Holiday greetings from Xie Laoshi

Hi!

Finally I can post something here. Thank you, Thomas!

I tried to post the newsletter (your pair-up reports) here, as I said in my message to you guys LONG LONG ago, but the PDF format cannot be accepted. So, I''ll wait till the technology can satisfy our needs.

Now it's Christmas and New Year season, I wish you all a peaceful holiday and a new year filled with happiness!

圣诞快乐，新年如意！

Xie Laoshi

Santa made me do it!

Well I 'upgraded' the blog and now things are a little bit screwy :-(
That was stupid... I blame Santa!

Summertime Soldier 徐筱渊

Here's two pictures from back in the hot days of summer when my program partner, along with all her classmates, endured three weeks of arduous training for long hours under hot summer sun - which made her one hot soldier!

Knowledge Gap

The Chinese students have had a very different high school education that we have, and when I mean different, I mean that what they learn is much more in content. Hence when we are put in the same classes together, it's not only unfair for us, but also unfair for them. It's unfair to us because the rate that the teacher teach here is more for a review rather than for learning the material for the first time (my belief in any case). They also go into more complex theories since most of the content, as mentioned before, had been learned in high school. Then when it comes to test time, our marks reflect that. There is a giant and obvious gap between the marks of the
Canadian students and the Chinese students. Example: The highest mark for the physics midterm was 99%. The lowest I believe passed (60% is a pass), if not within 10% away from passing. The highest mark for the physics midterm done by a Canadian student was 60%.

Obviously, the departments are trying to figure out a way to resolve this, but my point is that the knowledge gap between the Chinese students and Canadian students is very very large. Hence our current stress with the school work.

Asian Squat

The country that brought the world Kung Fu fighting, (which demands great bodily flexibility), is where you see people of all ages squatting down as if it were the most natural posture in the world, (which is likewise indicative of flexibility).
Perhaps it was that snow skiing accident that hurt my knee, perhaps it's my grasshopper-long legs, but it doesn't come as easily to me.

Update on Academic Situation

I'll have to keep this update short, as I am short on time. It seems I'm always short on time these days. No time to relax, or play, only work.

Currently, we have tutorials for ever class, whether it's formal (i.e. taught by a grad student or a teacher) or informal (i.e. taught by other students in the same class). Surprisingly, most of us passed Calculus. In terms of Physics, only one of us passed the midterm.

I'm withholding my decision to stay or leave this program until the end of the semester.

Thank you everyone for your support and your replies to our posts regarding our troubles here in China.

On Top of the World and Surrounded by Love in China

This is the scenic area of Yellow Mountain, about 4 hours bus ride from Hangzhou. A lovely view but I paid a price to get there - 18,000 steps according to a pocket pedometer! My knees were not happy. This first image is shortly after the initial portion of the ascent, which was facilitated by a comfortable trip via a cable car that gave magnificent views of the mountain terrain.
In the second image, you see me crouching (like a tiger) before stone engravings of the character for 'love'. This photo was taken in an area near where some filming occurred for the movie 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'.
My travelling companions were ZU student Sun Yi and SFU professors Steven Pearce and Stella Atkins. During the bus ride from Hangzhou I feared that we'd be in a motor crash and only hoped I'd escape without disfiguring injury. A very near miss occurred during that trip, and on the return trip a much less near (i.e. actual collision) did happen, and fortunately I did escape without injury.

RE: Reposted Blog

About accepting my fate......I think that's going to change. Because after seeing my marks from my Physics midterm (60%, yeah yeah, I know some of you out there think it's good, but at SFU, I got on the Dean's Honour Roll - do you see the problem?), and after knowing that there's no way that I passed my Calc II final fairly (if at all), I don't want to continue this program. The way I see it, I want to quit after this semester is over. Why?

I don't want to be depressed. But staying here, trying to keep up at the rate that Chinese students here go at is insane. I mean, not only are these people going 2 chapters (or sections for Calc) a day, but they are incredibly smart. Being in the same class and taking the same tests not only is incredibly stressful and demeaning while trying to do the homework and tests, but seeing the other student's grades and comparing them to yours is just painful. There are so many homework assignments (which we get EVERY SINGLE CLASS) when I just feel like I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing.

Academically, I don't belong here. If I was a high school student from China, my marks would not get me into this university, and for a good reason. It's like any sport. You have to tryout and then you get placed into whatever level you fit best. That's not to say that you can't try to improve and get higher, but they will not allow you to go into a higher level without that improvement. This is not only for you, since you won't get your ass kicked and not contribute at all, but also it pushes everyone to push harder since you are working and competing with people of the same level field (I think anyways). When there is too big of a gap between the top students/athletes/etc and the lowest ones, the top might get sloppier and the low might just feel humiliated. That's not always the case, but I believe it to be majority of the case.

Also, it's not only that I don't want to commit academic suicide (which is what I think this program is), but when I take a class and do the work, I take it so I LEARN. I don't feel like I'm learning here. And for me, that also adds a lot of weight to my decision.

So what does this add up to?

I want to quit the program after this semester.
I don't want to be depressed every single time I do homework.
I don't want to feel behind every single time I attend class.
I want to understand the content.
I want to learn.

The Blog That Was Posted For <1 Minute

Initially, I had pulled this blog from the site because I feared that not only the administration of DDP would be upset at the contents, but also other students in the DDP not feeling the same way. But now, after a series of tests and test results more specifically, I've decided to post my retracted blog.

November 5, 2006

Hardships

So far, most of what you've seen here on this blog has composed of haircuts and cool rainstorms. You haven't heard much of what it's like in China when it comes to school. Well here it is:

Taking a class where the teacher has to worry about both Chinese students and English-speaking student's understanding of the material is hard. It's much harder when the English-speaking students are a very small minority of the class population (say 9 out of 35). Some teachers will be considerate and try to teach in both languages, but while we might consider the speed of the class good, everyone else (including the teacher, school) will find it too slow. The native students will have also learned most of the material that we Canadian students are seeing for the first time. At least in those situations, we can survive if barely.

But then you have teachers that don't compromise. That go on teaching in Chinese (which is their right, I mean the class is bilingual and the book is in English) and give very little help if asked. Everything to them is "simple". For example, we have a calculus final next Sunday. Yeah. We don't understand the material. Double Yeah. We ask the teacher for further help and he repeatedly tells us to read the book, even after we make it clear that the book isn't helpful. That's just FANTASTIC. Long story short, this teacher pretty much refused to help us. I've never experienced a situation where a teacher wasn't willing to help a student who asked for help.

Some say this is the way that it's done here in China and the faster we get used to it, the better. I don't think that this is how it should be, but I think that this might be the case, that we will have no other choice but to accept this. I just thought that I'd do some damage and let everyone else know. So for people in the program, sorry but I'm just really pissed off. I might have to accept this fate, but that doesn't mean that I have to be happy about it.

Be ready to work. Work. Work. Work. If you play, get ready to fail.

. . .

Ok,

It seems a lot of the post here, are mostly of what we do with our off time, when we get off time. I figure since we never post about our academic situation (other than when I say "we're managing") that everyone thinks we're all doing peachy fine.

*I'm sure Cynthia's post will be up before this gets up, I figure I'll keep what I had originally written*

Sadly, with the results of our midterms, reality is hitting me harder than a faceplant onto cement. Let me start off with the following statement

I am failing 3/4 of my classes

I am not saying I'm not trying, I'm working my ass off, working on what seem our endless supply of work, studying for long hours, and attending all but maybe one physics class, and two Data Structures classes (Data structures being the one class I feel I'm doing well in).

The Stress level these past weeks have really been getting to me, I've been sick, my room is ridiculously cold due to zero insulation coupled with a heater that hardly heats my room, I'm up late most days working, studying, etc. And to top it off, other people are also studying late, later than I, and their talking through my paper-like door (which keeps neither sound or cold out, only matter, and a hard enough kick at it could disprove that though) which keeps me up till all hours of the night. I've snapped and broken down completely due to stress regarding school three times while I've been here.

I'm Sorry, I'm trying my damndest to work, and tried not to show it, even encouraging others when they've been doing bad. It's just getting harder and harder. We're only 1/8th of the way through our 2 years here! I feel I just don't belong here, This DDP program isn't meant for me, I think this program sounds nice on paper, and advertisements, but it just doesn't work well in practice.

The administration has had their hopes far to high on this one. In one year, they expected folks like David, Edward, and I, the ones who've had absolutly no backround speaking chinese to be fluent enough to understand a University lecture in Chinese. The reality is that we don't know shit right now, the people I understand right now are maybe some sales people if they ask simple enough questions, the cashiers at the convieniece store, and the waitresses at the canteen who ask us what we want to eat. all of the classes which were originally designed to be bilingual have all degenerated into just english, probably since we don't understand a word they say in Chinese.
Any conversation that goes into any depth blows over my head. With the massive piles of homework from our academic classes, I have no free time to study my Chinese characters.
There is a Chinese class, but I did drop it early, the reason being is that my current chinese level is far below that of the Chinese the teacher uses. Since the backgrounds in that class are multinational, all she uses is Chinese. I couldn't understand what she was saying when she was explaining chinese characters; what they meant and how to use them, as the words she used to describe and explain the usage we also words I didn't know.

I also found there to be little proffesional help offered by the school, and only offering it now, when we're so far behind everyone, probably even farther behind our classmates back at SFU. There were no T.A. or tutorial classes where we just asked questions and go over examples to clarify and understand the work, just having someone who cares and wants us to understand the work I feel goes a long way and helps us a lot. the best we can do ise-mail the teacher. Teachers who've been spotty at best, one such incident had us scrambling at the end, as one quesiton asked to a teacher revealed something about a project, which was due soon, that drastically changed how our project was to be coded. This was something she DID NOT mention in class, but was required for the project. From when the question was asked, it took ~3 days before we got a reply, for a project that was due in a week. we had started right away on the project, had it seemingly completed, but this changed had us scambling to work at the last minute to get it finished in time. Another similar incident involved several students asking for some help in their work from the teacher, saying that they weren't understanding how to do the work from just the book. The teacher had been teaching directly, example by example, line by line, from the book, basically reading the book to us. When help was asked for, I remember hearing "Well, I think the work is easy, I think that if you read the book, you'll be able to understand." We had been reading the book, on top of him also reading it out to us. What basically felt like a "You're SOL" kind of reply really lead people to hate him.

I have finaly decided to put more though into the notion of dropping the program, If I wanted to learn chinese, I should just learn it back at Canada. If I wanted to go to China, I might as well have just taken a vacation to China. If I wanted to commit Academic Suicide and kill my GPA, I'd stay in this program.

I figured this would have been a great time to see the world. I haven barely been around this country, I've gone to some places in this city, but the majority of my time has been in my room studying. I haven't seen or experienced this country, I've seen it's dorms and classrooms.

Update again!

Hello again, just figured I'd put up some more photos. This time me and David went over to the supermarket that sells import stuff. and got my hands on some good tomatoe sauce, pasta, etc. and cooked a spaghetti dinner for me and Cynthia (with the help of Cynthia, of course :P). it was some darn good pasta too. Really great to get a good break from the Chinese food here. Of course there are restaurants that server western-ish food around. I mean, we went to this place that supposedly had really good gourmet burgers, but I really didn't think they were too grand, since the burgers were kind of bland, and I'm not fond of the sweet bun they use for the burgers.
















Not pictured however, was the breakfast that me and Cythia also made together. Bacon and eggs. Was planning on making omlets, but the public kitchen only has woks, and the cooking surface just won't do to make an omlet. so we just had scrambled eggs with some ham mixed in with it. with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese on the top.Anywho, the other pictures are pretty alright, just more from the trips I mentioned earlier that I took with Cynthia.




 

finally, a post.

Hey hey,

Pretty sure, that we're long overdue for a blog entry (unless others have been adding, I haven't been checking lately, didn't check before I decided to write this either) . Works been bogging down on us, but we're managing.


Here's a couple of pictures I took while on the week long national break. All of these were taken on the days that me and Cynthia decided to take a trip and actually look around Westlake. We'd been there a couple of times, but we never took a nice, long, look around it.

However, since it was a national holiday, everyone else was there too.... EVERYONE!
















Yea, well, maybe not everyone, but still quite a lot of people to make it packed. busses, sidewalks, any form of entertainment and place to go around the Westlake was brimming with people. Of course, the sites were still great, the greenage wasn't disrupted by all the people walking around.
















Me and Cynthia decided while walking around to check out some of the historical sites while we were there. This place (below) was were we ended our first day of walking around. It was really quite nice, outside had tons of people, walking around, resting on the grass, getting yelled at by park security for resting on the grass who used a megaphone, talking, taking photos, etc. Inside however was peacful and quiet. Me and Cynthia enjoyed a nice rest sitting down inside this place. We had been walking around all day that day.
















I'd like to note that there are a lot of other photo's of these two days which we went down to westlake, and a great video I took inside , the Aquarium we went to. I've posted the video on YouTube.com.

web adress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iFulHZbMas



And out of all the photo's to choose from, I figure that the last one I can upload for this session should be one of Cynthia I took of her.

New room: The Sequel

These are the changes to my room after less than a month of moving in. I believe that this will be the last of the changes.



I bought a chair and a little table! Yeah! I actually did this a day or so after posting the first set of pictures. Hehe, chair is comfy. Not as comfy as the one back in Canada, but it'll do. It only cost 130 RMB (~20 CAD). Not bad?



I also bought a coat hanger. That purchase was very recent.



And lastly, this is what happens when you buy shelving units of sorts. Stuff looks neated. And look! I have hooks for my keys and my meal card. It's very convenient.

New room (III)

So the bathroom wasn't that great. Oh well. There must be something good about this room, right? You look ahead and you see...



A bed! Pretty, makes you think of summer. I like it too. I bought the bedspread, etc, in Guangzhou. Anyways, next to the bed....



And facing the bed....



And so ends the tour. Only the door is left now.



I hope you enjoyed the tour! :)

New room (II)

As you enter the room, you look to the right.



You look further ahead to the right.



You look to the left. Ewww, bathroom.



You look into the bathroom. Yuk.

New room (I)

So a tour of my new room? Ok.

You're walking through the corridor that leads to my room.



You arrive at the room 109. That just happens to be my room.



Of course, you can't just walk in, so in this case, we'll assume that I've opened the door.

Moving Time

Several days ago we finnaly moved into the Zijinggang campus, where we'll be staying for the next two years. Got myself all packed with just 2 extra containers of stuff. All of what I packed is pictured pictured below.
















moving me in was pretty easy, other people had troubles, such as some people had missing desks/broken desks/old beds(all our rooms were supposed to have new beds, but since they left the rooms open another person living here just came in and took one). Eryl probably had the biggest problem, since the room she was already assigned had someone living in it. so she was put in a different room for free till he was moved out and they cleaned up the room. My room had it's problems though, but nothing super bad, my breaker was off so my room had no power for a bit, but that was solved easily. My bathroom was dirty as hell, so I doused it with cleaners and other chemicals, so now it's much better. So far my balcony light doesn't work, neither does the fan on the cieling. I've asked the front desk, they've taken my name down, but seeing as I just saw the repair guy walk past and fix the fan in the room next to mine, then leave. I'm probably going to have to complain every day or something till it's done.


















My room is on the first floor, and you can see my flag from the lobby, pretty nice. Also I had a giant wad of cash I took out from the bank, never fear though, this is for the year rent. so it's going to something I need to pay for mom & dad. It's not going to get squandered on some shiney object or anything.

 

My Birthday!! (Part II)

Right, so after arriving at Partyworld, we sang and we ate. We also grabbed waayyyy too many cups of drinks. I think we had 30 or more cups of drinks that were completely left untouched. Ah well. Our bad? Haha, anyways, after a couple hours of singing, everyone decided to present me with presents and cake. Here are pictures of cake.

Did I mention that there were 3? Haha, we only managed to finish 2, the cheesecake and the chocolate mousse one (correct me if I'm wrong here, I can't remember for sure). The last one we ate practically (but not quite) a week later. Still excellent though.

Cheesecake. Mmm, it was soooooo good! The best of the 3.

The rasberry-filled cake. This one we had to leave for later.

Lastly, the chocolate mousse one.

Thanks you guys! Awesome way to spend my 19th birthday!

My Birthday!!

Alrighty, so it's been over half a month since my birthday and I haven't posted any pictures until now. Sorry, :) Unfortunately, the pictures that I'm posting are very few and a very poor visual reminder of what happened since most pictures weren't taken with this camera. I'll have to remember to bug Eryl about grabbing those pictures from her camera. Maybe I'll bug everyone else too, hehe.

Righty-o. So these first pictures are of the flowers that Devan gave me for my birthday. Aren't the beautiful?? So big too. Unfortunately, because of the weather here and my usage of the air conditioner which resulted in a back and forth of hot and cold air, these lilies died fairly soon. But they did leave my room smelling WONDERFUL! Hehe.

(curtains closed in the morning)

(curtains opened in the morning; what a difference eh?)

After the morning, we went out for sushi and ate until 3. Hehe, we sorta skimmed on dinner. However, around 6:30 we did go to Partyworld, a karaoke place that had a buffet dinner. This is Devan. I can't remember when this picture was taken. Probably right before we left campus since I see a little bit of light in the background. This is what I get for publishing this blog now instead of closer to when this all happened. Ahhh, my memory.

More stuff

Wow, that last paragraph got butchered by formating, anywho. here's the mouse and Mp3 player I got, the Mp3 also came with a rubber cover, but I took it off for the sake of the photo, and it came with a nifty pouch to put it in. and there is yonder mouse. Again, nothing too special. also have some garbage in the background and a yuan.... yea.

































Picture of me and Cynthia at sushi, pretty good stuff there. but there's an all you can eat place that costs more, but you can get a lot more sushi for your dollar.

Last photo is just to show what kind of sty I'm living in right now. Yes, I'll get around to cleaning it. especially when I have to move out of there fairly soon.