At this point in time, I am feeling a bit of China-overload. As is now probably become iconic to all of my parents' email forwardees, I am sick of having to think of crossing the street as a cultural experience in order to keep my cool and get through the day. While I try to be as open-minded as possible, it is hard at this point to keep from being judgmental about things I see here as being, well, problematic. There is the traffic, which maybe if there was a single stop-sign in this city could easily be taken care of. Oh, that and if people stuck to the correct side of the street. There is the difficulty of communicating. I think that I have had fewer communication problems in the countries I have been to where I don't speak a word of the language. And I have now been studying Chinese for almost four years now. I could go on.

I am glad to see that the U.S. media seems to be covering the school stabbings that have been happening around China in the past couple months. For those who have not heard about this, citizens have been going to schools, mostly kindergartens or early elementary schools, and stabbing children and teachers. Approximately 5 independent instances of this have happened since March. It's really gruesome.

In trying to explain this phenomenon, Michelle Tsai wrote an opinion article on Slate discussing the Chinese approach to conflict resolution. I am including a link to this article, and mentioning the stabbings above, because I mostly agree with Tsai's insights. As people often keep their feelings and opinions to themselves, about social issues as well as personal ones, they leave open the possibility that these feelings will explode. This is one explanation for the stabbings. You can read the article here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2254176

As my 70 year old tutor has described to me, and as I have experienced first-hand, there is a vast difference between peoples' private lives and public lives. Privately, people are very polite. Whenever my Chinese friends come to my house they bring gifts of fruit or little trinkets. They are very polite and warm. However, when you stand in line at the grocery store, you must fight for your place. It's a race to the cashier as my cart gets slammed by little old ladies who otherwise resemble the neighbors who sweetly and politely greet me in the stairwell. Really, you are lucky if there is even a line at all. The crowd getting on a bus often resembles a mosh pit. As Tzai points out, people are usually expected to resolve any issues that might arise in this environment on their own, without the aid of the police or the law. From friends who have taken the driver's test, I have learned that the correct answer to the question of how to deal with a car accident is not a) to involve the police, not c) to leave the scene of the accident, but b) to personally negotiate with the other driver. People are expected to take care of their own problems. They are not supposed to look to authority figures to figure out the confusion on the ground - the authorities are busy dealing with larger issues pertaining to nationally cohesive Chinese social order. Rather, they should be figuring out their place and their problems independently.

I'm not sure what my larger conclusions are. The Chinese people are not a bloodthirsty group looking for revenge for personal or political infractions. Far from it. I think that most people want to steer away from conflict. They do not openly discuss political issues they disagree with for precisely this reason. But enough of my philosophizing about things I'm sure I don't know enough about. As for my experiences here, while I will be glad to no longer bicker with shop-owners and taxi drivers, I will miss the welcoming of my teachers and neighbors into their homes, the generosity of friends, and watching they way people go out and about to enjoy a beautiful Kunming day as they fly kites, dance and do Tai Chi, or stroll through the park. And maybe sometimes I'll even miss the mosh pit on the way into the bus.

written by  agentsarainkunming on May 21, 2010 from Kunming, China
from the travel blog: CHINA
Send a Compliment

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So glad you returned to blogging, Sara! Not just because I'm yo mama, but I think you have a refreshing, interesting perspective on life, and I appreciate your incisive (your father's word)(biting?) sense of humor re: life in China/your cultural experiences (hmmmmm..... wonder where that particular brand of humor comes from?)

Keep those blogs coming - we eat them up with a spoon - more delicious than chocolate (and that's saying a lot!)

XOXOXOXO

Much love,

yo mama

written by  Jeanne Segal on May 30, 2010

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