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January 30, 2008
Escape from the Tibetan Icebox
Helping people is nice, but sometimes you've got to look out for numero uno. After spending a month sleeping in a room where our washing water froze solid every night and the food was... umm, edible... I decided enough was enough and caught the first 4x4 out of town. (Did I mention that a landslide last year knocked out the only road into Jinyuan?)
All of us foreign teachers had been experiencing various cold/flu symptoms almost the entire time we'd been in Jinyuan, with the addition of a mysterious dry cough that prevented us from getting a decent night's sleep. I had hoped to stay for Losar, the Tibetan New Year. But I'm happy to be currently relaxing in the relative comfort of Xining, awaiting a train back to Korla that leaves from Lanzhou on Friday. I'll even get back home in time to watch the NY Giants win the Superbowl on Sunday!
Most of the Tibetan kids I was teaching were absolute terrors, but the university students were the exact opposite: intelligent, funny, and fantastic singers. I asked two of my more talented students to sing a traditional Tibetan song for me while I recorded them with my camera's crappy video mode:
For those of you who miss my frequent uploads of Uyghur music videos in years past, I've posted a decent Tibetan video that I copied from one of the student's VCD collection (also available on my YouTube channel). I don't know what this Tibetan hottie is singing about while plowing the fields below Mt. Kailash, but the tune is catchy:
One thing... why did they have to mess everything up by sticking a stupid-looking laowai in the middle of an otherwise fine video?
Anyway, my final word on the Tibetan volunteer experience is this: don't do it in the winter. You'll freeze your ass off and you won't be happy. It's one thing to live in a frozen city, where your warm apartment awaits you every evening, and quite another to live in a small brick hut with a barely working coal stove. Also, if you're going to be teaching English to Tibetan kids, make sure that they've been screened in some way before you arrive. I've taught a lot of poorly behaved children before, but these ones were complete animals.
It sounds harsh, but the program would have been much more effective if 75% of the kids had been eliminated from the get-go, sent back to their unfortunate destinies as poor farmers in the barren mountains of southeast Qinghai.
posted January 30, 2008 at 02:22 PM unofficial Xinjiang time | HaoHao This!
Comments
Sounds like someone got voted off the mountain.
Posted by: ouyang at January 30, 2008 06:29 PM
Sounds unforgettable! Glad you can now warm up.
Are these kids in school just for the winter?
Posted by: bev at January 30, 2008 11:46 PM
Somehow you seem to have missed the meaning of the word 'volunteer'.
Posted by: FOARP at January 31, 2008 02:58 AM
applaud your spirit in helping the poor.
The program you participated in seems to be poorly thought out. What is the rationale for teaching these kids English? Does a month-long crash course on a foreign language improve their hope for a better future? It is crucial to make the students realize the relevance of the stuff they are supposed to learn. I learned this the hard way.
Posted by: bianxiangbianqiao at January 31, 2008 05:28 AM
That's not Mt. Kailash
Posted by: anon at January 31, 2008 07:08 AM
I think your "remove 75% rule" applies to an overwhelming majority of English-teaching situations in China.
Oh, and let me know if you need anything from USA.
Oh, and Ouyang, I saw your high school graduation photo when I dropped by the high school. Quite the charmer!
Posted by: Vincent at January 31, 2008 08:58 AM
Bian, I would suggest that even in a remote Tibetan village, English's status as a trade language could be useful (A Japanese plane goes to a Russian airport, what do they speak? English). Particularly if they want to leave said remote village.
I'm just curious how one can teach Tibetans English without speaking their language.
Posted by: Tiako at January 31, 2008 09:01 AM
"Does a month-long crash course on a foreign language improve their hope for a better future? It is crucial to make the students realize the relevance of the stuff they are supposed to learn."
So the Tibetans can better understand their MI6, CIA and US army spec ops trainers. Then quickly join the global economy as an independent nation with close ties to India.
Posted by: nanheyangrouchuan at January 31, 2008 12:52 PM
"So the Tibetans can better understand their MI6, CIA and US army spec ops trainers. Then quickly join the global economy as an independent nation with close ties to India."
Nan,
You are crazy as usual, admirable stamina.
Tiako,
Is becoming multi-lingual international traders a viable option for most of these kids? If you really cared for them, you would have put more thought into it.
Posted by: bianxiangbianqiao at January 31, 2008 06:30 PM
Yeah pretty sure that isn't Kailash, but a cool video nonetheless
Posted by: Lucas at January 31, 2008 11:02 PM
I thought she was going to take a bite out of that pepper, that would have been so hot (literally and figuratively)
Posted by: Lucas at January 31, 2008 11:12 PM
At least you had the balls to try, if not to finish it ;)
Posted by: Alex at February 1, 2008 09:42 PM
Mike,
Looks like Mount Gongkar (Minya Konka) in Western Sichuan (not Kailash). The hottie is probably singing in the Khampa dialect.
Posted by: BBC at February 1, 2008 11:01 PM
the most ridiculous thing said in this post though is notion that somehow the Giants are gonna take the superbowl away from our deserving Patriots!
GO PATRIOTS!
Posted by: eric at February 2, 2008 10:21 AM
@Dave: Give Tibet FIT Travel a call at 0891/634-9239 or 655--2370. Hopefully they can help you, although I suspect that they'll be on vacation for Spring Festival like everyone else.
Posted by: michael at February 2, 2008 02:55 PM
@bev: These kids go to school year round like everyone else in China, but they seem not to have absorbed very much. Well, they can speak Chinese... which is not their native language (it's Amdo Tibetan) so they at least learned that.
@BBC: I was told that she's singing in Amdo Tibetan, so maybe that mountain is in Qinghai? Although it certainly doesn't look like Qinghai.
@eric: GO GIANTS!
Posted by: michael at February 2, 2008 03:10 PM
"Is becoming multi-lingual international traders a viable option for most of these kids? If you really cared for them, you would have put more thought into it."
No, but it is plausible that some of them would migrate to a big city, where English skills would certainly help them. And I doubt this is all the English they will ever get, just all the English Michael will be giving them.
Posted by: Tiako at February 4, 2008 01:23 AM
The hope is that a handful of these kids will be stimulated enough by our presence to get off their asses, go to college, and maybe make something of themselves... then they can help their fellow villagers. Education is a benefit that snowballs, not a magic arrow.
Posted by: michael at February 4, 2008 08:31 AM
Great snowball analogy Mr Manning :)... and the students singing is a fantastic wee clip...have to say, I liked the 'Ice Box'...I sobbed full-heartedly when I left Jinyuan (and I'm not in the habit of being emotional about such stuff), though I was only teaching for half the time you were...I just loved the Tibetan people so much, despite the wee juvenile delinquents...for some reason I think preferred teaching them to the Han Chinese uni students, whose disinterest manifests itself in yawns and irritatingly rude facial contortions - that's just dull compared with fisticuffs and desk fires...but yes, a good chunk of kids should be ousted to make the program a million times more worthwhile...I'd do it again, though I won't, 'cause I won't be here!...must say I'm very happy to have met the other volunteers - Andy, Sun and your wonderful self ^^
Posted by: Soozy at February 14, 2008 09:56 PM