December 3, 2000
Dear All,
One of the values of immersion in another culture is a new awareness of how much a person is influenced by his/her own cultural values. That is a thread that runs through many of my letters although not always explicitly. I am more consciously American because of this sabbatical, aware of my biases and assumptions, surprised at the differences between China and the US in places where I don't expect differences.
One small example: The first day at Chuanda I had a tour of the campus. At the gate closest to my building, the school authorities had erected a large campus map for the benefit of visitors. I took a picture of the map, loaded it onto my computer, and for the first several weeks referred to that document more than any other on my hard disk. It was disconcerting, however, because the map had north at the bottom and south at the top. Some element of the past merger between two campuses, I assumed, or something to do with the relationship of the map to the actual position of the observer.
Then, as I carefully have collected business cards from restaurants and other establishments, I discovered that the little maps on the back side always had south at the top. I am really good at maps; I can read enough Chinese to know which way to hold the card. Are Sichuan people cartographically challenged? Why did I feel so disoriented?
Recently I found an explanation in a seemingly unrelated source, a book entitled "Travels Through Sacred China." On page 3, as one of the opening observations, the author notes:
On ancient Chinese maps, the south is always placed at the top, with north relegated to the bottom. This was no accident or quirk born of perverseness. The reason is simple. South is the direction of the Divine and the powerful. Only the Emperor was allowed to face south. All those around him had to face north.
I knew that temples all faced south, but I guess I thought it was for the monks to stay warm in the winter. I certainly didn't connect the south-facing temples with the business cards of my favorite Sichuan restaurants!
Or another example: Many of the buildings at Chuanda are unheated. The university is no exception--lots of buildings in Chengdu are unheated. In fact, although people make a big distinction between inside and outside [the walls], there is little distinction between indoors and outdoors. My favorite restaurant on a little street near the campus, like the other establishments in the area, is open to the outside in December just as it was in August. The only wall or door facing the street is the corrugated metal security gate that they lower at night. You go to the restaurant wearing your outdoor garments, sit down, eat your noodles or whatever wearing your coat (and some people even wearing their gloves) and then get up and pay.
People's homes also tend to be unheated. One of my guidebooks on Chinese etiquette said not to be surprised if your host doesn't offer to take your coat. You don't want to give him your coat, you want to keep it on. The temperature inside is pretty close to the temperature outside. If I thought layering was important in Colorado dressing, it is very important here. I never know exactly what I will find, so I now wear enough layers that I can go through the meeting (or my two hour class) and not get chilled. Once again, something we Americans take for granted is really a luxury by Chinese standards.
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Recently I have had other reflections on my own experiences and culture, but reflections that would never have come to me were I not in China. For example, my course in American culture is focused on the 1960s and its implications. The students are fascinated by this period in American history but to them it is long ago. The oldest student in the class was born at the end of the Sixties so none of them have personal memories of the Cultural Revolution either. For me, however, as a college students in those tumultuous years, it is an interesting personal odyssey to read documents from and analysis of that period, to rethink that formative time, to try to make a new kind of sense of it with several decades of subsequent experience. In particular, the questions of the students challenge my assumptions. Why did the hippies behave in such self-destructive ways? Did people really think they could influence government policy through protests in the streets? What has happened to the activists of that era as they have become older?
Last week I assigned a short reading about Generation X, the children of the children of the Sixties. My students identified a lot with Gen X although, as the conversation continued, they admitted that they lacked the optimism of American young people. The economic and political structures, they feel, limit their ability to get ahead. Even if they are smart, ambitious and hardworking, the system may defeat them, or at least hinder them. Many of them said that their major goal is to make money, or that they are very concerned about money.
Interesting, a lot of them told me at the beginning of the semester that they wanted to be teachers. Either they were giving me the accepted answer in the early fall, or somehow they expect to make a lot of money outside their formal teaching duties. That may be possible for people with excellent English skills. For example, there are always signs around soliciting English teachers (although particularly native speakers). The pay is 100-150 yuan per hour. An English teacher at Chuanda makes 1000 yuan per month, on average. So someone could do private tutoring or some other kind of weekend activity and make more on the side than would be available through a regular teaching paycheck. I am also sure that businesses interested in international trade would also call upon good English speakers to advance their positions, so perhaps that is what my students ultimately expect to do--to "jump into the sea" of private enterprise.
Another reflection also from my teaching. I was asked by the chair of the English Department to give a talk on American curriculum and American teaching methods. I received some invaluable "just in time" advice from colleagues at Colorado College so put together what seemed to be a well received talk. Certainly several of the teachers were interested enough in active learning and student-centered education to stay afterwards and ask for more information.
Reading the material and talking by email with my colleagues, however, got me thinking about my own classroom policies. In particular I started thinking about Wait Time--defined as the silence between the professor's question and a student's answer, or after a student's response and the professor's next words. Research shows that American faculty have a Wait Time of less than one second! In other words, we can't stand the silence so we fill it in with our own talk. In fact, say proponents of student-centered learning, that silence may mean that students are thinking, reflecting, shaping a response, not sitting there dumbly. If the professor would be willing to be silent a little longer, something interesting may happen.
Since I am a fast talker, I suspect my Wait Time is even shorter than the average. Then I looked at some of the other strategies for active learning and compared them with my own classroom practices. Even though I say I don't like to lecture, in fact I am doing a lot of lecturing this semester. I am the only one in my classroom with cultural knowledge about the US, knowledge that is useful for understanding the readings so I am eager to share it with my students and help them become more sophisticated about the material. That means, you've got it, I do most of the talking. So what started as a simple presentation to my colleagues in the College of Foreign Languages turned out to be a reverie about my own teaching practices. Once again, it would not have happened had I not been the local expert here in Chengdu.
But in case you fear I am spending all my time in navel-gazing, let me assure you that I have not given up my enjoyment of sightseeing. When I was in Shanghai last month, the officials in charge of my visit made sure I saw some of the top places in and around Shanghai. Let me give you a flavor of what I saw.
The city of Shanghai, the largest in China, is a creation of Western imperialism. At the end of the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century, European and American governments demanded a port in which they controlled trade, government, and most everything else. So from a sleepy fishing village at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai became a vibrant commercial power. This is the city where a major park had the infamous sign, "No dogs or Chinese allowed."
The Bund, the old waterfront area, is an interesting collection of western style buildings that are now preserved as cultural relics, even as they have been adapted to modern usage as banks, stock brokerages, and high tech companies. The major shopping streets could be anywhere in the world if you just looked at the products and didn't try to read the signs. High rise apartment buildings ring the city.
As part if its goal to surpass Hong Kong as an economic power, the Shanghai government is creating a new city on the east side of the river to house the 21st century enterprises that they believe will fuel the economy of China in the future. There is a dynamism, an energy, a sophistication that feels palpably different from Chengdu and even from Beijing. On several occasions people told me, with a somewhat superior sneer, that Beijing people are fixated on government while Shanghai people are dealing with real issues. There is a saying that I have read and heard in several settings: If you want to see the China of the past, go to Xian [that's where the terra cotta army is]. If you want to see the China of the present, go to Beijing. But if you want to see the China of the future, go to Shanghai. I believe it.
Of course, Shanghai has all the difficulties of any large urban area. Sprawl and pollution are serious problems. Traffic can be a nightmare. Rural people come to the city hoping for a better life and end up being one step up from homeless. For example, on the street on which the Fudan University guesthouse was located, a number of twenty-something men had little signs propped up on the sidewalk telling of their skills and hoping for work as day laborers or carpenters or whatever. I was told that many of them come from Sichuan and other poorer provinces. One person estimated that this floating population in Shanghai totals 3 million. Technically Chinese cannot move from the location of their official domicile but since the rules have been relaxed in the last decade or so, a lot of rural people in particular come to the cities to find work. Chengdu has had, and probably still has, some of the same problems although on a much smaller scale. It is a graphic demonstration of the population problem in China. And, as businesses and government agencies are being pushed to modernize (which includes streamlining their work forces), the unemployment problems will only become more severe.
It should be no surprise to you that my greatest delights came from my glimpses of old China. I had two day trips, one to Suzhou and one to Hangzhou, cities known for gardens and parks. In fact, Hangzhou is often described as Heaven on Earth, and is one of the most popular tourist destinations for Chinese people on vacation. My favorite was Suzhou and its gardens, several of them on the list as UNESCO world heritage sites.
Most of these walled gardens were built by retired or humiliated or resigned bureaucrats as their private escapes from the world of affairs. Oh, to have such amazing beauty as one’s personal retreat! The two we visited included both the largest of the gardens in Suzhou and the smallest. Both provided exquisitely created universes with their balance between human and natural elements. As one walks through the garden, one sees the trees and rocks and pavilions and water from different angles, with each view carefully composed. Often the placement of windows and walkways gives tantalizing glimpses of the next section of the garden, or sometimes of the world outside. Thus the view, even in a very small area, is expanded to include what can be fleetingly seen through windows and passageways. I will try to get some photos on the website (www.ColoradoCollege.edu/publications/postcards soon so you can see a bit of what I mean.
Apparently these gardens were an inspiration for Japanese Zen gardens, although the Chinese gardens evoke a less reverential tone. People walk and eat and talk on their cell phones and throw sticks in the ponds. No sitting zazen on the viewing platform contemplating raked gravel or the location of the unseen rock, as in Kyoto. I love the Japanese gardens but I was enthralled with the Chinese ones as well. It would be great to go back on a midweek day when there would be a chance for a somewhat more restful feeling with fewer people around. No wonder the Chinese have produced such lovely poetry and paintings. Who couldn't be inspired in such settings!
I was also struck by the greater simplicity compared with the northern temples and gardens I've seen. In Suzhou the walls are whitewashed and the roof tiles are a dark gray, almost black. In several cases where a building was a temple or a sacred structure, the walls were a rich ochre, quite a striking color. The lush foliage looked wonderful in contrast to these simple walls. A different aesthetic from the red colors, ornate eaves, and gold roofs of Beijing or Wutaishan.
My student guide said that southern Chinese had more in common with Japan in terms of visual preferences. The Shanghai people, or maybe the people of the whole region, prefer simple colors and plain designs rather than bright colors. She was making the contrast between peasant paintings and scholarly paintings but I see the parallels in architecture. Even the stores in pseudo-historical style were less ornate than those I have seen elsewhere.
Hangzhou was lovely also, with West Lake as the central feature. Once again, the entire area, including the lake and its islands, was the creation of scholars and intellectuals. Hangzhou is also a tea-growing center, with some of the most tasty and most expensive teas coming from the nearby hillsides. Many famous poems have been written about Hangzhou and its environs, some of which were quoted and translated for me at the appropriate locations. Seeing these beautiful places firsthand certainly helps me understand the Chinese aesthetic in new ways.
So, while I have many new images from my travels in China, my mind moves back and forth to my American responsibilities as well, with new insights on both sides. That's exactly what a sabbatical should provide.
Cheers,
Kathryn
P.S. Update on red kerchiefs--One of my early mysteries was the wearing of red kerchiefs by elementary school children. Symbol of the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth organization, the kerchiefs would have been out of style by now, I would have thought. Rather than ask a kid, however, I asked a parent. He told me that yes, the Young Pioneers attracts many fewer students than in the past. It has become something like Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, with activities and outings for the children. I didn't get a good estimate of the percentage of students participating, but my informant told me that when students enter middle school they tend to drop extracurricular activities in favor of studying. Getting good test scores and getting into college is serious business. No time for painting or music lessons or calligraphy. Some of the college students who have told me this have done so with a rather wistful tone, thinking back to the pleasure they had in these non-academic pursuits, whether sponsored by the Young Pioneers or anyone else.