I enter the classroom, heave my bulging backpack onto the podium, and flash a smile at the students. Before I can begin our customary exchange of friendly 8 AM greetings, one of them leaps to his feet and barks, "Stand up!" in true drill sergeant fashion. The entire class jumps up and bellows, "Good morning, teacher!" I reel, then recover, gesture for the students to sit down. "Ah," I say, "This is for the inspection, isn’t it?" They smile and nod sheepishly. "OK," I concede, "Do it one more time next week, just in case someone important is watching." I make a spyglass pantomime that makes them giggle.

Then I tell them, more soberly, that I hope the inspectors notice their English accomplishments rather than their ability to jump up and shout "Good morning!" They are smiling. They get it.
The long-dreaded inspection will begin next Monday and last just one anti-climactic week, after more than a year of preparation. On frosty mornings this week, between 7 and 8, the courtyard is filled with students, all of them studying diligently in the Chinese manner. That is, walking around memorizing textbooks by reading them aloud soto voce. It’s a mob scene, a deafening murmur. They’ve been locked out of the dormitories. No one will be caught sleeping in or even lounging in her bunk during the inspection period. We study hard, day in and day out. That’s the message.

As for the faculty and staff, we go on our special schedule starting Monday. Buses will leave for campus a half hour early in the morning and return a full hour late at the end of the day. There will be no lunch time buses. I don’t know what other departments are doing, but we will have our English Corner (informal English practice, usually once a week) every day. We will be having a special public speaking contest on Tuesday. We will be jumping up and shouting, "Good morning!"

Who are we trying to fool? I really don’t get it. Are the inspectors supposed to believe that we behave this way all the time, putting in eleven hour workdays and stomping around in the frost en masse to learn our lessons? Or is this just a piece of theater that everyone expects?
Whatever the answer, I’m praying for a good outcome. The human cost of the process was brought home to me this week when my friend Zhang Qiao Ping, whose marriage and ambitions you’ve read about in the past, told me that she isn’t going to attempt the master’s degree entrance exam in January. She hasn’t had any time to prepare, as she has worked six and seven day weeks at Lian Da for the past fifteen months. Now, Ping will have to wait a full year to begin her graduate studies. She’s blaming herself, in the self-effacing Chinese way. I’m heartbroken for her. There must be scores of others whose lives have been sidelined by this ... fiasco.