Every Friday afternoon around lunch time, the Epidemiology Department has a meeting. Everyone involved with the department goes to the main conference room on the 2nd floor around 11:30 (lunch time for many of the department), and gathers around the big table. Important people sit at the table and students sit in the chairs around the wall or in the back of the room. Most of the meetings start with the distribution of snack food (since its lunch time) which can vary from chocolate to crackers to dried fish and squid to beef jerky. The dried fish is very common, which I have learned to politely decline.
Then the meetings normally start with Dr. Qiao (my boss, and the head of the department) giving updates on research activities being done by members of the lab. He might let students talk, or not, depending, and normally he'll talk for about 30 minutes. Then one of the older staff members (whose name I can never remember) normally gives an angry diatribe about random things that the students can do better. She always seems so annoyed that its almost funny, the students tell us that no one likes her. Topics range from how the students don't clean the bathroom enough to not properly clocking out to washing your own desks…basically all silly mundane stuff that could be handled by email or in about 5 seconds in a meeting, not in 30 minutes of angry-sounding lecturing. I've personally named her 'Angry Lady' and my friends know exactly who I'm talking about.
Of course, since the entire meeting is in Chinese, Adam and I are pretty bored during these meetings, which can stretch anywhere from 1-1.5 hours. At the beginning of the year, we would both try hard to at least look attentive, looking at whoever was talking and sounding out Chinese words in our heads. However, its hard to look attentive for hours when you can't understand a thing, and we both kind of resent that we have to go at all, since its obvious to everyone involved that we can't understand what's happening. Its more of a show of interest in the department, and acceptance that since we're part of the department we have to go no matter what, than a mode of information exchange. SO, Adam and I have developed different modes of coping with the boredom -- he plays Snake on his cell phone, and I read classics on the book reader on my iPod. (only classics are free - right now i'm in the middle of the Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe).
The meeting last Friday was slightly more interesting than normal, however, as the diatribe by Angry Lady was focused on warning the students away from the 'protests' that are scheduled in Beijing in coming weeks. There is an anonymous person posting somewhere abroad (or perhaps in Beijing with a VPN) who is urging Beijingers to gather in a different shopping district each Sunday for a protest against the government and for human rights. So far, each protest has been attended by more police in riot gear than by demonstrators, but the government has shown signs of nervousness, including building a huge fake construction wall in front of the site of the first scheduled protest, deploying street cleaners to clear the street, and posting policemen every 5 feet. And apparently they've unleased the fury of local officials in the Communist party to lecture members to stay at home; Angry Lady is apparently an officer in the hospital's communist party, and so was authorized to lecture on the subject. Interestingly, all the students I asked during the meeting (in whispers, of course) did not know what the protests were about and felt that the government would be willing to change to make itself better, but that protests were a threat to stability. They sounded exactly like the propaganda coming from the government and Angry Lady herself, so I think she was preaching to the choir already anyway, but it made for an interesting meeting.
Then the meetings normally start with Dr. Qiao (my boss, and the head of the department) giving updates on research activities being done by members of the lab. He might let students talk, or not, depending, and normally he'll talk for about 30 minutes. Then one of the older staff members (whose name I can never remember) normally gives an angry diatribe about random things that the students can do better. She always seems so annoyed that its almost funny, the students tell us that no one likes her. Topics range from how the students don't clean the bathroom enough to not properly clocking out to washing your own desks…basically all silly mundane stuff that could be handled by email or in about 5 seconds in a meeting, not in 30 minutes of angry-sounding lecturing. I've personally named her 'Angry Lady' and my friends know exactly who I'm talking about.
Of course, since the entire meeting is in Chinese, Adam and I are pretty bored during these meetings, which can stretch anywhere from 1-1.5 hours. At the beginning of the year, we would both try hard to at least look attentive, looking at whoever was talking and sounding out Chinese words in our heads. However, its hard to look attentive for hours when you can't understand a thing, and we both kind of resent that we have to go at all, since its obvious to everyone involved that we can't understand what's happening. Its more of a show of interest in the department, and acceptance that since we're part of the department we have to go no matter what, than a mode of information exchange. SO, Adam and I have developed different modes of coping with the boredom -- he plays Snake on his cell phone, and I read classics on the book reader on my iPod. (only classics are free - right now i'm in the middle of the Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe).
The meeting last Friday was slightly more interesting than normal, however, as the diatribe by Angry Lady was focused on warning the students away from the 'protests' that are scheduled in Beijing in coming weeks. There is an anonymous person posting somewhere abroad (or perhaps in Beijing with a VPN) who is urging Beijingers to gather in a different shopping district each Sunday for a protest against the government and for human rights. So far, each protest has been attended by more police in riot gear than by demonstrators, but the government has shown signs of nervousness, including building a huge fake construction wall in front of the site of the first scheduled protest, deploying street cleaners to clear the street, and posting policemen every 5 feet. And apparently they've unleased the fury of local officials in the Communist party to lecture members to stay at home; Angry Lady is apparently an officer in the hospital's communist party, and so was authorized to lecture on the subject. Interestingly, all the students I asked during the meeting (in whispers, of course) did not know what the protests were about and felt that the government would be willing to change to make itself better, but that protests were a threat to stability. They sounded exactly like the propaganda coming from the government and Angry Lady herself, so I think she was preaching to the choir already anyway, but it made for an interesting meeting.
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