It was a moment that really resonated with this teacher’s soul.
Midway through my teaching residency at Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences School (CUAS) of Music in March 2015, I gave a two-hour voice masterclass, during which I worked with individual singers on their chosen repertoire and also discussed and answered questions — all through a translator, mind you — about how we teach music at the college level in the U.S. When I asked who might like to sing, a young baritone raised his hand, and then he excitedly came to the stage. He had prepared an aria from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, one that the title character sings at the end of the first act. The first vocal entrance was proving difficult for him, so I motioned to him and said, “Together?” I stepped over next to him at the piano and indicated to the pianist to start again. We worked out that musical entrance and sang the first few phrases as a duet, despite Mozart’s intention. We laughed, and then he carried on, quite successfully. Later on in the class, when speaking about the universality of musical language and artistic expression, I reminded the audience that, even though this particular singer spoke only Chinese and I only English, we both spoke Mozart! My experience in Chongqing and my teaching residency at the university was full of such human moments.
I arrived on a Friday, exhausted from travel, and was met at Jiangbei International Airport in Chongqing by three friendly faces asking, “Are you from Virginia?” Once we all determined that we were indeed looking for one another, they folded me into the car and we set off for the “town” of Yongchuan, about an hour away. No amount of research could have prepared me for the population in China. (The population of Yongchuan District, where the town is located, was almost 1,000,000 back in 2000!) People are everywhere, and high-rise apartment buildings, both existing and under construction, dominate the urban landscape. The population of China is currently estimated to be 1.4 billion, while the U.S. population is approximately 325 million. This was certainly a perspective adjuster! (Population data from United Nations data and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.)
As much as I wanted to share everything with friends and family at home, I was stymied by a firewall put in place last fall by the Chinese government. All things Google were blocked (so no SU email or Gmail) and Facebook and Twitter were unavailable. Luckily, I had an old Yahoo account that I no longer used but happily had not cancelled. With that and FaceTime, I was able to stay connected to my Shenandoah students and colleagues and my world at home.
To offer some context for my journey to China, the relationship between Shenandoah Conservatory and CUAS has been in development since President Tracy Fitzsimmons, then-Academic Vice President Bryon Grigsby, and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Voice Aimé Sposato made an initial visit in the spring of 2011. Dr. Sposato has developed a passion for international travel and exchange experiences for both students and faculty. She was instrumental in setting up the articulation agreement between the two schools and continues to champion this relationship. We have hosted faculty from CUAS, and other faculty from the Conservatory have visited there. Currently, Dr. Sposato sees this as an exciting opportunity for faculty exchanges. As with any such relationship, she is excited to see how this one flourishes.
My first weekend in China was mostly a blur. Travel-weary and jet-lagged, I graciously accepted my hosts’ offers to show me around the town and the university campus. I even met some of the students I would be teaching, though I barely remember these encounters! Monday morning, I was off to start my week of teaching. My daily schedule went something like this: 10:20 a.m. – noon, individual instruction (voice lessons); noon– 3:15 p.m., lunch and siesta (yes, siesta!); and 3:25 p.m. – 6 p.m., more voice lessons. On Wednesday, I taught the morning lessons and spent the afternoon in the recital hall giving the masterclass. Whereas at Shenandoah, my private teaching is, well, private, the lessons at Chongqing were always in a classroom and in front of an audience (and cameras!). At first, the voice students were unsure of my methods. It seemed that they were waiting for me to identify what was wrong and tell them how to fix it, a more detached and traditional “old-world” master-student relationship, perhaps. By day two, however, the word was out: this visitor from America was enthusiastic and supportive, he was knowledgeable, he asked questions, he praised what was good before offering technical or musical guidance, he sang with the student; in short, he was willing to try anything he was asking of the student! The students and I got along famously.
Chongqing University comprises three campuses. The campus where the School of Music is located is a 40-minute bus ride from the campus where my apartment was located. After lunch on my first day of teaching, I was taken to a beautiful building overlooking a lake. Here, the Vice-Dean signed out a room for me to “rest.” There was a comfortable bed, chairs and a table, and of course a way to make tea. In the midst of a very noisy week, I welcomed this 45-minute daily escape. I took off my shoes, stretched out, read a book, made tea, and listened to the birds. It certainly changed how the afternoon felt!
It seems that this emphasis on rest, what we call “down time,” and what we frequently forgo in our busy, productive society, is especially important in a country with so many residents. I also remarked at how mealtimes are just that. At Shenandoah, it’s not unusual for me to sit at the dining hall in front of my laptop or iPhone, trying to keep up with email or to catch up with what I may have missed during my morning lessons. During lunch in the faculty dining hall at Chongqing, however, when I pulled out a small notebook to make a few notes for myself, everyone looked at me as if I were committing some horrible faux pas. I laughed at myself, put the notebook away, and enjoyed lunch while talking and laughing with my new friends.
Toward the end of the week, it seemed that every moment was spent with a student who had questions about singing, teaching, music, life in America, the English language…it was delightful to share our experiences. Even the 10-minute breaks between lessons seemed to be filled with students who wanted to sing for me. In some instances, these were students who had worked with me earlier in the week and were anxious to show how they had incorporated what they learned into their singing.
The Chinese are clearly proud of their culture. I was treated to numerous “hot pot” meals, a specialty of the region. At a hot pot restaurant, a group sits around a table in the center of which is a huge basin of hot, spicy broth over a flame. The server brings plates of duck, fish, pork, and vegetables, and each person selects and cooks his or her own dinner. It is a wonderfully active and interactive way to eat!
And tea: Yongchuan is known for its tea. The cultural and social significance of tea (preparing it, serving it, drinking it) is obvious. The cup or bowl must be heated, the water brought to the appropriate temperature, and the leaves allowed to open for fullest aroma and taste. On my first teaching day, a student brought me a cup of coffee, since he figured this American needed to be fueled by java to make it through the day. It was awful, but I smiled, said “thank you,” and drank what I could. Then, I casually mentioned that I also enjoyed tea — that was all it took. For the rest of my time at the university, my tea mug was kept full all day. I learned that, with high quality tea, one could refresh the leaves with more hot water as many as five times. When the vice-dean heard that I wanted to take some tea home with me, she took me to a very fine tea shop—she knew the proprietor—so that I could experience the best.
After a life-changing experience like this, I could either choose to focus on the countless small, revelatory moments I experienced in terms of food, drink and everyday habits, or I could think about the odd familiarity of it all. I was in south-central China, spoke no Chinese, was in the racial and ethnic minority, and yet I was constantly reminded of our shared fabric of experience. Once I scratched the surface, I found that we had so much in common when it came to singing, artistic expression and the human condition.
I was treated with such warmth and respect during my time at CUAS. Yes, we had linguistic and cultural differences, but our connection was immediate and deep. Before I left, I performed a short recital, sharing the stage with two members of the voice faculty and a number of students with whom I had worked during the previous week. I included some of my favorite pieces, a nice variety which showed my musical “personality.” As a gift to their community, I chose to learn a Chinese folk song to close the recital. (For help with this, I contacted Dr. Tian-xu Zhou at UMass Dartmouth — Tian-xu received his doctoral degree from Shenandoah Conservatory in 2011, and I served as his document advisor.) He suggested a Mongolian folk song, which he was confident everyone would know. Tian-xu recorded the words, sent those recordings to me, and I practiced as best I could, once I had transcribed the Chinese into International Phonetic Alphabet. My performance was well received and the audience enthusiastically accepted my attempt at singing in Chinese (in front of a Chinese audience, no less!).
The night before my departure, I enjoyed one more delicious hot pot. As I was dropped off at my apartment after dinner, Vice-Dean Zhang, who had become a great friend during my stay, extended her hand to shake mine. I looked at her, shook my head, and said, “Oh no. American hugs, please!” We all laughed, and got out of the car. There we stood, Vice-Dean Zhang, her daughter, also a voice student, and my translator, Miss Xia, all chatting beside the car on a warm, spring evening, not one of us eager to leave the company of the others. It could have been anywhere in the world, but it just happened to be on a Chinese university campus. Though I was ready to come home and focus on the last half of the semester at Shenandoah, in many ways I did not want that moment to end, standing there talking with my new friends, feeling that nothing was more important in the world than that shared moment.
Contributed by Byron Jones