Job Discussion Forums

[Yu]

I observing a classroom the other day. It was all in Chinese, so I understood nothing. It was at a university. One of the top 10 universities in China no less.

The people in the auditorium classroom were listening to a speaker. While "listening" to the speaker people were talking amongst themselves, they were doing things withtheir cell phones, reading other materials, demonstrating how to use this puzzle thing, etc...

The speaker kept on talking. Nobody asked questions.

Essentially seemed like a typical class.... but there were like 200 people in there....



















200 other TEACHERS. All from the Foreign Language Department. I got dragged out of the meeting early to take care of some other issues. I had to get up and walk out of what I thought was a situation where one should not do that. I felt really uncomfortable and rude. Apparently, it was not a big deal.

Seriously, all this time I thought it was the students. But now I realize it is also the teachers.

I feel attending meeting is boring because they are all in Chinese. I am not required to go to them. I thought I should go to show I am intersted in my job, and really I wanted to just observe how these things are run... (I studied Anthropology in school, so just obeserving nonverbal things and the lot are intersting to me). I really never expected to essentially see the same behavior exhibited by my students. Teachers were doing this shamelessly. I mentioned it to the person who dragged me out of the room. She said during the last meeting the teachers were all talking so loud that the dean reprimanded them...

[limits601]

That is some excellent insight. Thanks for posting it :+)

[Old Dog]

My friends explain this interesting phenomenon in the following terms:

Your authority might be enough to force us to attend this meeting but it is not enough to force us to listen.

And so many Chinese meetings resolve themselves into "You do your thing and I'll do mine".

It gets pretty bad, I think, when a speaker is speaking, all the audience is chatting and the two rows of officials on stage engage themselves in animated conversation, sometimes with the front row of officials turning their backs on the audience to chat to those in the second row.

It's like a Beijing opera where the audience is not exactly required to listen with any degree of attention.

But, then, I've seen some strange audience behaviour in Rome too so the Chinese are not alone in what some, at least, tend to think of as outrageous behaviour.

[Roger]

Hi Yu,
a good post that newbies ought to read first! You were right - it is common in China to pretend to be listening when in fact everyone is concerned about their personal affairs. It is preserving face on both sides of the fence - the speaker ignores his or her audience and the audience is engaged in various businesses not relatewd to the occasion. You can safely say this is a "cultural" thing.

I noticed the same behaviour years ago in schools when kids performed drama: their parents were a noisy, obnoxious boorish crowd, munching sunflower seeds and dropping the shells on the floor, talking to each other or on their cellphones. For me, sitting in the audience, it was a pain listening to my own students trying to make their English heard across the rows of listeners.

Apparently, this is not new. I read in an essay on Chinese opera that it has always been custom for the common folks to hold the most animated discussions while an opera was in progress. People would hold their picknick on a lawn and an operatic troupe would perform on a dais in front of them.

THis also conveniently explains why it is next to impossible to enjoy a good movie in a Chinese theater. Even in Hong Kong, the audiences are so misbehaved the cinemas actually would love to install interfering devices to stop the reception of telephone signals - but a legal provision stops them from doing this.

In the final analysis, it seems to be lack of civic-mindedness, a poor sense of "don't do unto them what you don't want them to do unto you". It isn't as though people don't object to boorishness - ask students, and they will gladly opine that those cellphone-toting people in the STARBUCKS or the nearest McDonald's are their personal pet peeve; however, they won't turn off their own cellphone in your classroom.

[Voldermort]

I had a similar experience the other day. I went to the teachers lounge (English only teachers) to inform them I needed a bottle of water in my apartment. I also took my Chinese girlfriend with me, who does not speak English btw.

The teacher I spoke to decided to stop speaking with me and instead to speak to my girlfriend in Chinese. I found this rude and quite honestly shameful. Why is it an English speaking English teacher feels it necessary to use a translator?