Word of the Day
A Curriculum is what you are taught in school. The things they feel are important that you know, knowledge that must be passed down from the institution to the young.
The Hidden Curriculum is what they are really teaching you.
The easy to grasp ideas are, be on time, be respectful if not fearful of authority, that you are in competition with those around you. You are taught some kids are superior and therefore to have certain skills you are rewarded.
Those are probably what ALL Educational institutes teaches us. But then it differs, depends on the school or college they have other things to say, what kind of rules they have, what they choose to teach.
Uniform teaches conformity, rules on clothing teaches understanding of the importance of appropriate attire, having none -dealing with choices. Some schools emphasize sports, other academics, certain ones encourage art and creativity, other the importance of science.
And at a young age, depending on what institution you are placed in, you either flourish or suffer. A creative child in a school which has a huge science department and only one painting class is going to learn that his or her skills are not as coveted or cared about as the kid who is good at cutting up the rat.
If you’re a Chinese kid like myself and you end up in and English institution that does not teach an iota of Chinese History but a whole load of English stuff, I learnt that Chinese History was not equaled in importance to what happened in Britain. They didn’t have Chinese classes and for the first three years of my junior high and high school so I had to learn French. What I learnt was that it was more useful in the future that I excelled at European languages than that of my own even if I was living in Hong Kong.
Mainly my whole education was all about how much more important Europe was opposed to Asia and Asians. All my teachers for the first 16 years of my life were white, brought over from England, including my Puo Tong Hua teacher (which they started when I was 15). What it taught me was the knowledge of the west was better than what we had home grown. (FU ESF).
Finally, they actually brought in a Chinese teacher to teach us Chinese, and she occasionally ranted about the racism of the school, how badly all the other teachers treated her because she was Chinese, and that we should not be allowed to be treated this way because China was important, China was huge, and that colonialism was bad. (Thank You Ms. D).
Luckily I went off to college in California where pluralism was encouraged and that there were far more Asians and Latinos than British people and ended up in a Junior college where part of their hidden curriculum was educating all these dumb, culturally stupid Asian and Latino kids who were 80% of the college’s population to have some pride and learn their own history and culture after living in the white dominant culture for most of our lives. (I know, I grew up in HK, see the ridiculous irony of all this?)
There I learnt Maths from a someone from Hong Kong, had Japanese and Puerto Rican Professors of History, an Indian professors of English, a Black professor for International Politics and a White American Professor teaching us about the cultures of Papa New Guinea. There I learnt that it didn’t really matter what race and country you were from, where you were educated and by whom -you had every right to be knowledgeable. We are who we are by what we learn in life. None is more important, none is superior and surely Great Britain did not have the hold on it.
And I write this because Taiwan Tiger wrote about Traditions vs. Pluralism , which inspired The Tenement Palms to write about Pluralism over Culture Conformity, and I had a (real life) conversation with Miss Kitchy this weekend on Conformity and the Hidden Curriculum, so I write about the Hidden Cirriculum and Pluralism.
Here we are. The New Generation of China Writers in English. We have different things to say.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
I like this commentary very much. Nicely described aspect about the nexus of race, culture, nation, and education.
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Boy Tom. Even though we had a rocky start of aquaintance. We’ve really developed!! ;-> (U Rock).
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Hi, I have two widely disparate thoughts on the above.
‘The New Generation of China Writers in English’. Where can I find them? I’m trying to shift the demographic of the Living in China website, which at the moment is disprportionately still in favour of white male writers. Though it could be said that what people have to say is more important than their ethnicity or gender, from what I can see there is still only a handful of bloggers/writers writing from a Chinese perspective. How can we encourage more?
Secondly, as a Brit myself I do share in some of the collective guilt that the legacy of colonialism brings. I hadn’t realised how biased the old Hong Kong had been – but am surprised that the US was more pluralist in its approach. I wonder whether after 9/11 this is still the case. But on the other hand, for all its faults, would you rather live under the British governmental system or the Chinese? Or neither?
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First thing I would say, you can ask your participating blogs to stop behaving like this:
http://gweilodiaries.com/archives2/000055.html
http://www.seelai.com/blog/2004/01/on_local_blogge.html
http://glutter.typepad.com/glutter/2003/11/its_okay_boys_y.html
http://www.seelai.com/blog/2003/11/homophobic_raci.html
Personally, I can’t stand the site because of the people within it (Well those who are loudest, those who are quiet are the ones who keep me on because we find each other through the aggregator. Which is why you are not linked. My contribution to the site is tenatious as it is. Because it’s full off assholes, one more bullshit act and I pull. You can have one less Chinese writer in English. Fuck it. I am not even here to play with any of you in the first place. I write for myself.
Lets not forget a memeber of your editorial team wrote such patronizing words towards me and Hailey.
http://pekingduck.org/archives/000749.php
“At the risk of sounding racist, I tend to put on a gentler tone with these bloggers. There are so few young Asian bloggers writing in English about political and social issues, and I want to encourage them, not intimidate them. Even if they are wrong, maybe we should try to let them know in a way that won’t injure their pride. A double standard? Yes. But we all know that communicating with a native Chinese person is not the same as communicating with a native New Yorker. This is true in international negotiations as well as in blog comments.”
Give me a break. My friend after reading it said, “He’s just so up himself about being a western male, being patronizing with Asian females. People like that make me embarressed to be assosiated with them”.
Encourage us? I don’t like the tone in that itself. People write for themselves. And the only way to encourage is to have a safe space and people will go into it on their own. I only started this because I had NO idea there even was a China Blogging community. If I did. I am pretty sure I would not have done it.
I would firstly suggest Get certain people to learn some respect, learn some manners. Learn to take dissagreement. It might help you cause of being a respectable site to Chinese writers in English. It currently is not. I said all this to Michael, not that he replied me.
Secondly. I suggest you read this:
http://glutter.typepad.com/glutter/2004/02/my_30th_birthda.html
As for the US. I too wondered what would happen in the US after 9/11. Its fine. It’s exactly the same. Those who were one way remained exactly the same, those who were not, probably got more psychotic. California is California, NY is NY, if anything it made people think more about the US foreign policy. I am not suprized the US is more pluralistic at all. I went to the UK for a month and was completely shocked by how un-mulitcultural is was, and how generally racist it was compared to the US. (I know it’s hard to believe! which is why I was shocked). US has it’s problems, no doubt, but in general people are more aware of the issues as the educational system of college generally a liberal approach.
When I came home, I said, “I never knew what “old world” and “New World” meant, but now I have been to both. I can see a difference.
Yan
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Hi Yan. I want to ask you to take a step back and ask yourself exactly why you are doing this, stirring up issues that you know can only cause controversy. I’m sure there’s a reason why you’re taking a post I wrote in November and that I wrote with the best of intentions, and making a big deal about it now. I just don’t know what the reason is. Did something happen that would make you feel you needed to speak out at other bloggers again? I’m just trying to get a feel for what’s motivating you. I’ve tried to be polite to you and avoid conflict, but the pattern is now continuing. I won’t address it like last time because it’s a waste of time, but I really hope you can tell us why you feel the need to go on the offensive against people who are leaving you alone and wish you no harm.
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I cannot deny the racist thinking that underlies British culture as well as US, but I think there are some differences to note. Sometimes I feel that the US is preparing its citizens a bit better to handle a multicultural environment, especially when most of the culturally back-asswards thoughts I hear in Taiwan come from the mouths of Brits, but the US is a big place, and living on the Left Coast (or Massachusetts, yeah Mass!) is not representative of the whole. In most of the places in the US I have lived, there is a startling social commentary on Americanness. It has always been, and continues to be, coded as WHITE. My parents, for example, when faced with their children’s choice in partners, often respond with “but he/she is from a different culture.” That culture being Black American or Asian American or Latino American, born and raised in the US. I disagree. Now Taiwan undeniably is a different culture than the US–within the US, “culture” of course varies, but all are under the umbrella of American. But c’mon, Yan, how many times have you been asked “where are you from?”–the question that hints at the non-native appearance of skin color. In CA perhaps not so much, but elsewhere…it’s de rigeur.
The thing that I think separates American constructions of itself from British constructions of itself is a tremendous investment in keeping the face of American multicultural while at the same time granting the privileges of American society to its whitest, malest, heterosexual members. I am suggesting here not the choices of individuals, but of a undercurrent that consistently codes American as “white” in terms of the operation of power. Who has the money? It sure isn’t the vast multicultural communities in the US. The house of power in the US is lodged in legal codifications and board meetings and attitudes that lie under the surface (as well as a longstanding frontier hero worship that places the white male settler going into the wilderness to tame the savage before the savage rubs off on him.) But it is important to fabricate a face of America that is multicultural in order to obscure the great pains to keep those of the “right” color where they ought to be and those of the “other colors” where they ought to be.
It is a shock sometimes to live in a place where these subtleties don’t exist. Many countries’ citizens frankly say that darker people are not as good–it is better to be white. Although obnoxioius and–from my point of view–ridiculously small-minded, at least it is being said rather than elided. At least no one is pretending to be a garden of eden because that is how the country has always conceived of itself. Or to switch metaphors midstream–other countries haven’t burdened themselves with the idea that they are the “city on a hill”–the cumulation of liberal ideals–the penultimate stop before Heaven. If you start with this grandiose idea, where do go? You have to start to bury the truth somewhere to maintain that beautiful image. And there are a lot of holes being dug.
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P.S. Didn’t mean to sound scolding with my “c’mon yan” statement.
P.P.S. I think you are dead on bringing up Richard’s “old issues” in response to Phil’s request for words of encouragement. If I am a Chinese male writing a blog, why would I want to have ANYTHING to do with the foreigner community (mostly white male) who comes to Asia and uses and abuses Asian women? Am I some kind of nut? Why would I shack up with someone who sexually patronizes my friends and practices the same sort of sexual and political colonialism that led to a long and debilitating set of stereotypes that exist today?
Of course, I think they should have the right to expose their own idiocy, but if I am a writer, nah–it’s just too much. Who would want to admit their friend is actally a complete asshole when it is much easier to not have that friend?
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Great piece Yan, nice complement to Tiger’s laser-like insight and my waxing rambly (I invented a new word there).
As for the encouraging stuff… I read over your links up there about what you find discouraging, Yan, and the one thing I can say for certain is that that particular debate seemed to result in a whole lot of not listening to each other, on both sides. Everybody felt they’d been wronged and I get the impression everybody wanted the last word too. The comments generated to Glutter’s “It’s ok boys” got depressingly boring rather quick.
Phil, I’d suggest maybe Living in China could use an overhaul of its categories. I’m not exactly sure how, but there must be a way of organizing material so that I have a better way of navigating between different viewpoints, not just really general categories like “blogging” “culture” and “features”. That said, I don’t really know what those categories would be. The fact is that we’re all tied together one way or another, but there’s already a really wide spectrum of different viewpoints (and in some cases, camps) and the aggregator doesn’t give anyway to parse through that. And that also makes it harder to keep new visitors attention. Maybe we could form guilds! And then we could have sponsored debates on LiC? Whatever, I’m just spitting out some random notions.
And to make one thing clear, this exchange between you two, Yan and Phil, right here, is based on a miscommunication. Yan said we were “China writers” – not Chinese writers. I happen to be a white native New Yorker of NJ-bred Irish Catholic stock. As Yan says above, and I think everyone should remember this when looking back at the whole bruhaha over skin pics and stereotypes (and I love you Yan, but don’t forget your own words here):
I learnt that it didn’t really matter what race and country you were from, where you were educated and by whom -you had every right to be knowledgeable.
So, please, everybody take a deep breath – I don’t wanna see another skirmish. But guild on guild deathmatch debates would be pretty cool! Referee’d rumbles!
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OK, so the question should be asked of me–so I will ask it. Tiger–if that is the way you feel about “shacking up” with writers that are antithetical to your own views, why are you–in Taiwan–participating in a Living in China website?
Oh, good question. This was a tough decision for me. One, I am completely pro-Taiwan. Pro-independence, everything. So LiC’s “One Country, Many Voices” is completely antithetical to my participation in LiC. It is also not yet my place to decide if but mostly importantly when that would happen. So let’s just say that I am latent in my independent desires.
But I realize that the possibility for dialog is fantastic. And I am not blogging against the Chinese government, I am blogging with other people, all of whom have their own stance on politics, all of which are probably different than mine. There is an old solution to a problem that comes to mind. If you’ve got 2 cats that don’t get along, dribble honey on them and throw them in a dark closet for a couple of hours, and the likelihood is that they will come out friends. So maybe we can share that honey, be it sweet or bitter, and maybe we can come out of that darkness wiser at least as to the scope of our own misunderstandings.
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Richard Tries to be “Polite” to me and “Avoid Conflict” in JAN 2004.
Not again! Can we please stop the moral preaching?
A few months ago several of us Asian bloggers got into a foodfight over Glutter’s objections when another local blogger used the phrase “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” in a post about gays.
This may have been one of the silliest episodes in our community’s history.
Now, Glutter is re-igniting the holier-than-thou issue, announcing today that she has deleted from her blogroll all Asian bloggers who link to two specifc bloggers who show “photos of girls half their age semi-nude.”
I am only guessing that one of these two sinful sites is Conrad’s; I’m not certain of the 2nd site, but I can make a good guess.
All I can say is, get a sense of humor and lighten up. There’s no pornography, no sexploitation, no harm done. I link to Conrad’s site all the time. Your finding me guilty by association (I’m deleted from her blogroll) is preposterous. I do not link to Conrad’s site because of the girlie pictures, as you probably know. It’s because there’s other good stuff there. I know you like to see yourself as a crusading liberal, but this kind of single-issue tunnel vision is anything but; it’s closed-minded and dogmatic.
I’ve enjoyed knowing you and have linked to you often. But please step back and see how this looks. And then get off your high horse and be a little more tolerant.
UPDATE: Don’t miss Conrad’s scholarly response to this issue.
http://gweilodiaries.com/archives2/000055.html#000055
Ya….
I do not speak a word to certain people.
Living in China Policies and existence shall not be debated with me. I have no interest in helping grow build or propagate that what I feel can deteriorate into a debasement of the word “community.” It is not the fault of the editors mostly, but it’s their site and part of an editor’s job is the responsibility of content.
It’s seems to me Living in China is heading to be a commercial venture and we participate for free for what reason but an idea. We help grow something that one day will take advertising revenue but not said and not discussed. I can be wrong, but as a someone who was once in the industry that’s how I perceive it.
An idea that I supported at the beginning but have always had issues with the editorial. I have spoken with both Andrea and Michael about it in the Oct 2003. Michael brought about some changes, which I already told him that I was impressed. Nothing said here is new or unsaid on my behalf.
If there is a China Community of China writers to form that I support it will be with different people with completely different sensibilities. Although I appreciate what it tries to do, what has transpired by the people who are there already is very different.
Firstly it will be one of WRITERS and not COMMENTERS, those with original content.
Secondly it will have certain political and social and etiquette policies regarding behavior. Build many a sites with them, they work well.
Thirdly it will have serious goals to record and log ideas. Much like the Merging Boundaries project.
If it takes more effort on my part of facilitate this I would be happy and willing to do so. It’s not the time yet, but I will not lie and say I have not thought about it. However for any kind of real “movement” or group, it must grown from bottom up rather than top down.
If many voices to appear. We need different points of center and thoughts. Much like there are many newspaper of different persuading, different think tanks, different political parties. The idea of having one place, group or party (who acts like they have the last word) makes me uncomfortable.
One cannot proclaim “One country, Many Voices” as the tag line of Living in China and expect it to happen, as my being put on the aggregator was never particularly discussed with me. I had no idea what was, I was not involved in the creation or the development of Living in China in the first place, I would say that is true for the majority of participants
An idea was born but not all participants had a true understanding of the goals and vision, and to this day I am not sure of what they are. It does not matter. It’s not my project. Not once did I ever do Glutter to be part of anything. I just did it for myself and the aggravation having been part of both the Hong Kong internet community, part of living in China, is beyond me. I have no idea who most these people are, they just roped me into it, with their own ideas, and they keep engaging me when I just carry on with my own life and writing. They feel themselves as important, maybe they are to some but not me.
As Dave and Tiger discussed, I am not sure what “One Country” means, as I am pro-Taiwan independence, and full autonomy of Hong Kong, although I have written that Chinese people view ourselves as “tang ren” “tong bao,” -one people. Although the site lacks Chinese writers in general and it’s probably 90% white males, whom mostly aren’t my compatriots in that sense.
Oddly, last night I received an email from someone about what happened in Nov and Jan that pretty much said she was horrified by what happened and was very sorry. A very upset person on the other end, and I told her I don’t worry about it anymore, because that’s their lives, they hang themselves by their own words and behaviors. I am fine with it.
If I could take on Xin Hua and the Chinese Government. To try and change the Internet space for a moment.
http://glutter.typepad.com/glutter/2004/02/how_to_get_a_si.html
What’s a few visitors to my country who are rude to me and my beliefs? Not much.
I said it before. Just because we exist in the same geographical space does not mean we are bonded in anyway personal. I choose to be associated with people who I deem to be worthy, intelligent, mature, and have views I respect and ideals that I relate. Most of all people I LIKE.
I shall continue the more interesting and worthwhile discussion of the US, Brit, Multi-cultural issue when I have some time. I think both Dave and Tiger made some great points I would like to add but first I must deal with my own life.
This is my last word I hope. I am really NOT interested in discussing this again. I have not particularly chosen to part of their community, never really tried very hard to do anything with or for them. Some people are cool and they happen to be China blogger but I do things with Australian, Iraqi, American writers as well.
I wish these people can get it into their heads I don’t care, nor are interested in what they have to say. The last thing I want to do is help them “Encourage” people who they have time and time again patronized, been rude to, sexualized. Some people really have problems being dragged into a group when they don’t agree. Don’t like what I say, don’t read. I don’t read theirs because it’s not worth my time.
People just do their own thing. Some people aren’t interested to conform, to be part of a group, to provide a united front or anything like that. Which actually fits quite well into the hidden curriculum thing, something hidden is we all have to part of Living in China, part of a group of older white males with blogs because we live here.
We don’t. Taiwan is on the way to be independent. Hong Kong is part of China, and China is it’s own autonomous nation. The white males who patronizes us, who ruled us, who told us what to do and lorded over us and made us part of their country by coercion who once ruled part of this city are gone, it’s not that place anymore. I don’t see why I have to listen or participate or care about people who have no power over me on the net.
Yan
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Yan, what is wrong with good old fashioned British discipline? If you had just did as you were told at school you may have turned into a respectable member of society and a worthy citizen of the empire! ( 😛 just kidding, big time tongue in cheek comment!)
Interesting stuff here, especially tiger’s peices that you linked to and his posts above.
Something I can add about racism in England, My mum who is English made a revealing comment a couple of days ago when we were watching some kind of news broadcast, may have been CNN or a finance report etc. There was a Asian American women reporting and my mum said something along the lines of how unusal it seemed to people of her generation to see an Asian speak english with an American accent. I didn’t know how to respond to what she said, and I was a little shocked, but I guess it shows it can be confusing for people who only think in stereotypes when they are challenged by something they see. That does not excuse racism of any kind ofcourse, probably just points to the need for greater education and awareness and a responsibility to see things from others points of view instead of strutting around the world thinking you run the place. So bring on the different viewpoints, wherever you’re from, educate me! Fight small mindedness!
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Quick note to Dave:
I learnt that it didn’t really matter what race and country you were from, where you were educated and by whom -you had every right to be knowledgeable.
Yes. VERY TRUE. It doesn’t matter what race, country someone is from. If you’re patronizing, rude and obnoxious I deem such a person as such. I give no slack to anyone.
I have my breath caught. As usual it comes down to me being NOT interested. 🙂 I love you too? Wait was that Tiger who said that? Seems a little premature, but hey, I love everyone who has good ideals and politics.
Yan
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Hi Mike. The great “white” hope of Australia?? 😉 So when are you going to run for PM?
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so, um….
what were we talking about again?
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Nothing. In Cantonese there is a saying, 耳边风 “Ei Been Fong” (Ear Side Wind) it’s used to denote words that are said that passes one by.
After this I am pulling from LIC. I thought about it, and realized, why be one of the token Asian Woman on the site? Why be the one person that makes up the demographic and make a bleep? As Tiger said, why be friends with them when it’s easier not to be.
Anyway from the average 1000 hits of Glutter that I get every day, about four comes from LIC. What do I care?
Yan
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wow, Dave, you have good timing. I actually laughed out loud at that one.
Love? mumble..mumble..something about tigers not earning their stripes yet..mumble mumble..mumble
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To the curb Tiger. There is a long line waiting! 😛
Y
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Blood on the Floor: Perplexing Levels of Indivuality/Collectivity
We’ve been hashing out some interesting ideas recently, on Glutters’ post: http://glutter.typepad.com/glutter/2004/02/hidden_curricul.html and Tenement Palm’s http://silkworms.chinesetriad.org/index.php?p=52. Rather than approach this from a critical a…
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Christ. All I did was post a comment wondering where to find more female/Asian writers (‘Here we are. The New Generation of China Writers in English. We have different things to say.’) so that I could shift the LiC demographic away from the very people you condemn.
Please point out which articles written for the main part of LiC (as opposed to the aggregator, which is an automatic feature) are deemed sexist, racist or otherwise and I’ll see what can be done to address it.
I’m not out to argue or insult. The basic premise of LiC is to showcase the work of anybody and everybody writing from and about China and if that’s a bad thing I’ll take a taxi to Hell.
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Phil-
Your concerns are well meaning and carefully worded. I certainly was not intending to criticize what is an honest plea to expand the writers involved. But when I tried in my mind to address your “how do we open this up a bit?” question, what popped into my head was: as a writer, how would this affect my work? If I am joining a community whose dialogue is already underway with a regular group of people whose ideas I find atrocious, how would my writing change this? Would it be subsumed into the whole thing, or would it actually change the dialogue? And as a writer must make selfish choices, I can see how some might not want to get involved.
But your good question still stands–maybe it is a question of advice that someone could ask a writers’ collective. After all, writers’ groups, LiC no exception, have always dealt with strong personalities vehemently opposed to one another, shunning each at cocktail parties, furious debating stunningly mundane issues at times–but all very important to the workings of why we write, for whom, how, and for what end.
A suggestion would of course be to expand the primarily English format to a bilingual one. Without it, the project really smacks of colonialism. I mean, if you have been in China for a reasonable stretch of time, and you haven’t considered–not DONE, just considered the option, anyway–writing in Chinese, then maybe you are overdue for a little soul searching as to why you are there in the first place. And I am not trying to be patronizing here. I think of an acquaintance of mine here in Taiwan who has been here for 7 years and can’t speak a word of Chinese or Taiwanese (we all know someone like this, right???). I know he’s lazy, he knows he’s lazy. But he needs to ask some questions of himself–like what sort of access to a community can you gain or expect to gain when you don’t even bother to pick up rudimentary language skills? I am not trying to picture myself as better than him, because only HE can answer that question. And in the process of answering that question, he might unearth some attitudes of his–perhaps attitudes that have entered into earlier heated discussions here at Glutter–that need to be reassessed.
To get back to my point. If I am a Taiwanese, what’s my attitude toward this guy who views my language as unnecessary? And what’s my attitude when I am a blogger and a site appears to support a monolingual, non-native interpretation of life in China? I am not accusing LiC of monolinguality, but suggesting that maybe LiC could be constructed in a way that supports the idea more freely.
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I’ll continue to be a patron of Yan’s weblog so long as she writes.
Based on what I’ve seen, it takes an intrepid woman to buck the status quo in Asia.
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Tiger, and Dave, thanks for your remarks and suggestions, I do take your points.
However, on the idea of rejigging the categories, I’d be loath to do this. Firstly it will automatically politicize the site, and we’d prefer it to be apolitical and all-inclusive. I think there’d be a risk of it descending into mud-slinging. Secondly, to try to divide people into camps would be a very difficult and unpleasant job which which inevitably alienate people.
There are about 6 billion people in the world, 4.7 billion of whom don’t speak Chinese and are utterly ignorant about China. LiC is in English not because ‘we are too lazy to learn Chinese’ but because it’s those 4.7 billion others who we would like to reach. If we had more resources then we would translate stuff into English, as we are in fact trying to do for the ‘top 10 Chinese bloggers’ that emerged from a recent poll. However, this is very laborious for the few bilingual people we have.
Some of you may wish to look at the other sites we started up, Living in India and Living in Latin America, which illustrate a far more realistic demographic than Living in China currently has.
Finally, I wonder if anyone will address my question above: ‘Please point out which articles written for the main part of LiC (as opposed to the aggregator, which is an automatic feature) are deemed sexist, racist or otherwise and I’ll see what can be done to address it.’ It’s importnat to separate the aggregator from the actual written content of the site, which I am trying carefully to ensure does not contain anything ‘atrocious’.
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Woah…how did this turn into that old can of worms?
Anyway, I wanted to post up a comment relating to the original post.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with you on that the British education system is entirely wrong. I mean, cultural diversity is nice, but when you are in a British institution you’ll have to expect to learn about British History. There’s only limited space and time to learn about other things. I mean, I didn’t learn about Dutch history in a British school although my family’s heritage is Dutch. Maybe it’s the school that I went to, but we learnt about the Empire but it was very objective. I mean, I’m sure 100 years ago, it was “We brought civilization to the world, blah blah blah”. But maybe that was just my school. I mean, what I learned from my education was how to think, how to question, how to reason. They presented me with the facts and I questioned…all the way up to university and post-grad.
Why should we place such importance on Chinese history in a UK education institute? Likewise, I suspect, and I hope, that in Chinese education institutes, they would spend more time learning Chinese history than English history.
It was bad enough I had to study parts of American history (at the time, “What the hell do I care?”) but in a way I’m thankful they did (’cause now I can shove their history back down their throats when they start to playing the moral highground.
I guess all I am saying is that you have to take what limited time you have as a teacher and focus on somethings that are important. History is too large to explore everything. So countries will focus on what they percieve as important. But doesn’t make them right or wrong. It’s just limited time that they have, especially when half their students are probably not even paying attention.
Anyway, my friend once told me that his text book in primary and secondary school consisted of a map of China and the US. It said something like, “China has a history of 4000 years old and the US has a history of 400 years”. I think it was teaching numbers to kids. How is that not indoctrination? So it can be argued both ways.
If the British education school system is responsible for anything, then it’s the legion of sexually repressed men that feel the need to post up images of women on their sites (guilty as charged). Surprisingly, I would doubt that someone from a public school would have elitist values anymore (we were just taught we were better than everyone else – Chinese, American, French, German, British…!), and it’s usually undereducated that still behave like places like HK are still part of the British Empire. It’s cause they can’t afford the revised text books in school.
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Ohh. Eshin. The last comment was beautiful. 🙂
My school was not objective. We live in HK, do you think it’s a valid space NOT to teach why HK was British and it’s not a valid place not to have Chinese classes.
However I agree with you that there is limited time to what you teach, and what is important. As a matter of fact my school saw itself as “international” school. Not a pure British institution at all. However what it sold and what was reality was very different.
I have plenty of friend who were educated in Public schools in Britain, and my friend completely do not have the elitist attitudes but they would say they felt their school had. In fact many of them rather dispised their education on that account much like me.
On the other hand, I would say, and cannot deny that the education I got was fantastic in other regards. At least it allowed me to be able to read for myself.
Yan
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Glad you liked my comment.
I believe that HK schools should talk about Hong Kong’s history, whether that be Chinese or British. They are both parts of what Hong Kong was and what it will be. So they are equally valid. To choose one over the other as more valid, is incorrect.
My point was more that in an English school in the UK, you won’t be taught about Chinese history as much as English history because it has less relevance for people over there, a relevancy dependant on the amount of time that you have to cover. Of course, I think we should learn about all histories (yes, I am a man of history) of each culture and country. But who has time for that?
And yes, I see the product of the English school system in you. Some would say it’s the English tendancy to bitch about everything and anyone, others would say it’s a more inquiring mind.
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As for what Dave wrote, that’s exactly what I was feeling. Why do we need to “encourage” Chinese writers to write in English? They write in Chinese, if those who are truly interested in what Chinese people say, then they need to read Chinese. If not, well there are plenty of translated text around. Last I looked we recently had a nobel prize winner of literature from China, this book is widely translated not only in English but many others.
I write in English because of the reasons made very clear in the post above. It was my education, I am now taking my time to learn Chinese and plan to at some point begin that journey as a Chinese writer also. I will never be as good, I will never reach the proficency of that I am able to achieve in this form. But so be it. We obviously have very different idea of the world which is why it’s important to have other voices but at once these people who say they want more of us, they do not respect our right to having opposing views and are not mature enough to deal with it in anyway but write nasty comments. They can’t discuss anything without making it personal. We had one Chinese writer in English attacked completely because she beleived we were ONE PEOPLE but she said ONE CHINA. I spent some time talking to her and explained what she meant.
Well, she never wrote politics again and personally feels EXACTLY the same about those other as well as I do. I leave LIC. She stops writing about Politics unless it’s in Chinese.
Oh and Phil, that smacks of patronizing tone paragraph written by Richard appears on LIC. There we go. Lets start there. You site constantly smacks of that tone. I am suprized no one has said, “We’re here to educated Chinese people” (as one of your participating bloggers wrote on my site once).
I understand that’s who you have. But you don’t make it an interesting place for those of us who want to say anything different to participate as Dave said.
Why should I bother to go against the grain of a place that already has a certain point of view in place. Why don’t I just do my own thing and include people who I feel are the same.
There is no rule of participation.
Anyway it’s not a WRITERS group. Writers have original thoughts, and love the language. COMMENTERS and PUNDITS write about what happens and make opinions of it.
Yan
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Phil, I posted a response to your stuff on, appropriately, your page, so that maybe we can separate these two discussions. Besides, it was really long. I’m getting way too verbose these days.
Eshin said:
“History is too large to explore everything. So countries will focus on what they percieve as important. But doesn’t make them right or wrong.”
History is too large. As a history student, I learned that pretty well. The other thing I learned as a history student in the U.S., from primary to uni, is that there’s very little emphasis on critical reading. History is given as narrative fact. Most of my uni professors basically lectured out of “the book they never finished”, as I call it, which is all their interpretation. Though history profs encouraged us to read multiple sources, I never saw a class at Rice, Columbia or any other school I took classes at on methods of history.
Primary and secondary education are worse; there’s no mention at all on challenging the ideas you’re fed – I got all that Thanksgiving BS shoved down my throat for years, only to later learn about genocide in the Americas. When a holiday based on history creates the same situation as learning there is no Santa Claus, you know that history has been used as a tool of propaganda. And that is wrong – ideally a country should teach children to evaluate their history and others critically, because otherwise it justs makes it worse for all of us when patriotism and nationalism are based on ignorance and misinformation.
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Oh, and Glutter, I think most of the things you attributed to me are things Tiger said (and I agree with as well).
Anyhow, I went to an international school too – UNIS, the United Nations International School in NYC. We even graduated in the General Assembly hall, so you don’t get much more international than that. So the history stuff must have been pretty even, right?
Wrong. While middle school had some half-decent world history, the IB choices for history in high school were American or European. No Asia, Mid East, Africa or SA except as places invaded/plundered. Ugh. At least we got to hear about some of the invasion and plunder.
And despite a huge cast of diverse students, the majority of which being the children of UN employees, and a pretty diverse faculty, I didn’t learn much about other countries from them. That’s ok, I guess, since we all just hung out and did what high school students do, and we were mostly NYC kids at heart anyway (though the ESL kids were a somewhat opaque community, which I have some regrets about not getting to know better). My education on the rest of world came through an early (premature?) start in activism.
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What do you mean there is no Santa Claus???
Please, stop spreading this disinformation for the love of the kids!!!!!!!
(Okay, lighthearted tone intended but Santa Claus harks back to St. Nicklaus, a real life saint, I believe.)
I’d agree with you Dave that there is very little critical reading taught on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s unfortunate that when I was studing a Master’s degree, the requirement there was to be critical on what you read (“Always check who’s writing what, when they are writing and why they are writing something”). It’s a shame that you need to get to a level of post-grad to be actually taught that. Even in my BA, it was always regurgitation of the books.
Still, I managed to learn to think critically. I think.
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Some more thoughts.
And as Tom said, me being in Asia, it’s very obvious that sentiments of the other side if far more intact and entrenched. Probably in ways more than that of Britain or their home countries. I don’t think if I was writing in Chinese and said what i said, I would have as much problems do you think? Most Chinese people feel the same way of white men who go after young Chinese women don’t you think?
As I see it, those who I dispise the most are English, American and Australian who reside in Hong Kong. However, some of my biggest readers are Australians, Americans (not many English people I know of but I don’t see the Internet lifestyle as proliferate over there as much) and they do not feel that way. In fact they are pretty shocked by what they see themselves.
It’s a certain group whose views are held much from colonial times, if you look people like Dave, and Tiger are my age or younger, those others are at least 10 years older than us. That’s why I said we were the Young New China Writers.
Truth is my site readers are very international. I would estimate about 15% of my readers are in China. How they break down is overseas chinese readers as well as Liberal American and Australian ones (I am just doing a links and comment general feel thing). As well as the truth is those who don’t speak, but have always been around are the goodbye leslie and now goodbye anita people who filter through onto this site.
That’s what those in China blogging “community” don’t even understand. I don’t have the same readers as them, I am not coverting their readership, my “market” so to speak is completely different. I doubt many of my readers go to their sites. Maybe some of their comes here, but in terms of commenters hardly any.
I was actually thinking about that last night. Just how my tone or in art terms “gaze” is different. It’s conspirational. I talk to those who understand and posit I am trying to verbalize what many of us feel the best way I can.
So when I write about depression, I write for those who suffered it, and are suffering from it, when I write about music, I write for those who love it, when I write about anita it’s for those who also love her. When I write about China and Hong Kong, I open it up a little bit and try and explain some things, but still I see it as a voice of what those around me are also feeling.
I am not here to tell the damn 4.7 billion people to don’t read chinese about china. Sorry. I am not here as many of them are to show off my china knowledge which for a lot of them it’s obvious to me it’s minimal, but they get away with it because those 4.7 billion people don’t really know. It’s an easy place to make one seem smart and clever. Some like Dave, Tiger, Roddy and Matt, they probably know more than me, which is why they are my “friends” I want to learn from them.
I am here to tell my truths and those of my friends. If people who like my other stuff in turn learns a little bit about China and HK and start supporting our need for change I am happy.
If people like what I write about China and Hong Kong learn something about a new band or get to find out what it’s like to travel Laos cool. A hell of a lot of people who come through are looking for specifics, “Street Racing, Burning Man, Leslie, Anita, Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley” Things I feel confident that I write about outside of the China context.
This was never a “hong Kong” blog or a “China” blog to begin with. This is always YAN’s Blog.
I am Chinese, I was born in HK. I write a blog. Get it Phil? I am not writing because some guys from England or whereever feel there should be more Chinese writers in English and “encourage” us. I write because that’s what I have wanted to do since I was 11.
I am not here to show off coz I am different from all the other people I grew up with because I live in CHINA. I LIVE IN CHINA BECAUSE IT’S MY HOME.
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Ershin.
You can probably tell I had a British education because I spell neighbourhood with a U.
However I was also educated in New Zealand and also the US. So we can’t really just put what I do now into the context of my primary and secondary education.
As for inquiring mind. I don’t think that’s something that Britain has a hold over either, although I would probably agree with you that in the Chinese education system it’s not encouraged (although that’s changing in HK), it’s a sad fact.
But I don’t bitch about everything and everybody. I bitch at a very specific group of people and their views. In fact many people in the US bitch at the same kind of people and their views.
Do you know we’re all sitting here writing at the same time because before I finish there are new comments up. This is amazing!!!
Yan
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I’ve been drinking coffee and trying to turn culturally blind teaching material into something that produces some real intercultural interaction since 8 am. After staying up until 3 doing the same. I gave up for today, really, because I just can’t wrap my mind around it – not in that context, not today. My mind is only in respond mode – not create, I have this great article I wanna post but that would be creating. I’d nap, but… coffee.
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Phil
I’m not out to argue or insult. The basic premise of LiC is to showcase the work of anybody and everybody writing from and about China and if that’s a bad thing I’ll take a taxi to Hell.
No don’t take a taxi to hell, that’s not a pleasent journey. But as I said to Michael you guys have choosen to go for the expat market. There is a HUGE diaspora market of over seas Chinese who are writing about China and what’s important to US on the net. HUGE numbers, don’t see any of you coverting them or saying what they care about.
March for Democracy in HK in Dec? No word. Anita muis’s death? no word. I mean ever gone and asked those people? I have about five pieces sitting on my hard drive from people who grew up in HK writing about their feelings on the city and how if affects them. I don’t know how i found them, they seem to be right where I am.
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No, I realize that, said Eshin without an R.
I wasn’t saying you do bitch about everything and anyone. Just a lighthearted comment and if taken the wrong way, I apologize.
I do agree with what you are saying to an extent. What sickens me often being here in HK is that people have this impression that British and American is oh-so-much better.
I question local people here in HK that throw themselves at the feet of these two cultures. I’m not saying that they aren’t valid or great, I’m just saying that culturally, Chinese and Hong Kong culture should equally be valid in their eyes. Studying Chinese history should be no less valid than studying British history.
On the obverse side, I do resent local people who claim that British (or Western, although I hate to use the term) culture isn’t as valid as Chinese. Britain has a nice culture and just because it hasn’t been in existance for 4000 years doesn’t mean that it isn’t any less valid.
Not claiming you do either, just making a point that I question why people in HK sometimes have this “gold lines the streets” attitudes to the UK and the US, and are sometimes disparaging to their own culture or their “host culture”.
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Because we have a colonial mindset due to our history. And that the West has for so long ruled the world and people pick it up with the hidden words unsaid but taught to us.
I used to think that way too until I went to the US, which is what this piece is all about. I was literally taught it was better than myself and who I am. But when I got to California, I had a few very important people in my life in terms of Professors who took the time (those I mentioned) who saw it in me, and saw that I didn’t have to think like that and taught me to think differently.
I agree with you.
What drives me crazy is when people say, “You’re so smart you know english” and I go, “You’re really smart because you read Chinese.” and they are amazed it’s the first time anyone told them that what they know is important.
But it’s not THEM it’s institutional. It’s what they are taught. We cannot be so harsh on those who did not have the oppotunities or the luck to have people come and provoke change.
It’s a struggle of post colonialism. Some of the best post-colonial theorists resides in Britain (for obvious reasons)
Look up “Mimicry of man” on the internet, it’s probably one of those important pieces I read that made me understand that phenomenon better.
And never worry that I take offense to you or apologize, we’ve shown over and over again we can disagree but still be on good terms. I apreciate that, and even though you are autocratic, I am happy to have you around 🙂
Yan
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I always got the impression that the pride of “4000 years of history” was in a retaliation against the perceived superiority of the West. But again, this all deals in generalizations: all westerners are rich, all Chinese culture is ancient, all this all that.
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I think you’re right tho. I think it is a backlash of “Will you stop shoving it down our throats? We have 4000 years of history.”
On the other hand it’s also used as a mechanism of refusal to change, “We’ve got 4000 years of history behind us. We can opress women, ignore human rights, and not care about indiviuality.”
Depends on how it’s used, when it’s used and said by whom. (As usual).
Yan
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What do you mean we aren’t all rich? Nobody sent me the damned memo. Nobody sends me anything down here.
Yeah, I guess it might be a backlash and it might be justified. But Black-Americans have been backlashing for the last fifty years or so. They are still banging on about the inequalities and stuff, which given the history some might say they are entitled to do. But how does HK move forward with its own identity?
I’d hate for the answer to that to be, well, “let’s steal the hip-hop thing and make sure we’re all rapping in Chinese”. (Not disparaging hip-hop but it was a black identity thing…until M&M came along).
Is it to be modern? Well, by Hong Kong standards, I’ve seen many writers and observers say things like, oh we have all the major Western brands here – Starbuck’s, LV, Mercedes, etc. Oh yes, let’s build another McD’s here. Yep, let’s not bother building our software company even though we have the talent. We’ll just leech of Microsoft.
All I am saying is that your post addresses the issue of what HK identity is and how it has been under appreciated. When will HK’ers stop bitching (well, they can continue to do so) but help to bring their own identity forward? Only then, when a HK identity emerges that is their own, can they stop really on the institutional, economic, and ideological props given (or taken) to them by other cultures. Institutional education may be guilty about making them think in a certain way about Britain and the Big Bad West. Social conformity makes them believe they are Chinese rather than Hong Kongese. When will something be done that can be described as “that’s so Hong Kong”.
And the ameoba swimming around in the shores of HK has over a billion years more culture than all of us, maybe we should listen to them? (Get it? Amoeba…culture…? Never mind).
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Yan-
I love the simple statement “I am not here to show off coz I am different from all the other people I grew up with because I live in CHINA. I LIVE IN CHINA BECAUSE IT’S MY HOME.”
This is something I struggle with–my rights of interpretation as a writer–and I do think we all are writers, not just pundits. But you know, in a way, the actual process of writing makes me reevaluate the general statement “I LIVE IN ___ BECAUSE IT’S MY HOME.” For me, I grew up in the US midwest, but have been living in a wide variety of places. Now, however, I consider Taiwan HOME. Part of that reason is because I write about it, and make it mine in the only way I can–as someone who knows nothing (I know less than you, and everyone else, by the way) and is willing only to expose that ignorance in the hopes of understanding a place, a time, a life that I experience. Am I just another expat who writes about “life in a foreign land”? God, I hope not. I try not to be, but when I think I about where is my home, I get kind of confused. I don’t know where my home is and if I have a right to say what I do. I certainly try not to adopt the tone that I have seen on a number of blogs in Asia, which mirrors exactly the problems that I see reflected in the US idea of itself and treatment of immigrants. In essence, I am trying to write someone (“us”?, “me”?) OUT of that mindset. I hope I do it successfully and critically. But your statement is a welcome reminder that I need to continue to be critical of my own situated place within a larger structure–whose home am I writng about?
Eshin-
As for those pesky critical reading skills, I can attest to a vibrant community of people who attempt to teach first year college students that all that is written is not true or even arguable. I taught in the US university system, and I spent all 10 weeks of a 10 week term teaching students that they couldn’t write a worthwhile paper if they didn’t bother to read critically. And if the resistances i met (from students, NOT from the instructors who were shaking with anger at the blindness of their students) was any indication, this was the first time that most of them had been introduced to the concept that all writing, including history, is interpretation. I mean, we even had a work of fiction that I reiterated was FICTION, that many took to be an encyclopedia entry, full of absolute truths.
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No time today. Otherwise I would write huge replies! Soon.
Yan
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Tiger – okay, well, I guess that maybe making broad generalizations might not be correct. And in some ways, it might also the students that are to blame (we’ve all been at the – “hell, I haven’t studied, what do I NEED to know” instead of critically reading). But in any case, where does the fault lie? Evidently there are students that enter that level of education with that mentality. It didn’t just fall out of a tree. Maybe the whole system has it’s flaws in that case – professors, students, systems.
Maybe it’s society.
Look at the uproar that the book the Da Vinci Code caused. While it did draw on historical facts (and presented complex issues as simple historical statements), people need to remember it’s fiction.
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im like the artcle hidden curriculum, pleas the sand for me there artcle “Hidden Curriculum”…
your fraind
sufian
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