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!