They come by the thousands. Some stay for years while others take the next flight home. They're English instructors who come to China to spread the lingua franca. Dan Washburn is one of them. A former sportswriter, he left his home and newspaper in Gainesville, Georgia to teach at Shanghai University, and launched a Website about his experiences in the process.
Shanghai University English teacher Dan Washburn was born in Bloomsburg, Georgia, (population 1,500).
He later moved to the "big city," Gainesville, where he wrote a sports and outdoor-life column for a daily newspaper.
Then came the opportunity to teach in China, the most populous nation on Earth.
So, without a word of Chinese in his vocabulary and only elementary chopstick skills, Washburn wrote his last "Sporting Life" column, said "see ya'll" to kith and kin, and hopped a flight to Shanghai -- population 16 million.
And while Washburn concedes to experiencing a bit of culture shock upon his arrival, it didn't send him packing. In fact, it didn't take long before Washburn had launched a Website, "Shanghai Diaries" (www.danwashburn.com), a platform to recount his adventures in this slightly larger and somewhat different city and its colorful inhabitants.
"I had the Website through my job in Georgia to post my column," says Washburn, 29, here less than a year. "When I moved here I decided to keep the site up and change it to 'Shanghai Diaries.'"
According to Washburn, the site gets about 1,400 hit every week, and has a Chinese name, "Wo Qing Bu Chu," supposedly meaning "I don't understand." One of his students brought to his attention the fact that the Chinese name should, in fact, be "Wo Bu Qing Chu," but told his teacher that he shouldn't change it, as it underscore the fact that "He really doesn't understand" Chinese.
Expatriates come up with a number of creative ways to get around the fact that they don't know Chinese. Washburn has his own techniques and stratagems. "Every time I visit my neighborhood barber for a 5-yuan (60 US cents) cut, I hand him two photos of Hugh Grant (stills from About a Boy,) point to them and then point to my head," says Washburn. "This strategy has worked well so far, and after three cuts, I reckon I could give old Hugh a run for the money."
Washburn teaches conversational English and English literature at the university. He has 200 students in each of his six classes. If you've never taught Chinese students, it is difficult to appreciate just how challenging Washburn's job is. They are not used to the give-and-take that goes on between teachers and students in the West, and many would just as soon sit through an entire class without uttering a word.
Washburn has devised various methods to break the silence. He invited a musician friend to perform and has "analyzed" several episodes from the 7th season of "Friends" in class.
"I'm learning more from them than they learn from me," he says.
During his four years as a columnist, Washburn wrote a collection of "oddball sporting" stories, ranging from ice-climbing and nude volleyball, to sky-diving and lawnmower racing. In his efforts to get an insiders perspective on a story, he has gone to some unusual lengths, grabbing catfish by hand in the muddy waters of the Mississippi and riding rodeo bulls without regarding for his own skeletal structure. His efforts (and injuries) did not go unnoticed. In the Sports/Outdoors Writing category of the 2002 Gannett Well Done Award, Washburn's column took home top honors.
Washburn began writing for newspapers at 17 and has developed an eye for spotting interesting stories.
"The pace of life in America is a little slower," he says, most likely referring to the benign byways of Gainesville. "I tend to throw myself into new situations as a kind of challenge. I keep my eyes open, jotting down observations on a yellow legal pad and taking photos with a new digital camera." The end product is what winds up on his Website. Shanghai, he notes, is "seductive and beautiful city." By logging onto to his Website, his loyal readers will be able to see if his view of the city changes, or if he only becomes more enamored with it. A newcomer to Shanghai, Washburn notes the preponderance of pajama-clad pedestrians, and one can only hope that he moves beyond this oft-cited idiosyncrasy. "I'm a small-town boy," he says, "and although I like city life, I begin to miss open spaces and fresh air."
Although English teachers in Shanghai are paid relatively well, Washburn doesn't go in for the glitz and ritz, preferring instead the food and entertainment enjoyed by the average Shanghai resident. "Dan is a warm-hearted guy. He is a man that enjoys love and can always find fresh and interesting things about life," says Ge Ding, a sophomore English major at Shanghai University and one of Washburn's students. "He has taken us to many restaurants and bars. I sometimes feel as though he is my guide to Shanghai and through him I rediscover the city."
Asked how long he plans to stay in China, the Georgia native responds like a true Philadelphian. "It depends on whether they get a Jim's Steaks franchise here," he says, referring to a famous Philly cheese steak sandwich emporium. "I am a writer, and writers feed on life experiences. I'll have plenty of those here. I already have. The benefits may not be immediate, they may not be financial, but they will stay with me for the rest of my life," he adds.
(Eastday.com March 3, 2003)
