The Culture of Cute

As I walk around Shanghai, I’m struck by the subtle (and not so subtle) differences in fashion. Although you can find outfits that are more traditionally Asian (especially silk jackets for children and older women), there are two trends that are much more noteworthy.

The first notable difference is that, while American fashion seems to have run full-force back into the late 80s and early 90s, youth fashion in China never really left them. My analysis is based on photos I’ve seen from the past few decades as well as what I see every weekend in the subway station: spiky hair, stiletto heels, chunky metal accessories everywhere, bright colors and tight jeans (again, with metal accessories). The young men here seem to especially embrace these fashions, and more than once, sitting on the bus, I’ve said to myself, “Wow. That boy looks a lot like Edward Scissorhands!”

The second fashion creates a very strange juxtaposition. I call it The Culture of Cute. In downtown Shanghai, in a city that boasts sophistication equal to that of New York City, it’s not uncommon to see women carrying small, pink items one would imagine created specifically for junior high girls. The best example is Hello Kitty.

I’ve seen a Hello Kitty bobble head in a fellow teacher’s car (she’s married but has no children yet). One of our dear office staff has a plush Hello Kitty frame around her computer monitor: complete with head, arms, and feet that stick out from all sides. There are Hello Kitty scooters, cell phones, toasters. And Hello Kitty doesn’t have a monopoly on the market. If I go shopping with my students, some of their favorite things to purchase are little knick-knacks and jewelry, little sticker rhinestones and pearls to add to their cell phones. The markets that sell these things are out of this world. Imagine an underground system that contains never-ending booths of key chains, beaded necklaces, and plush purses. It’s like Claire’s took over the entire mall.

While I find the first trend a little frightening (I have yet to welcome a pair of gauchos back into my closet), the later is rather endearing and refreshing. Pink and plush aren’t limited to little girls—they’re for sophisticated professional women who aren’t ashamed to embrace the cuteness of Hello Kitty and her counterparts. I haven’t purchased any of them yet myself, but I gladly display the items given to my by my students. I may not be safe from the underground mall forever, though. Cute is catching.

Desiree

T-Shirt Sighting of the Day

I saw a student today wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt that had a picture of Betty Boop on the back of it. Ms. Boop was grimacing and thrusting her chubby finger, Uncle-Sam-like, at the viewer; beside and below her were the words "All of the Everything is Betty. No to war." Above her head floated a sequined numeral 5.

Oh, and she was wearing a hat bearing the legend "SWEET SMILE." Just for good measure.

Dave

The Princess Bride . . . again!!

Ah, spring! That magical time of year when a young man's fancy turns to . . . the Princess Bride. At least, if the young man is me, it does. II showed this to my lovely students last week and had them write papers on a few related topics. Here are some choice comments from their writings.

As you may be able to guess, the prince was unversally loathed. "Prince Humperdinck was a rude and flabby man," said one, and others decried his unsavory actions toward the poor lovers: "The prince tortures Westley and kills him away from Buttercup."

Inigo was quite a favorite. His famous saying was somewhat garbled, but still pretty scary, really: "He loves his father, he likes to say 'I'm Inigo, you bring me life and killed my father. And now, I'm kill kill you.'"

Little Fred Savage always seems to evoke squeals of delight, especially when he protests the contents of Grandpa's book -- "I like the active boy. His grandfather always said 'kiss.' He thought this thing didn't suit his age. He was sensitive to 'kiss.'"

Several of the descriptions of Westley were . . . interesting: "He wants to save Buttercup, so he is intrepid and warlike. Westley's traditional martial arts was good." They also swooned at his defense of the titular princess. Said one, "when the big mouse aggressed the Buttercup, Westley almost protected her." This was meant as a compliment.

I'm always surprised at how many students like the R.O.U.S. To me, it looks like a big floppy rat suit. To them . . . well, you can see for yourself. "The big mouse is a interesting negative character. And it's hardly for a person to crawl on the ground and fighting with a man, so it's my favorite character."

And, invariably, there are some instances of AEDS -- Acute Electronic Dictionary Syndrome; it's also called Talbert's Disease. Symptoms include handing in homework at the last second and always choosing the first definition listed, even if there are fifty of them. "The important man role is a courageous man. He gets the important woman role at the end. I liked this movie, because the simplex and beautiful gut."

Sure. That's what I was going to say.

Dave

Frightening In My Heart Forever

The following is an unaltered piece of writing by a student. She was assigned to write on the topic "a frightening thing that happened to you."

One day, I went home. I found a little sound and only me at home. I am every afraid of me. I think there is a mouse at home. I shouted "Oh no! This mouse is very dislike and frightening." Suddenly, I look at a fat mouse in my eyes. I shouted "Oh! Don't come on"

I run to my house's corrior. Then, I was crying. I was shy. The mouse still run to me and it seem not to listen to me. I shouted again and my face became red. I hoped my parents would go home at once. I know they didn't until midnight go home, because I called them. The mouse run to me again. I run quickly. I was awaying from this mouse. It is very terrible in my heart. I shoued angrily: "Go out!" I didn't want to look at it. This mouse run to me again. I awayed from it again. Finally, My parents went home. I was peaceful. That day is frightening in my heart forever.



I hope you didn't read this right before going to bed. I probably should have warned you.

Dave

The Horrible Truth About My Life

The horrible truth about my life is that it's so wonderful, no-one would voluntarily read a blog post about it. Most people only want to read posts with titles like "Ten Things I Hate About Everyone" or "I Just Met A Big Jerk" or "Defenestration Hurts." So I must resort to trickery in order to get people to read this stuff. My hope is that once you've gotten this far, you'll be resigned to your fate and keep going until you get to the end.

I have the world's greatest job. I've been a librarian, which was pretty good, and a helpdesk technician, which was great, and a mortgage broker, which was lousy, and a security guard, which was weird and kind of fun, but nothing compares with teaching. It's not for everyone, but by golly, it sure is for me. I love my students. I love explaining stuff. I love that look of dawning comprehension that comes over their little faces as they realize that that's how they use semicolons. It's just the best ever.

I have the world's most superb living arrangements. I live in a tiny apartment (more like a hotel room, really) on a floor with thirteen other wonderful people. We all live together and work together and hang out together, and we like it that way. We cook and eat dinner together four nights a week. We celebrate birthday parties as a group. We lift weights together and take vacations together. Every morning, I can get up and go down two flights of stairs to my office. When I'm ready for class, I get to walk five hundred feet to work. If I need some groceries or something, I just hop on a bus. I make enough money to live comfortably, but not so much that I worry about what to do with it. Every five months, the school pays to fly me back to the USA so I can see my friends and family on the other side of the ocean. It's just the best ever.

I am posessed of the world's most amazing wife. Desiree is intelligent, careful, thoughtful, funny, cute, diligent, caring, inquisitive, creative, beautiful, fun, organized, talented, hospitable, and helpful, and I didn't just grab a thesaurus for that sentence; evidence of every single adjective on the list appears on a regular basis. We do everything together and still wish that we had more time. In spite of the cynical predictions of my co-workers when I first got married, we're approaching our fifth anniversary, and not a day goes by that I'm not amazed that I have her. She's just totally the best ever.

Sure, there are a ton of other things that I love about my life -- the friends, family, weekends, books, music, games, ideas, education, hobbies, goals, and growth, but I can't even talk here in this blog about what's really most wonderful. All of the stuff I've written about already doesn't compare to my divine sonship, or my confidence about my eternal destiny, or my being transformed day by day from lesser into greater glory. Best of all, those most important things are the things that anybody can have, because they're free gifts of our loving Father.

So if you ever hear me complaining (as human nature is wont to do), just forward me a link to this page. It might just be my best blog post ever.

Dave

The Well of Lost Teachers

One of the big goals that Desiree and I have for our tenure here (however brief or long it may be) is to overhaul the English program within our International American department to make it more robust and easy for new personnel without prior English teaching experience to move into. We're introducing a big-time new emphasis on vocabulary, writing detailed lesson plans, and focusing the individual semester emphases more tightly. I teach the second year of English, and second semester second year (i.e., the one we're in now) attempts to emphasize development of writing skills.

Practically speaking, this means that I teach a particular type of writing (narrative, descriptive, argumentative, and so on) and assign the students various and sundry papers to write in order to see if they've understood it. I then grade the papers, carefully marking their mistakes, and give them back to the students so that they may learn from their misdeeds (and, usually, from their misspellings).

I have one hundred and eighteen students. Teaching a writing course for the first time to one hundred and eighteen EFL students is kind of like living at the bottom of a deep well. A well filled with papers, specifically. Some of them are good, more of them are bad, and a few of them are plagiarized. I spend my time struggling to swim upward through these papers, and every few days, just about the time I get my head above the crimson ink and scribbled corrections, the students peer over the edge far above me and shovel another load of unfiltered syntactical obscenities down into the well. Sheets of A4 stock white flutter down onto my head, and, brandishing my red pen like an oar, I doggedly make my way for the surface again.

"No problem!" I shout up to the students. "Bring me another one on Monday -- 250 words, double spaced, and watch the infinitives this time!" The students, for their part, don't say much, although occasionally I'll hear a faint voice calling down to me, "Teacher, I have not typed my paper. Is it OK?"

Sure, sure, whatever. When you're drowning in comma splices, it doesn't make much difference whether the curlicues are Times New Roman or not. I vaguely remember that Elijah, my predecessor, didn't get out much. "D'you want to watch a movie tonight?" we'd ask. "Well," he'd reply reluctantly, "I'd like to, but I have about two hundred papers left. I'd better not." We'd make consoling noises and leave him to his work. Little did I realize that the reason we didn't see him that much was that he was stuck at the bottom of a well.

For my part, I don't really mind it down here. Sometimes you read some funny typos, and a few of the papers are genuinely interesting. If I find the bones of one of the previous teachers, though, I'm telling the students that we're watching movies for the rest of the semester.

Dave

A brief gem . . .

. . . from a paper entitled "My Best Teacher." My student writes, "In my life I have had many good teachers. They are all very respectable. But for me, Miss Wang, who was my class teacher in my high school, left the deepest depression on me."

Apparently, it remains to this day.

Dave