Heating Up
I lived in LA for seven years and I have never seen smog like the pall that hung over Beijing at 5:30 a.m. this morning. It was a kind of a grey-brown haze that completely obscured the direction of the sun. China English newspaper had a story my first day on the Beijing Mayor's dilemma: whether to continue to allow his city to prosper from the substantial tax revenues generated by the local auto industry or to cut back on car production and reduce the number of cars on the roads. Depending on whom you ask, the population of Beijing is between 15 and 17 million.
But that was this morning. I write this evening from the hotel in Xi'an, a city located more towards the geographic center of the country and home of the famous terra cotta warriors. Small by comparison to Beijing, it supports a population of only four million. But there are construction cranes everywhere and the number of people is surely rising quickly. At 9:40 p.m., the view from my hotel window includes the familiar sparks of a welder's torch high up on the adjacent new building. This is construction 24/7 for a booming city.
After arriving by plane this afternoon, we visited the old fortified walls of the city. We visit the warriors tomorrow, then stop at a middle school, and are then hosted for a "dumpling banquet" by the Education Commission of Shanxi Province.
"Middle School" in China is grades 7-12. It is also called "high school." The educational system is organized in three units-primary school through grade six, middle or high school through grade 12, and college or university. "Middle" essentially refers to the middle of those three units, or so it was explained to me.
The warrior visit tomorrow will begin the fourth day of sightseeing for our group. We've visited the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, where I had my picture taken Saturday with the Chairman, then Sunday to the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. After several beautiful early days, the heat has become punishing. Apparently, yesterday's high in Xi’an set an all-time record.
Our tour guide commented wryly on the government‚s promise that on any day the mercury hits 40° C, no one will have to work. It just never seems to officially hit anything over 39° C.
Our days have also provided opportunities to talk with the HANBAN representatives who travel around with us as well as strategy sessions to get ready for the hiring days. Getting nine heads of school to agree on a process can be an interesting challenge. It is, however, a splendid group of individuals and we have worked our way to a structure that makes sense for the time and candidates with whom we will be meeting. HANBAN has been most accommodating.
The visit to the US Embassy, introduced us to a different side of the process.
It is amazing how quickly a government functionary with control of the levers of authority can reduce a group of otherwise confident and independent school heads to patsies. And it was my fault. Ok, it was an honest mistake. I was just curious, so I asked the US consular official in the visa section, "But how long can the extension to the one year temporary visa be granted for? 20 years?"
It was a rhetorical question. I was simply trying to establish what the typical outer limit was after the deputy consul had said, or I thought he had said, "There is no real limit."
"I hate to step on the whole purpose of this meeting," his assistant interjected, "but what I just heard has shaken me to the core." The air immediately left the room in the way that it can when you suddenly discover that you are ultimately powerless. "If the purpose of these entry visas is to recruit permanent resident workers, it would be a mistake to grant them."
The next twenty minutes were spent reassuring the deputy and his assistant that we were indeed looking for stays of one to three years. The meeting ended cordially and with a mutual understanding that our goals were reasonable and appropriate in the eyes of the consular office. But my one question had unintentionally driven home the degree to which the fate of this program, at one level, will depend on all of the steps in a complicated process falling into place.
And of course, the US consular office has an impossible task. Entry to the US is highly coveted while limits on immigration are of existential importance. The officials from the general consul's office with whom we met are responsible for the review of thousands of visa applications with the certain knowledge that some segment of those permitted to enter for limited periods of time will overstay their approved welcome, melt away into the US permanently and become impossible to track.
Later that day, on our official visit to the main HANBAN office, Director General Xu Lin had a clear command of the US consular requirements and expectations and great confidence in their organization's ability to field candidates on whom the US visa office would look favorably. They'd been down this road and knew what it takes.
Director General Xu Lin of the HANBAN office and Mike Downs
"Evidence of family to return to, ownership of property, and evidence of a job waiting for them upon return are the key elements of a successful J-1 visa applicant's profile,” was how the deputy consul at the embassy had put it.
"We guarantee them a job upon their return and fully expect them to come back," said Xu when I raised the issues we'd encountered at the embassy. "The hardest part is sometimes getting them to stay in the states for the full term. They are away from family, friends, their culture, and they get homesick," she went on.
Which speaks to the importance of the quality of the cultural and social support we provide to our new teacher.