Zhou

I sat for half an hour trying to figure out why my ADSL line exhibited slower-than-normal throughput this morning, worried that I wouldn’t be able to write a blog entry today. Well, who needs an Internet connection to write? Have I gotten so conditioned that I MUST have an Internet connection in order to communicate with myself? In fact, why do I write to myself in the first place? No, stay away from questions about my internal processing today. I – the automatic, computerized robot – know that my primary function is to write. Instead of writing this entry in blogger, I use Microsoft Word, which means I do not have to rely on my internal dictionary and grammar checker to produce readable text, good news for the reader, I suppose.

Only a few more classes to go: three more of IT104 (two sessions this week and one last one next week), two more of TB133 (one session this week and one next week) and one more of TB143. I think about my (and yes, I think of them as “my”) students/customers and wonder what they’ll do with the rest of their lives. Some of them will achieve great job-related goals. All of them have the potential to reach their dreams, both big and small. I did not give all of them the attention they needed to understand and nurture the potential within them. For that shortcoming, I alone am responsible. For those whose eyes lit up in front of me, indicating they saw the wonders I saw in them, they alone are responsible for taking the easy and difficult steps on the rest of the path to their success, avoiding obstacles and ignoring distractions.

I will miss my students/customers, even those who showed up occasionally or late, if at all. Others, who showed up every time, I wish I could have given them more attention because they gave the class their full attention. Folks who had outside issues to deal with, I hope they see they have all the mental skills to adapt and thrive. So many others I haven’t referenced who have excelled in class or who will do well in future jobs – don’t feel neglected if you read this! Every one of you is important!

Now that my teaching gig is almost over, I contemplate my future. The instructor for whom I substituted this term will return to the classroom next term, meaning that I have no classes to teach in the summer since I decided to no longer teach Saturday morning classes.

I think about the teacher/student relationship and remember an acquaintance from Nikko Restaurant named Joe.

Joe was one of the original servers at Nikko, a Japanese restaurant a little over a mile from my house that my wife and I partially owned (more specifically, we owned shares in the S corporation responsible for managing the restaurant; a separate LLC was responsible for ownership of the restaurant and property). Joe is a talented man. His daughter lived in San Francisco so Joe would visit her occasionally. Joe was born and raised in China – his real name is Zhou and grew up not far from Beijing.

In addition to working at the restaurant, Joe painted and taught painting classes. He used Chinese painting techniques, along with gouache paint and bamboo paper, to create landscapes and garden/water feature art.

One time Joe came in to the restaurant and showed us a few prints of his artwork. We noticed the signature on the prints and started calling him Zhou. He appreciated our concern for his name, thanking us for the correct pronunciation but said it was more important for one to assimilate himself into the local culture and take a new name than to hang on to the past.

Joe offered to sell us prints or originals so we asked to view his complete portfolio. Joe told us his prints were a good investment, unlike our investment in Nikko. He recommended that we not spend more money on the restaurant but invest in China infrastructure, instead, because the economy over there was booming. At that point, Joe started accepting us calling him Zhou, thanking us for helping him remember his home country and family, which he missed, despite his bad memories of the Mao era and dislike of communism.

We met Zhou at the atrium of Nikko one evening just for the sake of viewing his prints and some of his originals. As we looked at each art piece, some of them depicting dragons, some of them depicting women reposing in a garden, we sensed something familiar about the work in general. Finally, my wife named what we were thinking – we already had a painting at home that exactly resembled the art painting style as well as a near duplicate of one of Zhou’s original paintings of water lilies in bloom, almost down to the brush stroke. The piece we had at home was a smaller work of the large painting of Zhou’s, with only a few water lilies.

My wife and I debated mentioning this to Zhou. I decided to approach him about it since it concerned me, especially about any future value of a work we’d purchase.

“Zhou.”

“Yes, Rick.”

“I think I have seen one of your paintings before.”

“What? That cannot be. My works are my own. I have copied no one. I learned from my master that one must paint from one’s inner vision of his surroundings, not make photographic copies of what one sees.”

“Well, this particular painting is nearly identical to one we have at home.”

“Hmm…how can this be? And you say it is identical?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“I mean, the one we have is smaller and has fewer flowers in it but it looks like a copy of this one section here.”

“Ooh…not good. I am thinking there is something the matter here.” Zhou turned away from me and frowned heavily.

I looked at my wife and shrugged my shoulders, not yet sure what was the matter.

Zhou looked at me, his shoulders drooped and his face sad. “Can you tell me the name of the artist?”

My wife stood up and nodded. “Yes. It’s Brenda.”

Zhou’s head shook as if he’d been shocked. “I see. I am not happy. Not very happy at all. If you will excuse me…” Zhou dropped his portfolio on the table and quickly walked away.

Robert, the primary owner of the restaurant, walked over to us. “Hey guys, what’s the matter? I’ve never seen Joe act like that.”

Robert was right. Joe/Zhou was always a happy fellow, full of joy and pep. “I…I’m not sure but I think someone has copied one of Zhou’s paintings and he’s upset about it.”

“Copied? Like how?”

“I’m not sure but we have a painting at home that’s almost exactly like this one here.”

“That’s right, Robert. I bought it from Brenda, the wife of my gynecologist. She’s started painting and selling her paintings at her husband’s office.”

“Interesting. Guess I better go find out what’s the matter with Joe. You guys want something to eat while you’re waiting?”

“Sure. How about some edamame?”

“I’ll get the order in for you. I’ll be right back.”

We sat down and thumbed through the rest of the portfolio. We liked the works but couldn’t make up our minds which one we wanted to buy.

Zhou returned ten minutes later. He bowed to us and apologized. “I’m sorry but I can’t sell you any of these. A student of mine has violated the trust between teacher and pupil by selling what is supposed to be a pupil’s study of her master’s work. I am disgraced by this and must go home to decide what I am to do. Brenda has…” Zhou’s voice broke up and he choked. “Again, I am sorry. This is something that would not have happened back home. We respect our masters, our elders. Here…well, again, I am sorry. I am…I have nothing to say. Please forgive me but I must go.”

Zhou pushed all the prints and originals back into his portfolio folder and rushed out of the atrium. He left the framed originals that he had propped up against a wall. Robert returned with the edamame and told us he’d take care of the paintings for Joe.

What is the relationship between a teacher and student? I have seen many relationships, anything ranging from complete respect and trust to a total breakdown of any relationship between the two. I do not know what students and teachers do in other cultures. In my culture, teachers have violated the trust by offering themselves sexually to their students – I witnessed this personally when I was in high school. Some teachers also encourage their students to cheat. Some teachers treat their position as one of privilege, assuming an air of authority. Some have overwhelming empathy for their students, accepting their students’ problems almost as their own.

I am not an ideal teacher. I do not sympathize or empathize with students’ reasons for not participating in classroom activities or not fully devoting themselves to complete their homework assignments. I only feel responsible for showing up and presenting the students an enlightened view of the information they are supposed to learn and one day master for themselves. I do not reprimand students for cheating when it is obvious they completely copied another student’s homework assignment – I expect the students to respect the relationship between us and will not submit my will to theirs, leaving them to discover for themselves if classroom cheating will lead them to better lives. As both student and teacher, I have felt betrayed by cheating because I know that one’s cheating waters down the value of another student’s hard work in attempting to get a good grade and caught myself thinking, “What’s the point of working to be the person in class with the highest grade when someone else is just going to cheat their way to the top?”

In other words, in my culture (and in humankind in general), I have lost faith in justice. People go their whole lives and are rewarded for their cheating. Therefore, as a teacher I have given the cheaters a free ride by not weeding them out, hoping that the students who take their roles seriously will learn whatever it is I have to teach them.

We learn what we want to learn. We see what we want to see. Purity is an abstract concept, not a fact. The purest substances usually have at least one atom or molecule that makes the substances impure but does not take away from the substances’ ability to act as if they’re pure. There is no such thing as a pure teacher/student relationship but we can act like there’s one, can’t we?