The Chinese have their own way of doing everything. This sounds stupid to write down... But the truth is, in China there is a right and a wrong way to do everything. Boil it down to their high context culture or the intense formality and hierarchy but china should come with a "How to" manual.
In China you don't say something is wrong and you don't outright ask for things. What you were given was right, no matter what. I went to a restaurant with some friends the first night here. My Chinese was the best of the group's so I pointed out dishes that I understood (or understood for the most part). When I asked if they had an English menue the woman simply told me to point to pictures if I needed to. So we did (well I did) - I pointed at some pictures and some menue options. But what I got for food was nothing like what I ordered. I felt bad and apologized to the girls but then they pointed out that I had pointed t pictures, so it wasn't my bad Chinese that'd gotten us that food, it was the restaurant that had. They simply chose for us. they saw us struggling and thought they knew better. I looked at the recite next to the menue and in fact none of the things I had pointed to were on the recite (well except the wontons but they gave us meat instead of vegetables) and none of the dishes looked like the ones we pointed at.
Sarah, the teacher in my school i've talked about before she explained to me that to keep the system fair in their school the teachers rotate what grade they teach and all the teacher rotate offices. I thought this sounded smart. Grade three (the seniors) are the toughest to teach, they're in class the longest and there's a great stress put on them to study for the entrance exam (think bigger than the SATs, I'll explain these later). Yet, poor Sarah has been stuck teaching grade there for years now (I think she said this was her fifth year...) I said it was unfair and she just said that that's how it worked out. She is hands down the best English teacher in the school, so I understand the need for her to be teacher grade three and so does she. I am just amazed at how well she took it, it's jut how life works.
You also don't deserve anything in China. To deserve is a foreign idea. In China life is almost seen as arbitrary- what happens happens, what doesn't doen't - and that's just life! I know this isn't how they really view it, but it almost feels that way.
This is a good time to bring up the entrance exams. My understanding is still a little rough, but this is what I know for now. Exams are big in China, they've been used for thousands of years and for everything. The biggest exam the students take is taken after High School and dictates the rest of your life. Now I'm not being mellow dramatic with that statement, it's just true. What score you get dictates what schools you can apply to (I understand you get a choice of three or so) then those schools still have the choice to accept you or not. You apply with an intended major, but the majors here are really more like tracks. When in college you only take classes related to your major (there's no minor system over here) and you can't change it. You are accepted into a college with a certain major and can't change it. This sounds pretty rough to all us free-spirited Americans who changed our majors three or four times over four years (three for me) but what's even tougher is that you may be accepted into a school for a major that is not the one you chose. You could apply to study Chinese Literature and be stuck as an English major. Poof, your whole life written down for you without your consent. What's worse? If you don't get into the schools you apply to (or - god forbid - deny the school) you have to repeat your last year of High School so you can retake the exam. You can do this an infinite amount of times, I've actually been told by Americans living here that they've heard of students taking the exam five times. Five times! That more than doubles the length of High School! In America we can't get all of our students to finish but in China they get them to do it over and over again.
When you understand the exam and how important it is it makes sense that these students stay in school intill ten o'clock. Yes, students who get to school at 7 stay until 10 at night. They have their dinners on campus and after dinner classes very. On Saturday they were free to do homework but last night they had a big exam (that they didn't know about at dinner time). I have a lot of respect for the students here, it would be hard not to.
Want to learn more about Qinhuangdao? Checkout this website my friends made. (There are even some pictures of me on there!) http://qhdconnect.spruz.com/
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