Along the Li River

First, congratulations to brother Paul and his sweetheart on their wedding two days ago and to niece Sarah and her sweetheart on their wedding tomorrow. Wish I could be with all of you!

Second, I made it! With new passport and visa in hand, I made it through the checkout counter and security in Chongqing. (Never mind that my flight was cancelled--I eventually got another to Shanghai.)

So, this week I decided to just let my camera do what my pen can't while traveling here along the Li River here in southeastern China. (That's a chicken's way of telling you Mid-Missourians now reading Raymie's accounts of teaching in China that, well, he's a lot funnier. Read him.) But! Look at these incredible things they call mountains in Yangshuo--not far from Guilin--seen with a passel of Brits, Kiwis, a Congolese woman, a German, my three dear buddies from "East Campus" in Columbia--and our tour guide, Qin, from right here in Yangshuo.

Looking down from Moom Mountain.

Hiking in Yangshuo

Amazingly fit at 72, a Yangshuo farmer makes us at home
and tells us stories about everything adorning his walls. Jim Curley photo.

Pan Xiansheng toasted us with not any old rice wine. His comes from a jar
with snakes, scorpions and spiders--and 10:30 was none too early
to toast us -- Gan bei! Bottoms up! Jim Curley photo.

Most of the rafters along the Li River
were Chinese tourists yelling out "Hellos!"
to our gang of cyclists.

Pan Xiansheng's crow couldn't do as much as my sister's African Grey parrot can,
but it could jump up on odd numbers and down on even.

Forget the cotton spinning and notice the water buffalo
horns--and the Obama pin in the middle.

Rice!

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Cheers to the Tongliang Teachers

School ended in early July. The marathon end-of-year grading was barely behind me when I found myself trying to keep my balance on Bus 565, wedged between the man holding three live chickens, a young worker holding the overhead rail--armpit about an inch from my nose, and about twenty other people standing in the aisle. It was a hot day, close to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit (thirty-eight Celcius), so it was relief when I met three other Peace Corps volunteers and our Tongliang hosts and their air-conditioned cars. We were headed for a two-week summer project in the rice bowl of China, where we would work with Chinese primary school and high school teachers who wanted to improve their English. The trip from Chongqing to Tongliang was stunning, with terraced mountains crowding the highway. At one point our host took a wrong exit ramp—no matter. He just backed down the ramp, creeping backward onto the highway, until he found his way into the fast lane.

Terraced hillsides in western Chongqing

Western China doesn’t bother with ugly urban sprawl. Lush green mountains and rice paddies dominate the scenery, although every so often an urban geyser erupts with scores of thirty-story buildings. Tongliang is a somewhat non-descript city of about a half-million people, also exploding with new construction. The skyline was filled with cranes—the metal kind—and every other shop featured kitchen appliances or bathroom sinks. We were spoiled with our hotel's western accommodations and air conditioning, although the whole city was without water for spells during the heat wave.

Waiting for water on July 13th

Our two-week workshop was held at Bachuan Middle School, an impressive private school with uniformed guards controlling the entry way and carefully manicured courtyards, even in the upper levels of the buildings. (Yes, you’d walk out a fifth floor classroom into an upper courtyard with beautifully potted plants and trees.) The sculpted privet on the hillside spelled out slogans in Chinese characters. Only a handful of our teachers taught there; most taught in public schools somewhere within a two-hour radius. The primary school teachers told us their classes usually had about seventy students. Our very charming hosts, "Alice" and Chen Laoshi, looked after us carefully, walking us home to our hotel the first day, and escorting us every noontime to and fro a canteen five or six blocks away dedicated to teachers. There we were joined by other educators, including a man who had been one of Peter Hessler’s students in Fuling. (Peter Hessler wrote River Town, a book chronicling his Peace Corps teaching experience in Fuling. Hessler happens to hail from the same college town in Missouri that I do and is indebted, as I am, to Doug Hunt's mentoring.)

Bachuan Middle School - view from a fifth floor balcony

Evenings we had to ourselves, and we were usually the first act in a street-side circus. While eating noodles outside (under red umbrella, below), the cook and his wife pulled up plastic stools and peppered us with curious questions. Shop owners from neighboring stores stood outside and watched, as did other passersby, so that about thirty people stood in perforated concentric circles, watching us eat.

Shops along the way from our hotel to school in Tongliang

We’d walk the mile to school every morning and again every afternoon—given that the lunch break was long enough to return home to rest. I walked around men shoulder deep in trenches, delivery-men, babies, workers. One delivery man stopped his truck, left it and its AC running, while he took a boxed high chair up to the fence enclosing some high-rise apartments, and just heaved it over the ten-foot fence into a courtyard (below).

Tongliang streetscape

In the classroom, kept tolerably cool with 20 foot ceilings and half a dozen fans, we modeled English lessons that our teachers actually did, partly to improve their own English, partly as a basis for discussion about teaching.  (Their English, however, was orders of magnitude better than our Chinese, mine especially.) They wanted to do plays and we secured a big room at the end of the first week so that the other class could join us—at our teachers’ request. No sooner did the first thespians open their mouths than a string of firecrackers went off as intense as the grand finale of any US Fourth of July celebration, lasting perhaps fifteen minutes. Below us we could see hundreds of helium balloons lifting into the air and what appeared to be a graduation ceremony. Later a small crowd of brave custodians ran up to to ask me my age. They were disappointed. They clearly had me pegged for thirty years older, for just about everyone dyes his or her hair in China until they’re something close to ninety.

We all took a hand at teaching and modeling and asking questions—and we westerners learned as much from our Chinese colleagues as vice versa. We were all teachers teaching teachers—that’s what it was all about.

On the way from Tongliang to Dazu

I was admittedly tired—with passport/visa anxieties gaining tsunami-like strength as the days dwindled and more visits to police stations in far flung cities were called for—but I was also excited—with a day journey to nearby Dazu to see ancient rock carvings. Who knew what a netherworld Buddhists could create—with both a knife-wielding hell and a knee-splitting hell among many other hells under a panoply of Buddhas. (Dazu is an amazement that exceeded my expectations and warrants its own separate blog entry.)

Dazu ancient Buddhist rock carvings

But fatigue and ecstasy mixed when our beloved program manager, Peng ChuanZhong, showed up in Tongliang today with passport and new visa in hand. Scores of Chinese people at every administrative level (as well as Peace Corps director Jon Darrah) have helped push this seven-week ordeal to closure—I can now, thanks to all of them, fly to Shanghai on Sunday. Many, many thanks to this whole special population that made my upcoming trip possible!

(Because I'll be traveling--from Shanghai to Hangzhou, Yangshuo, the Three Gorges, Xi'An, and Beijing, I may not be able to post anything on July 26th--I just don't know.)

Ten things my college kids talk about

There’s a list for everything except this: What my college kids are talking about as spring slips into summer here in the furnace of China. Mind you, my twenty-somethings are generally preoccupied, as most of us on the planet are, with things occurring within a radius of about three miles. But their concerns aren’t entirely parochial and apolitical . . . as suggested by this list. (I did not initiate the conversations referenced below--just things I've heard them talk about.)

1.     Gay rights. I sense that widespread advocacy is thanks to several Western movies and to stances taken by popular celebrities more than to much awareness of landmark legal rulings in the US and elsewhere. I also think advocacy for gay rights is tied to a larger advocacy of romantic love as the basis for any committed relationship.

2.     Micro-blogs. I’ve heard students question whether it’s necessary for micro-bloggers to use their real names, and I’ve heard at least one student wonder whether microblogs are “beneficial to know the truth.”

3.     Testing and ranking. My students are critical--almost cynical--about the gaokao and other exams (lots of students feel like study machines), but most of my students seem to believe in the value of  merit based tests, especially in a big country. I also sense pride in knowing that they have good study habits and are well disciplined. (I don't hear lots of discussion about multi-factor selection--using such tests together with GPA or other criteria, though. I hear some but not lots of discussion about the effects of such testing on what constitutes "learning.")  I hear some students critiquing a narrow view of college ranking—according to what? Based on what criteria?

4.     One-child policy. I do hear some students defend it on the basis of population control and the environment, but I hear many more students critique it. Many students wish they had brothers and sisters. They’re keenly aware of the image of the spoiled Chinese child (which I have to say is not my image of the average child in western China.) Some worry about the burden of taking care of two elderly sets of parents. Some compare India and China—both of which have witnessed a leveling off of population growth, even though India took the approach of sex education rather than forced family planning.

5.     Getting married in college. I hear different things. Most of my students think it’s unwise but some think it should be legal. Apparently the restriction on marriage in college was lifted only in 2001.

6.     Eating disorders. On the whole, Chinese women are more finely boned than their Western counterparts. Their frames are smaller and more delicate. But I hear some college women express concern that their classmates are way too thin, possibly eating disordered. Statistics suggest that eating disorders are indeed increasing in China.

7.     Women’s rights.  Actually, I don’t hear many Chinese students talk about  “women’s rights” per se—most of my students are happy to be girls as long as they can. But I do hear objections to particular laws, including the new marriage law and its provisions for divorce (who gets the house and under what conditions) and some law that seems to blame the victim rather than hold the criminal responsible in cases of child rape. (I don’t know exactly what law this is, but I hear it discussed.)

8.     Death penalty. I hear students go both ways on this, but I do hear them talk about it and definitely hear critique--some advocating killing the death penalty.

9.     Chinese tourists. I heard a lot of talk about “why Chinese tourists are unpopular abroad” (the new “ugly American”) but I think this may be in response to a graffiti case that went viral in the blogosphere. A young Chinese boy had been found responsible for scarring an Egyptian artifact several millennia old, and Chinese bloggers responded.

10. Gap between the rich and poor. I'm not privy to subtle economic analyses, but I do hear particular concerns expressed (for example, about the chengguan running off pedlars and beggars on the street) and a general concern about the widening gap.

Rockets' red glare

Piero Sierra's Creative Commons image taken July 4th, 2005, in Seattle WA:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/piero/23712191/

It's only the first anniversary of my life in China, even if it's the 237th anniversary of the USA. But I understand that 99% of the fireworks exploding under US skies tonight were made in China--and no wonder. As we all know, the Chinese were the first pyrotechnics, and they continue to celebrate each new year and passing life with dramatic sound and spectacle. I had no idea what was going on when I first witnessed a Fourth-of-July-like funeral in the park below Ban Zhu Cun, the first of many funerals to keep me awake at night.

I remember my seven year old delight swirling a sparkler around, the biggest firework an ordinary citizen could possess in Michigan. It was big enough for me. I remember my seventeen year old  amazement when I learned that Missourians were allowed to set off their own fireworks, at least outside certain city limits. Later, my own children could see from our back porch on Gans Road not only the city fireworks, but the huge display from Riback Lane and ongoing private pops all night long. But, oh my gosh, on the eve of the 2013 Chinese New Year, I found myself in the cold next to JiaYue in downtown Dujiangyan, where the big stuff ripped all around us--individuals right and left were lifting into the sky the grade of fireworks that is usually set off from big city barges in the US, and ashes from all of this snowed down on my wool hat and eyelashes.

It's interesting what "independence" means here and there, both for our countries and for our individual citizens. As far as I know, no country wants to be lorded over by any other, and there is no uber-country to look over all of us. Independence seems to be a good, even if many countries value their own more than that of others. Interdependence of some sort may be a necessity in a complex global economy, but it seems that most countries will assume whatever autonomy they can hold onto. But does this hold true for the individual? What does it mean to be "independent" in a country where filial piety has been preached for thousands of years, where young people tend to hold in check their own desires if it conflicts with duty to one's parents? Despite recent BBC reports to the contrary, filial piety is alive and well in China. Who makes the decisions, calls the shots--and when? About a course of study, a job, a spouse, the country? Of course, the individual doesn't make all of his or her own decisions anywhere, in the East or the West, but here in China it seems that paternalism still runs thick and deep in both the family and the state. Individual decisions seem to be mediated mightily, for good or for bad. Interdependence is something I value, but I'm given pause when I think about what it means to be "independent" here--what it means to grow up.

A student once told me that she once heard that, in America, children are kicked out of their home when they're 21. It's true that there's a difference--generally, young adults in the US are assumed to be independent and capable of steering their own lives. It's true that in a collectivist society with a history of extended families living under one roof it's not quite the same. Among other things, the ideal of "independence" is different.

But just how mediated the reality of that independence or freedom might be is another issue. Of course, I must be mindful of what I write while living in any country where freedom of speech is not taken for granted. But what is freedom of speech anywhere in an era of the digital Big Brother, an era of pervasive surveillance, including Uncle Sam's? It gives me pause on this Fourth of July.