Chris In China

Back in the U.S.A.

2009-05-18T13:54:42Z

It took me a while, but I am back from China.
I landed a few weeks ago, just in time to watch the start of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. (By the way, I don't know if you heard, the Olympics are going on in China this year.) As I sat watching part of the opening ceremonies from a bar stool somewhere in the Berkshires, I finally started to decompress and think about the last year of my life.
I think it goes without saying that my year exploring and living in another part of the world was a great experience for me. I was tested and challenged, attacked and humiliated, lauded and admired. I learned more in one year living in China than I could have ever learned in four years in a classroom.
And I saw and experienced things that were far beyond anything I could have imagined.

]]> I guess one of the major themes that I came to understand about my time in China and how I relayed that to my friends and readers back home is this: Expect the unexpected -- or, perhaps more appropriately, don't expect anything at all.
The latter approach can be attributed to one of my fellow teachers, a friend named Natty Hussey. He, like me, is a MCLA graduate who went over to China for many of the same reasons. And many of his experiences were much like mine, irreplaceable and out of this world.
Perhaps I did have some expectations, however. I expected to be challenged and I expected to learn. Those kinds of expectations should not be ignored. Without the belief that experience leads to growth, most experiences hold no meaning.
So it was with these hopes in mind that I went to China. I wanted to learn, I wanted to grow, I wanted to experience the biggest story of our time, and I wanted to write about it.
As we have seen over the past few weeks with international attention focused on China and the Olympic games, the myth sometimes runs parallel to the reality, but sometimes it does not. The story is so big that no one person or news organization can cover it all. The truth is, China is forever fascinating. I tried my best to examine the little slice that I could from my post as a teacher in Baoding, and I believe I received a pretty good dose. But one year is not enough; neither are 10. Maybe a lifetime would cover it, but there are few willing to give all that is needed to complete the narrative.
During my year there, I witnessed moments that were immediately powerful and eternally important. The protests, the riots, the torch relay, the storms and the earthquake will forever mark 2007 and 2008 as one of the most turbulent and significant periods in China's history. I am simply grateful I lived to tell the story.
Ever since I returned, people have asked me to describe my time in China.
"How was it?" they ask.
"Great! Amazing!"
But it is not that simple.
I tell them that it is not very easy to put it into the words of a 30-minute conversation. If they truly are interested, they should go to China. I tell them to read "Wild Grass" by Ian Johnson, or "Oracle Bones" by Peter Hessler. I tell them that they should listen to and read everything they can about China (like this column). I tell them that product recalls, poverty, human rights abuses, government corruption and especially the Olympics only offer glimpses into the reality of China. I tell them that China is just like the United States, only different.
"How is it different?" they ask.
"Everything is more blatant," I reply.
"What do you mean?" they ask.
"Well," I say, "imagine a place where there are lots of people trying to live their lives, make money, raise families, work hard, pay bills, be entertained, and invest in their futures and the future of their country. Think of the types of people who read the news, watch television, eat, drink, talk with neighbors, complain about their government, and celebrate their opportunities. Envision a place where natural resources are used at an extreme pace to fuel an ever-growing economy, and where pollution and other environmental disasters are threatening the lives of millions."
I think it is pretty easy to imagine if you are from the United States or China because I have just described both.
"But then imagine all this on a much larger scale," I add. "Like four times larger. Add a billion to the image."
It should be obvious that if one were to add a billion people to the population of the United States, nearly everything would probably be much more intense. The United States is a country that values the individual who sacrifices, works hard and succeeds despite adversity. While nearly everyone is aspiring for the "American Dream," there are only so many individuals with different ideas on how to achieve this dream. Ideas are bound to overlap and with more and more people arriving on the scene every day, originality and creativity are getting squeezed out. That is why you can find a Wal-Mart in nearly every city selling the same stuff in the same layout.
Now, imagine that on the scale of China.
It is not exactly the same, yet. But the trends of demoralizing consumerism, exploitation of the land and the poor, and government control over its people are much more blatant in China than in the United States. But the need to stop these trends is exactly the same.
My time in China taught me many things, but one of the lessons was about home: I learned that in order to change the world, things at home have to change first.
The need is blatant.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate who just spent a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He wrote regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China; this is his last one. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com.

Young and rich in China

2008-06-24T17:04:49Z

Caraba Chen just had started placing the meal on the table when we walked into his sixth-floor apartment in Baoding, a city of 1 million people a few clicks south of China’s enormous capital city, Beijing. The apartment is a large two-bedroom located on the edge of the city in one of those unremarkable cookie-cutter apartment complexes one finds nearly everywhere in China.
But his place has class: overstuffed plush furniture, a large, white dining room table and a mud-brown shag rug inspired, no doubt, by a catalog selling authentic 1970s “style” carpets made by hand. The carpet softens the stark, white atmosphere enough for the room to feel comfortable. And sitting on the couch with my bare feet lost in the shag of the rug, I felt a sudden desire to discuss the implications of the Summer of Love and the war in Vietnam.
Instead, we just talked about the tragedy that is Chinese pop music.

]]> This was my first dinner party at the home of a person who has become part of China’s newest social class: The Young Professionals. This label, a relatively new term for many Chinese, is given to men and women in their 20s and early 30s who are independent and, compared to their parents’ generation, wealthy. There are millions of these young professionals, and they are all beneficiaries of the economic reforms and the stunning growth of the past 20 years.
And while this social class is just beginning to grow in places like Baoding, which many Chinese consider to be a “backward, old-fashioned” city, young professionals are nearly everywhere in Beijing. They drink expensive coffee at any one of the 63 Starbucks locations, or at one of the many imitators, they shop at Gucci, Prada and Tiffany’s located in underground megamalls that litter the city, and they drive German luxury cars, like Audis, Mercedes and BMWs — and for some strange reason (slick marketing?) every one of these luxury cars is black.
Wealth does not come easy to people in Beijing, and it is even more difficult to attain in a small city like Baoding. But nearly every member of this new group has one thing in common: an incredible work ethic.
A strong work ethic is not exclusive to this group. China is well-known to be a place that champions the worker, not only during the Communist era of the last 50 years, but throughout its long history. It was the Chinese, after all, that built the Great Wall.
But, only 35 years after Chairman Mao famously rid the Middle Kingdom of classes and individual wealth, the Chinese have taken entrepreneurism and capitalist zeal to unimaginable heights, and Mao would be turning over in his grave, if he had one. (Mao’s body is embalmed and on display in a Mausoleum in the center of Beijing).
After Mao died and Deng Xiaoping took control of the Communist Party, things began to change. One of Deng’s most famous quotes, “To be rich is glorious,” was a complete about-face from the economic policies of his predecessor. This spawned a chasm between the champion farming and working class and the new, emerging wealthy class.
People who lived in cities began to experience unprecedented opportunities to make money in white-collar jobs, and soon they began to discover ways to distinguish themselves from their poorer comrades.
“If you would have been here 15 to 20 years ago, you would have seen most everybody dressed in the same dark blue worker clothes,” reminisces Terry, an American who has been working in Beijing for the last two decades. “But now, everything has changed.”
Perhaps not everything. I can still see the occasional person wearing the same outfit, and there are lots of men who still sport the extra long pinkie-fingernail, an outward (and, to this reporter, bizarre) display that they rarely lift a finger for manual labor.
But the new emerging class seems to be less concerned with tradition and history.
Frankie Huan, a recent graduate from Hebei University College of Business, just landed a lucrative position as the manager of an upscale hair salon. He knows little about hair styling, but he excels in smooth-talking tax officials and city inspectors. His English is pretty good, too. During a recent afternoon, Huan managed to get away from the buzzing salon floor in order to take a break in his office, tucked away on the second floor from all the hubbub going on down below. He sat back in his black leather chair, put his feet up on the desk and lit a cigarette. “I love being a boss,” he said. “This wouldn’t be possible without my education, you know? And the best part is, my office has air conditioning.”
Chen is also snubbing tradition. He does not have the long nail; instead, his fingernails are neatly trimmed so they do not interfere with his work on a computer, or when he plays the guitar.
“Music is my life,” he said.
He is a musician and he makes his money by producing jingles for commercials, sound bites for radio stations, and by playing in a band. He drives a black Audi and is very fond of low-brow comedies from the United States.
Indeed, the new wealth has reached many young Chinese, and they will be the first to say they deserve it. But when asked, nearly every one cites the sacrifices his or her parents were forced to make in order for this generation to succeed. Admittedly, there was nowhere to go but up from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, and it seems the growth is not going to stop any time soon.
That means more dinner parties and comfy couches for years to come.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He writes regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

A long trip to the Great Wall

2008-05-12T18:06:13Z

Maybe it was the exhaust fumes spewing out of the countless coal carriers waiting, in both lanes, in a traffic jam that seemed to go on forever that was messing with my mind. More likely, it was being one of 18 people wedged into a minibus built for 16, like sardines packed into a tin box.
At one point, I was filled with delusional certainty that there would be a McDonald’s up the road so I could visit the little boys’ room and then order small fries off the dollar menu. But the only bathroom for miles was a concrete barrier preventing minibuses like ours from plunging over a cliff into a small creek below, and when we did reach a restaurant along the dusty road, somewhere around 2 a.m., there were no fries, and a bottle of Coke cost 8 yuan — highway robbery indeed.
And where were all those trucks going?

]]> The other passengers (my friends) and I nearly went crazy with all the waiting. We took turns climbing over each other to step outside and stretch our legs. Fresh air, however, was not an option. During the ordeal our patience was tested and we were brought to the brink of exasperation and asphyxiation. We were clueless as to when we would be out of traffic, when we could sleep, or when our next meal would come.
OK, I might be exaggerating.
But, you ask, how long was the ride?
That depends if you count the trip to our destination, the Great Wall at Laiyuan Village, or just the return trip. Our little group, which should have been in the bus for a total 7 hours, ended up sitting 1.125 people per seat for — wait for it — 18 hours.
It started as a perfect Sunday. I got up early for a planned trip to the countryside, the morning mist/smog began to lift as the sun climbed higher in the sky, and the temperature was just cool enough for me to wear my favorite red wool shirt, the one that makes me look like a lumberjack. My plan, to visit a part of the Great Wall that rarely sees tourists, seemed perfect: good friends, few clouds, plenty of Doritos and a chartered minibus on a direct route to the countryside. Nothing, I thought, could possibly ruin this day.
By the fourth hour of a three and half hour journey, I was bored. The television hanging from the ceiling just behind the driver had already played the same karaoke video three times, and outside the window the sand-colored mountains had not moved for the past two hours.
My legs were cramped and the small of my back was in pain. When the bus pulled over for a bathroom break, I relished the opportunity to step outside as if it was recreation time in the yard at a maximum-security prison.
When we arrived at the village, it was empty and quiet, and to the east I could see an ancient man-made tower that marks the border between Hebei and Shanxi provinces — the Great Wall. My frustration turned into giddiness. But first, lunch.
It was past 1 p.m. and my stomach was grumbling. But in order to find a restaurant willing to serve 18 people in this tiny town, we had to rely on a friend who speaks Chinese. The first place only had chicken for 80 yuan per bird, but they offered a discount if we would kill and pluck it ourselves. No thanks. The next restaurant was not equipped for such a large group. But finally, my friend discovered a place that had enough food and space for 18 people, and it even had beds on which to relax while the staff rounded up the necessary manpower to prepare and cook our food.
An hour later, lunch was served on the roof of the small restaurant/guestroom compound. I was so hungry I failed to notice the spectacular view surrounding the village. But as my blood sugar level rose, I took a minute to look around and thought, “This is incredible.”
Weather-worn mountains rolled onto one another in every direction, like giant brown-colored down comforters on unmade beds. The deep blue sky stretched above and tufts of white gathered on the horizon. A breeze funneled through the mountains and into the village, cooling the sun-bathed rooftop where lunch was served, and in the distance I saw it.
The Great Wall beckoned. It is one of the most recognizable symbols of human endeavor on Earth, and in this place it had not been restored, so I was looking at the real deal, untouched since the 15th century.
It took the remainder of the afternoon to climb to one of the dilapidated towers, a tough hike because there was no trail to follow, and with such a large group, there were bound to be some challenges. We triumphantly reached the top and took our time gazing at the spectacular view of the sun approaching the mountainous horizon to the west. We were simply happy to be there.
Later, someone in the group found a trail on the other side of the watchtower that led directly to the road below. This trail would have saved hours of hiking on the way up, but then we would not have felt this sense of achievement. It was an easy way down, however.
As the journey home began, I picked out some Peter Bjorn & John to listen to on my iPod and tried to find a comfortable position in a seat in the last row of the bus. I failed, but told myself, “There won’t be as much traffic on the way back, I can deal.”
(Ha-ha.)
Several hours later, the iPod’s battery died, the bus entered a tunnel and the concentrated fumes allowed (or forced) me to catch some sleep.
By the time we got back home, the sun had risen again, but in the end, the day was not ruined: We climbed the Great Wall!
But I am saddened by the thought of all those trucks spewing thousands of pounds of carbon into the atmosphere, and by the fact that nobody seems to be doing anything about it. I kept thinking about the thousands of trucks transporting thousands of tons of coal to supply this country’s insatiable thirst for energy that were all stuck in the longest traffic jam I had ever seen.
Now I think twice about recharging my iPod.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He writes regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

How far does patriotism go?

2008-04-21T15:52:35Z

There is nothing wrong with patriotism.
In the United States, most people are fervent supporters of the Constitution, and some are very proud to be U.S. citizens. When the country is attacked, physically or verbally, there is no lack of patriotic rhetoric defending and declaring the greatness of home.
But during the lead-up to the current war in Iraq, when the United States was attacked verbally by its allies across the globe, there was a wave of patriotism that perhaps went too far: How could one forget “freedom fries” and “freedom toast"?
When people in Europe and the United States began verbal attacks and protests against China and the Olympic torch during the aftermath of last month’s unrest in Tibet, the Chinese reacted in a similar manner.
As an American teaching at a university in China, I have been given a unique perspective of this response.

]]> Over the course of this school year, my students have come to know and trust me. They know I will be honest without belittling them or their country, and they are comfortable asking pointed questions about my opinion on various topics. I do not volunteer my opinion, and hardly ever ask them theirs, but when pressed by them, I try to demonstrate that I am a journalist concerned only with the truth.
So this week, when Chinese students across the country started a campaign to boycott Carrefour, a French-owned department store chain, for allegedly supporting pro-Tibet demonstrations during the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay, I wondered if my students were in the loop.
Apparently they were.
The first questions arose during class on Thursday.
“Do you know the French store Carrefour? Do you think it should be boycotted?” asked a male student.
“Don’t you think the Dalai Lhama is trying to split up our China?” asked another student.
“Why are Western people trying to destroy the Olympic games?”
“Don’t people know about all the Chinese people that were killed during the Lhasa riots?”
And finally, a female student who appeared a little worried timidly asked, “What do Americans think of us Chinese?”
The flurry of questions ended only when we were out of time, but students wanted to ask more after class.
Most of the questions were of this variety, leading questions based in patriotism, which has been fueled by state-owned media reports and official government responses.
Promoting nationalism has always been part of the agenda for the Communist government. For example, in response to the destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 by a U.S. bomb, anti-American protests swelled up across the country. And again fierce nationalism arose in 2005 in response to a Japanese textbook’s version of the invasion of China precluding World War II. In these cases and others, the Chinese government, to a degree, encouraged protests as a campaign of unity within the Chinese population.
But with the upcoming Olympic games and recent anti-China sentiments coming from the West — such as comments made by CNN’s Jack Caffety (who called the Chinese government a “bunch of thugs and goons"), and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s threat to boycott the opening ceremonies — nationalism has surpassed a level of simple pride and reached a level of maddening obsession.
Before, it was almost cute: The country was laden with Olympic mascots attending ceremonies to open new stores, pictured on everything from liquor bottles to postage stamps, and carved into juniper gardens across the country. Excitement for the Games was seeping into nearly every part of life, and the Games were often discussed in essays students of mine submitted.
I had to go so far as to ban the use of the phrase, “As we all know, China will host the Olympic Games” in essays because it was so overused.
But now, anti-Western protests online, in the Chinese news media and on the streets are focused on CNN, the BBC and French-owned properties, like Carrefour and the French embassy.
And there are suggestions to boycott other Western businesses and institutions. A student of mine expressed her concern about going to a McDonald’s recently.
In schools, French teachers have been instructed not to talk about politics in their classes, and some parents have even removed their children from French language lessons.
Most of these actions seem ridiculous, but I can party see where they come from.
Obviously, the Chinese are keen on showing the world a modern homeland where peace flourishes, and they plan on using the upcoming Olympic Games, when an estimated 1.5 million foreigners will be in China, as the platform for their demonstration. Commentators have said that the Games will be China’s unofficial “coming out” to the world.
As for my students, who are representative of a large part of Chinese students nationwide, they are upset with the apparently biased coverage of the Tibet issue in the Western media. They claim that the West is out to destroy China’s reputation and the Olympics, and that it should not “meddle with China’s internal affairs” — a line often used by the government when questioned on Tibet, Taiwan and other issues. They do not understand why the West is so concerned with human rights right now, claiming that the Olympics have nothing to do with politics.
But if China is going to use the Olympics to show itself to the world, it should be prepared to accept the backlash and questioning it is receiving. It is inevitable. China should try to answer all the questions without becoming vituperative.
There’s pride and patriotism in protest, which is good, but then there’s defensive anger and resentment, which is reactionary and unproductive. Both the United States and China can be accused of the latter.
Meanwhile, the protestors who advocate for greater Tibetan autonomy must realize that putting China on the defensive will only make things worse. I agree, there is a need for greater religious and political freedom in China, but the desire has to come from within its borders, and the freedom-loving West should do everything in its power to support that effort.

Spring scents bring homesickness

2008-04-08T20:58:40Z

Last week, I made a surprising discovery.
I was cycling back to my apartment after a filling lunch of jiaozi (dumplings), and getting my hair cut, when my eyes and nose suddenly became aware of something I have not seen in a long time — a sight and smell that seems so foreign to this land of scripted urban landscapes, but so familiar in my own.
It was the unmistakable cone-shaped panicle of the Syringa vulgaris, better known as the purple lilac.

]]> On its branch 6 feet from the ground, it appeared lonely and neglected, surrounded by anemic vegetation clinging to the side of a rust-stained edifice that marked the barrier of a small backyard in an apartment block near the campus. Although it was small and hidden, it somehow managed to grab my attention with its pale purple pedals, and with the sweetness of its fragrance.
A man stood nearby examining me with a puzzled look.
“Is this your flowers?” I asked in Chinese.
“Yes, my flowers,” he replied.
I wanted to tell him they smelled great, they smelled like home, but all I could muster was, “We have them in America, too.”
He didn’t know that, he said.
I once learned in a neuroscience class that the sense of smell has the strongest relationship among the senses to memory. Odorants enter the nose as chemicals in the air, and are captured by extremely sensitive nerve fibers called cilia.
The odor particles are absorbed and then synthesized into information in a part of the brain called the olfactory cortex, which is (perhaps deliberately) located directly next to the hippocampus and amygdala, both important components involved with memories. That is why familiar smells usually remind us of someone, somewhere, someplace or sometime.
As the distinct, heavenly smell of this particular lilac saturated the tiny hairs in my nasal cavity, I was transported to a mild, late spring evening seven years ago. I was cruising along a back road in New Hampshire in a small Japanese sports car, with the moon roof open allowing the lunar glow to bathe my dashboard with its radiance. There was something good on the radio, and in that moment I felt like there was nothing more I would ever want or need in the whole world. It was a moment of pure bliss.
This memory triggered a feeling of homesickness, and after the initial shock of discovering this familiar bush in China passed, I was surprised with what I felt.
Eight months of new experiences (food, culture, language, people, laws, weather, history and new plants, animals and flowers) have allowed me to succeed in staving off homesickness. The time has felt suspended, like I pressed the pause button on the VCR to go to the bathroom.
But the physical reminder of home the lilac represented jarred me into the realization that time constantly moves forward. Spring is here, and it has arrived on the other side of the world, too. Am I missing something by being here and not there?
Undoubtedly, yes, I am missing some things: the closing of my favorite restaurant, 55 Main, in North Adams, the graduations of friends from MCLA, the birth of a close friend’s baby and an entire year’s worth of birthdays. These are important events, and I am sorry to be missing them, but at least I know about them. I can keep up with these things through correspondence and photographs.
But I am missing things that people cannot tell me about, like the dirty snow piles turning into cold streams, the fresh buds of maple trees, and that first warm day when the sun shines brightly on bare skin that has gone through an entire winter being covered with thick layers of clothing.
I hate to miss all that, but I only have to reflect for a moment on the unique experiences the spring brings in China.
The holidays, for example — Chinese holidays around this time of year are truly interesting.
Spring Festival, marked by the lunar New Year, is the most important holiday of the year. It’s a time for families to reconnect, eat buckets of dumplings and light off fireworks by the truckload. The lantern festival 15 days later is very similar.
The Chinese also had the “Day Bright” festival, also known as “Grave Sweeping Day,” a day in which people visit the graves of their ancestors to pay their respects, plant new flora and do a little spring cleaning.
I am very fortunate to have the ability to witness those traditions firsthand, and if I were not spending the spring in China, I would have no clue about the importance of such events.
And, although the plants and flowers are different than those at home, they are no less beautiful.
In a park near the university blooms trees such as the brilliantly pink flowering Prunus tribola, known as the rose trees of China, the immaculately white Prunus yedoenis (Yoshino cherry tree), and more than a few large-budded Malus micromalus (Kaido crabapple tree). They are stunning to look at and very fragrant.
I cannot forget to mention the dust storms. How unique and special those are! The sandy loess and coal dust particles whipping through the city streets driven by heavy gusts of wind are a sure sign that spring has arrived in this part of China.
While the differences between a Berkshire spring and a Hebei Province spring are many, they share a special connection. After all, spring is spring, and time moves on at the same speed there as it does over here. Everywhere, the seasons change, new growth emerges and people continue to live their lives. There’s something remarkable about that.
I look forward to the day I’ll be riding my bike along some back road in Berkshire County and come across a lilac tree. When I stop to take a whiff, maybe my amygdala will remember this wonderful spring in China instead of some Japanese sports car.

It's the boob tube in China, too

2008-03-25T15:31:21Z

On Channel 6, a young woman wearing a garish pink dress addresses a studio audience and the audience at home through wireless microphone she holds in her hand. On the screen, lines of small bright blue text scroll across the bottom, while large blocks of flashing yellow text suddenly appear covering the woman’s face with three exclamation points. Next to her is another host, a man in an all white suit and pink turtleneck waiting for his turn to speak into his own microphone. They are introducing the next singer on Super Star, the Chinese edition of American Idol.
Channel 8 shows a woman with pigtails tied with large blue bows holding the arm of a man in a suit and tie. They are speaking softly about the man’s imminent departure; he stops and turns to face her, and, as tears begin to moisten her heavily made-up cheek bones, the man says, “I must leave, I’m sorry.” The woman brushes passed his left shoulder crying loudly, “I love you!”
I’ve dubbed Channel 8 “The All-Army Channel” for its 24-hour bombardment of military-themed programs. From World War II dramas featuring heroic Chinese soldiers brazenly fighting evil Japanese “aggressors,” to “Monkey King,” an episodic drama depicting the life of a simian-man warrior who rules over a flock of other man-beast characters in 14th-century China, Channel 8 is an ideal stage for overdramatic battles that affirm Chinese dominance and pride.
While this may appear to be thinly veiled propaganda, there is more than one channel distributing its content with an unmistakable bias: state-owned CCTV.

]]> China Central Television operates 15 different channels broadcasting throughout the country. Some run Chinese soap operas, others have cultural programming; there is one sports channel and three news stations.
In total, I can watch 19 television channels on my university-provided Changhong television set. For pure, unadulterated English-language Sino-centric propaganda, I turn to CCTV 9 (on Channel 4). The news on this channel is not as sensationalized as you would expect from a counterpart in the United States, like a Fox News or CNN, but the slant is undeniable. The difference is most Chinese view that slant as if it was parallel to the truth; there is no National Public Radio or New York Times to balance out the coverage.
With one side receiving all the coverage on Chinese news stations, and other channels broadcasting happy-go-lucky glorified karaoke and melodramatic gobbledygook, it is no wonder that dissent is conspicuously absent among the majority of the Chinese public.
This has made itself apparent on a number of occasions, but none so poignant as this past week and a half. Coverage of the protests-turned-riots in Lhasa, Tibet, started as a trickle of details coming from the official sources, CCTV and The People’s Daily newspaper. Comparatively, and despite foreign journalists being barred from entering Tibet (there was only one foreign correspondent in all of Lhasa during the events of last week), international media reports were gushing rivers of information, some based on unconfirmed reports and others substantiated. Where Chinese media called the event “unrest” that metastasized into “violent riots against innocent people,” the British Broadcasting Corporation (which I can find on Channel 19 because of foreign privilege, although the Web site is blocked), The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper from London painted a different picture, citing claims that 100 people died as a result of “violent clashes between China’s security forces and protestors.”
Western media outlets called the events in and around Tibet “peaceful protests” and described China’s response as a “violent crackdown on protestors.” China has not denied acting with a firm response, but there has been no mention on CCTV of the alleged deaths of 100 people, although it has confirmed that 22 people have died at the hands of the protestors, part of the story that I have yet to see mentioned by Western media.
I have the advantage of nearly unfettered Internet access (I have found a way to circumvent Internet censorship), and I receive the BBC World Service on television. I have been able to click between CCTV coverage and Western coverage to get many sides of this story. Only twice did the screen go black on the BBC channel when it reported on the events in and around Tibet, presumably instigated by Chinese censorship.
It seems, however, that both sides are offering an obvious bias. On one hand, China does not want to appear the aggressor, and on the other, the West is desperately trying to remain on top, seeking ways to make China appear evil.
So what, or where, rather, is the truth?
Does it even matter?
Even if both the Chinese and Western media have agendas to feed to the public, do people even care to know the whole story? Or would they rather just move on with their lives and laugh at cute girls in ugly dresses dance across the screen, satisfied and complacent that the “official” version tells them all they need to know?
This, perhaps, is the real question, which I find curiously familiar.
It was around the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003. I remember something about “weapons of mass destruction,” “Al Qaeda” and other bits of rhetoric. I eventually took that rhetoric for granted as the truth. Our so-called watchdog media never questioned it, and I had more important things to do, like laugh at Jessica Simpson’s “Chicken of the Sea” silliness.
But watching the television in my room in China has sent me back in time, and I see many parallels between what is broadcast here and what we saw on our television sets at home.
The game shows are the same, the soaps are the same, and I can even draw parallels between the “The All-Army Channel” and many of the programs on the History Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel. It seems the message is the same, too. It goes something like this: “Everything is OK, nothing to worry about, be entertained, stay blind to the atrocities our government is committing against our own people and people in faraway lands.”
The government shows little effort to hide its ruthless suppression of dissent, and there are very few accessible alternative sources of information. Besides, the breakneck growth China is experiencing and the quality entertainment showcased on CCTV’s 15 stations effectively squashes any need to complain anyway.
That sounds very much like home, although without the screaming yellow text.

A visit to a street-side barbershop

2008-03-11T17:52:10Z

I never expected to pay 70 cents for a straight-razor shave, including lotion, from an old Chinese man on the side of the street when I entered China seven months ago.
But last week, after a monthlong vacation, the scruff was beginning to become long and unattractive, I was out of razors, and I wanted an authentic barbershop experience, so I went to where the locals go: Da Fu Yuan Street.

]]> Da Fu Yuan, better known as RT mart, is a modern marvel of commercialization, a small, underground shopping village with faux marble floors and short ceilings. On Sundays, it is packed with shoppers strolling past stores selling knock-off Ralph Lauren sweaters and cheap — and tacky — plastic jewelry. On the bottom floor is the sprawling grocery store where one can find baked beans in tomato sauce and just expired Land-o-Lakes sharp cheddar cheese. The shopping center is located underneath a park that hosts elderly folk bands, stinky-tofu vendors and kite flyers by the dozens.
In short, it’s an idyllic setting for a Chinese family to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Da Fu Yuan Street, a narrow strip of outdoor restaurants and grocers huddled on the banks of a sludgy, is located behind the park. A few meters to the north is where the elderly barbers set up shop, including a modified kitchen chair that leans backward with a pair of leather strops hanging off the back, and a three-wheeled bicycle fitted with a barrow bed to hold all the tools of the trade: scissors, hot water, razors and a few towels.
Nearby, old men play mahjong and Chinese chess, impromptu social events that attract large gawking crowds of other old men who stand around, watching and dissecting the players’ every move and strategies.
“Ahh, I would have moved the elephant two spaces to the right!”
“Old Zhao, you will lose your first chariot if you move there!”
Most of the time, the men are silent observers, but every once in a while, the chime of a collective “Ahh” will echo through the air.
When I arrive to scout out a barber’s chair, some of their attention shifts from the game to this bizarre waiguoren, foreigner.
“He’s going to get a haircut!” laughs one of the onlookers.
I decided an old man should give me the shave, thinking he would know a little more about the sensitivity of another man’s beard than one of his female counterparts. The man I picked was just finishing up with another client when I locked up my Flying Pigeon bicycle next to his. The customer, a large, nearly hairless man with deep wrinkles, sat motionless in the converted chair as the barber, with the concentration of a veteran sculptor, put the finishing touches on the man’s shiny melon, meticulously seeking and removing any fuzzy remnants, ensuring a smooth and consistent finished product.
He was good, I thought; the customer didn’t flinch once. This boded well for me, but I was nervous. Barbershops no longer perform this service in most American cities; it is too dangerous, a barber at A Man’s World barbershop in North Adams once told me — liability insurance would not cover damages. Now, halfway across the world, I was about to get a shave by a man using a technique that, back home, is considered archaic and risky.
But this was why I came to China. I wanted to see how people lived before lawyers and businesses exploited and changed the old way of doing things. A shave from a street-side barbershop presented a perfect opportunity to step back in time.
I hold quixotic images of neighborhood barbershops from 1940s Brooklyn, South Boston, and Marshall Street, North Adams, giving “dangerous” shaves and haircuts to old men on lazy afternoons while they waxed poetic about the latest Red Sox and Dodgers games. It is a shame this piece of American masculine culture has died.
Evidence suggests the practice won’t last much longer in China, either. The street-side barbers are never busy, and I was by far the youngest customer they had seen in a long time. It is a relic of the past, a part of the old days that is being squashed by modernization.
As I sat down in the chair, a feeling of nostalgia came over me. I had never been in that position before, but there was an odd familiarity with the process. The old barber put the bristly white lather brush to my face, and the tingle of hot, menthol-scented soap permeated my pores. When he set a warm, damp cloth on my chin, cheeks and mouth, softening up the long, patchy beard, I felt completely relaxed and comfortable.
But, when he brought the strop-sharpened razor to my face, all those pleasant idealistic thoughts vanished like the hair on my chin soon would. I clenched my teeth and squeezed the armrest as hard as I could. I could hear the scrape of cold metal against my face through my inner ear. It sounded like he was scraping a thick frost off the windshield of my old Crown Victoria during the small hours of a cold winter morning in New England. It was a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard type of feeling; I cringed during the entire process. But I did not tell him to stop. I heeded the example of the old customer who went before me and tried to remain expressionless, determined to enjoy the experience.
When it was all over I thanked the old barber, gave him his well-earned money and unlocked my bike. The lotion he rubbed into my face gave me a slight sting, but it felt cool and clean.
On my way back home I ran into a friend, who took one look at my face and exclaimed, “What happened to your face!?”
“Uh, what do you mean?” I said, as I rubbed my hairless, baby’s bottom chin.
“You’re bleeding everywhere!”
“Oh.” I looked at the red liquid on my hand.
I never expected that to happen. It’s too bad it might not happen again.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate who is spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He is writing regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

Cambodia: A lesson in being content

2008-02-25T18:27:20Z

I went to southeast Asia recently, on vacation from my post as an English teacher in China, and my perception of the relationship between happiness and prosperity was completely upended.
As I have noted in the past, one of the most important lessons that I have learned so far during my Asia adventure is to expect the unexpected, or rather, to not expect anything at all. This is hard to do.
There is always an idea in one’s mind about what it is like in one place or another; what the people, the land, the culture and climate are like. This undoubtedly stems from what people have read or heard about the place, and even when someone studies the history, politics, or anthropology of a particular region, there is no substitute for actually seeing it. When people hear about stories of poverty or oppression, glory or conquest, the view is always shaped by the subjective reporting of the storyteller (no journalist is completely objective).
Even though I try to live with an open mind, I could not help but hold preconceived notions about one of the places I planned to visit: Cambodia. I read brief histories, news articles and travelogues about Cambodia, so inevitably my mind assembled a few ideas.
For many Americans, knowledge of southeast Asia comes from news reports and history lessons about the Vietnam War era. We remember Nixon sending troops up the Mekong River and bombers over Cambodian skies to “root out the reds.” Many people are familiar with the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, a junta government — initially supported by the United States — that, according to the CIA, killed 1.5 million people, mostly innocent civilians.
All this pre-knowledge of a country I had never visited led me to believe the people who lived there would almost certainly be poor and unhappy. I had this grand confidence that, as an educated and compassionate Westerner, I had a lot to offer the people of Cambodia. After all, it was my country that helped lead this people into the abject despair and poverty in which I thought they all lived in, so therefore it was my obligation to help those who could not help themselves.
How arrogant I was.

]]> My original intent was to go down there and get my hands dirty. Build some houses, remove some landmines, feed some children and make a difference. Finding these idealized volunteer opportunities proved to be impossible, and, in the end, I got sick and all I could do was spend tourist dollars and give change to those who asked for it.
A majority of what I saw was Western travelers gawking at the trash and dirt that covers the sides of the roads in cities like Siem Reap, Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh: "It’s so dirty. It’s so poor."
One place was especially depressing. It was on a main tourist road crowded by bars open to the street filled with local women and old white men from the United States, Europe and Australia. The men were not there to soak up the sun, but for entirely more despicable reasons involving the obviously underage girls that populate the bars along the strip. This left a deep impression in my mind.
Wherever there were tourists, there were touts, bleating the same salesman’s call, "Motobike, sir?" and whispering as I walked by, "You want lady? You want ganja?"
Whose fault is this, I thought. Was it like this before?
While I cannot come to a conclusive answer, I can say I saw the worst of what tourism has done to Cambodia.
The industry is a double-edged sword. It has certainly helped to lift Cambodia out of its nightmare and provided its people with jobs and greater access to the outside world, which has brought the story of the harshness of its recent history to the awareness of the millions of people worldwide. With greater exposure, there is more understanding.
But, in turn, this brings more people, more money, more crime and more corruption, resulting in tourist haunts filled with the deplorable characters and Westerners looking to exploit Cambodians. This forces the question, "Does it leave the normal Cambodian better or worse off than if tourism had never taken off in the first place?"
The majority of Cambodians I met were poor by Western economic standards. The moto drivers, outdoor restaurateurs and the handful of families I met told me that they live on only a few dollars a day, and things are not cheap. Rice costs about a dollar per kilogram, which will feed two or three people for one day. And potable water has to be purchased at the store for about the same price for a gallon.
They do not have much in material possessions, either. In Siem Reap, I visited a neighborhood erected on the banks of Siem Reap River. With no running water, erratic electricity and whole families living in homes the no bigger than a backyard shed in the Berkshires, these people live in poverty.
I remember thinking how terrible it must be to live like this, but when I met someone who spoke a little English, he did not complain. He told me this was how life was for him and his family, and they did not concern themselves with what they could not afford.
As I continued through the neighborhood I realized that, to the people living in these houses, money was not the most important part of their lives. Surviving — and seeing that others within their community survived — was entirely more important. It didn’t matter what some Western tourist thought. The most fragrant flowers bloomed pink, purple and white, children giggled as they played, women sang as they worked and men gossiped as they relaxed. They possessed something that is completely foreign to the West: content.
It’s true that their lives would be improved with essential services like clean water, health care and proper shelter, but their level of psychological satisfaction seems to surpass that of a typical person in the West. Cambodians have a tenacious spirit that has allowed them to overcome the awful tragedy of war, the stranglehold of poverty and the exploitation by Western powers through colonialization and tourist dollars.
Their strength of character, cultivated through centuries of challenges and accomplishments is greater than anything one arrogant 27-year-old Westerner could ever offer.

Happy Chinese New Year

2008-02-05T19:25:28Z

I'm sitting at computer number 045 at Sensation Internet.Club in Jinghong in China's southern Yunnan Province. A young woman with a red handbag and a white sweater sits to my right playing an Internet Dancing game and chatting with some friends online.
Computer number 046, to my left, is one of the few vacant stations in the place; the other hundred or so computers are occupied with young Chinese playing computer video games, drinking cans of Fanta and chain smoking Honghe brand cigarettes. The place is dark, hot and filled with smoke.
Jinghong is the last big city on the way to the Laotian and Burmese borders. Only 94,162 people live here, according to a 2007 census, small by China standards, but big enough to have an airport and three bus terminals. It also has a port on the Mekong river where once a day a speedboat whisks passengers to Chiang Saen in northern Thailand, a seven-hour journey for 800 Yuan.
I'm not prepared to spend that much on a boat ride, so later today, I will hop on a bus and eventually reach the Laotian border by land. I'm headed south, and will eventually end up in Cambodia, where rooms are $2 a night and cold beer is a quarter.

]]> I'm traveling cheaply. I'm wearing a week-old beard, which thins out into bald patches on my cheeks and chin (it's not very attractive). Outside the one open window in the corner, I can hear the faint banging of metal on metal — evidence of China's “construction boom” — a conversation in some dialect I've never heard, and the occasional honk of a car horn. The open window does little to alleviate the smoky situation in the room.
Earlier, I left my cheap hotel room with the hard bed and spotlessly clean Asian-style squat toilet, and rendezvoused up with some fellow travelers that I met earlier. Like them, I'm on vacation. Nearly everybody in China has a least a week or more off this time of year. It's Spring Festival time, a very important holiday for Chinese people across the globe. Its main day of celebration is Chinese New Year (the Chinese calender follows the lunar cycle, this year the new year falls on Feb. 8), when families gather together to eat Chinese dumplings (a symbol of prosperity for the coming year), and to light fireworks (to celebrate and ward off evil spirits).
For foreigners working in China who do not have families to visit, the Spring Festival means a month-long vacation. Many take the time to travel, and that is exactly what I've been doing. I left Baoding on Jan. 18 at 11 p.m. with my friend and coworker Natty. We took a train south, a journey that lasted 30 hours. We had bunks to sleep in and brought plenty of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
When we arrived in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, it was almost 6 a.m. We spent two days in Chengdu before moving on to Kunming, 18 hours away by train. In Kunming we stayed at a youth hostel near the Jing Ma (Golden Horse) Arches, in the center of town.
It was here that I woke up over 24 hours ago, startled by loud emotional voices erupting in a sudden argument outside my door. As I lay in bed festering about being awake at 6 a.m. on my vacation, I noticed that the voices were speaking English, but with foreign accents. After the argument seemed to be over, I got out of bed and watch the morning arrive from the balcony of our hostel. It was a beautiful morning, and I sat there writing and chatting with a few other travelers nearby for a little while. At the hostel, I met many people from all over the world. Some from Germany, France, Bangladesh, and even one from Worcester, Mass.
And, as I was speaking to all these different people, I discovered that they all had two very distinct things in common.
First, they all possess an intrepid spirit; they wouldn't traveling in China without one. It takes a sense of adventure and an immense amount of patience to deal with the transportation system and the millions of other travelers one encounters along the way.
The second thing they all have in common is that they all speak English. English seems to be the common language because nearly everybody in the world, but especially in Europe and China, people study English from a young age. Whenever travelers encounter each other or need to ask the hotel staff something, communication is almost exclusively done in English.
Yesterday, after I arrived in Jinghong, I was wandering a main street looking for a place to stay when I spotted a foreigner porting a heavy pack walking in the same direction. Before I could even say hello, she crossed the street and asked me, in French-accented English, “Are you looking for the Dai Youth Hostel?” I laughed and said, “You're lost too? Yeah I'm looking for any hostel. Are you French?” She nodded and asked, “Yes, how could you tell?” It was her French guidebook that gave her away.
We both arrived in Jinghong that morning on separate sleeper buses (the kind with three columns of five foot beds, just short enough to not sleep in), and we were both looking for a place to crash. Neither of us speaks much Chinese, so we had to rely on what little we knew to go from place to another in search of a pair of beds. It was not very difficult, as most places have some English-speaking staff. While Julie, the French girl, speaks four languages, it was English and a little Chinese that found us a place to stay. She tells me that she has yet to come into any problems traveling in China, but her knowledge of English is indispensable to her experience. Armed with this, she can speak to nearly every traveler she meets and can always find her way around any Chinese city.
I think countries around the world have the right idea in teaching children a second or third language. America should do the same. I think it would help bridge the growing cultural and ideological gap between the United States and the rest of the world. That said, I think I need to get out of this stuffy room and go bridge some gaps myself.

It's all about families

2008-01-08T18:16:09Z

I have a friend who recently left Baoding after being here for two years. She did not leave for a job; she did not leave for another opportunity. In fact, she did not even want to leave, but she had to. Her father told her to come home.
She is 22 years old.
She cried when she left, saddened by the prospect of never seeing her Baoding friends again, upset by the stress of having to move and distraught by her lack of choice in the matter.
I asked her why she couldn’t stay.
"You’re an adult," I said. "Can’t you make your own decisions?"
"In China, family comes first," she said tearfully.

]]> She has to obey the family because that is how it works in China. Very few people disobey the wishes of their parents. They may fight with them, but they rarely defy them.
Many reasons contribute to this "family first" phenomenon. As I’ve been told many times over, China has a long history, dating back 5000 years. Throughout that history, famines, wars, natural disasters, and different philosophies and religions have come and gone, leaving their marks on the Chinese people. When faced with changing social, political and physical landscapes, the people have had to rely on whatever they could to survive and prosper. And the most solid and unchanging beam of support was the family.
This deeply engrained social characteristic did not only arise as an indoctrinated abstract idea in Chinese tradition, it was also inscribed into Chinese social law after Emperor Wu of Han adopted Confucianism as the official philosophy of the state in 141 B.C.
Confucianism was born out of the teachings and writings of Confucius (think of those fortune cookie messages that begin with, "Confucius say ..."). He lived 2,500 years ago and wrote four major works, including "The Analects," which teaches filial piety — a belief in the importance of the bond between parents and children. He believed that this bond would produce social order and good governance, and that this bond should continue beyond death through the practice of ancestor worship. Confucius also taught a familial hierarchy, with the father being at the top and the youngest daughter at the bottom.
Although at this time there are few formal adherents to this philosophy (it’s not a religion), the values have become a principal part of Chinese society. It has been a part of China for so long that it is ingrained into its very structure. (In one family, the youngest daughter is rarely allowed to eat with the rest of the family, and she is forced to cook and clean while her older siblings study and surf the Internet).
Children are expected to respect their parents above all else, and, in return, parents are expected to care for and love their children and take very active roles in their lives. In modern China, this means parents tell their children what they must do and how they must do it — from what to study and where to work, to whom they befriend and date. It may seem overly controlling, but many parents have good reason to be so concerned: They invest so much, sacrificing a great deal for their children to succeed.
China’s modernization has required massive amounts of labor, so it is common for poor fathers and mothers from small villages to move to the big cities for work. Many of these migrant workers spend many years in the cities, saving money to send home so they can send their children to school. The New York Times recently profiled a migrant laborer who has been away from his family for 15 years. He has seen his daughter only once.
It is believed that education will lead to a good job and to a profitable career. So, while parents sacrifice to provide their children with an education, children are expected to take care of their parents when they make it big. Many children leave home when they become adults with the hope of returning one day with the resources needed to care for their parents for life.
But some stay at home well into adulthood. I know at least three families whose households include three generations, which they say is common, and I have yet to see any retirement communities (not to say there aren’t any).
The family is not the only institutions that rely on the younger generations to help care for the elderly: The government does, too. Since reforms of the social security system in the 1980s, more and more retirees have been given stipends and payments to live on, depending on what work they did and where they live. It is a policy for retirees living in urban areas to be awarded a government-issued payment based on the amount they contributed during their careers, the cost of living, surviving family members’ ability to support them and a number of other factors.
In rural areas, the system is a little different. The government began to implement an old-age security system in 1991 where the payments are made from a collective pool and by the beneficiaries themselves and their families.
One major difference, besides the financial differences, between urban and rural areas has a significant impact on Chinese families and stirs up controversy and debate: the one child per family policy.
One child per family policy was a law issued to curb the exponential growth of the Chinese population, which unofficially stands at 3.4 billion. The law is more strict in urban areas, but less enforced in the countryside. Many human rights groups and Western governments fiercely oppose this policy, but when faced with so many mouths to feed, the government had to do something, leaving many to ask, "Is there another way?"
Maybe not.
Whatever your opinion might be, the effects of this policy are clear. The traditional structure of the Chinese family is changing. The result is fewer large families, and the gradual disappearance of brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, leaving more of a burden on children to be sole providers for their elderly parents. When they can’t provide, the responsibility falls on the government.
It’s amazing to see the transformation that modernization is forcing China to make. I can’t help but wonder where my friends are going to end up and how they will cope with the challenges ahead.

What friends are for

2007-12-21T15:59:14Z

Any Westerner living in China can tell you about them, about their persistence, about how they can be slightly unnerving and about how they can sometimes be indispensable to a happy existence. And riding through the streets of any city — big or small — reveals a multitude of them making their presence known with a chorus of "helllooos" as you pass. Their accents are thick and their opening dialogues are predictable: "Nice-eh to meeet you! Do you know Yao Ming?"
Occasionally, you find a diamond in the rough.

]]> The past two decades of development in China has produced more English-speaking Chinese people than ever before. According to reports, there are currently more people learning English in China that the entire population of the United States. As a result, everyone knows how to say hello, and most everyone with even the slightest English ability wants to be friends.
At first, I thought, "This is great! Everyone is so friendly and willing to be my friend." But days and weeks passed, and sooner than later I felt like the calls were beginning to mock me. The individual who usually says something does so a few moments too late, as I am passing, and I am unable to understand why. Did the person have to take a moment to get over the initial shock of seeing a foreigner before searching his or her memory for the right word; or was it a rabble-rouser waiting until I pass to say hello, so that I would have to turn around and look back? Was this person just trying to annoy me and cause a possible head-on collision with the next unyielding light post?
Probably not.
But, when I’m inundated by requests for my phone number from people who want to be my friend solely based on me being foreign, I can’t help but feel a little cynical. So, I began to adopt a dubiety when being asked to be someone’s friend, and although this may seem a little haughty, I think it has helped cut down the quantity of friends I have while raising the quality of the friends I have.
This weekend, I am traveling with two friends to Xian, home of the famous Terracotta Warriors. One of my friends is Sarah, an American who also went to MCLA, and the other is Gao Yusi, a Chinese man whose English is nearly perfect. He’s got a real knack for languages; including Chinese and English, Yusi is also fluent in Russian.
I am looking forward to this trip for many reasons. I am excited to travel, as usual, to see the sights of Xian and to sample different foods of China, but most importantly, I am excited to spend time with these two friends.
Yusi, also known as "Noodles," is from Baoding and just graduated from Hebei University with a degree in English (he also spent two years in Siberia). His passionate interest in music, literature and language, along with his seemingly endless tact and patience, set him apart from most people I know. He is a likable 22-year-old, slender, with short dark hair. He wears glasses and when he smiles tiny crow’s feet wrinkles reveal a maturity and wisdom that most people in their early 20s do not demonstrate. Yusi has seen a little more of the world than many Chinese, and this has nurtured his desire to travel beyond the Great Wall.
I like Yusi because we can talk about music, culture, politics and other things that Chinese people shouldn’t talk to foreigners about. He possesses the worldly knowledge of an educated man, and his enthusiasm for learning, encouraged by his middle-class parents, is unwavering. Yusi will probably attend graduate school in the States. He has his sights set on Harvard, but I’m trying to convince him to check out Williams or MCLA.
Another close friend is my Chinese tutor Lu Cong Liang, but I call her Sunny. I met her on the tennis courts one day as she throttled backhand after backhand past me. She usually lets her wavy dark hair down during the day when she studies Human Resource Management and during our Chinese classes, but while she is hitting little green felt balls, it is tied in a ponytail. We struck up a quick friendship that has lead to many evenings of frustration as I butcher her native language with my awful American accent. She’s got a great spirit about it, though, and seems to enjoy the time we spend studying and talking about China.
Sunny is a pretty 24-year-old from a tiny village south of the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang, where her parents farm corn and wheat. She returns home only twice a semester, despite being only two and a half hours away; in October, she went home to help with the corn harvest; she also went home at the beginning of December for her sister’s wedding.
Family is obviously important to Sunny, and I admire her dedication to school while the rest of her family is working and raising families of their own. Sunny is the only one of her siblings to go to college, and it is evident that she views this commitment with honor and only wants to make everyone else happy.
Yusi and Sunny should be very proud of themselves; they are both amazing individuals full of kindness, intelligence and patience. They have become my friends not because I’m a foreigner, but because I am a fellow human. They have taken on the burden of dealing with my cultural blunders and with my inability to communicate in Chinese with a great deal of humor.
There are also a handful of others that I have become friends with, so many that I could write many books about each one. All of them help me appreciate the importance of having quality friends, especially in a foreign land. I am one lucky waiguoren helping to bridge the gap between China and America. And thanks to my friends, that gap continues to shrink as time passes.

Fitting in the danwei

2007-12-10T15:20:01Z

I feel like I should offer a counterbalance to my last column, which highlighted some of the more nauseating incidents that happen around me. This column will strive to shed some light on some of the more pleasurable parts of my daily life.
I am well settled into a social network that extends beyond my coworkers and students, and I have fallen in step with the routine of cold coal dust mornings, back alley noodle-shop lunches and dazzling four o’clock sunsets. The sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of every day, although sometimes repulsive, are uniquely Chinese, and for that they are wonderful. Each day finds me learning from the experience of the day before, like a 24-hour cultural education that even infiltrates my dreams.
In short, I am no longer on a trip to China — I am living in China. The change has been gradual, but noticeable. Right now, this is what I am doing, and I like it.

]]> Mondays are my favorite; sometimes I sleep until 10, have a guang bing for breakfast, return to my apartment and spend the rest of the day reading, writing and preparing lessons for my classes. I don’t even have to shower.
This Monday has been the best so far. Snow fell Sunday night, and it was the first snow I’ve seen in Baoding. I awoke to a white blanket dotted with dark tufts of grass poking through it covering the campus. Downstairs, in the building manager’s office, a heavy package from my mother, who lives in Georgia, waited patiently for me to receive it. I brought it to my room, tore it open and found gift-wrapped items with “From Santa” tags on them. It was a perfect way to welcome the Christmas season in China. But I couldn’t wait until Christmas Day to open the presents. My bedroom is still littered with orange and green wrapping paper and packing popcorn. (Thanks, Mom!)
Aside from this welcome break in the normal schedule, Mondays have typically been the same, just like the rest of my week.
From Tuesday through Friday, I have class on the new campus of Hebei University. I do not teach many classes, only four per week, but every day, I must spend time preparing and correcting vocabulary quizzes and editing student compositions. It’s not quite a full-time job, but it keeps me reasonably occupied. The students tend to do very well on my vocabulary quizzes; this week’s words included “condone,” “anecdote” and “fortuitous.” And I always ask them to read their compositions aloud during class. One student, who recently won a speech competition, always stands out as being unique and funny. He even makes fun of himself: “Nobody wants to see a boy with his eyebrows connected together saying a speech, but I must do it to improve my English and win the prize.”
I like my job.
The new campus is located 15 minutes (by bus) from where I live on the old campus. The university provides transportation for all the teachers who must travel between the two campuses.
The normal bus schedule is posted in Chinese, but when the bus started coming 10 minutes earlier for no immediately apparent reason, I was perplexed. I missed it a few times, but I adapted by biking — instead of walking — the 100-meter distance from the bike lot behind my building to the bus stop. Otherwise, I have to grab a taxi, which does not take long, but it is hard for me to justify spending 10 Yuan, even if that is only a dollar and a half.
This is not only a glimpse into my daily life, but also into the lives of many of my coworkers. Here, a major difference between the United States and China emerges.
Back home, I lived in an apartment on East Main Street in North Adams. I worked a few blocks away, went to school down the street and came home to roommates and neighbors that had little to do with my daily life. North Adams is small, so I would inevitably run into neighbors during certain parts of my day, but it was not a normal occurrence. In China, the people I work with are also the people I live next to, the people I share rides with and even the people I see at the same stores. I see Teacher Li in the mornings, Teacher Hou in the campus restaurant and Mr. Kim on the fourth floor of my building.
Behind my building stands another just as tall full of my coworkers and their families. To the east there is a large rubberized running track and sports field permeated with weeds. The complex is bordered by five-story brick apartment buildings that house employees of the college.
We are all part of the same danwei. There is no literal translation for the word, but an approximation would be “work corps.”
It is a relatively new term too. When the Communists took over in 1949, they introduced the danwei system as a new way to organize the people for the benefit of the nation. That collective mindset has continued through the population explosion of the 1950s and ’60s until today. This marks another difference between China and America. Where Americans value the individual and his or her ability to persevere through difficulty, for the Chinese, the individual is looked upon as selfish and much more emphasis is placed on the success of the community in a “we’re all in the together” mentality.
It is apparent within my danwei, but this is changing rapidly across the middle classes in China. Each day there are more cars on the road, bigger apartments being built and more things to buy. The danwei system is in danger of being phased out.
It seems that the new open market continues to encourage individuals in making money, getting rich, and living fat and happy.
It sounds familiar.
I like the way things are right now. I like my routine, I like my life and I like my part in this society. I feel like I am very lucky to experience these aspects of China.
Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that has not yet past?

Not trying to trash China, but ...

2007-11-26T21:37:01Z

Warning: Strolling along the streets of Baoding often can be a stomach-churning activity.
A human can endure a great deal of sensory assault, but the constant barrage of repulsive smells, gooey substances, constant noise and thick layers of dust that turn green trees gray can be too much to bear. I try to ignore the depressing bushes and blaring car horns, but slipping on a slimy, sloppy mixture of phlegm and swill makes me sick.
This city is like many Chinese cities. During the average day, hundreds of thousands of people roam the streets breathing in the equivalent of more than three packs of cigarettes worth of bad air. Most of the pollution comes from coal-dust and car fumes. Sidewalk restaurant stoves are heated with coal, as are homes, and basic fuel emission standards do not exist.

]]> The exhaust from these energy consumers combines with the dusty loess in the air and gets into everybody’s sinuses, throats and lungs. Many people wear doctor’s masks to protect themselves from the larger particles, but many more people do not. For them, the big particles gather in the back of throats, clogging up the airways.
An everyday walk along the street unexpectedly erupts into a lesson in hawking a loogie when a nearby man or woman decides to purge the particles. First, he or she empties their sinuses into the back of the throat with a quick, beefy inhale through the nose. Then, in a loud throat-clearing fashion, the person combines the sinus-muck with the dusty saliva. Next, the individual pushes the mixture into a puddle on his or her tongue and, with great force, blasts it through a round opening between the lips, creating a liquid projectile as it exits the mouth. It sounds something like: “Hwaaarkk! Pthooo! Thud.” The “thud” means the expectorator delivered a successful piece of discharge to the sidewalk. It’s up to me to remember to avoid stepping in the perpetrator’s accomplishment.
Avoiding these splotches of saliva on the ground while walking Baoding streets is like playing a hybrid game of Frogger and Minesweeper.
Pedestrians are not the only people using the sidewalks to deposit waste. Instead of using diapers, mothers and fathers let their infants and toddlers do their business in the bushes that flank the sidewalks through slits cut into the bottoms of the child’s trousers. Nearly everyone litters plastic wrappers, which contain everything from eggs to single serving socks. And, it is acceptable for restaurant owners to sweep cigarette butts and other trash out the door and dump used kitchen water onto the sidewalks. Even the owners of outdoor eateries simply dump their dregs into clogged sewer drains, resulting in a slippery mess of rancid meat bits and rotten vegetables, the smell of which beckons flies to come and feast.
I have not had the unfortunate experience of slipping and falling into one of these piles of refuse, but I know splashing around in it on a hot summer day would be very unpleasant.
Don’t get the wrong idea. All of China is not like this. It is not like people are walking around spitting (or worse) everywhere at all times, and many restaurants refrain from dumping onto the street. However, this type of behavior can be seen anywhere and has gone on for a very long time, making the habits difficult to break.
Despite this, things have changed, according to reports. The government has pushed and continues to push social reforms to eliminate these bad habits, along with a few others.
As a response to the outbreak of SARS in 2003, the government placed a ban on public spitting. That ban was not rigorously enforced as a sanitary measure, but it was renewed this year as part of the effort to clean up the streets and China’s image to the outside world in the lead up to next years’ Olympics.
The task of curbing public spitting, punishing those who litter and encouraging organized lines (most queues in China are a chaotic mass of people pushing and cutting in front of each other) has fallen to the Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the official etiquette watchdog.
Changing the minds of reluctant citizens is not easy. But the public information campaign meant to make citizens aware of the new rules and to gain their support has been rigorous. It tells citizens, in polite yet forceful language, to stop doing things they have done for hundreds of years — public spitting, littering, cursing and cutting in line — for the sake of the international public’s perception of Beijing. The campaign has even initiated a “voluntary stand in line day” every 11th day of each month (the number 11 represents two straight and orderly lines).
While the scheme seems to be working in Beijing and Hong Kong, where fines for those caught spitting can reach $130 (in U.S. dollars), and lines seem to be more civilized, the plans do not seem to have had any effect on the innumerable cities like Baoding, where there is more poverty and working-class citizens. The people are set in their ways, and it is hard to enforce change when even the police, who are meant to do the enforcing, can be seen blowing snot-rockets themselves.
Even with the vast pace of change to economy and infrastructure that is taking place in China, some things seem like they will never change. Only when littering and spitting becomes taboo will those changes take place, which seems a distant accomplishment.
In the meantime, I don’t mind. I have grown accustomed to cleaning my shoes everyday and suppressing the desire to vomit. By the time I go back home, I’ll have the stomach of a goat.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate who is spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He will be writing regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

Learning the Chinese way

2007-11-05T18:39:48Z

It should not come as a surprise that I have found teaching a foreign language and learning a foreign language very difficult. People say learning through immersion is the most effective way to become fluent, which is probably true, but it still involves a lot of studying and hard work.
Sometimes I wish learning by immersion meant learning by osmosis.

]]> My main reason for being here is not to learn Mandarin Chinese. It is one of my reasons, but primarily, I am here to teach Chinese students how to speak and write English more proficiently. With this in mind, I’d like to reveal a few observations that I’ve made with regard to the difficulties, differences and similarities that have arisen.
To begin with, these students’ English ability far surpasses my Chinese; the main reason is the amount of time they have devoted to learning a foreign language. Officially, all schools are now required to begin teaching the language when students reach the third grade, but in some schools, students can begin learning English in kindergarten.
There are many immersion schools in America, but foreign language as required by the government is unheard of. What the government does require under current policy (No Child Left Behind) forces teachers to decipher cryptic state-issued lesson plans with unrealistic and opaque objectives. They need a translator to teach English.
When I walk into the classroom, I do not have to worry about translating the lesson into Chinese: half of their learning experience is being immersed in the speech of a native English speaker. I can teach like any college-level English teacher would back home, using formal words and elevated speech in a way that makes my points more precise. Often I have to repeat or define some unfamiliar words, but I can always do it in English, and usually, the majority of the class understands in less than a moment.
Although my Chinese language class was, in the same way, taught by immersion, I had nobody there to hold my hand. From the very first class, billed as “A First class in Chinese for beginners,” I was lost amidst “ni haos,” “xie xies” and a flurry of “wo shis” — all without English translation — making my head spin and saturating it with the seemingly insane repetition of indistinguishable new sounds. I felt like saying, “If I didn’t get it the first time, I certainly won’t get it the 40th time, either.”
Our teachers taught using Chinese characters and Pinyin but only spoke Chinese and only spoke at one pace: fast. It served as a valuable lesson, because the pace and constant Chinese forced me to take on the challenge of learning the language with a more diligent approach.
Pinyin was developed in the 1950s under Chairman Mao. Mao envisioned it as a system give Chinese words a Romanized spelling so it would help foreigners with the sounds of Chinese language. But it hardly makes things easy. One word can have many meanings, and each word can have up to five different tones associated with it. Western languages are structured and spoken in a completely different way.
But my students cannot get enough of my attempts to throw in a Chinese word or two into my lectures, and whenever I give them praise in Chinese by saying, “right” or “very good,” they giggle with delight. I take that as encouragement and give them the same. From my (American) perspective, they deserve it.
Education the Chinese way typically involves excessive repetition followed by admonishment for mistakes and no praise for success. I have learned this by observing other classes and reading about the Chinese education system. Students are expected to know the correct answer, regardless of how it was reached. This is very different from the American style, where a student’s ego is constantly stroked and report cards track the student’s effort. You would never hear a Chinese teacher saying, “Nice try!” when a student got it wrong.
This fundamental difference in style between American teachers and Chinese teachers highlights a significant difference in the psychology of teaching between the two nations. It is true, both countries have an inherent entrepreneurial spirit, and both value hard work. But Americans are quick to praise, believing positive reinforcement garners positive results; whereas the Chinese are quick to rebuke, believing negative reinforcement is the most effective way to get the right answer.
Much to my dismay, this emphasis on being correct leads to constant cheating on quizzes and compositions. On the first day of class for each of my four classes (with whom I only meet once a week, each), the head of the English department came into the classroom to discuss plagiarism with the students. But because she said it in Chinese, I can only assume she told them how the West views this offense, and that the students should be on guard against it. Although I have yet to notice any flagrant violations, it is evident that some students take the easier path to success than others.
I cannot put the fault entirely on them. In reality, the system and society has taught them, over many generations, that there is nothing wrong with cheating, as long as the answer is correct. In fact, a student does not even have to be taking the examination in order to pass. There are students willing to take tests for them, charging anywhere between $50 and $3,000 to take English finals, nursing certifications and even college entrance examinations. To them, there is nothing wrong with skipping the studying and hard work.
When I asked a friend of mine who does this often about what happens if she gets caught, she said, “I took a test in human resource management on Saturday. I got caught and they told me to leave.”
“What happened to the person you were taking the test for?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she replied. “She paid me half, and I’m taking the test for her again in a month.”
It’s almost too simple and pragmatic for me to comprehend.
But learning to understand the Chinese way is the biggest difficulty of them all.