green oasis seventh graders come from the mainland, taiwan, malaysia, and india

so, yesterday was field day at green oasis. i enjoy field day for many reasons, not least of which is that field day makes the students happy, and happy students bring joy. nevertheless, what struck me during field day was the diversity of our student body.

facts that speak to the ongoing globalization of shenzhen. 49% our students come from outside the mainland (including taiwan and hong kong); 25% come from outside greater china (india and korea being the two largest non-chinese populations). for years, people have spoken of shenzhen as a city of immigrants (移民城市). however, what they meant by “immigrant” was “from other parts of the province/country” or simply “outsiders (外地人).” now the immigration situation isn’t so straightforward. most of these students won’t become chinese nationals. however, their parents work here for companies that are clearly here for the long-term. moreover, they have chosen to place their children in a chinese school in order to insure that these children will grow up into bi-cultural (mandarin-speaking) citizens.

this model is obviously different from the local chinese model, which educates with an eye toward helping chinese students become chinese citizens. it is also a very different model from the colonial model of an “international” school, which has taught euro-american or curriculums with an eye toward going to university in the u.s. or europe. those children live in china, but are not part of china; indeed, there is no intention to make them part of china. instead, the green oasis model entails educating international children to be part of china, without becoming chinese nationals. at any rate, we now have students whose mandarin is better than their (native) russian or spanish or korean or cantonese…

in many ways, the green oasis model echoes the larger chinese model of sojourning, where people (outsiders) live in other cities, but retain hometown identities. i’m beginning to think that sojourning increasingly enables chinese people to weave foreigners into the fabric of shenzhen life. so that the questions “where is your hometown (你的老家在哪里？)” and “what country are you from (你是哪个国家的人？)” become functionally equivalent in terms of social mapping. which is to say, that for many chinese, especially students, the u.s. and korea and india are no longer as foreign as they used to be.

field day pictures, which in addition to sharing childhood smiles, also illustrate how childhood has globalized with chinese characteristics…