Swing Cabs

Wow, it’s been 21 days (three whole weeks?!) since my last post. I simultaneously find that hard to believe and not so hard to believe. I guess I’ve just been so busy plugging along I hadn’t noticed the time passing away. But I’m here now—the only problem is that I can’t seem to remember what happened three weeks ago.

So, I suppose we can start with last last Monday (that is to say the 10th of October), as that is when things got interesting. Mondays are my longest days out at the YangPu campus—I teach for four hours in the morning and then two hours in the afternoon. The catch is that the two hours in the afternoon are from 4:30-6:30PM. This means that between 12:30-4:30PM I don’t really have anything to do. Well, I try to grade, I guess, but sometimes I am more successful at that than other times.

That is especially true now that the university is providing me a dorm room to stay in for the four hours during the afternoon. They say that the siesta is so ingrained into Mexican culture that it cost Santa Ana the Mexican-American War (they had apparently surrounded a large part of the American army, but instead of going in to finish the job, they took a siesta and the army escaped, regrouped, and captured Santa Ana), but it’s also an important part of the Chinese tradition. Believe me, you only call once at 1:30PM before you learn that lesson. I actually really appreciate having the break though, and I think it’s cool that the university actually provides me a bed because they think it is so important. I also find it refreshing to be in the dorms there. They are actually quite nice, and designed for only four people in a room, so it reminds me very much of my life in Taiwan which I enjoyed very much.

But I have surprisingly digressed. That Monday was the first day I got to go sleep at YangPu, but it turned out that I needn’t really have stayed there that afternoon. In fact, the first years had a basketball tournament organized for that afternoon starting at 5:30PM in which about half of my afternoon class was participating. Basically, when I asked who was staying for class, one girl raised her hand, so I said fine, taught them an English cheer (it is my Oral English class after all), and I made them all go to the tournament and do the cheer. Unfortunately, our department’s team lost fairly thoroughly, but I also got to see some of my students from last year who are now in other majors so I don’t see anymore. That made me happy.

Well, one of those students happens to be the president of the Foreign Languages Association, one of the largest clubs on campus. His English name is Sean, and you might or might not remember him from one of my posts last December A Week to be Reckoned With--to summarize, he’s one of my students who I would consider a friend. We chatted for a bit, and I gave him my new phone number. Lo and behold, Thursday rolls around and I get a call from none other than Sean asking if I wanted to go to lunch with him as he was on the main campus. I accepted thinking we would just be catching up or some such thing. I should have been more wary.

After ordering our food at a cute little Thai place on Culture Alley, pretty much the first thing out of his mouth was, “I came to the main campus on an urgent mission.” I braced as I knew he was about to ask me for a favor. Turns out that the next day the university was having what was essentially an activities fair for the clubs on campus with an accompanying performance. The Foreign Languages Association had prepared a performance, but it was entirely with students from the YangPu campus. The leader of the YangPu campus had called him that morning to inform him that, in the end, they would not be allowing those students to go into the main campus the next day, and that if they did try to go, they would all get demerits! There was apparently no reasoning with the leadership, and is just another example of how arbitrary decisions in China are. They had previously said that it wouldn’t be a problem.

So, it’s the day before the performance (which turned out to be a competition), and his group was without a performance. This is where I came in. He basically asked me what I could put together in 24 hours, nevermind I had four hours of class that afternoon/evening. I nevertheless told him I could help, as he seemed to be in a real pickle. So, that afternoon I spent calling friends, and I finally got Chesa to agree to do a swing dance with me. Sean, in turn, called around and found us backup dancers.

That night I felt like Hermione Granger with the clock thing because I somehow managed to be in three places at once. At 7:30PM I put on a movie for my students (My Big Fat Greek Wedding :o) ), and went downstairs to go teach my backup dancers how to swing. Of course, Chesa was actually teaching at the time, so she could only practice during her breaks. So, at 8:50PM we went up to her classroom and decided to perform for her students. I then raced back downstairs with my students to reclaim our practice room and hurried upstairs to my class to find the movie just ending. I then led a fifteen minute discussion on the movie before returning downstairs to finish practice with the backup dancers. It was a crazy night, but it made me feel powerful in that “I am omnipotent and can bend time to my will” sort of a way.

The next day the performance went surprisingly well, and in the end, it turned out that we won the competition if you can believe it. Now, I think that it was probably just because we were laowai that we won, but at least I enjoyed myself. The backup dancers also want me to start a swing club on campus. Yikes! The three funny things about the day were a) one of the backup dancers went up to Aaliyah (another foreign teacher here at Yunda from DC who happens to be African American) and asked, “how do you make your hair?” b) On several occasions I had different Chinese people come up to me and say “I’ve only ever seen that dance in the movies!” And c) in the program our performance was listed as “Swing Cabs.” I had told Sean over the phone that it was supposed to be “Swing Kids” (à la the movie of the same name). It makes you wonder exactly what movies they’ve seen swing in, as it apparently wasn’t that one ;o).

That night we went to dinner, and in continuing my tradition with Sean, had a truly, ahem, unique dinner. No pig brain this time, but we did have pig stomach (Surprisingly good. I actually think I prefer it over the intestines), and pig feet (again, surprisingly good). The ensuing conversation about weird foodstuffs, however, was slightly disconcerting, and believe me, you don’t even want to know.

As we won, we did the performance again this week on the YangPu campus. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as well, but at least we had fun!