China's Rich Orphans

A bitter-sweet memory a former student shared with me: “I started boarding school at five. Each night an auntie would instruct us to clean our room before we slept. We would wait for her to leave, throw bucket-loads of water onto the floor, and then laughing, we would pretend to be little fish swimming away in the dirty water. We would then huddle together to keep warm and sleep, because none of us liked to be alone.”

Growing up in Australian suburbia, we all had the inking the Asian education ethic was a far cry from the lame aspirations of underachievement dogging the average Aussie. What this inkling didn’t even nearly give us, was the full picture of educational expectations in China. As it turns out, Chinese-Australians were pretty laid back compared to Chinese from China.

Schooling in China starts as early as two. By schooling, I do not mean day-care or finger-painting, nor do I mean an hour-and-a-half in a sandpit with other toddlers, and an adoring parent waving at you lovingly from outside the kindy gate. Entrance for two year olds into China’s most prestigious pre-schools requires a hefty round of testing and the submission of a resume listing talents and achievements. These ‘achievements’ do not include obvious toddler triumphs, such as being potty-trained or weaned from a mother’s tit, but glorious musical, linguistic and athletic feats.

For many toddlers, acceptance into these prestigious schools also marks the start of boarding school. At boarding school, these small children are expected to shower, feed and dress themselves, attend full days of schooling, and show their filial gratitude by achieving highly. Many a sympathetic teacher has been known to complete the tasks themselves, before drilling the toddlers with the question and answer: “Who did this?” – “I did this!” “Who did this?” – “I did this!”

For many, being a good parent in China means providing the most expensive and prestigious education available, and pressuring your child to over-achieve. As judgemental as it may sound, I think it is wrong, senseless, and detrimental to any child’s wellbeing. Children should be with their parents. There are thousands of ways to bring up healthy, happy and intelligent children, and this is not one of them.
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Home or Away

After ten raging years of hostel-hopping and share-housing, the idea of “home” has become no more than the few familiar trinkets I drag around with me, and the déjà vu of nine repeated stays in buildings like Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions. My post-modern nomadic lifestyle has found me renting in excess of fifteen different share-houses across six countries, traversing the hostels of another twenty, and spending long extended months on grimy couches.

In fact, it had been so long without central air-conditioning, functional household appliances, five cars for a family of five, a private patch of grass, and an unobtrusive place to hang my washing, even the idea of a month with my parents, in a remote corner of Australian suburbia had me on edge. Of course my edginess could always be offset by moments of rosy nostalgia for the obvious benefits – no roaches, no voyeuristic landlords, no construction sites, and no acid rain … just sunny arvos filled with warbling magpies and puffy clouds.

The reality of these wonderful arvos though, is they give you a lot of time to obsess about things like allergies to gluten, and which sacred Indian cow gave you tapeworm. And as these worries subside the mind tends to fill with delightful childhood memories like playing lesbian Perfect Match with Barbie (because Ken was ever-absent), or writing long heart-wrenching Dear Diary entries delineating the complexities of being eleven, which would later be used as performance pieces by my brother to entertain other small, snotty children.

After a decade outside the shelter of the family, I can now affirm not having a Ken doll and being mocked by a group of eight year olds are fairly minor household challenges. Living jacked between two major inner-city freeways, with a nutcase who leaves chocolate bunny-face croissants outside your room by day, and writes disparaging classifieds in your name by night is much more testing. As is room-sharing with a girl who has a penchant for Celine Dion ballads (in Italian), and who wants you to make decisions based on her mother’s communication with a dead saint.

My return to the familial home though has been most marked by the reminder that cleaning doesn’t have to be democratic. There actually isn’t a need for individual dirty-dish stacking stations, and it is only a dull egalitarianism that gives everyone an equal right not to scrub the toilet. My parents’ extreme cleanliness has also successfully expelled all of life’s murky bits and hidden skeletons. There are no algae infested pools with feral ducks, no family heirlooms inherited from the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, and no horror film obsessed Alzheimer’s patients locked up in back studies.

Despite pushing on thirty and feeling the world has changed me, I’m discovering that under my parent’s roof, I inevitably suffer from a compulsive, reactionary eating disorder, which I like to blame on everyone else’s weird carb-free, lactose-free, organic diets. The eating also dampens the effects of my mother’s regret-filled diatribes about bringing up strong-willed, independent children. Because now, instead of being settled into a life in suburbia (around the corner from her), and willingly popping out her third grandchild, I only crave the return to my anonymous and clandestine existence in the heart of China.
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The Shallow Roots

"The starting point of all critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and in 'knowing thyself' as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. Therefore, it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory."   - Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks

Several years ago I began to travel. The will to uncover the parts of myself that I could not yet see, and the parts of myself that I did not know, has always been my most basic driving force. A force that manifests as the will to compile (within my consciousness) something similar to Gramsci's 'inventory.' This intent for knowledge and clarity has taken me back to numerous cross-overs in both the Occident and the Orient.

I have wandered from continent to continent, leaving my mind open to the consequences of irreversible change. As much joy as there has been, there has been disappointment. In China, I have been struck by an immense sadness, because there is a nothingness about wandering the streets of a civilization that has severed its ancient roots, and negated thousands of years of thought. The tree that grows here now has shallow roots that cling to the empty dream of modelling and then transcending its "western" other (the Olympics were this kind of display).

So I ask the question, how are those of us with historical roots in both Orient and Occident supposed to see clearly and know ourselves, when half of our civilizations are in demise, and our histories have been overwritten? Is it natural to accept that as our civilizations have been conquered, parts of ourselves have also been conquered? And how do we reconcile this defeat and submission, when the Occident has always rejected us, because of our embodiment or traces of the conquered?

Too easily the noveau-Occidentals jump up to speak for all, in their declarations of: race doesn't exist, colour doesn't exist, we are all the same, we constructed it all ... But who is this "we?" For centuries this "we" has been the greatest conquerer of all; the great construct to obliterate diversity. It has been this "we," with its colonial conquests, wars and genocides, that has left deep scars in the psyches of many peoples around the world, not just those in the Orient.

For every "Oriental other" that constructs him/herself in the image of the Occident, one more tiny thread is cut. The underwriting is clear: "It is true what you say, we are all the same (now). We are the same, because I have ceased to exist, my culture does not exist, and together we have obliterated my history, and filed it into a department of your history. My skin may be a different colour, but I am no longer recognizable as your "other" (bar a few shadows in my eyes), because I am no longer what I was. I am as close to being you, and your own brother. Yes, we are the same, because I do not remember, and there is no way for me to know."
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Behind Yuyuan, Shanghai

. trailing the back alleys of shanghai ...

. comtemplating the contradictions of yet another china ...

.  another china still full of its exhausted dreamers ...

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A Little Bit of Summer in the Jing!

. Outside the "Bird's Nest" during the Paralympics ...

On Harmony and Human Rights

In 1968 the United Nations General Assembly approved two conventions on Human Rights that expanded upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the International Convenant on Political and Civil Rights, and the International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 

It comes as no surprise that China did not ratify the Convenant on Political and Civil Rights, but for some, it may come as suprise that the world's grand and booming orator on human rights, the United States, did not ratify the Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. China however, in line with the majority of developing nations, did ratify this second Convenant. Regardless of my personal opinion, I think it is perfectly logical that a nation as large as China, with China's history, insists that the right to develop and the right to subsist be prioritized over individual rights.

In regards to these two convenants, we can jusifiably conclude that the boxing rounds between these two powerhouses about human rights do not actually include any agreement about the nature of human rights. The US accuses China of being an authoritarian state impinging on people's civil and political rights, and China, in turn, accuses the US of being a 'violent, crime-ridden society' that 'does not guarantee the personal safety' of its citizens. 

Articulating the Chinese understanding of human rights, also sheds light on the logic of a billion Chinese standing up to say: "China brought human rights and freedom to Tibet, a feudal nation wallowing in poverty and slavery." What remains doubtful of course, even within China's own mindset of human rights, is just how China has brought 'cultural rights' to the Tibetan state.

All this aside, I can't help but notice that despite China's aggressive claims to the protection and advancement of human rights, a soft underbelly of uncertainty belies the public consciousness. I dug a knife into this underbelly earlier this week, when I messaged my editor, proposing the inclusion of a unit on human rights in a series of high school textbooks that I'm writing. Her response was all too clear: "Harmony, and One World, One Dream. Thanks." 

 

Reference: Ching, Frank, China: The Truth about its Human Rights Record, Random House, Great Britain, 2008.

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The Great Unfinished Nation!

Unlike China, Australia is a great nation of home-finishings; all the windows have fly-screens, all the toilets flush, and there are no coils of electrical wires dangling into the street. One of the main reasons I left Australia was the exorbitant prices of home repairs, and the social pressure to invest in quality interior infrastructure. What attracted me to China was the promise that anyone could be a plumber, electrician or outfitter. After all, I thought, how hard can it be to smash a hole in the window with a hammer and run a television cable into your apartment?

When we first moved to the Jing, we found ourselves tossing up between living in a sunny mezzanine and our Cave at Sanlitun. The way I saw it, the mezzanine had yellow silk curtains that shimmered in the breeze, and a private roof-top enclave, where I envisioned reclining on over-stuffed cushions amongst twisted vines and smoking apple-flavoured tobacco from my hookah. The deciding factor for my more earthy partner however, was that the landlord of the mezzanine insisted his renovations were finished.

To side with my partner, I will concede that the mezzanine was littered with empty paint tins and wood shavings, and there were large holes covered by pieces of cardboard in the second-story floor. It also had a suspiciously wobbly balustrade, windows that wouldn’t lock or close, a toilet pipe that pointed in the wrong direction for effective flushing, and no hot water in the kitchen. In turn, the Cave at Sanlitun does have polished wooden floors, non-fluorescent light-fittings, hot water pressure, windows that close, and enough heaters to survive the winter.

As the months have passed however, the absences of light and yellow silk curtains have caused the small imperfections of the Cave to encroach on my state of well-being. The tiny gaps in the walls and screens have paved the way for many a curious roach, and our midsummer night dreams are filled with the operatic whine of mosquitoes. I also fear that between repairing the door handles and trying to contain a rebellious shower-curtain rod, I’ve neglected our rock in the bathroom drain, leaving it subject to asphyxiation by hairballs and grey mush.

It is possible that my unwillingness to fork out an extra couple of grand a month may be the root of all my problems, but I keep returning to the nagging thought that this lack of finesse goes deeper. After all, my friend pays twice the rent I do, and all the tiles in his newly refurbished bathroom dislodged from the walls a couple of months after he moved in; and the luxurious multi-million dollar ‘gold’ mall in the Village at Sanlitun has sewerage pipes sticking out of its exterior.

When it all gets too much, I just remind myself why I came here in the first place. I now have nearly three years of practical plumbing and electrical experience, which puts me in good stead to get an apprenticeship when I go back home. After all, what other Australian can unblock a drain with a pair of chopsticks!

Love Behind the Forbidden City

On Sunday afternoons one can find swarms of tourists in central Beijing with their fancy cameras, elbowing each other out of the way for one of the cities most famous shots: The Forbidden City Reflected.

Across the Forbidden City's moat in Zhongshan Park there is a lesser known swarm of eager, elbowing bidders. Hundreds of parents mill about swapping photographs and details of their marriageable sons and daughters: Sunday's market of arranged marriages!

Hundreds of photocopied sheets change hands, detailing everything from age to education, star sign to expectations. There are even the extra pushy mothers who instruct other hopefuls that they shouldn't come without being well equipped with up-to-date portraits of the prospective brides and grooms!

If I'm unable to hook myself a husband by age 35, I know where I'm sending my mother!