Students of Hong Kong artist, Momo Leung Meiping created a series of interventions in Old Hubei Village. Projects included making pillows out of old clothing, poetry painted onto the walls, a balloon release, an exhibition of portraits, planters made out of old bricks, and a map of the area with renamed streets. We followed their tracks and discovered the joy public art can bring.
The Mandarin expression for internet trolling — visiting sites, but not actually participating — is scuba diving or 潜水. Last night, I heard it used in the context of parental supervision. Apparently, there are mothers who have requested that their children give them their qq, we chat, and other social networking account passwords so that they can supervise them. The person describing the mother in question joked she was as “mama troll (潜水妈妈)”.
When I mentioned that I found this behavior highly disturbing, my friends responded that yes, it was a bit excessive, but what could you do? Children are an extension of their mothers, and if I didn’t understand this cultural root, I couldn’t understand Chinese mothers.
What’s more, another friend added, many of these mothers have nothing to do. They sit around and worry about who their husbands may or may not be seeing. They chat with friends and imagine all sorts of situations that their daughters might encounter. The most worrisome problem would be young love, especially because young love adversely affected grade point averages.
I then did another of my highly selective surveys, where I told this story to friends and cab drivers and the odd waitress to get their take. I asked if they thought it possible that a mother would go to such extremes? The 100% answer: yes. Most agreed that this kind of supervision was excessive. However, they pointed out that many mothers worry about their children, especially their daughters and so the concern was natural. Others remembered that when they were younger, their friends’ mothers might read their diaries for similar reasons.
I then asked why didn’t the children just sign up for another email or we chat account? Here the responses varied — maybe the children lived at home and their mothers paid for their cell phone and internet access; maybe the children always did what their mother asked them to do, and; maybe it was just easier to put up with the intrusive supervision than it was to set up independent accounts.
After all, another friend pointed out, as long as a child is living with her mother, her options are limited because sometimes teachers will request parents to increase supervision over a child. “It’s a conspiracy,” she then said half jokingly, “Teachers and mothers work together to make sure that children do what they should.”
Back in the day — and a good fifteen years ago it was — Shenzhen University gave me toilet paper and toothpaste, economy sized bottles of shampoo and other necessities as part of my new year’s bonus. This year, they gave an impressively health conscious and self-consciously environmental package of whole grains, legumes, and two bottles of Spanish olive oil. In addition, they included a shopping cart that has a map of the university campus printed on its sack and two coffee cups. I used to think, “What the f—?” upon receiving a sleeve of 10 rolls of toilet paper. But now I’m happy to receive such plenty, especially because neither organic grains nor imported olive oil come cheap. Thus, it is perhaps worth noting that the economic conditions of the imagined university community have shifted into familiar territory. Shenzhen University teachers and staff imagine themselves to be and engage society as full on members of an enlightened, cosmopolitan middle class. And that’s point du jour: our paths cross in the fantasy land of neoliberal desire because as a child of the Jersey suburbs, I still live there, no matter where my body might physically be located.
According to a knowledgeable friend, Shenzhen’s latest census results indicate that the city’s population has breached 17 million. However, the number of residents with hukou remains between 2 and 3 million. In other words, although the population continues to grow and despite liberalizing hukou regulations, nevertheless, the hukou population has remained relatively static.
What’s going on?
Another at the table said that although the regulations had been liberalized, nevertheless, applications had bottle-necked at different ministries and offices. The common denominator seems to be that its not enough to have fulfilled the requirements, but one must somehow exceed those requirements, offering something that will enhance Shenzhen’s statistical profile.
This rumor echoed similar rumors that I have heard about education. Although Shenzhen schools are required to admit waidi (outside) students in their cachment area, nevertheless, schools often refuse to admit these students unless they are incredibly talented and likely to produce results. Importantly, people emphasize that its not possible simply to buy one’s way into a school because teachers’ salaries and school rankings are at stake — no one wants to waste their time on students who will drag down class and school averages.
The general point seems to be that simply having money isn’t enough to buy one’s way into Shenzhen; one must also add cultural value to get in with the in crowd.
These past few days, I have visited elementary schools in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.
The prefecture capital, Jinghong is undergoing a small (by coastal standards) boom: in 2003, Jinghong had an estimated population of 370,000 and roughly ten years later, school officials estimated a population of over 1.2 million people, suggesting that the same processes of internal migration and rural urbanization that we have seen along the coast; China’s population is not growing so much as it is redistributing (results of the 2011 Census). Indeed, the goals of China’s socialist new village campaign sound explicitly urban — “to develop production, enrich life, civilize the countryside, clean up the villages, and use democratic governance (生产发展、生活宽裕、乡风文明、村容整洁、管理民主的社会主义新农村)”.
Extraction and tourist capitalism have fueled the boom. On the one hand, the primary source of production revenue has been the expansion of rubber tree farming. However, the region also produces pu’er tea, mahogany, and has ancient jade mines. In addition, because Banna (as it is colloquially known) borders Burma, Thailand, and Laos, the prefecture also serves as an entrepôt for Burmese jade, Thai agricultural products, and Laotian hard woods. On the other hand, internal tourism to experience stylized representations of minority cultures continues to grow. Indeed, much of the building development in Jinghong involves adding stereotypical Dai flourishes to concrete buildings, which are structural heirs to Maoist dormitory and mass architecture.
The boom is a reform twist on Maoist efforts to integrate minority communities into the larger Chinese state. The situation of Yunnan ethnic minorities varies, reflecting indigenous pre-Mao state building (the Bai Kingdom at Dali, for example, in contrast to the rain forest tribes of Mengla, Banna), integration into the ancient tea trade, and the building of modern roads and transportation systems. During the Mao era, for example, it took several days to make the trip from Jinghong to the provincial capital, Kunming. Today the trip is a 40-minute plane trip and ethnic Han people hold most political positions and control access to economic opportunities. Indeed, the situation of ethnic minorities in Yunnan resembles that of villagers in Han cities like Shenzhen; whatever opportunities locals have it is tied to traditional land rights as they have been re-interpretted by the state.
However, unlike in Han settlements, where (crudely speaking) rural urbanization has meant making access to some aspects of elite Han culture accessible to peasants, while strengthening class differences, in Yunnan, rural urbanization has had a double thrust — cultural homogenization while asserting Han superiority. In other words, through new village programs, Banna minorities are both sinified and regulated to the lowest rank within Han hierarchies. Of course, many of the Banna born Han are themselves relatively impoverished, but nevertheless better placed than ethnics to capitalize on extraction and tourist opportunities. Thus, what seems to have emerged in Yunnan generally, but Banna specifically, is a situation similar to other colonial situations — on US American indian reservations and throughout the Brazilian Amazon, for example.
The Banna schools that I visited teach the national curriculum to ethnic children. The schools are not destitute, but the problems they face are similar to those faced in peripheral societies elsewhere.
The children were wonderful. The teachers generous. The officials (mostly Han, but some ethnic representatives) determined to improve the situation. However, unless, the values motivating the integration of Banna minorities into the Han state change, I am not sure that the results will differ from other national efforts to integrate minorities elsewhere — cultural loss, relative impoverishment, and the destruction of rain forest. It bears repeating: Underdevelopment and concomitant forms of inequality are the result of human actions, which arise when we confuse profit with the common good.
Impressions from Banna schools, below:
I have an ambivalent relationship to academic conferences. On the one hand, I find them physically exhausting because structured to produce the largest amount of intellectual work in the most efficient way. Sadly, intellectual efficiency, like all forms of efficiency is a statistical concept that can only be represented through quantification. The success of an academic conference tends to be measured in numbers of participants, sessions, and published proceedings — measurements which effectively transform intellectuals into academic line workers and make conferences just another station in what might be described as toolpath control over knowledge production. Thus, I experience diminishing returns in a conference’s progression; early on, I am able to listen more actively and participate more fully simply because I’m rested and able to engage a diversity of theoretical positions and claims. In contrast, as the conference unfolds, I become physically tired and often find myself aware that my only contribution is the effort to engage a presenter’s work; I try to listen and understand.
On the other hand, I attend academic conferences because I yearn for intellectual conversations with people I do not meet in the general unfolding of my life. I have colleagues and friends in Shenzhen with whom I debate and discuss various issues. But in order to be inspired and challenged, or simply unsettled and honed, I need both the stability of familiar conversations and the jolt of unexpected encounters. Consequently, I continue to see old friends and opponents, while making new at conferences, which are by and large international and place me in proximity to scholars working both in and beyond Chinese borders. Thus, the conference format, especially when funded by academic and public institutions, offers opportunities to nurture and grow intellectually — precisely through intellectual companionship — both during and in the off time between stations sessions.
In other words, both the strengths and limits to Fordist knowledge production are relentlessly human; international conferences provide opportunities to be surprised and inspired outside the paths of everyday life, however, tired bodies can only do so much, even and especially when we are going through the privileged motions of academic conferencing.
On Oct 18-19, I had the pleasure of participating in the Masterplanning the Future Conference, which was organized and hosted by the Department of Architecture at the recently established Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University in the Suzhou Industrial Park. Organizers, Austin Williams and Theodoros Dounas’ attempted to address the inherent problems of academic conferences through a schedule, which started late enough in the morning and ended early enough in the evening to allow for conversations about and around the the question of high-speed development(s). Moreover, the conference structure attempted to open discussion to the widest possible audience, including a local audience for these ideas. On day one, for example, the public sessions raised general issues, their lay representations, and potential representatives, while on day two, the academic sessions provided more detailed analysis and examples of these issues. Finally, the conference itself was small enough to allow for participants to leave with a sense of the whole, satisfied that if someone were to ask me, “So, what was the conference about?” I could confidently answer, “English language efforts to come to terms with how China has shaped post Cold War thinking about and experience of urbanization. With a few divergences.”
That said, my interpretation of the point and purpose of the Conference differs importantly from the full title of the conference which was Masterplanning the Future: Modernism — East, West & Across the World. The aim to generalize at this scale meant that during sessions we inevitably stereotyped both ourselves and our interlocutors. All too often, the conversation reduced to statements that began with “The West this” or “China that”, rather than staying focused on more specific examples or standpoints that might allow for the negotiation of similarity and difference as shifting aspects of human experience, rather than as identifiable characteristics of mass populations. In this sense, the underlying assumptions of the academic sessions did not differ significantly from that of the public sessions, or even from a more general representation of China and The West at the university itself.
And there’s the rub: this tendency to stereotype distresses me not only because it seems intellectually dodgy, but also because it invariably reduces international relations and cross cultural understanding to semiotic match-making, in all senses of the term. Romancing the factory, so to speak. After all, the conference did take place in an industrial park, with an eye to global knowledge production and consumption.
Outside the XJTLU conference centered where we convened, for example, was a sculpture of a Tang lady and an English gentlemen playing polo (image below).
Both ride culturally appropriate horses and wear culturally appropriate costumes. Both the Tang Lady and English Gentlemen are stylized representations of a recognizable elite, which in turn represent English and Chinese cultures, while glossing internal hierarchy and inequality within the United Kingdom and People’s Republic of China; Tang Ladies and English Gentlemen may represent the current elite of each of these countries, but in no way do they represent the lives of contemporary workers. Moreover, while I’m willing to entertain the idea that contemporary Sino-British relations are simply a game played by elites from the PRC and UK, nevertheless, the gendering of this statue is itself so stereotypically neo-colonial that I don’t know where to begin my critique.
(But really, if we insist on representing international relations through figures of hetero-normative couples, might we not consider a male Chinese zither player and a female British mandolin player, aiming for musical harmony rather than competitive sportsmanship as a unifying metaphor of international intercourse?)
All this to say: I think that these stereotypical elites and their games continue to echo throughout cross cultural conversation because leisure is one of the predicates of meaningful conversation. Here I mean leisure in all senses of the word — as unstructured time, as non-productive time, as pleasurably engaged time and the resultant inspirations, solidarities, and new beginnings. We know that we need to play together in order to create more meaningful relationships and concomitant social orderings; children do it everyday and, unlike us adults, they do it well, creating community out of mud pies and whatever else is at hand. However, unless we restructure the inequalities built into contemporary chains of production and consumption, including cross cultural production and consumption of knowledge, we will remain nostalgic for forms of elite leisure that we cannot have experienced, even as we mistake this deluded nostalgia with the necessary realization of leisure in society.
Sigh.
Yesterday, Ministry of Tofu translated a Southern Daily article about a Shenzhen elementary school teacher who marked students faces with blue stamps for misbehavior. They also published samples of weibo responses to this practice. No unexpectedly, there was general outrage over using humiliation as a means to correct student behavior. The article also mentioned that students received stamps for good behavior. Netizens were noticeably silent on this topic, no doubt because as long as I have been in Shenzhen, rewarding student behavior with stars and stickers has been standard practice in elementary schools.
In fact, public recognition and shaming are the most important motivators in the Shenzhen education system, where schools give and receive public recognition for “results (成绩)”. What’s more there is no question that we are speaking of test results, especially gaokao test results. At the high school level, municipal and district governments reward schools for the number of students sent on to first tier universities, in turn, the schools reward teachers for their students results, and teachers reward their students. In middle schools, public rewards are based on zhongkao, or high school entrance exam results with a similar system of bonuses for teachers who can produce results (出成绩) and students who get into top scores.
Given the importance of test scores their reputation and livelihood, Shenzhen teachers constantly seek ways to help students to improve their test scores. High school teachers run mandatory study sessions, while middle school teachers use classroom time to teach test taking skills. Moreover, most parents not only accept the primacy of test taking to education, but also arrange for their children to attend cram schools at night and over the weekend. In fact, many high school students often ask to attend cram schools in order to compete with their classmates.
Importantly, the system only works – Chinese schools infamously produce test-taking machines – to the extent that teachers and students accept test scores as their raison d’être. Consequently, elementary school schools and teachers have an awkward place in this system because it is their job to transition students from home life to the test life. At the same time and to a greater degree than their middle and high school colleagues, elementary teachers are expected to care for the total student, including their emotional and physical wellbeing. And there’s the rub: most young children and especially boys cannot sit still for long periods of time.
The restlessness of young bodies places elementary school teachers in a difficult position because in order to take tests, students must sit at desks for at least 40 minutes with an eye to eventually taking 2 to 2.5 hour tests that make up the gaokao. The 2012 Shenzhen gaokao, for example, took place on June 7 and 8. In the morning, candidates sat for 2.5 hours (Chinese on the 7th and humanities/science on the 8th) and in the afternoon they sat for 2 hours (humanities/science on the 7th and English on the 8th). The zhongkao was held on the 9th, with two 1.5 hour test periods, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Thus, more often than not, restless elementary students receive low test scores, their teachers are accused of ineffective pedagogy, and the schools are criticized for not doing their jobs.
In order to transform the restless body into a test-taking machine, elementary school teachers often use public recognition to encourage students. In fact, stickers and stamps are just two elements of a repertoire that also includes publicizing grades, issuing certificates and holding award ceremonies. During weekly flag raising ceremonies, top students receive public commendation and at the end of the year, the best students receive merit scholarships and their photos are hung in prominent places.
Obviously, this system creates pressure for the majority of students who cannot (by definition) earn the top scores. For these students, the desire to alleviate feelings of envy and shame sometimes become motivations to study. Or as often the case, middling students learn to live with second-rate status and find pleasure in non-academic activities. At the same time, teachers will attempt to use envy and shame to motivate students to overtake top students or to redeem themselves in the public eye.
Nor are teachers alone in celebrating top scores and denigrating poor results. Parental bragging about good students is rampant, while parental complaints about poor results are never simply good manners, but also strategies to motivate children to do better in school. Parents often negatively compare a child to another, even as some of the most brutal set downs entail parental complaints about lives wasted to support a student who has failed academically.
Point du jour: The blue star of shame on third grade faces are symptoms of a much larger problem that cannot be ameliorated by ridiculing the teacher herself or calling for different pedagogy. Rather, the system of Chinese education constitutes a problem so vast and entrenched that it is hard to know where to begin deconstructing it. Do we begin with the gaokao? Or with a more equitable system of job opportunities? Or allow for private schools that are certified even when they do not teach the national curriculum?
I am not posting this response to absolve the teacher from her responsibility in damaging her students’ self esteem. I am, however, posting this response to highlight the desperate hypocrisy of netizen complaints about blue stars. On the one hand, in a system that motivates through public recognition, shame is effective. Thus, issuing blue star demerits should be understood as a natural extension of extent pedagogy. On the other hand, until the system changes, parents and teachers find themselves in the desperate position of trying to force children to become test-taking machines in the gentlest manner possible. All recognize that the goal itself is violent, but hope getting there doesn’t have to hurt.
As we live it, one of the most important functions of an education system is to cull genius. However, given that genius — like stupidity — exists only to the extent that others recognize it, this means the educational system does not simply cull genius, but must also produce it. And one of the easiest and certainly most effective ways of culling genius is to cultivate stupidity.
In the US, for example, math classes provide a key site for the production of stupidity. Our math pedagogy consistently churns out students who have difficulty with mental math, are intimidated by word problems and conceptual reasoning, and regularly underachieve. This remarkably low level of math skills — even after ten years of math classes — is considered “normal”. Those who survive the lack of drills, out-dated curriculum, and their teachers’ ever lower expectations are designated geniuses.
Similarly, in China, English classes manufacture stupidity. The Chinese EFL curriculum relentlessly produces students who have difficulty participating in simple conversations, are intimidated by novels and poetic meaning, and regularly underachieve. This lamentable low level of English skills — even after ten years of daily English lessons — is considered “normal”. Those who survive the lack reading exercises, test driven curriculum, and their teachers’ ever lower expectations are designated geniuses.
However, when we turn our gaze away from our respective home fronts, it is obvious that elsewhere in the world it is possible to teach English (or in the US a foreign language) well. Likewise, Asian and Indian programs cultivate excellent general math skills. More tellingly, US American math and Chinese EFL teachers share the belief that a particular form of knowledge (math or English, respectively) cannot be taught. Also, in both the US and China, the social effects of low math or English scores are disproportionately high with respect to the actual knowledge obtained. In US schools, for example, low math scores mean that a student may be kept out of higher level science classes, while in China, English scores are a graduation requirement. Indeed, the US situation is even less extreme than the Chinese, where English tests also determine graduate school admission and job opportunities.
All this to make a simple point du jour. Both US American and Chinese students learn when we provide adequate training, interesting curriculum, and challenging standards. The question, of course, is not so much — can we teach math or English? — but rather, what social purposes do horrific pedagogy serve?
Yesterday, I participated in an organizational meeting for a public talk on Shenzhen University. The meeting was held at the Qinghua Park (清华苑), the design firm headed by Luo Zhengqi former SZU president and members of the original SZU design team that left the University when he did (in post June 4th restructuring).
The planning of the SZU campus interests because it represents a unique moment in the Municipality’s history. Members of the Architecture Department as well as students in the first graduating classes actively participated in the design and construction of the campus. Indeed, Teacher Luo held on campus competitions to design dormitories and other buildings on campus.
According to Teacher Liang, who was in charge of the project, the animating principle of the design was a “return to nature (回到自然)”. She defined this return to nature in terms of freedom of spirit . For Teacher Liang, “nature” meant “human nature” as an extension of natural order.
Teacher Luo joked that the reason the design of the SZU campus had succeed was because they hadn’t done anything, a reference to the Daoist value of “no action (无为)”. On Teacher Liang’s understanding, freedom allows human beings to express and recognize human nature or art through the creation of material objects and the modification of the environment. She emphasized that neither economic nor social limits determined the form and meaning of an object or space, but rather human intention and the liberation of the human spirit.
Eyes sparkling, Teacher Liang illustrated her understanding of the kind of freedom at SZU with a joke, “There was no summer vacation at SZU.” Everyone was busy at one of the many construction projects, none of which were landmark buildings. Instead the campus layout reflected the ethos of communal construction toward a common goal — education for a new kind of citizen, one who made creative break throughs rather than repeated standardized forms.
For example, the main gate was set at an oblique angle, rather than along a cardinal axis, which was and remains a standard design practice for a university. In addition, early SZU was not walled off to create links between the campus and society. Moreover, the library held pride of place in the university commons, rather than a Ceremonial Hall for university meetings. In this sense, Teacher Liang defined freedom not as “freedom to do whatever I want (自由放肆)”, but rather a self-regulating freedom that creatively responded to community needs (自由自律).”
The second planning value that Teacher Liang emphasized was humility (谦卑). Humility took two explicit forms. First, layout emphasized users’ convenience, rather than centralization. Thus, staff offices and classrooms were located on either side of the central library, while student dormitories were placed adjacent to classrooms and within a 10-minute walk to the library. Staff housing and facilities were located furthest from the central commons. To further promote cross disciplinary conversations, students were not housed by major, but by year.
Second, large swathes of land were left open for future use. This open land, which included a large section of Mangrove forrest along pre-landfilled Shenzhen Bay, included extant Lychee orchards (and yes, students and teachers participated in early harvests) as well as planting garden areas and an artificial lake. According to SZU architectural student, from the outside the campus looked like waves of trees and low-lying buildings, while inside one could leisurely walk on shaded paths without the oppressive sense of skyscrapers or the disorientation caused by too many landmark buildings that stood apart from an integrated urban whole.
Participants agreed that early Shenzhen University reflected larger social goals to reform and open the Maoist system. They had been proud that SZU was not like Beida or Qinghua, they wanted to educated students who learned through doing, and they believed that universities had an important place in leading post Mao China. Indeed, they were not simply nostalgic for early SZU, but also and more profoundly, nostalgic for the Special Zone, when Shenzhen was a synonym with “experimentation” and “difference”, and “freedom” defined as a “return to [human] nature”. To this end, Teacher Liang made a point of quoting Liang Qichao’s Confucian motto for Qinghua University, “Strengthen the self without stopping, hold the world with virtue (自强不息，厚德载物)”.
Early SZU’s socialist /Daoist / neo-Confucian hybrid culture stands in marked contrast to the Municipality’s ongoing campaign to promote neo-Confucian harmony. The meeting ended with further comparisons to then and now; SZU, one of the participants maintained, had represented an architectural expression of educational values. Indeed, he lamented a fundamental change in attitude. Previously, SZU administration, teachers, and students had taken it as a point of pride that early reports criticized SZU as “not conforming to the standard (不和规矩)”. In contrast, today’s SZU was so busy trying to play catch-up that it had lost what made it special.
The comparison was explicit; just as SZU had become second-rate by relinquishing its experimental and creative mandate, so too had Shenzhen lost what once made it the epicenter of reform and opening a moribund system and thus a special zone.
This organizational meeting was part of the Shenzhen Design Center‘s (深圳市城市设计促进中心) series of public talks, Design & Life (设计与生活). The format begins with an architect led tour of an interesting Shenzhen building or site. This tour is open to the public, and then edited into a short film. The film is shown at a two-hour public talk, which includes a viewing of the short film and talks by three or four guests, concluding with a question and answer session.
The first two sites were the Nanshan Marriage Registration Hall (南山婚礼堂 by Urbanus) and the Shenzhen Music Hall (深圳音乐厅 by Irata Isozaki). Architect Meng Yan led the tour of the Registration Hall and Hu Qian, a Chinese architect who studied in Japan led the Music Hall Tour. The SZU talk will take place on August 25 at the Civic Center Book City.
Luo Zhengqi will be the guest of honor.
I tend to think that middle class Chinese parents have it good. Grandparents take care of young children, elementary school children go to school and can generally be pressured into doing several hours of homework a night, and older children hang out with their parents, not only out of respect, but also because they acknowledge that being with children makes parents happy. In fact, a visit to any park or mall, or even an ordinary bus commute suggests how well behaved Chinese infants are. One or two fuss, but most sit calmly on their grandparents’ laps or play with a water bottle. School age children get themselves to and from campus, attend cram sessions, and organize their homework.
Even after graduating from college, middle class children take care of their parents’ well-being. I know more than one member of Generation 80, for example, who returns home for weekly meals. Working Chinese children also arrange for their parents and parental-in laws to live with or near them in order to attend to parental needs. So common is the assumption of parental care that throughout Shenzhen, hospitals and shopping malls market themselves as places where children can express care for parents — arranging a mother’s dental appointment or family dinner, for example. Certainly, facilitating migrant remittances from Shenzhen to neidi and family network phone plans are huge sections of the financial and service industries. In other words, my experience has shown me the extent to which middle class Chinese children — even members of Generation 80 and 90 — remain remarkably filial. Or certainly seem so when compared with their age cohorts in the United States.
I realize that mine is a minority position. Commentators in both China and the West have focused on how China’s middle-class parents work exceedingly hard to provide the material conditions for their only child to live well. These parents sacrifice all sorts of ambitions and desires so that their child can go a famous university. They also point out that since promulgation in 1980, China’s one-child policy has produced not a few “little Emperors (小皇帝)”, who in common English are simply “spoilt brats”. Now it may be that when two sets of grandparents and often a nanny orbit the lone descendent, some children become unreasonable. But not all. And certainly not the majority, who study hours as long or longer than their parents work to achieve academic results that will make their elders proud. Indeed, I am still impressed by the number of young Chinese people who make their parents’ dreams (rather than their own) their lodestar.
As I have begun to gather stories about generations 80 and 90 abroad, however, my perspective has shifted. I am beginning to realize the extent to which their parents have made these young people their life’s purpose. It is not simply that middle class parents bask in the glory of their child’s accomplishments, but also and more importantly, that they have crafted lives out of raising this child. These parents often confuse high grades with success and low grades with failure, or interpret independent thinking as “rebellion” and “intransigence”. Nevertheless, once their child successfully matriculates in an overseas high school or college, these parents suffer acute ” empty nest” syndrome, as we call it in the States not only because they realize that they will no longer be able to direct their children’s development, but also because they finally understand, no matter what and how they dream for their child, ultimately they cannot give their child a smooth and carefree life.
Yesterday, I helped a mother read and understand US insurance documents. Her daughter is in California and was in a car accident. The other party has filed for damages, and the daughter’s insurance company has begun to negotiate with the claimant’s lawyer. Ironically, the mother sold her own car so that the daughter could purchase a car, which she explained, “is more necessary in California than Shenzhen.” The daughter whose English is fine, but not strong enough to feel confident about her understanding of documents in legal English sent her mother digital copies, asking for guidance. The mother does not read English and used half a day to find a connection to me to make an appointment. After I explained the content to her, we came up with a plan of action and contacted the daughter, who is no doubt figuring out what needs to be done and doing it. Her mother, however, is in Shenzhen managing the anxiety of helplessness; she deeply wants to help her daughter, but cannot.
All this to say that I am hearing the expression “take pity on the hearts of the world’s parents (可怜天下父母心)” differently, and perhaps more accurately. I used to hear it as spoilt parent moaning about a child’s attempt to establish a bit of independence. Today, I am better able to pity parents, not because their child received poor grades or has a stubborn streak, but rather because they would do anything to make their child’s life smooth and happy. Of course, that is precisely what they cannot do, and so they suffer.
Interesting cultural postscript: in Chinese, empty nests refer to lonely grandparents and the phrase “empty nester” is translated as 孤寡老人. Thus, when their children go and remain abroad, Chinese parents not only become empty nesters in the US sense of “children have moved out”, but also potentially in the Chinese sense of “old person without a grandchild”.
Shenzhen Noted 