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After daily entries stretching back to June 13, China blog will take a break for a trip north. Check this site later in July and into August for updates on the Mandarin program and Wang Tian's arrival. Special thanks to Theresa and Jay for helping to maintain this blog.
Artist's Point - Grand Marais, MN
I am standing in a small windowless room rubbing a stone cat - lion actually - and it has something to do with Feng Shui and, no, this is not a dream; it is actually happening, and I am not alone, there are others. They are lining up to rub the stone lion.
“First, behind the ears,” the woman instructs, “ then the chest...now the front paws...now the sides...now the big butt.”
And it all means something important, especially the rubbing of the big butt, but I can’t remember what now. I dutifully rub as commanded. Amazing what one will do in a group on tour in a faraway land if the guide is convincing enough.
We have escaped from the punishing mid-day heat on the walls of the old city of Xi’an and moved into an exhibit room that our guide claims is only open 72 days of the year and how lucky we are to be here on this day. Lucky most are those who discover the AC unit in the corner pumping out wonderfully chilled air.
This infrequently open exhibit with the lucky rubbing lion shows pictures of buildings whose feng shui is good and some not. I have no pictures to prove this because the taking of photos is forbidden. Not sure why, but there it is.
According to Wikipedia, Feng Shui was the reason the Chinese invented the compass. “It has foundation texts, core theories and methods, and an impressive past based on archæological discoveries and the work of archæoastronomers.”
But the exhibit room is connected to a small store which, I suspect, is actually open more than 72 days a year, but I can’t confirm that. Buy any of a number of different sized and colored jade lions, each to bring a different good thing to its owner.
This is just one of the three or four times on our trip that we are taken to what appears to be a legitimate factory or exhibit that is - surprise! - fortuitously connected to a retail establishment selling products related to the exhibit. Buy a full sized terra cotta warrior at the factory that makes them (see photo under July 1 entry "Ghengis Can"). Or buy a silk comforter at the silk factory (OK - I did!)
The more cynical in our group assume that the "factory workers" are all part of a front, extensions of the retail operation. Perhaps. But everyone rubbed lion butt. Just in case....
"Yesterday, my eighty-year-old grandpa called me," writes Tina. "He told me he looked at the map to find out where Minnesota is. I was surprised that he knew it was cold in winter there. He said, 'It is like Harbin.'
"Harbin is a northern city of China. He once lived there and some of my relatives were born there, including my parents. Then because of the work, they moved to Hubei province, central part of China. Although I was born in Hubei, I am a northerner.
"In northern part, people can speak mandarin better than other parts. That's why my mandarin is good. And it seems that my grandpa is very happy to know I can live in a place similar to Harbin."
Back in May when our team of teachers and administrators began helping me to prepare for the hiring trip to China, I was encouraged to try and identify candidates who spoke Putōnghuà (Standard Mandarin). It sounded like a good idea, although I wasn't sure how I would be able to establish that, short of simply asking candidates and trusting in their answer.
The thinking was that since there are so many different dialects in China and natives of different provinces can be virtually unintelligible to each other when speaking local dialects, it would be important to hire someone who would teach the standard language.
Visit Wikipedia (the first coherent piece on this subject my Google search turned up) and read more about this.
But Tina's note got me thinking about regional influences and the underlying social, political and cultural forces at play in the evolution of a common language. I am certain there are thoughtful works of considerable depth and breadth on the subject. Perhaps Evangeline will uncover something about this during her offline humanities studies.
There is something of a parallel in this country, if on a less extreme scale. While Maine natives can certainly get along with their Arkansas cousins, the accents can be quite different, especially to the ear of a foreigner.
We didn’t talk like most people in Baltimore, where I grew up. With grandparents from Ohio, Illinois, Kansas/Colorado and upstate New York, my linguistic lineage was decidedly Midwestern, home of standard broadcast American English - our version of Putōnghuà.
Mr.Downs:
After my final-term exam, the school divided us into science part and humanities part. Do you Americans also do this? I hope not!
A few days ago, we formed a new class. Unfortunately, the students in science part, like me, will not have history, politics or geography classes any more, while the students in humanities part will never have the chance of learning science lessons. I don't think it is good for us, for what we need is not only scores. It was true I chose science. That's because I want to make some contribution in Physics. But it never means I'll give up humanities lessons or even never touch them! IT IS UNFAIR, I think. I want to know the world more completely.
It's the reality in China and I can not change it. Yet I still want it to be better. At least let me get some lessons about humanity. Or, maybe I can do it by myself
By the way, what do you think about the things that happened in North Korea these days?
Sincerely Evangeline
*************************
Dear Evangeline,
I understand that you are disappointed about the fact that your choices for studying subjects in school will be more limited from now on. I realize that school systems throughout the world do things differently. The system you describe seems to put a high value on spending as much time as possible learning all that you can about a few specific areas, rather than trying to learn some things about a lot of different areas.
We have some schools in this country that really try and specialize in the way you describe. I think that can be very effective if you know exactly what you want to study and what you intend to do with it when you graduate.
Our school and probably most schools in America tend to expect students to study a lot of different things throughout their grade school years. This means that our students’ options to choose an area of focus remain open longer.
I am reminded of a former student of ours named David Siegel. David was the student at our school who first inspired me to keep a “blog”. He is working this summer for Google and is studying computer science AND philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. I am not sure what David would have chosen if we at MPA had required him to focus exclusively on one thing, as you are being expected to do.
But thanks to the internet, there is much that you can learn on your own about the humanities that will not be a part of your school program. And if you would like to communicate by email with some of our students here at MPA, I would be happy to introduce you to some who would be glad to be an email friend of yours.
Beyond that, perhaps you would be interested in seeing if your school would like to participate in a program called Challenge 20/20. You can read about that program at www.nais.org. It brings a school from the US together with a school from another country to try and develop solutions to some of the big problems facing us all.
Like the situation with North Korea. If you are asking me what I think, I would have to say that I worry about what North Korea is doing. Perhaps the missile testing is just a tactic to send some kind of message to neighboring countries and the US. I am afraid that the leaders of North Korea have closed themselves off from the rest of the world and do not necessarily see things as clearly as they should. Sometimes, ignorance can create a sense of fear.
On this subject, I think it is very good what is happening in your country now. There seems to be a real effort to reach out to the rest of the world and to try and work together. This is a very good thing, in my opinion. I am not sure that you are aware of why I came to your school, but our group was in China to meet and hire teachers who will come to our schools to teach the Chinese language to our students. Our trip was sponsored by a Chinese organization working for your government.
So your government wants to help our people learn your language so we can communicate with each other better. And when people can communicate better, they way you and I are right now, we can learn to understand and appreciate each other more easily. Then, perhaps, instead of sending messages with missile tests, we send them with emails. Or better still, in face to face meetings. Just like that nice talk we had at your school.
I hope to see you there again some day, or you here!
Sincerely,
Mike Downs
"Mum and I" - Wang Tian(right) and Liu Lijie
"I called my parents after I got the result. They were quite supportive. My mother told me although I am a good teacher in China, it doesn’t mean I can be the same in America, I must make preparations and try my best, and don’t make the one who chose you disappointed. I bear this in mind, and I believe I can undertake this job!" (from June 27 entry "email from Tina")
It was a TV commercial for some kind of home decor product - a special wood-like floor covering. Youngish couple on the new floor and child playing happily near them - a typically warm and appealing domestic scene designed to sell a product.
I was channel surfing in the Beijing hotel, bored with CNN Asia, uninterested in whatever HBO was running and out of English language options. Watching CCTV (Chinese Central Television Network) was a temporarily amusing puzzle, trying to divine what the content was.
It wasn’t until after the 30 second commercial ended that I realized what was different. One child. A comparable spot on American TV would have had two children, and probably a dog.
Naturally, the commercial spots reflect an idealized reality for potential consumers. And that reality can only include one child in China.
As I write this, the annual fourth of July neighborhood parade has just passed by our south Minneapolis home. It always starts with a fire truck from the local fire house and passes by in the late morning. As it appeared, I happened to be doing a google search on the One Child Policy in China (this obsession will pass, I feel sure of it...) so I was particularly aware, as I watched from the front step, of the ratio of young children to adults in this all-American scene.
And I wondered again what must be the unintended consequences of essentially mandating that the country be populated by only children, as has been the case in China since 1979. I thought particularly of the schools and the impact on the community of children in schools all across urban China, where the rule applies.
Now, some of my favorite people are only children, including our 21 year-old son. But any experienced school person can tell you that, if nothing else, the only children in the class tend to arrive, by definition, with a higher-stakes burden. They generally mean, literally, everything to their parents. This can make it more difficult, on occasion, for parents of "onlys" to see the normal trials and tribulations of growing up in the context of the long term learning process.
Perhaps the very fact that all are from the same experience base in this regard would have a kind of moderating effect. Or not. (see June 18 entry Sorting it Out for one Beijing principal’s perspective on the effects of the policy.)
Bilingual sign - ZhaBei Primary School, Shanghai
“Perhaps you know of the American Fourth of July holiday?” I find myself writing to Tina. “It is our Independence Day, celebrating the day we declared our independence from the British in the year 1776. Our revolutionary war followed.”
I am explaining why something will not be available to me at school until this Wednesday, the 5th. I have no idea whether or not this is something educated Chinese like Wang Tian know as a matter of course. And if they do, how they view this particular period in our relatively short history.
If her sense of early American history is as limited as mine is of early Chinese history, it is quite possible that this holiday is unknown to her. One of the added benefits of having this visitor in our midst will be the opportunity to learn more about how we and our history are viewed and understood from the outside.
“The war of resistance against America and support for Korea,” is what author Peter Hessler tells us is the Chinese name for what we call the Korean War. In his book “Oracle Bones” he writes of visiting the Chinese town of Dandong on the border with North Korea.
At the bookstore in the Shanghai Museum, among the treasures I found for our teachers’ use this coming year was a fascinating book I ultimately decided not to buy. Now I regret it. But I had a good reason at the time.
It was a book of photographs essentially cataloging the dark side of China’s Cultural Revolution. These were very strong black and white images with an underground feel to them, certainly not what the official government-approved accounting of that period would have included. I took it as an encouraging sign that this volume was published and available in such a public institution.
But I worried that interested consumers of this book among, perhaps, some of our older students might see it as an opening to confront our new visitor, armed as they would be with the particular view through the lens of this photographer. I thought about what it means to be a welcoming host and what it means to be alone in a foreign country. I imagined what it might feel like to have my hosts in a foreign land confront me with some of the more difficult truths of my country.
But I underestimate our remarkable students whose capacity for respect and understanding across cultures is quite developed. And I underestimate our MPA teachers’ ability to properly contextualize such a cross cultural discussion. And I suspect I underestimate our visitor and her readiness to experience the freedom of thought and opinion which are founding values of the country whose independence we celebrate on Tuesday.
During the sometimes lengthy bus rides from place to place in China, we often had time to ponder the mysteries of Chinese history and culture - like the implications of the theory that Genghis Khan might have had as many as 20,000 offspring.
With NAIS delegation members from some of the older schools.