Wednesday 9th October, 2013             1340

With the typhoon departed we are now back to the high twenties for a while, there is the school final of the national speaking competition in under an hour. Kevin had been invited to be a question master (the judges for an English speaking contest all being Chinese!) but not I.

At least not until last night when one of students called me to say he wanted to give me copies of the speeches for perusal. He seemed confused when I said I wouldn’t be attending as I wasn’t asked, so would be teaching a class instead. My plan had been to turn up late after I finished in the hope of seeing at least a couple of my students perform. Two minutes after that call ended Prof Fang’s assistant rang asking why I wasn’t going, which was because I wasn’t invited. To her horror it dawned on her that nobody had thought to tell me and of course given what happened two years ago (when I was deliberately excluded as my questions were “too hard” so I turned up to spectate and they were embarrassed into making me a question master) I was not going to go on principle.

So I have spent most of this morning trying to think up questions about what the students have written. No easy task considering the topic is “when Socrates meets Confucius”! as you may imagine, all the speeches are similar, making it incredibly difficult. Worse, three speeches were missing, two of which Kevin has just received and once he gets me a copy I will have to work on two more questions in a hurry. There is a bonus of course - in the past few hours I have learnt a lot about both philosophers!

2000

I endured 150 minutes of a buttock-numbing competition but at least the powers felt our questions were good. The procedure is that the top two scores from the English majors together with the top score for non-English majors go through to the provincial finals (in Hefei again this year) together with the third placed English major who is taken to observe for the experience. The third place thing came about at Kevin’s suggestion two years ago and the first recipient was in fact Joanna.

Now I remember when Joanna was a sophomore, my students telling me that Prof Fang had informed them that a sophomore would never win and as all my students were sophomores at the time and not knowing any better I informed them that I wanted to prove her wrong and beat Kevin, who had juniors widely expected to win. At the time I assumed this comment was said purely because juniors and seniors have a year or two more experience but today I’m not so sure at all.

To my utter delight Jim (a lad both Kevin and I have taught and now Daisy is off the scene unquestionably our best) came first and one of my sophomores came second. You may recall last year where the scores were cooked so that not only did Jim beat Daisy when she was miles better but an utterly useless student came second? As a result of protests the skulduggery was overturned and Daisy ended up going. Personally I think the whole competition is a waste of time as it is fixed both at local and provincial level, in fact I have opined that I could enter the provincial finals as a native speaker and would not win simply because the province won’t want to send anyone not from one of the “elite” universities.

Now I was so pleased and proud when I realised my sophomore had done the impossible and qualified. My elation was rather short lived and soon turned to bitterness when (if I heard correctly) she will only be going as an observer and the third placed student - admittedly only by a whisker but scores are scores - will actually take part instead. The reason? My student’s appearance! Sure, she’s overweight and frumpy but naively I thought at least at the school level it was all about English speaking, I never dreamed it was also a beauty pageant.

There is of course nothing I can do although when I was told I did comment (and I hope my meaning was clear) that maybe I should tell her next year to have a makeover in the beauty salon first. Now of course I am wondering if the sophomore comment meant something more and that a spanner was thrown in the works today with an unwelcome result but whatever reason is given it leaves a very nasty taste. God knows what that kid is going to feel like when she discovers she won yet she didn’t.