Future

Namaste,

Once upon a time there was a rural village. One hour from town.

There was a primary school. The kids were antsy, it was hot, they waited for vacation. Their families needed them to plant rice.

There was a teacher in the school. She graduated from a university. She graduated from a government pedagogic school. She found a job teaching 6th grade.

This is how it works, said the boss of the teachers.

You are new. Your salary is $40 a month. You teach for eight months with no salary. After completing eight months you receive 70% of your salary until you complete one year. After five years you get a raise. 

I'm going to have a find a part-time job to feed my family. 

Vacation arrived singing, No more school! Go to the fields and plant rice. 

60 students finished grade 6. We are free. Let's run, play and sing. 

Of the 60, only ten would attend 7th grade in the fall. Rural opportunity cost.

The other 50 played, planted, harvested rice and worked at local brick factories for $1.25 a day.

Metta.

MK Podcast 90

Namaste,

After a year away from the voice he discovered a new headset mike. Hi mike. How are you? I am small, made of plastic. You speak into me. You press the red record button. My name is red.

Then your calm voice travels through wires into a recording program. You can add music and sound effects if you like. KISS. Ok, mike, here goes. He pressed the red button.

He recorded a small story about sitting down a year ago in Kampot, a sleepy little river town. He met amazing people at a technical school where disadvantaged girls and women and boys learn sewing and weaving and auto mechanical skills. They are empowered.

He met EPIC ARTS young adults. They work in a cafe and arts center. They are hearing and speech challenged. They Sign to to communicate. They have a vibrant healthy community. They pay close attention to each other. They are awake.

In the fall he went to Luang Prabang, Laos. He went up the Nam Ou river. 

This is Middle Kingdom podcast #90, or MK 90 for short. He began creating these audio adventures in China 5,000 years ago. 

Thanks for listening, said mike.

Metta. 

MK 90.

You have to cross the bridge to learn something.

Inee the weaver.

Rhythm

Namaste,

when I learned the alphabet
late in life toward primordial birth

infinite moment before now and then

air whispers sang
from my trash collector’s plastic bottle
pulling my rolling cart filled with cardboard
singing a muscular rhythm
stirring sonomulent dust on broken stones

in a deep forest

Metta.

empty ears

Namaste,

A Spanish kid said, “I’m setting the scene where place is a developing character and enhancing the tone of the tale. Anyway, while he was enjoying fresh mountain air so inherently peaceful, calm and a blessing, he noticed, way up in the high sky multiple black specks.

"He immediately recognized a family of Egyptian vultures and eagles who lived in the national park. They were practicing early morning flight on excellent thermal drafts.

"One of the largest nesting colonies of tawny vultures in Europe. While living and hiking in the region he’d seen several species: the golden eagle, Hieraetus fasciatus, Aquila heliaca, Hieratus pennatus, and Circaetus gallicus. Goshawk and the Egyptian vulture also inhabited the Sierras.

“What did he do? How did he see them clearly?”

“He got his 7x20 binoculars and focused on the predators. Amazing. There were six mature ones and young ones slowly circling on drafts.”

“Were they rough drafts?”

“Probably,” said the kid, laughing, "It got them started. Cutting creates real honest and true writing.”

“So, I’ve heard. But you can’t believe everything you hear.”

“Easy to say and hard to do as they say in China.”

“Speaking of China in Mandarin, you can get your ears cleaned there.”

“What did you say?"

“Now it happened that at that moment in the empty Chinese opera one afternoon in Chengdu, you sit down in a wicker chair and give the girl in a blue uniform 10Y or slightly more than a buck. A group of Chinese men in wicker chairs drinking tea stare and laugh at you. Everyone stares at you in China because it's a human zoo and you are an exotic humanoid species of endless speculation.

“Look at the funny foreigner! He’s going to get his ears cleaned. Boy is he in for a surprise!”

“You sit back and close your eyes. She has all the tools; long steel wires, cotton swabs, some ointment, a microscopic spoon on a post and a pair of stainless steel tongs.

“She probes your right ear with the spoon and digs out hard brown wax. She flicks it on the ground where it becomes part of Ear Wax Mountain, a new wonder of the World. She swabs and cleans out your ear with a small cotton ball on a thin wire. While this is buried in your ear she taps the tongs creating a vibrating frequency.

"She touches the steel rod in your ear and you hear the WHIRLING! BUZZ! BUZZ! as 1,000 bees and cicadas invade your consciousness with a deafening crescendo. She has opened your aural chambers big time! taps the tongs again, you receive the echo chamber canyon of sound, the WHIRLING BUZZ like sandpaper being rasped against old fibers of skin or yes, the fast centrifugal centrifuge of heartbeat nuclear reactors, roaring rivers inside a galaxy of weightless streams. BUZZ!

“She eases it out, massages your temples, your eyes are closed, dreaming you are in a Chinese opera playing the role of an old dramatic hero dying at his post after proclaiming his undying love for family and harmonious social order and stability in the country.

“She attacks and cleans the other ear and the vibrations take you away. BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ! She caresses your ears, massages your temples and scalp and when she finishes you no longer have a hearing problem. It’s all in the listening. You’ve been buzzed back to clarity.”

“Everything that goes in the ear comes out as language. It becomes a tool for emotion and expression.”

Metta.

 

Asian Education

Namaste,

A Chinese university student said, “It’s the old ones you have to watch out for. Some of them have no heart, let me tell you. I feel for them knowing many of them survived the ten year Cultural Revolution when intellectuals and teachers were killed or sent to the countryside for Re-education and Reform.

"It was more of a Giant Leap Backward if you ask me. Our history books gloss it over. What a terrible time that was for many of my teachers. My parents never talk about it but I know they suffered a great deal.

“This is why many of the Chinese teachers take bribes to pass students as a way to supplement their income or get things they want. They casually mention something they desire, like, ‘you know I really like such-and-such wine,’ or subtly mention money. Students know how the system works. Pay as you go. It’s an insidious problem from primary through university. Ha!

“In my opinion this university is an extension of high school and a retirement home for older Chinese teachers. Maybe you’d call it a nursing home in a rough translation. This system is about product, exams, not process, not how to learn. It’s about driving yourself into the ground to pass exams. It’s all about getting the marks so your parents won’t kill you. My social life is next to zero in this quasi-prison.

“The foreigner teachers, on the other hand, are friendly and outgoing. But, they are resented by the other teachers and many students. Why? Because they expect students to do the work, to learn or they fail them. And they get three times the Chinese teacher’s salary and teach fewer hours."

“What’s the standard?”

“We’ve become good at text and theory with our Chinese teachers doing the mechanical tedious book drilling, drilling, drilling, method but remain poor at analysis. It’s obvious when we have foreign teachers for business courses.

"Our textbook rote memorization conditioning is a real liability when it comes down to critical thinking, the foreigners say. Independent critical thinking may as well be an indecipherable alien cultural reality for the majority of students here."

“It’s fair to say the Chinese education system emphasis is on practice and mastery, whereas in the West it’s about self expression and curiosity.”

“I agree. It’s a double bind. How can personal desires and national demands be reconciled? Our generation faces huge problems, but, like I said, it’s a business school, so the International Trade, Marketing, Finance and Business classes give us new perspectives on global international development. It’s an opportunity but I’ll be more than ready to graduate this June.”

“What are your plans?”

“I will go to Shanghai and apply with multinational companies as an international translator and business negotiator using my English skills. Perhaps something in Sales and Marketing. I need work experience and know it’s going to be tough but I have the confidence. If I can survive in this place four years I know I can make it anywhere.”

“You struggle to survive in a dystopian environment. Save face.”

Metta.