Announcing the Discovery of "Inability-to-plan-itis" in Central China

I may have mentioned before that the Chinese are not known for their planning skills. Their trains run late. The ticket sales for the trains is a mess. They don’t have school calendars because they don’t know the schedule of school holidays and breaks until days before. They inform you of rather vital pieces of information about three seconds before it is too late. The list could go on and on, but this is nothing new. So why devote a blog post to it? Here’s why: The inability of my school’s officials to plan reached a new, surprising level today.

A few months ago the English department head told me to start planning a “performance” for Christmas time with the students in my English Corner. English Corner is a select group of students from each class who come for what is essentially an extra oral English class every week. “Come” is a term that is used loosely here as students are more than often absent from English Corner. They typically can’t come to class because they have to do things that their head teacher has deemed more important during the time that my class is scheduled. You may agree that running around the track, cleaning the school, and practicing writing are all far more important than an extra English class held by the most unimportant teacher at the school.

At any rate, I was instructed to produce four “performances” with each of my two English Corners. When I asked what type of “performances” they were looking for, my liaison replied, “Maybe the students can sing, dance, do a skit, or whatever you want. It’s up to you.” Using these loose instructions, I came up with a program for each class. My Tuesday class would sing two Christmas songs, recite a traditional Christmas poem, and present a Christmas themed acrostic and the Thursday class would do a variation on the same.

For the last two months the few students who attend class and I have been working hard to get our acts ready. We’ve drawn, colored, practiced our lines, and learned our lyrics. It was quite a challenge to get the students ready when I couldn’t really be sure who would be on hand from week to week or if a specific student would ever be present again. There were times that I felt like I was being given an impossible task, but I am really pleased with the show that my students and I are ready to put on.

Late Thursday afternoon I found out from my liaison that a rehearsal for the performance was scheduled for the next day and that the students and their parents had been informed that the show would be on the following Monday. When pressed for details, she said that our little shindig would begin at 7:00 pm in the music room. I was give four whole days notice! I should have known it was too good to be true.

Today, I arrived at school ready for the performance in the evening. During my second class of the day a student asked me if we would be practicing the Twelve Days of Christmas at English Corner on Tuesday. I said that we wouldn’t because the performance would be over. “No,” she said, “the performance will not be over. It is not today.” A little confused, I went back to my office after class to find out what was going on. My sitemate, Kelly, informed me that the performances had indeed been postponed. Apparently our liaison told her that there were no free rooms to hold our mini-Christmas pageant. Who in the world schedules a variety show that students and teachers have been working on for months without checking if there are any open rooms, you ask? Chinese middle school officials, that’s who.

When I told my friend, Caroline, the story of the ill planned pageant she knew all too well where I’m coming from. She said, “I think Chinese middle school administrators are allergic to planning ahead… This is what I think our school says sometime, ‘The foreigners want to know what's going on, but we refuse to make firm plans for anything, so let’s just tell them something and change it at the last minute’.” I think she’s right. They have no idea what's going on themselves, so they just make up details to keep us quiet.

I've decided to named this allergy "Inability-to-plan-itis" and plan on setting up a support group nearly next year called Inability-to-plan-itis Anonymous (or ITPA). I'll have to plan everything myself: left to their own devices nothing would ever be scheduled.

The latest news is that the performance will be held, “later this week or next week.” I’m not going to hold my breath.