Foreigners and Emperors

By Charles Justus Garard

In his second tour-of-duty as an American professor of literature and writing, Alex Barteau encounters even greater obstacles than he did during his two-year stint at Shan-An University in northeastern China. This time the university where he is teaching in southeastern China is connected with a program run by an American university in Indiana, His troubles include, but are not limited to, inept communications between his home campus and the Chinese administrators, spoiled students including the "little emperor" males and their cellphones, criticism of his strict teaching style, etc. As it turns out, this is only the beginning of his multi-university experiences in China. Fortunately, as he travels from one university to another, he encounters friendly colleagues and students, lovely ladies, and contacts from his past. These outweigh and offer relief from those indigenous colleagues who want to elbow him in the back in public or try to sabotage his high standards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Justus Garard
• Release date: Aug 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9780996445696

Book preview

Xuyan

~

Phil: So how have you been?

Alex: Long story.

Phil: Interesting news at this college is that a number of faculty, but not all, received mysterious postcards through the school mail with the words THINK NO CONFIDENCE on them. So, now people are speculating that at the next faculty meeting someone will call for a No-Confidence vote on our president, which I doubt will do anything but piss him off and stir him into action. But for the faculty, it's all the talk.

Alex: NATO, as they say here in China. No action, talk only.

Phil: Exactly. Several people assumed I had something to do with it or knew something about it, which I didn't.

Alex: They are thinking of the former pro-union Phil Chandler.

Phil: No doubt.

Phil had been a strong faculty union promoter at his community college, more successful than Alex had been when he had tried to bring a faculty union to Manfred Green.

Alex: Speaking of a No-Confidence vote, Dr. Constance McGuiness, the colleague who came to Jin Huang with me, tells me that, Dr. Marion Willis, the former chairperson in the English Department that hired me to come to China, was given a No-Confidence vote by the department members. Constance said that was the real reason that she resigned as chairperson, not because she did not want to deal with the 2+2 Sino-US program here in Jin Huang. Dr. Arnold Moss took over as chairperson.

Phil: Oh. Someone didn’t want you to know the truth.

Alex: You think?

Phil: So how are you getting along there now?

Alex: Annoyed with my obstreperous downstairs neighbor. You guessed it. Constance McGuiness. She can't keep her mouth shut—can't stop talking for other people or from sticking her nose into other people's business.

Phil: People like that are hard to ignore. What is her job?

Alex: Being my boss, she seems to think.

Phil: Probably everyone's, not just yours.

Alex: When we were at dinner the other night, I was trying to ask Miranda a question about the school where she used to teach. She works for JSTI directly, like I did in Shan-An. Constance had to interrupt and answer for her.

Phil: Annoying.

Alex: That's an understatement. I've met some annoying people—but not even Carol was this bad.

Phil: Wow.  That's saying a lot. So, what is her ability to cause you difficulties if she is so inclined? Do you have to placate her? Or can you tell her where to go and how fast she should get there?

Alex: I did once, but it only calmed her down for a while. Now I just avoid her.

Chapter One

~

Once again, the phenomenon of the sunny sky with hazy blue patches glimpsed above the clouds was short-lived, and the shoulders of the terrain once again receded into the polluted blanket of fog that kept them covered like a huge, misty shawl. Only after the typhoon had swept in from the ocean and caused the evacuation of low-lying areas of coastal cities like Shanghai did the sun reveal itself in a clear blue sky for almost an entire day.

Only on days like this could Alex Barteau glimpse the mountain ranges to the south – the shorter range that was darker because it was nearer, and the taller range that was dim but still visible as it cut a stalwart outline into the horizon. Only then, by looking to the west through the windows of the alcove where his laptop was perched and dozens of DVDs were strewn about on the L-shaped ledge, could Alex see the vast terrain that included the southern section of this newer section of the city with its numerous high-rises and projects under construction.

I’m here, he thought. Here again in China. Not in Shan-An, but still in China.

~

Dear Dr. Barteau:

How are you going now? I am sorry that I don’t connect with you for so long time. I miss you. I am always asking about your situation from Clark, who says he still receives emails from you in the U.S. You are the best teacher I’ve ever met; your ideas, your knowledge, your classes all give me a deep impression. Really, you are a real teacher. Others are just half playing, half working. From them I don’t learn anything. If I learn something, that’s what I learn from you. Your leaving is a loss to this university, the English Department, and it is also our loss. It is you who taught us that the more knowledge you have, the more freedom you have. No one tells us this except you. I think I won’t forget you forever.

Clark and I, and other students, want you to come back, and work and study with us. We need your help, because this university is not good, and lacking good teachers like you. I know you cannot understand and accept some of the policies of this school, cannot understand why some people act like that. Not everything has its reason. People cannot explain it clearly. Maybe just because there are so many unreasonable things which make this university like this – not good, have no good teacher. The words are from my deep heart: I MISS YOU!

Yours sincerely

Lucinda

Shan-An, China

22 Jan 2007

~

Not long after his arrival, Lucinda wrote to him from Shan-An. You’ll like the southern city where you’re going better than Shan-An.

Why’s that?

This is the industrial northeast. Jin Huang City is more developed.

More developed, he thought.

Maybe Jin Huang City lacked the number of half-finished streets and sidewalks of Shan-An, some of which had disintegrated into powder, the rubbish-choked alleys and creaky mule-drawn carts, but it had its share of traffic congestion and egocentric drivers, unprotected pedestrians, and bicyclists who often over-loaded their two-wheel vehicles, sometimes with children.

The buildings, Alex knew, at least in this high-rise village that were supposedly reserved for faculty and staff members employed at the nearby universities, were new; this whole area was only a couple of years old, and some taxi drivers still had difficulties finding it. The private British university, whose clock tower he could see glowing at night and whose chimes he heard hourly, looked as though it might have been the first higher education institute in this area, probably long before the neighborhood had been labeled the Higher Educational Zone.

Alex was, he had discovered when moving in, the first tenant on the sixteenth floor of one of five towers. Moving in later was Marvin, a professor from the business department at Southern that he had met at the first dinner.

So, he wasn’t really on his own.

Nor had he come here on his own.

He thought about Phil Chandler, the Phil Chandler whom he had met on the strike line at the community college where he had taught writing and literature part-time.

Phil had been there with a video camcorder to record any action for the local cable station and had told Alex that he, after witnessing the tenacity of these community college instructors, was planning on going back to Kentucky to continue studies. Alex, after returning to graduate school and earning his PhD, had taken the teaching position at the small HBC in Atlanta called Manfred Green College. Phil had been hired at a small community college in northeastern Kentucky.

When Alex married Carol, Phil and his young wife – now ex-wife – had traveled to Atlanta to join them at the ceremony. After Alex and Carol separated, Phil had driven twice to Little Five Points to visit him, and Alex had flown to Kentucky to visit him once.

Phil, unlike Alex’s family, had professed to understand why he was unhappy during the year he stayed in Atlanta after his return from China. He was not, he explained, unhappy being with Rina again, even though her apartment was small, and even though she was clearly in control of their environment. He was not allowed to smoke in her place, and he had to keep his underwear in a plastic bag hanging in her closet. They had gone out to movies, eaten dinner often with Darryl, and had argued only occasionally about his former relationship with Dawn in Shan-An. It was when Rina was at work and Alex was alone in her apartment that he felt the heavy weight of depression burdening him. Going for bicycle rides alone helped him somewhat, but the feeling of being useless would not abate.

It was being a dependent that he hated.

Alex had only found a part-time teaching position at the learning center operated by a former Chinese colleague at Manfred Green. Teaching high school students had not made him as happy or as satisfied as it had in the past, and teaching young children, as they asked him to do, was not in his area of expertise. As he told Phil on the phone, he was pleased that he had to revise and complete a science-fiction screenplay during that year in Atlanta, as well as attend, on Wednesday nights, a writer’s group that met in a bookstore.

Unfortunately, even though Alex had been back in Atlanta for a year after his return from Shan-An, he never saw Phil in person. Their conversations were confined to phone calls from Kentucky to Georgia or Georgia to Kentucky and to emails. Occasionally, they would connect through Yahoo Instant Messenger, but since Phil only got online in his office at the community college, this form of exchange to did not occur often.

Rina had accompanied Alex to an interview at an HBC university in southern Georgia. The phone interview with them had gone well, but when Alex visited the campus, he found the faculty members who met with him to be defensive and unfriendly. The administrators seemed cordial enough, as did the search committee for whom he gave a sample lecture, but as he admitted to Rina, and later to Phil on the phone, he did not particularly want to go there.

Something just felt wrong.

Rina said that she understood.

As did Phil.

Had it not been for Phil, it was unlikely that Alex would have known that a university in southern Indiana had advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education seeking an experienced professor who had some experience teaching in China.

Alex had applied, and he was called to the Indiana campus for an interview. It was a new Sino-US program that had been set-up with the Jin Huang Science and Technology Institute. Dr. Constance McGuiness spoke to him outside the restrooms during a break in the interview and told him that he was most qualified of the candidates that they had met.  She confided that they were going to hire him for the spring semester in Jin Huang.

Weeks after he had returned to Atlanta after the interview, and after Phil had mailed to him textbooks that he might use in the courses he was initially scheduled to teach, the dean of the division called him to say that the program was being stalled until the following fall semester. Evidently, the professor from Southern Indiana, Dr. Gloria Jameson, who had taught there for one semester had frightened the students with her standards.

Poor babies, Alex had said to Constance during her phone call from Indiana.

That’s what Gloria said, she had responded.

~

E-mail from Marion Willis

Southern Indiana

12 July 2007

Dear Long-Suffering Alex:

I have attached my report on my final trip. You will see what I was able to negotiate. I hope you will not be too upset over the plan they agreed to. If some of your preparations have been in vain, well I think you’ll be able to keep the material and use it in a future year, if, that is, you can stand to stay there a second year.

Frankly, Chinese cities are too polluted for my body to bear. Perhaps you have been blessed with few allergies, good health, and a poor sense of smell.

We need you to teach History of the English Language as planned. I think you are prepared for that. I understood that you have videos that you want to use already. Let me know soon if there’s anything else you want ordered. Can you teach English Lit. II (starts at 1750 CE) and American Lit. (Civil War forward) in the fall and Shakespeare, Advanced Composition, and Research Methods in the Spring?

This is the first year for the program. Still it has more growing pains than others because we have had a difficult time getting the Chinese to agree. I think the program was forced on the faculty by administrators who both prestige and money to gain from the program. It was a poor idea from the start, but I am doing my best to carry out the instructions from my supervisors. Our faculty was never too keen on it.

After August 1, Arnold Moss will be our chairperson. I understand that Dean Samuel Breyer and VP Sheila Mayson have arranged for you to be here for a week. I’m told it’s the week before classes begin on Aug. 27. You will be here for fac/staff institute and a few other things. We will orient you as best we can at that time. Unfortunately, you won’t get to observe any classes.

Sincerely,

Marion Willis

~

In August, Southern Indiana University had flown him to their campus for a week of orientation sessions. They put him into a motel near the campus, and even, despite the objections of some administrators, gave him the loan of a new campus vehicle. He ate one dinner meal with Gloria at her apartment, and another with Dr. Marion Willis and her husband, a distinguished-looking radio personality for a local classical music station. Marion told him to examine the syllabi of the faculty members that were kept on file.

Why he was told to do this, he wasn’t sure. Maybe they wanted him to be impressed with their abilities, or to imitate their styles.

He was sure, on the other hand, that Marion was displeased when he decided to use a textbook for History of the English Language that he had used at Manfred Green College instead of the one she had used. This became apparent when her manner changed into snappy mode when they ordered the DVDs for the course from their library.

I was never a good politician, Alex told Phil after he had returned to Atlanta.

Maybe it will work out, Phil told him on the phone. China doesn’t interest me, but I know how much you miss it.

My friend Darryl Burns told me that he envies me, being able to go to China again.

Tell him to go along with you then. I’m sure they need architectural programs over there.

I did.

What did he say?

He didn’t answer me.

For much of that summer of Alex’s stay in Atlanta, Alex had helped Darryl set up his own architectural school in one of the buildings on the Manfred Green campus. This free lease in the unused area of the campus had been their settlement, Darryl had explained, for his lawsuit against the college: four years lease in lieu of monetary reparations. In return for helping Darryl paint and move furniture for his new classes, Darryl allowed Alex to store many of his books and videotapes on the shelves that they both constructed along the walls.

*

Alex’s recorded notes: SONY VOR Microcassette-recorder M-800v

"My trip down here was fairly uneventful; the flight was smooth except for some last moment shakiness