A Chinese Worker
Over the months I have come to know a person who works in our area, who is both interesting and in some ways typical of a class or workers that one meets here. She does indoor cleaning as well as yard work and various other duties for which she receives the equivalent of less than $100 USD per month. She's on the job 5 or 6 days per week pretty much from 8 a.m. till about 5 p.m. with the an extended lunch/rest time (休息) that used to be typical but that fewer and fewer workers now get. She and her husband are both from the countryside around the middle of the province, and while all of her siblings have left the farm to work in the city, her husband is the only one of his siblings to do so. He's a construction worker and is now in charge of a small construction team for a bigger company so probably does a little bit better, though construction workers of rural origin are typically not well paid for very hard work and very long hours. They are both probably in their early-mid 40s and have one son, who is 12 years old. She knows a bit of English and uses it with the foreigners she encounters on the job. In short, the folks she works for are lucky to have such a person for so little money. On top of that she is incredibly conscientious and energetic about her cleaning work, reflecting her rural upbringing—fearless in the face of hard work.
There is probably one way in which she is not typical: she finished senior high school and did 2 years of further of study, which could have qualified her to teach primary school. She was not very informative about why she didn't get that kind of job, but I suspect that one of the reasons is that it's much more competitive to get that kind of work in the city as opposed to being back in the village, and for the sake of her son it's better to be a cleaning person in the city than a primary school teacher in the village. There's a lot riding on this 12-year old boy. She has definite plans for college for him and possibly an eventual Ph.D. She asked me if I would spend a little time with him once in preparation for an English langauge speech contest competition. I agreed and was impressed that this 12-year old could function as well as he did in a foreign language. Indeed, he was first in his school but didn't progress to the next level in competition with students from other schools. His mother said it was because his school was less prestigious, suggesting that the students are not as good, though the pecking order might well have influenced the judges' opinions.
Social class is something we have talked about and something that, like most urban workers from the countryside, she is keenly aware of. She has mentioned feeling looked down on for her job and her rural origins even though she is obviously very intelligent and more intellectually alert than lots of professors I know. During several conversations, she has mentioned my treating her as an equal (给我平等), which prompted me to mention my own class background and my political beliefs that this is her due and not a matter of anything I bestow on her out of some manner of kindness.
She is well read and has well-informed opinions on many issues. She doesn't read the mainline newpapers but tries to get information from various sources to triangulate what the truth might be. She opposes the death penalty, a minority view in China, and is very concerned about the environment. Her views about the US are quite positive to the point of being generous perhaps, but she quite correctly sees Americans as more concerned about the environment and more governed by laws than personal relations. During the 17th National Communist Party Congress meeting back in October she was hopeful to hear the "leaders" (领导人) talk about issues like the environment, inflation and rural development, but at the same time blasts them as corrupt and untrustworthy. I told her of my experiences in the countryside sleeping on a kang (炕) with a whole family and shitting in their common hole and such things, and she laughed that one of these people would never do that (not any more than George Bush or Bill Clinton would either). In spite of her mistrust of such people, she seems to be resigned as most are here that these people make the policy decisions and people like her are pretty much left to hoping for the best from them.
Recently we had a really interesting discussion about rural and agricultural issues. This really got her going. She feels that the biggest issue in the country is the plight of farmers. Since she grew up in a rural village and now lives in a city she knows both, but city people don't have a clue about what the countryside is about and most of the political and economic power is now in their hands. She said they wouldn't be able to tell a corn stalk from wheat. Of course, I egged her on and she agreed with me that the national government probably had no real intention of improving the rural economy or rural living conditions and was probably far more interested in getting more and more rural people into urban factories to produce goods for big export profit.
One thing that really set her off was coal mining deaths, which probably number around seven or so per day across the country. Quite recently there was one explosion that killed 180 some miners. As a person of rural origin, she said that she knows that it's the desperately poorest of the poor rural people who go down into the mines. Everyone knows the risk and no one goes unless there are no other choices. The compensation that they receive after getting killed is the biggest insult of all. She doesn't believe at all the stats that come on the TV about the numbers of miners' deaths and believes it's much worse than what gets reported.
She had lots of interesting things to say about local farming. She said that it used to be that the farmers in her area could drill down 3 meters to get ground water to pump for irrigation and now it's 10. (One student told me in her area they have to drill 30 meters now. No wonder I see so many posters in the countryside for well drilling. It must be big business.) Also, there used to be about 2 to 3 feet of snow in winter, but in recent years there has hardly been a few inches. Thus, farmers have to pump and irrigate even more as a result of the lack of snow for winter wheat and the ground water is hardly being replenished at all.
Chemical fertilizer is another issue. Nowadays farmers don't want to raise pigs and cows and use the fertilizer on their fields. It's easier just to use chemical fertilizer. Yields keep going up but the soil is depleted more every year. I told her that one Minnesota farm boy once told me that the soil in his southern family farm didn't do a damn thing except hold up the crop. Everything else comes from Monsanto or whatever.
She decries all the investment in planes and high tech hardware and whatever at the expense of agriculture. If agriculture collapses, what will all these people eat? She feels that no matter what "development" comes about there will still be more workers than engineers so why aren't the lives of workers being attended to? She had all kinds of stats that she was firing at me about how many people per hectare and stats about the loss of agricultural land and how she doesn't believe what the government puts out about these issues. Even if I were a trained stenographer and native speaker I could not have kept up with her. Inflation was another big issue. Her rural-urban experience tells her that both urban consumers and small scale rural producers are taking a hit. What she pays from shopping everyday does not jibe with the inflation numbers she hears on the evening news. It just ain't so.
Our last conversation ended with the usual grimmaces and head shakes accompanied by the very common phrase 没办法, meibanfa, 'no way,' 'no solution,' 'it can't be helped.’ It seems to be descriptive of so many situations, and not just in China. From the price of peanuts in Henan to the Iraq war, it seems that someone is always taking some links out of your chain, cutting down your running room, giving you more comps to corrrect and adding the earnings from your sweat and your sleepless nights to their travel money. 肯定有办法. There has to be a way.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Christmas in Xinxiang
Christmas in Xinxiang
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Xinxiang. Trips downtown over the past two weekends have revealed some evidence of capitalist Christmas in Xinxiang, something totally unheard of in years past. Of course, it all has to do with promoting shopping. A couple of stores have life-size Santas in the windows and one of them is playing a sax out in front of the store as Jingle Bells wanders into the street from somewhere inside. Of course, the stores with this Christmas hype are the more upscale places, where both customers and owners alike are just looking for one more excuse to buy and sell. In the biggest stores, all of the check out and sales staff, virtually all young women, are wearing red elf or Santa hats or whatever. I've seen literally hundreds of them in the past week or so. There was even one comely young woman totally in red velvet with a mock ermine trim cape at one sales station, and I was wondering what was so special about her get-up until she turned around and I saw Coca Cola embroidered in white across the back of the cape. Many other downtown stores have snow flakes, tinsel, streamers, trees and Santa faces taped to the windows.
In fact, the Christmas spirit has belatedly migrated from downtown to other parts of the city. Even our local department store, the Star Market (the title appears in both English and Chinese), has its clerks wearing Christmas caps, though these young (and not so young) ladies are less dolled up than their downtown counterparts. The neighborhood store even has a scrawny plastic Christmas tree right inside the entrance. The campus guest house next door also has fancy Santa faces taped to the restaurant doors with "Xmas" across Santa's chubby face and beard. A nice touch. I was out for a walk the other day and saw that one of the local internet bars also had Santa faces taped to its doors. Old Saint Nick's likeness happened to be right under the sign that said "No admittance to those under 18 years of age." Good advice for those venturing into capitalist Christmas. Caveat emptor.
For sure the biggest displays were at the city's biggest department store, Pang Dong Lai (胖东来). This store has everything you could expect to buy before Christmas in the upscale shopping districts of the Twin Cities except it's just more concentrated due to the fact that the number of people who can afford such stuff is smaller. There are Hong Kong jewelers, French wines (Bordeaux for about $25 US—I passed), European watches and plenty of brand name clothes. In the basement one can find a lavish food store with many fancy things hard to get elsewhere. It very much reminded me of similar places in Kobe or Taipei complete with an extensive food court. It's the one place where we can get nice western style bread and butter as well. There are sweepers and moppers constantly moving around in the crowds getting up every bit of trash and every stain from the highly polished floors. Target managers would be envious.
The characters in the name of Pang Dong Lai literally mean 'fat' 'east' 'come,' "Fatness Comes to the East," referring to the idea, I would guess, that China—the heart of the East—has arrived. Fat city is here, at least for some. How appropriate to connect it with Christmas, the ultimate fat city for sellers around the world and now for China as well.
A few days ago the local newspaper had an interesting article on the phenomenon of Christmas decoration shopping. They quoted one "happy" manager, who reported that the sales of Christmas items are going up every year. "Christmas is getting closer to the common people (老百姓) every year," he said. He noted that it used to be only stores that that bought Christmas decorations, but now average people are also buying them up. The place was hopping with people who were "wondering if this Santa sings or how many snowflakes are in that package." About half the article talked about how most of the Christmas articles were shoddy or even potentially toxic without indications of who made them or where they were made—Disney toys from Haiti perhaps!? In any case the reporter indicated that these issues were not of concern to the enthusiastic shoppers s/he spoke to.
Needless to say there are no religious items or themes in evidence, not because China is a godless communist country, but more likely just because there's no money to be made in selling them. But that day may not be far off.
On a personal note, this is not my first Christmas in China, but maybe because there's just one other American working here or just because we are thousands of miles from the hard core source of Christmas hype, I seem totally unaffected by it. We're far from family and the 25th is just another work day and my stacks of essays are even higher as the semester draws to a close in two weeks—not much time for the holiday spirit. Anyway, on the bright side, there are still 367 shopping days till Christmas of 2008. Happy Holidays!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Xinxiang. Trips downtown over the past two weekends have revealed some evidence of capitalist Christmas in Xinxiang, something totally unheard of in years past. Of course, it all has to do with promoting shopping. A couple of stores have life-size Santas in the windows and one of them is playing a sax out in front of the store as Jingle Bells wanders into the street from somewhere inside. Of course, the stores with this Christmas hype are the more upscale places, where both customers and owners alike are just looking for one more excuse to buy and sell. In the biggest stores, all of the check out and sales staff, virtually all young women, are wearing red elf or Santa hats or whatever. I've seen literally hundreds of them in the past week or so. There was even one comely young woman totally in red velvet with a mock ermine trim cape at one sales station, and I was wondering what was so special about her get-up until she turned around and I saw Coca Cola embroidered in white across the back of the cape. Many other downtown stores have snow flakes, tinsel, streamers, trees and Santa faces taped to the windows.
In fact, the Christmas spirit has belatedly migrated from downtown to other parts of the city. Even our local department store, the Star Market (the title appears in both English and Chinese), has its clerks wearing Christmas caps, though these young (and not so young) ladies are less dolled up than their downtown counterparts. The neighborhood store even has a scrawny plastic Christmas tree right inside the entrance. The campus guest house next door also has fancy Santa faces taped to the restaurant doors with "Xmas" across Santa's chubby face and beard. A nice touch. I was out for a walk the other day and saw that one of the local internet bars also had Santa faces taped to its doors. Old Saint Nick's likeness happened to be right under the sign that said "No admittance to those under 18 years of age." Good advice for those venturing into capitalist Christmas. Caveat emptor.
For sure the biggest displays were at the city's biggest department store, Pang Dong Lai (胖东来). This store has everything you could expect to buy before Christmas in the upscale shopping districts of the Twin Cities except it's just more concentrated due to the fact that the number of people who can afford such stuff is smaller. There are Hong Kong jewelers, French wines (Bordeaux for about $25 US—I passed), European watches and plenty of brand name clothes. In the basement one can find a lavish food store with many fancy things hard to get elsewhere. It very much reminded me of similar places in Kobe or Taipei complete with an extensive food court. It's the one place where we can get nice western style bread and butter as well. There are sweepers and moppers constantly moving around in the crowds getting up every bit of trash and every stain from the highly polished floors. Target managers would be envious.
The characters in the name of Pang Dong Lai literally mean 'fat' 'east' 'come,' "Fatness Comes to the East," referring to the idea, I would guess, that China—the heart of the East—has arrived. Fat city is here, at least for some. How appropriate to connect it with Christmas, the ultimate fat city for sellers around the world and now for China as well.
A few days ago the local newspaper had an interesting article on the phenomenon of Christmas decoration shopping. They quoted one "happy" manager, who reported that the sales of Christmas items are going up every year. "Christmas is getting closer to the common people (老百姓) every year," he said. He noted that it used to be only stores that that bought Christmas decorations, but now average people are also buying them up. The place was hopping with people who were "wondering if this Santa sings or how many snowflakes are in that package." About half the article talked about how most of the Christmas articles were shoddy or even potentially toxic without indications of who made them or where they were made—Disney toys from Haiti perhaps!? In any case the reporter indicated that these issues were not of concern to the enthusiastic shoppers s/he spoke to.
Needless to say there are no religious items or themes in evidence, not because China is a godless communist country, but more likely just because there's no money to be made in selling them. But that day may not be far off.
On a personal note, this is not my first Christmas in China, but maybe because there's just one other American working here or just because we are thousands of miles from the hard core source of Christmas hype, I seem totally unaffected by it. We're far from family and the 25th is just another work day and my stacks of essays are even higher as the semester draws to a close in two weeks—not much time for the holiday spirit. Anyway, on the bright side, there are still 367 shopping days till Christmas of 2008. Happy Holidays!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Wednesdays with Bob
Wednesdays with Bob
Since about the 3rd week of the semester I have had open meetings with students for 2 hours on Wednesday afternoons for whoever wants to come to chat about anything. I was told by somebody in the English department that I didn't have to bother to do this, but I went ahead anyway. I actually had two motives. One was to head off having students come to the apartment because I just don't have the time given my work load. The second was that I really did want to have a chance to get students' views on things but on their own turf. If I just had an open house, only the most outgoing ones would come. I did it this way in Shengyang in the early 90s, and it worked out pretty well.
It has been interesting. The first week I had the most people, about 30, and the first comment/question was what book of the Bible I most recommended them to read. I actually gave a considered and somewhat detailed answer and then went on to tell them that while I thought that it was important to know about Christianity for purposes of understanding western culture, I myself was no longer a believer. I asked them if they were surprised, and indeed they were. Maybe the Christian crowd among the students thought that these sessions would or could be turned into a Bible study group. Well, I gave my reasons for not believing and then the discussion went on to why not believe if it can offer some comfort in this increasingly isolated and alienated post-modern world. My answer was simply that those energies would be better spent asking ourselves why modern society was like this and doing something about it—actively working on those problems instead of running to church (though I conceded that there were church goers doing both). I said I thought there were plenty of things we could start working on right now. However, there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this approach. Anyway, that was the first and last of the visits of the Bible study group.
The other big contingent on that first day back in September was the get-rich-quick crowd. Did I want go get rich and isn't that the most important thing to do right now in China? Well, no, I didn't think that either and gave my reasons there too. In fact, quite a lot of young people enthusiastically buy into the idea of getting rich and becoming a philanthropist...a bit later in life, of course. However, it is also convenient to hold this view because it's the party line and government policy. Buying into the neoliberal export economy and letting some "get rich first" is presented as the quickest route to enriching the country. Lots of students embrace this and it's hard to criticize success. You can see the effects of 10 years of double-digit economic growth everywhere. Even in a hinterland place like Xinxiang there's new construction everywhere and lots of really nice stuff to buy. This was another case of not getting the expected answer from the American, so that was the last of that group as well.
Students are very interested in the US and curious about US attitudes about China. We have spent a good deal of time breaking down stereotypes about Americans: All Jews support Israel, all blacks are poor, all whites are well off, all Americans are Christians, etc. and other issues of race, class and gender. Students are anxious to travel and see the US and the world for themselves, but this group will have to do a good bit of waiting because they are not well off by any means or they would not be in this school. Snide comments about "high class Chinese" here or in the US are pretty well received. These students of largely rural origin know the meaning of social class and they don't have much use for such people.
I try to get them to be more realistic about the US as I have had to get more realistic about China. Each place has plenty of its own issues and some advantages, but the more I move back and forth the more I see similarities. I couldn't find answers for the problems of the US by coming here any more than they can solve the problems of China by assuming that they have already been solved in the US. The problems of both places are just variations on the same themes—income gaps, no health care, lack of democracy, assembly line education, social class, gender inequalities, indirect rule by a rich elite served by a political establishment, etc.
The students who continue to come on Wednesday afternoons are mostly those who are interested in these political, social and economic issues in the US and China and around the world. The discussions can get heavy and sometimes difficult or even discouraging. From student writing, I know lots are in la-la land or, more accurately, in a state of denial, but not those who are still coming to these discussions. Once a student even started crying from feeling so overwhelmed with the world's problems and the powerlessness she felt both as a Chinese citizen and as a single human being. The fact she could cry at least indicates a sensitivity which lots have discovered is most conveniently left behind. No wonder that only less than 10 still come.
There's a good bit of cynicism among some of them. We discussed rural education, which lags so far behind what's available in the city, and I said that the government could, for example, decide to pay rural teachers more, though I recognized that it wouldn't ever happen. But even the mention of the example of the government doing something like that just produced cynical sneers in some of these 19-year-olds. Many feel that while China had made stunning economic progress, it has regressed spiritually in many other ways. As an example, one mentioned that twenty years ago director Zhang Yimou was producing challenging reflective films but now is just turning out trash for cash.
I've mentioned several times in these group discussions my doubts about how long the US can stay on top of the world heap. This surprises them. The attitude here is that China can "cooperate" with the US to "develop" China for a long time to come. To the students the US seems pretty invincible though their hope is for a multi-polar world in the future rather than China somehow replacing the US as the new world power.
In some ways, I'm a little surprised they are not more on top if world news. But this is just another similarity between the countries. They are, of course, busy but also as cynical about news sources as their counterparts in the US as well both should be given the Judith Miller-NY Times cheerleading role before the Iraq war and the People's Daily going on about a new harmonious society that's just around the corner.
It's difficult. Maybe for these bright mostly female students it's the problem of being served up a China that's still a feudal cake with the recent addition of a frosting of capitalist consumerism decked out with a few churchy vigil light candles on top. Eat it or go hungry. The western menu is not so different.
Since about the 3rd week of the semester I have had open meetings with students for 2 hours on Wednesday afternoons for whoever wants to come to chat about anything. I was told by somebody in the English department that I didn't have to bother to do this, but I went ahead anyway. I actually had two motives. One was to head off having students come to the apartment because I just don't have the time given my work load. The second was that I really did want to have a chance to get students' views on things but on their own turf. If I just had an open house, only the most outgoing ones would come. I did it this way in Shengyang in the early 90s, and it worked out pretty well.
It has been interesting. The first week I had the most people, about 30, and the first comment/question was what book of the Bible I most recommended them to read. I actually gave a considered and somewhat detailed answer and then went on to tell them that while I thought that it was important to know about Christianity for purposes of understanding western culture, I myself was no longer a believer. I asked them if they were surprised, and indeed they were. Maybe the Christian crowd among the students thought that these sessions would or could be turned into a Bible study group. Well, I gave my reasons for not believing and then the discussion went on to why not believe if it can offer some comfort in this increasingly isolated and alienated post-modern world. My answer was simply that those energies would be better spent asking ourselves why modern society was like this and doing something about it—actively working on those problems instead of running to church (though I conceded that there were church goers doing both). I said I thought there were plenty of things we could start working on right now. However, there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this approach. Anyway, that was the first and last of the visits of the Bible study group.
The other big contingent on that first day back in September was the get-rich-quick crowd. Did I want go get rich and isn't that the most important thing to do right now in China? Well, no, I didn't think that either and gave my reasons there too. In fact, quite a lot of young people enthusiastically buy into the idea of getting rich and becoming a philanthropist...a bit later in life, of course. However, it is also convenient to hold this view because it's the party line and government policy. Buying into the neoliberal export economy and letting some "get rich first" is presented as the quickest route to enriching the country. Lots of students embrace this and it's hard to criticize success. You can see the effects of 10 years of double-digit economic growth everywhere. Even in a hinterland place like Xinxiang there's new construction everywhere and lots of really nice stuff to buy. This was another case of not getting the expected answer from the American, so that was the last of that group as well.
Students are very interested in the US and curious about US attitudes about China. We have spent a good deal of time breaking down stereotypes about Americans: All Jews support Israel, all blacks are poor, all whites are well off, all Americans are Christians, etc. and other issues of race, class and gender. Students are anxious to travel and see the US and the world for themselves, but this group will have to do a good bit of waiting because they are not well off by any means or they would not be in this school. Snide comments about "high class Chinese" here or in the US are pretty well received. These students of largely rural origin know the meaning of social class and they don't have much use for such people.
I try to get them to be more realistic about the US as I have had to get more realistic about China. Each place has plenty of its own issues and some advantages, but the more I move back and forth the more I see similarities. I couldn't find answers for the problems of the US by coming here any more than they can solve the problems of China by assuming that they have already been solved in the US. The problems of both places are just variations on the same themes—income gaps, no health care, lack of democracy, assembly line education, social class, gender inequalities, indirect rule by a rich elite served by a political establishment, etc.
The students who continue to come on Wednesday afternoons are mostly those who are interested in these political, social and economic issues in the US and China and around the world. The discussions can get heavy and sometimes difficult or even discouraging. From student writing, I know lots are in la-la land or, more accurately, in a state of denial, but not those who are still coming to these discussions. Once a student even started crying from feeling so overwhelmed with the world's problems and the powerlessness she felt both as a Chinese citizen and as a single human being. The fact she could cry at least indicates a sensitivity which lots have discovered is most conveniently left behind. No wonder that only less than 10 still come.
There's a good bit of cynicism among some of them. We discussed rural education, which lags so far behind what's available in the city, and I said that the government could, for example, decide to pay rural teachers more, though I recognized that it wouldn't ever happen. But even the mention of the example of the government doing something like that just produced cynical sneers in some of these 19-year-olds. Many feel that while China had made stunning economic progress, it has regressed spiritually in many other ways. As an example, one mentioned that twenty years ago director Zhang Yimou was producing challenging reflective films but now is just turning out trash for cash.
I've mentioned several times in these group discussions my doubts about how long the US can stay on top of the world heap. This surprises them. The attitude here is that China can "cooperate" with the US to "develop" China for a long time to come. To the students the US seems pretty invincible though their hope is for a multi-polar world in the future rather than China somehow replacing the US as the new world power.
In some ways, I'm a little surprised they are not more on top if world news. But this is just another similarity between the countries. They are, of course, busy but also as cynical about news sources as their counterparts in the US as well both should be given the Judith Miller-NY Times cheerleading role before the Iraq war and the People's Daily going on about a new harmonious society that's just around the corner.
It's difficult. Maybe for these bright mostly female students it's the problem of being served up a China that's still a feudal cake with the recent addition of a frosting of capitalist consumerism decked out with a few churchy vigil light candles on top. Eat it or go hungry. The western menu is not so different.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Still Seventy Percent Feudal
Still Seventy Percent Feudal
This is basically a report on some conversations with the director of the foreign affairs office here, a very lively personality with very good English, a good sense of humor and interesting insights into life in China.
After some various issues came up about why things depend so much on people rather than clear policies and straight answers, he explained that it is necessary to remember that China is still 70% feudal, by which he meant that it's a hierarchical culture of relations not of rules. Everything depends on who you know and who you have done things for and who has done things for you. People do things for reasons. There's always a catch. It's an eternal merry-go-round. Let's have dinner--can you judge the speech contest？ Let's have lunch—can you give a 2-hour lecture at the art conference—in 2 days?! This is the kind of thing that has been going on for a few thousand years more or less.
As for the other 30%, he considers 20% of it to be capitalist and 10% socialist. He is optimistic about change, but it's tempered with reality. He feels it will probably take some decades to get the feudalism down to 60% and the capitalism up to 30%. It was clear that he would consider that to be progress and that the eventual near total capitalization of the Chinese economy would be a positive thing.
I would almost surely take him to be a party member. One doesn't get that far without it, so it's simply a matter of practicality. However, he was very strong about how the down and outs of society need to be taken care of. I presume this is his 10% socialism, and it gives some insight into how such people think about the nature of socialism in China. He felt this needed to be done not out of political expediency but out of a sense of morality and justice. This might set him apart from many who would certainly do it only for the former reason. Knowing him fairly well, I feel comfortable taking him at his word. He's kind of carved out some space for himself by placating or at least dealing with those who must be dealt with so as to be able to do what he likes and feels in important. In short, he has more successful in doing what I never could accomplish in my own university days.
He's had things to say about Mao now and then. On this his view is pretty much that of most intelligentsia. Mao was right to put his finger on feudalism, i.e. patriarchal social class, as the root of the basic inequality between classes and genders in traditional Chinese society, but he dealt with it himself in a patriarchal way, like a traditional emperor issuing edicts. Even worse, according to the director, he did it in a way that messed things up so badly in China for 10 years that no has been willing to deal with it again since, making the last state in some ways worse than the first. Yet, for me, at least Mao did try to confront it directly, but today's elite are comfortable—yes, very comfortable—with the idea of just letting the ruling oligarchy deal with social class and gender inequalities indirectly by manipulating the economy or throwing bones at various interest groups as the need arises.
His background gives some insight into things. He grew up in the Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, and is young enough that his Cultural Revolution experience came through the eyes of a child with no bad personal experience. His father managed some kind of mess hall during those times, so there was always something to eat. He is clearly a city person, urbane but not the least arrogant. He told a joke about a country guy who came to Xinxiang with his young son, who, seeing the city for the first time, asked his father if this was Beijing. No, silly boy, the father replied, Beijing is in Zhengzhou!
Henan province has always had the reputation of being a rural rather backwater place. He said that even the university people used to be rather rough on the edges too, but have come some way since his early days. People have gotten a little more refinement. He told the story of some department chair or other who some years ago came into the business office to get his reimbursement money and just entered the room rudely shouting “Where's the money?” as if he were barking orders to a waitress (as people usually do even now). One of the clerks just raised her head and responded, “Oh, are you here to hold us up?” and then put her head back down to her work. I guess people no longer do such things. Progress.
He had a funny comparison between the economy and skirt lengths. He said when the economy is good skirt lengths get shorter, but if it takes a dive skirt lengths get long again because the conservatives will be back in power managing a strict top-down economy accompanied by hosts of other conservative attitudes and policies. I told him he should write it up for publication in an economic journal. I do believe it could be proven with statistical data. I don't think we'd be lacking in volunteers to gather the data about skirt lengths.
From a dinner with him I recall a funny pun about Chinese people looking forward to the qiantu (前途) ‘the future’ and qiantu (钱途) ‘the way of money’. There are so many things like this. I just wish I could catch faster and remember them better. I should have stuck with French.
At this same dinner he talked about world leaders like Bush and Hu Jintao. He thought that what makes such people succeed is not brains (responding to my comment that Hu probably had some whereas Bush had obviously been shortchanged) but just guts. This is what allows them to get what they want. In this context he went on to say that he thought the US had about another 50 or 100 years before it would slide, not to obscurity or into some cataclysmic implosion, but just to the natural end of its world dominance. Without saying so, he was probably reflecting what most Chinese feel about their own future in the world—slow and steady wins the race. I had no contradictory evidence to offer, at least not about the United States. Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is basically a report on some conversations with the director of the foreign affairs office here, a very lively personality with very good English, a good sense of humor and interesting insights into life in China.
After some various issues came up about why things depend so much on people rather than clear policies and straight answers, he explained that it is necessary to remember that China is still 70% feudal, by which he meant that it's a hierarchical culture of relations not of rules. Everything depends on who you know and who you have done things for and who has done things for you. People do things for reasons. There's always a catch. It's an eternal merry-go-round. Let's have dinner--can you judge the speech contest？ Let's have lunch—can you give a 2-hour lecture at the art conference—in 2 days?! This is the kind of thing that has been going on for a few thousand years more or less.
As for the other 30%, he considers 20% of it to be capitalist and 10% socialist. He is optimistic about change, but it's tempered with reality. He feels it will probably take some decades to get the feudalism down to 60% and the capitalism up to 30%. It was clear that he would consider that to be progress and that the eventual near total capitalization of the Chinese economy would be a positive thing.
I would almost surely take him to be a party member. One doesn't get that far without it, so it's simply a matter of practicality. However, he was very strong about how the down and outs of society need to be taken care of. I presume this is his 10% socialism, and it gives some insight into how such people think about the nature of socialism in China. He felt this needed to be done not out of political expediency but out of a sense of morality and justice. This might set him apart from many who would certainly do it only for the former reason. Knowing him fairly well, I feel comfortable taking him at his word. He's kind of carved out some space for himself by placating or at least dealing with those who must be dealt with so as to be able to do what he likes and feels in important. In short, he has more successful in doing what I never could accomplish in my own university days.
He's had things to say about Mao now and then. On this his view is pretty much that of most intelligentsia. Mao was right to put his finger on feudalism, i.e. patriarchal social class, as the root of the basic inequality between classes and genders in traditional Chinese society, but he dealt with it himself in a patriarchal way, like a traditional emperor issuing edicts. Even worse, according to the director, he did it in a way that messed things up so badly in China for 10 years that no has been willing to deal with it again since, making the last state in some ways worse than the first. Yet, for me, at least Mao did try to confront it directly, but today's elite are comfortable—yes, very comfortable—with the idea of just letting the ruling oligarchy deal with social class and gender inequalities indirectly by manipulating the economy or throwing bones at various interest groups as the need arises.
His background gives some insight into things. He grew up in the Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, and is young enough that his Cultural Revolution experience came through the eyes of a child with no bad personal experience. His father managed some kind of mess hall during those times, so there was always something to eat. He is clearly a city person, urbane but not the least arrogant. He told a joke about a country guy who came to Xinxiang with his young son, who, seeing the city for the first time, asked his father if this was Beijing. No, silly boy, the father replied, Beijing is in Zhengzhou!
Henan province has always had the reputation of being a rural rather backwater place. He said that even the university people used to be rather rough on the edges too, but have come some way since his early days. People have gotten a little more refinement. He told the story of some department chair or other who some years ago came into the business office to get his reimbursement money and just entered the room rudely shouting “Where's the money?” as if he were barking orders to a waitress (as people usually do even now). One of the clerks just raised her head and responded, “Oh, are you here to hold us up?” and then put her head back down to her work. I guess people no longer do such things. Progress.
He had a funny comparison between the economy and skirt lengths. He said when the economy is good skirt lengths get shorter, but if it takes a dive skirt lengths get long again because the conservatives will be back in power managing a strict top-down economy accompanied by hosts of other conservative attitudes and policies. I told him he should write it up for publication in an economic journal. I do believe it could be proven with statistical data. I don't think we'd be lacking in volunteers to gather the data about skirt lengths.
From a dinner with him I recall a funny pun about Chinese people looking forward to the qiantu (前途) ‘the future’ and qiantu (钱途) ‘the way of money’. There are so many things like this. I just wish I could catch faster and remember them better. I should have stuck with French.
At this same dinner he talked about world leaders like Bush and Hu Jintao. He thought that what makes such people succeed is not brains (responding to my comment that Hu probably had some whereas Bush had obviously been shortchanged) but just guts. This is what allows them to get what they want. In this context he went on to say that he thought the US had about another 50 or 100 years before it would slide, not to obscurity or into some cataclysmic implosion, but just to the natural end of its world dominance. Without saying so, he was probably reflecting what most Chinese feel about their own future in the world—slow and steady wins the race. I had no contradictory evidence to offer, at least not about the United States. Not with a bang but a whimper.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Students on Life
Students on Life
For the first writing assignments, I had students write a journal and then an essay on the topic “A Theme in My Life.” Without much luck I first had a discussion on Erich Fromm's idea of being and having to get them away from seeing their lives just in terms of a job. It was a failure. Without a single exception all 360 of them produced “journals” that were in fact canned essays on the jobs they wanted. A number noted that they had never been asked to think about their lives in this way, so maybe that was part of the problem, but mostly it was just the default mode kicking in. When it was time to turn the journals into essays, I remained very insistent that they go beyond the idea of describing a job to a reflection on what meaning or significance they hoped to give to their lives. They were free to bring in the jobs they hoped to get, but the jobs had to be a part of a larger theme.
I had some mild success. There were a number of common themes, which said some things about life in contemporary China for these students. First, it must be recalled that this is a provincial teachers college of 20,000 students, who are overwhelmingly first generation college. Maybe half are from small rural villages around the province; many others are the children of factory workers in some medium size cities with a minority being the children of K-12 teachers following in their parents' footsteps. What they had to say strongly reflects these conditions.
One theme, frequent but not the most common, was to get rich. Make lots of money by setting up your own export company or whatever, and then buy lots of nice stuff—cars, villas, clothes, travel, etc. Then the background kicks in. After you've made lots of money, indulge your parents, who maybe now go to work in the city after the planting or harvest to keep you in school. Buy them a nice villa too and take them around in your car and overseas with you on your trips. The next use for the money was to do something for the village—build a school, a road or a factory to give people good jobs. I was sometimes indelicate enough to write responses on journals wondering how the CEOs they want to emulate got so rich themselves. Was it not in fact by starting up factories employing rural school drop outs and paying them very little? I never got any answers. Maybe they took my questions to be rhetorical.
Another very common theme was to be a teacher at some level along the K-12 continuum. Clearly lots of students find the calling to be a teacher a noble one and look forward to being the kind of teacher that many of them were affected by—someone who went the extra mile to encourage them to hang in another year and take the college entrance exams again or whatever. They want to be the students' friends and confidants and advocates. Within this context and even in the one above, spending some years teaching in one the China's poor and remote provinces or in Africa as a volunteer was often mentioned. These aspirations were often part of a larger theme of wanting to become a person who is useful to society. While the way these goals were expressed often struck me as naïve or incredibly idealistic, I cannot say that they did not also remind me of some younger days when I had very similar and equally naïve hopes.
A desire for a simple, peaceful or "ordinary" life was a third rather common theme. Give me any kind of job that puts food on the table—I don't care what—but let me live in a natural remote place or do something that removes me from the competitive grasp of the new society, the corrupt politics, the smiling at people I don't respect and the constant looking over my shoulder. I think this feeling might come from the fact that many of them have already seen too much of what they don't like just from the struggle of getting a seat in college.
Other themes included descriptions of lives that would be interesting, challenging, colorful, varied, independent, happy, full of travel, etc. Using their English to be an interpreter for some jet-setting CEO or high official was often seen as a way of accomplishing these other goals. Some of the more career-minded writers mentioned graduate school, which is apparently all the rage now. "Everyone" wants a graduate degree, and a number of my students voiced interest in that as a way of getting a job teaching in college—good pay, job security and long vacations. Talk about naïvete. Well, maybe not if you can get some fat tenure track cake job.
Family was at the center of virtually all of these themes. Family in terms of parents and care for them was equally important as spousal relationships to these still single (mostly) women. Not a few of them began these conversations with phrases like "Because I'm a girl/daughter..." Many made comments about wanting to find a "lover" (爱人, airen, the term for 'spouse' that has been used in post-1949 China) who need not be handsome or rich but is a kind person, devoted and faithful to them. Children—one or two—were in all the pictures. Not one of the male students made a similar comment about trying to find such a woman.
I've heard people talk about how this generation of students feels terribly pressured and for this reason prone to some instability. I certainly see the pressure, but can't say I've yet seen evidence of any obvious instability. The school here has recently set up a counseling center and the challenge is to get students to use it because there is an assumption that people who get counseling are mentally ill, and there is considerable social stigma in China about mental illness, maybe like the US in the 50s. Another issue is that so many of these students are literally just off the farm. They have come on dirt paths to blinking neon and western style department stores. They have lots of adjustments to make beyond academic ones. As noted above, they feel incredibly indebted to parents and family, who are putting all their hopes on them, and some of them are indebted to banks as well. To make matters worse, most of them were overprotected as younger children so the adjustment is all the more challenging. I heard of a fairly recent incident in which some young student of rural origin on a large urban campus in another province hammered a couple fellow students to death because he felt he was being ridiculed as a bumpkin who didn't know how to dance or dress or talk like the city folk. Supposedly he was found not to be criminally insane or pathologically anti-social—just full of hatred for the city people, who he felt had wronged him. (The common word for bumpkin is 土包子, tubaozi, which means something like 'wrapped in mud' or 'mud ball,' very descriptive but not very nice.)
Much more remains to be said about "higher" education here in China and certainly in the US. No one can teach anything well to 400 students, let alone writing and logical thinking with a touch of creative expression in a second language to boot. What the hell am I doing here anyway?
For the first writing assignments, I had students write a journal and then an essay on the topic “A Theme in My Life.” Without much luck I first had a discussion on Erich Fromm's idea of being and having to get them away from seeing their lives just in terms of a job. It was a failure. Without a single exception all 360 of them produced “journals” that were in fact canned essays on the jobs they wanted. A number noted that they had never been asked to think about their lives in this way, so maybe that was part of the problem, but mostly it was just the default mode kicking in. When it was time to turn the journals into essays, I remained very insistent that they go beyond the idea of describing a job to a reflection on what meaning or significance they hoped to give to their lives. They were free to bring in the jobs they hoped to get, but the jobs had to be a part of a larger theme.
I had some mild success. There were a number of common themes, which said some things about life in contemporary China for these students. First, it must be recalled that this is a provincial teachers college of 20,000 students, who are overwhelmingly first generation college. Maybe half are from small rural villages around the province; many others are the children of factory workers in some medium size cities with a minority being the children of K-12 teachers following in their parents' footsteps. What they had to say strongly reflects these conditions.
One theme, frequent but not the most common, was to get rich. Make lots of money by setting up your own export company or whatever, and then buy lots of nice stuff—cars, villas, clothes, travel, etc. Then the background kicks in. After you've made lots of money, indulge your parents, who maybe now go to work in the city after the planting or harvest to keep you in school. Buy them a nice villa too and take them around in your car and overseas with you on your trips. The next use for the money was to do something for the village—build a school, a road or a factory to give people good jobs. I was sometimes indelicate enough to write responses on journals wondering how the CEOs they want to emulate got so rich themselves. Was it not in fact by starting up factories employing rural school drop outs and paying them very little? I never got any answers. Maybe they took my questions to be rhetorical.
Another very common theme was to be a teacher at some level along the K-12 continuum. Clearly lots of students find the calling to be a teacher a noble one and look forward to being the kind of teacher that many of them were affected by—someone who went the extra mile to encourage them to hang in another year and take the college entrance exams again or whatever. They want to be the students' friends and confidants and advocates. Within this context and even in the one above, spending some years teaching in one the China's poor and remote provinces or in Africa as a volunteer was often mentioned. These aspirations were often part of a larger theme of wanting to become a person who is useful to society. While the way these goals were expressed often struck me as naïve or incredibly idealistic, I cannot say that they did not also remind me of some younger days when I had very similar and equally naïve hopes.
A desire for a simple, peaceful or "ordinary" life was a third rather common theme. Give me any kind of job that puts food on the table—I don't care what—but let me live in a natural remote place or do something that removes me from the competitive grasp of the new society, the corrupt politics, the smiling at people I don't respect and the constant looking over my shoulder. I think this feeling might come from the fact that many of them have already seen too much of what they don't like just from the struggle of getting a seat in college.
Other themes included descriptions of lives that would be interesting, challenging, colorful, varied, independent, happy, full of travel, etc. Using their English to be an interpreter for some jet-setting CEO or high official was often seen as a way of accomplishing these other goals. Some of the more career-minded writers mentioned graduate school, which is apparently all the rage now. "Everyone" wants a graduate degree, and a number of my students voiced interest in that as a way of getting a job teaching in college—good pay, job security and long vacations. Talk about naïvete. Well, maybe not if you can get some fat tenure track cake job.
Family was at the center of virtually all of these themes. Family in terms of parents and care for them was equally important as spousal relationships to these still single (mostly) women. Not a few of them began these conversations with phrases like "Because I'm a girl/daughter..." Many made comments about wanting to find a "lover" (爱人, airen, the term for 'spouse' that has been used in post-1949 China) who need not be handsome or rich but is a kind person, devoted and faithful to them. Children—one or two—were in all the pictures. Not one of the male students made a similar comment about trying to find such a woman.
I've heard people talk about how this generation of students feels terribly pressured and for this reason prone to some instability. I certainly see the pressure, but can't say I've yet seen evidence of any obvious instability. The school here has recently set up a counseling center and the challenge is to get students to use it because there is an assumption that people who get counseling are mentally ill, and there is considerable social stigma in China about mental illness, maybe like the US in the 50s. Another issue is that so many of these students are literally just off the farm. They have come on dirt paths to blinking neon and western style department stores. They have lots of adjustments to make beyond academic ones. As noted above, they feel incredibly indebted to parents and family, who are putting all their hopes on them, and some of them are indebted to banks as well. To make matters worse, most of them were overprotected as younger children so the adjustment is all the more challenging. I heard of a fairly recent incident in which some young student of rural origin on a large urban campus in another province hammered a couple fellow students to death because he felt he was being ridiculed as a bumpkin who didn't know how to dance or dress or talk like the city folk. Supposedly he was found not to be criminally insane or pathologically anti-social—just full of hatred for the city people, who he felt had wronged him. (The common word for bumpkin is 土包子, tubaozi, which means something like 'wrapped in mud' or 'mud ball,' very descriptive but not very nice.)
Much more remains to be said about "higher" education here in China and certainly in the US. No one can teach anything well to 400 students, let alone writing and logical thinking with a touch of creative expression in a second language to boot. What the hell am I doing here anyway?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)