in Paraguay.
They may not be globetrotters the likes of Monty Python’s Michael Palin, but if Jason Harper ’06 and Justin Nicholes ’07 have their way, eventually they may come pretty darn close.
After receiving their MFAs in creative writing with an emphasis in fiction, both men seized the opportunity to teach for a year in 2007-08 at Sias International University in Xinzheng City, through a program offered by Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan.
The experience was enjoyable enough that when the chance came to renew their contracts, they decided to stay in China for at least another year. An added bonus, of course, was this year’s summer Olympics and the excitement surrounding it. Ultimately, Harper and Nicholes missed the Olympics, a trade-off for some downtime back in the United States, but they didn’t miss the charge in the atmosphere during the time leading up to the games, an atmosphere Nicholes describes as “a collective hope of impressing and being embraced by the outside world.”
Harper and Nicholes are riding on another high in addition to their traveling escapades, one that’s a rarity for the recently graduated MFA student: Another Sky Press accepted Harper’s short novel, Yellow #5, and Nicholes’ novel Ash Dogs for publication.
Both works served as their theses projects at Wichita State. As graduate teaching assistants at WSU, Harper and Nicholes taught a myriad of composition courses, including those designed for English as a Second Language students. “Mary Sherman (Wichita State’s ESL coordinator) was wonderful,” Harper says. “And teaching those classes absolutely prepared me for what I do now.”
He adds, “It’s been challenging. It’s also been interesting, fascinating and fun.” He and Nicholes teach four sections of Composition 101 and 102 each, but they see few differences between the way they teach the courses to their Chinese students and the way they taught similar courses at WSU. Nicholes already had experience teaching in other countries before he was a graduate teaching assistant at WSU, having taught in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and Dresden, Germany.
experience writing restaurant reviews
for The Sunflower are helping in his
research for a book about Chinese food.
Harper got his first taste of teaching in another country after his graduation from WSU. In the fall of 2006, he worked as a visiting adjunct instructor at the Universidad Católica and as a volunteer instructor at Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americana, both in Paraguay. “For me, it’s just the same as in the States,” notes Harper about his current students’ writing skills. “You have some students who are better writers than American students. Then you have some who look at you blankly and smile when you ask them a question.
Nicholes is impressed by his students’ willingness to work with one another. “The students practice group responsibility, which often means students collaborate to make sure everyone understands and completes assignments,” he says. “It also means notices get to all students, since students inform one another.”
“You have to adjust, just as any teacher does,” adds Harper. “I usually have 25 students in each class, and I have to spend more time with some of them than I do others. What’s most rewarding for me is when they feel comfortable enough to come to me and ask for help in applying to graduate school.”
Harper also learned about the Chinese culture’s respect for teachers, a respect that seems to border on devotion. “On the last day of class some students just wouldn’t leave the classroom. I had so many gifts,” he says. Harper used to have a cat, Cuckoo, while he was in Wichita, but he had to find a new home for him before his first overseas teaching gig in Paraguay. He must have relayed this information to his students at some point. One of his gifts was a stuffed animal: a cat.
Yin and Yang
Looking back, it’s difficult for Harper to recall what he thought living in China was going to be like versus the reality when he got there. “I thought it was going to be … I don’t know,” he says. “It’s like that whole ‘digging to China’ concept you might have had as a kid. Research was just like that: shovels full of dirt. You never really got to China. It was nothing like I thought it was going to be.”
The dichotomies that are part of Chinese culture, dichotomies that don’t phase the Chinese, gave Harper and Nicholes something to ponder. In many areas, the Chinese are known for being, and actually are, technologically savvy and advanced. In other areas, however, the average U.S. citizen might find it difficult to adapt.
For example, the Chinese have thumbprint readers outside administrative offices, the 21st-century version of the punch-in clock. “It’s the shape and size of a deck of cards and electronically scans faculty and staff thumbprints,” explains Harper. “Employees place their thumb on the glass rectangle. The image is transmitted to a central computer through an Ethernet cable and compared to the employee’s print on file. The images must match exactly. The measure is to identify employees and track hours and attendance.”
campus, has had his debut novel
published by Another Sky Press.
That may sound like something out of Star Trek, but Harper puts things in perspective by describing the bathrooms. “Very often they’re squat toilets that smell like a cat box in a hothouse,” he says with a slight wince. “And in the winter, there isn’t any heat in the classrooms, so everyone has to wear coats. It’s the concept of yin and yang. Something terrific can happen one minute, and the next minute, something terrible happens. You encounter extremes every day.”
Of his experiences, Nicholes finds he takes an introspective approach to life in China. “The most rewarding aspect of living here involves being among a thriving, busy society. My experiences in America usually include varying degrees of isolation, not only personally but interpersonally, because of my choice of how to study or what to do with my free time.” Nicholes, like Harper, spends a lot of free time writing — and making keen observations about the differences between life in China and in the United States. “Mainstream suburban American culture is relatively individualistic,” Nicholes says. “For me, living in this kind of collective society accentuates a basic human need of belonging.”
Conceal Your Disposition
One unique hurdle for Harper and Nicholes as researchers and writers centers on the Chinese government’s policies on censorship. They find they can’t access certain websites, and they even have to be careful with e-mails.
Using the wrong words mean their e-mail accounts might be shut down for a day, especially if they use what is known as “The Three Ts”: Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen Square. They can get away with it, but they have to be sly. Nicholes had to denote Taiwan as “Tai%%wa[000]n,” Tibet as “T ‘I bet!’” and Tiananmen Square as “Ti[RRR]an_an$$$men Square,” and even then he was taking a gamble.
“Trying to keep up on reading and writing in China is not as easy as it is in the States,” he says. “Sites, especially for writers, are blocked, but not always selectively. When I first got to China in August of 2007, the site of the online journal Our Stories, where I edit fiction, was available. Shortly after that I wrote in a biographical statement that I was an editor of this journal. Somehow the word got out, and now Our Stories is blocked across the whole country. To read submissions I now go through a proxy server.”
reports. "Every day offers a new
surprise."
Perspective appears to be the key in adapting to such situations. “The thing about the Chinese is they know what they get through the news is more or less propaganda,” Nicholes says. “Americans, it seems, accept mainstream news as fair and objective.
Before coming here, it’s wise to read up, especially Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Conceal your disposition is the rule. Though everyone knows everything, the subtle high-text communication styles might deceive an American used to a low-context style, where so much is spelled out and relatively little needs to be inferred.”
Nicholes is quick to point out he detects change on the horizon, based on observations of his students, most of whom are 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds. “An American might think this country is sleeping,” he says. “It isn’t. It’s awake, just biding its time. The generation I’m teaching marks the transition generation.
He also sees in his Chinese students exactly what he saw in his American students, aspects that bridge Chinese and American cultures. “Students are students, and like anything, censorship sometimes works in their favor, such as when they come to class not having found five outside sources for their papers. Shrugging their shoulders, they say they couldn’t finish the assignment because ‘many sites are blocked in China.’”
The Chinese student’s version of “the dog ate my homework” excuses aside, they are also similar to American students in that they particularly enjoy the socialization aspect university life provides for them. They may even enjoy it a little more, since many of them may have attended same-sex only boarding schools.
“They’re now finally on a campus where they have access to the opposite sex,” Nicholes says. “They want to have fun. And they do.” Chinese students manage to do this even though dormitory life is radically different from the one students experience in the States. “Eight students live in one dorm room. That’s four sets of bunk beds in a room about the size of the average dorm room in the States.”
Students are also enthusiastic about their studies and learning about other cultures. Every year at Sias International there is a designated “culture week.” This past year Harper was slated to talk about the differences between teaching in Paraguay and China. Such a talk might garner a healthy audience at WSU, but Harper got the Jack LaLane of audiences at Sias International: he found himself speaking to nearly 400 students.
Shockers and Aftershocks
Xinzheng City in the distance, is in the
revision phase of his novel Yellow #5.
One experience Harper could have done without was the Sichuan earthquake, which struck on May 12. Initially measuring a magnitude of
7.9 on the Richter scale, aftershocks were felt for months — according
to the China Seismological Bureau, 8,911 have been reported. The quake was devastating; the worst China has experienced since the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, which was the second-greatest quake in recorded history.
Harper and Nicholes were far from the epicenter, but they got a taste of the quake’s wrath. “We definitely felt it even in the Henan Province,” reports Harper. “Buildings started slowly swaying during class. The students were quite panicked, but they followed directions — in English! — very well. All students got out of the building, and there was no damage or injuries here. Things were just moving quite a lot and it was hard to keep balance. But it all turned out okay.”
Earthquakes and swaying buildings behind them, Harper and Nicholes are settling into a new semester. Every day provides them a little more insight into the culture they’re surrounded by, the greater world — and even themselves.
Life in China, in fact, has provided a Buddhist-like epiphany for Nicholes. “I’ve become enlightened about what kind of member of the world I want, and perhaps ought, to be.”
