Are the Fireflies Ghosts?

Abstract

flew like banners from the bamboo poles above her balcony. Ursula wrote anecdotal accounts for German newspapers about her language teaching experience. She used to say that if you stayed in China for three weeks you'd write a book, and if you were there for three months you'd turn out an article, but if you stayed for a year, you'd find it hard to write anything. She was right. The truths were too hidden, too intricate, too deep for me to dig them up with my little made-in-the-U.S.A. shovel. Actually I didn't go to excavate truths about China anyway. I went to teach American literature and English composition to students who, as it turned out, thought Jack London's novels were still inciting revolution in the American ghettoes and that Americans charged their parents when they came to dinner. I suppose I also expected, like many another American, to front the essential facts of in the woods of the other side of the world, and see what life to First, however, I myself had to learn how and what to teach. The educational facts of life at Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute were, as I had expected, different from those at Dartmouth, where I teach in the U.S., but I hadn't anticipated how upside-down, how disorienting the changes would be, even the more superficial ones. Dartmouth, for example, has about 4,000 outstanding undergraduates, male and female, whose annual college costs amount to about $14,000. Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute has about 1,000 outstanding un dergraduates, male and female, whose annual college costs amount to about $80. Baker Library has 1.5 million volumes; the Guangzhou library might have had as many as 15,000. I counted 26 sports in the Dartmouth General Information Bulletin; at Guangzhou teachers, staff, students, and anybody else from the political unit who wanted to join in played soccer, basketball, badminton, track, tug-of-war, and ping pong. Dartmouth students live in singles, doubles, suites, or off-campus hous ing. Guangzhou students live six to an 8 x 15-foot room. Dartmouth