May 27th: soapboxes and stalker students

Day 253

My hopes for a better day than Thursday seemed promising. The energy level was up and things were going smoothly until...I started showing pictures of May festival. At the one of Heather and I on the Great Wall, Very Angry snickered to his friends and made a "thumbwars" gesture (equivalent to the American "finger in hole"). I kicked him out and he didn't even protest. Sometimes you're so busted, you can't even dispute.

The next class gave their usual mediocre stab at participation, a non-comitted junior 2 symptom. After lunch, I held up my promise from the previous week of singing "Hey Jude" for class 7 and they all cracked up at the "Na na na" part. Class 8 ended a bit early and Jimmy asked me if I liked Japanese. "Not again," thought I. The Nanjing Massacre is given as a reason, THE reason actually, every time. The Japanese government has never apologized for the atrocities committed (unlike Germany) and after 60 years, two cultures forged out of face-saving, honor and pride will likely never see the end of their quarreling.

I asked them who did it? Army. "Japanese army killed Chinese army?" They nodded and I mounted my soapbox. "That's what armies do. They kill people. They are bad." I drew a map of Japan, shaded a portion that signified the army population. "This is the army. Very small. What about the rest of Japan? Farmers? Children? Students? Do you hate them?"

They shook their heads no.

"Then you don't hate all of Japan."

Their faces changed, they could see my point. Jimmy nodded. "Only a little bit."

"Right," I said. "Do you know Pearl Harbor? Japanese army killed a lot of American army, but I don't hate Japanese."

I think I was getting through to them, but since the class was right next to the English teacher's office where Rose was, I hastened to continue. After all, this could be construed as "interfering with Chinese politics," which my contract strictly forbids. I concluded with, "I don't want to kill people. I just want to make songs."

After packing for Shanghai, I rode up to the middle school. We decided to get la za ji ding at the sheep place, but were delayed en route by a student of Rhys's who wouldn't take a hint to leave. Heather told her over and over that tonight was not a good night to fraternize and practice English, but then she lingered to see who else was game, but none of us were.

We enlisted Mickey to talk sense to her, and she ended up walking with us a block before Shishan Lu and I told her we would be at the club at 10:30, knowing she would not meet us, or if she got there, would never find us. Mickey joined us for dinner, and then after for massage. While we got worked on, we talked about America and how she wants to visit Heather and go to Chinatown. I told her that most Chinese in America speak Cantonese (so the little Mandarin I've learned will be absolutely useless stateside).

She left us before we hit the club, everything about her visits a delight except the brevity. The club was packed and they stuck the four of us upstairs (all the better for avoiding the stalker student.) The floor show was some song parody with dirty words (all in Mandarin) with groping and simulated humping between the man and woman. Next was another Michael Jackson impersonator who began the routine with audio from the Thriller video: extended girl screams and werewolf howling. Heather and I finished our beer and left, turned in early for the bleary bus to Shanghai in the morning.