China Reflection

At the start of this semester, I was very uneducated on pretty much all matters concerning China. I had done research about Tibet and the Chinese takeover of the area for a paper for Global Studies, but other than that, I really didn’t know anything about the country. I approached informing myself about China with some trepidation, in part because it is a culture and country over 5000 years old, and is governed by a strict communist government that the U.S. owes trillions of dollars to. These elements and others made China somewhat intimidating to me, but I decided to surpass these factors and dive in to Chinese culture by enrolling in the China Mojo class, which was scheduled to take a 9 day trip to China over spring break. This, along with the second China class I took, China’s Wild, Wild West, greatly enhanced my understanding of this fascinating nation.

I really didn’t know much about what I would be learning in “China’s Wild, Wild West,” and on the first day of class, we began a discussion of the subject matter: China’s 55 minority groups. I was blow away to learn that China had minority groups. I know that it was very naive of me to assume that a nation that large and with that much history did not have minority groups, and opening my eyes to this information was very influential in my education of Chinese life and culture.

It was also very interesting to take this class in conjunction with the China Mojo class, because on my trip, I was able to search for signs of minority groups in the areas we visited. I didn’t see much in the way of minority indicators on the first leg of our trip in Wuhan, but on our boat cruise on the Yangtze River, we had the privilege of meeting members of the Tujia minority group. We were taken in groups of about 20, down an offshoot of the Yangtze River, and the small boats we were on were powered by 4 Tujia men rowing, and guided by a young woman of the Tujia minority. She sang us ancient Tujia folk songs that were translated into Mandarin so that the tourists were able to understand what the traditional love songs were about. It was fascinating to see how these people had used tourism to develop a means of getting income other than farming.

Additionally, in Beijing, I saw examples of the minority presented as the “exoitic other,” a theme prevalent in “China’s Wild, Wild West.” For example, on the huge television screens in Tiananmen Square, photos of beautiful women scrolled across the screens, and each one was decked out in the clothing and hairstyles of one of the 55 minority groups of China. In addition, while exploring the Forbidden City, I saw a tour group of about 30 people from a minority group (which I was unable to identify) who were all dressed in navy outfits, which were slightly different for men and women.

Another thing that I learned a lot about was Chinese family life and education. In the first couple weeks of the China Mojo class, we read an article about Chinese parenting, specifically Chinese mothers in America. I thought that some of the things that the author presented were incredibly strict, almost unimaginable. This was only until I met Polaris, the daughter of our host family when we stayed in Wuhan. One of the first things she said to my roommate, Blythe and I was, “my parents are very China.” We didn’t know exactly what she meant by this, but we soon found out that her mother was a professor of law at a local university and her father worked for the government. Further explaining this statement was the way that they presented their lives and home to us. For example, much of the conversation we had was about school and the classes that we were taking in comparison with the ones Polaris, who was the equivalent to a sophomore in high school, was taking. The importance of school was apparent in many ways, but especially when, on the second night of our home stay, she did her homework while we socialized with her mother and grandmother. Additionally, as soon as we arrived to their home (after eating a fabulous home-cooked meal, of course) her father took about 45 minutes showing us his collection of books, valuable Chinese artifacts, and the degrees and awards that he had received. One of the most “China” things that I noticed about her family was revealed when I questioned Polaris about whether she had any siblings. She had been referring to one of her cousins as her sister, and, knowing about the One Child Policy in China, I asked offhand, “So how many siblings so you have?” She looked at me, with shock on her face and said, “Oh no, no siblings!” This, I guess is what it means to have parents and to be a part of a family that is very “China.”

Finally, one thing that truly took me aback about Chinese culture was the fascination, even obsession that many people had with the Western world, mostly America. On many urban streets, we saw McDonalds’s, KFCs, and Starbucks, and we even went with our host family to see an American movie, I am Number Four in theaters. Additionally, everywhere we went, we were photographed. Some of the less daring people pretended to take photos of something else, and at the last minute redirected their cameras to shoot a photo of our group, but some asked to take photos with us, and took 3 or 4, just to make sure that they got a good one.

The information that I have learned both from my trip to China and in the classes has opened my eyes in many ways. I had never really traveled outside of the country or immersed myself in the culture of another country before this semester. It was incredible for me to see what the Chinese are doing to grow as a nation, and the things that they see as important, like learning English. In the areas we visited, there was usually at least one person that spoke enough English to communicate in a basic way with us, something that you would not find in America. I think that as Americans, we view the world in a very self centered way. We don’t learn other languages or much about other cultures; we a kind of protected in our own bubble. These classes and the trip have broken me out of that bubble, and I now have a strong desire to learn about other cultures, and try to learn other languages, starting with Mandarin.

Additionally, these classes have made me realize that America is an incredibly young nation. We have none of the antiquity that is present in almost every other nation worldwide, and we have a lot to learn about sustaining a quality of life over time. We need to not see ourselves as the strongest nation, because really, we’re just the rookie in a sense, and assuming that because we had a great first couple rounds does not make us the best, strongest, or most durable player in the game.