Buckland Weekly #29: The Last Minute

Christmas is coming.

And like every year it will be here on the 25^th December. A much harder question is when will you finish your teaching? This is one of the tricky things when teaching – or for that matter living – here in China. You will rarely be given much, if any, notice of when things will happen. I’ll give you a couple of examples – one from school life and one from my social life. The school one first. At the end of the first semester of my third year teaching in Baiyin I was informed of the date of my last lesson two days AFTER it had actually taken place. It came about because on my schedule for that semester I had no lessons on Wednesdays. On the Thursday morning I was just about to leave my apartment to go to school when my phone rang. It wasn’t my administrator and it wasn’t the head – or anyone else – in my department. It was a friend from another department who was ringing to ask if anyone had told me that lessons had actually finished on Wednesday and I was now officially on vacation. I checked with my administrator who after a moment of considering said she would check with the school. A few minutes later she rang me back to tell me that this was true but the Chinese teachers had only been informed yesterday when I wasn’t there.

That’s an extreme case but even now, as I type this on the 4^th December, I have been told that my junior classes will probably finish on the 14^th but no one in the school, so they say, knows when the senior classes will finish. It could be anywhere between 16^th December and 6^th January. Literally no one has been able to find out for me. I wanted to go visit my friends in Baiyin for Christmas but until I know for sure when the term ends I can’t book a flight or a hotel. I might not be able to go at all.

The other example was at this same time of year. In my first year here I had to work on our New Year’s Eve, 31^st December. I was living in a city with just two other foreign teachers and beyond a very vague arrangement that we might meet for a drink later I had no fixed plans for celebrating. Well at least up until three O’clock I had no fixed plans. Between three and six I received no fewer than five further invitations to do something. Teachers in my department had decide to take me to dinner and had booked a restaurant without checking with me first – just assuming that I was free. A friend from a school I had previously worked at invited me to KTV. One of the other foreign teachers was invited by her colleagues to a different KTV. My administrator called me up and invited me out to dinner and finally, as I was getting ready for the dinner with my colleagues (which I felt obliged to go to as they had already booked it) my next door neighbour’s ten year old son knocked on my door to ask if I wanted to eat with them.

This last minute attitude is just something you have to get used to. Chinese colleagues always express total astonishment when I tell them that in any western school the schedule for the whole year – start and end dates, exam dates, holidays and all – is known by the teachers from the start of the first term and that the office will almost certainly have at least an outline schedule for two or three years. Barring the occasional snow day closure we know exactly when we will or will not be there.

As for social events I have told many of my friends that if I plan a dinner party – whether at home or in a restaurant – I will start asking the people who are coming at least a few weeks early so that they can arrange their schedule accordingly. No one ever seems to believe me. No one ever seems to think it possible to arrange anything more than a day or so in advance

There is nothing that you can do about it except learn to adapt to it.

Anyway, whether you have your finish date or not let me wish you, 21 days early, a very happy Christmas in whichever part of China you find yourself.