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by James L. Secor, Ph.D.

If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, as "ddjango" maintains, then there is little in the Chinese university culture that could possibly lead one to believe that there will be, any time soon, an intellectual giant. This is especially so if we add into the mix present behavior. What I have to say is based on personal experience and anecdote and actual occurrences suffered by friends. Nevertheless, it will sound like a hatchet job, much like Jung Chang's Mao, the unknown story. But I'm going to say it nonetheless--I've even written a play about it, a satire that is most cynical and being translated into Chinese for a commissioning agent. It is set in the 13th century, way out in the northwest where corruption and. . .whatnot were rampant, so it's safe. Unfortunately for China, it still is corrupt out there, which may be why there's little to no investment in business in the area. It is a place that is, in terms of employment, off limits to me: they don't like me out there.

I must admit right up front that I have a slight flaw that seems to have caused me considerable difficulty: corruption seems to fall into my lap, uninvited. It is, to be sure, the reason I came to China to begin with: corruption in Missouri State Vocational Rehabilitation that went all the way to the governor's office. There was no help for me. My employer, an independent living organization, was bought off. And now there is next to nothing, less than they had before. But Missouri VocRehab is still running under the thumb of Ron Vestal and the approval of the governor and all other state governmental departments that might have a say in the matter.

How unfortunate for me that corruption fell right into my lap upon coming to China. In the far northwest--not as far as Xinjiang, where the corruption is of a different type altogether. This came by way of the director of Foreign Affairs not taking care of business: upkeep of housing. But there was also the keeping of my passport and residency permit. In actual fact, not just mine: all foreigners'. But my discovery that this practice, then fairly widespread in the country at 2nd or 3rd tier universities, was (is) illegal brought to light other issues. There is a kind of indentured slavery look to this practice, for without these documents, the foreigner is basically imprisoned. But the problem didn't stop there: this man, who suffered from the US Senator disease--that is, if a lie is good enough why bother to tell the truth--also withheld my return trip ticket. The logic being that since all Chinese are suspect and crooked (as in, out for themselves alone), all foreigners are too. People being people.

I intended to sell the return portion of my ticket, for there was no reason for me to return to the States (even less reason now). What I found, however, was that I would not be given full price as full price had not been paid: there'd been some kind of specially arranged discount. Nevertheless, the full price was printed on the ticket and the receipts for the tickets were turned in to the bursar's office for reimbursement to the Foreign Affairs Office (FAO). Standard procedure. But. . .the FAO director was getting full price reimbursement when he actually paid considerably less. . .on every foreigner's ticket. The school did not know it was being scammed--until I told the VP. The ticket agent in Beijing was in on the deal and got his cut; a man in the Foreign Expert Office of the province was in on the deal and got his cut, as the university turned in their receipts to them for reimbursement.

I have another slight flaw: I try to right wrongs. Injustice gets my bile up, as it were. Perhaps this flaw is not so slight, as I tend to see injustice everywhere. Being demented, I of course believe it is everywhere. A man of my times, eh?

My computer was tampered with, documents were erased--including a 190 pp manuscript on my observations of China (not including any corruption)--and my phone was tapped. A helpful friend was bought off with threats to his business and family. My lawyer was pressured by the school via his uncle, the Dean of Education. And another foreigner, from another area school, was bought as informant (which took me awhile to grasp).

Everything, more or less, lost, I resigned based on the university's breaking of the contract. At that point, I discovered that penalties for violation of contract only apply to foreigners; the universities simple don't hold up their end of the bargain. What can a foreigner do? Somehow or other, I came away with about 1/3 of what I was owed. I moved on to a small, no-name college--the difference between college and university is crucial in China--for a three-year stint where I discovered the joy of incompetence.

Several years later, I learned that this same northwestern province university--it was only a college when I was there--had gotten rid of an internal thorn in the side in the Foreign Language School (that only taught English): the Vice-dean, Jin Qiao. A woman. A highly competent, no-nonsense kind of person, very outspoken. She was not liked by the FAO Director, who, at the end of his term, returned to the English faculty. Apparently, they'd been at each other's throats for years. With the help of the Dean, a weasely man rather fearful of the old FAO Director (who once was the Dean), Jin Qiao was framed and divested of her position, continuing to live on in daily embarrassment and ignominy. The method was nefarious and seemed to me to be a throwback to the Cultural Revolution when any two-bit second-rater could gain fame and fortune by one means or another, both being rather insidious and absent of ethical concerns. That is, inhuman to the draconian.

While she was in Japan gaining further education in teaching methodology, a student was bribed to say that she had paid him to take an English proficiency test. Now, this kind of buying of people to take tests or, even, get the answers, is widely known and rather accepted behavior, at least by students. As I was close to this woman, working on a paper detailing the English mistakes in national testing materials, I knew that her English was quite good. There was no reason for her to take a proficiency test. . .and she couldn't have while in Japan anyway. Nevertheless, the school administration fired her from her position while she was in Japan: she returned to disrespect and ridicule and no vice-deanship. The last I heard, she was shelving books in the library; by now, she's retired.

Jin Qiao's problem was not simply her outspoken temperament and no-nonsense manner of handling herself; her problem was competency. She was intensely competent.

At school #2, I spent a year and a half with the most competent foreign affairs person I've dealt with in my 6-7 years here. He simply did the job as he was told to: a characteristic of Chinese teachers. They do what they're told and they're put-upon, treated very much like slaves and not paid much better than indentured servants, by the administration and/or their deans. In actual fact, Robert Zhang was not getting paid at all for his work. He understood the foreign position. He worked hard to help us along. He took care of all problems when they arose so that his superiors never bothered and, therefore, never knew there were any. Of course, there was always one or another piddling problem in the apartments. As would be expected. Repairmen always taking care to do a not quite adequate job in the name of job security: they'd be sure to be called back.

The Vice-dean of Foreign Languages was also competent, a real mover and shaker. (This must be taken with a cultural pinch of salt, for in China a mover and shaker gets things done in a much longer, slower, round the block manner than in the West.) I got along well with this woman. Indeed, we were working on revamping the way certain reading courses were built and taught, a project that never saw the light of day, even five years later when the Dean of my present school asked for some curriculum writing.

Alternative methods is talked about without any real knowledge of methodology and then never put into practice. It's not been done before. Precedence, under the rubric of tradition, being the ruling principle.

Unfortunately, Robert and the vice dean went off for Master's work. Replacing Wang Lin as Vice-dean was a man of no note, commonly known by staff and students as "gong-gong," the appellative given to the Eunuchs of the Imperial Court in prior days. A man with decision-making responsibilities, he would make none. True to his nickname, he would take any requests to the Dean, only telling the Dean the necessary information to get the answer he intended to give all along. I got along fairly well with the Dean and one day this came to light; his reversal, though, came too late. But he did nothing to alleviate gong-gong's problem.

I have another slight flaw: I do not give respect to people who don't deserve it, no matter their position. I start out giving them the benefit of the doubt and let them erode themselves. I'm not rude, mind you, I simply do not obey simply because they are authority figures. (It's so hard not to get arrogant here, in discussing this.) This is as true in China as it is in America or Japan.

Gong-gong also side-swiped a study I was conducting, with the Dean's approval, and begun under the tutelage of the Vice-dean, on the effects of dramatic textual analysis on reading comprehension in literature (drama not being literature). Drama, because there is so much unstated in the text but implicit in the dialogue and situation, and the symbolic-metaphoric nature of literature often show the same qualities. Gong-gong denied my request to copy the post-test. Another one bites the dust. Sometimes a gong-gong's comprehension is as amiss as his genitalia.

It must be admitted here, though, that at Gong-gong's appointment, the female members of the staff were quite vocal in their damnation of his appointment, noting there were far more competent women in the department who could have filled the position--and would, it was predicted, do a better job.

For Gong-gong, the only thing a foreigner was good for was teaching oral English. He told me to my face that a Chinese teacher could teach English writing better than a native speaker. That is, in this case, better than a Ph.D. and published writer and editor. Well, this is, after all, China. What do I know?
But the incompetence didn't stop here. It reared an enticingly ugly head in foreign affairs later on. Although it had been arranged that I take up much of the slack of Robert Zhang's absence, as I knew foreigner needs and problems in a new culture, it was nevertheless decided that perhaps the most incompetent individual I've ever met was put in this position. Most of what I was to do was help in hiring: reading CVs and making decisions, discovering true language ability, etc. I was to be paid for each new hire (I never was).

Unfortunately, the real FAO director, the Dean of the College, saw fit to install his protégé, as he might be called, Gao Sen (foreign name Garçon, though he spelled it with an "s"). A little man of no attainment who misunderstood most all of the English that came his way, spoke torturously garbled English at best, got lost on his way home on the train, could not make arrangements for travel and had a rather demeaning, rude manner of questioning everything a foreigner might have to say. To wit:- there was a short in the heater to my shower such that whenever I showered, I was shocked. Sometimes this was quite violent. Garçon came by, looked at the heater, not accepting the word of the foreigner--after all, this is China--and said, "I see no problem." I demanded it be fixed and, sure enough, it was discovered that water was leaking back into the unit and shorting out the wiring. I got along fine with the repairman: he'd been to the house before. We joked and laughed and he told me the design of the unit was faulty and I was lucky not to be fried to a crisp. But I paid for my insistent safety with a total lack of cooperation, harmony being only the other guy's (i.e., my) business.

Garçon was far too intellectually ungifted to get into graduate school, so the Dean of the College called in a favor at a Shanghai maritime university, so that Garçon now has a Master's in English with, to be kind, minimal abilities, perhaps at the level of a 2-3 year old native speaker. This is okay: it is usual in China to pass everyone who manages to get into college/university. No matter what. Once you're in, you're out. (More of this later.)

Two to three years later, upon visiting friends and setting up house for the summer in this little city, I discovered that all of the foreigners were beset by problems for which no one in the college would make even the slightest effort to take care of, resulting in the foreigners themselves having to pay for repairs and upkeep. In one instance, a family of four was left without shower/bathroom facilities for a month. As they finally paid for this to be remedied, the FAO, not hearing of any problem, believed there was none. However, the foreigners also deigned to ever complain, having learned--you might say--that this did no good. So, they kind of sank their own boat. . .as they might have if they'd complained: individual complainers are terminated from their jobs.
This school has since had trouble finding and keeping foreign teachers. The contract is full of language that tells the hiree what the school will do to them if they misbehave; nothing for good behavior or addition to the college. And foreigners talk.

Upon leaving the college, I ran up against monetary corruption in learning that the school paid in advance of the work done. That is, payday was on the 10th of the month for the following month's work. This meant that I was shorted a month's salary from hire date. I pointed this out and would not bow down to pressure or authority. The Dean of the college bought off Robert Zhang, whom I blew off (we both realized his predicament) and, in the end, I got my salary. . .a few hundred more than I would have accepted due to a miscalculation on their part. I said nothing.

Authorities in China have a very difficult time with people who do not accept their say-so, their directives, without question; they cannot deal with people who stand up to their shenanigans, their--basically--abuse. The Chinese staff certainly don't question: job security is not a concept here. And so the settlement was belabored and done in the name of placating someone who was totally out of order and definitely wrong. How magnanimous of them!

It was also at this college (now university) that I discovered the key to college education in China. That is, the "once in, you will graduate" mantra. There is no reason to work. There is no incentive. Even students who do nothing pass. Students who cannot follow directions simply whine to the Dean and their grade is upped. Passing is a mere 60 but, in practice, everything from 54-59 is reassigned the grade of 60 without student input. This is called saving face, numbers being important to funding and status, to hell with proficiency. Even a zero can be commuted. This teaches irresponsibility by abrogating responsible behavior to the trash bin. If you are never held responsible for your behavior, you never learn responsible behavior. . . and incompetence then becomes the mark of reward. That is, the incompetent rise to the top like cream in an old, non-homogenized bottle of milk. (Oh! Do I date myself with this simile!) The few who want to learn something and work hard complain of this--to the foreigner. And then suffer at the egregious hands of their schoolmates. Who wants a hard worker around to show them up--but they all want to go further with their studies!

Incompetence is further supported as higher grades mean better placement and more in the way of minor funding, called scholarships. Thus, cheating is big. There are businesses that supply answers to tests--or even people to take them for you. Students will pay other, more competent students to take their tests for them. Plagiarism is rampant under the aegis of "borrowing" and tradition--all the way through doctoral studies. That it has nothing to do with tradition rests in the scorn heaped on plagiarizers by Liu Xie and Confucius, to name but two honored ancients.

Garçon is the prime example of incompetence rewarded, followed by Gong-gong; but the list is long. At Lanzhou jiaotong daxue, the FAO Director only got anywhere through the old buddy system and connivance. He was fond of saying that he got his Master's at the St. Andrews University, where the Royal family and other aristocratic British dignitaries go. His English was not so good, to be kind. The Dean of the College at Anyang shifan daxue, Garçon's mentor, got his position via his father, who was a noted vice president. The Dean of the English School at Zhongshan daxue (aka Sun Yat-sen University), a top ten university, is a do-nothing man who maintains he is an expert in the Bible and an internationally known translator and taught at a school I attended. So frightened of failing, even in the slightest of ways, he does nothing. Everyone else does it for him. Thus, if they fail it is not his fault. Martin Ma Teng at #3 Middle School, Jiayuguan; though it must be admitted he was only incompetent in his position as foreign affairs personage, albeit his English was somewhat wanting. Hu Jia, FAO secretary at Hefei gongye daxue, incompetent to get up in the morning, only in her position due to her mother's intervention. Deans and others who expect you to produce a new, never-before-designed course in two weeks with no computer.

Another flaw of mine is the inability to not name names. Unlike the Dalai Lama, who shies away from saying much of anything, I am a committed Buddhist, albeit known as a bad Buddhist, for I eat meat, drink alcohol and fornicate at every opportunity (not many, at 62). I spent 10 years as a social-political activist for the disability community--I'm disabled myself--and was quite good at it. Putting my well-being on the line was, as noted before, what led to my emigration to China. People need to know who it is who is lying and cheating and thieving and generally keeping them down. There is little difference now, in China, from that depicted in Shui hu zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh), a Ming dynasty satire set in the Song dynasty (11-13th centuries). A few modern writers have had their hand slapped for saying similar things.

I cannot say, at this point, that my achievements have anything to do with my attitude and behavior. After all, I was considered too stupid to graduate from a 4-year college but I've got a Ph.D. And my writing and theatre were considered without merit; however, I'm published in two languages and three countries (that I know of), was a journalist, edited a literary journal, owned my own theatre and was the only foreigner ever to study at the National Puppet Theatre of Japan, a nationally protected historical treasure. My mentor, Andrew Tsubaki, is now a National Living Historical Treasure for his work in Noh theatre. This does not mean that I am necessarily any good, so you can see how competence is, then, not a high priority in my life, in my teaching. . .but I tell people anyway that it is.

But incompetence reigns in the lower regions of college-dom, for many teachers of English are near to monolingual. English is taught in Chinese, especially in lower and upper middle school. In the lower level colleges, it's not much better. And the makers of tests of competence are mistaken in many, many ways--even unto university entrance exams. However, my study of this was rejected by an uppity, arrogant little Indian American academic editor as being no more than my opinion. Oh, surely not! Incompetence is somewhere else than in China!?

There are very nice language labs here but they are locked up except for assigned classes. No one can access them. Chinese teacher do not interact with students at all, so there is no way to gain more understanding, much less knowledge--even on the graduate level. As most of these teachers are kind of deficient in their Enlgish abilities, this is not surprising. However, this holds for every subject: the teachers go into the classroom, lecture and then leave again. All you have to do to pass is memorize a bunch of facts and spit them out at the end of the semester.

So. . .

There is a problem here, a conundrum perhaps, in that the government has sold a college education as the means to a better life, a higher paying job. . .and the people have bought it hook, line and sinker. Much as we Americans bought it in the 1950's and 1960's. But the quality of the college graduate remains questionable, all thought of work stopping at the entrance examination point. These exams are meant to fail people, though if you've gone to the right high school or gotten some kind of high priced coaching or know somebody, the qualification score is somewhat easier to attain. Grad school exams are even more elimination oriented, often only 1% of applicants being accepted. You can only apply to one top ten school, for if you fail at making the grade at one, none of the others will take you, regardless of your score (it is more difficult to get into Renmin daxue or Beida than it is to matriculate at Zhejiang daxue or Sun Yat-sen University), so that if you fail at Renmin daxue, even if your score is over the required minimum at Sun Yat-sen, you will be refused at the latter, setting you up for less of a good result upon graduation because you didn't get a degree at a top flight school. Which isn't saying you know so very much more.

There are three top flight schools--in the top 100--in Hefei, all within spitting distance of each other; I work at the least of the three and my students are comparable to the students I suffered through at Sun Yat-sen University. Some are even as arrogant and disrespectful; most are hard workers, very few at Sun Yat-sen were hard workers. (Caveat: I'm only really familiar with the English School of the Foreign Language College of these universities, though I have taught non-major graduate students.) Hard work pays off, of course, but it's not necessary, so why do it?

Competition kills. It's so intense that, though prospective students don't commit suicide at not making the #1 school as in Japan, cheating is rampant in an attempt to insure they do make it--into any school. Once in a college, a great sigh of relief may be heaved, for the student will be graduated no matter what. Zippity doo-dah, zippity ay, my oh my what a wonderful day. Yeah. Everything going their way. And the marketplace is filled with ill-prepared, incompetent people; the universities are staffed with half- baked teachers. And one wonders why they cut corners?

There are always exceptions and these become my prize students, often questioning life and education, as they should, and thereby growing up. More often than not, they recognize the inadequacy of their education and seek study abroad. It's difficult to make it on your merits with all of the favors and corruption going on around you. A college degree is supposed to help.

It's a hoax.

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