"My English writing teacher is a woman with curl brown hair. She is not very high but looks vigorous. I think she must like Chinese culture because she often wears the clothes that have Chinese style. I think that clothes suit her. Her teaching is very interesting, which may be called "American way." Although this way is different from "Chinese way," my classmates and I can orient to it. After several months, I feel my English writing is progressing."

Recognize anyone?

This semester I've been teaching the first-year graduate students writing. This class presents two challenges. For one thing, I've never taught writing separate from the other elements of English, so I'm learning as I go along. Second, these are older, more subdued students than the exuberant undergraduates to whom I teach speaking. In fact, with few exceptions, the graduate students speak much more poorly than do my undergraduates. Outside of class, I almost always speak Chinese with them, and in class I speak English at an exhaustingly slow pace. At first, it was like teaching in a black hole. They listened attentively, but there was no reaction, which as any teacher knows, is discouraging.

Within a couple of weeks, I had them smiling, and by midterm I could count on laughs at the appropriate times. I must admit, I don't relish the time I spend with them in the classroom as much as I do my other classes, but I *love* reading what they've written.

From the very first pile of essays came this gem:
"Last year I underwent a fail affection. When I crawled from the love swamp, the blood dripped from my body, especially my heart. In those dark and depressing days, I was in a bad mood."

I thought, "I am going LOVE this!"

Through their writing, I get a poignant glimpse into a China that would be hard for me to know. Most of the students are from rural places in provinces that have yet to be visited by China's recent prosperity. They write of childhoods spent gathering pumpkins and herding cattle, of being so driven by hunger that they stole apples and watermelons and suffered the consequences.

One student, Stone, who yearns to become a statesman--and probably will--wrote this about his childhood: "I remember now that I often starved at that time. I was thirteen years old when I graduated from primary school. In order to cultivate the ability of independence and relieve the heavy burden on my family, I was forced to do a parttime job. The job was carrying bricks and water in buckets from my shoulders.

Every morning I had to get up early and rode my father's old bicycle along a country road in order to get to the workshop. The bricks and water were very heavy. My shoulders became red and the skin dropped from my body. In the process of carrying bricks and water, I often fell and the blood flowed from my legs and mouth. After working for ten hours every day, I rode the bicycle to go home, even in darkness....

One day, I rode that old bicycle along the same road. I found that there was a big car behind me. At last, I was fallen from my bicycle because I was terrified of it, which heavily damaged my legs and I was sent to hospital. Of course, I had to give up the job.

After that accident, I thought for along time. I knew that if I wanted to succeed, then I must work harder to change my fate. Because I knew that heaven doesn't have free lunch and cake doesn't fall from the sky."

Quite a few have mentioned that they are the first in their families to finish high school. They still seem amazed that they have been able to enter graduate school, and in truth, in China, it is a rare accomplishment.

Plum wrote: "I was born in a peasant family in an out-of-the-way village...When my grandfather died of hunger, my father was only 18 years old. By then, my father had no opportunity for education. He only had a few years of elementary school. My mother didn't receive any education. Therefore, they pin all their hopes on me."

Bill wrote about a time in primary school: "The new term was not a happy thing for my family because it meant a considerable amount of tuition that was heavy burden on my parents. One day just before the time the tuition had to be given, my mother told me that I couldn't go to school because my family couldn't afford the money to support my study in school. Hearing the bad news, I felt very sad and began to hate my mother. In the following days, I didn't talk with my mother. At the same time I knew she was very painful and she asked my relatives for help. When she got enough money for the tuition, she asked me if I hated her. My tears couldn't help bursting out and she hugged me closely."

Writing topics in China traditionally feature topics such as the development of western China and economic reform. While I did every now and then throw in an "issue" that interests me such as capital punishment, early on I learned that correcting papers about their lives was much more fun than reading 28 papers supporting the government's economic policies. Also, it gave me a way to know my students. Ella, who is also a math teacher at the college as well as a graduate student wrote about her love for her three year old daughter, but added, "At the same time, I have no life of my own now. I do not have my name now. Everyone calls me Xiao Li's mother." Nicole reported her frustration with a boyfriend she eventually married: "At 12:00 AM I left some honey words in my boyfriend's phone call, wished him happy and safe, in the upcoming year. To my disappointed, he had no response! What a man lacking of romance!"

The textbook we use is not bad, but was designed for immigrants in the United States, so sometimes the content just doesn't make sense here. One chapter about consumer rights focused on how to write a letter of complaint. I had already learned that China offers fewer consumer rights than religious rights, so the idea of writing a letter to complain about that lemon of a refrigerator is hilarious. It seemed to me that writing a business letter was important, but I had to think of a different slant.

I decided to have them write to President Bush to tell him why selling even more sophisticated weapons to Taiwan was a bad idea. (This was before the spy plane incident so at least we didn't have to deal with that!) I pointed out that since Bush was president, they would have to be very polite, but that he is stupid, so they would also have to be quite clear in their reasoning. The students were very excited about this idea. It seems that in China writing to a political leader might be tantamount to seeking an invitation to a labor camp; none of them had ever done such a thing.

Before I mailed the letters off with a cover letter explaining that I was an American citizen working in China, we went through several drafts. After all, I didn't want my students' letters to elicit laughter in the White House mail room, especially when I agreed with so many of their comments. As one student wrote in his first draft: "Maybe we two countries have different cultures, different ideologies, and different systems, but we all hope for peace and hope to live happily. What we really want is understanding instead of confronting. If you keep what you are doing, the victims are not only the Chinese but the Americans. So I beg you think it carefully before you put selling weapons into practice. I think an intelligent and farsighted president must do a sensible thing that both countries can get benefit from."

I am naive enough to be surprised that we received no White House response.