No amuse: abuse of teachers by parents

A bunch of my friends are school teachers, a few in primary and mostly in secondary. Over the past few years, three quitted all of them having received rigourous teacher training. They all said that return is never an option. Enough is enough, I learned from them.

Paper work and extra-curricular activities are part of teaching compoents but it is much more than that. Teaching pupils is both physically demanding and mentally challenging. It pushes ones' mental potential to the brink of collapse.

School kids are home princes and princesses. What's more to deal with nowadays is to serve their parents, Kings and Queens. A few months ago, I met an old friend of mine in our common umate's wedding reception, who teaches in a so-called band-1 secondary school. As a fashionable rule, I asked how band-1 pupils excelled and behaved. No surprise his answer was overwhelmingly negative.

The most telling part of the story was that a father of a pupil, who worked in a managerial level, behaved liked a gangster violently roaring at my friend over his son's irresponsble wrongdoing outside staff room.

This situation seems to be universal and is completely unacceptable. BBC reported today that "four in ten teachers have faced verbal or physical aggression from a pupil's parent or guardian". No wonder a British friend of mine vowed that he will never be a school teacher. 

Having been shocked by my friend's miserable episode, I immediately wondered whether teacher training includes handling verbal violence and potential physical threat, or even self-defence technique. It reminds me of the ubiquitous welcoming notice at airline and immigration counter in England: "verbal violence is NOT TOLERATED!"

The NRS Social Grade (Class) for GB

Britain is a nation riven by and obsessed with class. Developed by The National Readership Survey for Great Britain, the social grade are divided into six grades:

A: Upper Middle Class, Higher managerial, administrative or professional

B: Middle Class, Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional

C1: Lower Middle Class, Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional

C2: Skilled Working Class, Skilled manual workers

D: Working Class, Semi and unskilled manual workers

E: Those at the lowest levels of subsistence, Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the state for their income

To further divide them into middle class and and working class, let alone upper class, ABC1 are the former and C2DE the latter.

舊文重刊：荃灣

五年多前寫下感懷昔日荃灣國貨公司的blog文

今天是月圓佳節。從前每逢中秋，第一時間想到和去做的是煲臘；燈籠嘛，不過是孩提時的玩意，或是在沙灘漫步時的配角。現在，金華火腿月餅已經成為了首席，就是在國貨公司專賣的雲腿月餅（有一年吃了三盒，也不管是否合乎衛生標準，反正眼不見為乾淨就是了）。
現在似乎也沒有所謂國貨公司了，反正所有百貨公司售賣的都不過是貨真價實、MADE IN CHINA的國貨。中國國貨公司結業標誌著國貨公司的式微，中聯由二變一，奄奄一息。還記得兒時經常光顧新中聯，手執一支十字牌牛奶，就在冰箱前飲個清光，連按樽錢也不用找贖了。這兩間國貨公司都座落在人傑地靈的荃灣，眼看國貨公司的末日，不禁憂心忡忡，是退守了嘛？還是另覓發展？
尚幸近日多次到中聯遊覽，看看十年如一日的陳設，個性自我的聯員，貨架上的醃製食品（我最愛的螺仔和蜆仔），好像是時光倒流。怎麼已經由南豐紗廠脫變成翠豐臺，連大帽山都被大財團攻陷的荃灣．．．還可以保留著一點點七、八十年代的味道？想不通。

裕華和華潤都換了新裝，八樓的樂園消失了。那一點未泯的童心都被埋沒了，就只有中聯還有點古蹟的感覺。三棟屋嘛，雖然在那裏還有點青澀回憶，但也不過是沒有生氣的博物館，遠不及中聯簡陋的陳列架，加上最疏離也最親切的老職員，實在是荃灣之寶。越扯越遠了．．．主題不得不改，免得文不對題之嘲。

沒有香港文學

沒有香港文學。

沒有是因為不能發生，不曾確立，也不會完成，更不會因文學「馳名」（註一）。

香港是一個城市/地區（territory），一個小城。一個人口超過芬蘭、挪威或瑞典的小城，比愛爾蘭（加上北愛爾蘭）還要多，不過這裏沒有James Joyce, 也沒有W. B. Yeats。

沒有東京文學，東京只有日本文學；沒有紐約文學，紐約只有美國文學；沒有倫敦文學，倫敦只有英國文學；沒有加爾各答文學，加爾各答只有印度文學。川端康成、Toni Morrison、Rudyard Kipling和রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর (Rabindranath Tagore)代表的是孕育於國家的文學。

說香港有香港文學就正如以為T. S. Eliot會自稱是倫敦詩人而不是英國詩人一樣可笑。說香港沒有文學就好像Parisians謔笑Londoners沒有情趣只顧金錢般乏善足陳。各說各話，互爭領土，就像兩條平行線永遠不會相交，難免淪落成自報政治文化立場的平台。（註二）

要怪香港沒有香港文學，只怪論者眼高手低，誤把我城作我國。

香港沒有香港文學，只有中國文學和英國文學。

註一：王德威指「香港從不以文學馳名」。倫敦是以文學馳名嗎？紐約又是嗎？這幾乎是一個不能引人發笑，卻又會難禁引用的虛話。

註二：也斯說「香港的故事？每個人都在說，說一個不同的故事，到頭來我們唯一可以肯定的，是那些不同的故事，不一定告訴我們關於香港的事，而是告訴我們那個說故事的人，告訴了我們他站在甚麼位置說話。」

數月前，為了準備「香港文學」中的城市景觀的講座，讀了點中英文學作品和文章，頓開茅塞。近讀王德威的〈香港－－一座城市的故事〉，頗有感興。（原文見氏著：《如何現代，怎樣文學？－－十九、二十世紀中文小說新論》（台北：麥田出版，1998），今據氏著：《如此繁華：王德威自選集》（香港：天地圖書有限公司，2005），頁2-30。）

Post-modern Cities in Global Perspective

Guided by Austin Kilroy's "What and how can urban sociology contribute to understanding the interaction of urban growth and public insecurtiy in developing-world cities?" (May 2007), which could be downloaded from MIT's opencourse, I hastened to examineUN-HABITAT's Global Reports on Human Settlements, in particular two issues: Cities in A Globalizing World in 2001 and The Challenge of Slums in 2003. What attracted me most was a six-tiered stratification of post-modern cities (from 2003: 22-23):

1. The luxury city and the controlling city, involving the groups for whom the city is a locus of power and profit, as well as consumption and relaxation.

2. The gentrified city and the city of advanced services, involving income-earning professionals and those involved in the ‘knowledge economy’.

3. The suburban city and the city of direct production of the better paid blue-collar and white-collar nonprofessional workers and their factories and offices.

4. The tenement city and the city of unskilled workers, including the immigrant enclaves, the lower paid wage workers and the ‘respectable poor’.

5. The abandoned city and the residual city, for the very poor and the permanently unemployed ‘underclass’ or ‘ghetto poor’, with income based on marginal or illegal activity, direct street-level exploitation, and denial of the public and private services of other parts of the city.

6. The informal city and the city of illegality, which comprises the slums of the developing megacities and where the informal sector has its base; where services are poor or non-existent; where residents are invisible to legal status systems; and where harassment by authorities is commonplace.

More explanation could be found in 2001: 32-38.

BTW, I have always been curious why the bloody hell environmentalists relentlessly accuse HK of being one of the top waste-producing / polluted cities in the world, and, thus, HKers are being environmental killers. I could never stand by them. First, HK is not an industrial city, not even light industry at best. Second, given vehicle being heavy waste and pollution source, HK's vehicle-ownership rate is far below developed countries/cities. Many more counter examples fill the list endless but most importantly, is it fair to compare a 100% urbanized and densely populated city/territory to a hugh country where rural areas are massive? That's non-sense! What about London? New York? Paris? Tokyo? We HKers waste far too less than them. HK may not be an ideal city, but definitely not a messy one.

Lady Hosie and China

Lady (Dorothea Soothill) Hosie had a ordinary Chinese name, 謝福芸。

From her Portrait of a Chinese lady and certain of her contemporaries (London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1933).

A legend is current in the West that the Chinese are an inscrutable joyless race, their faces made blank in order to deceive the innocent foreigner. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is, indeed, inculcated in every young Chinese that he should stand with eyes cast down before his elders and betters: and strangers are treated with this aspect of polite respect. But one walk down a Chinese street will dispel the other illusion. Its occupants are laughing, loiter-(p. 64)ing, chattering, calling to each other. There is animation and vivacity. Very different are the passers-by from the silent quick-stepping English folk who hasten down the grey streets of London Town. (p. 65)

W. Somerset Maugham's China and Far East II

It has been a long time ago since I started reading and admiring Maugham's works, beginning from Far Eastern short stories, like P & O and Mr. Know-all, to his HK-and-China-based novel, The Painted Veil. I love it. My wife, Joyce, shares the same feeling with me, which has proven that we have so much in common.

Maugham was one of the most notable and influential English authors in the first half of the 20th century. After the triumph of his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (1915) and successful theatre productions, his popularity quickly spanned from Britain to America, later to France and China.

During the heyday of British Empire, armed with gunboats and outposts, Maugham was frequently introduced to China with the help of the ubiquitous presence of modern book-selling enterprises, such as Kelly & Walsh and Max Nossler in a number of treaty port cities. (to put this into a larger historical context, what kinds of literature / knowledge were brought to China by foreign and / or local book-selling enterprises? why and when? how and how many? To what extent it influenced the Chinese people? These are the essential questions to ask to cope with the lack of research on the first wave of knowledge dissemination and formation, translation being second, in Late Qing and Early Republican China.)

No wonder that Maugham was very popular among Anglophone Chinese intellectuals in Republican China during the 1930s and 1940s. His sharply exquisite depiction of human nature enchanted several generations of Chinese writers, including a young writer in the cosmopolitain Shanghai, Eileen Chang, who had been one of his avid readers at the time. 

1943年，張愛玲捧著〈沉香屑〉兩篇稿子（

"Aloeswood Ashes: The First Burning" and "Aloeswood Ashes: The Second Burning,"）謁見紫羅蘭庵主周瘦鵑以後，周瘦鵑“覺得它的風格很像英國名作家William Somerset Maugham的作品＂“她表示心悅神服，因為她正是S. Maugham作品的愛好者＂。（蘇偉貞：《孤島張愛玲：追蹤張愛玲香港時期（1952-1955）小說》（台北：三民書局，2002））

'Chang later repeated this statement in a more public setting. Invited to the Women Writer's Group Discussion held by Magazine Monthly (Cha Chih Yuan K'an) in 1944, she again mentioned that "Maugham was one of her favorite authors." See Yu Ching's The Biography of Eileen Chang (Taipei: World Publisher, 1995), 113. Later commenting on the influence of British writers on her work in a personal letter (1977), Chang reconfirmed how much she "liked Maugham's short stories." See Edward Gunn's endnote in "Antiromanticism," The Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literature in Shanghai and Peking 1937-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 292.' (Hsiu-Chuang Deppman, “Rewriting Colonial Encounters: Eileen Chang and Somerset Maugham” Jouvert: a Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2001), one of the few early papers on Maugham and Eileen)

Some quotes from The Painted Veil (Vintage Classics).

"His shyness is a disease." (p. 47)

"it's a damned soft job to be a Colonial Governor." (p. 63) read this with the preface would make more sense to how hilarious Colonial HK was.

"it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you." (p. 63)

to be continued...

Books to read

1. Michèle Lamont, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Cambridge: HUP, 2009).

2. Charles Tilly, Why? (Princeton: PUP, 2006).

RAE 2008, UK

RAE Panel N History employed the following descriptors of the definitions of quality levels forresearch outputs (bold are :

4* – quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Originality can be in the form of reshaping interpretations or approaches or opening up new sources, new data or material. Significance will be judged on the basis of, for example, depth and likely lasting scholarly value. Rigour will be judged on, for example, accuracy, clarity and standards of scholarship. Work graded 4* will be outstanding in respect of virtually all these qualities. Such work is or ought to be a primary point of reference in its relevant field, ie, a contribution of which every serious worker in that relevant field is or ought to be aware.

3* – quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which nonetheless falls short of the highest standards of excellence.

Work graded 3* will be outstanding in respect of many of the criteria listed above for 4*. It is or ought to be a point of reference in its relevant field, ie, a contribution of which serious workers in that relevant field are or ought to be expected to be aware.

2* – quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour. 

Work graded 2* will be distinguished by some of the qualities listed above. It makes a substantial contribution and merits attention in its relevant field.

1* – quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Work which makes a valuable contribution and merits some attention.

Unclassified – quality that falls below the standard of nationally recognised work. Or work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purpose of this assessment. Or ‘missing’ outputs, where the reason for submitting fewer than four outputs has not been accepted by the subpanel.

"In judging outputs the sub-panel will be guided solely by its view of their research quality. All cited outputs will be judged on academic merit regardless of the medium (for example, inpaper or electronic form) or location of publication. Web-based publications, including for instance those published on publicly available departmental web-sites, will be judged by the same standards and criteria as other outputs."

"The sub-panel will look for evidence of the following in judging the quality of outputs: originality, contribution to the advancement of knowledge and understanding, scope or range of the work, and scholarly rigour."

"Types of output will not be ranked against each other, and outputs not already subject to a peer review or refereeing process will not for that reason be regarded as of lesser quality. No form of output will be regarded as intrinsically inferior to any other." (emphasis added)

MSG is all around

It sounds like a myth that only the Chinese are addicted to MSG (Monosodium glutamate), which was invented by the Japanese more than a century ago. Is that true? I always question such kind of quasi-racial presumption. It doesn't break a sweat to know the truth.

In fact, popular American fast food chains like McDonald's, Burger King, KFC all use MSG extensively. Others foods like Campbells and Walkers are no better. Of course, you never know the ingredients of Big Mac and realize the fact that MSG is no longer labelled properly but marketed brilliantly and irresponsibly.

A few weeks ago, while I was enjoying pre-packed wanton produced by a local brand, I felt I had some of the symptoms of the Chinese restaurant syndrome. Then I checked the ingredients label and I expected that I would find MSG on it, but none. (I was so stupid that I didn't check it before buying it) Instead, I was puzzled by "flavour enchancer (E621)". What the hell is that? I jumped to my laptop and google. It is MSG!!! E621 is the code of MSG! I was furious and hastened to check my Walkers stock. E621 again. My goodness, MSG is all around.

BTW, in response to my earlier post Chinese food mania, finally I had Yorkshire pudding again last week after I left England for almost two and a half years. Thanks to M & S.