Oregon Team

The past two days we've had the blessing of having about 15 American high school kids from Oregon on spring break. They've been in country for a little while now but spent their last two days with us. It was very refreshing to see all these Americans (that we didn't know) come and be so willingly cheerful and helpful and anxious to do whatever manual labor we could find for them. A few of the girls spent their time on the mammoth and highly impossible task of making our community kitchen shine, even going so far as to put butcher paper on the walls in the "splatter zone." That idea was from the sweet little girl who spent her entire time on this campus trying to scrub down and remove the ancient mold and grease stains, some of which were older than her. All three of them who cleaned the kitchen did so with such smiles and singing, they were like three Cinderellas.
Other Oregon team members took on the most unenviable job of counting all our hand-outs and papers that we give to the students. In one session alone, it's a couple of thousand sheets of paper that we give out, all that need to be counted and sorted and clipped into piles of twenty. We used to do it ourselves, but the job grew to be so dreaded and so hated that we just ordered several thousand more copies than we needed, to make sure we never ran out. Over time, this got to be very disorganized and it required something slightly less than a full archaeological dig to find the hand-outs you needed. Not good when it's 7:45 and you've got class at 8.
The Oregon team happily accomplished the time consuming task of cleaning the supply room, which is where supplies went to die. For a while, we had a theory that there was a real life black hole in one corner sucking up objects stored in there. In two days, they had it cleaned, sorted and systematically organized, destroying the hopes of the black theorists.
After doing all this, then in the afternoons some of the guys would play basketball (mostly for the students entertainment, as four of the guys were well over six feet and no Chinese was brave enough to play against that) and everyone would have lively conversations at dinner with the students. They head back to America tomorrow, and we're sad to see them go. Some of them have expressed interest in coming back to be short term staff. We certainly hope so.

Just Keep In Mind

I've been following this healthcare deal in America pretty closely and while I am firmly against the implementation of such, I refuse to be of the doom and gloom variety. Most of my friends and the people I talk to are against it, a few are for it. The more I read, the more I see how some people view Obama as a great savior of modern America, while others see him as evil incarnate. Here's my view on the future...

Because the air quality is only NEARLY fatal...

This was a photo taken early this morning in Ningxia, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Province of a nasty sandstorm. Visibility was limited to only a couple of thousand feet and the winds were blowing at an incredible 40 to 50 miles an hour. Can you imagine what kind of damage trillions of grains of sand blowing around at near hurricane speeds can do? How far could that sand blow over the course of a single night? 10 miles? 100 miles?

Try 800 to 1,000 miles. All the way to Beijing. In one night.

This morning when we woke up the sky was a sickly orange color and the wind was higher than normal. Coated over everything was a fine layer of gritty sand. The remnants of the sand storm in the mid-western provinces reached us overnight. When I stepped out, I could feel the grit in my mouth and the winds were sharper. However, by afternoon, the sky was normal (well for Beijing anyway), the fierce wind had died down and the only evidence was some residual sand stuck in between cobblestones on streets and corners where it was blown.

I'll Take "Things That Make You Go Whoa! for 500, Alex"

These are two articles from the China Daily, the official and very much state controlled newspaper here.
The date is two days ago, the location is right in my own district....A couple of bus stops away from me..I have cut and pasted word for word from the original article. Links are provided here for reference.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2010-03/17/content_9602273.htm

A Beijing Christian Shares His Story of Conversion
By Wu Yiyao (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-17 07:54

Simon Zhang, a 22-year-old student in Haidian district, Beijing, says he was converted to Christianity two years ago when trying to figure out the meaning of life.

Zhang spoke on condition of only being identified by his surname and English first name instead of his full Chinese name.

"People wondered why I would challenge myself with such a question," said Zhang. "Other people my age were preoccupied with more pragmatic things, such as school, job hunting and romantic relationships."

But he was already on top of his studies, winning scholarships every term, and had a growing relationship with a girl. He had interned at a Fortune 500 company, and still felt like he was looking for something.

"Good academic scores, a girlfriend and bright career prospects may really have been something for my peers, but I found having it all pointless and insignificant," Zhang said. "I was just bored of everything."

When he started reading a Bible a colleague gave him, his perspective on life changed.

"I didn't hesitate much when I started to believe in Jesus, despite my usual skepticism," he said.

"All of a sudden all my questions about life were answered and what could be as amazing as that?"

Zhang's conversion was seamless, but he had trouble choosing a church.

Some churches asked congregation members to donate at every meeting and the priest would say those who did not donate were spiritually challenged," he said. "I disliked the feeling of being judged by the amount or the frequency of donation."

He then read about criminal groups disguised as Christian house churches holding secret meetings and committing rape, murder and fraud in his hometown in Jiangxi province.

"Since then I have avoided secret meetings of any kind," he said. "Secret meetings can easily go too far."

Another church he tried frequently distributed publications about non-spiritual issues, prompting him to quit.

But he says he is now happy with a 700-member house church in Haidian district, which meets openly almost all the time. He said he has gained a new appreciation for his studies and girlfriend.

House Churches Thrive in Beijing

(Check this one out for some other fascinating information and pictures not included here)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-03/17/content_9600333.htm

Churchgoers drawn by smaller congregations and more relaxed approach of authorities

Beijing has a growing number of, and an increasingly open attitude toward, "house churches," according to members of these churches and experts on religion.

"House churches" refers to Christian churches other than those government-sanctioned, officially registered ones, which include the Three Self Patriot Movement, the China Christian Council and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

The increase in house churches is partly due to lack of space at official churches, according to Jacob Sun, a 38-year-old house churchgoer. Sun spoke on condition of being identified only by his surname and English first name, instead of his full Chinese name.

"Many of our practical needs, which are not satisfied at official churches, are well catered to at house churches," said Sun, who is also a philosophy professor at a university in Beijing.

He said he went to Three Self churches for five years after he was baptized in 1999, but then shifted to house churches for several reasons, the main one of which was overcrowding at the Three Self churches.

"Thousands of people gathered in the Three Self churches for Sunday service and sometimes you could barely hear anything," said Sun. "The congregation could hardly be considered intimate at that size."

There are more than 50,000 Christians and 17 Three Self churches in Beijing, roughly one church for every 3,000 Christian, according to a study on Chinese Christianity in 2008 by Duan Qi and Tang Xiaofeng, from the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

When the congregation size is smaller, as it is at most house churches, it is easier to develop a close rapport with fellow churchgoers, said Abel Li, a manager with a technology company in Zhongguancun. Li also spoke on condition of being identified only by his surname and English first name.

"My church's congregation of 300 members is ideal for me," said Li. "In a small congregation like this, I have more opportunities to communicate and build relationships with other churchgoers before and after services. We have also fellowships for people who have things such as occupations in common."

The other reason for the growing number of house churches could be a more tolerant approach by authorities, according to an academic who studies religion.

"The authorities have a much more open attitude toward discussion and debate on house churches," said Cao Zhongjian, an expert on religion in China at the China Academy of Social Sciences, in an annual report on China's religions in 2009.

This more open attitude has allowed some house churches to establish permanent venues. In the past many often had to continually shift location, jumping from office buildings to canteens to small apartments.

Li's house church will soon have a permanent location in a large apartment in an office building in Zhongguancun, Haidian district. The congregation raised 22 million yuan to buy it.

"We don't have to wander from one place to another, or crowd in a small apartment," Li said.

Many house churches do small things to foster a sense of community among congregation members and attract potential new members.

Lily Zhou, a 25-year-old fine arts student in Haidian district, said her house church's publication was a major factor that drew her to the church, which has a congregation of just 50, more than five years ago. Zhou also spoke on condition of being identified only by her surname and English first name.

The 120-page quarterly, which is available online, gives Zhou "a sense of belonging", she said.

"As a fine arts student I have to leave Beijing for painting and miss Sunday services from time to time, but I can always follow what is happening at the church and feel connected to other churchgoers through the publication," said Zhou.

Despite their growth house churches in Beijing continue to operate in a gray area.

"There is currently no law legitimizing house churches in China, but China's constitution and international convention allows freedom of religious belief" said Yang Fenggang, the director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University in the US.

And although house churches may continue to increase in number in the capital and establish more permanent venues, they likely have a long way to go before receiving any kind of official approval, according to a worker at a Beijing Three Self church who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Some house churches have already attempted to officially register with the authorities, but their applications were denied because their clergyman had not trained under Three Self system," said the worker.

(China Daily 03/17/2010 page28

Seriously...wow. In fact, this particular unregistered church has actually been allowed to purchase property for a church building. As John Piper says:

"This doesn't discount the fact that persecution still occurs in China. But we need to let this news soak in. This little article is huge. God is doing something incredible in this great nation. Keep praying."

I can't help but to look over this man's confession here that he had good grades, a good girlfriend, and good job prospects (the Chinese equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock and roll) and still felt void, "insignificant and meaningless" was the term he used until he came to Christ at an underground house church. I wonder how many Chinese feeling the exact same way will read this article either online or on the paper and start to question if maybe, just maybe, this could be an answer for them as well.

Thank you, China Daily.

You know what they say... on St Patricks Day...everyone is Irish!

In a country that has absolutely zero ties to Ireland, do they celebrate St. Patrick's day just because it sounds like fun. A few of us went to Lush today to celebrate the occasion and they had an Irish flag hanging, the employees decked out in green, and the soundtrack from my favorite St Patricks day movie, The Boondock Saints playing (Mom, don't watch it) and to top it all off, the beer was dyed green. On campus, we told the students about the holiday, but the part they liked the most was how you can pinch someone for not wearing green.

Why I say "No" when you ask how much Chinese I've learned..

I came across this article in the China Daily from about five years ago on why it is so difficult for Westerners to learn Mandarin and the common mistakes they make when attempting to do so. I still believe anybody can learn but this article helps explain a lot. This article also mentions a man named Hao Ping, who at the time was head of the Beijing Foreign Language Institute and is now the Chinese Minister of Education. He is a graduate of Institute of English, an ESEC program that was the fore-runner to TIP! :)

Teaching Method Holds the Key in Chinese Learning

In every corner of the world there are students struggling with Chinese tones, practising writing characters and perhaps even making sure they have a few chengyu - idiomatic four-character phrases - up their sleeve for extra kudos.

But their progress is not as rapid as might be expected. At least that's according to the international group of experts that gathered at the First World Chinese Conference in Beijing last week. They have been discussing the way Chinese is taught around the world.

Estimates vary as to the number of people learning Chinese, but none falls below 30 million. The numbers are growing as Chinese is offered at more and more universities and even schools, and as the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language enthusiastically directs the establishment of teaching institutes.

But many students do not seem to be getting very far. The high level of interest in Chinese and hours of hard work are not paying off.

One of the experts at the conference was Peter Kupfer, director of the School of Applied Linguistics and Culture Studies in Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He contrasted the high number of Chinese learners with a lack of really competent Chinese speakers, citing Germany as an example.

There, he said, there are only three people who can provide thoroughly proficient German-Chinese simultaneous translation.

The problem exists even at the very heart of China's international interactions - in the world of business. Kupfer pointed out that many foreigners who come to work in China speak limited or no Chinese, and although many local staff have studied English, communication over technical matters can sometimes be highly problematic.

Why is the Chinese language giving the world such a hard time?

One major obstacle is that Chinese language acquisition is so poorly understood.

Hao Ping, director of Beijing Foreign Languages University, spoke at the conference.

Until now, he said, Chinese learning and teaching methods have relied upon European language acquisition theory, which is completely inappropriate as the two language families are radically different.

Expressing a belief endorsed by many of the speakers at the forum, Hao stated that it is imperative a specialized field of Chinese language acquisition theory be developed as soon as possible.

The process of Chinese language acquisition is thought to be unique.

An interesting piece of evidence for this was offered by Zhou Xuan, assistant to the President of Nanjing University. Zhou noted Chinese students have a particularly strong academic record at foreign universities.

This is believed, he said, to be influenced by the nature of Chinese language acquisition and the way in which it stimulates development of the brain from a young age. Some research suggests knowing Chinese increases IQ by 15-20 points.

The character-based writing system generally takes the blame for the language's difficulty. Even Chinese children take longer to reach a certain level of literacy than their counterparts learning to read in languages with phonetic writing systems.

It is into this aspect of Chinese, therefore, that research is most urgently needed. Studies are already under way in Australia, which has the world's highest percentage population of Chinese learners.

Andrew Scrimgeour is a research fellow at the University of South Australia's Research Centre for Languages and Cultures Education.

"In an alphabetic language, the reader looks at a word on the page, immediately knows its sound, and can connect it to a meaning directly through the brain's oral lexicon," he said.

"When a learner looks at a Chinese character, the brain must connect it separately to its sound and to its meaning."

This aspect of learning Chinese poses a particular challenge for Western learners. Japanese and Korean students have an advantage as their languages, though unrelated to Chinese, give them some exposure to characters.

Despite this, said Scrimgeour, teaching methods in China are biased towards Japanese and Korean learners. These students make up around two-thirds of foreign students in China, and have therefore been on the receiving end of the bulk of resources allocated to teaching research.

Speakers at the conference were advocating changes to Chinese teaching methods worldwide.

"Modern Chinese language teaching is too traditional and lacks vitality," said Zhu Yongsheng, Dean of Fudan University's International Cultural Exchange College, referring to the heavy reliance on textbooks, passive learning and emphasis on grammar.

"Language learning should not be a torture for foreign students," Zhu said.

Speakers advocated a shift from teacher-oriented to student-centred methods. Teacher-centred learning has the student entirely dependent upon the instructor for information, rather than being given the freedom to create his or her own learning process.

"Students don't learn what the teacher tells them, they learn what they understand," said Scrimgeour. As a result, student-centered learning is far more effective.

The excellent Chinese spoken by many foreign experts at the conference demonstrated indisputably that fluency in Chinese is an attainable goal for second-language learners.

But very few students have the stamina and motivation to pursue this goal, often painfully, even to the bright end.

As the government moves ahead with plans to pour US$200 million into its international "Bridge of Chinese Language Programme," it is hoped that careful research and creative thinking will profoundly change teaching methods and materials, and perhaps reveal some of the mysteries of the Chinese language to an eager world.

(China Daily 07/28/2005)

Enough with the weather already!

Yesterday was a nice day, a little on the chilly side, maybe 50 degrees or so. It was so nice, I even thought about running or exercising outside before my body quickly put a stop to that foolishness. You can see Geoff's blog on what him and I ended up doing yesterday.
http://geofftravels.blogspot.com/2010/03/scavengers-again.html

So this morning I wake up to go to church and its white outside. Not just lightly snowing but white. Like fog and heavy snow. I make it to church shivering the whole way and when I get out, the temperature has risen several degrees and all that snow furiously falling earlier has turned into nothing but slush and one lesson I learned today was 1 inch of snow equals about 3 inches of slush, so getting home was a cold, slushy nighmare. :(
However, with the weather here, tomorrow should be high 60's :)

Same Session New Roles

A lot of what we do here is pretty revolutionary in terms of educational concepts. We focus a lot on student centered learning, instead of the traditional teacher speaking, everyone listening method.
We have been training teachers in this way for a few years now and it has attracted national attention. The government wants to implement some of our Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) strategies on a nationwide scale. However, first much research must be done to determine the best strategies to incorporate TESOL into the classroom among myriad other complications. To solve these problems, ESEC founder Danny Yu is writing the definitive text on how to transform the traditional teacher centered classroom to a much more student friendly (ie not boring) classroom regardless of economic or geographic situation. So how does this involve me?

I get to do the research.

and have my name on the book :)

New Session New Roles

Normally at the end of one session the roles for the next are handed out and we have the break to prepare. However due to the massively long break we had and some other factors, we didn't get our roles until yesterday, the day before the new session. I am not a classroom facilitator this session, but instead working more behind the scenes. Not exactly admin, but working closely with them. I will be working on streamlining updates from the manual again, like I did a few sessions ago as well as helping prepare for the summer staff. The summer staff prep is what I am really looking forward to as I have a lot of fresh ideas on how to better improve the program for the high school/college kids who come here every summer.

Shoot 'em up!

Since I got back at the end of the break, we've been having some days where we have no schedule which are quite rare, but pretty nice. Yesterday, Geoff and I, along with coworkers Riley, Brandon and Cassie went to Chaoyang Park, the site of the sand volleyball competition in the 2008 Olympics. A little further into the park there is a laser tag arena set up like a bombed out village in the woods. It was a little on the pricey side, but great fun and what better way to further bond with your coworkers than by outrageously outlandish Rambo impersonations and Terminator style warfare?







By the way, that protruding bulge in my hoodie is a pair of thick gloves...It got pretty cold yesterday, which is why Cassie and Geoff are wearing thick coats. Don't ask me why Riley is wearing a tshirt...he's crazy :)