China News

• The Serious...

China Tries to Narrow Urban-Rural Gap (February 23, 2006, The New York Times)
Faced with rising inequality and unrest in the countryside, the Chinese government has formally announced major initiatives to expand health, education and welfare benefits for farmers but left unresolved the fundamental issue of whether farmers should be allowed to buy or sell their land. In recent days, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have given speeches about the "new socialist countryside" initiative, while the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled legislature, is expected to make the rural program the centerpiece of a new five-year plan during its annual meeting next month. The program, which emerged in broad form last October, includes free education for many rural students, increased subsidy payments for farmers, new government funding for medical care and further government investment in rural infrastructure projects. A specific price tag has not been announced, though rural spending is expected to rise significantly.
Another article from AFP stated these statistics:
The poorest 20 per cent of the urban population received only 2.75 per cent of the total urban income, the key economic planner said in a report. Last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said 10 per cent of the nation's richest people enjoyed 45 per cent of the country's wealth, while the poorest 10 per cent had only 1.4 per cent.

• And the Kinda Funny...

Beijing Tries to ‘Civilize’ Residents Ahead of Olympics (February 20, 2006, AFP)
Beijing will launch a major "civilization" campaign to target spitting, littering and etiquette in an effort to clean up the city's image ahead of the 2008 Olympics. Beijing would set up trash boxes and provide sanitary bags for people to spit into on major streets and step up the enforcement of on-the-spot fines of up to 50 Yuan (six dollars) for spitting elsewhere, the Beijing News said. As part of the campaign, which kicks off next month, more than 4.3 million Beijing families would receive a guide on civilization and etiquette, it said. More "civilization supervisors" would be deployed on public transport as pushing and shoving to get on and off, common in Beijing and other cities, came under scrutiny. Other rude behavior targeted by the campaign included littering and pets fouling the streets, the report said, without giving details of fines or other punishments.

Personal Note: Yes, Beijing could certainly use some trash cans. They don't really exist. It will be interesting to see how this "civilization" campaign really works. Still, when China wants to put on a good face, they get serious about it. I have no doubt that Beijing will be amazing...whatever the costs.

**Retrieved from ZG Briefs (www.zgbriefs.com)

Putonghua

I was excited to find, when reading a recent US News (recent being 2 months ago…) entitled “50 Ways to Improve Your Life in 2006,” that learning Chinese was one of the fifty suggestions. The article says,

To be sure, you shouldn’t expect to pick it up overnight. Chinese is one of the
hardest languages for English speakers to learn. Words are depicted with
pictograms rather than spelled out with an alphabet. And saying a word
using the wrong tone can change its meaning from “mother” to “scold” or “horse.”

Difficult – oh yes. But I’m already on my way to improving my life. On Monday evening I had my first Chinese class of the semester. Our foreign affairs office has arranged a beginning (very-very-beginning) Mandarin class for the foreign teachers on the campus. Two evenings a week after teaching classes I get to sit in a very cold classroom and be a student.

We have met twice and have learned things like “Wo jiao Ruth.” My favorite, if someone asks how you are doing, “Ni hao ma?” you can say, “ma ma tu tu” (so-so). It sounds really funny. Our teacher writes the words in characters so we can become familiar with them and then writes it in pinyin so we can actually read them.

Here is an interesting comment on pinyin (the phonetic spelling of characters). Foreigners who have come to the country since the 17th century have used a variety of spelling systems. The current pinyin system was developed by the communist government in 1933 and was only officially used since 1958. One of my students mentioned she is teaching her mother pinyin. It is my only connection to understanding Chinese, but it is not even known by older generations. Now, people use pinyin on the computer and for text messages. You type in the pinyin and the computer or cell phone converts to the characters. There is concern that the younger generations will lose some of their proficiency in reading and writing characters because of this.

To learn Chinese you have to first learn the pinyin pronunciations. Some are the same as English and some are quite different (q = chee, x = sh, zh = j). And then there are sounds that we just don’t have in English. Each sound can be said with four different tones (high, rising, swooping down and back up, and falling) to have four different meanings. You can say the same word with the wrong tones and no one will understand you. Believe me – I’ve tried it. You can be a relatively fluent speaker of Chinese and still be completely illiterate. The characters are fascinating but are completely unfamiliar. Educated Chinese use between 6000 and 8000 characters, and they basically have to be memorized. Suddenly a 26 letter alphabet seems ridiculously easy. And then you can read Chinese and still not be able to write it. The strokes of each character have to be made in a certain order for it to be correct. In case it needed to be a little more difficult, there are traditional and simplified Characters which, to the untrained eye, look nothing alike. Simplified characters are mostly used in everyday life, and traditional characters are somtimes used on advertisements, signs, or for special announcements, since it looks prettier. They are also used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Another note. "Putonghua" refers to standard Mandarin, as opposed to a number of other dialects. Recently in taxis we keep seeing signs that say (in Chinese characters) "Please speak Putonghua." We are always like, "Aw man, that's rough." :)

The encouraging thing about starting from scratch: anything is improvement! I can almost feel my brain straining and expanding. Yep, I’d better be getting smarter.

Note to Father

Father,

My dreams are not wild enough. I am too easily satisfied with the mundane, the moderate, the ordinary. You are a radical Master. You challenge centuries of tradition with greater truth. You would not accept harmony at the price of tolorating evil and injustice. Your love is tough, down-in-the-dirt incarnate, and not entirely pretty. Your love became brokenness, left you eternally scarred. Your truth caused controversy. You showed your power through weakness. Your triumph looked like defeat.
My life is too tame to follow a Master like that. I follow you with moderation, not with wild abandonment. I ask for reasonable requests, perhaps not trusting that you still do the unreasonable and impossible. I love from a distance, still shying away from pain and suffering. You are waiting eagerly, longing jealously, for me to catch the vision. Open my eyes and my heart. Show me what this life was meant to be.

Just to Live

It’s not New Years. But for me, it’s the start of a new semester so it seems like the year is just getting started. I was thinking over the break about all the goals I have for myself this semester. I want to be better, more competent, more successful than last semester. I want to learn more Chinese. I want to spend more time with students. I want to be a “good teacher:” to assess more regularly, plan further ahead in my classes, make every class interactive and interesting, be consistent in classroom management, not take student disinterest personally, make more connections to Chinese culture. I want to make a connection with the copy shop girl so that she doesn’t think I’m stupid and I don’t think she’s rude. I want to plan more for studies, be more intentional in my conversations, mop my floor more often, eat more vegetables, cook a real meal at least once a week, cook food for my students, keep in touch with people, exercise, go to the park, and do all my Wheaton work. With each thought, it gets harder and harder to breathe. How am I going to do all that? I’m always failing to reach my goals.

One of the things I was struggling with during conference was the crazy expectations I place upon myself. We all do that, don’t we? Expect ourselves to be super-human. Except…I finally realized that’s totally the wrong way to look at life. How can I have any joy in life when I think the responsibility for the world rests on my shoulders? Of course I’ll feel like a failure. I want to have it all together all of the time, but I realized that doesn’t help people. What does my life say? "I serve a master who expects me to do the impossible. Come, be stressed out with me. Then you too can feel like a failure." Yikes. Of course that's not what I say, but my life can't lie. Think about it - what does your life say?

I can’t save the world. I need to stop trying.

So I put aside all those goals. My goal this semester is to live. To just live an open and honest life. To attempt to let people see what I’m really like – the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the brokenness and wholeness. I want to be real and allow other people to be real too. My goal is just to live, and I think that’s the best example I can show. He doesn't use perfection. He chose the foolish things…the weak things…the lowly things…the despised things – that I could be humbled and He could be glorified.

Well, There Are 3+ Billion People

I just realized. I have 330 students this semester. Give or take 2 or 3. Yikes! Last semester I had about 220 and I thought that was a lot. I have a headache right now thinking about it. I have all the same students as last semester plus 110 new students. At least I only have 110 new names to learn. Of course, that’s assuming that I remember all my previous students… It won’t be too bad, right? Oh seriously. That’s a lot of students. I feel a little dizzy thinking about it. Or maybe that's travel hangover.

Back to China

Oh, the transition. Coming back to China is a little shocking. Surprisingly, the cold wasn’t the worst of it. Granted, I am bemoaning the fact that two days ago I was wearing shorts and sandals and sweating and today I am wearing long underwear and sitting in front of my space heater.
But coming back to China I was immediately struck with (1) my confusion, (2) my incompetence, (3) my ability to stand out in every crowd, (4) my aloneness. When the lady made us (my friend Tre’ and I) get off the airport shuttle one stop early, I was so confused. I kept insisting that we wanted to go to the next stop, but she just shoveled us off and we were left on some random Shanghai sidewalk encompassed by our luggage. I was still confused when several taxis refused to take us to our hotel. Surely there was a reason, but all I knew was that we were stranded, cold, tired, and confused. Anyway, we got to our hotel eventually.
I forgot that so many people in Thailand speak English. You can just say English words to them and they understand. Not so in China. I feel very incompetent when I can’t speak the language. I was thinking about being illiterate, because I am right now, and it is quite disempowering. You never know what’s going on and always feel like you are doing the wrong thing. Probably you are. It’s frustrating when a crowd of people gathers around, trying to be helpful, but everyone is telling you things you don’t understand. They shake their heads in bewilderment when they realize you have no idea what they are talking about. Can you really be so clueless? Why yes, in fact.
In case I haven’t mentioned this before, let me tell you now: people in China stare. A lot. I forgot how much. I was used to the casual, half interested glances of Thai people who see a bazillion tourists. I had forgotten that in China, people stop in their tracks, turn around, point their fingers, and cry out “Lao wai! Lao wai!” (word for foreigner, literally meaning “outsider”). Probably the only other foreigners going through the Yangzhou bus station this week (or month?...) will be my teammates, so I guess they feel the need to get in their twenty seconds of open staring. But I get to stare back. I appreciate that.
China feels further away from the US. In Thailand, I kept thinking about home because so many things reminded me of it. I guess in a mixed blessing, there's not much about China that reminds me of good old Mei guo. I feel very far away, and all the people staring make me aware that I am alone. Surrounded by billions of people, I am the one that’s the outsider. And now that I don’t have friends around, I have to resort to talking to myself again. Sometimes I’m a boring person to talk to.
This sounds so negative. Life isn’t all negative. I rather like my life. I just spent half the winter in Thailand. And I just watched an inspiring teacher movie that makes me slightly enthused about starting classes in a few days. I’m happy to be back in my apartment. I like having internet again. And I had a happy dinner of Hui noodles and milk tea. All in all, not such a bad homecoming.

Gratifying the Senses

Beauty is healing. I’m realizing that since being in Thailand. For our conference, we are staying up on a mountain outside of Chiang Mai. After six months of China city, I am in awe of the beauty.

All around I see green, open fields of luscious grass. It is February, and everything is lusciously green. I love all the trees: ancient, twisting, vine-covered trees, small trees exploding with bright orange flowers. In the background the tree-covered mountains rise gently in front of the clear skies. The sun rises brilliantly in the morning, and at night we can see whole constellations, not just an occasional token two stars.

It is February, but I hear birds singing outside. Not just one bird, but many different kinds of birds. At night I hear frogs croaking and crickets chirping peacefully. I miss frogs. The wind has no buildings to tear around so it just quietly rustles the leaves and carries them slowly to the ground.
Perhaps more noticeable is what I don’t hear…no horns and squeaky breaks, no yelling and slamming of doors, no loudspeaker music (although we do get our own Thai karaoke), no hacking up spit or clearing of nostrils. I can live without that.

The air is so clean and clear! When I breathe, I feel like I am helping my lungs instead of damaging them. Instead of Stinky River and raw sewage, I smell the flowers blooming all around. I’m serious – there really are beautiful, fragrant flowers blooming everywhere – in February. People even smell good, since they shower, use deodorant, and brush their teeth.

Sometimes I go barefoot, and underneath my feet I feel the scratchy grass or the hotel room carpet. I don’t get to do barefoot much…or ever. In my China apartment the concrete floors are too cold and outside you would probably catch some horrible communicable disease the instant your bare skin even thought about touching the ground. My pillow is deep and doesn’t collapse beneath my head. My mattress doesn’t leave bruises, like the plank-like China mattresses are known to do. It’s the little things that mean a lot, you know? And I can feel the sun and wind on my skin because they aren’t covered by four layers. I like that.

Finally, the tastes. Yeah, there have been some good tasting things going into my mouth lately. Ice cream. Real ice cream sundaes. Whole grain bread. Chocolate chip cookies. Strawberries. Salad. I really appreciate salad. If we just had some ranch dressing, that would be even better. The one disappointment is the coffee, which is pretty abysmal.

I don’t say all this to disparage China. There are unpleasantries about living there. It doesn’t always appeal to my aesthetic desires. But I am glad to live there and am even thinking of things I am looking forward to about returning. That says a lot, considering I am right now in tropical paradise. I am learning to love China, but I am grateful for a retreat into the beautiful.