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 猜猜今天 (Nov. 19th) 是什么日子？ |
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看来世界公厕日还要大力宣传 -- 游客 - (0 Byte) 2003-11-20 周四, 04:17 (302 reads) |
wanderer
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头衔: 海归准将
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加入时间: 2004/02/20
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作者：wanderer 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Hank老师在淮北的一所大学里教授英美文学。学校的厕所使他有一天在课堂上忍不住当众发火，而下课后一个学生的话又让他似有所悟、、、
Built just two years ago, the building where I am lecturing during this cold morning remains in a state of perpetual and rapid decay, paint peeling off the walls when they aren't crumbling, coal dust everywhere and the desks themselves dismantling. On the floor are empty plastic bags, soiled tissue, and yes, despite my untold efforts to stop it-even a few puddles of saliva.
At the end of third period, I had ten minutes to catch a smoke and relieve myself before resuming my British Literature class. Leaving the podium, I lit a Hongtashan, scampered out the door, trotted down two flights of stairs, and walked briskly to the end of the third floor hallway.
The restroom was crowded; a few boys were patiently waiting, joking, and glancing at me as I surveyed the opportunity to urinate; others had given up their jocular waiting and were paired off pissing together into one individual urinal. The restrooms, boys' and girls' are never cleaned; I smell the stench daily inside my classroom and have becomed, more or less, more on a good China day and less on a bad China day, accepting of it. But after three years of inhaling the putrid methane of decaying feces as well as the ammonia derivative of stale urine, I wonder if my loathing and disgust will ever truly go away.
Frustrated with waiting, I turned around and departed the restroom, galvalating down three flights of stairs, exiting the back door of the building and headed to the Old Foreign Language Department building where I hoped I could possibly secure a vacancy in the restroom there on its first floor.
I entered this restroom, again inhaling the reek of decomposing feces and rancid urine. I stepped up to the communal urinal; a small canal made of tile. The drain to the communal urinal was clogged up, and so the urine was brimming at the very top, ready to breach the urinal walls and deposit gallons filled with the flotsam of feces. I went ahead and made my small contribution, being careful not to soil my shoes. I then gave my hands cursory washing which would make my mother slap me for a whole month of Sundays, and finally, I made a dash back to the top fifth floor of my classroom to resume my teaching.
The last few days here in Huaibei have been brutally cold. The college has refused to turn on heat to any of the buildings. The administrators-who have big black cars and drivers and big banquets with lots of baijiu and nice apartments, who hire staff that falsify receipts for padded reimbursements, who allow maintenance workers to overcharge for repairs that are never done, who hire janitors who never clean, and who promote teachers into leadership positions who encourage cheating from students on band exams and gifts in exchange for passing marks-have noted that the college will have heat officially on December 15th. I wear many layers of clothes when I teach, and fortunately my apartment has small heating units that will suffice until the coal oil is allowed to enter all the buildings on campus.
Yesterday, during my office hours, a freshman student approached me.
"You're the first foreigner I have ever talked to," She said.
I smiled slightly and shook my head. I've heard this line many times for the past three years, and now, it's outworn its novelty.
"What? Are you laughing at me?" She asked.
"NO, I am amused at the difference."
Actually I was amused at the mundaneness of her comment. By now, I can predict the comments before they are even uttered. It's simple, it's easy, and it's too expected.
"Well, I think it's great to be talking to a foreigner," She smiled. "I waited for two hours hoping to catch you."
"Two hours?" I asked, almost smiling again, but checking myself: because waiting two hours to meet someone with a white face and ask the same questions that hundreds have ask in the past may strike me as ridiculous, but her sincerity does not, and she has to be pretty damn sincere to wait in the cold for two hours, I reasoned.
"Yes, two hours, so I ran up and down the stairs of the library, all seven stories, to keep warm." She smiled as she said it. She wasn't wearing a coat, and her face was blushed from being cold.
I bet she hasn't taken a shower this week because there's no heat, I thought.
Once inside my classroom, I began shuffling my notes and trying to return my thoughts to the lecture, but I could not.
This is one of the days here that I want to break down-as in cry my guts out at the utter futility of it all-at the poverty, the filth, the corruption, and the ignorance, the overwhelming uselessness of me being here and trying to teach and always having the feeling that I am getting screwed, everyone is getting screwed, and feeling that the pigs are winning-the restrooms are symptomatic of the problem: the complete lack of care for the humanity and welfare of others.
"Everyone listen to me," I said. "Close your books!"
"Your restrooms are disgusting, they are unhealthy, they stink, and damn, I don't want to look at your shit and smell your shit, and I just can't take it anymore."
"Do you know how bad it seems to a foreigner?"
Lots of blank faces stared back.
"It makes you out to be a third world country. Don't give me that bullshit that this is a developing country."
"You have people begging in the streets."
"I know 'Mei Banfa!'" (No solution)
"You just accept it and don't do anything!"
I shook my head.
"Okay, sorry, I just had to vent…"
I swallowed hard, and began my lecture on Hamlet's Solioquy by reading from the textbook that has violated international copyright laws, to students whose educational system has included the drudgery of overcrowded middle school classes, inadequate teaching, rote memorization, and propaganda. Against those odds, how can they understand me, especially when the system that they have been educated under demands that they see me as something different, maybe even threatening? Quite often, I feel what I try to teach is just seen as fodder for exams-no more and no less and sometimes for amusement but never for enriching their minds.
"To be or not to be that is the question: whether t'is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them."
"My dogs live better in America than you live here!" I exclaimed caustically, adding, "You could have so much more!"
They know that Mr. Hank is not happy today. No jokes.
I continued Hamlet's Solioquy:
"To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. Aye there's the rub!"
"Okay, here's the rub: "Why the hell am I here? I mean it's bad enough that sometimes I am badly treated, but YOU Chinese treat each other a lot worse! Do you know that?"
A voice in wilderness answered, "Yes, that's true we do."
This was quite unexpected.
"Why?" I asked, dumbfounded that this student had answered.
He just gazed down at my podium, and few other students did the same.
I gritted my teeth, not in anger, but to try to still my voice from wavering in emotion.
The rest of the class I anchored my emotions and kept to my lecture.
At the end of class, everyone departed for lunch at the crowded dining halls. I picked up my coat and put it on, sighing heavily, feeling defeated.
"What the hell…" I said startled, as I felt my back being stroked. I thought the classroom was empty.
"Your coat is dirty. I clean it off," One of my students said. Snot was draining out of his nose and just beginning to touch his upper lip.
"It's okay," I said.
"No, not okay. You're my teacher. Mr. Hank, we understand how you feel. We feel the same. We do know the truth, but we have to just take it."
He continued to brush my coat with his tissue. I gritted my teeth harder.
"I will walk with you down the stairs." He was smiling. He was cold. His hand touched my shoulder. There was a heaviness behind his eyes.
"Mr. Hank, it's important to have a happy life. You have a beautiful wife, and your students really love you and respect you. So don't let those bad things or bad people affect your life. Your students need you."
At the bottom of the stairs, he said, "Okay, I go eat now at the dining hall."
"Okay," I said weakly.
I watched him walk away, still smiling and still cold and chances were great that because he took a little time cleaning my coat, that he would have to fight the crowds at the dining hall and probably not get what he wanted since he would be late arriving there.
And I thought, for the first time, I half-understood what my students had kept trying to say, but now I am not sure. I can't remember enough. Emptiness everywhere is a live thing.
The campus was empty, and everyone was inside eating lunch.
I walked back alone, and being alone was a good thing. I didn't want anyone to see what happens when vanity doesn't offer consolation.
And I didn't even remember his name.
作者：wanderer 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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