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| CHINA: half a year after, half a year before | ||
| We came to China knowing literally nothing. Yes, we had the common knowledge shared by most open-minded and educated Westerners – a few thousand years of eventful history, remarkable culture and tradition, communism, distinct language and even more distinct customs – but it was too superficial to even start THINKING about boarding a plane to China, let alone living there! Yet, we did board a plane to Hong Kong with nothing but a handful of stereotypes and an illustrated travel guide, and went on to live in China for almost four months. Our stay was an unforgettable experience and, despite the untruthfulness of our hosts, we have no regrets; the changes it brought to our lives are invaluable, and although it would be a bit of an overstatement to say we have become different people, we have certainly learnt a great deal about the world, ourselves, and China. We found the Middle Kingdom hot, humid, noisy, and absolutely stunning. The person who met us at the airport took us out for a sumptuous dinner in an exotic environment that we had never dreamt of, and the following days were filled with greedy sightseeing, startling discoveries and hasty conclusions. We were surrounded by an unbelievable world of stark contrasts between the rich and the poor, the skyscrapers and the shacks, the cleanliness and the dirt, the limousines and the rickshaws. We were struck by the frantic pace of life, unruly traffic, and the blazing sun, which, we thought, made life unbearable. Those were the first impressions, but then, little by little, we drifted into the everyday routine, which gave us the feeling of control over what was going on and an opportunity to go deeper beyond the surface. There were few foreigners in the city where we lived, and people constantly stared and pointed fingers at us. They kept whispering Meiguo, Meiguo, which was quite pleasant at first, but soon became a nuisance. The students in the school corridors were only too eager to run up to us with their pens and pieces of paper, and pull at our clothes until we gave up and autographed. Naturally, the lessons could not go smoothly for similar reasons; we were supposed to teach conversation, but how to do it if the kids keep chattering in Chinese? With time we developed a good rapport with the younger students who quickly took to our way of teaching, but the 16-year-olds, who showed no desire to acquire the language, still posed the greatest challenge. We are still haunted by their bored, sleepy faces and distracted mumbling – the worst teaching experience we have ever had. Other teachers showed different attitudes towards us. They were supposed to co-run the classes with us, which for some of them meant just standing at the back of the classroom or in the corridor, intervening only when the students were too loud and otherwise giving us a completely free hand, while for others it connoted insisting that we strictly follow the syllabus. In fact, there was never any actual co-running, and we preferred it the first way that allowed us to use the recommended books as suggestions, rather than real aids. Planning our own lessons became a must and we spent some time utilising the trial and error process before we got the feel for it. Once, the school was visited by the local TV crew who came to interview us and film our work, and at a moment's notice we were expected to come to the classes that were, in fact, scheduled for the next day. The crew had already been waiting and started arranging the interview just as we appeared. So, we sat at those tiny desks and answered their questions with the aid of one of the local English teachers. Then we had to go to the playground and walk around the place, pretending to chat freely with random students and supervise them at play. Needless to say, we had never done that before, and the “random students” had been carefully chosen from among the best of the best so that they could cope with the conversation on camera. At this point we realised we were there more to advertise the school than to actually teach, and however we found this experience truly amusing, it left a bitter taste. It was a popular sentiment that we earned too much for our work and enjoyed undeserved privileges, which resulted in long faces and meaningful looks. The money we received became a legend and we had no idea how this laughable news got round. But it stuck and being limited to English did not help us set the record straight. It was hard for the locals to stop gossiping about our alleged sky-high earnings and start believing that we were paid no more than double their salaries, let alone accepting that otherwise there would be practically no economic incentive for any foreign teacher to come to China – free accommodation is obviously not enough. Nevertheless, there was more than a handful of local teachers whose kindness to us was genuine. They helped us a lot not only at school, but also in the outside activities. What gave us the best insight into the Chinese mentality was the time spent giving private lessons to adults from different walks of life. They were young private managers, government officials, and college students. Hours upon hours of fascinating conversations and breathtaking travels with them now seem the best part of the process of raising our cultural awareness. There are so many things we did not ask them when we had the chance, but still we learnt a lot and hopefully taught them something in return. The communist heritage runs deep into hearts and minds of some Chinese people. What runs even deeper is the firm belief than China outshines the rest of the world. We found it astonishing how great the country seemed to them. For example, during a conversation with our translator before we embarked on a trip to Hainan Island, he pointed out that the island was almost the size of France. When we told him France was more than 15 times bigger than Hainan, he refused to believe us. We also heard that it was the Chinese who invented the dynamite and that the United States was almost as big as China only because they had Alaska, which, according to our interlocutor, did not count. The matter of geographical size appeared a sort of fetish. Maybe some of it stems from Mao Zedong, who once said that Europe is but an unimportant cape. One way or the other, some of the Chinese we met presented a strange mixture of respect and contempt. It seemed to us that while they admired Western prosperity, they felt that they deserved it more. What was worse, despite the Internet access, they based their knowledge mainly on the local press and pirated movies, which resulted in deep conviction that the West was rotten with crime and ruled by corrupted officials. They seemed to ignore their own system of widespread bribery and nepotism, as well as absolute impossibility of changing anything unless the Party wanted to. Democracy meant nothing to some of them; once we heard it was better the way things were in the communist China, because most people were stupid and they could not choose right, but the Party knew what to do. According to some of our students, the freedom of speech and journalism was nothing but imperialist propaganda, for the newspapers were in the hands of powerful tycoons who played their own game in collusion with political leaders. As to the World’s history, the Chinese we met boasted the oldest civilisation on Earth; everything else came later. And everything worth seeing in the world was said to be located in China; some of our Chinese friends openly stated that they did not intend to travel further than to other provinces, let alone abroad, because their country itself was full of amazing places and mesmerising landscapes that could be seen nowhere else. Strangely enough, this attitude towards homeland and foreign countries looks similar to that of some Americans, who also appear convinced of the unparalleled self-sufficiency of the United States. The Middle Kingdom – there is more to this name than it seems. Despite these opinions, there are people who seriously want to establish links between China and the West. They take full advantage of new economic opportunities and quickly become affluent. In the circumstances of autocratic, yet flexible rule and runaway capitalist economy, the Chinese are inexhaustibly making up for years of isolation and catching up with the Western world to which they look for exemplars. However, even in their approach we perceived the same self-importance; China was bound to become the richest country on Earth and it is the fact that could have happened long ago had it not been for the enemies’ plotting and undermining the Chinese greatness. At the same time this approach was mixed with true rapport with us, especially when we needed some assistance. The same people whose political and ideological convictions made our hair stand on end, revealed sincere friendliness when everyday issues took over. Despite those changes, there are still obstacles that keep impeding mutual communication. What is worse, they create an environment for misbehaviour. When a Chinese society (of any size) notices that a foreigner does not know their language, he or she immediately becomes an object to be either ignored or abused. It is especially conspicuous while doing paperwork or asking for something with the help of a translator – the discussion focuses on the go-between, who seldom bothers to translate all the details of the conversation going on. Things seem to be settled over the heads of the ones most concerned. In the shops, foreigners are handed needless goods without any hint about the prices. That situation requires a lot of patience and determination to cope with. And the only solution is learning the language and thus becoming self-reliant. It is especially vital in dealings with such important matters as visas and working permits. We placed our trust in one person who was supposed to take care of all this, which proved to be a grave mistake. Had we been aware of how tricky this business could be and taken care of these formalities personally, we would still be in China, enjoying ourselves. But one thing is clear – too often foreign teachers in Zhongguo are sort of a commodity, and what really counts is how much the school can make on them. Now at least we know how important it is not to be fully dependent on the locals, although the price we had to pay for this knowledge was high. Our observations are a result of less than four months of living in a few places in Guangdong and Hainan provinces, so it is possible that some of them may be unintentionally biased and unrelated to facts that other foreigners have experienced. That is why we want to come back to China in the near future and have one more chance to discover her culture, civilisation, language, and nature. In the times when more and more eyes are set on the Far East it would be most unwise to be oblivious to the changes on the horizon of the world affairs. There is one thing, though, that we will never do again – come unprepared. Dawid & Joanna Bielsko-Biala, Poland beriskorf@interia.pl 18.05.2004 |