Jump, push, run

Just like last year, as the cool fall weather came, so did the buzz about the campus wide track meet. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten any clear indications about the basketball tournament, as Sean, Jordan, and I all are interested in bringing some red, white, and blue skills to the Foreign Language Department team. But, the track meet (or sports meeting as it’s poorly translated) is a staple here, and went down a few weekends ago. Sean, Sarah, Peter, and I all got up early and got dressed for the opening ceremony on Friday morning. It was just the same as last years, but still provided me with plenty of entertainment. Seeing ‘volunteer’ female students standing, slightly dancing and holding flowers at attention as all the teachers march by reminds me again of the value of equality between the genders and onerous duties of students in such a hierarchical system. I was able to skirt around the dark suit requirement for the teachers in the School of Foreign Languages because I am, umm, not Chinese.

After the ceremony, I hung out on the track for a bit talking with students about how much they didn’t want to be performing in the ceremony but how little they could do about it. I then met up with Sean and Sarah and Steve (吴雪松)to watch the faculty high jump. Now, Sean high jumped in high school, and was very good. But, as he noted, he graduated high school ten years ago. Nonetheless, this strapping Irish lad from small town Michigan put on quite a show. There were two apparatuses available for the competitors to use. One was the high jump set up you’re thinking of. The other was a pole on top of two supports along the side edge of a long jump pit. Instead of the Fosbury flop, the majority of the competitors (and all of those eliminated early) would run parallel to the bar, and when reaching it would kind of scissor kick over it. This meant many would fall into the sand pit if they didn’t get their feet set. Many did. Much more grave was the possibility that a jumper (mind these are men) wouldn’t get his second leg over the bar, thus landing on the bar with the part of his body he least wanted to land on the bar with.

Sean, on the other hand, didn’t look like ten years had passed him by since his high school jumping days. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite understand what was going on (although the students volunteering were pretty helpful) so he didn’t get to skip the early heights. Despite this tiring him out, as the bar got higher, he outlasted every other jumper. One of his last competitors gave some valiant efforts, and had track spikes and a water bottle and shoe to mark out his approach, but Sean wasn’t having it. He ended up not only winning, but literally raised the bar and set the new faculty record by 15 cm or something ridiculous like that. At some point, the other departments are going to quit letting the school of foreign languages use the foreign ringers.

My only event of the day was the faculty 4x100m relay. One of the secretaries from the foreign language department had approached Steve (most likely because he is known as ‘that one Chinese teacher always hanging out with the foreign teachers’) and asked if he could get a team together for the 4x100. Of course, Sean, Peter, and I have nothing better to do, so we all consented. Steve took the lead off, Peter in second, me third, with His Airness Sean anchoring. We ended up getting fourth in our heat and eighth overall. We didn’t practice handoffs because if the U.S. Olympic team isn’t practicing them, then I feel no need to do so. Peter stumbled a bit out of his handoff from Steve, but otherwise we did all right. Now, in general, the school of foreign languages isn’t too well known for its athletic prowess in the faculty competitions. Apparently the type of people holing up to write their thesis about Leaves of Grass or Wuthering Heights isn’t exactly the athletic type. So, just having a team, and on top of that beating more than half of the competition is much appreciated by our Chinese colleagues.

I got up early Saturday morning for my main event, the faculty 800m. I had big shoes to fill as last year Dave not only finished first, but also set a new faculty record. As the picture shows, I wasn’t messing around this year. I was the only ‘merricun running in the race, and I was representing. I was sad to see that there were only eight or nine competitors, as last year Dave ran in a pretty good pack. After the customary dead sprint (Chinese people seem incapable of pacing themselves) at the beginning of the race, I settled into first place. Which of course, is the worst place to run a race in. I was aware of some footsteps behind me, and as we turned the 600m corner, two other teachers were right behind me and slowly drew past. The crowd started to cheer and as they passed me they either yelled 加油(jia you) meaning ‘let’s go’ or ‘come on’ or 中国 (zhong guo) meaning China. I couldn’t quite tell, although I’d like to imagine they yelled China as they moved past the foreign devil. You can see from the picture that they really did run past me, but fear not; I gave it the old Ken Ferrell puuuddsch (inside joke) and came by in first place. Of course, my fast jog didn’t set any records, but I ran it in 2:26, no more than ten seconds off of what I was running in high school. Sean mentioned that all the students around him were cheering really loudly when the other two runners passed me, but that after I won the photo finish, they all just went quiet, looked down and walked away. I wasn’t really trying to ruin people’s day, there just aren’t a lot of times for me to rock the red, white, and blue bandana over here.

My other competition was the push-up competition. Peter was also competing in this competition; he placed in the top eight. I ended up getting second, which was disappointing, but you can’t win them all. There was incredible irregularity among the various forms of push-ups allowed (mine was admittedly not the best). As I watched the rest of my competition I got kind of worked up about what I considered unacceptable form. Danthemanstan reminded me that “this is a faculty push-up competition at a tier three college in China.” He was right, so I shut up. So, a first and a second isn’t two firsts, but it’s not too bad. Of course, some of my competition was twenty or thirty years my senior. All in all, the great weather and great competition made this year’s track meet lots of fun, and once again made me wish that somehow, even without the power to wield a giant authoritarian stick, schools in the States could pull something like this off. (The middle picture is of me with some random admirers after my win.)

Class trip

At the beginning of almost every class, as I do the attendance, I ask for any announcements, jokes, stories, or gossip. I’m not one to ever be in a hurry, and early in the morning I am rarely raring to get right into class. Generally my students act like they’re taught, and are silent. But, one day my junior secretarial studies class told me that they were going to be going on a class trip. I inquired a bit further and found out they were headed to a ghost town and cave on Halloween weekend. They kind of invited me to go, and I said I’d like to and to give me some more details. Well, it turned out that their Chinese teachers couldn’t chaperone the trip, so that job became mine. I had a student (Zhenzhen…from the trip to Song Shan) help me write a letter to the administrator for the class explaining my (supposed) qualifications for chaperoning the trip. They really needed two teachers to come, so Danthemanstan agreed to come. Well, as always, things changed a few days before the trip, and it switched to an overnight trip to a lake. Well, that would’ve had Danthemanstan missing a World Series game featuring his beloved Yankees, so it was just the students and me. It turned out just fine, they had the whole trip planned; I didn’t do a single thing that one might normally term as “chaperoning.”

We started the trip at the ungodly hour of 05:30, when we met in total darkness to board the bus. Our group was about half of my class and then about ten or so of their friends from our campus, some of which were my students last fall. We went with a travel agency, so we were joined on our bus by a few middle-aged couples and a hearty, jovial group of grandpas and grandmas, as the elderly are affectionately called here. I went right to my seat, pulled my hat over my eyes and did what people should be doing at that hour.

Our first destination was Da Ci Yan(大慈岩), a national park in northern Zhejiang province, the coastal province south of Jiangsu, where I live. We hiked up to a couple different points along a ridge. It wasn’t quite mountainous, but was a pretty are filled with steep, forested hills. There were many archetypal pagodas on cliffs overlooking valleys. One of the big features was the two-sided Buddha, which was pretty impressive, if not a bit out of place due it its obviously recent construction.

Our next stop was a cave named Ling Xi Sheng Jing (灵栖胜境).It wasn’t too inviting, as all of the ponds leading up to it were at that nasty stage between needing to be drained or filled. But, the cave was pretty impressive and expansive. I would’ve liked to spend a bit more time there, but we were herded through it in classic Chinese tourist fashion. I recognize that tours I have been on in many countries rushed me through the site, but in China this rushing is exacerbated by the fact that you are also being pushed and shoved the whole time, due to the inescapable throngs of visitors. Walking around the caves and the national park was really enjoyable. My students and I talked a mostly Chinese with some English mixed in for my convenience. They were all girls, as the two boys from the class didn’t make the trip. I really enjoyed talking with them outside of class, as they really let down their guard, and we could joke around, they could teach me some dirty Chinese words and phrases. I try to make my classes pretty light and enjoyable (while still prohibiting Chinese) but the classroom itself just adds some seriousness on its own. Just these conversations alone made the trip a joy.

As I have to with many things in China, I just laughed and sighed during the bus ride. The tour guide, for some cultural reason I am still working on understanding, was constantly blasting trip updates through the bus speakers as well as begging for people to come to the front of the bus to sing or give some sort of performance. There were also some call and answer type games. This type of in-bus entertainment is pretty normal here, but in no way aligns with my idea of what should occur on a bus, train, or plane. Thank god for iPods.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the hotel we stayed at, as the trip was fairly cheap. But I guess economies of scale combined with some travel agent kickbacks makes for such. I had an awesome dinner with the grandpas and grandmas (all the students went cheap and brought their own food). It was great food, and I had a heck of a time trying to understand the flurry of questions from my companions. They seemingly predated the implementation of standard Mandarin in the schools, so I could barely decipher even the most basic phrases in their Changzhou dialect. Regardless, they were (like most Chinese) very hospitable and continually passed the dishes to me and showed me how to scoop out the spicy snails, which were superb. I passed the rest of the night, after some prodding, playing cards, drinking beer, and eating various snacks with some of my students. They did their best to teach me the most popular Chinese card game, but as we weren’t betting, I wasn’t too worried about doing it right. Typical Chinese snacks (read: lots of spicy tofu) and warm beer isn’t really my idea of a great night, but being able to see some of my students’ personalities come out was well worth it. By the power of numbers I wasn’t able to head to bed until showing them that I could clearly out-drink any of them, including a few boyfriends along for the trip. It took only four or five beers to show them that an American fraternity is a little better practice than a prison-like Chinese high school.

On Sunday morning we headed to Qian Dao Hu (千岛湖)which is a man made lake whose name roughly translates as lake of a thousand islands. We took a boat to only two islands, and spent very little time on the boat. I was hoping to island hop around the island, but that didn’t happen. In fact I got the impression there are much fewer than a thousand islands. It was cool and misty, so didn’t make for the best day to boat around a lake. There were some passable temples and stone bridges over streams, but I wasn’t too impressed. I did have a riot shaking a rope bridge with some of the more adventurous students while the rest of the girls shrieked and clung to the ropes. I couldn’t help but laugh and take a picture when we passed a stream and a few of the grandmas from our group were bending over picking some a reed like plant and filling plastic bags with it. I’m guessing it’s good for cooking or some herbal medicine (and isn’t sold at the supermarket?). I doubt they had any detrimental impact, but picking plants from a park/nature preserve is a bit unsettling. Arriving back on campus after an equally annoying but eventless bus ride, I was quite happy to have gone on the trip, especially to get to know my students better and see them hang out/interact with each other naturally. I also was satisfied with my role as chaperone’s complete lack of responsibility.

Song Shan, Shaolin Temple, Yuntai Shan

The reason for one of my recent trips came in a discussion with one of my students about places she had visited in China. I thought I had been to three of the four famous/important mountains in China. But, she corrected me and let me know that I had only been to two. Later that night, I was talking with her on QQ (the ubiquitous Chinese chat program) and suggested taking a trip that weekend. I of course thought she would reject immediately, because of the lack of time for preparation coupled with the oddity of traveling with a foreign teacher. Surprisingly, she said yes, if she could find a friend to come with us. I said the more the merrier. So, Zhenzhen (真真), Zheye (哲烨) and I headed to Song Shan in Henan province. Both of them are my students, seniors majoring in English Education.

Our overnight train trip was uneventful, which is how train trips ought to be. Upon arrival, we needed to find a hotel. Both of them had traveled a fair amount before, with their parents. Both of them are from families with sufficient if not excess money hence the traveling. So, they were pretty unhappy with my hotel selection method…essentially look for the grimiest location, knowing it will be cheap. They didn’t agree with my assessment that it’s all the same when you’re asleep. But, they consented, and the three of us shared a room for only 90Y.

We first visited Shaolin Temple(少林寺), the world famous home of Kung fu (better termed Chinese martial arts). It is also the titular location of Jet Li’s first movie. The temple was very similar to the Confucius Temple, in the absence of a guide telling me the significance of the structures and tablets, wasn’t too interesting to me. We were able to watch a performance by mostly teen martial arts students. It was pretty impressive. One of the students did a few push up modifications that didn’t look that easy. I tried them when I got home: I was wrong. They were incredibly difficult. Throngs of visitors (mostly Chinese—thus pushy) made the temple less spectacular than it might have been.

In stark contrast to the temple, a pagoda garden, filled with burial pagodas of past martial arts masters, was gorgeous. Amid the mountains and filled with a bright afternoon sun, the pagodas majestically (I borrow this word from President Obama) rose into the sky. I really enjoyed just walking around and pondering about history and the thoughts and desires of the men buried beneath the pagodas, (as one does in any cemetery or memorial). One funny thing happened when I asked Zheye to take a picture with me in front of one of the pagodas. She politely refused. When I asked (because I always ask) she said that it was bad luck to take pictures in front of graves/memorials. I had heard this before here, but didn’t really think of it. I held my anti-superstition tongue and took the picture with Zhenzhen. After the pagoda we took the cable car up to a peak, as it was too late in the day to climb up, and my companions didn’t want to. Song Shan is more like a collection of peaks than one stand-alone mountain, and this peak was spectacular. There were some great paths along precipices and the views of the valley below, changing into autumn colors, was a great change from the bustle and overwhelming grayness of Changzhou. Back at the hotel that night, as we discussed the next day, I was just planning to try to climb up one of the other well-recommended peaks. Zhenzhen though, true to the adventurous spirit which made her consent to the trip, wanted to head to a national park nearby which she had heard goo things about.

So the next morning we headed to Yuntai Shan(云台山), which although called a mountain, is much more famous for its waterfalls and gorges. So we hit up two buses to make it to the town nearest Yuntai Shan. Both of the girls weren’t super keen on using the (admittedly) rough and dirty intercity buses. Apparently when their parents foot the bill, it’s either private cars or chartered buses. Contrarily, I love the unadulterated humanity that exists on such bus rides. Once we got there, it was a great relief to have the two girls figure out the taxi, tickets, and a hotel for me. The park itself was beautiful. We enjoyed a nice hike up to the highest waterfall in China, that was a little weak that day…but infinitely higher than anything I’m used to in Iowa. The main gorge was impressive, and had trails running right through and around it. I noticed that the valley below it was dry and overgrown with vegetation, due to a small dam and reservoir at the bottom of the gorge. I appreciate the eventful gorge that this created, but also think it might be a symbol of the developing water shortage problem in northern China. At the end of this site was a massive construction project of a new dam. I wondered if maybe I was glad we went as the whole gorge might soon be go the way of the valley. Of course then they can run tours of the dam like they do at the Three Gorges or Hoover Dam.Our taxi driver to and from the park was much more like a business consultant. He arranged the hotel for us, took us right to the ticket booth and told us about the discounts, and kind of gave us our schedule for visiting the different sites in the extensive park. This is because the infrastructure prevents it from being a DIY place. I don’t know if this is due to a lack of tourism or a lack of government interest in creating the infrastructure. It seems like there is much more of these limited option stops in China than anywhere else I have traveled (save Laos, where there literally is only one road). I hope it’s due to lack of volume to warrant the creation of more varied options, but tend to think it’s more likely to be the often seen Chinese government tactic of controlling/extorting tourists. They do this because, well, they can and no one’s going to tell them they can’t.
Both Zhenzhen and Zheye were great travel partners. They seemed to be much more easy-going than many of my other students/acquaintances. Finding a hotel room and getting what I wanted to eat was no longer one of the main challenges of traveling. As I have maybe mentioned before, I was still amazed at how I was more proficient at figuring some things out and finding places. I probably shouldn’t have been though, because, even though they have both traveled a lot in China, they hadn’t ever been on a trip with this small of a group in which everyone was unfamiliar with the place. The three of us stayed in the hotel room without any troubles, which might seem awkward to many, but it was fine. For starters, it was cheaper, so an easy decision for me. Additionally, having assigned roommates in middle school, high school, and/or college as well as often sharing rooms with relatives and friends makes young Chinese people much more comfortable sharing rooms than a lot of my American friends. They complained a lot about being bored on the bus/train rides, but after I offered the line “the only people who are bored are those with boring minds” from my fifth grade teacher, they didn’t complain so much. It was a great trip, and I think it’s pretty cool that I can say I have walked among the same stones and trees that first inspired Chinese monks long ago to begin martial arts.

Teaching and learning

As this blog often looks much more like a travelogue than a reflection of living in China, I thought I ought to write a bit about my actual “job”. Now, I put it in quotations because, honestly, it doesn’t really feel like a job. Almost all of the time, I thoroughly enjoy my time in class, and as I taught here last year, am able to recycle many lesson plans, so that my out of class work is minimal. This year I am teaching a whopping twelve hours of class per week. While that is the normal course load for a professor in the U.S., I don’t have to maintain office hours or a rigorous research project like a real professor. Now, don’t worry, I never refer to myself as a professor, save a few ironic boasts. My twelve hours consist of four sections of “Selected Readings of English Publications” and one section of the default oral English class that meets twice a week. The oral English students are juniors who study what is best translated as secretarial studies, and thus have English on par with some of the freshman or sophomore students. I don’t have nearly as stimulating discussions or activities as those I’ll discuss below, but they are good, kind students and I have fun joking around with them. A few assignments have allowed them to open up a bit emotionally, which is marginally enlightening and a bit touching.

I teach the publications class to senior Business English and English Education students, and they have been a joy to teach. The only negative in teaching them is that in the spring they do an internship, so this is their last semester of classes, which makes for some shotty attendance. Yet, the students that come to class generally have very good English and thus can understand almost all I say at normal speed. They also show much broader ranges of openness to new ideas and concepts, as well as a little more diversified life experiences. In my opinion, this openness to new concepts and ability to understand them is much more what a liberal arts education ought to be. In contrast, even subjects like foreign languages and the social sciences here reflect a more technical training. I have been pretty surprised and impressed with the interests of my students. Two students, for example are currently reading Wide Sargasso Sea and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in English.

In a rare spurt of idealism, my goal for the publications class was to develop the students’ ability to summarize and analyze a newspaper or magazine article using critical and creative thinking. If you’ve read many entries in this blog, you’ll know that (in my opinion) the Chinese educational system and mentality in general, is bereft of critical and creative thinking. Aside from a few of the top national universities, schools here (from kindergarten to cap and gown) neglect these two related skills, which for me were what I most enjoyed in college. I still remember one day in Spanish literature class with a superb professor when most of us had analyzed a pretty polemic and graphic passage in the most obvious way. He got up, stepped back, told us to clean out our brains, and look at it anew. Now, I certainly don’t think I’ll be able to have this impact on my students. But, I am hoping, by providing some important examples, to at least make a few students think differently. I think it’s pretty darn important in a country where the media is heavily controlled, books are censored, the Internet is monitored and controlled with the best Internet surveillance program in the world, and people who speak their mind often aren’t heard from again. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I am doing anything really grand or that could even pale in comparison to the work of the few Chinese dissidents. But, I think that encouraging students to not take an article at its word is the kind of cultural exchange I am paid to provide.

One of the more interesting things about teaching most of the senior students in the English department is to really see the different personalities that different classes take on. My sister Jane had told me this was certain to happen, and teaching four different classes of similar students has really shown me this. Being seniors, they have had three years for their class personalities to develop, and also can communicate much better with me than my freshmen and sophomore students last year. My two Business English classes are much more talkative and responsive than the English education students. One class, which has the most boys, is a lot of fun and for the most part gives me the least trouble in following directions. I think that having more boys is actually one of the big reasons for this. Although their role in China is quickly changing (as it ought to) women here are still often held to a very conservative, patriarchal standard. Until recently, when the Communist Party criminalized the binding of feet and promoted women’s role for both economic and egalitarian reasons, women in China were expected to be obedient, passive, servile, and delicate. Bring that attitude to my class where they’re expected to discuss and doubt articles in a foreign language, and class can be quite quiet. So having some assertive boys makes class much more enjoyable. One of my English Education classes, to be frank, sucks in comparison to the others. Sucks may be a crass word, but they often suck my energy and patience away by refusing to ask questions, answer questions, or suffer a little embarrassment by guessing the answer. I can understand the freshmen being very worried about the Asian tragedy of “losing face” by being wrong amongst their new classmates. But after three years of tracked classes and living next door to each other, I doubt many surprises will emerge, so it’s frustrating that the won’t answer any questions.

I do my best to select articles that balance what I think is beneficial for them to read and their preferences, which I solicited during the first class. One thing I noticed when asking for topics is the sharp divergence between the guys’ and girls’ interests. Most guys were looking to read about computer games or the NBA, while I had an overwhelming preference by the girls for articles about fashion, movies, or American-Chinese cultural differences. Of course, all I want to read about is politics and economics, so I have to show some restraint. Recently they read an article about the Nobel Prize and the military, and the discussion questions were in the general military/war/peace/personal sacrifice field. One student, who is normally pretty quiet and seems much more concerned about her bracelets and make-up made an interesting, if not somewhat obvious statement. She explained to me (I paraphrase) “that the government’s opinion about political subjects is the only one that can exist. If you disagree with it, you will just go to jail. So the only real option is to just say what the government says”. Many of you, like me, might be pretty eager to criticize this apparently lazy and defeatist-esque attitude. But I know that I can’t fully understand the risk vs. reward analysis that past and recent events have formed in my students’ minds. It’s comments like these, and the thinking they make my brain do that make teaching here very enjoyable.
(included are pics of two of my senior classes)

Shacking with the fellas

A few weekends ago (I know, I am a little behind on posting) I spent the night in the main boys dormitory with some of my students. During one of my classes, when I had the students suggest article subjects for class, one student-English name Terry-suggested the EPL. Luckily, my wee bit of soccer knowledge allowed me to know that he meant the English Premier League. I later found out he picked his name after John Terry, the English defender for Chelsea FC. Oddly enough, when I talked to him during the break, he informed me that Real Madrid was his favorite team. So I was ecstatic to find out that he watches almost all their games (even though they're on in the middle of the night). Well, he misses the mid week games due to the fact that the electricity is cut off after 23:00 during the week.

So, I arranged to watch a game with him and his roommates one weekend. In their room of eight beds, there are seven guys living there, as one moved out previously. Many students go home every weekend, so there was room for me to sleep in Terry's bed, and he in another. The extra bed is littered with old class materials and extra bedding. I have already visited the boys dorms and discussed it a little in this post. I had actually already been to this building and floor, as some of the students I taught last year live last year live there. The floor has four rooms, three of which have senior English students and one with sophomore English students. The game wasn't on until two in the morning, so I had plenty of time to hang out with them before it started. I came over at 22:30 (before the 23:00 curfew) with some fried dumplings and a six pack of Snow Beer. Most of them were pretty excited to have me spend the night, and honestly, I was excited to do so.

Immediately upon entrance in all four of the dorm rooms on this floor it is apparent what the main weekend activity of Chinese male college students is: computer games. They are wildly popular here. Wildly might be an understatement. At least two, if not three or four computers are set up on the one main table in the rooms otherwise cramped with beds, books, and bags. From the minute I showed up until a little after 02:00, there were never less than two guys playing in each room. If I had money to invest, I would be pouring it into companies developing games for the Chinese market. I have been told the girls also are glued to their computers, either watching movies, tv shows, or playing simpler flash games. They seem to really enjoy it, and have some beer or pop to drink while they play, as well as munch on sunflower seeds, spicy tofu strips, or spicy fried chicken. As I was when I first visited the dorms here, I was impressed by how well the guys got along and joked with each other. Their decorations were pretty sparse, the main one being an "inspirational" poster with a picture of all eight roommates that the school required them to make. Some of the guys had used a Sharpie to add some real inspiration to the poster. A few guys were reading on their cell phones (very popular here) or watching movies on their laptops, but playing or watching computer games was by far the most popular thing. Terry and I stayed up to watch the game, which Real Madrid won, so it was worth the late night.

In contrast to a Saturday night during my time at the University of Tulsa, these guys' night was pretty mild. The 23:00 curfew and lack of co-ed dorms really limit the type of parties that have suffused American campuses. Furthermore, the dorms are packed tightly enough to effectively prevent any sort of gathering even among the guys or girls. The fact that many students spend Friday and Saturday nights in the library studying or "relaxing" and reading magazines displays a studiousness that inhibits any keggers from gaining much ground. My (invalidated) opinion is that they choose to do more individual activities on the weekend nights because they already spend so much time with their roommates and classmates during the week. It's fundamentally difficult to be alone in a place as populated as this part of China, and even the senior students still have pretty regimented lives during the week-most of it with their classmates (who are also their roommates). I never saw my senior year roommates in an academic setting, as they had different majors in different colleges; so hanging with them and other friends on the weekend meant seeing someone different. Not so for the students at my university. It was a great experience to spend the night with them, and even furthered my respect for the resiliency that so many Chinese people in all walks of life exhibit to make their place in a very competitive and unforgiving economy/environment.

Mo' money, mo' problems

At the end of last year, I meant to write a blog with some sort of summary about my year teaching in China. For all sorts of reasons, my “year” teaching in China has turned into two. Yet, there is still a post it note on my desktop about writing a sort of summary blog. I was reminded of it last week when on a trip with a student and the subject of it came up. We were riding on a bus through the outskirts of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Henan province is northwest of Jiangsu, but more importantly is in the second line of provinces in China. By this I mean the row of provinces that border the coastal provinces, which are the most developed. So in places like Henan, and Zhengzhou, which is an emerging city, one can really see China’s development in process.

There are myriad works written about China’s economic and social development over the last 30 years. They are undoubtedly written by people much more intelligent and better informed that I. So, I don’t know that I have much to offer. Essentially, though, I think I ought to try to answer the frequent question “what’s China like?” as I saw it after a year here. Such a question is broad, so my answers ought to be. But to be succinct, China is busy. Busy building, busy selling, busy making, busy buying: in essence busy consuming.

This busyness worries and intrigues me. It worries me because I don’t believe that China can consume the way we do in America. I’m not sure that they want to do so, but most of what I see tells me they do. There’s no doubt that China is growing rapidly, wealth is increasing, and its society is modernizing, albeit much slower than the economy. The most common reason students have missed my classes this semester has been to attend driving lessons. Now surely every student that is taking driving lessons isn’t going to be driving his own car upon graduation…but the trend is shifting that way in China. And the roads are already crowded and the smog already thick. Chinese people love to display their wealth (I’m not saying Americans don’t). There may be many reasons for it, but I mainly attribute it to the fact that wealth is so new here. The fall of Imperial China, the civil war and Mao’s regime pretty much ruined any chance of China joining the Industrial Revolution. So, instead, now, China is doing its industrial revolution and its technological revolution at the same time. This means a family can go from farming rice to surfing the web on their smart phones in not too much time. With such a dramatic shift, why not buy the flashiest phone there is.

More precisely, I worry because the way America consumes is highly irresponsible (in my opinion). I generally believe that as the world continues to grow and consume naturally resources, the pressure on these finite resources will increase, causing tensions to escalate. I also believe as the gap between poor and rich widens, the moral question surrounding this gap will become more central in our lives. America puts a lot of pressure on natural resources, especially per capita. The wealth gap in America is huge, not because our poor are poor, but because our rich are really rich. China puts a lot of pressure on natural resources, but not so much per capita. Its wealth gap is huge because its poor are really poor and its rich are becoming really rich. Chinese people are very diligent and very nationalistic, thus if they put their minds to something, they most certainly can achieve it-if you don’t believe me consult an Olympics medal count from the most recent games. I am worried because if China tries to consume like America, which it really seems like they do; I think they will be able to do it, but only with huge conflicts that result from natural resources allocations and massive problems that come from unequal wealth distribution. China’s potential consumers are the most numerous in the world, so the problems and conflicts will be bigger; this is why I am worried about it.

Much of the reason I returned to China (besides the good pay for easy work) is that I am intrigued by the way China is developing and how it will choose to deal with the problems that, in my opinion, are nearly inevitable. Being here has allowed me to see the main of the advantages of an authoritarian government: when a public measure needs to be implemented, it is done so with amazing speed and efficiency. Of course, whether or not the public measure is beneficial or just is not weighed on by the public. In my opinion, which is obviously heavily influenced by my life in America, the efficiency isn’t worth the lack of control. Not at all, especially in the long run. China won’t be able to continue to open up its economy and grow its wealth without re-addressing some of the issues it put down via the Tian’anmen Square Massacre. Most of my students say that they just want a stable life, but yet also show an amazing propensity for coming to class with the newest cell phones, portable video players and name brand clothing. I’ll trust their actions on this one. I am very intrigued to see how the government responds to these desires while still keeping its incontestable grip on power and maintaining what it calls a “harmonious society.”

I recognize that this post may seem too serious and that I touch on all sorts of issues here that may be controversial, but I don’t know that I did a good enough job of expressing to friends and family when I was home this summer my general impression of living in the world’s most populous country. As you might expect, China is busy. It’s on the move, hustling here and there to get rich and gain power. I’m sure that about every country on Earth (except Bhutan) is doing the same thing, but it’s right in your face over here. It’s what I see every day.