More fascinating insights from phillyboy jdavis reporting from China!
Politics and Chinese Culture
In the year before I came to China, I was taking private Chinese lessons with a tutor for one hour a week for about 10 months. However, my tutoring essentially consisted, initially anyway, of my tutor teaching me how to pronounce Chinese words, making me write down lots of new words, and then telling me to memorize them. As things transpired, it turned into her telling me to memorize the words in the lessons in the book and her quizzing me on them during class.
Since I’ve been in China, I didn’t have a tutor, and yet my Chinese was still able to progress very quickly from a basic, but solid, foundation to near fluency where I am today. However, just recently, I finally decided that I should hire a tutor because I’m still pushing for specialized, business vocabulary. I’ve had two classes so far and I’m very pleased with not only the quality of her spoken Chinese (it’s non-dialectic) and the clarity of her explanations. Additionally, the fact that her spoken English is rather poor forces us to communicate almost 100% in Chinese.
Today, she was looking through my Chinese textbook and was asking me if I knew the words on the list, notably the word “curious.” I told her I knew the word and she said, “Okay, what are you curious about?” I thought for a moment and said, “Politics.” Her reaction was one I would expect: Her eyes grew wide and she said, “Politics? Really?! Why?” Without waiting for me to answer, however, she immediately said, “That’s so dangerous!”
This took me slightly aback, but I had heard responses like this before. I once had a discussion with a friend of mine about why there was a lack of transparency in China, and worse yet, why no one seemed to ask why about anything. My friend replied, “This isn’t America. Asking why gets you in trouble here.”
I carefully explained to my teacher that in America, I’m expected to take an interest in politics. That it’s considered not only the duty of citizens to take an interest in matters of governance, but also as a young, recently graduated student, it’s just part of my job description. She replied, “Oh, I see. I guess every country is different. Our traditions are different.”
I didn’t press the issue with her because I wanted to make the most of the time that I had at class, but this is a typically Chinese excuse that I hear all the time. The thing is it wasn’t valid when she said it, and it won’t be valid the next time someone says it to me.
To illustrate my point, I’ll use the example of one of my students and give a brief background about life as a college student in China. A foreigner’s glance at my university would reveal a puritanical lifestyle: men and women have separate dorms and one sex is prohibited from entering the opposite sex’s dorm. This, as you can imagine, makes dating very difficult. In addition, in each room is about 8×15 feet and usually houses seven or eight people. Finally, every night, the school locks the students inside the dorm at 11 PM and turns the electricity off. Not exactly the life of freedom and relaxation that most American college students experience as an incoming freshman.
I was having dinner with a student one time and I asked him why the students are all fine with such poor living conditions, especially their complacency toward the school locking them inside at night. I said that if the school tried to do that to me, I would feel like a prisoner and would want to leave. I finally asked him why none of them complain about it.
He replied, “If we do that, maybe the leaders will make our lives very difficult.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “They may make us leave the university.” I said, “Are you saying you’re afraid of the people in charge of the university?” “Yes,” he acquiesced.
Now, as it relates to my Chinese teacher, I’ll say this: I don’t believe that it’s Chinese culture to be afraid of those in positions of power. The Taiwanese seem to be doing okay with their leaders, and it doesn’t seem to be taboo to take an interest in politics there.
In fact, according to this article from the BBC, Chinese are taking an increasingly active interest in politics. Is this the result of modernization, westernization, Americanization, Europeanization, and whatever other –ization you may fancy? Could be. Is it because the people of China are beginning to question information that’s force-fed? Again, could be.
But one thing that’s worth mentioning is, if it’s Chinese traditional culture not to take an interest in politics, then how could it have ever gone through dynastic changes and evolved into what it is today?
I may be a little fuzzy on Confucius’s teachings, but I’m reasonably sure he never said anything along the lines of, “Fear your leaders as if they were gods.”
I should add, PG readers, that for the longest time JD was unable to blog for us because he had trouble accessing WordPress in China. Hmmm, let’s just hope his “politicking” won’t get him in trouble :P
I actually was wondering the same thing.
But I disagree with this:
I carefully explained to my teacher that in America, I’m expected to take an interest in politics. That it’s considered not only the duty of citizens to take an interest in matters of governance, but also as a young, recently graduated student, it’s just part of my job description.
Ideally, yes. But unless it’s the political-science department, many students would freely admit that they don’t really follow or even know much of politics.
That’s not saying that other students in other departments don’t follow it, but that if you go to those classes or departments and ask the students, you will probably see a good number who don’t follow much, and sometimes even talk about not caring.
I meant to say the same thing about that sentence: “That it’s considered not only the duty of citizens to take an interest in matters of governance, but also as a young, recently graduated student, it’s just part of my job description.”
Perhaps post-Obama it’s considered hip to be “political,” but like it or not, most kids don’t care about that stuff.
You make a point. Perhaps it’s just politically minded folks that I hang out with in the U.S. I have a feeling that anyone who is not apathetic to the situation of the Chinese becomes politically charged when they come here, whether they like it or not.
However, I do think the “standard of knowledge” for people in America in the political arena is much higher than over here. Could you really tell me you wouldn’t think someone was living under a rock if they didn’t have an opinion on Obama, Hillary, McCain, Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and the other most vocal and most exposed people? Because that’s what I see here.
That’s true. But the opinion still doesn’t exactly have to be about specific policies. But yeah there is a general knowledge, of the main players–but it was an election year. A huge election year.
To add to that, new media increasingly made those people even more omnipresent.
And yeah, I would think they are living under a rock.
But I get your point. Most of people still have an *opinion* however limited their actual knowledge is. (Some will still say they don’t care.) Whereas over there, people are afraid or taught not to form or voice the opinions.
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I also meant to point this out before as well.
The circumstances you described of colleges are not that different from some private boarding schools. I, of course, have no idea if the colleges are private or public or both in China. (I’m not going to assume it’s all public because it’s “Communist.”)
Are they “poor” living conditions, or simply “strict” living conditions? Whether or not it’s extreme is different than whether or not it’s a human rights problem. (I am talking specifically of the strict rules you described, nothing else.)
Yeah they are over 18, but such rules aren’t the worst of it.
I’m pretty sure this was the case with some college dorms (hostels, as the parents call it) in India. Strict rules about the housing. Don’t know about the lights out, but I am fairly sure boarding schools had/have that.
The circumstances are probably much different b/w the two countries. I don’t know what the rules are in India now. And it’s obviously not government rules, but the school rules.
And I don’t know what would be the punishment for the Chinese students.
But still. The strict social rules are really nothing different than it was in the U.S. a few decades ago. All things being equal for the two genders (not saying that they are) strict enforcement of gender-separation is being looked through your own culturally shaded lenses.
Now again, if we were to talk about overblown punishemtn for violations, different standards for males and females, or the really vast human right offences that go on, you would have no argument from me.
Perhaps I wasn’t being clear. I suppose strict is a better word to use in this instance.
I totally agree with you that I am looking through culturally shaded lenses. And I absolutely agree that such restrictions still exist in other parts of the world (the muslim and ultra-religious Jewish world, for example). My intent wasn’t to complain about those conditions, but rather the students’ fear of their leaders at voicing their opinions about them. I gave the background information to help illustrate the anecdote.
You could, of course, say that I don’t have much of a right to be judging their culture — after all they could be perfectly happy with not being able to date until they’re 22. But the reason I don’t believe that is because of a conversation I had with the same student I mentioned above and another. I told them that I knew that in China, people don’t really date unless they think there’s a possibility of marriage. In other words, people don’t casually date or sleep around.
These two students, whom I would consider among the most traditional of my students, laughed and said, “we’re not our parents. It’s not like that anymore.” Those words were what gave me reasoning to press him further on the subject.
I also don’t know what the punishment would be, but I imagine probably just being told to leave the school. They all still date , but the result is that you see people making out very obviously in public places, and sometimes in pretty lewd positions. A friend commented once, after seeing a girl straddle a guy face to face at about 9 PM on a public bench, that it’s like taking a girl to dinner and just giving her salad.
(I also forgot to add. Just in case people are mistaken that it is not an issue in Western Christianity. There are few–not all–American Christian colleges/universities that have similar strict rules.)
Yes, not being able to express opinion is a different factor here, than in some other places.
The reality is pretty much all young people everywhere want to get out of those restrictions.
Some youth succeed in gradually changing the society. Others take longer.
But overall, I do understand now what you were trying to say. That it was more about the fear of voicing dissenting opinion.