The Servants of Hong Kong
One can hardly be in Hong Kong very long at all, especially in middle class residential neighborhoods, without noticing the very large number of women who are obviously not Chinese or Western doing everything from shopping to walking well manicured dogs to pushing baby carriages with Chinese or Western children in them. They are domestic servants, mostly from the Philippines, but there is a sizeable number from Indonesia as well. Most are younger women from rural areas but there are some middle aged ones as well. The Philippine women speak Engish and can take their orders in English from native speakers or from professional Chinese, but there is a sizeable number who speak Chinese (both Cantonese and putonghua) to serve the Chinese monolinguals as well.
They work six days per week but on Sundays, their day off, they are everywhere—out shopping in the cheaper street markets, meeting with friends downtown, taking pictures, having picnics on the hillsides, or just strutting around in their Sunday finest. They all have cell phones and are constantly in touch with their friends and getting together with different groups from early on Sunday morning until they head back late on Sunday night for another week of work. On Sundays especially, they seem to talk a mile a minute. It felt this way to me possibly because I don't know a word in their langauges but maybe because they have spent the last 6 days listening to people telling them what to do and can now finally talk freely to peers. Their presence adds a new energtic cosmopolitan dimension to Hong Kong. There have always been domestic servants in Hong Kong but they were typically older Chinese woman who were invisible in the majority populace.
The servants are all live-in and they typically have a tiny room of their own to sleep in or go to when not on duty, which is not very often. Looking out of the window where we were staying, I could see into a kitchen in another wing of the same building (about 50 feet away) and noticed a servant's bed hanging about 3 feet off the ceiling in a corner of the kitchen. Needless to say these young women are not uncomely and having them at home all the time might put some stress and temptation into some marriages. Abuse is probably a more likely outcome than wrecked marriages, but this is only conjecture on my part. In Cantonese the usual term for the Philippine women is 宾妹, the first character of which is from the transliteration of 'Philippine' and the second of which means 'girl' but in a somewhat condescending way in this context. It's kind of like calling a foreigner a laowai on the mainland. It's not the worst, but not exactly respectful. On Sundays, I've seen middle aged Philippinas handing out business cards which looked like they might have hotline numbers. Many others, however, were just trying to sell bargain airfares back to Manila.
I'm surprised at the large number of people who are able to afford domestic servants. Of some people we saw—a technical college teacher, a legal worker, a social work couple—all had servants. A decent HK salary is about 20,000 HK dollars per month and a live-in servant might cost 4-5000 HK dollars per month in addition to food and a little room or corner to sleep in. Thus, for a 2-income couple it's not much of a stretch and covers child care, pet care, cooking, dish washing, shopping, house cleaning, laundry, etc. Quite a bargain. Clearly, the servants themselves must consider it worthwhile or at least better than other options back home because they are there in HK in the tens of thousands. Five to six hundred US dollars per month is not very much, but remitting half of it to a relative in a rural village could mean a lot. The comparison to Mexicans in North America is obvious.
In the house where we were staying we were waited on by an Indonesian woman in her early 30s who gets about 4000 HK dollars per month. She saves her money and sends it home to buy farm land and a house for her parents. She doesn't go out even on Sundays, seems to have only the barest necessities for clothes, and goes home only once every one to three years for a week or two. She's extremely polite, calling everyone Sir or Miss. She does things you don't ask her to do—I never asked her to do anything—like making coffee, peeling fruit, washing clothes, etc. Her biggest pleasure seems to be staying up late watching the house TV, which she is permitted to do, and sleeping in late when possible. She speaks good everyday Cantonese, which she learned from TV. She is also said to speak putonghua and basic English. She graduated from senior high school but said there was no point in studying further since there were no good jobs to be had in any case.
I explained to her that I didn't like the idea of servants and it was not necessary to treat me formally or do things for me since I wasn't her boss, but she said that she was a maid and this was her station in life. Anyway, she probably knew we would give her some extra money for her trouble, which we did. She refused to go out to dinner with us probably because she feared that the person who pays her salary would disapprove. (It's a very complicated family situation in which the friend we were staying with and where the servant works is not the one who pays the servant's salary.) She gets somewhat overworked in the sense that besides the place where she lives and works she occasionally gets dragged over to the employer's sister's place to do cleaning there too.
The whole idea of servants is repulsive to me, but perhaps one can say that being a domestic gives this person the chance to develop herself and save some cash, travel, and learn a language. After all, I did essentially the same thing with teaching English as a second langauge—not my first career choice by any means and one that opened me to heavier work loads, lower salaries and no job security, but got me off the block. She said if she gets enough land she'll have people farm it and take 50% of their crops. Thus, she in turn will become an exploiter after 13 years to date of being exploited. As yet she has no idea or plan as to when she can return home. She does not appear the least bitter or angry about her station in life. On the contrary, she always comes across as very cheerful.
She recognized that people in Indonesia have a negative view of Chinese because of the economic power of the overseas Chinese there and in most of Southeast Asia. An interesting and not unexpected aside is that she spoke well of the former independence leader Sukarno but dislikes the deposed and corrupt Suharto. I would presume that to be a common opinion among the dispossed majority of the country.
From the window of this flat I saw servants in other flats constantly washing windows, drapes, even the rims of flower pots and other stupid make-work projects. In return they get Sundays off and get to descend on flea markets and wear their finest right along with their young Chinese and Western counteparts. This is their gift from international capitalism, the global economy. Abuse—beyond what's totally legal—must exist, but to hear them laugh, chatter and picnic on a Sunday afternoon you would never know it. Is this what they came for? Are they content? Hopeful? It's easy enough for Tom Friedman to point to them and say yes. He's a busy and important man and may well have a servant too.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Culture Shock in Hong Kong
Culture Shock in Hong Kong
At the doorstep of Hong Kong is Shenzhen, the city developed by Deng Xiaoping to be the mainland's version of Hong Kong. Now the whole area is pretty much one seamless web of business and development. Getting across from one side to the other still requires paper work and passport stamping for foreigners but for HK residents the process is very easy. Needless to say the many comings and goings are very beneficial, that is, economically profitable, particularly for the mainland side as HK shoppers and investors stream into Shenzhen for lower prices on goods and labor.
An interesting thing about Shenzhen is that all the workers at the airport and along the bus route to Hong Kong spoke very nice putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and were very disciplined about keeping it up even among themselves though Cantonese was surely their native dialect. The reasons might have been the rather large number of non-Cantonese speaking mainlanders getting off the planes and/or strict enforcement by their supervisors. The only recalcitrant one was the bus driver, a young guy in his 20s. When I asked him in putonghua how long it would be before the bus left he answered "20 mintues" in Cantonese. Only after the bus was under way did one of the woman workers switch to Cantonese to talk to him. This dialect switching is a very interesting linguistic phenomenon and it remains to be seen if it contributes to a coexistence of equality between the dialects or the eventual erosion of the regional dialects.
My first culture shock came when we were heading up to where we would stay with friends on better heeled Robinson Road: White people. Some of them even had blond hair. Since the end of August of last year I had seen a total of two white people in all my time in Xinxiang. Oh, I forgot I saw one one the street in Hohot in Inner Mongolia too. It's like sperm whales or lynx. You know they exist and you know people have seen them, but you don't expect to see one yourself. It's the same thing that produces that look on the faces of rural people when I bicycle in the countryside. Somehow I never expected this feeling and it even took me a while to realize what it was that I was disoriented about.
It has been ten years since I was in Hong Kong last and 30 years since I first lived there. In many ways nothing has changed. HK is still a place where you make money and go out to eat. Not that much else happens there. Yet there are some changes. On a TV program giving out awards to new young vocal artists, there were three MCs, 2 of whom spoke Cantonese and one who spoke putonghua. Of the vocalist winners, maybe 2 or 3 of the 4 sang putonghua songs instead of Cantonese songs. Government workers are getting "encouragement" to learn putonghua but it does not seem that they are resisting. It's just harder for them because they didn't grow up with both as the airport workers did. On the subway trains and in other public locations announcements are now made in putonghua as well as Cantonese.
Housing in HK is about the same as in previous years except higher—both in price and the number of storeys above the ground. More and more high rise office and residential buildings are replacing older smaller ones, but this is a quantitative change, not a qualitative one. Increased housing costs leave moderate income people in a difficult situation, an international phenomenon. Living space is very limited. If one looks out of a window the only thing to see is the walls and windows of the next building. To see sky one has to look pretty much straight up. To be sure, if one goes high enough up on the mountain, where the wealthiest live, the size and luxury of the flats grow and the angle for seeing sky gets cut down, but these are my assumptions as I have never been in such places. Even in front of the new building next to where I was there was an outdoor swimming pool about 30' x 60' a full 4 or 5 floors off the ground.
There's now an escalator that goes up and down the mountain side from the mid-levels to the central district of downtown HK. It is reversible and goes uphill most of the day but downhill from 8 to 10 a.m. when one can see all the suits and briefcases and spiked high heels flying past on the left with earphones and cell phones buzzing even before they make it to the office—buy, sell, move, deliver. Along the escalator a new neighborhood catering to foreigners and their Chinese counterparts has sprung up. Mostly there are bars but also coffee shops, health food restaurants, taco shops, fast food places, a huge health center and, interestingly, lots of places to buy wine—a sure sign of a full-scale yuppie invasion. In fact, it seemed to me that there are more white foreigners in HK now, but maybe I just never saw such places before. From overhearing conversations, I felt that there were still lots of Brits and a larger number of Australians but relatively few Americans. I'm told that overall the population of HK has increased and it certainly seems to be the case. Except for fewer Indians, HK looked overall to be more cosmopolitan than before, but this impressioin too might just have been due to my relative isolation in the mainland hinterland for nearly 5 months
One can still tourists wandering around HK because it remains a shopping mecca even though there's not much else to see or do except eat. On the tram I sat opposite a young French speaking couple. Each one had a canvass bag with "Beijing" on it. Hers was pink and his was blue, and each had a striped shirt to match the bag. He had blue canvass loafers too, but hers, mon Dieu, had gold trim instead of pink!
There are still working class neighborhoods that are more or less similar to those of past times, where one sees few if any servants (more on this important phenomenon later) or foreigners. No busy businessy foreigners or overdressed women or yuppie watering holes, just people who work for a living. Working class people, though certainly as many as before, are more hidden these days in post-industrial HK. However, when one stops to think of the legions of cooks, vegetable choppers, waitstaff, drivers, cleaners, etc., there can't be fewer. In the old neighborhood we had 芝麻雾 'sesame mist' a kind of sweet black thick liquid made of sesame seed. We used to go there 30 years ago, and it was still busy with pretty much the same kind of local people. At the place where one pays on the way out, I asked this old guy taking money if he was there 30 years ago, the last time I was probably there. It took a few seconds for him answer no. Then he repeated, "30 years!?" Indeed.
We had dinner with a 30-something couple who have a child in the first grade. He brought his homework with him to the restaurant because he had a big important exam the next day. During the meal his father stopped eating occasionally to quiz him. It was pretty impressive/scary to see what he had to know in terms of Chinese characters at that age. Furthermore, he was only in an average school, not the most high-pressure accelerated place he could have been in. Indeed, his father said he's somewhat concerned because his son doesn't care much for study and is nearly at the bottom of his class. Because his father got a Ph.D. in the US and speaks English fluently, this little 8-year old also speaks English quite well. In one of the mid-level parks where I went out for a walk and in some other locations, I overheard parents who were obviously not native speakers of English speak only English to their very young children. This education situation bears semblance to that of the mainland, where "stuffing the duck" （填鸭）education is also the norm. Though US education is gratefully different in this regard, it suffers from other problems and just as successfully avoids the teaching of critical thinking by other means. The common factor in all these places is the separate educational paths for children of the priviliged and everyone else.
While we were in HK, a demonstration organized by the HK "democracy movement" took place though I knew or heard nothing about it until seeing it reported in the newspaper the next day. According to the report about 6,000 people turned out though organizers claimed the number was over 20,000. In any case, it was down considerably from 250,000 in December of 2005 when the larger numbers turned out to oppose the mainland's decisions about the election of the territory's chief executive and legislature in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The current Basic Law gives the mainland an upper hand in determining HK policy because of its power to appoint the chief executive and enough of the legislators to have its way. Thus, the demonstrators' main demand is for "real universal suffarage," not just limited input from those neighborhood legislators who are elected democratically but constitute only a minority.
I've always found it interesting that while HK was totally a British colony with a London-appointed absolute power governor, there was never a peep from the English-speaking HK elite. Of course, that's probably due to the fact that this elite had far more in common with the British imperialists than with HK workers and average citizens. Now they are torn because they want to maintan their elite status and wealth, the source of which is now autocratic Beijing, not the former "democratic" albeit imperialist Britain, but they are unsure as to how to accomplish this without looking too much like they are the willing todies of Beijing. It's the appearance of the thing that troubles them, not the reality. It's maybe not so different from the US corporate elite flip-flopping between Republicans and Democrats. Expediency overrules all other considerations. The fact that public support for the movement has dwindled also reflects the absence of fear of economic change or rather the continuity of the economic status quo since 1997, when Beijing first took over.
What excited me about living in HK in my 20s would very quickly tire me now—too much running around and very little living space. When I think of culture shock potential, I think of my students from the countryside of Henan who have had serious problems adjusting from village life to even a medium sized city like Xinxiang in the hintherland of China. Hong Kong would overwhelm them--not only the pace of life and the din of traffic but also things like the ads with women in scanty lacey underwear plastered 3-storeys high. It would be sensory overload to dangerous proportions. I don't know how they would manage, but I suppose given time, aggressive advertising and the profit motive all things can be accomplished.
At the doorstep of Hong Kong is Shenzhen, the city developed by Deng Xiaoping to be the mainland's version of Hong Kong. Now the whole area is pretty much one seamless web of business and development. Getting across from one side to the other still requires paper work and passport stamping for foreigners but for HK residents the process is very easy. Needless to say the many comings and goings are very beneficial, that is, economically profitable, particularly for the mainland side as HK shoppers and investors stream into Shenzhen for lower prices on goods and labor.
An interesting thing about Shenzhen is that all the workers at the airport and along the bus route to Hong Kong spoke very nice putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and were very disciplined about keeping it up even among themselves though Cantonese was surely their native dialect. The reasons might have been the rather large number of non-Cantonese speaking mainlanders getting off the planes and/or strict enforcement by their supervisors. The only recalcitrant one was the bus driver, a young guy in his 20s. When I asked him in putonghua how long it would be before the bus left he answered "20 mintues" in Cantonese. Only after the bus was under way did one of the woman workers switch to Cantonese to talk to him. This dialect switching is a very interesting linguistic phenomenon and it remains to be seen if it contributes to a coexistence of equality between the dialects or the eventual erosion of the regional dialects.
My first culture shock came when we were heading up to where we would stay with friends on better heeled Robinson Road: White people. Some of them even had blond hair. Since the end of August of last year I had seen a total of two white people in all my time in Xinxiang. Oh, I forgot I saw one one the street in Hohot in Inner Mongolia too. It's like sperm whales or lynx. You know they exist and you know people have seen them, but you don't expect to see one yourself. It's the same thing that produces that look on the faces of rural people when I bicycle in the countryside. Somehow I never expected this feeling and it even took me a while to realize what it was that I was disoriented about.
It has been ten years since I was in Hong Kong last and 30 years since I first lived there. In many ways nothing has changed. HK is still a place where you make money and go out to eat. Not that much else happens there. Yet there are some changes. On a TV program giving out awards to new young vocal artists, there were three MCs, 2 of whom spoke Cantonese and one who spoke putonghua. Of the vocalist winners, maybe 2 or 3 of the 4 sang putonghua songs instead of Cantonese songs. Government workers are getting "encouragement" to learn putonghua but it does not seem that they are resisting. It's just harder for them because they didn't grow up with both as the airport workers did. On the subway trains and in other public locations announcements are now made in putonghua as well as Cantonese.
Housing in HK is about the same as in previous years except higher—both in price and the number of storeys above the ground. More and more high rise office and residential buildings are replacing older smaller ones, but this is a quantitative change, not a qualitative one. Increased housing costs leave moderate income people in a difficult situation, an international phenomenon. Living space is very limited. If one looks out of a window the only thing to see is the walls and windows of the next building. To see sky one has to look pretty much straight up. To be sure, if one goes high enough up on the mountain, where the wealthiest live, the size and luxury of the flats grow and the angle for seeing sky gets cut down, but these are my assumptions as I have never been in such places. Even in front of the new building next to where I was there was an outdoor swimming pool about 30' x 60' a full 4 or 5 floors off the ground.
There's now an escalator that goes up and down the mountain side from the mid-levels to the central district of downtown HK. It is reversible and goes uphill most of the day but downhill from 8 to 10 a.m. when one can see all the suits and briefcases and spiked high heels flying past on the left with earphones and cell phones buzzing even before they make it to the office—buy, sell, move, deliver. Along the escalator a new neighborhood catering to foreigners and their Chinese counterparts has sprung up. Mostly there are bars but also coffee shops, health food restaurants, taco shops, fast food places, a huge health center and, interestingly, lots of places to buy wine—a sure sign of a full-scale yuppie invasion. In fact, it seemed to me that there are more white foreigners in HK now, but maybe I just never saw such places before. From overhearing conversations, I felt that there were still lots of Brits and a larger number of Australians but relatively few Americans. I'm told that overall the population of HK has increased and it certainly seems to be the case. Except for fewer Indians, HK looked overall to be more cosmopolitan than before, but this impressioin too might just have been due to my relative isolation in the mainland hinterland for nearly 5 months
One can still tourists wandering around HK because it remains a shopping mecca even though there's not much else to see or do except eat. On the tram I sat opposite a young French speaking couple. Each one had a canvass bag with "Beijing" on it. Hers was pink and his was blue, and each had a striped shirt to match the bag. He had blue canvass loafers too, but hers, mon Dieu, had gold trim instead of pink!
There are still working class neighborhoods that are more or less similar to those of past times, where one sees few if any servants (more on this important phenomenon later) or foreigners. No busy businessy foreigners or overdressed women or yuppie watering holes, just people who work for a living. Working class people, though certainly as many as before, are more hidden these days in post-industrial HK. However, when one stops to think of the legions of cooks, vegetable choppers, waitstaff, drivers, cleaners, etc., there can't be fewer. In the old neighborhood we had 芝麻雾 'sesame mist' a kind of sweet black thick liquid made of sesame seed. We used to go there 30 years ago, and it was still busy with pretty much the same kind of local people. At the place where one pays on the way out, I asked this old guy taking money if he was there 30 years ago, the last time I was probably there. It took a few seconds for him answer no. Then he repeated, "30 years!?" Indeed.
We had dinner with a 30-something couple who have a child in the first grade. He brought his homework with him to the restaurant because he had a big important exam the next day. During the meal his father stopped eating occasionally to quiz him. It was pretty impressive/scary to see what he had to know in terms of Chinese characters at that age. Furthermore, he was only in an average school, not the most high-pressure accelerated place he could have been in. Indeed, his father said he's somewhat concerned because his son doesn't care much for study and is nearly at the bottom of his class. Because his father got a Ph.D. in the US and speaks English fluently, this little 8-year old also speaks English quite well. In one of the mid-level parks where I went out for a walk and in some other locations, I overheard parents who were obviously not native speakers of English speak only English to their very young children. This education situation bears semblance to that of the mainland, where "stuffing the duck" （填鸭）education is also the norm. Though US education is gratefully different in this regard, it suffers from other problems and just as successfully avoids the teaching of critical thinking by other means. The common factor in all these places is the separate educational paths for children of the priviliged and everyone else.
While we were in HK, a demonstration organized by the HK "democracy movement" took place though I knew or heard nothing about it until seeing it reported in the newspaper the next day. According to the report about 6,000 people turned out though organizers claimed the number was over 20,000. In any case, it was down considerably from 250,000 in December of 2005 when the larger numbers turned out to oppose the mainland's decisions about the election of the territory's chief executive and legislature in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The current Basic Law gives the mainland an upper hand in determining HK policy because of its power to appoint the chief executive and enough of the legislators to have its way. Thus, the demonstrators' main demand is for "real universal suffarage," not just limited input from those neighborhood legislators who are elected democratically but constitute only a minority.
I've always found it interesting that while HK was totally a British colony with a London-appointed absolute power governor, there was never a peep from the English-speaking HK elite. Of course, that's probably due to the fact that this elite had far more in common with the British imperialists than with HK workers and average citizens. Now they are torn because they want to maintan their elite status and wealth, the source of which is now autocratic Beijing, not the former "democratic" albeit imperialist Britain, but they are unsure as to how to accomplish this without looking too much like they are the willing todies of Beijing. It's the appearance of the thing that troubles them, not the reality. It's maybe not so different from the US corporate elite flip-flopping between Republicans and Democrats. Expediency overrules all other considerations. The fact that public support for the movement has dwindled also reflects the absence of fear of economic change or rather the continuity of the economic status quo since 1997, when Beijing first took over.
What excited me about living in HK in my 20s would very quickly tire me now—too much running around and very little living space. When I think of culture shock potential, I think of my students from the countryside of Henan who have had serious problems adjusting from village life to even a medium sized city like Xinxiang in the hintherland of China. Hong Kong would overwhelm them--not only the pace of life and the din of traffic but also things like the ads with women in scanty lacey underwear plastered 3-storeys high. It would be sensory overload to dangerous proportions. I don't know how they would manage, but I suppose given time, aggressive advertising and the profit motive all things can be accomplished.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The PLA and the CCP
The PLA and the CCP
The presence of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is very noticeable pretty much wherever one wanders not only on the street but also in the media.
In the neighborhood not so far from campus I saw a big character poster saying that one enlistment in the army brings glory to the whole family. China's army, like that of the US, is now an all-volunteer army, but also as in the US the majority of recruits are people whose economic opportunities are rather limited and no one denies this. Recently passing through Beijing, I saw a smiling young recruit wearing his fatigues and backpack having his picture taken by one of his army buddies in front of the main railroad station, a famous Beijing landmark. He's probably a kid from the countryside escaping his life of boredom not unlike a counterpart in the US from a small town in Mississippi. There aren't the aggressive glitzy TV and newspaper ads for enlistment as there are in the US or huge enlistment bonuses, but due to the ubiquitous and positive presence of the military it's an obvious option. In the local paper last fall there was an article about the military registration procedure. All 18-year olds must register at special locations and have their physical fitness analyzed and categorized. They don't just go to the post office and fill out a form. Seventeen-year olds can join but they have to get an ok from relatives or guardians.
Soldiers are often seen on the street in uniform, much more than in the US even though one sees more US soldiers in uniform now than during the Vietnam war. Many small PLA detatchments and offices are located in cities and scattered close to populations, so their non-armed presence is obvious but not resented. I've detected no negativity whatsoever toward the military as a result of its role on "June 4th" (the 1989 Tiananmen shootings). Quite the contrary. There's the idea that the army defends the nation but doesn't invade or harm others. This positive attitude exists across generations. Of course, there's plenty of positive reinforcement on TV, mostly about the PLA role in the anti-Japanese war. Also, on newsstands there's a variety of newspapers and magazines about the Chinese armed forces and their military equipment and that of other countries. This is another Chinese-US similarity. Most everywhere in the world it seems there's something that gets people cranked up about high tech, sleek jet fighters, missles and navy ships. There are also military surplus stores where people can buy fatigues and military overcoats and army equipment, and one sees civilians on the street wearing such stuff about as much as in the US.
Freshmen students at the university undergo a pretty intense one-month military training program on campus and classes begin one month late for them. They get up early, run around in fatigues, march and sing patriotic songs. I don't think that they train with weapons or in the field, so this experience is probably of limited military value, but it certainly adds to patriotic fervor and solidarity with the army.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also everywhere but less obvious to the uninitiated. Every unit of work or organization has a party secretary (书记) whose duty is to implement party policy at the local level. I have gone to art and Chinese language department dinner parties and there was the department party secretary. I was riding around on my bicycle and met some people in a neighborhood where an amateur performance of a Chinese opera was being given and before long someone introduced me to the neighborhood party secretary. The number one person in the university is not the university president but the party secretary, and he takes his lunch almost daily in the foreign student/teacher cafeteria in a separate room next to ours with a nice selection of dishes for just one person. Just as you can't be a univeristy president in the US without cozying up to and probably joining the Chamber of Commerce, you can't be a high official in the university or anywhere without at least embracing the party and probably joining it.
The link to the campus plan for implementing the 17th National Party Congress initiatives is on the university home page and on bulletin boards around campus. There are study sessions on it at all levels of the university and students study it and take exams on it. I saw their Marxism study book for the final exam. It was maybe 100 pages of nothing but questions and multiple choice answers that they will have to regurgitate. Some students are upset about having to do this at all, but others are interested in and positive about Marxism and politics but turned off by the predigested way in which it's presented. On the desk of one my students I also saw a book on how to become a party member. Join it or not, you have to deal with it. Once at a dinner party someone was chatting up a friend about Buddhism, but the friend said that he was a party member so he could only be a Buddhist in his heart.
Just like the Republicrats in the US, the CCP metes out favors to friends, keeps lids on kettles and stamps out fires. To be sure, as among politicians in the US, there are serious hard-working professional people who are trying to do their best for the most within the system. Certainly, not everyone is on the take. Just as it's easier to be an honest sincere city council member, it's easier to be a sincere and effective local CCP official. However, in either system as one tries to move up the ladder of power to affect policy, the contradictions, compromises and real sources of power quickly appear.
The amount of personal freedom in the US is great though for the most part expressed at the mall, with one's internet mouse, or in front of one's cable TV. However, the problems of the US are not so much personal as social, and US consumer capitalism is not interested in addressing them. Due to its incredible size and diversity (the latter just as great as that of the US even though China does not have the racial diversity of the US), China has to keep a lot more balls in the air and lots of people seem very willing to accept the idea that a powerful single party government that can move fast when it decides something is the best way to go. This attitude was expressed to me by a graduate student in regard to the water shortage and the dropping of the water table in the north. Yes, he recognized that it's a very serious problem but is confident it will be addressed and acted on before it becomes critical. Indeed, part of an eventual south-north waterway, equivalent to moving Lake Superior water to Oklahoma, has already been started.
With impressive economic development, personal freedoms of the kind now enjoyed in the US have grown steadily in China, so many Chinese feel they are having their cake and eating it too. For the time being, the chief butcher, baker and candlestick maker are all members of the CCP.
The presence of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is very noticeable pretty much wherever one wanders not only on the street but also in the media.
In the neighborhood not so far from campus I saw a big character poster saying that one enlistment in the army brings glory to the whole family. China's army, like that of the US, is now an all-volunteer army, but also as in the US the majority of recruits are people whose economic opportunities are rather limited and no one denies this. Recently passing through Beijing, I saw a smiling young recruit wearing his fatigues and backpack having his picture taken by one of his army buddies in front of the main railroad station, a famous Beijing landmark. He's probably a kid from the countryside escaping his life of boredom not unlike a counterpart in the US from a small town in Mississippi. There aren't the aggressive glitzy TV and newspaper ads for enlistment as there are in the US or huge enlistment bonuses, but due to the ubiquitous and positive presence of the military it's an obvious option. In the local paper last fall there was an article about the military registration procedure. All 18-year olds must register at special locations and have their physical fitness analyzed and categorized. They don't just go to the post office and fill out a form. Seventeen-year olds can join but they have to get an ok from relatives or guardians.
Soldiers are often seen on the street in uniform, much more than in the US even though one sees more US soldiers in uniform now than during the Vietnam war. Many small PLA detatchments and offices are located in cities and scattered close to populations, so their non-armed presence is obvious but not resented. I've detected no negativity whatsoever toward the military as a result of its role on "June 4th" (the 1989 Tiananmen shootings). Quite the contrary. There's the idea that the army defends the nation but doesn't invade or harm others. This positive attitude exists across generations. Of course, there's plenty of positive reinforcement on TV, mostly about the PLA role in the anti-Japanese war. Also, on newsstands there's a variety of newspapers and magazines about the Chinese armed forces and their military equipment and that of other countries. This is another Chinese-US similarity. Most everywhere in the world it seems there's something that gets people cranked up about high tech, sleek jet fighters, missles and navy ships. There are also military surplus stores where people can buy fatigues and military overcoats and army equipment, and one sees civilians on the street wearing such stuff about as much as in the US.
Freshmen students at the university undergo a pretty intense one-month military training program on campus and classes begin one month late for them. They get up early, run around in fatigues, march and sing patriotic songs. I don't think that they train with weapons or in the field, so this experience is probably of limited military value, but it certainly adds to patriotic fervor and solidarity with the army.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also everywhere but less obvious to the uninitiated. Every unit of work or organization has a party secretary (书记) whose duty is to implement party policy at the local level. I have gone to art and Chinese language department dinner parties and there was the department party secretary. I was riding around on my bicycle and met some people in a neighborhood where an amateur performance of a Chinese opera was being given and before long someone introduced me to the neighborhood party secretary. The number one person in the university is not the university president but the party secretary, and he takes his lunch almost daily in the foreign student/teacher cafeteria in a separate room next to ours with a nice selection of dishes for just one person. Just as you can't be a univeristy president in the US without cozying up to and probably joining the Chamber of Commerce, you can't be a high official in the university or anywhere without at least embracing the party and probably joining it.
The link to the campus plan for implementing the 17th National Party Congress initiatives is on the university home page and on bulletin boards around campus. There are study sessions on it at all levels of the university and students study it and take exams on it. I saw their Marxism study book for the final exam. It was maybe 100 pages of nothing but questions and multiple choice answers that they will have to regurgitate. Some students are upset about having to do this at all, but others are interested in and positive about Marxism and politics but turned off by the predigested way in which it's presented. On the desk of one my students I also saw a book on how to become a party member. Join it or not, you have to deal with it. Once at a dinner party someone was chatting up a friend about Buddhism, but the friend said that he was a party member so he could only be a Buddhist in his heart.
Just like the Republicrats in the US, the CCP metes out favors to friends, keeps lids on kettles and stamps out fires. To be sure, as among politicians in the US, there are serious hard-working professional people who are trying to do their best for the most within the system. Certainly, not everyone is on the take. Just as it's easier to be an honest sincere city council member, it's easier to be a sincere and effective local CCP official. However, in either system as one tries to move up the ladder of power to affect policy, the contradictions, compromises and real sources of power quickly appear.
The amount of personal freedom in the US is great though for the most part expressed at the mall, with one's internet mouse, or in front of one's cable TV. However, the problems of the US are not so much personal as social, and US consumer capitalism is not interested in addressing them. Due to its incredible size and diversity (the latter just as great as that of the US even though China does not have the racial diversity of the US), China has to keep a lot more balls in the air and lots of people seem very willing to accept the idea that a powerful single party government that can move fast when it decides something is the best way to go. This attitude was expressed to me by a graduate student in regard to the water shortage and the dropping of the water table in the north. Yes, he recognized that it's a very serious problem but is confident it will be addressed and acted on before it becomes critical. Indeed, part of an eventual south-north waterway, equivalent to moving Lake Superior water to Oklahoma, has already been started.
With impressive economic development, personal freedoms of the kind now enjoyed in the US have grown steadily in China, so many Chinese feel they are having their cake and eating it too. For the time being, the chief butcher, baker and candlestick maker are all members of the CCP.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Wedding in Tianjin
Wedding in Tianjin
I got out of Xinxiang for the first time in what seems a very long time to go up to Tainjin for the wedding of the son of a couple we got to know quite well when I was working in Tianjin 20 years ago. Both the trip and the wedding were interesting though it was a very hectic three day weekend.
We took the bullet train to Beijing and then another one to Tianjin. On the way up I sat next to an early 30s couple with a 2-year old daughter. We didn't really talk but I got that they were from Beijing, which was as plain as the very big nose on my face just from looking at how they—I should say she—was dressed. The kid was actually pretty good and both parents took turns watching her and walking her up and down the aisle when she started to get antsy. There were a couple of times when mom lost patience a bit and told the kid that if she didn't shape up mother wouldn't want her (妈妈不要你), a very common threat from mothers here. Of course, these single child city kids know full well very early on that nothing further could be from the truth because every one of them has 2 parents and 4 grandparents vying for their affection during every moment of their waking hours.
The one headache about our route is that the two trains arrive at and leave from different stations and getting from one station to the other is a hassle with Beijing traffic being what it is now. On the way up it was Saturday so the problems were minimal. A number of somewhat pudgy counter-culture looking teens with slightly more daring hairstyles and clothes were hanging out in front of the main Beijing station. Across from the station there was a new shopping mall full of small specialty shops. Well, actually all of them had pretty much the same speciality—selling lots of clothes, cosmetics and jewelry to virtually an exclusively female clientele. Overdressed women of all ages were there browsing among overpriced items as you would see in any upscale urban center in any deveolped country of the world.
Compared to earlier years there was only a small number of workers from the countryside in the square in front of the main Beijing train station. Maybe the migration is taking other forms or maybe there are other modes of transportation such as long distance busses. More likely the later blooming smaller hinterland cities like Xinxiang are now soaking up the rural labor.
Tianjin's air quality was very noticeably poor. It's hard to believe that some of the Olympic events will be held there in just 8 months. A talkative cab driver said that the team sports events that will be held there would happen in climate controlled indoor stadiums. He went on a good bit about how Tianjin is still way behind Beijing and Shanghai in terms of economic development and I'm sure it's true. He pointed to the single storey brown brick buildings that are still everywhere where the pooer types live in between the the 30-40 storey places that are springing up everywhere. He asked me if I was some kind of factory manager and I said if I were we'd be going to the airport instead of the train station. Still when he asked my salary—the inevitable question—I'm sure it seemed like I was a very wealthy person indeed, and by Chinese worker standards I am. He said that his cab salary allowed him to get by (过日子) 'get through the days' but not allow him to buy a flat in the city.
It was something of a comfort to see that the famland between Beijing and Tianjin is still pretty well intact. Both cities are spreading out but more up than out. Lots of the smaller towns in between are building big new housing blocks that are replacing old one and two storey housing. This is a big improvement over US suburban sprawl. Along all the train routes there were lots of trees planted just last fall because they were cropped short before transplanting in the typical manner but had no small branches yet. There seems to be an effort under way to put about 10 meters of trees on either side of the major railroad lines and superhighways though so much more could be done. Every time I drive from Duluth to Minneapolis, I have this same feeling. All the places along the highways could be planted as well as the medians not to mention making wind breaks between the huge farm fields which still blow topsoil away on warm dry days in spring and fall when the crops are off. But since it doesn't turn an immediate profit it doesn't happen. China and the US—two very different countries with so many simliar problems stemming from the same causes, the rush for immediate and maximum profit.
We were at the family's home before the wedding and got to the location too late for the traditional fireworks. Some fireworks displays before weddings are really something. In general, wedding customs, I'm told, are a bit in flux and vary greatly from place to place. During the cultural revolution all the former customs were stopped and now what comes back is a mixture of this and that. (A good example of what happened at that time can be seen in the film To Live 活着)). For example, Tianjin weddings traditionally take place in the afternoon followed by an evening meal, but this bride was from Tanggu, just 75 miles away, where they happen at noon followed by an early afternoon meal. Here in Xinxiang they happen at noon too.
The ceremony was rather brief because people are officially married when the receive documents from the state and don't even have to go to a justice of the peace as in the US. Nevertheless, most people go through something like what we participated in. The room was decorated in pink: a floral arch, a row of small columns covered with pink satin, a pink backdrop with neon blinking cupids, a large candle stand, and pop music love songs in the background. On either side of the room there were rows of chairs facing the center with the closest ones for the immediate family, one side for the bride's and one side for the groom's. A few people wore suits, but most were dressed very causally. The main guests of honor wore corsages and most older women on both sides wore in their hair a kind of bright red barette, which was about 2 inches by about 6 inches separated into three bars with silver stars in it. I take this to be a Tianjin custom. At least I have not seen it elsewhere.
The ceremony was presided over what seemed to be a hired MC. It was really quite short, and in it the couple pledged their love and loyalty to each other in words not unlike any US service. The new couple was then introduced and there was applause at several points. There were words by the MC about the importance of parents to children and the parents and representatives on both sides made statements of congratulations and good wishes. Not surprisingly, however, there was no mention of reproducing and filling the earth. This part of the earth is pretty full already, thank you. After the words there was a quick and restrained kiss-the-bride thing, an interlocking arm drinking of wine and that was about it. There was no dancing, no removing of garters, no throwing of bouquets. A distinctively Chinese feature was the bowing and offering of tea by both the bride and groom to their respective in-laws.
Of course, this is China and the most important part of the day was eating. There were about 25 dishes served at each table of 12 people and all of them were very delicious indeed. The other big part was the drinking of baijiu (白酒), a kind of white lightening about 50% alcohol. There's some of it that goes up to maybe 60% and some only about 35%, but one of my fellow drinkers said that hitting the middle around 50% is best. I'm not a big fan of baijiu because I'm not so crazy about the taste but also because it's a really nasty hangover. Of course, they say the same thing here as in the US: If you drink the good stuff it doesn't bother you. Don't believe it. However, I did managed to leave the place under my own power with all of the food I ate staying in its proper place. A couple of Excedrin back at the hotel got me through the rest of the day.
The ceremony and dinner happened in the same building, a complex of dining halls with gardens called Ding Xiang (丁香), "Most Fragrant." The bride wore white for the ceremony and then wore a lavish reddish pink dress to make the rounds to toast guests at dinner and then changed again into blue. There were about 100 guests and this might be considered a smaller gathering, but again like the US it depends on one's cash reserve and desire for face, etc. I'm told that some get really carried away and might invite a thousand, but such large events are perhaps rare. Also, the more you invite and get invited, the more endless the cost and the mutual obligations that are incurred. After the ceremony the bride and groom headed off the their new condominium and I didn't hear any mention of a honeymoon.
The next day we headed back to Xinxiang by the same route—train to Beijing, change stations and trains, and then back to Xinxiang. The return trip was on a Monday, so the traffic in Beijing was at its worst. When we tried to get a cab in the cab line in front of the main train station to go to the west one, the clown cab driver asked me for 80 yuan for a fare I knew was only 30 at most. I told him he was crazy in a very colloquial way (你疯了), which brought laugher from all the cabbies in line and someone said, “This guy really knows China” (中国通). Well, I know enough not to get ripped off that badly. We went across the street and hailed a cab on the street rather than from the line because this has worked for me before in Beijing. After we got in, the guy popped on the meter as he is supposed to but started going on about the traffic's being so bad and how he'd better take some more expensive but faster ciruitous route to get us there on time. He said I'd pay for the time sitting in traffic or the time on the road. But as a former Chicago cab driver, I know that time on the road cranks the meter faster than time in traffic, so I told him to sit tight. Also, I know that the road to the other train station goes past Tiananmen Square and is very wide after the worst part and would likely be fairly smooth sailing as it was. Even when we got back to Xinxiang a local cabbie wanted to get a higher fare instead of using the meter, so I told him to forget it and slammed the door just before I was about to get in. I suppose he thought I was some foreigner newly fallen off the turnip truck in the big town of Xinxiang. No. In fact, I've been around the block more than a few times. The young fellow who did take us according to the meter had a plastic rear view mirror ornament of Mao Zedong. He said although some people don't like Mao because of the Cultural Revolution, Mao was the one he believed in, "He is my god." Step into a different cab and step into a different China.
I got out of Xinxiang for the first time in what seems a very long time to go up to Tainjin for the wedding of the son of a couple we got to know quite well when I was working in Tianjin 20 years ago. Both the trip and the wedding were interesting though it was a very hectic three day weekend.
We took the bullet train to Beijing and then another one to Tianjin. On the way up I sat next to an early 30s couple with a 2-year old daughter. We didn't really talk but I got that they were from Beijing, which was as plain as the very big nose on my face just from looking at how they—I should say she—was dressed. The kid was actually pretty good and both parents took turns watching her and walking her up and down the aisle when she started to get antsy. There were a couple of times when mom lost patience a bit and told the kid that if she didn't shape up mother wouldn't want her (妈妈不要你), a very common threat from mothers here. Of course, these single child city kids know full well very early on that nothing further could be from the truth because every one of them has 2 parents and 4 grandparents vying for their affection during every moment of their waking hours.
The one headache about our route is that the two trains arrive at and leave from different stations and getting from one station to the other is a hassle with Beijing traffic being what it is now. On the way up it was Saturday so the problems were minimal. A number of somewhat pudgy counter-culture looking teens with slightly more daring hairstyles and clothes were hanging out in front of the main Beijing station. Across from the station there was a new shopping mall full of small specialty shops. Well, actually all of them had pretty much the same speciality—selling lots of clothes, cosmetics and jewelry to virtually an exclusively female clientele. Overdressed women of all ages were there browsing among overpriced items as you would see in any upscale urban center in any deveolped country of the world.
Compared to earlier years there was only a small number of workers from the countryside in the square in front of the main Beijing train station. Maybe the migration is taking other forms or maybe there are other modes of transportation such as long distance busses. More likely the later blooming smaller hinterland cities like Xinxiang are now soaking up the rural labor.
Tianjin's air quality was very noticeably poor. It's hard to believe that some of the Olympic events will be held there in just 8 months. A talkative cab driver said that the team sports events that will be held there would happen in climate controlled indoor stadiums. He went on a good bit about how Tianjin is still way behind Beijing and Shanghai in terms of economic development and I'm sure it's true. He pointed to the single storey brown brick buildings that are still everywhere where the pooer types live in between the the 30-40 storey places that are springing up everywhere. He asked me if I was some kind of factory manager and I said if I were we'd be going to the airport instead of the train station. Still when he asked my salary—the inevitable question—I'm sure it seemed like I was a very wealthy person indeed, and by Chinese worker standards I am. He said that his cab salary allowed him to get by (过日子) 'get through the days' but not allow him to buy a flat in the city.
It was something of a comfort to see that the famland between Beijing and Tianjin is still pretty well intact. Both cities are spreading out but more up than out. Lots of the smaller towns in between are building big new housing blocks that are replacing old one and two storey housing. This is a big improvement over US suburban sprawl. Along all the train routes there were lots of trees planted just last fall because they were cropped short before transplanting in the typical manner but had no small branches yet. There seems to be an effort under way to put about 10 meters of trees on either side of the major railroad lines and superhighways though so much more could be done. Every time I drive from Duluth to Minneapolis, I have this same feeling. All the places along the highways could be planted as well as the medians not to mention making wind breaks between the huge farm fields which still blow topsoil away on warm dry days in spring and fall when the crops are off. But since it doesn't turn an immediate profit it doesn't happen. China and the US—two very different countries with so many simliar problems stemming from the same causes, the rush for immediate and maximum profit.
We were at the family's home before the wedding and got to the location too late for the traditional fireworks. Some fireworks displays before weddings are really something. In general, wedding customs, I'm told, are a bit in flux and vary greatly from place to place. During the cultural revolution all the former customs were stopped and now what comes back is a mixture of this and that. (A good example of what happened at that time can be seen in the film To Live 活着)). For example, Tianjin weddings traditionally take place in the afternoon followed by an evening meal, but this bride was from Tanggu, just 75 miles away, where they happen at noon followed by an early afternoon meal. Here in Xinxiang they happen at noon too.
The ceremony was rather brief because people are officially married when the receive documents from the state and don't even have to go to a justice of the peace as in the US. Nevertheless, most people go through something like what we participated in. The room was decorated in pink: a floral arch, a row of small columns covered with pink satin, a pink backdrop with neon blinking cupids, a large candle stand, and pop music love songs in the background. On either side of the room there were rows of chairs facing the center with the closest ones for the immediate family, one side for the bride's and one side for the groom's. A few people wore suits, but most were dressed very causally. The main guests of honor wore corsages and most older women on both sides wore in their hair a kind of bright red barette, which was about 2 inches by about 6 inches separated into three bars with silver stars in it. I take this to be a Tianjin custom. At least I have not seen it elsewhere.
The ceremony was presided over what seemed to be a hired MC. It was really quite short, and in it the couple pledged their love and loyalty to each other in words not unlike any US service. The new couple was then introduced and there was applause at several points. There were words by the MC about the importance of parents to children and the parents and representatives on both sides made statements of congratulations and good wishes. Not surprisingly, however, there was no mention of reproducing and filling the earth. This part of the earth is pretty full already, thank you. After the words there was a quick and restrained kiss-the-bride thing, an interlocking arm drinking of wine and that was about it. There was no dancing, no removing of garters, no throwing of bouquets. A distinctively Chinese feature was the bowing and offering of tea by both the bride and groom to their respective in-laws.
Of course, this is China and the most important part of the day was eating. There were about 25 dishes served at each table of 12 people and all of them were very delicious indeed. The other big part was the drinking of baijiu (白酒), a kind of white lightening about 50% alcohol. There's some of it that goes up to maybe 60% and some only about 35%, but one of my fellow drinkers said that hitting the middle around 50% is best. I'm not a big fan of baijiu because I'm not so crazy about the taste but also because it's a really nasty hangover. Of course, they say the same thing here as in the US: If you drink the good stuff it doesn't bother you. Don't believe it. However, I did managed to leave the place under my own power with all of the food I ate staying in its proper place. A couple of Excedrin back at the hotel got me through the rest of the day.
The ceremony and dinner happened in the same building, a complex of dining halls with gardens called Ding Xiang (丁香), "Most Fragrant." The bride wore white for the ceremony and then wore a lavish reddish pink dress to make the rounds to toast guests at dinner and then changed again into blue. There were about 100 guests and this might be considered a smaller gathering, but again like the US it depends on one's cash reserve and desire for face, etc. I'm told that some get really carried away and might invite a thousand, but such large events are perhaps rare. Also, the more you invite and get invited, the more endless the cost and the mutual obligations that are incurred. After the ceremony the bride and groom headed off the their new condominium and I didn't hear any mention of a honeymoon.
The next day we headed back to Xinxiang by the same route—train to Beijing, change stations and trains, and then back to Xinxiang. The return trip was on a Monday, so the traffic in Beijing was at its worst. When we tried to get a cab in the cab line in front of the main train station to go to the west one, the clown cab driver asked me for 80 yuan for a fare I knew was only 30 at most. I told him he was crazy in a very colloquial way (你疯了), which brought laugher from all the cabbies in line and someone said, “This guy really knows China” (中国通). Well, I know enough not to get ripped off that badly. We went across the street and hailed a cab on the street rather than from the line because this has worked for me before in Beijing. After we got in, the guy popped on the meter as he is supposed to but started going on about the traffic's being so bad and how he'd better take some more expensive but faster ciruitous route to get us there on time. He said I'd pay for the time sitting in traffic or the time on the road. But as a former Chicago cab driver, I know that time on the road cranks the meter faster than time in traffic, so I told him to sit tight. Also, I know that the road to the other train station goes past Tiananmen Square and is very wide after the worst part and would likely be fairly smooth sailing as it was. Even when we got back to Xinxiang a local cabbie wanted to get a higher fare instead of using the meter, so I told him to forget it and slammed the door just before I was about to get in. I suppose he thought I was some foreigner newly fallen off the turnip truck in the big town of Xinxiang. No. In fact, I've been around the block more than a few times. The young fellow who did take us according to the meter had a plastic rear view mirror ornament of Mao Zedong. He said although some people don't like Mao because of the Cultural Revolution, Mao was the one he believed in, "He is my god." Step into a different cab and step into a different China.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
A Chinese Worker
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)