Monkey bars

Monkey bars: You let go of the last bar before reaching out and grabbing the next one. That's what C. S. Lewis has to say about "endings and beginnings."

I'm indeed letting go of a lot as I end my two year Peace Corps stint in China. That includes this blog, so let me pause and thank all of you who have taken a little time to read some of Jing's Journey. I can't see individual's names, but I can see countries, and your tuning in has meant a great deal to me. I'm posting for the last time something from China, and I've seen for the last time many a Chinese face and place--and will continue to say goodbye to others before boarding a plane in Shanghai in July. Monkey bars. Yes. I'm indeed uncurling my fingers here and reaching out to something else, something over there.

"Monkey bars" works on lots of levels--but figuring out the boundaries of any analogy is half the fun. All transitions--all beginnings and endings--involve letting go in some ways, or should, as part of moving on. But have I really let anything go? Could all those faces and places, experiences and feelings, still live inside this little brain, a brain that, like all of ours, is still wider than the sky? Or have I let it all go--and am I already mentally and emotionally far away?

You see, in my mind's eye, I'm bursting through the gates at San Francisco International Airport, now catching sight of Mary, Tony, and Jim--and, who knows, maybe Paul and Jade. Now I'm opening the doors to the oak book case in the Gans homestead in Missouri. Ben and I are sizing things up as we get ready for an estate sale. Ann, too. I find myself squinting up the olive tree alley with Jim, trying to decide how much to cut back those branches-on-steroids so that a furniture truck can make its way down the lane. Now I'm in Michigan, waiting for my mama's head to turn when she hears my voice--and Sally's and Ted's. Will she know me? Us? I find myself trolling the pages of the CU website for the Writing and Rhetoric program, trying to familiarize myself with who is doing what. And then I find myself halfway up Boulder Canyon, high in the Rocky Mountains, at Pat's place where I'll be living for a while. Jane's there. Most of all, I find myself going back to Chris and Ana's north shore rooftop in Pittsburgh, witnessing three brothers laughing, Nick the hardest. Seeing Ana's growing belly.

And then I come to. Actually, I'm in China. I'm here. Hunched over my laptop. Maybe mentally I'm holding the next monkey bar (for those images are real enough, or will be), but at least physically I'm still gripping the last monkey bar. Here in Beibei. The dancers' music from the garden way below drifts in on a still-soft breeze. A motorcycle revs up and I hear the chop-chop-chopping of cabbage in several nearby kitchens. My own kitchen counter is laden with bounty bought dirt cheap from the vegetable man. A critter scurries through the walls. My eyes fall on my Chinese book--a book that felt like my best friend for over a year--but a friend I jilted. A month ago I had to admit--wo meiyou shijian--I didn't have enough time to keep up with my class and still make progress on a book project with Professor Liu and honor my other Peace Corps priorities before leaving. I was surprised just how heavy that loss felt--almost like a break up that was long in coming but not desired. A letting go I wasn't ready for. Yesterday I sat at the banquet table, a farewell luncheon the waiban hosted, trying to figure out which pieces in the dish before me were pig's ear and which were mushroom. It was hard to tell.  I'm here in China, alive, but with hand outreached for the next monkey bar.

Later in July, the situation likely will be reversed: I may find myself mentally back in this kitchen chair in Beibei, mentally picturing ferns sprouting everywhere, even out of stone walls, mentally strolling through the lush campus landscape, under the magnolia and fig trees, mentally appreciating my hard-working students. And yet physically I may be somewhere else, maybe on a dry mountain trail in the Flatirons of Colorado.

The lane a half mile behind my apartment in Ban Zhu Cun

Endings and beginnings, letting go and reaching forward, of course, are not simple. Multiple, overlapping, varied. Identities are stretched, expanded, altered. What is it that we release and what stays with us? With identity? With experience? Awareness?

I'm sort of leaving China and my Chinese students, but not all of China, not everything Chinese.  I'll be bringing some of China home with me, wherever home is. And just what do my students want me to bring home?

Invitations to come visit China!

A desire for peaceful relations.

Hope that people will be curious about China's delicious cuisines--maybe enough to view the documentary "A Bite of China."

Students from Xinjiang, Tibet, and other autonomous regions want people to know that everything isn't Han and their cultures have just as much to offer.

Some students express hope that Americans may take an interest in China's emerging film industry, just as China has long been devoted to Hollywood. Others want to introduce their mythologies, their ancient Chinese stories. Dragon stories.

Over and over I hear variations of this "If you come, you will be welcome! We want to meet you!"

Most of all, I hear my Chinese students wanting to be understood. One student says "Perhaps in most people's minds our thoughts and ideas are limited or somewhat closed. However, even though we have little limited ways to get information, the fact is we are interested in getting new knowledge, in accepting different views. We are open, too!"

The lunch crowd on Africa

My first hike through campus two years ago exposed me to tens of thousands of Chinese--and one African, whose eyes caught mine that fine morning. Those eyes seemed to suggest we were already connected, perhaps as two honorary members in a Society of Outsiders. Once I started taking Chinese classes, I got to know some other Africans--Evanio and Agilcio, both from Guinea Bissau, and a doctor from the Congo. A woman from Malawi. Sometimes on Wednesday afternoons we would sit around a bowl of peanuts in my apartment and stammer through our Chinese lessons--unable to easily drift off into our native languages, since we spoke Portuguese, French and English respectively. Chinese was our common language. I at least had the benefit of Chinese-English dictionaries and books. Not so easy for them.

It was in those days that I started thinking about the Sino-African relationship. My radar was up, and I started noticing things in the news and
in book reviews about China's growing presence in Africa. Today, for instance, there is buzz about Monday's Second Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation.

My classmate from the Congo already is a doctor, a gynecologist, but hopes to pursue further study here in China if he passes the HSK language exam. The two from Guinea Bissau aspire to be doctors, and sweet ones they will be if all goes well. They like China's mix of Western and Eastern practices and they value what they believe China has done for them at home.

I sense that some Africans embrace  China's less-Western values and are willing to overlook occasional abuses--no country is above them.  If nothing else, China and most African countries have developing economies, and they're all just trying to make the best of it. Why not cooperate?

Today a different collection of individuals, my Tuesday lunch crowd minus Shi Jun, huddled over tofu, vegetables and rice in the school cafeteria and talked about China's presence in Africa. These three Chinese people--my linguist buddy, a friend of her daughter's, and a stray academic who has taken to joining our weekly conversations--were each eager to dissuade me from seeing China's growing presence in Africa as a re-run of European imperialism, but each for different reasons.

The older two, who often see big gaps between government theory and practice, between professed motives and real intentions, were less critical than usual of the government and were focused more on the individuals who have migrated from China to Africa. Why not go to Africa? Life is just so hard for so many Chinese people, and there is so much competition for too few good jobs. Pollution is a problem--rivers are bad, cancer rates are skyrocketing (so one of them said). And they painted a picture of immigration not unlike that of any other diaspora, where people who have suffered seek more opportunity in a new place. And the Chinese are well known for their capacity to go on, to work hard, and to endure.

But one of them felt that the Chinese government has misplaced priorities and should be doing more for these very people (before they emigrate) and less for people abroad, possibly Africans. Should a mother give food to others if two of her own children are hungry? That one also felt that China actually has decent environmental regulations but is hesitant to enforce them, partly because it has too cozy a relationship with the tax-paying companies it is supposed to regulate.

But the youngest one thought that the Chinese government, however self-interested it might be in making business deals in Africa and elsewhere, has no choice. In the long run, China's poor will benefit from the relationships China is currying abroad. China needs to make deals for food. She argued that food security is a mind-boggling issue and that the government must do whatever it can to make allies and plan for the future, even if some of it is on the backs of working people. She didn't deny that many workers are getting a lousy deal--whether Chinese or African--and that some mineral extraction is almost stealing (her word) and some farm laborers are treated almost as slaves, but she thought the larger picture is entirely justifiable. Of course, China must look out for itself. What country doesn't? Moreover, she argued that what we're witnessing in both China and Africa--with high pollution and low working conditions--is an inevitable stage in  becoming a more developed economy. She compared China to England during the Industrial Revolution--and thought that it must go through a dirty phase on its way to economic well being--and China might as well take a number of African countries with it.

The older two were much less inclined to take an ends-justify-the-means perspective and yet one of them felt nothing good can happen until there is a little more widespread economic well being in China. One of them was quick to criticize the poor, who will do anything to survive, he felt; the other pointed fingers at the government, which is more interested in protecting Party members than in protecting China as a whole. These two obviously aren't nationalistic, but they are deeply patriotic--they love their homeland, no matter how flawed its policies and individuals might be.

I have no idea how representative this trio's views are of the general population's, but one thing is clear: Chinese people don't all think alike about the daunting issues facing their government.

Another thing is this: my experience as a foreigner is complex. I'm a foreigner who shares outsider status with other foreigners in a part of China that still tends to stare at anyone who is not a Han; and yet many of the other foreigners at this university, like our Chinese hosts, are non-Westerners who may be seeking decidedly non-Western paths.

We may be witnessing not just the emergence of China as a growing power, but the emergence of a collective energy that is decidedly non-Western.

* * * * *

As my brother's friend MEB points out, a book some people might find interesting is Howard French's China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa.

The class monitor

Echo and Arabella were chatting during my office hours, just practicing their English and letting the conversation flow loosely. Somehow the subject of "class monitor" came up, the designated person who acts both as teacher's assistant in the classroom and house mom in the dormitory.

Being a class monitor, by the way, is an intense responsibility. A "class" of students in a Chinese university is like a class in my junior high, where the same body of students goes from math class, to history class and so on. In my high school, it was different: completely different students populated my math class and history class, and certainly that was the case in my college classes. But here in China, university students live together as a "class" (body of students) in the same dormitory; they take all their courses together, semester after semester for eight semesters; and they are looked after by the same monitor. The monitor is kind of a mom or pop in both administrative ways and personal ways--and keeps the class on track.

How are these monitors chosen, I wondered aloud? Most of my monitors have been fabulous--smart, savvy, usually sensitive leaders. The tiniest little monitor can shout out orders and everybody falls in line. They're given authority and they use it, but usually in very responsible ways. Students seem to just accept their authority--and their help. And monitors, in turn, seem to accept the privileges that go with the position and the faint promise of more good favors down the road. So, how are they chosen? Grades, my students think. They're not sure--it's not clear. Teachers choose them. Do they need to be Party members? Well, maybe not at first, but most are invited to be members. After all, the really best students tend to be invited to be Party members. Echo and Arabella thought it worked like this: The monitors are usually invited to take the class that prepares them for the exam that must be taken before applying to be a Party member.  That led to a whole 'nother conversation, but it cycled back to monitors.

How are monitors chosen in my country, Echo and Arabella wondered?  Well, we don't have class monitors in the US, at least not on a university level. But from what I can tell, both countries do have little models of their respective governments embedded in the school system. In most US high schools, there's a student council, president, other officers, and so on, and the council members are elected. Likewise, to some degree, in most US universities. Democracy of sorts, never pure.

And here the monitor system links to the larger Chinese government, and indeed the monitors are being groomed for it. But it's not so much communism I see at play as it is paternalism. (In fact, I see very little communism in the Chinese government.) If anything, it seems more Confucian than communist--with "harmony" in the collective body maintained through a prescribed system of superiors and subordinates. I see paternalism and the family metaphor everywhere. There is an authority figure responsible for monitoring and protecting a large group, that authority figure is chosen in ways that are not entirely transparent, there is extensive monitoring--and also protecting, and the larger group fairly obediently accepts the authority of that figure. Or so it seems to me.

At its best, this paternalism works for the common good and fosters a stable and harmonious family; at its worst, it is autocratic, patriarchal, and self-serving, creating a dysfunctional family. It's a paternalism that seems to maximize order and efficiency but possibly by keeping the larger population in a somewhat childlike state of dependency. I see paternalism everywhere--in the government, in households, in the university, in organizations, and even in the social life of the classroom. Generally, it's the more benign kind of paternalism and it often works, but there is still widespread passivity in the face of authority. Some might say that passivity in the general population might be better understood as a practical acceptance of the trade-offs needed for stability and order, rather than childlike dependency. The net effect, though, is the same: deferring to the authority for decision making and not questioning the decisions.

Echo and Arabella said nothing about paternalism per se--rather they ranged all over the map in their opinions about this and that--but as I listened to them, these thoughts ran through my mind.

And it's a curious thing in a university. One thing about paternalism--and the stability and order it fosters--is this: it may stifle creativity and independent thinking which, some might say, are at the heart of academic research. Questioning is at the heart of learning. In China, every department is governed not only by deans, but also by party secretaries. (I have fabulous deans--smart, progressive, visionary.) However, as far as I can tell neither the deans nor the faculty enjoy a Western standard of "academic freedom," not that the ideal of independent research is unsullied in the West--the reality is far from perfect. And several friends who are Chinese academics have tried to set me straight on what "peer review" means in China. Whatever it is, it might be different from that in the West--although, again, "peer review" in the West often falls short of the ideal of independent review.

The glue in the family system in China seems to be "guanxi"--connections, relationships, special favors. But those relationships exist in a system monitored by authorities whose rulings largely go unquestioned.

The Chinese system of monitoring and protecting is a paternalism with which I'm not entirely comfortable (not that the US is innocent of excessive monitoring in the name of protectionism). But if my smart, savvy class monitors are the future of China, I do have hope.

One down (almost)

One down, the rest to go

The spring semester in China starts late by Western standards—late February—and also ends late—early July. This, of course, accommodates the Chinese New Year activities, which last for almost two weeks earlier in the winter. It also provides a good balance—the winter and summer breaks aren’t quite equal, but are close to it—six weeks, give or take a little. So! What does this mean? Most of my classes don’t finish for another month. The one exception is my news class, a short class that meets for only ten weeks. It is a foreign language class—English—and the students enrolled in it are all double majors, some graduating with physics degrees, some with environmental science degrees, all different kinds of degrees. Our exam is Friday, the 6^th.

So it is a curious thing. What do I teach in a class like this? What should I focus on the first week in June? As I write, it is actually two days before the 6^th of June, a day that is not insignificant in the history of China. Even though this class is not my main preparation, I have loved teaching it—partly because I’m a news junkie, I suppose—partly because teaching news literacy is one of the best ways I know to teach critical thinking. It is also of paramount importance in the digital age, a time when we find ourselves swimming in information—but—just what kind of information? Reader beware! No matter what country we might live in, the burden is on us as readers more than ever to read thoughtfully and critically.  That’s true for all of us all around the globe.

So what am I thinking about this week? And what am I allowed to say? My own organization, Peace Corps, follows the “when in Rome do as the Romans do” philosophy and forbids us Peace Corps volunteers to make reference to any of the “three T’s”—so that is something I bear in mind when teaching this class. One of my colleagues, an American contract teacher who is not a Peace Corps volunteer, was just reprimanded and had a job reassignment because he did get in a discussion with some students about one of them, arguably the least controversial.

One thing that is natural to do in a news class such as this is to compare news coverage on any given day—what is the BBC saying? The Guardian? China Daily? Al Jazeera? Der Spiegel? The New York Times? And so on. This enables us to ask questions not only about accuracy and truthfulness, but also about the rhetorical situation—Who is the author? Who is the audience? What is included, excluded, and for what purpose, in what the context? How are the sources handled? Not only how many—but what kind? Can they be checked? And so on. Below is a screen shot of the front pages of several newspapers. 

I would not be allowed to focus on the front page of some of these papers today (say the WSJ)  because Peace Corps would not allow me to mention some of the top stories. So I don’t. I don’t try to touch on every possible issue—and I don’t meet my next class until June 6^th, anyway, which will have different stories.

We spend lots of time looking at news from cross-cultural perspectives—and anyone’s own country almost always looks awful through the lens of another country. That’s because what is considered “news” usually isn’t pretty—especially any “news” that jumps oceans and national borders. Another way to put it is that our own countries tend to demonize others—not that we are untruthful, but we selectively focus on the negative. I think the coverage of China in the NYT is unrelentlingly harsh.

My students have had lots to say about US spying on China and elsewhere. They have lots of opinions about Snowden. They have not read—in fact, most have no clue—about stories of some other major countries that have been called on the carpet for spying, but we have discussed in the abstract general principles about both privacy and transparency.

Although I do think the NYT is unrelentingly harsh, it is a news organization with admirable journalistic standards and understandably won’t be quiet about certain issues that are of great concern to journalists. One of the issues in a news literacy class is “what makes a journalist?” and “what makes a good citizen journalist?” How much is the journalist a watch dog—for governments and other institutions? We use criteria that have been widely discussed among some of the world’s leading journalists.  I can’t always get the articles I want on this and other topics—this week my computer keeps shutting down; it is unbearably slow. But it is always slow, for layers and layers of reasons.

The issues here I believe are of paramount importance in any country, and I don’t know how successful I’ve been as a teacher. But my goal has not been to cover every possible story. My goal has simply been to ask questions.

It’s not fish, but fishing I’m after.