By MICHELLE WONG
Editor-in-Chief
 

"Only connect ... " wrote E.M. Forster at the beginning of his modern novel "Howard's End." This is advice I had to keep in mind in piecing together parts of the elliptical two-hour conversation I had with Liu, a man of letters and a visiting lecturer in the department of German,Russian, and East Asian Languages and Literatures.

Our conversation over pasta with pesto took sharp turns and twists, repeatedly crashing into theoretical walls. The following is what I pulled from the wreckage in my notebook:

For Liu and Bates students, the College is just a brief stop on the career path itinerary that leads into the great unknown - what will happen to all of us when we leave.

Liu, who is at Bates only for the fall semester semester, came via a MLA (Modern Language Association) conference whereby academics present papers and a job fair is held for doctoral candidates and others seeking work.

At the time he attended the conference, Liu was a graduate instructor at Duke University in North Carolina, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in English literature. His dissertation concerned Chinese critical theory and contemporary Western thinking and postcolonialism; these are also the areas in which he subsequently taught.

As an instructor at Duke, he said that he worked as "cheap labor." Bates is a better deal, he said, but did not disclose details.

"It's a good idea for the school to cut into its budgetary plan," he said with reference to Bates. "They need somebody to fill the position for only half a year."

So, Liu said, "I'm still in the job market."

A professor who has both learned and taught in China and the United States, Liu said he misses China, "It's a beautiful country." Nonetheless, he plans to remain in the United States.

He is not tied to academia, although all his confided intellectual pursuits are linked to language.

Enter the topic of the scholar Eagleton into our conversation. Liu translates the literary theorist's work into Mandarin. Liu proceeded to question me about him, for Eagleton is stationed at the college where I studied abroad last year.

I said what I know: that the neo-Marxist Eagleton teaches graduate students at Wadham College, Oxford. He also delivers lectures to students from the whole University, and writes books that are quite accessible and understandable.

I said that I attended one of Eagleton's lectures about postmodernism; it was a plug for his latest book. I told Liu that the only parts of the lecture that I understood were Eagleton's jokes.

He nodded, and with that, we were on to Marxism. That gave us a segue intothe link of social responsibility to education. Liu then provided a comparison of the habits and attitudes of Chinese and American college students.

"They do have quite a different value system," Liu said about Chinese students. "There has been an influence of the free market economy on Chinese students' and universities' ethical standards, to be responsible and part of the program of building the country."

Chinese students feel that they have social responsibilities to do something for their society, he said. Liu and his peers, who were undergraduates about two decades ago, felt the same way.

Many of these students dream of working for the central government. "The more power you have, the more you can do for your people and your country," he said. "Civil servants dream of the power to do good, not to make money."

Liu is undecided about how he feels about this way of thinking. "I don't know whether it's good or not," he said.

What he is certain of, though, is what he wants students to do, and what he wants to do himself. "I want students to challenge the basic foundation of traditional, Western education," he said. "As a scholar, I'm challenging them, too."

At Duke, Liu said that his students tended to focus on their future careers' potential profitability. Students in his Chinese language classes there intended to learn to communicate verbally, go abroad and get into business, all with the intention of raking in the dollars.

Not so at Bates. Sipping caffeine-free diet Pepsi, Liu said that in his courses here, liberal arts majors seem more idealistic than capitalistic.

"I appreciate the ethics and moral standards of Bates students," he said.

But, he said, "They still have to think of a career. They still have to find a way to live in a very decent way" (meaning comfortably).

Faculty members could help students develop a better understanding about what life after Bates can bring, he said. "We should at least give students more of an idea about what's going on outside of campus."

When I asked Liu to give advice to students, he said that learning a foreign language is one investment that can pay off, and "choosing a class is like making an investment."

From his point of view, "it's not just for fun, or for an interest," he said.

Pausing and smiling, he said, "Maybe it is, if your parents are millionaires."