The longer I teach in
China the more convinced I become that the "last minute"
culture is a deliberate attempt to control the actions and movements
of the people here. There may or may not be exams at my school
tomorrow. I may or may not have the day off. If I have the day off I
may or may not have to work on Saturday or Sunday to make it up. It
is literally impossible to ever make a plan here because it is
literally impossible to ever find out what's happening. My next
lesson at that school is at ten thirty tomorrow morning. It's now one
forty. How is it possible that no one, no one at all, in the school
knows whether there is an exam tomorrow? How can the school function
under those conditions?
I am told that, in the
absence of other instructions, I should make the thirty minute
journey to school at the usual time where I may find my students
doing an exam and be told to go home again.
At first I thought it
was just schools but my girlfriend works in real estate and she can
never tell me before six O'clock on Friday whether she has to work on
the weekend. My friend Doctor Hu sometimes rings me up to go for
dinner. He never does it with more than a couple of hours notice
because he is never told further ahead than that which shift he will
be working. My private student is usually accompanied by her father
but sometimes it's her mother because her father has been given ten
minutes notice of extra work he must do.
No other country in the
world routinely works at such short notice. It makes it completely
impossible to plan even short trips. A colleague was planning to go
away on a camping trip with the parent of a potential student on
Sunday. He has just, and I do mean just - Thursday lunchtime - been
told that his Friday lesson is now being moved to Sunday so that trip
is off.
Dragon Boat Festival is
next week and this, in previous years, has meant a day off in the
week, again made up on the weekend. No one, inside or outside the
school, can tell me if or when it's happening though their "best
guess" is Monday with work shifted to the following Sunday.
Everyone here is so
used to this that when I mention it they find it remarkable that
anyone even thinks about it. When I tell them that school timetables
in other countries are known before the academic year even begins
they look at me with incredulity or outright disbelief.
The only reason that I
can think of that this would be so is that by keeping people in the
dark until the very last minute the authorities ensure that no one
can make plans. And if no one can make plans it's so much easier to
control their movements and actions.
The fact that it makes
everything function so inefficiently doesn't matter when your
principal aim isn't success but control.
