The Peripatetic.

Edited excerpts of emails written in January 2008 when working at a non-profit in Beijing.

Every month we go to Linfen, a coal mining capital of sorts in the mainland, to visit a vocational school just outside the city.

In Linfen, the students live in old army barracks without heat in the winter.  When you come to observe a class, they rush to get a stool and dust it off for you, breathlessly telling you you’re wonderful and thank you for coming and talking to them.  

The sky on a normal day, view from our taxi

They live with little to no access to computers, but some of them will spend hours searching for books in English just to get ahead, books like Pride and Prejudice, which they devour. But at the end of the day, it’s still sometimes impossible to understand them in conversation.  They’re gorgeous souls who persevere.

We interviewed a few about to graduate, looking for a secretary. These were their first job interviews, and it showed.  When we asked what they wanted to do in life, we got answers like, ”Something eye opening.”  Open ended indeed. 

What do they do in their spare time?  In summer: 

“Start classes for children in my village and teach them what I learn here.”
“Read love books!” and
“Go online.”  Hopelessly honest.

Did they have any further questions for us? 
“Yes, can you tell me about Harvard University?” and
“Yes, what is your company? What am I interviewing for?”  Impeccably honest.

They’re trying a special program at the school focusing on community action/empowerment and cooperative learning vs. cut-throat competition, and the students are taking it to heart.  It’s funny, because one of my friends at Microsoft is training the Chinese staff and wanted to know how we encouraged students to work in groups because after taking China’s best and brightest they found those recent grads excelled in beating out everyone around them, because that’s the standard way in the school system.  Most of them, for their whole lives, never had to do group work.  It’s amazing what happens when you take the lecture-style classroom and turn a few desks away from the board and the teacher and towards each other.  

Their preparations for our interviews were not about how to get a job, but how to serve society, starting with being truthful and honest and striving to expand your horizons.  In that sense, their answers were perfect.

Looking out the window of staff housing

Throughout the interview process my American boss and I tried to add some degree of formality, some standard American way of interviewing people.  In the end, our Chinese colleague chose the student who became our fearless secretary, someone my boss and I hadn’t even considered.  

She was perfect, and the whole process my boss and I had used to vet candidates was useless.  She came in March, and stayed with me for a bit.  More on Monday.

Now that people ask me what I’d like to do, I don’t think I’ve found a better answer than “Something eye-opening.”  Then, in the midst of informational interviews, I want to ask more about a man’s family life and how he coped with the move from the UK to Colombia, where his children go to school and do they ask for chocolate in English or Spanish now (which, by the way, is a fantastic story for Tuesday).