What makes a German Professor, when Chinese students boycott his classes? And what is going on, if it smells in the Seminar, after the noodle soup? Zhang Danhong gives insights into student life in China.
The author in front of the Cologne Brauhaus Sion
The German re-unification, we have taken the mid-1980s at Beijing University in advance. The East German Professor gave us the total German literature. Above all, he helped to fist us in the exegesis of Goethe’s “”. A West German lecturer, was seconded by the German Academic exchange service (DAAD), should improve our Speaking.
By “us” I mean a ten-member class, which consisted entirely of graduates of foreign language schools across China. Because never before have so many young people in my class with a good knowledge of the German language had applied for a German to study at Beijing University, decided by the faculty at short hand, to expand the planned quota of 18 to 22 squares and to divide us into two groups – a Normal and a turbo class. In the lessons, which were held primarily in English, we stayed in our familiar small round; other Lectures we attended together, with the beginners in the German language as well as English and romance languages.
The West gate of Peking University
In order to improve our conversational ability, had to explore the young lecturer, what we have already. Very carefully, he groped to us: “what’s your name?” “Where do You come from?” These questions were just ridiculous and beneath us. We had placed extra name tags for him. Without prior arrangement, we responded with ten completely identical – we were silent. He tried to elicit from us the answers: “How old are You?” “Do You Have Any Siblings?” I felt sorry for him. As a nerd I tend to cooperate with the teachers. However, as someone who could pontificate 500 sentences about Lu Xun, almost error free, I felt such questions offended. He would have been able to check in first at the Chinese colleagues of how far we already were.
Food as an icebreaker
After three sessions, alone, with self-talks, the poor guy gave up the frontal lessons: “you Know what? Today I invite you for lunch at the swallow’s spring garden.” The “garden” with the poetic name was the only Restaurant on the Campus. There is a more diverse and tasty food offered in the Cafeterias, at very reasonable prices. Although we have not had is working with our silent strategy on this invitation, but the joy we could barely conceal. In a relaxed atmosphere, we began to tell our story. At some point, the “long nose” in a loud voice, “Hey said, you’re not a deaf-mute!”
Since then, the felt was held every second hour speaking lessons in swallow spring garden. And we learned a lot about him: He came from Bremen, and had been a Maoist for a long time. His Dorm room was covered from floor to ceiling with Mao portraits. Well, then, he is arrived now in the right country, I thought. He felt apparently, even in Post-Mao China so well that he extended his stay. Eventually, we learned the real reason: He had fallen in love with an Indonesian woman of Chinese descent. The invitations were unfortunately rare – but in the meantime, he no longer needed them as bait to get us to Talk.
For Relaxation James Bond
Another specialist in this ten-round, the equivalent of the Talking – and the listening comprehension. To us, a technically very advanced room available with cartridge shaft receivers, headphones and separate places recorders. Often we heard the news of the German shaft and translated simultaneously into Chinese. This one-hour concentration is called the Maximum. The loosening of the lecturer, an attractive Chinese shifted to the beginning of 30, in the we five young women (our class was the gender of the face model points almost) all of them were more or less in love, the lessons, and in his one-room apartment. While we watched James Bond movies, to he prepared in the kitchen of noodle soup. It had to be always the fine eating of the swallow’s spring garden, which made us happy. A hot noodle soup, it did.
When one of the University lecturers, there was an agent to see movies for free in the apartment and noodle soup
Unfortunately, we were not of all the professors as spoiled as these two bachelors. The Professor who tortured us with the Translation of the Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven held his seminars, while his wife prepared next door for lunch. The more it smelled from the kitchen, the greater our Hunger. With a hanging stomach, we left his apartment and had to March into the nearest cafeteria.
Certainly not have escaped you that all of us teachers lived on the Campus or in the immediate vicinity. Also, we were divided into dormitories, which were all located within the University. More on this in the next episode.
Zhang Danhong was born in Beijing and lives since 30 years in Germany. In the series “English is not a bed of roses” she writes once a week about your first contacts with the German language and their Integration in Germany.