Looking at China with a Brit at Lunch -- a Ramble,

Today, as per usual, Y and I sat down in the teachers' area in the lunchroom. I had my stainless steel bowl full of tofu and rice and Y had her own bowl full of whatever it was full of. Some people bring their own bowls -- because they aren't convinced of the caf's ability to clean the communal ones available -- and I also saw one of those stainless steel trays people in prison movies eat out of. The prison trays would be handy because all of the food gets mixed together otherwise. You can buy them at the Lotus Market, my capitalist refuge and source of palatable yogurt drinks when all else fails. But I don't think I will. I bought a tea glass with a strainer to keep the scary looking tea leaves away from my mouth, though. I have some beautiful tea, but the leaves seem almost alive; I find this disconcerting and the glass helps a little.

We sat at a table with Chinese teachers teaching in a British international baccalaureate program plus two of their leaders -- an English guy and a guy from Kenya. They were talking about Tibet and the Dalai Lama in hushed tones. I really wanted to hear what they were saying! The English guy was also talking about the bias of the western press. But the Chinese teachers quickly shut up, finished up, and left. The English guy said the Chinese didn't know us well enough to talk about politics. Too bad, I thought.

The English guy, David, and I talked about how the west's perception of China is a bit off. One observation we shared was that these kids did not seem unhappy, particularly or stifled. They are at school from 7:30 - 6 and on weekends, and are tested frequently in a standardized sort of way, but they just accept it. Y has talked about how Chinese people just accept things, and it doesn't quite seem like the energy a feeling of resignation generates. David also gave an example of how even though there was, in his words, "horseplay", meaning some sort of physical fooling around, the kid "at the bottom of it", took it. That, moreover, it wasn't like bullying. D and I discussed bullying, and we had a common conception of what that was. he discussed the Chinese idea of safety, and that it was OK to rough house a bit; no one here thought it was bullying or dangerous, and in his observation it wasn't. We talked about how the US is so litigious and that in general both our countries were raising self-centered rather than self-reliant children.

David also said that China wasn't entirely broken down and not functioning. He said he lost power once a week or so, or that they shut it off. He said "you don't get the notice, though," meaning they don't tell you ahead of time, which I'd noticed in the dorm, "but they always had a reason, now didn't they." I guess so. I wasn't going to ask. But I did point out that next to those high rises, right down the block, there is a neighborhood where you can see into the windows because there is no glass, and there are no power lines. He agreed..

We both admitted to teaching in privileged schools, however different. One thing we both observed here is a lack of cynicism among students, cynicism being something we both see at home. However, we did discuss this in terms of the Chinese collective mentality. The system is the system, The country is based on a hierarchical system, and has been since Confucius.

There is also the fact that these students were all going somewhere -- they were the top in the country, and even more elite in his program. There was a future pretty much guaranteed for them in China given its economy at present. Not so in the US or Britain. As well, the lack of a societal structure to think for oneself in China took away the burden of trying to evaluate and hence find flaws to complain about as well.

David is probably 15 years older than I, just for perspective, and he wasn't a stiff upper lip sort at all, so this really didn't strike me as some sort of English stoicism. We also agreed that the rules at school and restrictions on kids how everything in both of our countries had gotten ridiculous. We talked about how teachers aren't supposed to touch kids. "Say that guy's dad died last week. Of course he needs an arm ' round his shoulder. And why not, " said David. David had been a housemaster at a boarding school at one point in his career and I bet he'd run up against perhaps that very situation. You could see he was incensed by the whole idea.

One thing he and I had personally in common though, was the Anglo Saxon thing. His daughter came to visit recently with her husband and when it came time for her to go to the airport, she came by school to say goodbye. D's Chinese students couldn't believe he didn't take her to the airport and say goodbye. He said he couldn't because he was working. Even as an American WASP, I could relate to this. I am not sure all of my non WASP American friends or colleagues would, actually. I thought this was a WASP way of thinking, not just western.

I thought of parallels to other far-flung empires. Here in modern China, although it is a huge country, both with regard to population and with regard to land, certain things are accomplished according to local rules, customs, and connections despite the one
Party system. This is true even in that you cannot use a cellphone purchased in Beijing in Xi'an necessarily, Or that you need to know which bank will deal with your tour guide and he has to have connections to take your group's traveler's checks there. Every housing complex has some sort of police or quasi military guard there. The Communist Party cannot control each individual apartment building or bank they manage from afar and so are reliant on local managers. This is fine as long as the local managers are not corrupt. Or too corrupt. Someone has to keep the tiny tiny cogs greased. But they can't watch you all the time, Right? I did wonder if the inFocus projector in our borrowed classroom was tapped though.

Consider the Ottoman Empire, though; one of the causes of its failure was that it was too big and there was corruption. Likewise those crazy Romans. There must be something that has held the Chinese people together for so long. There seems to be less decadence. Or was. What will the new middle and nouveaux riche classes bring China? Hmmm, Sounds like an essay question or more for me to think about.