Speech Contest and Free Talk

In addition to teaching courses, the university will ask us to take part in some extra English speaking related events. The foreign language department highly encourages us to hold "Free Talk" sessions. These are times set aside when I invite students to my apartment to hold informal conversations in English-- essentially to just hang out. There is a lot to say about these Free Talk sessions so I'll go into that later. One thing that some of us were recently asked to do is to judge a speech contest.

I jumped at the chance to be a judge because it sounded like it would be so much fun. The contest was through CCTV which is China's TV network. There are two sections of the contest, one for English majors and one for non-English majors. The finalists from Qufu compete in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, and then so on and so on until the televised finals in Beijing. I was a judge for the second night, for non-English majors.

When I got there, I was so excited to see many of my students, and I was glad that it was the non-English major part of the contest so that I wouldn't have to rate my students compared to others! They were so excited to see me and all came up to me to say "hi". I was really excited to find out that two of my students were the emcees, so I got to see them stand up and speak in front of the crowd all night.

There were four other judges on the panel, all were professors at the university. There were 13 contestants that gave a prepared speech, an impromptu speech, and had to answer a question from a judge. The prepared speech topic for all of them was "science intelligence or culture smart" so they chose to argue for science over culture or culture over science or some said that they were inseparable. Then they chose a number which corresponded to a random question such as "Should Chinese citizens boycott goods made in Japan? Why or why not?" or "What do you think about internet addiction?" ("internet addiction" is when young people spend too much time on the internet and can get in a lot of trouble for it here in China). Then, as a judge, I had to come up for a question on the spot if it was my turn to question the contestant. As an American, I found this really difficult to do because I didn't want to say something inappropriate or too difficult for them to answer since I didn't really know their English knowledge. We then tallied our scores of between 30-40 points for the prepared speech, 30-40 points for the impromptu speech, and 15-20 for their answers to the judge's question.

At the end I was introduced as "our foreign teacher Lisa" and asked to address the crowd. It was pretty funny as I made the typical "congratulations to everyone!" speech and thanked them all for having me. It was actually a really fun night and great to see a campus event like that that I could understand. After the winners were announced (everyone got a certificate for participating) and they all took pictures with the judges. I'm really glad that I did it and I can't wait to attend more of those kind of events. Next week is Confucius' birthday and Founder's Day (the 60th anniversary of Communist rule this year) so I think that some impressive celebrations will be in store.

But on to Free Talk. I've had several sessions in my apartment all ready and while they are pretty fun they are also exhausting. The students are so excited but also so nervous so these first sessions have just been two-hour long sessions of small talk with one of me and 15 or so of them. I have learned some funny things from them but I think that in the coming weeks I'm going to structure them a little bit more. We talked about American movies like Twilight, Harry Potter, and High School Musical. We also talked about things in China, where they are from, what those places are famous for (kite festivals, mountains, vegetables), what kinds of food they like that I should try. We also had some really interesting talks when they asked me about voting for America and if I really got to vote there. They giggled incessantly when I told them I voted for Barack Obama because they think he is so cute. A lot of girls in my classes chose the name Michelle to be like the first lady. I'm not going to lie though, I was really hoping to get some Sashas or Malias but no such luck.

They also told me how scared they were about the swine flu. We have a break coming up in the beginning of October for Autumn Festival and Founder's Day that us Americans were planning to make use of by traveling. But rumors are flying around that no one will be allowed to leave campus for fear of bringing back swine flu or for fear of involvement in potential Founder's Day mayhem. That includes the state organized parades because 60 is such an important number in Chinese culture everyone is saying that the streets of every major city are going to be jam-packed. I've seen some of the rehearsals of the parades in Beijing on TV and it looks comparable to the 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony... yeah, it's a really big deal. Also every other year the parade is made up of the military but for the first time this year students will also be included in the parades.

Here on campus to battle swine flu, all of the foreign teachers have been given thermometers to check our temperatures and tell our liaison if we are not feeling well so we can be quarantined. One teacher came back from visiting her family with a cold and her temperature was .3 degrees above average so she was quarantined for a week. They have also closed the east gate to campus which is where a very crowded (and largely Muslim) market is. However, you can walk about 500 feet out the north gate to the east gate.

They are taking it very seriously here but the only thing that I am really nervous about at all is whether we will be able to leave or not. I am healthy and safe and have all the right antibodies so I just want to be able to travel. We had a variety of ideas of where to go on our travels but have toned them down to traveling to Jinan or Tai'an where a famous Taoist mountain is that we want to climb. No matter what, I'm sure I'll have some good stories to report about after this break.