a reference book, teachers can check them out for as long as they need them. She did not really know whether that specific book had been checked out, but she guessed it had. She also said there was no way to know when the teacher would return it.
Not only is this a real pain, but it also supports the point that I have been trying to make about libraries in China throughout these journal entries. They are very concerned with rank, and they are not really made to serve the students, as they say they are. I also believe that these librarians are basically sinecures, with the librarians not spending the day not really doing anything but chatting with each other. I will have more on what I think this means for China’s future.