The Inspection Begins
Day 1 minus 12:

Just after Sunday supper, the phone rings. It’s Sun Yue Rui, my co-teacher, sounding exhausted. She’s just gotten home from a full weekend of drudgery at the U. She’s calling to tell me that I must hand her my lesson plans for the entire current term tomorrow morning. I observe that I’ve never been asked for such a thing before, and that some advance notice would have been nice. Then I apologize and tell her I know it isn’t her fault, and I promise to produce the needed document in the morning. Were I teaching a content course, I would actually have a semester plan I could pull from my sleeve. But Oral English is such a vapid course, I just make it up from week to week. Now, I sit down at the computer and transcribe everything we’ve done for the first eleven weeks, then simply contrive possible lessons for the last seven weeks. Some of my musings actually look promising. Lewis Carroll, "The Jabberwocky." Won’t that be fun? English phonetics via nonsense words.

Day 1:
6:20 The phone is ringing. It’s Cao Ling, the deputy dean’s protegee, calling to ask if I know that the university bus is leaving early (7:10). Yes, I tell her, sleepily, I know. She rattles off some more details of the week’s activities that I already know. I thank her and we hang up. I’ve scampered over the cold cement-and-tile floor in my bare feet; I’m up, wide awake.

8:30 I have no classes until 10:10, so I leave late to catch the public bus. The sense of urgency is infectious; I’m nearly run over by a bicyclist as I lunge for the number 82 bus. Entering the gate of campus, the first thing I notice is that the guards are standing at attention on each side of the gate, wearing what must be rented blue serge uniforms, caps, and, get this, white gloves! (Normally, they’d be lounging nearby in crumpled fatigues, or inside the guard house playing cards.) I notice that no one has given them new shoes; they are all wearing their cheap, tattered sneakers. Nearby in the bus yard is an impressive row of sleek, identical black sedans, each with a large red number in the top left of its windshield. They are, of course, parked in ranking order.
But the most striking thing is the quiet. It’s other-worldly. There are few students visible. The ones I see are walking purposefully to some destination. No one is eating anything. No one is talking on the public phones. No young lovers are cuddling. As I go inside, there are no boys smoking and rough-housing in the stairwells. There are no girls giggling on the landings. There is a solemn hush; office doors are closed. Faculty scurry from one haven to another. Cleaners are sweeping everywhere, diligently.

I knock on Sue Yue Rui’s door and give her the tidy computer print-out of my semester plan. (This is not good. Handwritten documents are preferred, I know. Handwritten is "more true.") She gives me a binder with the course objectives of Oral English and the teaching objectives of the School of Foreign Languages, all in Chinese. I thank her elaborately, and we have a private laugh together.

10:08 I tiptoe into the classroom. At first, the students don’t notice me, and continue to chatter together. Then, one by one, they slip into their seats and we act out a pantomime of waiting for the bell to ring at 10:10. My watch is a little fast. I mime distress; they mime sympathy. We are all in some un-natural state. At last, the bell rings. The monitor barks the order, the students leap up and greet me. I respond and urge them to sit down. Now we’re free to get on with our lives. I ask them about their weekend. We talk about the day’s work. We move on. During our break at 11 o’clock I notice that something big is going on outside a conference room nearby. A statuesque student is wearing a form-fitting purple jacket, matching mini skirt, tights and tall boots. Her purple hat is in the style I associate with WWII military women. She is adorned with a red and gold sash proclaiming the name of the U. As the week progresses, I observe that she has an identical twin sister, and that their role appears to be to precede our evaluators and open doors for them.

12:00 noon: Sun Yue Rui and my Filipina colleague, MariLou, arrive at my office with our lunch tickets. We’ve all been given 7 yuan for food. That’s a small fortune; I rarely spend more than 3 yuan for lunch (36 cents). We go to a small cafe for sha gua, a wonderful bowl of soup. The place is swamped, as every café on campus must be, with about 500 faculty and staff being held hostage. But yes, there is free lunch.

15:20: Students have moved on from our usual Monday afternoon time of chatter and book borrowing. I’m lounging in the office, reading, when Deputy Dean Jiang arrives with Sun Yue Rui in tow. Usually a sharp dresser, today the D.D. is wearing an ill-fitting navy blue suit over a V-necked navy blue sweater and white dress shirt. Later I’ll notice that this seems to be a kind of faculty uniform, but other men have managed to get a better fit. He has arrived to tell me all about the events of the week, redundantly.

16:30 English Corner begins in the rose garden. We have been blessed with mild and sunny weather. We enjoy a speech from Zhao Xue Sen, Chairman of the Communist Youth League on our campus (whereupon I notice the uniformity of the blue suit/V-neck sweater). We sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" far too merrily and play word games in the waning daylight. I don’t think anyone notices or cares that we’re out here, but who am I to say?

18:10 Our buses are ready to leave. We watch the drivers climb into the row of black sedans, and the cars glide out of sight toward the front of the administration building. I predict, to myself, that we will sit on the buses respectfully until our distinguished visitors have driven away. But I’m wrong. The buses roll; the spiffy guards at the gate stand at attention, saluting us as we depart.

Day 2:
6:50 I leave for the bus stop in the pre-dawn; the morning star and a crescent moon are visible over Yan Tan Lu. Morning lessons are uneventful. Students and colleagues fill me in on the rumors, which are thin and predictably contradictory. The inspectors speak no English and will not visit our department. The inspectors speak no English but will observe our classes at random. The inspectors will probably not observe my teaching. The inspectors probably will observe my teaching.

16:30 Back in the rose garden for English corner. Today we have a PA system and my student, David, is shouting into the microphone. Marilou makes an extemporaneous speech. I chat with a crush of freshmen.

17:30 The English majors’ speech competition begins. The topic is "Green Olympics." As judges, my colleagues and I listen to sixteen finalists rhapsodize about the 2008 Olympics and lament about the environment. One speaker observes that she and her roommates try to conserve water every evening by washing their feet in the same water they have used to wash their faces. (These girls live on our campus with no showers.) Several other departments are holding showcase events simultaneously. I suspect that our distinguished visitors have already gone back to their luxury hotel for dinner and a hot shower.

Day 3 and Day 4 were almost humdrum. We were well accustomed to the drill, and got on with it. English Corner every day in the rose garden. The blessing of abundant chalk – a full, new box each of white and multicolored in every classroom. And fluffy new chalkboard erasers. Electric light at the touch of a switch. Cleaning people in bright blue smocks, sweeping and polishing everywhere. We could get to like this, maybe get spoiled. But our distinguished visitors depart at the end of Day 4; one can’t help but expect that we will gradually backslide. The chalk will quickly be exhausted. The light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures will burn out one by one, and not be replaced until the next inspection.

Day 5:
8:00 My first group of students is understandably limp. I get them up on their feet to do some stretches and deep breathing, and they perk up.

Day 8:
9:00 I visit Sun Yue Rui in her tiny office. I have some routine things to discuss, including confirming our customary Tuesday lunch date. She confesses that she will take Tuesday off to wash her hair and catch up on laundry, and we change our date to Friday. Turns out, she had spent the weekend proctoring a standardized test on campus. Still no respite! She relates that our University has received a grade of B from the inspection. While this could be better, our score is equal with some others where there are better facilities, so there’s cause for celebration. And, if nothing else, it’s over, at last!