Introducing Zappa! "For BRAIN POWER!" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

你们好!

Introducing Zappa!

"For BRAIN POWER!" "Zappa! is an all natural supplement that stimulates brain activity. Popular with American university students during Finals Week, it can be taken directly or mixed with the beverage of your choosing. Tasteless and odorless, it aids memory, recollection, and mental alertness!"

Now before you start thinking I am trying to sell homemade heroin on the blog, hear me out! At the end of last semester, I gave my students a take-home "final exam": Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story, "The Lottery" (click if you haven't read it) and asked them to write a simple 1-2 page composition detailing their reaction to the story's "ridiculous" (the most popular adjective in their essays) ending and how the story was relevant to personal experiences from their own lives. I gave the assignment and said nothing more. All Spring Festival, I read hundreds of these essays, collected interesting quotations from a select few, and just this past week addressed the story/assignment to the class. But before that....

I want to thank my lovely mother, who sent me a huge crate of Zappa! in the mail. I chopped it up into small cubes and passed out tissues to all my students. I used a pair of Peace Corps-issued tweezers to disperse the Zappa!, because every American college student knows you can't touch Zappa! with your bare hands or the active chemical in it would be compromised. As I carefully placed the fragile cube on their tissues, some of their faces moved curiously close to the Zappa! and gave it a really hard look. I gave myself a cube and, after raising my tissue, stuck the tip of my tongue onto the small cube and pulled it into my mouth, chewing quickly and then swallowing. The class followed.

The class quickly started, we did our speaking/thinking exercises, and after a 10 minute break, we started talking about "The Lottery" and the things they said in their essays (NOTE: If you want the handout with the complete quotations, send me an e-mail). Here are a few of my favorite quotations:

• "Today, we still follow like sheep. When seeing a report in the newspaper, we believe it without thinking; when knowing a piece of news from the TV, we accept it; when hearing an inflammatory speech, we respect it. But is it true? Is there something phony? Is there a stereotype which puzzled our right decision?...Because of conformism (conformity), we lose our creation; because of conformism, we stops thinking, because of conformism, we human being degenerate to animals"
• "We cannot tolerate to see the situation in Tibet worsen like in DRC, not let Taiwan be independent as Kosovo, not have an election like America does. We hold different history, different culture and different backgrounds. The tree that bear fruits in the outsider are unquestionably cannot always grow well on the soil of China"
• "Sometimes opposition is not enough. Last year, almost all the students in our major asked the school to change a better dormitory for us, or at least gave us a shower. We wrote a letter to school and we all signed our name on it. But our school didn’t take any action, and in other words, our school just ignored our request. Though we felt very angry about it, we can do nothing. Perhaps we need to adapt ourselves to our environment."

And a quotation that received many laughs and nodding heads:

• "It seems that people can only be happy when they see others unhappy. I have to admit that I have also had this kind of feeling. My friend ____'s boyfriend is gorgeous and they look very happy. I really envy them. Once ____ had a quarrel with her boyfriend and cried in front of me. I felt sorry for her and tried to comfort her. I could feel the smile inside my heart. That was true. I could feel it and even hear it."

We talked about these quotations; some students said some really interesting things that I believe aren't normally shared in a Chinese university classroom (setting aside tradition for modernism, wanting a say in political affairs, etc.) but there was still many who regurgitated the Party line: "The West should stay out of our affairs. The monks in Tibet like their hard life - it's part of their culture." The Peace Corps and SWU told me when I arrived that I shouldn't talk about the "Three T's" (Taiwan, Tibet, and 19_89 Tian_an_m_en - the last still being too controversial to discuss in a classroom) but I slowly start to see I don't need to bring them up in class - the students make connections themselves. That is wonderful.

And finally, in the last 5 minutes of class, I ask the students where their Zappa! is, and ask them why they ate it. "You did it!" they yelled. The week before, I gave everyone a fortune cookie my mother had actually mailed from home. They were primed for receiving presents. "Guess what? Zappa! doesn't exist...I made it up. It's poison - (Phil looks at his watch) - you have 5 minutes to live." The class sits back quickly and stares at me with a mixture of curiosity, catharsis, and pure fear. "Just kiddin'" I say.

"What how many things are like Zappa! in your life? How many things do you just accept and put into your body or mind without thinking and asking yourself, 'Wait a minute! What?!' What is your Zappa!?"

Heads nod, small smiles, working brains.

Of course, maybe they will never trust me again. But I would rather have them not trust me than compliantly swallow without first thinking if they should put something or idea in their mouths/minds. "Never forget Zappa!" I tell them before the bell rings.

What's your Zappa!?

I love and miss you all,

Phil

蓝麦飞

References:

• Lu Xun's "The Medicine"
• Zappa! is just Chinese snack food called 禄豆糕 I bought in Guangxi Province. Hard Bean Cake. 不好吃!