Missed moments of humour

The other morning I was sitting on the loo in our apartment on the 22^nd floor in downtown Shanghai, cursing a decadent evening of German eisbein, sausages, sauerkraut and Long Island iced teas. I heard a shifting noise and looked at the window. A Chinese gentleman was peering at me through a crack in the window while I urged my bowels on to greater feats. Indignantly, I got up and closed the window, hoping I made it before the gentleman could compare Western equipment with Asian.

Our entire 27-floor apartment block is a green bubble of netting and scaffolding with decks. Right now the men in hardhats are everywhere, cleaning up the building and hundreds of others for the World Expo 2010.

And it’s a typical day of dealing with the Chinese.

Do they know how daft they are being? Before I turn to a book that is a quasi-fiction written by a Chinese man’s experience* of the Korean war in 1951 to 1953, let’s look at some other day-to-day experiences here.

“Hi, Rod, your lessons are great, the students like you very much,” bubbles Professor Tom Sun, the portly, short head of the English department at a Shanghai college I freelance at one or two days of the week.

“Glad to hear,” I reply. “Let me know if there is more I can do.”

“Well, the staff would like to see one of your lessons to see what your teaching style is. Can we use the class time next week and would you do that lesson on marriage customs and romance that you wrote and emailed to me? The students will like that very much. I will make enough copies.”

“Sure,” I reply, almost adding that Prof Sun should make certain enough copies were made not only for the undergrads this time, but also for all the teaching staff, but, not wanting to insult his intelligence …

True to bloody form, he did not make enough copies for his staff and the lesson was a flop for the teaching staff as all 20 of them hadn’t the faintest clue as to what the students are working on. They glanced at one another in confused, bored silence at the back of the lecture theatre, while the students happily got on with a lesson which included me crooning Love is in the air (as a South African-born Irishman with seven years choir training I can sing), which they loved, and afterwards I explained the terminology. A week or so later, also true to form, Prof Sun asked my work agency to ensure I never teach at his college again because my lesson was “not up to required performance”.

Another quick example before we take a look at the book:

My new teaching assistant, English name Easy (more about her name in another blog), arrived for classes for a private company I freelance for. It was my birthday and the staff had kindly given me a birthday cake. I asked her to take a photo of me and my students behind the cake. I sat, they stood. Qiezi! I bellowed (Chinese for eggplant, the way we say cheese), thrusting my arm with the cake knife into the air like a horse-rider with his sword. Easy, impressed by the sudden, exaggerated flourish, obediently raised the camera and photographed my upraised arm and cake knife, not us.

I have never come across behaviour like this before in my life. The resemblance to sheep is sometimes just too uncanny.

So I read that book, Ha Jin’s War Trash, seeing it from another perspective, “deep inside”, and no ways would a reader who has not had solid experience of China be able to appreciate the countless missed moments of humour Ha Jin breezes over as just another blasé day in his times as a soldier instead of taking advantage of the anecdotes. To wit:

“We … were armed with burp guns and artillery pieces made in Russia … without delay we began to learn how to use the new weapons. The instructions were in Russian, but nobody … understood the Cyrillic alphabet. Some units complained they couldn’t figure out how to operate the anti-aircraft machine guns effectively. Who could help them? … the Russian officer couldn’t help us either. So the soldiers were ordered: “Learn to master your weapons through using them.”

Hu Jin then just airily moves on, missing all that comic potential because no one thought of issuing thousands of weapons with Chinese instructions!

Wang Linhu: “Hey, Wu Hao, I think I have assembled this anti-aircraft machine gizmo … do you think if I turn the barrel this way and then pull on this, I think it’s the fricken trigger…” WABABABABABABWABABAWA Wang Linhu falls backwards while the Russian anti-aircraft gun takes out half the roof of, say, the commanding officer’s quarters, umm, maybe a dozen or so chickens, the commanding officer’s wife’s neatly stacked flowerpots in the garden, everyone in the vicinity sprinting for dear life, oh, and perhaps a few fowl fall from the sky in time for lunch.

Wu Hao: “Yep, I think you got that machine gun figured out, we just need to work on the aim a bit, I think …”

Wang Linhu, wide-eyed, mouth agape: “Shit, do you think I could get court-martialled for removing part of Commander Sun’s roof, what will his missus say about her flowerpots? She loves petunias, hey?”

Wu Hao, flicking through orders from HQ: “Nope. Can’t see how, HQ just told us, ‘Learn to master your weapons through using them’, no other clauses or provisions, just figure out how to use the suckers …”

* * *

Hu Hong: “Righty-oh, that must be the pin for the grenade and ‘– YANK — ‘ that’s how you pull it out. Should we see how long it takes before it explodes?”

Yao Li: “I really don’t think we hang about here, though …”

Dear reader, the potential is blithely ignored on nearly every page, to wit two paragraphs later:

“Though the Communists may have had their reasons for dismissing [our] officers, replacing them right now before battle later caused disasters in the chain of command when we were in Korea, because there wasn’t enough time for the new officers and their men to get to know each other.”

What possibilities! Where are the anecdotes, the gems that Hu Jin could have pounced on? But Hu Jin just blithely moves on again to talk about the Chinese Spring festival and sleeping quarters.

Commandant Sun barks: “Place Third Corps unit undercover in the north-west of Eagle Peak, the advancing Americans will surely use that gully.”

Staff sergeant Hong: “Good idea sir, I think it’s time we just spoke to the Americans.”

Commandant Sun bawls: “Speak to the yanks? We want to blow the buggers to hell.”

Staff Hong, scratching head, “Third Corps unit is now mostly Signals and radio com backup, change was made recently by your predecessor …”

Honestly, the book could have written like that. It’s not brought to life because Hu Jin, I avow, is oblivious to the collective, daffy mindset I often see in the Chinese. Old and new military orders for various assaults and strategic movements are confused all the time in this tragic narrative, but they are blissfully accepted as common-day practice by the writer. Hu Jin never takes advantage of the buffoonery, nor draws out the real tragedy:

“…without further delay messengers were sent out to catch up with the troops already on their way west and to deliver the new order, which demanded that the 538^th and 540^th Regiments turn south west and set up a defence line … Strange to say [Hu Jin almost sees the daftness], a part of the order was altered in the process of delivery, and the whole 539^th Regiment was dispatched to Eagle Peak, a hill almost eight miles to the northeast! They were ambushed by the Americans and got smashed!”

Such misfired orders vividly remind me of working now in China. I have long learned to keep personal records of all my Chinese students’ performance. Why? On more than one occasion I have received a bizarre text message, something like, “Please hand in test results and all class lists tomorrow”, from the work agency, “as instructed by the school”.

Yet tests are only due in about a month’s time.

Typically, no reason was given. The school knew, or surely knew, that it was agreed tests will only be in a month’s time and, further, although I have repeatedly asked for them, they have not given me the official school class lists so I can compile the test results.

The last time this happened I spoke to the head of the work agency (agencies farm you out to schools as many schools here are not legally allowed to employ foreigners directly) and pretended I had not tested the children; tests were only due in a few weeks’ time. Her face reddened; this school was one of her clients and, through no fault of my own, about 400 children had not been tested.

“That is most unprofessional of you …” she cried and immediately started a huge row with me, protecting her irresponsible client, the school, unperturbed by the fact I was losing a month’s freelance income for that school and I wanted to see if her concern about that, for me as an employee, would come up. It did not. Eventually, when she had completely lost her cool, continually accusing me of being most unprofessional and that I should have prepared for any eventuality, I triumphantly hauled out my personal test results and bid her farewell.

Agh, it’s all fun here. Not many dull moments. And Hu Jin’s book, tragic as it is about senseless war, is just so typical of a culture that just cannot see its own farce. Can I see mine? Can you yours?

“Each man kept 10 feet from the one in front of him. The water below was dark, hissing and plunging … a mule, drawing a cart, got its hind leg stuck in a rift and couldn’t dislodge it … The moment I passed the tilted cart, it shook, then keeled over into the river along with the helpless animal. There was a great splash … and the entire load of medical supplies vanished.” (emphasis mine.)

* Hu Jin says of his book: This is a work of fiction and all of the main characters are fictional. Most events and details, however, are factual.