A College in Nanning, BNG as BMOC

My friend, a young professor with a B.S. in English and currently teaching at a college in Nanning, asked me to talk with a "few" of his students about college life in America. His invitation was a surprise, but in conjunction with my desire to research the Chinese culture it was a great opportunity for me. Since I arrived early on the evening in question, he invited me over to his  apartment where he and some students were having a ‘hot pot’ dinner and discussion. As it turned out, the handsome young professor was accompanied by 9 attractive young women that wanted to practice English with him; teaching here is a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. I suffered through 30 minutes or so of this lovely torture before Wei hustled me off to the lecture room to talk with his other students.

I imagined a small Socratic group of us discussing American colleges, admissions requirements, TOEFL and GRE, partying, etc. We walked a little way to the class building, where I went up 3 flights of stairs and into a room that seats 50 – there were 6 that had to stand among these "few" students. I will teach Wei a new English phrase tomorrow – "I’ll get even with you for this."

I decided to use Benjamin Disraeli's "3 Pillars of Learning" quotation as a basis for speaking to these eager, but very shy, young Chinese students. Chinese professors must  be terrible dragons indeed; fiery truths hurled down from the Olympian heights of the lectern by the Dragon Sage on the stage, which is set on a small foot high platform with a wall-to-wall blackboard behind. I wrote old Ben’s 3 truths on the board, along with a basic line drawing of 3 pillars holding something up. I labeled the three pillars 1, 2, and 3.

"The three pillars of learning are: 1) Seeing much, 2) Studying much, and 3) Suffering much." I tried to be motivational and funny to get the ice broken without calling in a Chinese Navy icebreaker. Slapstick followed by pounding the lectern to the beat of the 3 pillars of learning seemed to work. We then had a question and answer session (with students standing as they addressed the lecturer). The Chinese have come so far in many ways, but have so far to go in others.

When it came time for questions, everyone was afraid to speak. Somehow, after laughing at my antics and nodding solemnly at the little truths that crept into my 30 minute talk – they were silenced by this huge bearded apparition from somewhere else. I started writing the formulae for standard deviation, correlation, analysis of variance, etc on the board and threatened to carry on into 3-way ANOVA and factor analysis until I heard some questions. This strange roaring foreign devil from some other planet certainly got their attention. They laughed and the first brave soul rose timidly and asked if they missed on of the 3 pillars a little, would it really be that bad. She explained that she studied very much, but felt that she did not have time to be with her friends and socialize. I thought for a second and wrote in big letters, "There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch – TANSTAFFL," Heinlein's acronym for that common sense idea probably coined by Cicero or some other old dead Greek guy. I then underlined #2 twice and everyone solemnly nodded and wrote it down. Another student rose, a little quicker this time to beat out the 4 other pairs of hands that were now waving. An old Chinese saying, "A peasant will have to stand on the hillside very long with his mouth open before a roast  duck will fly in." was proffered. Since this is one of my favorite quotations, I said that I thought Sun Tsu (it’s author) was a very wise man and that he had much to tell us from the long past of their great country. After some discussion involving my pronunciation (or lack thereof) they literally dropped their jaws and fell silent at the very idea that a Westerner knew of the great Sun Tsu; a sea of hands. One student rose and said he spent his little bit of spare time going to companies and looking at their businesses and practices to see what was really happening. He asked, "Is this good idea?" I underlined #1 twice and said that "seeing much" was the first pillar of learning for a good reason. Asked and answered.

After several more questions about the 9/11 attack, violence in American schools, disciplining children, why I have a beard, etc (about an hours worth), a student rose and explained that he studied very hard for examinations. He said that no matter how hard he worked, there always seemed to be someone that did better and studied less. This was unfair, he went on, and pointed to this as a crack in my "3 pillars" analogy. I said that in 20 years that apparently great student would look back and think sadly about the things he didn’t accomplish in his scholarship, while the student standing before me would look back and smile with satisfaction at his hard-won accomplishments. This sounded good and was actually followed by applause from the entire class. I underlined "Suffering much" to the accompaniment of laughter and more applause. We ended there after almost 2 hours, with me wondering whether I had told him the truth or had dodged it.

I was presented with a Christmas card signed by the entire group, many pictures were taken and off I went with young Professor Wei. I took one of the pictures I made of the group and had 56 copies made for the students. I also included 56 of my English/Chinese business cards, each stamped in red with my personal seal in Chinese characters (see the bottom of the "MAIN" page). Wei said that he had planned to get the negative and do that himself, and that I should not have gone to so much trouble. Jesus wept; these are truly wonderful people here. I’d have gotten 100 prints just for the privilege of meeting these young students of English - not to mention the "hot pot" dinner and concomitant social activities.