Finally, it’s time: On my second Thursday in China, Green Tea — one of the music teachers — sends me a text: I’m to meet with Ms. Music at the music department.
The music department is just past the main gate of the school: a compound of three squat, drab rectangles. I don’t know what’s in two of them, but I have previously been told that the one near the gate, with the red rug in front of the door, is the office. I knock.
Green Tea answers. Well, it turns out to be Green Tea: I have not previously met her, so I have to say, “Green Tea?” except that her name sounds different in Chinese, and I’m not sure I get it right. She stares at me, a little bit blank, for a little while, before asking, “Sazerac?”
(That’s me!)
Green Tea is the Chinese person you see in old communist propaganda: her hair has a bow in it, she is dressed conservatively, and she has comically blushed her own cheeks. She also has something approaching hips, which I had not previously seen on a Chinese woman. Her face and eyes are very wide, and her lips – carefully painted – are full. I find this attractive, which I think makes me sexist.
“Yes, come!” she says, waving me in.
The office is large and completely open: no cubicles; no dividers: just a room with desks in it. The desks are covered in knick-knacks, papers, and pens. Some have keyboards – the musical kind – on them. One, in the corner, is completely empty. This looks like home for the next year.
In the opposite corner is the desk that faces the rest of them; and in that desk is a woman the size of a pistachio, with a Maoist haircut and a bright smile: Ms. Music herself. She sees me, and says, “Ah!”
She fumbles herself out of her papers and walks over to us. She and Green Tea fire back and forth in Mandarin. It sounds like someone has made a grievous mistake, but Ms. Music is smiling. (Green Tea looks very earnest.)
The pleasantries end; it is time for business. I learn this on tape delay: Ms. Music changes the subject, and a bit later Green Tea translates the subject change. Right now, Green tea is saying, “So these are class you will teach.”
Finally. I’ve been in Shanghai a week, and no one has bothered to tell me.
“First, you will teach grade 6 music.”
I had feared I’d get a middle-school class, but at least it’s not primary school. I’m pretty awful with small children.
“Next you will teach grade 7 music. Two section.”
“Wait, wait. Let me write this down.” I crack a notebook.
“Two section,” Green Tea nods.
“Of what?”
“Grade 7 music.”
“No, but –” I need to speak a little slowly here – “which class?”
“Music.”
Ms. Music grunt-nods in affirmation.
I recalibrate: “What kind of music? What is this class for?”
This question draws Mandarin crossfire. Ms. Music curls her brow and machine-guns questions at Green Tea, who returns crackling, irregular fire. As the shell casings hiss to the floor, Green Tea answers me: “Music theory.”
“Uh… do I use a curriculum?”
The Chinese strafe each other a few more times to decide, via Green Tea: “Yes.”
I stand dumb for a moment. “Uh… Can I have it?”
“We will give you this book,” Green Tea assures me. She doesn’t say when.
Moving on: “You will teach grade 8 – opera.” (She says, “Ah-pour-rah;” clipped and evenly weighted across the syllables.)
“Opera?” I’m alarmed.
“Ah-pour-ah. Yes.”
I don’t remember shit about opera. I did homework during those sections of music history class. When I was in undergrad. Eight years ago. “What do you want me to teach them about opera?”
Ms. Music exchanges linguistic handgun pops with Green Tea.
“Maybe they will sing ah-pour-ah,” offers Green Tea.
“Maybe?”
“You can teach them. They will maybe sing opera song for the test.”
I for sure can’t teach them how to sing opera because I can’t sing opera. I never trained for it, it’s not the sort of thing that gets picked up on the side, and I probably lack the raw physical ability. I decide to stick a pin in that one. “Okay,” I shrug.
“You will teach grade 3 and grade 4 music.”
At this moment I remember in crisp, full technicolor the moment I opened the diploma that read “Doctor of Musical Arts.”
I shake myself into focus: “Teaching them music theory?”
“No no no,” says Green Tea. “You will teach with another teacher. They will learn a song for Art Festival.”
“Art Festival?”
“Yes, Art Festival. It is where all the student dance.”
I don’t know what else to do, so I scribble and nod. Guess I’ll fucking cross some of these bridges when I come to them; or at least when Green Tea tells me, “Look: there is a bridge. Maybe you cross it?”
What she’s saying right now, instead, is: “You will teach grade 7…” and she gathers herself; probably like opera singers do, for all I know, before they sing opera: “comm-pew-turr music.” She smiles, satisfied.
I scribble some more. “On their laptops? Do you have a studio for them? Are we going to record audio, or work with sequencers?”
“You will teach kew base,” says Green Tea.
Cubase. Music recording and sequencing software. One of the kinds I’ve never used.
“There is comm-pew-turr lab,” Green Tea assures me. “You will teach kew base.”
It’s better than dancing seven-year-olds and giving opera lessons, I guess. I write “Cubase!” with a lot of exclamation points.
“You teach grade 6,” says Green Tea.
“Yeah I have that already.”
“Grade 6 world music,” she finishes.
“Oh. What… what is that class like? Do you mean musical history? Different kinds of music around the world?”
“You can start, I think, a-ROBB-ick.”
I consider this. Insightfully, I ask, “What?”
“A-ROBB-ick music. Like with snake,” she clarifies, smiling and bobbing her head. She mimes what looks like oboe playing.
With snake. Shit. Arabic. She wants me to teach Arabic music, and judging from her impression of a snake charmer, she knows about as much about it as I do. I once had to read a paper about Led Zeppelin’s musical appropriation of Arabic motifs, but I’m not sure that’s going to play super well with Chinese 11-year-olds.
“A-ROBB-ick,” Green Tea nods.
When the dust settles, I’m teaching eleven classes from grades 3-12. I have no curriculum (though I’m told I’ll get that book for 6th– and 7th-grade theory). I have no access to the computer lab of lore and legend. And I haven’t gotten better at singing or, like, knowing about opera in the last half-hour. It’s Thursday evening. Classes start Tuesday at 8am.
My first plan is to panic. What has been requested of me is flatly impossible: I can’t learn all about opera, give myself a course in elementary education, master the history and theory of one of any number of Arabic music traditions (how many? Who’s to fucking say?), and prepare syllabi and notes for a week of classes in four days. I could maybe (maybe) get there in about four months; but even then, without classroom experience teaching small children I’d probably still be pretty fucked.
But on the other hand, what has been requested of me is flatly impossible: If I can’t do it, I have to figure out what I can do in the next four days, and do that. And then see what happens the second week of classes.
So: syllabi are right out: I’m going to have to get enough material to last a week at a time, commit zero hours of prep to courses I sort of understand already, and reuse as much material across classes as I can. And of course, to start I should probably decide what any of these courses are actually going to be about; and tilt that subject matter to my existing proficiencies. This is going to be the next year of my professional life.
I think a few things about my predicament. Some of them do not turn out to be true.
I think that the school must know what it’s doing: it hires teachers from the U.S., Canada, and England all the damn time. Someone must have figured out how to teach eleven classes in a semester about everything in music.
I think that it’s time to hold myself accountable: to become the truly professional teacher I never was as a doctoral student.
I think that with the right attitude, teaching small children won’t be so much worse than teaching college sophomores.
After all this, I think – quietly; in a whisper packed in a closet behind my other thoughts – that maybe my first thought is exactly wrong: Maybe, if the school is asking for something impossible, they have no fucking idea what’s going on, and I just have appear like I know what’s going on while staying exactly one class period ahead.
I stuff this thought in the back of its closet.
I start writing. My notebook says, “Grade 6 – world music?” and “Curriculum?” without answers. I start sketching basic lesson plans. I’m not sure why: I’m not sure what goes in them. I’m not a very good employee, and I struggle to understand that thing good employees do where they generate a lot of material for no reason; where they do things loudly and obviously whether or not anything needs to be done. I think I see the point of it, here. I scribble in circles and breathe on purpose.
I’m distracted from all the work I’m very carefully not really doing by a bustle at the door. Another Chinese teacher shuffles into the office; his bag thuds on his desk. He exchanges light Mandarin artillery fire with Ms. Music; when he’s satisfied, he turns to me.
“So, I will show you… com-pew-turr lab.”
I don’t know why everyone in China has agreed to pronounce the word “computer” this way. “Sure,” I say. We step out of the office and make a diagonal slice of campus.
I’ve seen this teacher before: My fifth night in China, I returned from dinner on Bai Se Lu with Tom Collins and decided to stop by the music school, nestled feet from the main gate. The lights were on. This teacher answered. He said that soon I would meet them all, and that I would get my keys in a few days. Now, he hands me a key to the office. His name is Seven & Seven.
Seven & Seven has body mass equivalent to a tall fern, or a heron. He moves, however, less like a heron and more like a squirrel: jerky, stiff, alert; skittering. His limbs seem to appear in certain places with a hiccup; like a Rankin-Bass puppet teaching me the true meaning of Christmas. In this way he glitches across the path.
“So… you… getyoupeeheychdee?” He asks. Each of his sentences is a sneak attack, with the bulk of it dropped, at the very end, like a net from a tree; after the first part of the sentence lulls you.
I tell him yes: I got my PhD. (Sort of. I don’t think this is the time to explain a DMA.)
“Wooooow,” he says. It’s a little uncomfortable. I want to tell him that while I’m proud of my education, I didn’t, like, gain superpowers. Radioactive Mozart didn’t bite me.
Seven & Seven quizzes me about a lot of things, and also offers of lot of projects at IK-12. I can’t tell if these projects are mandatory or friendly suggestions; but I can tell which project occupies the most real estate in his mind:
“Musical club,” he says, over and over. Seven & Seven, it transpires, is the founder of and sole songwriter for the Musical Club; and he is very happy to have another composer around.
“You… will… beaccompanist!” he possibly orders, though maybe suggests. This is the sort of request I habitually dodge – you want me to do more work for no more cash, on the grounds of like team spirit? – but I’m trying to be a good citizen. Trying the Chinese style on for size, I offer vague agreement that could be construed to mean virtually anything. Sure, I’ll play for the school musical: I will beaccompanist.
In time we reach the high school’s underclassmen division. “Here is… thecomputerlab,” explains Seven & Seven. The computer lab is a flat, drab room in a flat drab building. There’s a whiteboard and some cabinets skulk in the corners. But mostly there are desks: Each with a monitor and a MIDI keyboard.
“So, I will… show you… Cubase,” says Seven & Seven.
I don’t think this is going to be too difficult. I’ve spent a lot of time messing around with audio software, and most of it follows the same format. Besides, it’s in the interest of both computer and software manufacturers to ensure that these programs are as simple as possible. When I started in high school, it took an age just to make sure everything was plugged in correctly, and that the keyboard was linked to the computer. Now, you just plug in a cable and the software sets itself up for you (loosely speaking – back down, technophiles). So even though I’ve never used Cubase, I figure I know what I’m doing.
It turns out I do not.
There are some problems in the computer lab that I had not anticipated. First, these machines are not new. They are probably from this century, but they are definitely not from this decade. It takes each one about five minutes to wake up, and when they do I’m welcomed by Windows Vista. Or the excavated corpse of Windows Vista: “Sometimes it is slow… because we getthesoftware… allatonce,” Seven & Seven explains. Later, I will come to understand what he’s really telling me: These Vista packages are pirated. They’re glitchy, and they are not in good standing with the copyright division of the Microsoft Corporation.
The second problem, related to the first, is that it’s very hard to tell if Cubase (also pirated) is working properly. This is not one of the glimmering services that works upon connection to components. This ancient pile of diseased code needs its hand held (though be careful, because you might catch Polio): You have to introduce the keyboard to the machine, then tell the machine to load the right sounds, then tell the machine to send out the right sound out the right speaker, or the headphones; which should be the same thing as far as the computer is concerned but are emphatically not.
And these efforts may fail: After ten minutes working one machine like a stripper three credits from a law degree, Seven & Seven shrugs and says, “I think maybe this one does not work.” He tapes it up, like he’s cordoning off the body.
When we leave, I am not any closer to knowing how to manage a knockoff Cubase from the second term of the Bush presidency. Seven and Seven gives me a key so that I can return to the lab any time. I can feel him pass me the leaden hours I’ll spend in this room, cursing at machines that long in turn for the sloppy, wet kiss of death; or at least the quick reach-around of mechanical embalmment.
I now have eleven classes to teach, and one of the subjects I thought I understood depends on the electronic debris lining the closeout rack of a Comp USA. You’re not really supposed to understand that reference, which is the point of that reference.
“We rehearse… musicalclub on Mondays,” Seven & Seven reminds me. “I will send you the music.”