Culture and Globalization, According to Chinese 11 Year Olds

So, sometimes I give my students discussion topics that are even hard for native English speakers to really put into words. But some of them really surprise me with how well they are able to articulate their thoughts, and even more so, some of them provide the cutest answers. This week we are working on culture and globalization. I provided them with the main arguments for and against globalization in terms of its impact on culture. They worked in groups to discuss whether or not they find globalization to be a good or bad thing, and then they had to present their opinions. I just really love to hear what they have to say, and I wanted to share these! Below are one of the responses in favor of globalization, and one response against it. I hope you smile :)

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I think the globalization is good. We can know something we don’t know in our area. For example, farmers don’t know about the seas and oceans because they can’t get there. If the globalization becomes true, farmers can know about seas and oceans and can even have seafood at lunch. Above all, the globalization will help us with better technology, more knowledge, and better ways to live. Somebody says globalization will make everybody the same. Actually, in some aspect it’s true. But if a country can’t keep its culture, the problem is in that country, not the globalization.

I think globalization is bad for some people of the world. For sure, we need our national culture. Because all of we humans do not looks all the same and at last, we speak different language, we eat different food, we sing different songs, and we do different exercises. If the globalization becoming more and more, what should we do? Can we Chinese sing songs from the West life or all of Justin [he is referring to Justin Beiber]? Can the American eat food with China every time? Can English drink tea but not coffee, juice? Can the old man who is from South Africa dance Disco? It’s impossible. So I think globalization is bad.

My White Privilege

Anyone who has taken graduate courses in the social sciences (and even those undergraduates who have had great teachers) has likely read Peggy McIntosh’s work on White Privilege.  If not, I highly recommend that you do so, no matter who you are or where you come from or what ‘race’ you identify with, her work is powerful and eye-opening. {I have included a link to one of her most well-known pieces below, and I strongly encourage you to read it}  

I shall preface this by saying I don’t believe in race.  Skin color, a phenotypic characteristic of an organism, in no way determines ‘race.’ In fact, it has been scientifically proven that race has absolutely no biological basis, race is not part of our genes or our DNA; race is not real. Rather, race is a social construction.  Race is a notion created by society.  But just because race may not be real, the consequences of society’s perception of it as so are very real.  So while I acknowledge that I am not, in fact, a ‘white’ person, I will refer to myself as such within this post, because society’s perception of me as a ‘white’ individual has very real consequences in the world we live in.

I have been fortunate enough to experience my white privilege from a multitude of perspectives in a variety of cultures.  I say fortunate not because of what I have been able to materially gain from these experiences, but I have been fortunate in regards to the struggle to gain wisdom as a human belonging to a multi-faceted, diverse, and interconnected world of beings. I grew up in the United States, a country still haunted by racism whether or not we wish to admit it.  As a white member of society, I enjoy a number of ‘invisible’ privileges that are not enjoyed by those who are not white (see Peggy McIntosh’s article below for some great examples). I have lived in Tanzania, where people constantly came to me in search of help and/or money, because I am white. I now live in China where I am offered far more money than the locals and am given various things for free, because I am white.  In Tanzania, people wished (and in most cases, needed) to gain something material from their association with me; in China, people wish to bestow something material upon me. In both cases, this occurs because I am white.

For the most part, those of us in positions of privilege are unaware of that privilege. Even if we do acknowledge it, we are afforded privileges on a daily basis which go unrecognized. Most people in America are taught to believe that they get where they are because they worked hard to get there. Wrong. Most people in America are where they are because someone else worked hard to get there, and you were born into a position of privilege which has allowed you to live the life you live because of someone else’s hard work. I know that I never could have led such an amazing life if I had had to really do everything on my own. I am where I am and I have had the experiences I have had because of the hard work of others and because of the support of those people as well. I don’t mean to say I have never worked hard, because I have (relatively speaking for a person of my position). But, can I call the work I’ve done ‘hard’ when I see the Mexican immigrant in my father’s restaurant who works 3 jobs at all hours of the day and night just to feed his son? Can I call the work I’ve done ‘hard’ when women in Tanzania spend 10 hours a day breaking stones into gravel by hand in the blistering sun? Can I call the work I’ve done ‘hard’ when one of my Tanzanian students worked 4 hours in the fields every morning, came to school, left school to go back to the fields until dark, and couldn’t even afford the 10 cent bread at lunch each day?

Recognizing our privilege can have many effects; it can be eye-opening, thought-provoking, guilt-inducing, but best of all, it can be humbling. That is where I have found the greatest reward in recognizing my privilege, in being humbled. Being humbled allows compassion to grow inside of us, and compassion opens the door for feelings of love toward other people. And there is no greater thing in this world than to live in love. Gandhi once said, “Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable." The greatest thing we can do with our life is to live in love; the greatest force which exists in this world is love, love that comes from the process of being humbled, love that is itself humble. Once we rid ourselves of the desire to yield power in the forms of position, wealth, fame, and superiority, and instead choose to yield power in the form of compassion and love, recognizing every one among us as one of us, only then can we create a world of unity and peace.

Peggy McIntosh- Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege

http://insightpv.org/storage/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Unpacking%20the%20Knapsack%20of%20White%20Privilege.pdf

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

I’ve been so unmotivated to update my adventures in China, but a few people have asked for a new blog post, so I have mustered the energy to provide :)

A few weeks ago I had a nice relaxing weekend. I interviewed for a second job which would entail working at a language training center about 6 hours a week, and I got it! I will be starting it in the next couple of weeks. Then I ventured into the city to find some English books and left with two Paulo Coelho (my favorite!) works, and a Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook so I can work on learning this insanely difficult language! The following day I ventured into a really cool area near my house where I found a cozy, peaceful coffee shop with a gorgeous view and studied Mandarin while sipping on a Cappuccino. The owner of the shop is a young Chinese girl with excellent English. She told me she wanted to promote her coffee shop as a place for foreigners and expats and asked if she could take a few photos of me with the staff in exchange for a few free coffees…well, of course! I went back today and the young girl invited me to join a “conversation corner” every couple of weeks with free coffee and cake; a time when native English-speakers and Chinese come together for an hour or so of discussion. The first one will be in a couple of weeks, and I’m already looking forward to it.

The weekend before last, my friend and I set out for Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) in Anhui, a neighboring province. It’s about a 4 hour bus ride. We went there with the intention of hiking the mountain. Well, who knew, hiking in China means climbing up and down stairs, thousands of stairs. I thought I might die up there. I can hike for hours on end, but stairs are another story. If you’ve been on a strenuous hike with me before, you know that climbing up rocks or stairs trigger ridiculous amounts of pain for me due to an irregular heartbeat…not to mention I’ve just come off a year of a back injury, and the pressure of climbing up and down stairs is incredibly dangerous for my particular problem. So yes, stairs; we went up and down almost 20 kilometers of stairs (about 12 miles). I was in unbelievable pain for the next week; I don’t think I have been so sore in all of my life. Thankfully there is a medical student interning here at our school (providing the teachers with free services), so I went to her for a leg and back massage. It hurt so good! ;) And all my pain is now gone! Whew! I was waddling like a penguin for about 4 days after the hike; my students were loving that!

This past weekend began a 7 day holiday that the Chinese have for their national day, celebrating the country’s founding in 1949. It’s a time when the whole country travels, and there are masses of people everywhere. I tried to arrange a trip to Beijing with an old high school friend who lives in Hong Kong, but we tried far too late. Everything was completely booked up, which from the looks of everything here, it’s probably best that I’ve stayed put because I can only imagine how awful it would be to try and travel at this time, not to mention the hiked up prices. So I’ve stayed here at my apartment on the school campus. Aside from a few staff members and the security guards, I seem to be the only one who stayed around. Meal times with the few people here have proven to be a great time. None of them speak English, but they are desperate to communicate with me. Very few people at the school (including those who could speak to me if they wanted to) have been so eager to spend time with me and TRY to speak with me. This group of people is so funny. We share our meals together in the canteen, and the men offer me beer or liquor every single day…at 11:30 a.m. I usually decline, but yesterday I accepted. They poured me a tiny bit of some awful smelling, unbelievably strong liquor and insisted that I share a cigarette with them afterward. I left lunch half drunk and ready to crawl into bed.

Sunday I took the public buses for the first time by myself. Aside from one tiny incident of getting lost for about 20 minutes, I made it to my destination successfully. I have just been using taxis, but this city is huuuge. Buses save a lot of money and I’ve been wanting to become more independent in that regard, so it felt really great to get to where I wanted to be on my own using the bus! I went to this American-owned bar, which is popular with expats, for free gumbo night. I went with the intention of meeting some more foreigners who are living and working in the city, but I ended up spending the entire time talking with a young Chinese woman whom I left with for a walk along the lake. I didn’t talk to a single Westerner! But it was great, because this girl and I had such a wonderful conversation. I honestly haven’t felt like I’ve connected with anyone like that since I’ve been here. We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers and vowed to get together soon.

While I’m slowly starting to make more friends and establish a more settled life here, my time so far has been what most people would consider terribly lonely. But to be honest, I haven’t really felt that lonely. I’ve been surprisingly content. I am certainly excited to be meeting new people and adding friends to my life here, but the times of solitude I’ve had have been very good for me. The last three years of grad school have kept me unbelievably occupied. For the first time, I have had time to read, to reflect, to journal, just to be alone and at peace with no worries and do things I love that I never really had time for before. And it has felt great. And I feel really good being here in China, too. I am already thinking about staying for another year when this one is over. Of course I don’t know what will happen in the next year, but right now I really know I’m supposed to be here. It’s strange. Every time I walk outside I am filled with a sense of belonging, purpose, contentment, and half a dozen other emotions I’m not sure how to name. I can clearly remember the last time I felt this way; it has been 7 years since then. 7 years!!

I know I’m supposed to be here. I don’t know why or for how long or what it means, but I can honestly say that I feel this is ‘right.’ …“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

It's Time to be Angry.

Those of you who know me well, those of you who know my heart, know that I am not someone who gets angry. When I am wronged, I feel pain, I feel hurt, I feel disappointment, but I do not feel anger toward another. I forgive; I understand. But I don’t get angry. Anger is an emotion that I have done my best to avoid. The anger of others, others with significant roles in my life, has left me scarred. There have been things said to me in anger and things done to me in anger which have left me with deep-seeded fears, insecurities, and heartbreak. Words said to me in anger remain embedded in my mind, convincing me that I am not good enough, no matter how hard I try. Bruises inflicted on me in anger, the hands that have struck me in anger, have left me with the belief that I do not deserve love; I deserve to feel small, meaningless, worthless.

I have recently come to realize that these lies that have infected my heart and soul are the reason that I won’t allow myself to feel anger. I fear that I will be responsible for saying and doing things in the heat of the moment which will leave those I love irrevocably damaged. But I have not only been damaged by others’ expression of anger, I have also been damaged by my own failure to allow myself to feel anger. For so long, I have thought that I am not an angry person. But only because I have not let myself be.

 In the last several months, the unraveling of particular events has forced me to realize that there are situations for which I should have been angry, and I should have let myself experience the rage worthy of wrongs done to me in the past. The anger, it seems, has remained locked somewhere deep inside of me, and my failure to process it at the appropriate time is now having a severe effect on me. I have begun to have nightmares; awful, tormenting nightmares. For the last two months, there have been very few nights when I have not been awoken from my sleep in sobs. I literally wake up crying because of the pain and anger I am experiencing in my nightmares. My insomnia has always plagued me; this takes it to another level.

So now I am angry. ANGRY. And I finally feel like it’s ok to be. I’m angry that I have done everything I could do to be the best I could be, and it has never been acknowledged or appreciated by those who I have worked hard to make proud. I’m angry that I have worked my ass off only to have my accomplishments degraded by those who are meant to support me. I’m angry that I have given so much time and energy to people who didn’t deserve it. I’m angry that I have always said yes to others at the cost of saying no to myself. I'm angry that people have taken me for granted and have come to me only in times of need. I'm angry that 'close' friends have neglected me only because they know I'll be there waiting when they come back. I’m angry that I have sacrificed so much in relationships for people who always prioritized everything else before me. I’m angry that someone who was too afraid to be honest with me has robbed me of my ability to trust all men I become involved with, making me feel sure that everyone is charming me with deception as their only aim.

I AM ANGRY, and I want to be free. Anger doesn’t have to be a bad thing. And it doesn’t have to hurt other people. Anger doesn’t have to have the effect that I fear it will have-- as long as I handle my anger appropriately; as long as I deal with my anger at the appropriate time, rather than years later; as long as I also let go of the anger once the time for feeling it has passed. Aristotle said, “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.” I have to learn how to experience and master the emotion of anger in the same way that I have done with joy, love, and forgiveness. Anger does not have to be a weapon; it can also be a means of healing and moving on. Sometimes even the nice girl needs to say f*$& off. Yes, I am finally angry. And maybe, hopefully, I can finally be free.

Everything Just Takes a Bit of Getting Used To...

I know…I don’t usually post boring day to day things on my blog.  I usually just write about life realizations or something equally tragic and dramatic every 4-5 months, but now that I’m in China and several people have asked for regular updates, I’m here to bore you :)

It might help a bit if I explained exactly what my job is here in China.  I am teaching in a pretty high-class middle school here in Hangzhou, and my students are seventh and eighth graders.  I am an oral English teacher.  The students have Chinese teachers who teach them English reading, writing, grammar, etc.  My job is simply to make them practice speaking English.  I teach 20 classes a week and each class is a different group of students, about 45 students in each class.  This means I have about 900 different students!  That’s a lot, and it really keeps me from doing things I like to do with my classes, like give gifts and remember names!  But at the same time, it creates less work for me as I only have to prepare one lesson per week…I just have to teach the same lesson 20 times which could potentially be unbelievably boring for me, but the students are all so different that they keep it interesting and dynamic. In most of my classes, the students’ Chinese English teacher comes along to act as an assistant to me, aiding in translating difficult concepts and that sort of thing.  Some of them are awesome and they undoubtedly make the class go over more smoothly.  Some of them are absolutely useless snobs who sit in the back of my class with their noses in the air refusing to help me; I could do without them, thank you very much. Those also happen to be my WORST classes; somehow the students are far more disruptive and defiant in the classes with those kinds of teaching ‘assistants.’  I am very tempted to tell the principle I don’t want them coming to my class, but I’m not really in a position to be making enemies.

Overall, each day last week got better and better with the students.  I quickly learned how to best engage them and every day felt easier than the last.  However, I have some really challenging groups of students on Mondays.  It is already becoming clear to me that Mondays will be a constant rollercoaster.  It is the day I have the most classes, 6, and they are each so different from one another.  Some of the classes are very active and complete their work and present and share so many ideas, while other classes literally make me want to scream. 

I’m also finally starting to make some friends at school.  The highlight of my week was probably when three of the teachers actually CHOSE to sit with me at lunch last Wednesday.  Honestly, it felt like one of the best moments…ever. They sat and talked with me, and the four of us have had every meal together since!  Two of them don’t speak English too well, but one of them, Elsie, is one of the English assistants who helps in two of my classes and she is my absolute favorite person here.  She tells me so many things about the school and the city that I would never know without her and she is so friendly and talkative.

I had a really great weekend as well. I just spent Friday night at home, doing nothing, but it was nice.  Saturday I decided I would venture out into a particular part of the city.  I was preparing myself for the inevitably of failed communication and confused taxi drivers and heading out the building door when I turned around, went up the stairs, walked up to my next door neighbor’s door and knocked.  Eric lives next door to me and he is one of the three teachers who eats with me at lunch/dinner.  Most of the students and teachers had gone home for the weekend, but Eric is from another province and stays for the weekends so I thought he might be lonely, and I wanted to invite him into the city with me.  He immediately and excitedly agreed, put his shoes on, and ran out the door to meet me.  We got a cab and headed for the shopping district.  Not that I had any desire whatsoever to shop (as if I even could in this country), but we walked around the area for about an hour or so.  We then decided to go to the natural history museum.  Not that there was ANYthing special about it; we didn’t even really look at anything.  We walked past every display with complete disinterest; we obviously cared far more about the air conditioning!  I’m pretty sure it’s the only real reason we went inside. Afterward we sat in a small café where Eric ordered a couple of sweets to offer me…he then made me eat it all by myself and he didn’t have anything.  That’s the way we do things in our country, he explained.  Great; Greece #2. Mercilessly stuff me up like a turkey at Thanksgiving.  We headed back toward the school, but got out at a part of our district that I had never been to before and walked to the school from there.  It was a really nice area and apparently has one of the top food streets in the city.  That night, I went to a bar called Coco Banana to meet my friend Jamie and his classmates.  I also met some more American teachers.  And I got to the bar all by myself with no troubles (after taking a picture of the address to show the taxi driver, of course).  On Sunday, Jamie and I went to West Lake.  It was awesome.  I really liked that area so much.  It was beautiful and felt peaceful and there were a lot of great shops, restaurants, etc around.  We decided to go into a shopping mall for a bit and ended up stumbling across the videotaping of auditions for China’s Got Talent.  Needless to say, we saw a couple of unbelievably funny auditions.  We went out to the lake as it got dark and watched a water fountain show they put on every night. It was really such a nice area and I can see myself going back there pretty frequently.

So, things are going well!  I’m settling in, getting to know a few people, and learning how to deal with my students. In the end, everything just takes a bit of getting used to.  

[Some of my students working on this week's presentation]

The Beginnings of Life in China

Well, I have officially begun my new life in Hangzhou, China! I arrived Thursday evening in Beijing where the company who hired me is located. I spent one night and day there doing logistics like learning how best to teach Chinese students and opening up a Chinese bank account. Friday night I boarded an overnight train and arrived the following morning in my new home city of Hangzhou.

I have free accommodation and meals on the school grounds. There are few teachers who speak English, and I am the only Western teacher at the school. My first lunch in the canteen was awkward to say the least. The food was amazing, but no one could speak to me. The teachers talked about me amongst themselves, laughing and showing sheer awe at the fact that I know how to eat with chopsticks. I felt like quite the display! Since then, I feel like people avoid sitting with me! I think they are afraid that they will have to try and speak English with me, so they avoid that possibility.

A part of me is quite uneasy about the fact that I won’t really have anyone to speak to here, until I meet some people (hopefully!) outside of the school. I am very fortunate, however, to know someone else living in this city for the year, someone I met while traveling in Cambodia just over a month ago. Saturday he came to the school to visit me and we went out that night to a bar downtown where I also met a few of his classmates from England. The only problem is that this city is MASSIVE…8 million people. It took Jamie about an hour and a half to get to my school, so I’m not exactly close to them. We also met some other people out on Saturday who told me that they have many Western teachers in the schools were they work; it kind of seems like I’m the only one around here going solo on this one.

I do feel a bit imprisoned here, however. There is tight security on the school grounds, with massive walls and gates all around campus. All the other teachers, as well as the students, live here. I have a 10 pm curfew and must be back on school grounds by then. I asked if I could come back later on the weekends so that I could go out, and they said I could come back ‘a little bit later.’ I sure hope that by that they mean 2 or 3 a.m. is ok! Haha. I did come back at 3 a.m. Saturday night before I knew about my curfew and had no problem being let into the gate, so hopefully it will be ok. Apparently the English teacher before me went out to a bar for a World Cup game and ended up drunk and passed out in front of the school yard, so they have concerns, but I think you all know I’m not likely to follow in his footsteps!

My schedule is pretty scattered throughout the week, with the busiest day being Monday, but I only teach 20 hours a week, so I foresee a lot of boredom in my future. Not quite sure how to fill all this time. It would be really great if I could somehow find another small job to do on the side, but I think the inconsistency in my schedule might make this pretty difficult. Coming out of an insanely intense anthropology Master’s program makes three hours of work seem like absolutely nothing, so I can imagine myself going a bit stir-crazy if I don’t find something else to fill up a bit of my time. I would love to take a Chinese class, or try to teach myself some Chinese. I also really wish I had a lot of books here and more DVDs/TV show seasons. I’ve seen everything I own soo many times! I’m going to try to find a bookstore with English books somewhere in the city.

I taught my first classes today. Six classes, all the same lesson. In fact, my other 14 classes this week will also be the same lesson as I have 20 different groups of students. Needless to say, the material is going to be ridiculously repetitive and boring for me, but the good thing is that I only have to prepare one lesson per week. The students are unbelievably shy. It is so difficult to engage them and get them to speak. This class is meant to be oral English only; no grammar, spelling, writing, reading, etc. But it’s very hard to conduct class when you have 50 little pairs of eyes staring at you without speaking. Class dynamics make some groups of students more fun than others, as is usual when teaching. I have a couple of classes that are a lot of fun, and some where no one wants to speak at all. Honestly, I’ve finished my first day of teaching feeling overwhelmingly frustrated. I was close to bursting into tears by the end of my sixth lesson. This experience is making me very nostalgic for Tanzania and my students there. I think it may be too early to really know how I will like this experience, but I do know that if I could actually make money teaching in Tanzania, I would have gone back. I am doing my best not to psych myself out, though, and not to dwell too much on thoughts of loneliness and language barriers. This is something to be expected when moving to a country where you can’t speak the language and very few people can speak your own. I am sure that in time I will make some friends and I will travel, and in the end it will be something very good for me. One student who spoke well and offered a lot of information, and who just started at this school, said something that resonated with me so much, and something I probably needed to hear at that moment. She said, “This is a very new experience for me. And I am missing my friends a lot. But even though it is hard, I know that this will open my eyes and it will teach me a lot about myself.” She is so very right.

[Below are images of my room and the school's campus]

A Traveler's Ruminations on Longing for the Lost: In Search of Treasure

I have come to realize that I have unhealthily spent the majority of this trip longing for something lost. Several times a day, while surrounded by a group of people, I become consumed by my own thoughts, drifting off into a world of seclusion while people talk and laugh around me. I am lost in thoughts of Nigel. He is supposed to be here. Why can’t he be here? What would this be like if he were here? I know the answer, of course. It would be amazing. And somehow, in my desire to share this with him, in my longing for his presence, his laughter, his wisdom, I have lost sight of the fact that this trip IS amazing, because even though I can’t see or touch Nigel, he is here. He is everywhere. Because the truth is, Nigel’s soul was far too beautiful to be contained by this world. And that is why he was released from it. So he could be free to be everywhere at once, so his dreams of seeing every inch of this globe could be realized. Now he is everywhere, and that means he is also here. There are moments when I feel him. And regardless, he is always living every moment with me, because we travel this road together in my heart even if not in what we have come to call ‘reality.’ When Nigel died, one of the first things I said was that the world had lost a treasure. I thought about this a lot last night, and I realized how apt it truly is to say it. Treasure is something people look for, search for. It is something desired for its beauty, for its value, for its worth. When people met Nigel, they were being confronted with something they had searched for their whole lives. Because in Nigel could be found the culmination of every beautiful, precious and valued thing in this world. Hope, love, freedom, compassion, laughter, contentment, resilience, honesty, adventure. In Nigel, one could find what one spent their lives seeking. And that is why everyone loved him. That is why Nigel changed lives. That is why his death could be just as transformative as his life had been for those who loved him. Because when treasure is found and then lost, we must once again begin the search, knowing what it was to have been confronted with something truly amazing, and now to realize its absence in a way far deeper than would have been possible before this confrontation. We begin to search for a replacement. We look everywhere for this beauty, longing to fill the void of what has been lost. I do believe that by discovering the world, one can discover oneself. But in the end, I have come to find that this is not enough. Because looking into the world to fill the void in oneself is not possible. It is also not possible to fill the void in oneself with another person. … “I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it” (Paulo Coelho). One must also discover oneself in order to discover the world. Looking to know who you are by the things and people and places around you is not the only task that must be taken to hand, we must also look to ourselves to know the things and people and places around us. And we must be willing to lose, because nothing is really ours. Longing for what has been lost is torment. It creates a void that one seeks to fill with what is absent. And this is not possible. But to realize that nothing is ever really lost because nothing really belonged to you from the start, this is freedom. This is joy. This is love. We must come to realize that in order to have something real and meaningful and lasting in this world, we must accept that, in reality, we have nothing.