Stratagems

I mentioned on a forum the other day that essentially, the goal of life in mainland China is figuring out how to work around governmental restrictions, and the more I think about it the more I think it’s true. At the very least, two experiences I’ve had this week have brought it to the forefront of my mind.

Event A- The School Bus

As some of you are aware, Yunnan University just this year opened a second campus about a 45-minute drive outside of town in an area called YangPu. It’s really a lovely campus, it being all new and such, but there are still many kinks that must be worked out with regard to its new operation. I guess this is normal, but in China the bureaucracy makes change slow. Of course, the decision to move out to YangPu was not, from what I’ve heard, entirely thought through and was just part of a work-around solution that the provincial government is trying whereby it’s moving all government facilities out of the city to the YangPu area so as to alleviate traffic (…everywhere except for on the already crowded, newly constructed highway that connects the two cities that is already undergoing expansion in preparation for the future move), but I digress (we’re surprised).

Anyway, one of the rather large kinks that still hasn’t been worked out has to do with the bussing situation from the main campus to the YangPu campus. Every Monday morning, I get up at 6:45AM to trudge down to the bus stop at 7:25AM to catch the 7:30AM bus to be able to teach out at YangPu at 8:30AM. It’s an early morning, and I’m, quite frankly, not willing to make it any earlier. Last semester, they had a bus that left at 7:20AM, a bus that left at 7:30AM, and a bus that left at 7:40AM. You could get on the 7:40AM bus and get there with enough time to prepare for class. Well, this semester they decided to have a bus at 7:30AM. Not only is this earlier than preferred for sleepy heads like me, but there are no where near enough seats to go around when you go from 3 buses down to 1. This is even more true on Monday mornings when an influx of students is headed back to campus after having spent the weekend at home.

This means that I sometimes have problems, and it has come to a head twice now—once about a month ago, and once last Monday. A month ago I arrived at about 7:25AM to get the bus, but alas there were no seats. After a reassuring (not) “等一下” (literal translation, “wait a moment,” actual translation “wait until the Earth enters its next ice age”), we were forced to sit in the cold waiting a half an hour for a minivan to come collect the fifteen stranded teachers. We were therefore about half an hour late to class, as traffic is worse at this period of time. I screamed bloody murder, and the university SEEMED to take action. The next week the minivan was ready and waiting next to the other 7:30AM bus.

Well, as time progressed, people found out about this and apparently stopped taking the 7:15AM (or something like that) bus in favor of the 7:30AM bus, so the university was forced to upgrade to two full buses on busy days. Two weeks ago, I’m down at 7:25AM and both the big bus and the little bus were full, so we migrated to an empty large bus. Last week, again arriving around 7:25AM, as I think I’ve shown I have wont to do, and finding the big bus previously departed, and the small bus full, the obvious solution to the driver was to put a sack of dirty towels on the floor for me to sit on. I grudgingly accept (but am not so happy about it as I was feeling very sick at that point and was on about one and a half hours of sleep at that point). Then two more teachers come running up to the over-full bus. The solution: go to the empty big bus next to us? No. Put oil-stained towels in the stairwell for these two nicely dressed female teachers to sit on? Yes. At that point I point-blank asked the driver if he was kidding and got off the bus to go to bed and sent a texto to the office saying that I refused to go to the YangPu campus until the bus situation was resolved. I made the mistake, however, of telling them that I was sick, and that’s kind of what they heard as the key part of my story.

In any event, the School of Foreign Languages seems to be taking this situation somewhat seriously, as they called both me and M-L (the French teacher) into a meeting with the head of the school (aka high muckity-muck). They have passed my complaint on to the transportation department, but seem to not expect much of a result. Therefore their solution was: have the secretary of the English department go to the bus at 7:15AM and save me a seat. If the bus is too full, then they will pay for a taxi to take me to the campus. I told them that this solved nothing, as my point was not that I shouldn’t have to sit on the floor, but rather that nobody should be forced to sit on the floor. Especially since the solution is not hard—on Monday mornings take two big buses at 7:30AM. I mean, if they are going to force teachers to go out to that bloody campus, the least they can do is make sure that everybody has a seat! The thing is that I know that the uni couldn’t care less about its own teachers, but when it comes to us foreign “treasures” I figured they’d listen. And actually, I’ve since heard that the party has become concerned about the situation and that I am to write an official report on the matter. We’ll see if that gets us anything!

Situation B- The Import and Export of Dogs

This is a long story that I will save for another post, as I’ve already gone on for like 1,000 words, and I don’t know about you other ADHD and ADD folk out there, but that’s a lot.

IN OTHER NEWS

This week is Labour Week for my sophomores. As far as I can tell this is a holdover from the commie reeducation camps of the Cultural Revolution whereby the university rotates all the schools through one week of forced labour cleaning classrooms and toilets and whatnot. Fun for them, but even more fun for me, as it means that I essentially have a week of vacation.

So, another teacher suggested we take a little trip in Yunnan this weekend as she had a long weekend. But since I have from Monday afternoon till the following Monday off, that I would take a longer trip and maybe visit some friends in Xi’an (middle of China). Then I was in this XinJiang-style restaurant eating dinner one night, and I was like: “Hey, why not go there and eat the real food?!” So, I texto my travel agent while eating dinner and arrange tickets to Urumqi for this week. Yay for spontaneity!

So tomorrow night I’m off to Xi’an for a one night layover (which, rather conveniently means that I will have time to visit friends there), then the next day I fly from Xi’an to Urumqi. You have to understand that XinJiang is in the FAR northwest of China. The majority population there is actually Uighur, not Han, so I’m expecting it to have a more of a Turkish feel (the Uighurs are Muslim). If I’m lucky I’ll be able to follow the Silk Road as far as Kashgar (really close to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan) which is supposedly the capital of the bazaar (somewhere between 50 and 150 thousand people come to the town for the Sunday Market even from the surrounding countries). I’m expecting it to feel somewhat like Fez, Morocco, but who knows! I’ll keep you posted from the Middle Orient (that’s a term, right?)

I’ll also try to post a map for your reference! ;o)