I have got a fame! part 2
I mentioned that a couple weeks ago I was interviewed by an intern from China Business News.  The article was finally published today. 
Actually, I thought the interview might never see the light of day.¬† What happened was that I mentioned it to someone in the grad school here, telling them the writer wanted to come to my class and take some photos of me teaching.¬† That person was worried it wasn’t okay, and went to talk to the head of the graduate school.¬† Then the head of the graduate school talked to the head of the waiban.¬† She told me I should not give any statements to the press without the school’s permission, and she also told the photographer he couldn’t come into the school.¬† She said because of the former mayor of Shanghai’s troubles (he was just involved in a scandal that apparently had something to do with taking money from foreigners), the school had to be really careful about its relationship with foreign teachers.¬† I was wondering if without a pic, the story wouldn’t run, but it was published today.¬† I talked to the guy from the newspaper, and he talked about all of this as a freedom of speech issue, that the school had no right to restrict his right to go anywhere he wanted to take pictures.¬† They may have even asked him to quash the story, but I’m not sure.¬†
As for the story itself, it is part of an article called “Foreign teachers’ happy life in Shanghai.”¬† There were two other interviewees, a Japanese woman and an English man.¬† I was kind of worried the article would say wildly inaccurate things.¬† My friend Megan B. was interviewed in Shenzhen, and when she read the article about her, it said she was a barmaid from Germany, when in fact she was a teacher from the United States.¬† I think MOST of it is stuff I really said, but the quotes are mostly paraphrased.¬† This isn’t kosher in the American journalism, but apparently it is in China.¬† Maybe it was partly done to put my replies into better, or more standard Chinese.¬† I’m not sure.¬† It did have one wholly fictitious story, though.¬† In it, I talk about how my students gave me cards for Teachers’ Day, when in fact that never happened.¬† Actually, the semester hadn’t even started on Teachers’ Day.¬†
Here’s a link to the article, but it’s only part of the article, and for some reason the Chinese characters don’t display on my computer …
http://china-cbn.com/s/n/005004005/20061013/020000028402.shtml