Recently I wrote with contempt of this claim that "China remains brutally authoritarian," which is partially buttressed by misconceptions Americans harbor about Chinese internet censorship.
Social media blogger, Shel Israel, recently made his first visit to China. And all it took was a brief visit for him to get a very accurate view on the realities of Chinese censorship and its role in the lives of actual Chinese:
Censorship in China "is just about like what happens when you work for a company in the US. There are certain things you simply cannot say." When Robert and I collaborated on Naked Conversations, he was working at Microsoft. When I emailed him there, I had to write "N*ked Conversations to get through the corporate spam/porn filters." The point is that we both knew what we were talking about and it was easy to work around the problem.
The person who believes China is a threat to the United States might have a hard time admitting that the voices of Americans are routinely censored at home. With full understanding granted to the difference between government and employment restrictions, it still stands that the lives of most Americans are impacted more greatly by the censors at their jobs than they would be impacted if the government was suddenly as authoritarian. How frequently does the average American protest? Have you ever voiced your dissent in a public manor? Held a sign in front of a courthouse? Filed a legal suit against your government? How much does the average American really make use of all the freedom she is afforded?
Then consider the controls on your expression at work. Employees have little problem swallowing their pride in the face of dictates from higher-ups, they perceive no violation of human rights when they are made to smile and nod at their bosses’ terrible ideas, and not a single sticker is stuck to the bumper of a car, in a foreign country, calling for the downfall of Bed, Bath, and Beyond because of their cultural genocide. Why not?
I think we’re more oppressed than we realize because of how we frame the issue. Our historical identity, one transmitted to us in mandatory education, is a nation of rebels united against tyranny and the promotion of individual rights. No k-12 student is ever asked to conceive of the term “freedom” in anything but the terms of US government; despite it having a much broader philosophical value, including one that applies to our work lives. As an unfortunate result it is outside our purview to see how Chinese citizens are no more oppressed than we are in daily life, because the Chinese government fails our constitutional standard, which is the only one that applies to our concept of freedom.
In China, in rare cases, where a blogger persisted in testing the government's will, there have been imprisonments. But such reaction is not an everyday occurrence and social media people do not live in constant fear of their doors being kicked down in the night. It just doesn't happen that way.
This is the point I tried to demonstrate with my April fools prank, where two thirds of Americans believed I was actually being deported from China for something I wrote on this blog. Exciting though it would it be, it just doesn’t happen that way.
In fact, for a small minority of bloggers, there is some status in pushing the envelope. I talked with two bloggers who boasted about how many times they had been blocked. One told me it would be "cool" if he actually got arrested.
Sounds unmistakably like the sentiments of troublemaking Americans school children. And if the way a Chinese person feels about internet censorship the same way American children feel about schools, American schools must brutally authoritarian threats to the globe. That, or internet censorship in China is a benign obstacle. Take your pick.
I concur with Israel, "censorship can be a major hemorrhoid to the China tech community, but it is not the Orwellian horror that so many Westerners seem to think it is."
I have been following the Bizcult blog since I found out Kyle Long was writing for it around December 2007. I never disagreed too strongly with the opinions it expressed because I don’t run a business in China. Moreover, my knowledge of Chinese culture is the flawed product of Western academic institutions mashed with experience from living in Beijing...as a product of Western institutions. But this postis about something I can disagree confidently about. Chinese food is delicious. It's better than American food. And although there were many aspects of American food I missed in Beijing, after returning I say with confidence the preponderance of great food lies in China.
Matt at Bizcult offers his translations of Mr. Paul, a Westerner writing about the many ways Chinese food is superlative:
Mr. Paul suggests there is “endless variety,” as if every animal body part made edible were a good thing. He says he has “sampled as much as possible.” Translation: he really did try to eat it, up until the point he knew he would gag if he took a bite of the penis meat.
I'm not here to defend penis eating. Nary a single time was a privileged enough to partake in such an expensive luxury, not even when dining with Chinese Communist Party officials in Yuncheng. But the following "translation" is far-and-away wrong, and I cannot fathom how a fellow Beijinger writes these things.
Though the Thai and Indian foods in America are pretty good versions of the real thing, the Chinese cuisine is most often an abomination,” Mr. Paul writes. Translation: Thai and Indian foods are pretty good versions of the real thing because they’re naturally tasty to Westerners. Chinese cuisine is most often an abomination to the Western palette, and must be altered drastically.
My views, in short: Americanized Chinese food is delicious, though a sodium hazard. Beijing Chinese food is delicious, though a sanitation hazard. American food is sometimes good, though its goodness is hazardously tied to its saturated fat content.
Readjusting back to an American diet took much longer than adjusting to a Chinese one when I lived in Beijing. Sure, there are flavors in Chinese food that make you question the entire country, like tripe, but those are rare, and the majority of what you eat is very similar to the flavors you find in the United States. Breads, meats, sweet things...the specifics change, like your meat has bones all over, and yes, there is probably glass somewhere in one of your dishes, but all and all it's very delicious food.
The solution for tastes which your “Western palette” (whatever that is) rejects? Just don't order them. Instead of thousand year old eggs order orange chicken instead, it's on the same menu. And, since Chinese custom has multiple people sharing dishes over their individual bowls of rice, you can pick whatever you like the most and leave what you don't like for someone else.
Contrast that to American custom where you frequently order an entree which consists of a whole lot of some vegetable, a whole lot of some starch, and a huge hunk of meat. This hoggish approach is no better demonstrated than the American solution to vegetabls: salad, plate full of vegetables, often laden with a bunch of saturated fats. This unintegrated way of eating is boring and probably poses much more of a health problem than unsanitary Chinese kitchens. It is unlikely the Chinese government publishes any statistics on the number of people taken ill from food poisoning each year, but I'd wager it has a smaller financial cost than the clinical obesity of Americans.
Chinese cuisine integrates different food groups into a single dish, which offers a more interesting variety and means you can eat lots of vegetables in rich and tasty sauces without a ranch dressing fat infusion. It makes nutrition much more of a no-brainer and accounts for the lower levels of obesity experienced in East Asian countries relative to North American and Europe.
The only thing that I desperately missed in Beijing was tex-mex. Or more accurately, anything with cheese or tomato sauce on it. Now that I'm back, I eat a quesadilla with salsa everyday, preparing for the eventual return to Beijing where the only cheese I get to eat is on pizza at the Kro's Nest.
With more than two billion residents, the world’s most spoken language and a booming economy, China is undoubtedly a rising global superpower. Suddenly America is faced with the prospect of a country whose financial and military power could soon rival its own, prompting many to wonder if China is a friend or foe. Is China really a red flag for the U.S.?-source-
Normally I'd see this headline-grabbing question as beneath consideration for anyone but the National Security Agency, but since it has come up in more than one casual conversation I realize it holds some importance even among young Americans who missed most of the Cold War. The Tiananmen Square protests probably have a large part to do with that. In any case, it's a worthwhile thought exercise.
Is China a Threat to the U.S.? Short answer: Nah. Long answer: If I weren't in the midst of writing a research paper about PRC and US motives for rapprochement in 1972 I would be more than happy to plunge into this issue. But for now the following critique of one expert's answer will have to suffice.
"China remains brutally authoritarian." The vast majority of Chinese cities live their lives without ever having a bag thrown over their heads and beaten in a government compound. That dissidents are threatened and arrested from time to time is indeed a difference between here and there, however, the vast majority of Chinese will never even come close to that. There are places in the world where the authorities really are brutal and it devalues the term to claim China qualifies. It takes a lot of effort to threaten the Party, and until you do they aren't likely to bother you.
"China's government functions absent the protections of the rule of law." Sometimes. It's changing.
The point here isn’t that the commentator is wrong, it’s that he thinks this statement is somehow an indictment of the Party and indicative of why China is a threat. And that demonstrates his lack of expertise, because the lack of rule of law is just one more facet of life in China which matters to Westerners but most Chinese are generally satisfied dealing with. Like pollution. A comparable fact of life in the United States is the democratic enforcement of speech codes which we call “political correctness.” Most Chinese find it a tremendous nuisance for them and might wonder how Americans can live their day to day lives with such oppression. We of course, barely notice. Imagine if Chinese newspapers frequently wrote about how oppressed Americans were by political correctness; we’d be angered or think “they just don’t understand.” Well that’s exactly what’s happening here; this expert American is claiming that, somehow, China's underdeveloped rule of law means the government is running roughshod over the people.
I’d say that rule of law is one aspect of enfranchisement the Chinese people have not yet fully achieved. But brutal authoritarian state it does not make.
“Thus as long as China willingly violates the basic rights of its own people, it can never be trusted to respect the rights of other nations” This is bullshit. More rights have been violated and more violence has been done to people of the world in the name of American freedom, democracy, and capitalism than will be committed by China in the name of being brutally oppressive motherfuckers. Whether they pay homage to inalienable human rights at the start of every speech or not, the Chinese Communist Party is generally pragmatic and its outlook long-term--since it doesn’t get unelected every 8 years. The Chinese people are generally without idealistic zeal; though even if they were they can't swing the state apparatus into beastmode like Americans can.
If you want to talk about threats, the righteous and freedom-loving goodwill of the American people is a much greater threat to China than Chinese are to Americans. I would trust Chinese to respect the rights of other nations sooner than Americans because Chinese foreign policy doesn’t let their morality interfere with national sovereignty (at least, not since they asserted their own national sovereignty over Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and others 50 years ago). Or more accurately, national soverignity is an issue of morality for China. The same can not be said about American foreign policy.
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Tonight is the first time I've seen it, but the China debate on opposingviews.com doesn't seem particularly researched or thoughtful. For the reader trying to ascertain the relative China threat I suggest starting with the basics before leaping out into predicting the motives and worldview of the CCP.
I don't know their motives, but I know that the Firefox plugin developed by Aram Bartholl, Evan Roth, and Tobias Leingruber, is pretty sweet. It allows internet surfers anywhere in the world to surf through a Chinese proxy, therefore experiencing all the same disconnections as someone living in China. It's a wonderful demonstration which I hope will raise awareness among the West about the actual conditions in China. That and the following two articles.
They each deserve posts of their own, but I supply them here as background reading for someone who actually wants to know about internet censorship in China, rather than having a dismissive and falsely sympathetic attitude. Few people really believed me that you can Google image search for "Tiananmen Square tank man" and you will get tons of results. They are thumbnails and you can't get to the websites hosting them, but the police don't kick down your door days afterward to interrogate you.
Think again of the real importance of the Great Firewall. Does the Chinese government really care if a citizen can look up the Tiananmen Square entry on Wikipedia? Of course not. Anyone who wants that information will get it—by using a proxy server or VPN, by e-mailing to a friend overseas, even by looking at the surprisingly broad array of foreign magazines that arrive, uncensored, in Chinese public libraries.
Absolutely true. You can get to anything through a proxy, it's just a slow pain in the ass. Like rush hour traffic.
Many Americans assume that China's internet users are unhappy about their government's control of the internet, but this survey finds most Chinese say they approve of internet regulation, especially by the government.
There appears to be a loose correlation between good China policy and being a bad president.
The most forward thinking policy of all was implemented by Nixon, the guy who tapped the phones of the opposition and even had his cronies burglarize the Democratic National Convention office in order to win reelection. Nixon was the first president to visit modern China. He broke through a policy of rapprochement, an easing of hostilities and growth of political, economic, and cultural ties, which was continued though his lame successors, Ford, Carter, and Regan.
Then after the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 the US imposed economic sanctions and moral censure which precluded a warm relationship through the prosperous Clinton years.
Recently George W. Bush’s policy toward China has returned to rapprochement which among most other 911 foreign policy, is surprisingly enlightened. He even went to the Olympics; a simple gesture which meant a lot to the Chinese. The United States and China are closer today than any time since 1949, which is good for the global economy, good for Chinese, good for Americans, and anyone who fears the prospects of a third World War. Coming in around 25 percent, with the second lowest approval rating since Gallup, W. Bush is leaving the office to a new candidate in January.
What’s Obama’s view of China? “…China is rising, and it’s not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region.” Low hopes for the Sino-American relationship; Obama will make a great president.
John McCain on the other hand, the hawkish president who is more likely to continue a heavy-handed American foreign policy around the world, said explicitly in the debates he does not think we should think of China as our competitor. A wise view. What a terrible president he'll make.
Originally this was attached to this post. It has been slightly edited to stand alone.
Chinese views of skin colors are fascinating and diverse. For examples, girls buy skin whitening lotion and rock umbrellas on sunny days to avoid tans (and wrinkles). Central to Chinese understandings of ethnicity are the famous 56 which supposedly make up China's ethnic fabric. The majority, Han, make up 91% of the population and live along the Eastern seaboard and fertile provinces inland. The other 9% are 55 minorities which are supposedly all Chinese and part of the colorful harmonious nation China purports to be. These ethnicities were categorized in the 1950’s by Han scientists using four Stalinist criteria: economic life, language, geographic location, and culture. Despite severe overlap and a complete lack of distinction in some areas, 56 ethnicities were determined. No more. No less. So today we have Tibetians who don’t want to be Chinese, Manchu who completely indistinguishable from the Han by the four criteria yet still receive five extra points on their college admissions scores (similar to our Affirmative Action statutes), Hui who are just Han Muslims, and yet no Jewish ethnicity though there are many in China. The system has many noteworthy faults, but questioning it is futile because the Chinese Communist Party has spoken. This is how it has been since 1960, this is how it is now, and how it will be in the future. No new groups are being added, and if makes Americans mad they are forever foreigners even though there is a Korean ethnicity, then tough beans. Today, these ethnic divisions fantasy or not, are as good as real. They have been etched in stone.
Each ethnicity has its own cute logo, ostensibly designed by a Han party member. Here you can see the Hui icon on the left. Of course it’s nothing more than a big mosque since there’s nothing else which could uniquely identify them. Then some other Muslim ethnicity also has the crescent but a bird as well. Each minority also has a picture which gets used whenever the government publishes concerning the famous 56, like the map I have with the fancy minorities all around the border. Only 3 of the 55 are represented by males; instead they are mostly women in colorful bright ethnic costumes. In fact ,the feminization of the minorities is part of a larger discourse which aims to construct the Han as the center of China’s modern progress--humorless, asexual, suit wearers--while treating the minorities as the other which is more pastoral, quaint, primitive; and thus more free sexually, emotionally, and perhaps creatively too. It’s all pretty fascinating.
If you can imagine the US proudly proclaiming it’s 32 (or some other arbitrary number) ethnic minorities, you can probably understand China’s minority situation. We’d have African tribals with orange and red traditional garb, speaking click languages while dancing around beating drums. During halftime shows and New Years celebrations they’d come on stage and do spear tricks. Hispanics would be represented by a sombrero, and we’d often recount their rich history of innovative cuisine involving cheese. Inuit would be represented by a fuzzy jacket because all we’d care about--wherever they’re from—is that it’s really cold. Native Americans would always have huge feathered headdresses, and their primitive, aboriginal existence would lend legitimacy to our identity as a modern, progressive, unbeatable American force. Men would lust after Haitian babes because they’re so much looser than white women. Irish would be renowned for their ability to drink. So on and so forth. The whole thing would be a mythology based on some historical traditions, perverted, exaggerated, and molded to fit what white Americans want to see. All we’d need to be set is an ethnic theme park where we could traipse around gawking at the minorities in their natural habitat.
Which China has.
Welcome to the Beijing Ethnic Minorities Park.
It’s quite a beautiful park. The scenery is a great escape from Beijing which is largely grey with pollution and bland soviet-styled housing blocks.
Now that we’ve got the good out of the way, here’s what’s interesting about the park. All of the 55 minorities are represented, meaning there’s a section with authentic housing and ethnic themes for everyone! Of course, most of these sections are depressing because the minorities who work there, which Beijing apparently went out and got from the actual minority region, just sit there looking depressed at their status as a human zoo animal. That’s just my guess though.
The more civilized an ethnicity is the closer it generally is to the entrance. The wilder the ethnicity the more rope bridges and dirt trails you have to cross to get there. And it’s great, because you can really tell which of the minorities are more dirty and primitive. They have pretty contrasting sections:
Most of the plaques read something along the lines of “{ethnicity} people are famous for their ability to sing and dance and their colorful style of dress. They are from {some place} and the {size rank} ethnicity in China.” It’s really clever the way all these minority cultures have such great singing and dancing. The Han must be very entertained.
As cynical as this is getting, it actually is a very well-designed park from an aesthetic and entertainment standpoint. So lets watch some singing and dancing, and some beautiful and exotic girls flinging water on each other. Hell, we may as well even participate, go primitive for a moment. If you get a "movie no longer availible" message just go to youtube by double clicking on the video. All the videos are viewable, just maybe not more than 3 at a time or something
If you’re like me, you can’t really get to into any of it because you realize you’re watching ethnicities perform for a mostly Han audience so the Han can feel superior, much like animals at a zoo. So if that doesn’t make you angry, maybe this pathetic, shit-eating goose will:
Beijing Ethnic Minority Park has it all.
As easy as it is to accuse the Chinese of being naive, perhaps this is one place where we’d be unaware of our own naivety. America has a history of exoticizing its minorities as well. Think about the Washington Red Skins, Kansas City Chiefs, or the Cleveland Indians with their big red faces, feather dresses, and tomahawk chants. Only instead of a colorful costumes our urban black wears baggy clothes and gold chains. But man can negros dance. How about those pastoral Mexican laborers—“they work so hard!”
In the end I suppose we can pat ourselves on the back because we don’t have any ethnic parks, and our educational system takes time to defeat stereotypes, even requiring “difference, power and discrimination” credit in colleges. But as those courses teach us, we still have work to do to create a more inclusive and merit-driven society.
The bottom line for the government is their continued economic growth, and they need normal relations with the rest of the world in order to maintain it, but the contradiction that poses with the hate propaganda they keep spewing is bound to blow up in their faces at some point.
The so-called "hate propaganda" does blow up in their face. Not dramatically, but enough that it's becoming more common for the government to issue calls for restraint in the media than to try and fan nationalistic flames. Nowadays the Chinese themselves are carrying the torch. The boycott of Carrefour here was allegedly started over phone text messaging, as well as it’s ongoing support by people adding “(l)China” to their MSN names. This is grassroots action, not government nudging. When these grassroots efforts start to put political pressure on the party, or strain international relations the Party asks people to stop.
It also did so in 1999 after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by American forces. When the government didn’t do anything hasty or drastic, popular outrage was expressed in letters to newspapers and on the internet. “The [Americans] know that our government policy is one of merely lodging ‘fierce protests [qianglie kangyi].’ Premier Zhu….Our government’s weak stance has created a distance between itself and the people….You are so capable…and we need you….But without the ‘people’s confidence [minxin]’ how can you lead China’s economic construction!” Surprisingly critical of the government wasn’t it? Instead of the typical support of the government, this kind of expression asks it for action. As a response Hu Jintao gave a speech which urged everyone to get back to work and study. So they (mostly) did.
This is a change from 1996 when the CCP didn't ask the people to do anything, they just outright banned China Can Say No for arbitrarily criticizing party policy. Of course, this is after the book was approved by party apparatus, like all paper publishing is, to this day in China, and after it instigated a lot of nationalist zeal against Japan and the US. Earlier that same year, Japanese boyscouts built a lighthouse on the Diaoyu islands and got China into a flurry. The government response then was just as decisive. They dispersed demonstrations in the street and took away students access to the internet for 10 days when students took their proesting there.
Patriotic actions require guidance.
The public must be dissuaded and prevented from organizing spontaneous meetings, demonstrations and protests.
The publicizing of activities by…printing or distributing documents, or using various means of communication is prohibited.
As you can see by comparison with the 1990's, the policy appears to be changing. This could be a sign of the political reform that the party sees as necessary, or in the words of Peter Gries whose work I borrowed heavily from in the above paragraphs, a sign “The CCP is losing its control over nationalist discourse.” So, if an incident were to "blow up" it wouldn’t just be in the face of the CCP but the people too. Both are responsible for the current nationalism.
With regards to the other part of the original quote, I disagree overall that there’s any threat to China’s economic interests, despite the fact that nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment is on the rise. The government might be vacillating, but I still think it’s at the reigns and not so stupid to jeopardize China’s rise by letting university students actually piss off the world. Besides, whiney students would have to do a lot more than boycott Carrefour for the world to turn its back on Chinese industry and markets. Never underestimate the power of money, or the degree to which the West can write off the views of Chinese people.
...Usually mean "hey, I'm passing." And since people drift in and out of the lanes like they're quaint suggestions, there is a lot of honking. As a result, drivers generally don't check before they turn or change lanes because they expect someone will beep at them if a collision is imminent. Which then necessitates drivers to honk for 10 seconds in Morse code if they see someone getting on a bicycle in a parking lot 9 seconds away. Gotta be safe, because the cyclist is probably not going to look.
They also honk to clear traffic jams and increase the flow of traffic.
But today I was awoken from a nap by the sound of every car in Beijing honking simultaneously. When the air-raid horn started I became a little alarmed and kept looking into the sky half-expecting Japanese bombers to suddenly emerge from the pollution cloud.
Not knowing what to do in the event of a Japanese surprise attack, I did as all college students do when faced with a problem of modern life, I ran a quick google search:
China will begin three days of mourning with a nationwide silence at 2.28pm this afternoon, precisely one week after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck.
Air raid sirens and horns of vehicles, trains and ships will be sounded in grief at the end of a three-minute silence and national flags will fly at half-mast across the country and at Chinese embassies worldwide.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought the horns and sirens disrupted the silence. Here’s a youtube video of the scene here in Beijing since the Shanhaiist’s video was removed.
Ah, the earthquake in Sichuan. A public relations officer wet dream. The timing for such a catastrophic geologic event was so precise. How did the Earth's crust know to fracture now, during this decade, and this year, and this month, just two weeks after a natural disaster leveled Burma and brought worldwide condemnation of its government's failure to respond? China, unlike Burma, has allowed and encouraged press coverage of its relief efforts, which has everyone here getting warm fuzzies about the their government’s vigour and effectiveness. The president Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao have been rushing around from PR opportunity to another, looking concerned, saluting troops, and likely kissing any baby boys pulled from wreckage.
Contrast this with America, where if there was similar press coverage of a disaster response some of today’s college students would be alleging the government planned it. Many Americans thrive on flinging hate at the government. That fact always mystified me since I knew that people ran the government, and those people were elected by American voters. Nonetheless, it’s probably good somewhere in the world the people hate their government unconditionally so that yin and yang are in balance.
The earthquake helped shift everyone’s focus away from the fact that protests during the Olympic torch tour have been so severe security officials have frequently needed to make unscheduled changes to it’s route or stage the relay in areas restricted from the public. The full story of the tour’s path through protest after protest makes for a fascinating read. If China hosts the Olympics again sometime soon we may need to create a separate event just for the world tour considering the amount of foot speed and dexterity required by its bearers to hurdle demonstrators and juke their water balloons of protest.
So is China’s response to the earthquake actually having an effect on how the West is reporting on China? Maybe, if the recent cover of Time here in China is an indication.
The outpouring of support has been a revelation. For years, China's citizens couldn't watch the evening news without being reminded of their darker sides, of the grasping, reckless self-interest that has characterized China's headlong rush to become wealthy and powerful: stories of slave labor and child-kidnapping rings, rampant government corruption, counterfeit products, tainted food, dangerous toys and, lately, a crackdown on dissent in Tibet. But from a monstrous humanitarian crisis has come a new self-awareness, a recognition of the Chinese people's sympathy and generosity of spirit. The earthquake has been a "shock of consciousness" as scholar Jiang Wenran puts it, a collective epiphany when the nation was suddenly confronted with how much it had changed in two decades of booming growth — and liked what it saw.
Actually, last time I watched the evening news it was 20% about actual events in the country—which I guess you could construe the Shanxi slave scandal as, 40% about the growth of the economy, and 40% about the NBA and Yao Ming. Of course, now that the NBA has joined Sharon Stone and Carrefour on China’s shitlist, I suppose the dramatic description could be more accurate.
It's not just China's self-image that has changed. The quake has altered, at least temporarily, the world's perception of China, whose growing economic and military might is viewed with suspicion and fear in many quarters. China's relationship with the West has been particularly strained after March's bloody demonstrations in Tibet and the chaotic protests that dogged the Olympic Torch relay. But the quake, coming just 10 days after Cyclone Nargis ripped into Burma, has cast the Chinese government in a different light. By blocking foreign aid, Burma's paranoid military junta demonstrated just how impotent and callous to the suffering of its citizens a repressive autocracy can be.
Remind me to fully read all the articles I plan to reference in a post so that I don’t discover everything I’m saying has already been published somewhere. Nonetheless, here it is clear as day, by not being completely evil and mercilessly denying relief to your suffering population the world will forget all the shit they’ve been talking for the past 30 years and embrace you, at least temporarily. I hope it’s very temporary otherwise my faith in the free press will level out next to Xinhua news.
"The Olympics seemed destined for disaster and that would have been a major setback for China's emergence onto the world stage," says the diplomat. "Now many people will be cheering for the Chinese and hoping they pull off a good show. That will be pivotal for China self-confidence and its perception of its place in the world."
I suppose if a blizzard can save Christmas an earthquake can save the Olympics. He makes another point though, that people should cheer for China to win big at the Olympics. I hope they smoke the US and Russia in Gold medals. Why? Because the Chinese are the only people on the planet who think the world respects countries who win Gold Medals. They’ll swell up with pride, just like a kindergarten kid getting a smiley sticker on his worksheet. And, like a child, maybe they’ll stop being so insecure if they get enough positive reinforcement. There you go, good China. Look, the world thinks you’re way strong, and my, how many 1st place ribbons you have!
Last weekend I hiked the mountains between two villages, one in Shanxi and one in Hubei.
I also went to a bathhouse where every Chinese man there stared directly at my junk. In the pool, in the sauna, even when I went to close the bathroom door so that I didn't have to smell shit.
Next weekend I'm going to an orphanage.
I wrote a biography for a dead pilot.
If study abroad is a chance for people to notch one liners of "experience" onto their belts I'm well on my way to filling a wardrobe. And naturally, any of these experiences will lose its mystique when sufficiently explained. I don't refrain from elaborating for this reason, but rather my own lack of interest in the things I do and unwillingness to expend the effort it requires to present these experiences with a facade of implausibility. Some call this laziness. I think it's more about being realistic. Too often the measure of our lives is in how good a story it makes at a party.
All we are is dust in the wind. And if that's true and you believe it, then you get a sort of Teflon-coating for any experiences which fall short of impacting eternity. On the good days I forget this fact. Today isn't one of those.
I finally got to bed early tonight and was in a pre-sleep fog when my roomate came in to announce:
"Hey Chris, I do not know if you know, but the, my embassy? It just called and they say there will be an earthquake and not to be inside the building from 10 to 12? 6.6 size earthquake. Aye, just so you know."
I said oh, while wondering why my embassy never calls me. Probably because I don't play on their soccer team.
Then I debated whether I should sleep or get dressed and ready. 10pm is 10 minutes away. Normally this would be nothing interesting because as far back as I can remember I've been immortal, but the quality of Chinese civil engineering has been one of the lower points of my time here. Actually the lowest, as everything from my bathroom floor, to a tunnel, to an entire track, becomes flooded with water quite easily.
In the event of an earthquake I can imagine our whole dorm going down. I'm up on the tenth floor and pretty sure that if the building falls it'll be into the street, meaning I'm on the bottom of the pile. If it stands, then I'll die in the subsequent fire with no escape--because there is no fire escape. There are stairs, to be sure, but those aren't lit, have no emergency lighting (were they to be lit) and last I checked they were locked by a gate on the fourth floor for a reason which eludes all of us. I almost bought a crescent wrench so I could unhinge it in a pinch, but never went through with it.
If it does fall, there will be a lot of equipment nearby for clearing the rubble. They have been tearing up the road underneath me for the past 5 days, solely at night. And if it falls, it might kill some of the workers down there I've come to loathe. For all I know they're the ones gonna cause the building to fall with their incessant drilling, jack hammering, sawing--which by the way, is not followed by building, repairing, or constructing, but rather just the sound of huge steel panels sliding around on asphalt with a rusty and decrepit bulldozer to cover the gaping holes leftover. These panels are adjusted on the hour so as to better enable taxies and bicycles to nearly collide on once what was just your average Chinese deathtrap.
On the bright side, if the building doesn't fall or catch on fire, it may cause my bedroom wall to cumble which will give me access to the fat girls next door who are playing awful Russian dance-pop at 10pm on Monday night.
It's cool. Sweat to the dance grooves. Just do it more quietly and don't dance when you're doing it so I can tell when the earthquake starts.
Well, my roomate left so I better find my flashlight. If I don’t post for a few days it’s because I can’t find my computer in the rubble.
I just got back from Yuncheng, Shanxi province where I carried camera equipment and shot on a Canon SLR for two days as my boss interviewed aging Chinese men. We were searching for the final resting place of an American pilot who had crashed in the village in 1945. For more information about the pilot's life you can look here. I'll probably make a more detailed post of our trip, including links to the Chinese newspaper coverage.
I marched in a parade today during the opening ceremony of the school's track and field meet. I was the only American. They gave all the students from the international education college a flag to wave, and I kept mine in my pants so I could have free hands to shoot pictures and hold my water bottle.
I just got done texting a girl in Chinese whom I'm going to a jazz club with tonight.
Next week I have midterms for my Chinese classes. If the grading empasis is on correct use of varied gramatical structures and speech tone, I will do fine. If they stress fluency and ability to carry on a conversation, I will do poorly.
One text message, one email, one Facebook status update, and a couple AIM messages.
Total possible audience of 280+. Number of responses: 15 Of those, people calling bullshit: 3 people asking about April 1st: 3 people fooled: 10. Punked rate: 66%
(It doesn't add up because someone I messaged told a friend, and as a vocal Tibetian sympathizer, she started freaking out she'd get deported too.)
Memorable quotes: I do not believe youuuuu What? are you serious? You can't be fucking serious What the fuck. What the fuck. I'm stunned. I can't believe this is happening. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry though, too That's horrible. lolol Chambers is getting deported Hahahah 你打我吓坏了。 That was a good one. Bastard. You are so mean. ^@^ You are such an f-ing badass. What did you say on your blog? I would like to read your blog. Can I see it?
This is the third thing that every Chinese will say if you talk to one long enough. I hope it was unexpected. Otherwise, the rest of the post might not make sense.
I’ve been rather surprised to hear this, especially on more than one occasion, in a country with so few black people to begin with. Each time I hear it a voice in my head pops up and reminds me “you can’t say that!” That I have a this voice in my head is a good demonstration of how politically correct we are in the United States, relative to China, for better or worse. Thankfully college didn't make me _solely_ a PC robot, so I've been thinking critically about the statement.
Why should “black people are hard to see at night” be so surprising? It’s true. It’s goddamn true, true as the sky is blue.
I trust if you’re an American you’re having a similar voice pop up in your head right now telling you I've said something shocking, controversial, or racist. And I think when we only recognize the truth in a true statement after we’ve recognized how much trouble someone can get in for saying it, we’ve lost something.
The Chinese still have it. They’ve got it and got more where that came from. They got a whole bag of it under the table. They’ve got’em like hotcakes. If I had a nickel for every one they had… In other words, they’ve got a lot and they’ve got it bad. So bad they also lack the ability to conceptualize how such a statement marginalizes minorities by defining them through their minority characteristics. I’ve spent countless hours with Chinese people trying to build the framework for understanding oppression. I’ve talked about the birdcage, insufficient sample sizes, the myth of genetic races, and where all else failed simply asked to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. But in the end I always have to settle for just strongly urging that they never say “black people are hard to see at night” in the US, because almost everyone will be offended by it. “While you might not lose friends over this particular statement,” I say, “it’s a safe bet just to avoid referring to inborn differences like skin color altogether.” Would you agree? Is this really the case in America? And if it is, isn’t it a much more shocking statement--revealing the current thought-controlling condition of political correctness in America--than “black people are hard to see” could ever be?
The party members of Orwell's 1984 doublethink their way around a minefield of thoughts the party deems too dangerous, both at once understanding the truth and then denying it to their conscious brain. My boots have a hole in the toe and the sole is disintegrating but the radio says boot production is up 20% this year so I'm happy to live in such a luxurious country! The politically correct reflex operates with a similar mechanism, where a brain is so well-trained it can captured a statement, react to it appropriately, and discard it before understanding it's meaning. "Black people are hard to see at night." In my case, I think I stop listening and start doubting the statement after "black people are..."
Perhaps this is scary, perhaps not. Whereas doublethink is a tool of party oppression in 1984, in the US political correctness is enforced democratically, i.e., "everyone will be offended if you say ____." Since I'm not as able to articulate what is "lost" by this process, and can see how in a bigger picture how it helps to create a more inclusive and egalitarian society I accept it. But I also worry that doublethink can become so pervasive in the mind of a society that it forgets the bittersweet taste of truth.
Sharing an honest opinion regarding race in the US is like crossing the street without looking: a costly accident waiting to happen. So Americans always look both ways before crossing, and twice to the left. Chinese don’t bother to look. They’re too busy looking out for black people whom could evidently be anywhere.
Since there are so few dark skinned people in China, I think that their perceptions are mainly informed by American movies. Considering so many black characters in blockbusters are urban stereotypes, they rightfully think all blacks are dangerous and speak Ebonics. I first cringed when Chris Tucker yelled at Jackie Chan “don’tchu know nevertoucha black man’s radioooooo!?” and now cringe again when experiencing Chinese views of black skin.
This post originally went on to elaborate by documenting my experience at the Beijing Ethnic Minorities Park. This section has now been split off to it's own post here.
“China has (over) 5000 years of history.” This is said almost any time a Chinese person discusses China’s place in the world or its future and is often followed quickly by a patronizing comparison to the United States with its juvenile 250 years of history. The quicker among you are already sensing the sandy foundation this statement has. Unfortunately if American history only begins 250 years ago, then its history only began with the War of Independence. And if the metric for historical legacy is when a current political body was founded, then China comes up about 200 years short of the United States since Mao defeated the Nationalists and founded the People’s Republic of China only in 1949. Doh.
Of course, it’s silly to think that a people’s history only begins with the inception of a modern political system, otherwise the world would stand in abject awe of San Marino. But then, what is a useful metric for tracing your historical legacy?
I have few good ideas because in America we’re not generally not preoccupied with claiming credit for the past. The exceptions are notable, like routinely inflating our contribution to the Allied effort in Europe in World War 2; by "our" I mean middle schoolers and soldiers who credit America with saving Europe. But more times than not American esteem comes from its current place atop the global hierarchy and not its history. Americans who are proud are so because of their glorious present, not their glorious past. Our relationship to history is often one of willful ignorance until the academy gets around to educating us about it. For example, the American genocide of Native Americans was whitewashed and swept under the rug for my parent’s generation, when I was in k-12 we skirted the issue by talking about manifest destiny with a half-frown, but students in school today might even use the accurate term genocide in a few places.
History plays a much greater role in Chinese esteem because the CCP uses it to influence the ideology of the population. When the PRC consolidated control over the territory we call China in 1949 it went to great lengths to announce its victory over the centuries of humiliation by Western colonial empires, over Japanese imperialism, and in recent years, the United States and the West. This victory takes on many dimensions, all of them ostensibly to legitimize the party control of state. The dimension we’re concerned with here is the notion that Chinese people are somehow special on the world stage, a nation with unparalleled longevity.
It’s wrong to chalk all of this to the PRC since 1949, because it’s not as if they created the concept of Chinese superiority. That has a long and well documented past from the unification by the first emperor through centuries of receiving tribute from nearby states in South East Asia and Japan, through culturally assimilating their Mongol conquerors, to when strange smelling barbarians started making regular visits in the 17th century. However, the PRC currently holds the reins on compulsory education and to a large degree the academy, and so it would be fallacious to try and paint the concept of 5000 unbroken years of history as just a continuation of old perspectives. Chinese notions of superiority were smashed quite thoroughly during the “century of humiliation” 1850-1950.
Also, it’s wrong to attribute all dimensions of Chinese nationalism to the machinations of the Chinese Communist Party. In metaphor, they’re at the reins, not pulling puppet strings. If I were Chinese, I’d want to shake off the shame of the past and look forward to the future with confidence too. So the party steers the people where they already want to go.
So how do you rebound from a century of humiliation? Your innate awesomeness! If your people predate all of civilization then clearly you are quite special, destined for a bright future…with the help of the PRC’s enlightened leadership. Also, if you are the timeless and eternal, you can look down on those with shorter time spans like America, the West, and everyone else in the world whom you look up to in other areas. Status as an elder is even more crucial in the East than the West, and so if you are 5000 years old, then places only 1000 years old ought to respect you. And if all else fails, you can use your lengthy existence to project into the future, making you appear all but invincible. Poof, legitimacy in everything you do as a nation.
Of course, China does not deserve to rank itself above every other place on the planet. China has had advanced civilization within its current political boundaries for thousands of years. But so has India, the Middle East, Mediterranean, Northern Europe, and Tropical Africa. China developed agriculture within the same timeframe as our much touted “cradle of civilization” in Mesopotamia, but languished relative to the speed of development there and in Egypt. Diamond would tell us this is from a lack of certain cereal grain and livestock, but nonetheless, they don’t predate anyone else. If any current nation is able to claim 5000 years of history, it’s Iraq.
However, even Iraq and Mesopotamia couldn’t claim 5000 years back, because actual history, as in written records, devolves into uncertain mythology past 3000bc. Cuneiform is regarded as the most ancient form of writing on the planet, and it predates Chinese script by 1300 years.
It’s pretty ridiculous. Chinese paleoanthropologists spend a lot of their time trying to prove human remains like Peking Man predate discoveries in Africa and the Middle east, some fringe researchers even going so far as to argue Chinese people evolved independently from Cro Magnon. This is at odds with the preponderance of evidence, and represents a sorry example of how Chinese nationalism disconnects them from the mainstream of what’s going on elsewhere. In a scientific field, no less.
Arguing over dates and year lengths is a really fruitless exercise because Americans cannot claim advances made by Mesopotamians any more than current Chinese can claim credibility from their ancestors. The China of today is not culturally homogenous with the China of 3000bc. Much of today’s discourse concerns alarm at how rapidly Chinese youth are assimilating Western culture: eating at McDonalds, wearing Nikes, and for godsakes listening to rap! Even without the huge influence by the West, at best the Chinese of today are heirs of whatever non-Chinese culture existed in 3000bc. It certainly wasn’t Chinese, because the term China didn’t even exist before Qin unification in 220bc and the Han ethnicity (91% of mainland Chinese are Hanzu) had no name before the Han dynasty around 200bc. More on etymology here.
Like every piece of dirt on the planet, China has been long been occupied by people calling themselves something, practicing some culture that co-mingles and changes , under a political environment which fluxuates. China has been broken up and reunified. It has been conquered and liberated. It is not the monolithic and timeless entity that Chinese claim it to be. China does not have an unbroken history. Its historical legacy, however you measure, does not predate everyone. It does not have (over) 5000 years of history. And that’s okay.
Really I only object unquestioned bounds of the statement and not the spirit. In many ways China does have continuity, such as their pictographic language which has been in continual use since its origin--but not before writing existed. Chinese can still claim to have a really long line of dynasties which ruled over a relatively advanced society roughly in the same area in roughly the same way for a period roughly five fold longer than the nearest European challenger. But then one must answer the question “so what?”
My internet was too slow to log on to the OSU library academic resources. I beg your pardon for several links to Wikipedia.
There are three things that every Chinese person will say if you talk to him or her long enough. This will be a three-part post, because each one requires a day or two to unpack.
“You should take medicine.” In America this is said, but more commonly we implore each other to “go see a doctor.” But here in China, everyone is a doctor so they just cut to the chase and diagnose you. If you so much as cough, wipe your nose, clear your throat, sneeze, sniffle, yawn, frown, fart, or close your eyes, a Chinese person will suggest medicine. And not as a passive, helpful, FYI mention, but actively and with sincerity. *concerned face* “You really should take medicine.” This totally defeats the mystical or romantic notion I had of Chinese medicine and replaces it with overmedicated hypochondriac mania. Try insisting you’re "just sleepy" or telling someone you’re going to "tough it out." To a Chinese person it just makes you sound delirious resulting in increased calls for medicine and maybe even hot water as well. Before the first symptom of illness Chinese start chain-guzzling remedies in their tea, crunching on pills, and getting booster shots at the clinic. Caught in the rain? Did you get a chill? Quick, chemotherapy. Here, medicine is not just a panacea, but a preventative strike against viral infection. I can imagine Chinese treating broken limbs, brain damage, and cancer all with medicine alone.
I figure it stems from a poor understanding of germs and viruses. A Chinese person has no problem eating undercooked meat from a street vendor who is using his hands and cooking on unclean, never-sanitized equipment. They don’t flinch when munching at a small family restaurant and they bite down on some glass, rocks, or copper. But if you go outside in shorts in 60 degree weather your concerned friends will warn you that you should wear more clothes. “Wearing too few clothes makes you sick.”
This is from high school graduates.
Granted, the same kind of mommy-sense is passed down to American children too, but we understand that a lack of insulation makes our bodies burn more energy to keep warm, which can weaken our immune system, thus increase the chance our system is unable to stave off bacterial and viral infections. Chinese people yell at you when you open a window on a bus not because they’re cold and their immune system is threatened but because they think the illness fairy can get in. Meanwhile people cough all over the bus while I just stare at my closed window, watching condensation bead and fall down, wishing I wasn’t in a humid human petri dish.
After probing a friend and finding where her biological knowledge ended, I became quite curious about what kind of health education Chinese students get these days. They don’t study drug or alcohol use. They don’t study exercise or nutrition. They don’t study pregnancy, sex, or contraception. However, in biology they study cell reproduction, animal reproduction, and quickly breeze through an embarrassing section that explains the same process works in humans.
I can’t tell you how much this explains.
Of course, education is not one-size-fits all. Comparing our educational curriculum to others is tried and true in the West, but as failing to account for cultural differences reduces the analysis to a moral pat on the back, as is the case with Female Genital Mutilation. China seems to have its bases covered. Drug and alcohol abuse seems to be ameliorated to a large degree by culture where shame is a high crime and students are pushed too hard in school to ever pick up the habit. The traditional diet here does a good job of hitting the corners on the food pyramid, and city life, traditionally the only place sedentary lifestyles are attainable, doesn’t quite prohibit walking and cycling the way American cities do. Strong conservative mores regarding premarital sex probably discourage some teenage pregnancy and STI transmission, though there are no numbers to really say. Even if the government is keeping tabs, they surely aren’t going to report a disappointing picture. Moreover, I would wager the logistics of sex are stacked against teenagers and college students here who, even if they are sufficiently informed on technique from Western film and the internet, don’t have anywhere to go do it. They live at home or in dorms with 6 to a room. They don’t have cars to go park in. While it’s not hard to find kids making out on the streets and in dark corners at night, I don’t think I’ll ever find people actually having sex in public. And of course, family planning is easy to come by here, so any unwanted pregnancies that do occur are probably dealt with rather easily. This is all speculation on my part, based on very limited information.
Health curriculum is a lower priority in Chinese schools than subjects which can continue to propel its development, like math, science, and English. But, as China continues to raise its standard of living it is bound to have increasingly levels of obesity (already being noted in Chinese media) and as it consumes more Western media it is bound to have increasing sexual openness and a corresponding increase in incidents of unprotected sex. However, I would be shocked to see any notable increase in drug or alcohol abuse, because there are such high penalties for criminality and antisocial behavior, and because there are no statistics to speak of which one could monitor. Good ol’ ignorance is bliss. It works for the CCP and it works for graduates of Chinese schools who don’t have much in the way of a formal health education. It won’t work forever though. Eventually kids will need to know how to use condoms, and if it doesn’t come from school then it will have to come in an episode of Friends (the most popular show of people in college).
Very personable. For instance, I was playing hookey to write this post but my teacher called my room phone (instead of my cell which I can screen) and now I have to go to class. I suppose this violates my sense of privacy less than when she walked in on me taking a nap last semester.
Last night came and went in a blur. I've rewound the tape and played it back in slow motion, and I still can't account for all the time, but a sizable portion of it was spent contemplating my future career in academia. Specifically, I was for the first time really seeing things from the other side--that is, not as a student but as a professor.
This sudden insight comes from rateyourstudents.blogspot.com, a blog I discovered after an interesting Techdirt post. It seems that while China hurtles itself toward the West culturally and economically, France continues to lead Europe toward socialism and totalitarianism by blocking ratemyprofessors.com. I've used the site to determine which section of a course to enroll in and to leave feedback for my favorite teachers. In particular I remember contradicting one girl who claimed professor Ip had an accent too thick to understand. Another time I mentioned that Mr. Wanke，a poor adjunct, was one of the most thought-provoking and funniest teachers I've ever had. I did what I could to help him on the official course evaluation but found it insufficient and took my appreciation to the 'nets too.
It's fascinating to realize the kinds of concerns and issues professors face teaching at a university setting. We students get whiffs of frustration while reading syllabi underlined and bolded until a white page is black and from listening to our professors start stories each class session with "every term at least one student...." But these are professional cautions. They lack the candor of what's on ratemystudents: the stomach-turning vitrol; the dejected, jaded, and hopeless rants; and the darkest fears a student could entertain.
The first hour was defeating. My rosy future turned a sickening shade of Beijing smog. I've only been teaching English for a few weeks, but I could already sympathize with a post which referred to the manor in which a class stares back at you like "caged animals." Rather, my caged animals are fiercely domesticated Korean kids too embarrassed to speak up in a classroom, let alone in English. They spend most of class locked in a staring contest with their desk, and I'm not even lecturing. I'm asking them questions, making wild hand gestures and being funny. But when they laugh they suppress it and nuzzle closer to the teat on their desk.
I suppose that means they're listening and I should be happy. But my real challenge isn't that they listen, because there isn't a single sound in the building which could prevent that, but that they're comprehending. You see, I teach TOEFL speaking and writing. It's a college admission test for studying in the US and other countries, like a language SAT. All of my students are 16-18, and they have been studying English on average for, get this, 3 months to 1 year. Some of them can barely understand directions in the classroom like "I'm going to read the sample now, take notes, listening for the five problems and their solutions." As a result, teaching this class is much different than I envisioned.
It's still very rewarding though. When one of them sputters out something that might actually pass for English I am elated. Particularly when they sputter, and I give them five minutes to write down what they're going to say, then have them read it off the page, it comes very close to being something that might score on an actual TOEFL test.
But the kids aren't to blame. I'm learning on the job, but my job isn't to teach English, it's to teach TOEFL. Which puts me in an odd place since English should be a prerequisite, but it's not. The only prerequisite is that parents pay the school money so the 20something guy running it can not provide books for the students and not pay me. Then their children sit in fear for 3 hours a week, and everyone is happy.
In order to facilitate a warm environment we circle the desks each class. I'm trying to break the conception that a teacher talks down to students which is the paradigm in Korea, Japan, and China. Afterall, if they one day succeed on the TOEFL they will be studying in a Western country, so I may as well give them a more Western classroom environment now. So that they'll get comfortable asking questions I don't let anyone leave until they ask me something. Anything. What my favorite color is. What I did this weekend. What I think about China. Where I bought my pants. So far this creative and funny strategy has not encouraged a single question about English, not even over email.
Fortunately new students are trickling in, and so far none of them have had less English than a month. So if the trend continues eventually the average might be somewhere around 1 year, which is about how long it takes 16 year olds to get college-level proficient in a foreign language.
Anyway, after reading more and more at ratemystudents I've gotten pretty angry and determined to be a good teacher should I one day become one. I find the perspectives expressed in many of the posts horrendous and lacking in the skills we expect of college students, like recognizing logical fallacies and failing their critical thinking roll. But I'm also unfortunately old enough to know how fleeting idealistic zeal can be, so I'll cross my fingers and keep my eyes on the pie in the sky.
Today while returning from the cafeteria with some delicious food to go I found myself repeatedly hearing “Frenchman! Frenchman!” This is not particularly compelling conversation, nor is it my name, so I continued walking ahead, thinking about the times I have had cab drivers tell me they thought I was French. One time I was with a Chinese girl, which the cabbie suggested meant I was romantic like a Frenchman, but another time I was alone. I asked him why he thought I was French and he gestured to my Carhartt jacket, which is about as American as a brand of clothing can be. It’s an American company worn predominantly by American farmboys. It’s rugged, functional, and I would say highly unfashionable, which collectively defeat the French stereotype, right? Right? Just then I hear someone yelling again, “he’s French!” I'm happy just to find my Chinese comprehension has grown increasingly disruptive of my thought bubbles, but given my proclivity for French airs, I thought I ought to turn around, just in case the yelling was regarding moi.
And it was. I proceed to chat a bit with a group of three French students with one of the girls refusing to believe I wasn’t really French. I explained that I had already met two of them last term at a party. To demonstrate I asked one, “your name is Lamia, right?” Unfortunately the proper pronunciation of her name cemented the suspicion. I must be French. No buts about it. Raised in America by sandwich makers. It’s just who I am.
Je suis français. You didn’t know it, nor did I. You just liked me for who I was, but as it turns out, you liked someone who was French. On the otherhand, this development presents a challenge since so many of my social interactions here in China are oriented toward presenting an American face to foreigners and Chinese. I live in an international nexus. Above me are four floors of Uzbeks, Russians, Kyrgyzstanis, Europeans, and below are floors of Japanese and Koreans (floor 8 and below are all squatty potties). I am likely to be only one American in the handful that any given person will meet in their life. This is a weighty burden for someone who understands how memes reproduce and die. Everything else they know will come from media, especially media generated in their own country, which predominantly provides the meat of the errors I must correct, stereotypes to break, or learning to do.
So let this be my motto, La souris est sous la table, le chat est sous la chaise, le singe est sur la branche.
This was originally written sometime in October. It remained unfinished waiting for a day I deigned to polish into something less terrible. As time went on the decreasing accuracy of it's overall aura discouraged this effort, and so lost for all time it would have been, were it not for the increasing worries of fam and friends as to whether I was, in fact, still alive. I'm not dead. And here is proof:
Is progressing nicely. I spend 4 hours a day in class and about 4 hours studying, with 4.5 hours of tutoring a week. It is very clear to me that my brain has been molded differently than my peers, because I possess almost no ability to listen and comprehend anything I haven’t already seen. Most of my peers can hear a word they don’t know, say it once, and recall it later that day. I can have a word repeated to me multiple times, I can say it multiple times, and I won’t remember it unless I write it down. When I’m saying a word, I see how it is spelled in my head, and when I’m listening to someone speak, I’m seeing their words written down as if I’m reading from paper. The more familiar I am with a sound, like virtually all of English, the less aware I am this process may be taking place. For instance, if you tell me you live in Corvallis, I notice nothing. If you tell me I am “cantankerous” I will try to picture the word in my head. I suspect the same process operates in everyone to a degree, but in my case everything in Chinese sounds like “cantankerous,” while other students seem internalize the sounds much faster.
On the flip side, I seem to have a badass sense of direction and effortless visual memory. Over the weeks I’ve routinely placed my location in Beijing correctly whereas my programmates continue to demonstrate no clue of their own whereabouts until we drive directly in front of our dorm. One time we tried to find a big bookstore at the edge of our district. After finding it we tried to catch a bus back, but couldn’t find any that went to a location near our school, so we set off walking in a random direction. As we went down this street people gradually got tired of exploring and started talking about getting taxis. I recognized that if we walked two blocks farther we’d be on the same street as our school, and that virtually every bus on that road would take us straight to its doorstep. Having no comprehension of how I could know this, people argued with me for several minutes about how that was impossible and so forth.
While this was happening we all walked into a pit construction workers leave unnatended on the streets and mark with a flag 6 feet away.
To me, this isn’t very impressive. It’s easy to recognize certain billboards and skyscrapers in the city. When I really began to think maybe my brain was responsible was when we were staying in a Tibetian village a couple weeks ago. We were stationed in a house on the outskirts of the town, and so any time we went out to explore or participate in the village activities we had to walk through the whole thing. Tibetian villages are often as vertical as they are wide, and wind up the mountain with no attention to straight or logical road layouts. Often a street will end in the wall of someone’s home, and continue as a 30degree narrow ramp up to the next “street” 10 feet above your head. I never paid particular attention to how things were connected, but sure enough, whenever we had to navigate at night, everyone around me, including our Tibetian guides, was horribly lost. As in, “I don’t know if my home is left, right, up, or down.” I may not know where I am exactly, but I always have some sense of the direction and the approximate distance I want to head so the whole phenomenon astounds me. Anyway, by flashlight I led my group back to our house every time, even when they insisted “no, it can’t be that way, I don’t remember this at all.” Though my difficulties listening plague me on a daily basis, I guess I’d rather have the ability to find where I live since I seem to be the only one capable of doing so in my group.
My class only has 13 people: two Americans, five Mongolians, four Kazaks, a Russian, a Hungarian, and one who I think is Kyrgyzistani (I know in Chinese he’s from “jurgistan”). Most of us went out for lunch one time: I’ll let you guess who is who (its later in the post).
At this point my two teachers are trying to teach solely in Chinese and they are succeeding except when my programmate yells at them “in English!” It’s really ignorant and rude so here is an unflattering picture of her.
Previously there was a lot of English being thrown around in the classroom because here it’s the international language. Everyone from every country I’ve met has had some sort of English education. For Kazaks and Chinese it’s in school, and for everyone else its movies and music. In fact, there is one Kazak here who claims to have learned his fluent English from rap music videos.
This is not to say everyone speaks English, but for social interactions between international students it’s often the best language to use. Many students speak Russian too. The program here is probably 50% central Asian, 25% East Asian, and a 25% western [civilization]. But back in the classroom, a lot of students don’t know English well enough to learn Chinese through it. So throughout class the students who speak Russian are translating to each other and the students who speak Mongolian are translating to each other, and I guess at the end of the day learning some Chinese. Thankfully for us Americans we are proficient at English and that’s really helpful, even for the Russian-speakers and Mongolians who turn to me to translate our teacher’s broken English into something intelligible.
I never thought that we Americans would be the most disciplined students in the Chinese language program, but we definitely are. What would be a flagrant violation of classroom conduct in the States is routine in our classes. Cell phones go off regularly, including the teacher’s. The ring does not initiate a frantic scramble to locate and deactivate the ring either, it initiates a casual answering which sometimes continues into a conversation or, when the student/teacher deems it worthy, stepping outside to take the call. Even the teacher is beginning to take calls during class. People are constantly talking out of turn, both in their own languages to tell jokes, and in Chinese when it’s not their turn to speak. The girls in front of me hold a photoshoot weekly where they lean together and take cell phone pictures in fact. At first, the lack of discipline is very distracting, but at this point it’s all very normal. Usually when people are goofing off is when the teachers are going around to each individual in the room and asking them questions or making them repeat. One of our two teachers is less experienced and has a much less successful time keeping everyone’s attention while doing this, and for me it’s a good time to study the text on my own. Here’s a movie I made one day when I brought a camera to document the classroom scene. Notice the direction people’s heads are facing as an indication of where their attention lies. Listen to the myriad of voices popping up at will. Feel the lack of direction as you try to guess who the teacher is talking to.
During the 4.5 hours of optional tutoring we have each week is when I feel I make the most progress speaking, because I and sometimes one or two other students are the only ones that show up. That gets us lots of personal attention, and since the tutor teachers are fellow Chinese university students in foreign language education and lack any experience (18-21 years old), it basically consists of us reading/speaking and them repeatedly correcting us on every mistake. It sounds harsh but is a way to lay a good foundation for pronunciation.
The overly critical method is also how Chinese students are usually taught. Don’t mistake my Chinese language classes as indicative of all Chinese education. From what I know most classes are much larger, harsher, and disciplined. I think the Chinese language program is designed to be very lax and accommodating to students which come from less rigorous backgrounds. I didn’t expect to find that American classroom conduct is much closer to Chinese classroom conduct than what is going on in other countries, particularly Kazakhstan which has the rowdiest students by far.
As an aside, the Kazaks have a reputation on campus, which I will briefly recount so that you may know nothing about Kazakhstan other than what Borat and I tell you. Kazaks disrupt class. This is fact, and I think everyone has come to grips with it, or even enjoy the classclownery. However, though I saw none of this with my own eyes, they also evidently piss in the elevator, set dorm furniture on fire, and frequent the happy-ending massage parlor around the block. What I have seen with my own eyes were the fifteen year olds lighting firecrackers off on the 14th floor of the dorm in the stairwell, which echoes the ear-shattering sound most effectively. At current, there is little evidence their reputation is unwarranted. To cope, me and my American friends have begun to theorize about school and childhood back in Kazakhstan, and we figure it generally to be like this, though with a few more tire fires:
During the 10 minute breaks half the students filter out into the hallway to talk to their friends. This breaks down along nationality. In the following picture you see the Americans hanging out on one end, Kazaks at the other. In the case of Americans I know they’re not super motivated to seek out international friendships. I figure it’s the same for the Kazaks. But while people are grouped up, it doesn’t feel cold or clique-y. People just fall into the place their most comfortable, and with pretty challenging language barriers to overcome, most exchanges are pretty brief. While these people go out into the halls about half the students stay in their classrooms or visit friends in other classrooms. While I don’t visit any of the classrooms other than my own since my (non-American) friends come to it, my impression from walking by their doorways is that there is more international getting-together inside. This is a long way of saying not to read too much into this one picture. Here’s a video of why my classroom often attracts visitors.
I’m not sure why the school computers have at least a gig of pop in Russian and Chinese, including music videos, but they do. And the teachers go along with it when students jump on and start blaring music through the speakers, so the classroom transforms into a club 40 minutes every morning. In fact, the Kazak and Russian girls that sit in front of me love it so much they often insist we keep listening/watching after the break is over, and since our younger teacher is a pushover, we usually do. Again, this is all bad from one standpoint, but it’s fun from another, and if you’re like me and in the classroom to learn it’s not hard just to study on your own while this is going on.
What do you know about Mongolians? That Ghengis Khan and his family conquered the world in the 13h and 14th centuries? Well, now you can add the fact that they eat virtually nothing other than meat and fat (and claim this is why they are strong and conquered the world). For a Westerner used to cutting fat off a steak and using utensils, grabbing a rib with your hand and tearing the meat off the bone with your mouth is kind of embarrassing. But it’s also very satisfying and tasty. I have to say, I was almost a vegetarian when I came here to China but after repeatedly having this experience with meat, I think I’m going to have huge cravings to bite hunks of meat and fat off of bones in the States. Cravings that I won’t be able to fufill without looking like an animal. Check out the table. Those discs are filled with meat, and what appears like a vegetable platter is really radishes and onion to be eaten with the meat. What appears to be liquid in our bowls is salted milk tea. Hah, I’m awesome. I’ve also been hanging out with a Turkman from, you guessed it, Turkmenistan. We usually talk in Chinese since we’re at the same level, but when we want to say more than what colors our clothes are or ask for things at a restaurant we switch to English because his is awesome. He asked for an English book so I gave him a copy of Skeptic magazine. That should keep him busy for quite a while. There’s even an Uzbeck girl who knows more about American emo music than I do because she’s 15. I’ve yet to make any Chinese friends though. The major factor is my horrendous Chinese and the fact that I study every moment I’m not asleep, buying food, or typing this email. All and all, I’m pretty satisfied with my social life, because in comparison to my programmates, I do something other than hang out with Americans all day talking about minutia.
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Why is it, out of all the ideals we hold to be true, we are most troubled when our sense of justice is violated? Justice, or our sense of it, is the amalgamation of ideals like equality and righteousness. Justice is the universe functioning according to it’s own rules. Bad things happening to good people is a violation of the golden rule of justice, yet here we have “good” defined internally by the universe and yet they are still punished by the means of the universe. That’s a philosophical contradiction. It moots the point.
I had my first school exam in China today and was shocked by the level of cheating. Cheating goes on in American classrooms but where I’m from it usually does not go farther than the opportunistic gazing of a student in thought. I witnessed deliberate and unashamed attempts: leaning left and right to peek around shoulders, whispering in Kazak or Russian, and even the ol’ pull-out-my-*uking-textbook. It was extremely aggravating, so aggravating in fact, I spent half of the time deciding whether it was a moral imperative that I do something about it. I weighed the costs to their academic lives against my personal life under the unpredictable element of my teacher’s reaction: be righteous and loathed? Been there. Say nothing and allow evil to persist in this world? The current paradigm. Pass the buck to a teacher who probably wouldn’t have an entirely successful response because she’s kind of soft yet would care very much that students were cheating? Bad news. You’ve gotta ask, “how much personal loss am I willing to incur for the chance to believe I’m a moral person?” I believe the boundary between adult and child is set partially by this measure.
So on and so forth while my test was not being completed or considered. I might have remained in this state of dilemma if one of my programmates hadn’t begun asking the teacher for help, in English, and received an answer, in English, to which she replied “how the fuck am I supposed to know what a preposition is?” Also she nights before had been talking about heading to graduate school. Ah, what sudden levity.
Look for a current update sometime soon. Naturally it will be brain-numbing drivel, but proof that enough of my organs are still intact to post something.
In a post-modern age with corporate attempts to virally market, metawareness is on the rise by both content producers and content consumers. Wherever they confusingly collide, Satire?blog will be there, reporting on the ineffable qualities of stuff I want to write about.
