Back online with a summary of the news...part 1

I don't now if anyone is still reading this blog...it got shut down by the Chinese gov't in advance of the June 4 anniversary of Tienanmen and I didn't update it because of continuous problems accessing it as well as mounting problems on the ground here with putting the show together. (It wasn't MY pointed observations about life in China that made the party bosses nervous, to be sure; they came down on ALL blogs.)
So now it's June 16 already, and so much has transpired in the interim that it would take a day to give a faithful reckoning of it all. I'm sitting at the Westin Chaoyang in Beijing; Caron, Inge, and I returned yesterday from 5 great days in Hong Kong and Macao. Outside, the Beijing sky is night-black with thunder clouds, so it's a good opportunity to repack and get organized before the tour starts tomorrow.
My last posting was about my previous short trip to Hong Kong to attend the Chinese Shakespeare festival at Chinese University of HK. I very much enjoyed the occasion, both because it was well-organized and because it provided a respite from the ongoing challenges of putting together "Einstein's Dreams." Joe Graves had put me in touch with one of his former students, Nancy Yang, who graduated from Beida and now is a law student at HK University. Nancy was extremely friendly, picked me up at the airport, and took time off to show me around. One evening, she and I and Colin McPhillamy (the British actor who was my predecessor at Beida and also acted as judge for the festival) went down into the the bowels of Kowloon district and had a memorable three-restaurant evening: Nancy took us first to a "famous noodle restaurant," then a "famous rice restaurant," and then a "famous dessert restaurant" to top it all off. (Imagine each of these as a little family-run hole in the wall with delicious, though sometimes unidentifiable, food).
The Shakespeare competition featured 12 teams from around China, each allotted 20 minutes to play their scene(s). Predictably, this was a mixed bag, but the best scenes were quite imaginatively staged and executed, especially a Henry VI and a Winter's Tale. The winning team (in this case, Nanjing University) gets an all-expenses-paid trip to London. The festival has just been given another 5-year lease on life through a cash injection by its benefactor, whose enthusiasm for Shakespeare stands in fascinating contrast to his background as a shadowy money man. I think I was able to make some good contacts that might pay off for UF as a way to establish a more lasting connection to the festival.

Hong Kong

I went to Hong Kong from May 25 to 28 to attend the 5th annual Chinese Shakespeare Festival at Chinese University of Hong Kong. I'll blog about that soon, but here are some pictures.

Rain and Shine in Beijing

The play has been progressing at its usual fitful pace, with the usual irritations; this last week, as I was conducting rehearsals in David's absence, we get kicked out of the Democracy Building once ("dragon lady" insisting we had no reservations); got double-booked in our customary rehearsal room (we were able to persuade that class meeting there to take an adjacent conference room); and had to resort for one rehearsal to the corridor of the fifth floor of the computing center. This caused some consternation to the geeks passing by at intervals, especially as the scene we were rehearsing involved the actors lying prostrate and chanting to an imaginary "Great Clock." The computer folks must have thought that they stumbled into the secret rituals of some strange cult.
When the people entrusted with procuring props for us failed to do so, Molly (the stage manager) and I hit the town on Saturday in search of someone to build stilts and make sticks for us. When we finally located woodworking and construction materials shops in a dusty back alley (think Home Depot, third-world style), they acceded to our peculiar demands after much back and forth, animated discussion, and flagrant attempts to price-gouge. Apparently, I made too prosperous and Occidental (Joe's term) an impression, so the price went up the moment they laid eyes on me. But Molly and I -- she's half my size-- drove a medium-hard bargain ("...ok, if they ask 500 yuan, they'll have to throw in the painting and delivery..."). Heaven knows what they'll fabricate for us. Still, we were promised delivery by early next week.
Meanwhile, I blocked through all of the scenes that demanded athleticism (stilt-walking, roller skating, building human pyramids) and formal dancing. To say that this challenged my directorial proficiency would be putting it mildly, but we got through it, and the actors exhibited their usual enthusiasm, if not always the most spot-on physical coordination.
On Thursday night, I had been summoned back to UIBE, the Beijing University of Business and Economics, by the formidable Prof. Sun, for the finals of the Beijing-wide university short play competition. It was raining as I piled into a taxi with the students from Beida who were also presenting a scene. When I arrived at the theatre, what I assumed to be a rather low-key affair turned out to be an enormous extravaganza, with a 600-seat theatre filled to the brim, presenters in formal attire, TV game-show style, video projections, blaring music, etc. One of the solicitous students organizing the show asked me if I was one of the judges. Not to my knowledge, I replied. But of course it turns out that I was indeed, although Prof. Sun had neglected to inform me of this circumstance. (Which was a bit awkward, as a Beida team was competing as well. However, I found out that this kind of conflict of interest is not only not a problem in China, it's in fact expected that competing teams try to stack the jury in their favor. Why rely on merit if you can use influence? In fact, we were being plied with party favors and little snacks all the way through.) As we watched the pieces, all of them contemporary American plays of a signal lack of literary or dramatic distinction, Sun, sitting next to me, would render judgments under her breath in an effort to sway my opinion. "This team chose a very stupid play," she would say with admirable frankness, "they don't know what they're doing." At the end of it all, I was invited to the stage to give feedback -- Sun and I doing a kind of Mutt and Jeff number together. To my surprise, the team from Peking University won and was awarded an 800 Yuan prize. They were all convinced that it was my doing (in actuality, with scrupulous honesty, I had assigned them second place), and we celebrated at a Yunnan restaurant out the south gate long past midnight.

Blogspot is still blocked in the mainland, so updates will have to wait until I can access the VPN.


-- Post From My iPhone

The Cowboy Rides into Town

The blog's been out of commission because I've had some serious trouble logging in; Google's sites seem to have had problems in all of Asia. Right now, I'm at Starbucks (again) on Tuesday afternoon, and using the UF VPN, which makes the network think my computer's actually in the US. Ah, the virtual life!
Much has happened, and lest I once again get too far behind, here's a digest of it all. Currently, I'm by myself in Beijing. After having come back from Arkansas on Wednesday, Joe Graves departed again for Taiwan on Sunday, this time with David in tow. (Upon entry, Joe was slightly delayed at the airport due to the Chinese authorities' almost militant over-cautiousness about the H1N1 virus -- vulgo, swine flu -- of which there have been a total of 3 (!) documented cases in China, none fatal. If you think that's being unreasonable, let Joe tell you about the time the bird flu hit and they quarantined campus from one hour to the next...no one allowed to leave or enter for 3 months!)
So, I've finally met Joe, who is technically the producer of our show. (David, of course, knew him from being in a play with him at Oregon Shakes many years ago.) He is tall, craggy-faced, sloppy, profane, and entirely charismatic. A full-blooded actor and adventurer, he came to China about seven years ago to do a show and stayed to create an institute, and now has ambitions to establish theatre departments on campuses around China, using their childlike devotion to Shakespeare as leverage. (He tells an unbelievable story about the first Chinese translator of Shakespeare that would need a blog post to itself, or perhaps a movie.) Joe has been able to charm money out of people and do the almost impossible, organizing tours of English and American theatres in China, directing Western and Chinese plays at the People's Art Theatre in Beijing and many other locations around the country, and so forth. He sees himself as a spiritual anarchist (scion of a Baptist preacher, no less), hedonist, and holy fool, and somehow, with his amiable but tough-minded persistence, he is able to puncture that skein of bureaucratic intransigence that otherwise envelopes everything here.
His intervention now has restored our performance dates, at least approximately, at the Centennial Hall theatre on campus. We'll be performing from June 2-4, which is precisely 2 weeks from now. This prospect leaves me somewhat beathless, seeing as we haven't even gotten through the whole play, and have virtually none of the props necessary, haven't talked to the lighting designer, etc. On the other hand, the costumer has come and measured, and promises delivery of the costumes by the 25th. In David's almost weeklong absence -- he and Joe are giving Shakespeare workshops around Taiwan -- I am conducting what must be the most difficult part of the rehearsals (I say this as a mere statement of fact). All of the scenes we've thus far avoided because they involve props (stilts, roller skates) and a good measure of acrobatics and athleticism now fall to me to block through. This continues amid the usual problems associated with rehearsals here -- students who suddenly discover they're unavailable for the evening, rooms that are double-booked or guarded by some dragon with a serious animus against theatre, etc. Fortunately, the actors (when present) are good to work with and quick to pick up ideas. (If they were slow-witted, I'd despair.)
Of course, I'm also covering David's classes, so I'm somewhat beleaguered this week. On top of that, Professor Sun (remember her from a previous post?) once again requires my services on Thursday evening, this time to judge the intercollegiate drama competition at Beijing U of Business and Economics. I'm sure I'll have something to report about that...
Just when David comes back, I myself will leave for Hong Kong from May 25 to 28 to attend the finals of the 5th annual Chinese Shakespeare festival at HK Chinese University. Hardly do I return from that excursion, and we get ready to open.
Speaking of excursions, we did get to go to downtown Beijing on Saturday (finally) to see a magnificent exhibit of Turner paintings on loan to the Beijing Art Museum by the Tate Gallery in London, and we rode the subway home.

Far away so near

If I've been remiss about keeping up with the posts on this blog, it's in part because communication, even from China, is now so easy and multifaceted -- email, Facebook, Skype, cell phone, etc. -- that the only true impediment to it is the government's arbitrary (and easily circumvented) censorship, rather than cost or distance, and the blog is just an outlet among several. As long as I'm at Starbucks or any number of other wifi locations off campus, or as long as I use my TA Joe's Netpas (yes, one "s") login, the world is at my fingertips and I can Skype from my iPhone to a landline, update my Twitter account, or exchange any amount of data with anyone (I typically download Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC in the background on iTunes while I'm slurping my overpriced iced mocha.) Setting up the blog, I admit I was still entertaining a romantic notion of China as the quintessence of remoteness, a notion that harkens back to Marco Polo's day, but in reality it's very much part of the connected globe, and so the idea of writing a blog with dispatches from far away, as if it were as tentative and fragile as a message in a bottle, has been washed up by a data tsunami on a digital shore littered with such bottles.
I'm not sure that the metaphor quite holds (water), but anyway...The other reason I've let time elapse is because we've settled into a kind of routine of teaching, rehearsing, shopping, scrounging for food, etc. Even doing a play in Beijing becomes remarkably normal after a while. Until Joe Graves returned yesterday (more about that later), David and I had been effectively orphaned and made in many small and large ways to fend for ourselves. Our presumptive contact and minder Sebastian has been nowhere in evidence, and so getting anything done, from figuring out banking, shopping, and procuring cell phone cards, to obtaining a faculty ID (which identifies us as "foreign experts"), necessary to get past the guards at the campus gates, has been dependent on our own resourcefulness or the kindness of strangers.
Especially going to restaurants is still something of an adventure. Don't ask what our favorite dishes are; to our knowledge we haven't ever ordered the same thing twice (mostly because we can't recall what we ordered before). We usually have to order by pointing at some picture or other and hoping that what looks appetizing in the photo isn't fried bees, snake soup, or old turtle stew (I'm not making these up; we've actually encountered these, though not ordered them). The staff is often a bit impatient with our evident inability to speak even simple Chinese, and in fact seems puzzled that there could be such a thing as a non-Chinese-speaking person.
In one restaurant, to which we've gone several times, they smile indulgently at us when we come in, which we are willing to endure because the dishes are good and cheap (8-10 yuan). It's better than being spoken to at high volume in rapid Chinese, as if we were simply hard of hearing, and we'd understand if whatever was being said were repeated often enough with no change of inflection and no attempt to add an explanatory gesture. Who knows what we've actually ordered and eaten these last two weeks. Sometimes you just have to eat a spoonful of peanut butter or a yoghurt to reset your stomach. There are certain things we haven't been able to find. I am nonplussed that there seems no cinnamon anywhere (to put on my oatmeal). David is on a futile quest for limes for his gin and tonic. The last time he bought limes, they turned out to be mandarins with green skin.
The traffic is absolutely stark raving mad, and they'll just as soon run you over as look at you. We marvel at how such a thoroughly collectivized society, with its professed ideals of social equality and mutual respect turns so utterly Darwinian when loosed on the streets. Traffic signals mean nothing, and pedestrians are at the bottom of a food chain that starts with busses at the top. The simple rule is: get out of the way of anything larger than you. Our assumption is that the street is a kind of primal scene in which the Chinese compensate for all of the other psychic pressures in their life.
These are minor irritations, of course. (Well, ok, I guess if I were flattened by a bus, that would be a major irritation.) The students, by contrast, are very much aware of the world outside, and seem very conscious of their place as the elite in a rapidly transforming society. They strike a balancing act -- we have interesting discussions about this in class -- between pride in China and loyalty to its post-Maoist principles, and their sense of being players on a global stage, the values of which they have to understand, if not embrace.
In the next post, I'll write about rehearsals and Joe's return.

Summer Palace

The trip to the Summer Palace on Thursday was our first real outing from campus, and we treated ourselves to a taxi ride there, which cost 12 Yuan (about $1.75) - not extravagant. Last time I was at the Summer Palace was in 1998, on the Bear Treks trip with Caron, and we rushed through it, barely getting an impression of the the enormous park-like area that bounds the three lakes. This time, David and I took about 3 hours to stroll around, saw some performers on the great outdoor stage that was host to magnificent Peking Opera performances in the time of the empress dowager, walked the length of the great Long Corridor with its 14,000 paintings, had an outrageously overpriced and awful microwaved lunch (when Chinese food in China is bad, it's really, really horrid), climbed the steep steps to the Tower of Buddhist Incense with its 16th-century multi-armed Buddha statue (to which we donated money to incur benevolence for our enterprise), saw many locations the poetic names of which were matched by their serene beauty (the Hall of Virtue and Longevity, the Cloud-Dispelling Tower, the Tower of Listening to the Orioles, etc.), and returned to campus in late afternoon. I've posted some pictures here, both from outside campus and the Summer Palace. (Click pictures to enlarge!)

Summer in the Air

If you've been following this blog on the edge of your seat (and who hasn't?), wondering what next will befall our intrepid travelers, relax a little, reader. Summer has officially begun in China, things are heating up, and with it there's lots of good news from Beijing.
On Wednesday night, when things seemed a bit bleak, we got a phone call from Joe Graves from Arkansas (he's playing Treeves in Elephant Man there at the Rep). Joe, who founded the PKU Institute years ago and has been through the ups and downs of Chinese bureaucracy, put our minds at ease on several fronts. First, he's back next week Wednesday, which will make everything so much easier for us. Secondly, he thinks the space problem can be solved and we'll be able to get Centennial Hall or some equivalent venue. Third, he assures us that, yes, of course there's a budget, and we'll meet with designers as soon as he's back in Beijing. What's more, he will deal with the classes when he's back, so we don't have to agonize about how to evaluate these students on whom we've been dropped willy-nilly. Finally, he has some treats in store for us (at this point, his mellow baritone over the phone is starting to sound like Santa Claus). He will take David on a trip to Taiwan in late May for a theatre festival there; once they have returned, he will send me off to Hong Kong as guest observer at the All-China College Shakespeare festival, into which 200 Chinese universities have entered scenes (12 are selected to perform). Colin McPhillamy, our predecessor in teaching and directing here, will be one of the judges, so I'll get to hang out with him in HK for a few days.
As you might imagine, Joe's intervention makes a lot of difference to our mood. (He also shares a story that puts the Dragon Lady episode from the Democracy Building into perspective. Apparently, Dragon Lady and her husband live on the premises of that building and protect it fiercely, especially from activities they judge frivolous, such as theatre rehearsals. Joe says that at one point he was so low in her estimation that he felt he should apologize to her, so he bought some roses and memorized a phrase of abject self-abasement. When he handed her the flowers, she eyed him with unconcealed horror, backed away slowly, and threw the roses in the trash! Apology not accepted, presumably.)
In rehearsals, we lost a few cast members who were alternates and one who was a principal, but we were told this might happen due to the heavy schedule of the students. We are now down to exactly nine cast members, the minimum for the production, and know that this is a potentially precarious situation. On the other hand, the cast is having genuine fun with the play, and every rehearsal fuses them into more of a close-knit ensemble.
On Thursday, after my morning class, we finally ventured afield from campus, to the Summer Palace of the last empress dowager, Cixi. I'll post a few pictures and a description later.

Slings and arrows...with some pictures from PKU mixed in

Well, it had to happen. When we finally arranged a meeting with Sebastian Li, Joe's assistant who is supposed to look after us but who is mysteriously absent most of the time, to nail down some facts about performance dates and space and designers for the show, it all started unraveling. Sebastian had neglected to book the theatre in Centennial Hall on campus that was to be our venue, and now it was all booked up for the weekend we were promised performances. Sebastian, who bills himself the "production manager" but seems to have no idea that in America, this lapse would be grounds for instant dismissal, is a sympathetic young-ish man with long hair and a constantly beatific smile, who seems to actually hear requests you make and is quick to make you any promise ("no problem"), but is challenged quite substantially on the follow-through front. He takes this disclosure of the theatre's unavailability as if it were some kind of natural event independent of his volition, and helpfully suggests that we perhaps try a venue at another university, where we don't have to sell tickets to cover the rent. This last is said as if selling the tickets is David's and my business; I can already picture myself with a vendor's tray in front of the South Gate of campus hawking discounted tickets to "Einstein's Dreams." Sebastian is also unsure whether there is any budget for the show, and we generally don't get the idea that it has high priority for him compared to whatever else is going on in his busy life. David and I take all of this with a remarkable degree of equanimity, reader, as if we were masters of a Zen-like fatalism and self-restraint. In truth, we are simply surrendering slowly to this down-the-rabbithole feeling because we've become accustomed to how it all works here (or doesn't), and know that howling and gnashing of teeth will get us nowhere. It's as if it would be slightly impertinent to point out that both of us have cleared our schedules, made a few sacrifices, and traveled thousands of miles here to make this happen. At one point, I say to David, "maybe this will be a staged reading yet...", and David acknowledges it with a chuckle. Are we somehow atoning for all the productions we have done that have gone so well?
Meanwhile, we spend more time in classes and on class assignments than on rehearsals, because it is so difficult to get students together until 9pm. The rehearsals we do manage are actually good fun, though fitful, but we don't quite know yet if the actors retain anything at all. (Small triumph over bureaucracy: in need of a silk sheet, which is a key prop for the show, but finding nothing else handy, we take one of the ubiquitous propaganda banners down in the classroom where we were rehearsing. David now carries it around in his backpack.)
On Monday afternoon, I see a white-haired older gent climbing the stairs to my floor and, recognizing him for a professorial type, introduce myself. He is Tom Rendall, a retired English professor from Nova Scotia who with his wife Barbara lives on my floor. They invite me to their apartment, and I learn that he's taught for 5 years at Beida, after 4 years in Macau, so he knows his way around the institution. They are most gracious, and on Tuesday, Tom takes us over to the English department to introduce us to the secretary, Sophie, and inquire about getting us faculty ID cards as well as a mailbox. Then he shepherds us to the office of the Dean of modern languages, Dr. Chang, whom we meet and who may be able to help us with our space conundrum. We feel a little less out in the wilderness after these encounters. Since it's David's birthday, we decide to finally venture out the East Gate in the direction of Wudaokou ("the Wu"), which is the restaurant and bar area close to Beida and Tsinghua University. The Rendalls have recommended an Indian restaurant, the Ganges, to us, and we find it after some searching and have a delightful meal there, with actual cocktails.
When we return to campus at 7:30 to begin rehearsals, our stage manager calls with the news that she's been shut out of the classroom building where we're supposed to be by an officious dragon who claims she knows nothing about any rehearsals.
David and I look at each other, take a deep Zen breath, and repair to my apartment where we break out the scotch and watch an episode of Rome on my computer.

A few pictures

My "home," Shao Yuan no. 5

All Quiet on the Chinese Front

Not much to report this Monday morning, except that's it's a new week in Beijing. We had no rehearsals between Thursday and Sunday evenings because students had mostly left for the long holiday weekend, so David and I got some time to ourselves, spent hours at wifi central (aka Starbucks, where we should be paying rent by now, or at least get a mailbox). In my case, I had a good amount of grading still to do, and spent much of Sunday compiling final grades for upload to UF's server before Monday.
Saturday's adventure was braving the shop-happy masses in the vast underground mall at Zhongguancun, Beijing's largest. I needed a mattress pad to offset my unforgiving bed, and we had a few other items on the list, such as hand sanitizer (we've read about swine flu here, too, and want to be ready for germ warfare!), wine (the Chinese now make a palatable cabernet under the "Great Wall" label), cinnamon (needed to make my breakfast oatmeal less bland), cheese (who doesn't need cheese?), etc. All this and much, much, much more (did I mention "much"?) can be found at the Carrefour, the French-owned but thoroughly chinesified super-mart that anchors the mall. I got the mattress pad for 99 Yuan (about $15), and then we ascended to the food area, where you duck careening shopping carts, low-hanging signs, and shouting salespeople to stock up on every manner of meats, fruits, spices, rice, and tea. The din and the smells are unbelievable. It's a perfect mix between a traditional outdoor market and a Western-style supermarket. I'll post some pictures when I go next.
Sunday rehearsal was quite satisfying, although we find we can't move as fast with these students as we can with our own. It is not for lack of unerstanding; their command of English is quite sophisticated. Rather, there is a discrepancy in theatrical sensibilities that we well have to find a way to bridge. For now, some practical considerations are also challenges, in particular trying to coordinate everyone's schedules. But that's boring, and I won't trouble the blog with it.

Where did the week go...?

I notice these posts are getting a bit long, and I'm falling behind. No wonder: in the first five days after getting off the plane, I taught 5 classes, gave one guest lecture, and conducted 3 rehearsals. I also (occasionally) washed, slept, ate, and learned fluent Chinese. Ok, the last is not true, much to my chagrin. I have little confidence in using the language beyond "ni hao" (hello) and "xiexie" (thank you). I can identify some characters (the ones for "China," "Beijing," "exit," "West Gate," etc.), but it's not enough not to feel like an ignorant boob.
So, the rest of the week in quick review...David Gardiner (my co-director, to those of my lurking blogophiles who don't know the whole story) arrived Tuesday night, while I was out on loan to Professor Sun, and got dragged off to a drama competition himself, most of which was in Chinese. I didn't see him until next morning, somewhat the worse for wear. Wednesday afternoon we had two sophomore writing classes on the schedule, which we split. I should perhaps briefly explain about these classes that they're usually taught by Joe Graves, who is currently at Arkansas Rep, and that Joe had hired an ex-RSC actor from New York named Colin McPhillamy to do the teaching this semester. Colin left quite suddenly and under somewhat mysterious circumstances before I arrived (I had skyped with him once or twice while still in G'ville to get the briefest orientation about the teaching. He is now somewhere in Australia...we seem to be holding down the fort for a number of fugitive characters.). So, with about a month to go in the semester, David and I are now the de facto teachers of these classes, if not the teachers of record. The students of course expect us to know what's going on -- do we have a lesson plan? -- will there be exams? -- to which our extremely professional and reassuring answer is: "Uh, we'll see...we don't really work here..."
In the writing class, I had them first compose a collective story based on elements of the dramatic plot (exposition, complication, climax, etc.). They would write one element and then pass the story on to their neighbor. Then I passed out an article from the NY Times about the government's homogenizing of given names. Their homework for next week is to draft a letter to the editor in response.
On the rehearsal front, we met on Wednesday night for a read-through at the North Chemistry building (which is where the English department is headquartered. Of course.) We have nine members of the cast and several alternates, in case we lose students in the rehearsal process, which is a very real possibility, given their schedules. Before reading the script, we did some physical/improv exercises with them, like "building a machine," mostly to condition them for ensemble work.
On Thursday, I taught another oral English for freshmen in the (bloody early!) morning. The quote of the day came from one girl who said: "I must tell a joke. Do you know who is the American actor Gary Oldman?" (He's British, of course.) "You look a little like him. I think he is...charming (giggle giggle)." I accepted the compliment humbly. These students are simultaneously whip-smart and naive, a very interesting mixture.
During the afternoon, David and I wandered outside campus to a part of town called "Electronics City," which you have to imagine like a souk, if it were transplanted into Blade Runner. You are accosted from all sides by salesmen and -women trying to lure you to their stands, except they sell laptops and MP3 players and cell phones, not spices and silk. David got himself a new battery for his laptop after some haggling (de rigeur). Then we went on a quest for the Carrefour (a kind of French-based superstore chain), which, it turned out, is part of a vast underground shopping arcade that could be anywhere in Globalistan. By the time we had found it, we were too hungry to shop for anything, so we backtracked and found an Indian restaurant. We hesitated at first -- is it even right to eat Indian food in China?-- but it smelled very good and had a cheap lunch buffet. So we rationalized it by saying that at least we were on the same continent.
At evening rehearsal, we had only for actors, the others having left for the long Mayday weekend, but we had a good time improvising with them through one of the chapters/scenes of Einstein's Dreams which we are thinking of adding to the play. If we can harness the enthusiasm of that evening, we can do the play.

A Professor Calls...

So on Monday morning at about 8, I receive a call out of the blue from a woman who introduces herself as "Sun" (Professor Sun, I was soon to learn) and who requests, with a degree of friendly urgency, my presence the next afternoon at her college to help her judge a drama competition in which students enter 10-minute plays. Obviously, she has a long-standing arrangement with Joe Graves, and I've inherited all of Joe's obligations. In no position to demur (she has the forceful tone of Chinese women d'un certain age), I agree to join her the next day. The location is Beijing University of Business and Economics. I have no idea where that is, but she tells me that she'll send me the address by email and all I have to do is show it to the taxi driver. (This proposition presents a small problem in itself, as I have no printer and do not copy Chinese characters well. I could be writing "second pigsty on Appleblossom Street" or "eviscerate me when you read this." Too risky. Fortunately, Joe the TA comes to my rescue later.)
Tuesday morning I receive an email from the Professor that "plans had changed" and that the student in charge has let her know that there have hardly been any rehearsals yet. So instead of giving feedback on scenes, could I come and talk to them about how to act and direct? It would be fine, she adds helpfully, if I wanted to use Powerpoint, and maybe bring in scenes for demonstration. I'm getting a feeling that this kind of on-the-fly redefinition of events is entirely normal. I don't even feel that I need to answer her and point out that I wasn't exactly prepared to give a formal lecture on no notice two days after I have arrive. It will probably be sufficient to just redefine the event when I arrive on the scene...
Following my two oral English classes on Tuesday (about which see the previous entry), I grab a taxi outside the West gate of campus, although I would rather have hibernated, in all truth. (The mattress of my bed is a fine product of People's Quarry #4, and sleep sometimes elusive.) The ride at high speeds across the impressive vistas of contemporary Beijing with its expansive ring roads takes about 20 minutes. The city planners seem to have taken a cue from Atlanta regarding urban freeways. I had been told that a fair price was 25 Yuan, but the driver takes 50 and drops me off at the wrong gate to boot. (Cheated by taxi driver: check.) I'm walking around campus a bit stupidly, looking for the apartment building of Professor Sun ("18 stories, just inside the North Gate"), but do eventually find it and brazen my way past the sullen young guard in police (military? lollipop guild?) uniform -- one such cerberus seems to stand gloweringly in the doorway of any building of substance in Beijing. Professor Sun, who is of the generation on whom a slightly updated variant of the unisex Mao jacket looks right, opens the door to her apartment and embraces me enthusiatically. I have the feeling I've somehow come to her rescue. Waiting in the unkempt professorial apartment already is Beate Neubauer, a German professor from the University of Cologne who, as I find out in due time, gives lectures at campuses around Beijing on English drama while her husband has a semester appointment at Beida. She, too, has been taken a bit by surprise by Sun's assault invitation, and so in the next few hours, we exchange more than a few ironic glances. Sun hustles us over to her dining room table where scripts lie in profusion. Would we please read the short plays the students will be rehearsing while she brings us coffee and sandwiches? So we sit and read 5 short plays, Sun all the while bustling about us, asking questions, urging us to identify parts we might discuss with the students. What do we think of the plays?, she wants to know. (They range from acceptable to execrable, and there is no rhyme or reason why the students would want to do them. One features a foul-mouthed teddy bear who talks back to his owner, a kind of anti-Harvey). Finally, after fitful readings and a hasty dinner, we are taken over to a classroom building liberally plastered with announcements of an upcoming event, "How to Stage Short English Plays." This, it dawns on Beate and me, is the event for which we are the featured speakers. Indeed, when we get to the lecture hall, there are about 30 students waiting quietly in their seats. Our names have been transliterated into Chinese on neat name tags*, and a petite student gives an introduction of the honored guests, hardly have we set foot into the classroom. The students applaud politely and look at us expectantly. It is a little like one of those anxiety dreams I used to have as a young faculty member where I was thrust into a place to lecture on some obscure topic without preparation.
It all turns out well, reader. Beate talks for a few minutes on the relationship of text and performance, and then I take over, giving (very much off the top of my head) some general pointers about beats, objectives, obstacles, subtext, the need for careful rehearsal, when to get off book, and so on. This seems to go over well, and we spend the next hour and a half working with various groups on their scenes, answering questions, etc. When we're back in the taxi after having made copious promises that we will return to inspect the progress of their work, I find that someone (Sun?) has put an envelope with 250 Yuan in my pocket -- a discreet payment for services rendered.
I will conclude this entry here and report on Wednesday and our first rehearsal in the next one.

*In case you're wondering, I figured out that mine says "la - er - fu" -- which is supposed to be like "Ralf."

First teaching

I've taught my first classes now, a drama class on Monday afternoon, and an oral English on Tuesday morning at 8am. Classes here are in blocks of 2x50 minutes, enough to get you in trouble if you're not prepared. The drama class had about 20 students in it, and Wuming had sent me some of the scenes being worked beforehand (mostly Shakespeare and Jonson), so I knew what I was getting into. Astonishingly, even though the semester is coming to a close in about 5 weeks, the students had barely memorized their scene nor had they worked with the text at all. It seems they were in some limbo where they mimed the scene silently (and usually melodramatically), and lines were supposed to come "later," whenever that might be. I did some warmups and then worked through two scenes (Merchant of Venice and Hamlet), clarifying action and giving blocking, or rather, eliciting it from the two actresses playing Bassanio and Antonio. Students are often timid in their choices here, afraid to make a mistake, but after a while they took to it and the class perked up, seeing progress being made. I harped especially on clear choices, specificity, and "raising the stakes" of the scene. I was surprised to find that many students were missing and/or had not settled on their scene yet, and Wuming (who is emerging as one of the most talented and thoughtful of the bunch) told me that students are so overscheduled that they have to skip classes to survive. Still, I'm missing a bit that vaunted Chinese sense of discipline that I assumed was inherent in these best and brightest. From our students, I'm used to natural showmanship and an instinctive sense of theatricality, so quite an adjustment here.
In the afternoon, I spent about two hours in Starbucks, at the price of an 18-Yuan iced coffee, catching up with email, etc.
At 9:15 pm (presaging how late many rehearsals will be) we had the first cast meeting in the conference room of the English dept., and I talked them through the development of the original Einstein's Dreams and our plans for this production. They are a motley lot with mostly quite fluent English, comprised of English students as well as physicists, finance majors, ecological science majors, even a Farsi (!) major. (Why not?) We'll have our first rehearsal on Wednesday before some students leave for the long May 1st weekend.
Monday night I was starting to feel the effects of the jet lag more severely, and so I got not a lot of sleep before having to be up to teach an 8am oral English class to freshmen. But first I had to find the Wenshi (pron. "wen-shrr") building where the classroom was. Remember, I can't read any signs... Students hadn't really been informed that Colin was no longer teaching the class, so they were somewhat puzzled by my arrival on the scene, but I think I made a hit with them by getting them all to talk, playing a little game of Q&A about who the strange German guy was. By the end of the class, they were all laughing and chattering. Their homework for next week is to draft a five-minute statement about what they think should be changed about Beida (which might get me in political hot water; I hear there are student "spies" in classes taught by foreigners). One student told me she was looking forward to class next week because she enjoyed it so much. (Apparently, she was NOT the spy.)
Later I met with "Joe," the TA for the sophomore writing class, whom I had asked to do some photocopying for me (an article about standardization of Chinese names from the NY Times; more potential for doo-doo). Another oral English class in the afternoon went well, too. After this one, a student said earnestly that she knew there were a lot of Jews in Germany, and that Jews are so intelligent, and asked whether I was a Jew. No comment.

Sunday

With plenty of leftover grading trailing me from home, Sunday morning was spent reading a number of graduate papers. But first I ventured out to get some breakfast in a cafe at the international center and went to the on-campus convenience store to pick up some sundries. (I was challenged by trying to identify milk containers, since the Chinese package yoghurt to look like milk, but yoghurt makes an ugly lump in your coffee).
Internet access, I can already see, will be a source of frustration. On campus, the government's Great Firewall prevails, which means nothing but Chinese sites (except Falun Gong, of course), and anything belonging to Google. In advance of the Olympics, Google made a deal with China that allowed them into the Chinese market as long as they censored themselves. As a consequence, I'm able to use bogspot and gmail unimpeded, much as I loathe the reasoning behind making it possible. The solution for my access troubles, and for a good cup of coffee, will have to be the Starbucks with free wi-fi about a half mile from campus. And thus do corporations make cowards of us all.
In the afternoon, I met with Sebastian Li, Joe Graves' right-hand man, who is running things while Joe is in Arkansas, playing the doctor in The Elephant Man. Sebastian is, let's say, vague on a few details of the arrangement here, including when and where our play will actually be performed. I'm taking this in stride. Vagueness and a diffuse sense of responsibility are going to be the order of the day, and the more I drop my Teutonic expectations of order and simply take it as a game with uncertain outcome, the better things will work out for me.
Molly came by as well, and she gave me the cell phone we were promised, and helped me get an international access card. In the evening, I was finally able to talk to Caron at length, which did my soul much good, as I had spent most of the day by myself. I had ventured out of the southwest gate of campus (in search of the Starbucks, truth be told, but it was closed), took my life into my hands crossing the 4th ring road, a maelstrom of traffic nearby where, as I had been warned, anything on wheels makes sport of picking off anything on legs, and wandered into a buffet-style restaurant in an adjacent shopping mall, gamely pointing at a dish on the illuminated menu above the counter. 8 Yuan (a buck and a bit) bought me a noodle bowl with green onions, cilantro, mushrooms, and meat upon which I will not speculate, but delicious all the same.
Getting back into campus I was almost detained by the person of authority at the gate (I can't tell police from army, but uniforms are ubiquitous). It appears one needs an ID to get onto campus -- something no one bothered to tell me -- but showing my key to the PKU guest house with an air of confidence helped. This time...

Here in one piece

On the flight from SFO I was sitting next to an elderly Chinese couple, permanent US residents who emigrated as adults and spoke rudimentary but enthusiastic English. The concept of "theatre" was difficult to explain to them, but I remembered the Chinese word for it was xi, which they registered noddingly. Of course, there are about a hundred other meanings of xi, so lord knows what they think I'm doing over here.
Was picked up by Molly Hong (most Chinese who speak English give themselves English names, sometimes quite fancifully), our stage manager, a diminutive and spirited being who seems very competent. With her was Wu Ming (no English name he), one of our actors, who is a philosophy student and as tall as Molly is short. His spoken English is quite beautiful, and he pronounces German correctly, too (after all, they make him read Nietzsche, Kant, and Heidegger). We took a cab to Beijing University (Beida), past some of the landmarks of the new Beijing, such as the Olympic stadium, nicknamed the "bird's nest" for its distinctive shape, which glowed in the setting sun.
I have an apartment in Shao Yuan (Spoon Garden) building no. 5, which is part of a complex for foreigners on campus. It's not luxurious, but more spacious than I expected, with a bedroom, bathroom, and den.
I had changed some Yuan in San Francisco, so after a brief campus tour to point out a few practical necessities (cafes and restaurants, a convenience store, etc.) I invited Molly and Wu Ming to dinner. They picked a Yunnan-style restaurant just outside the South Gate of campus, and we had a meal for 80 Yuan (about $11.00) for the three of us, including rice wine. Those prices are about typical.
I spent the rest of the evening unpacking and getting settled, gave Caron a quick call on my US cell phone, and got to bed at about 1 am.

San Fran layover

Now on a 24-hour layover in San Francisco, which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best cities in the world to be laid over in. My Air China flight leaves tomorrow early afternoon, and I'll be in Beijing at 6pm local time on Saturday. I almost didn't make it here and entertained a long flight's worth of trepidations about my luggage on account of morning fog in G'ville, which delayed takeoff and made the connection in Charlotte very tight. But CLT came through and got my bags on the plane. Civilized and efficient; the Old South married happily with the New. On the plane I wrote the review of a new book on German theatre (edited by one of my former professors) which I'll send off to CHOICE in a few moments electronically, and then post the book (now nothing but dead weight) back home via snail mail. Later I'll conduct a final oral exam with a grad student via Skype from my hotel room. And then I'll take the BART into town and see where fate and chance take me (as long as it involves dinner with a nice glass of Cali cabernet).

Only a few days till blastoff...

...and what I still have to accomplish before I get out of Gainesville is positively indecent. I am grading like a madman, and the week will be chock full of juries and other meetings. Packing is almost done, though; a great relief. In another blog post this week I'll describe what the trip is all about, so this is no more than an inaugural placeholder. Read on if you dare!