The Pros and Cons of China: A Celebrity Guest Blog

FROM THE LOVELY SHAYNA HUTCHINS: Guest Blogger for the day!
Well, I'm not a celebrity, but this is a guest blog. I finally made it to China! After 14 and 1/2 miserable hours on a plane next to a very large, very creepy man, we finally hit solid ground. I was greeted by four Chinese men who boarded the plane in full hazmat suits. Goggles, face masks, hoods, and shiny white plastic- they looked like aliens from outer space. The strange men went from seat to seat to seat while we were still on the runway- "close your eyes, move your bangs they said," while they shot a laser gun into my forehead. Think I'm kidding? The Chinese take the outbreak of the Swine Flu very seriously. They were taking each of our temperatures and individually recording them to make sure we were healthy enough to enter the country. An hour later, they determined we were all safe and were allowed to leave the plane. So make that 15 and 1/2 miserable hours on the plane.

Con: Aliens in Hazmat Suits

After that warm welcome, I stumbled out from customs in a jet-lagged, laser-beam induced stupor to be greeted by the one and only Justin Taylor Arrington. Handsome, sweaty, and slightly Chinese looking, he met me with a huge hug and a set of small panda stuffed animals. I couldn't have been happier. I was finally back where I belonged. Before I left for the airport in Buffalo, my sister asked me if I would have my cell phone in China. "No," I replied, "it wont work there." "But how will you find Justin?" she asked. "Love," I said. "Love will bring us together." And it did.

Let the adventure begin.

Pro: Good looking men I am crazy in love with.

My first night in Shanghai. Not so sure about this country yet, but it is growing on me.
Pro: Delicious dinner the first night on the 56th floor with an amazing view of the city and even more amazing company from Justin and the infamous Tim Cronin.
Con: Slight motion-sickness from the plane and looking down 79 floors from our hotel room to the atrium made my stomach churn.

My new best friend. Shanghai is hosting the World's 2010 Expo and the advertisements are everywhere. The mascot? A blue, toothpaste looking version of Gumbi. Justin can't stand him, but we seem to be getting along fine.
Pro: I made at least one new friend in China.
Con: Justin hates him.

Until Next Time,
Shayna

Worker Bee

Today on my lunch break I hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi with my camera and told him just to cruise. With no particular destination we rolled through parts of the city that have, so far, remained hidden to me.

--Perhaps time's definition of coal is the Diamond.--

Kahlil Gibran

In the shadow of the coal fired plant that powers my neighborhood there is a small flower garden. The ladies of the community tend to it with care. Further down the patch of dirt stands a few rows wheat. There is nothing to be done of the blight of the smokestacks, or the smog, or the high walls topped with barbed wire, but there is a little patch of dirt. Despite the building's towering ugliness, neighbors stand around the little patch of dirt with it's few stubborn bulbs and glow over "their beautiful neighborhood". It is a small gesture in defiance of larger forces. I am amazed at their resilience. It seems either hopeless or very sweet, depending on the day.

--The Beekeper and His Wife--

The beekeeper and his wife travel the countryside during growing season with their hives. They collect a fee from farmers who rely on the service of pollination performed by the unwitting contributors. During the off season they sell honey from their roadside home, easily collapsible for next season's travels.

--Evolve--

The evolution of the motorized vehicle in one frame: utility, affordability, luxury.

---Farmer Joe and Lou---

The closest vegetable stand to my apartment is a mobile one. The farmer, who I've come to call Joe, stands with his associate, Lou (lu 驴) the Donkey, waiting for customers.

--Too Cool to Crash--

The Chinese in my town simply don't wear helmets. It won't matter if it is someone riding a motorcycle or an old man taking his grandson home on a bicycle, they won't be wearing a helmet. Sadly, this is reflective of the rest of the country. The Chinese boast a mere 3% of the world's cars but a striking 25% of traffic fatalities. This is partly due to the number of bikers on the road sans head gear. But the scarf is cool lady, I'll give you that much.

--Safety--

The only guys I see wearing helmets are the motorcycle taxi drivers. They're all brave dudes and somehow stay alive making a living on the Chinese roads

--Chinese Food--

“I’ve been slaving away over a gigantic wok and shovel all day…” The school cook prepares lunch for the students and staff daily. This wok and a tub-sized rice steamer feed about 150 people. Today Ms. Lu prepared zucchini and egg stir-fry with steamed buns. Tomorrow? Roast beef sandwiches? Maybe? No?

--Problem Solved--

Shayna, I told you we’d be visiting the pandas but it turns out we don’t have to travel all the way to Sichuan province to do it. The school already has one in the sand box!

--Ba Shi Ba--

Domo and I had a little party to celebrate our 88th day in China. The double eight is an especially auspicious number to the Chinese. They think 8 八 (ba) sounds like lucky 发 (fa). I think an opportunity to drink bourbon is fine by me. This Jim Beam brought to you by himself: Tim "Conan the Barbarian" Cronin

A Word on Chinese Words

Warning:
To those escapists out there who rely on my blog for stories about drooling Chinese kids and pictures of my traveling buddy Domo, THE FOLLOWING POST IS NOT FOR YOU. This post is EXTREMELY BORING and if read, may dissuade you from ever returning to the blog. I welcome all escapists and would like you to visit, often, but I feel obligated to shield you from my more academic posts. So, please PROCEED WITH CAUTION. If you begin to flash back to a college lecture shut down your computer immediately.

Sincerely,
The Management

What's In a Name

Have you ever wondered how to write your name in Chinese? This is actually a more complicated question than you might think. To figure it out let's take a quick and dirty course in linguistics, shall we? Who's exited?! Second, we'll look at what Chinese actually is and what it isn't. Finally we'll get around to that name question.

Once upon a time, two cave-folks sat around a fire enjoying dinner together. Suddenly the cave man said to the cave woman:

"Grunt," asking for the salt-shaker.

"Humph," was the lovely cave woman's reply, folding her arms.

Eureka! Unbeknownst to the two participants in this extraordinary moment of human evolution, the cave-couple had just unwittingly agreed on words for "gimme" and "fat chance". Imagine this conversation occurring around camp fires all across the globe but each time different words and gestures are agreed upon and thus begins the development distinct language groups among human tribes.

The spoken word is the natural primary human communication tool but it has some limitations. One day our friend the cave woman discovered this as she told her cave husband what they needed from the store. "Grunt!" He exclaimed, "I can't remember all that!" She took a stick from the fire and on a turtle shell she drew pictures of eggs, milk, bread, toilet paper, laundry detergent and pickles. This resourceful couple had just devised the first writing system for a human language. The field of linguistics helps us organize and understand just these developments in human communication.

Linguistics is the study of natural language as opposed to formal language (such as computer code or mathatmatics) or constructed language (such as Esparanto, Klingon, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish). In linguistics understanding language involves:

* Phonetics: What we say -- speaking and pronunciation
* Phonology: What we hear -- listening and comprehension
* Morphology: How we build words -- etymology and definition
* Syntax: How we build sentences --grammar
* Semantics: How we use sentences -- tone
* Pragmatics: "It's not what you say, but how you say it."-- Body language and context
* Discourse Analysis: Speeches and books-- literature

From those first fireside communications until today, human language still has the same basic building block: the morpheme or syllable. With this common trait in mind languages are either described as analytic (all words are one syllable) or synthetic (multiple syllables can be joined to make a word). English is a synthetic language. Chinese on the other hand is analytic; all words are one syllable.

You made it! Congratulations! You just passed Language 101. That was the painful part. Now you know more than all of your friends about linguistics. Here comes part two in my explanation of how to write your name in Chinese, which, if you don't already, will make you regret asking the innocent question in the first place.

"What is my name in Chinese?"

"Well, grasshopper, what is Chinese?"

"It's the language Chinese people speak."

"Which one?"

When you say Chinese you are actually referring to a language grouping of about 7 to 13 different dialects. And because they are mutually unintelligible, they are actually each distinct languages and not really dialects at all. Mandarin is the language from Beijing that has been adopted as the national language taught in schools and used by government and media. Cantonese is only spoken in Hong Kong and southern areas of China and is totally unintelligible to a Mandarin speaker (in the spoken form).

Do you know Wu? No, not the guy you copied off of in calculus. You don't know Wu?! Don't worry. There are 80 million people near Shanghai province that know Wu; a language spoken by more people than French, Italian or Korean and I just found out it existed. This is the magnitude of a country of 1.3 billion. Wu, the 9th most widely spoken language on earth and it doesn't even show up on the radar of an IR major. They need Tibet's publicist.

So, what do these 7-13 languages have in common to be lumped together as Chinese?
1. They are all spoken within The People's Republic of China
2. They are all analytic (don't you wish you'd paid attention in Language 101?)
3. They are all tonal (this means inflection can make the same sound a different word)
4. They share a common writing system

The fun (did he say fun?) thing about linguistics is that it finds the commonalities among seemingly distinct languages. Human language writing systems today fall neatly into only a few basic categories, neatly rolled into about 5 basic systems.

The Alphabetic System uses letters to represent each sound in English, Finnish, or Greek for example (Alpha-Beta? Alphabetic? Get it?). The Alphabetic system is actually comparatively new, developed first by Egyptian scribes trying to organize the spoken languages of their slaves around 2000 b.c.. Most of today's alphabets are descended from this original script.

The Syllabic System, employed by Japanese and some Native American Languages, assigns a symbol to each possible syllable, replacing the letter as the basic unit of writing. If English used a syllabic system, there would have to be a different letter for every possible syllable. With roughly 8,000 syllables, this is not feasible. Japanese employs fewer than 100 different syllables and each one gets a corresponding "letter". Japanese is generally accepted as the hardest of all languages to learn, employing three distinct writing systems that all intermingle within a Japanese sentence.

Words that sound the same but have different meanings are called Homophones, like wright, right, write and rite. Chinese has only 1,700 syllable building blocks compared to the 8,000 in English. So this means A LOT of homophones. When I speak Chinese, the way I inflect my voice helps clarify the meaning. When I say "ma" to a Chinese friend, depending on my tone I could be saying the word for 马 horse, 妈 mother, 麻 tingly, or 码 stack. I can say with great authority that "horse" and "mother" are not words you want to mix up.

A more basic form of written language (developed by our friends the cave couple to make their prehistoric grocery list) is the Logographic System. It was the earliest form of writing, appearing first around 6600 b.c. as pictographs representing things and ideas. In this case, simplicity of the system doesn’t translate into ease of acquisition. In fact, Logographs aren't really much of a system at all: each word or idea has a corresponding picture or symbol much like the English symbols #, $, & or %. Now imagine each individual word on this blog page as its own unique symbol like the few I just listed. I use about 800 different words in this post. That is 800 pictographs.

To learn Chinese you must memorize the shape of the character, its meaning, and its pronunciation, one by one. Get started; to be literate takes about 5000 characters, but there are upwards of 20,000 used commonly in literature. It is no mistake that this hugely inefficient way of writing a language is no longer used by anyone aside from the Chinese.

The system makes for nice tattoos and pretty calligraphy but has caused real headaches for a government fighting illiteracy. It is just incredibly difficult and time intensive to acquire Chinese literacy.

Finally this brings us to Chinese words as names. Most English names have an intrinsic meaning (for example Justin is derived from justice) but for the most part, a name is either a familial memorial or simply aesthetic. Most Chinese names, on the other hand are chosen for their intrinsic meaning. This is intended to ascribe some characteristic on the recipient not unlike Native American names such as Pocohantas which means "she is playful".

Names in China are often shaped around references to success, happiness, strength, intelligence, prosperity, beauty or wealth. So when choosing a name for yourself in Chinese, you should give some consideration to what message you want to send. Intended or not, the name you choose will be judged as a message of your sense of self by those Chinese who hear it. A friend of mine still gets a snicker or two when he introduces himself to Chinese colleagues as Wu Tang, which, if pronounced imprecisely means “sugar free yogurt”.

If, for example, let’s say you want convert, oh I don’t know, how about "Shayna" (a lovely name which is a derivation of beautiful in Yiddish). To give Shayna a Chinese name you have two options.

Option 1: Pick Chinese words that sound roughly similar to the syllables in her name. So using this method you could call Shayna 谁Shei 捺Na. This means roughly: "who is pushing?" Not so good. In this case the method mimics the sound of the original name but it doesn't sound so hot in Chinese.

Option 2: The method I used to pick my Chinese name was to decide on a value or idea I wish to convey and then chose corresponding words. My Chinese name is Li Songtao. The family name Li comes first. It is a common family name like Jones or Smith. It is a strong name and a good conversation starter because I meet a lot of Li's.

The given name, Songtao is a literary reference that means essentially "the sight and sound of wind sweeping across pines like a wave". Painters and writers have been known to adopt Songtao as a pen name. The name reminded me of peaceful days as a kid in the smoky mountains of the Carolinas or stringing lights in the top of a pine tree behind my dad's house before Christmas. Every time I say my name, I hear the wind, and I see the trees and I think about home.

Li Song Tao

If you are reading this you are brave, loyal and a scholar. Thanks for the support. Writing is time consuming, draining, and exposing. Your comments and visits make this an incredibly meaningful part of my day. Now I think you've earned a few posts of Domo photos and drooling kid stories.

Senior Superlatives

Luckily for the less ruggedly handsome and charming of the two Arrington boys, my younger sibling has one saving grace: the golden foot. Well, that and unmatched determination, dedication, impeccable personal style, unique artistic creativity, an ability to empathize with those of different stripes and to elevate those around him and a communicative breviloquence such that when he talks you really listen. He is on his own adventure, pursuing the kind of dream that most dare not share for fear of the sting of failure or the shame of never trying. He is taking his love of Fútbol to the next level, vying for a place on the roster of a European club.

There is great risk with the scrutiny that comes with pursuing a dream. My brother has accepted this risk of returning home short of the summit. In sport, unlike more private pursuits, success and failure can be a matter of moments or millimeters and in both cases the result is a public spectacle. The crowd is unconcerned with the sweat and toil that has brought a player to the field but cares only of the final result as he walks off at the closing whistle. Matthew has already garnered loyal fans who have witnessed his journey from Stoddert Youth Soccer secret weapon, to Walt Whitman High School captain, to a college player unwilling to bend his natural sense of the game to the American bastardization of the sport, even at the expense of playing time or placating coaches.

Throughout his development he continuously refined his technique over hours at a local field, shooting on goal. Sometimes I'd join him as a stand-in goalie in front of the net. If you've ever stood in front of a loaded cannon and watched as the ball is fired in your direction then you can understand what it's like to defend against a shot from Matthew. I suffered the painful realization that the greater my contribution to his skill, the greater the threat to my own personal safety. Luckily for me, I contributed little.

I thought I had it bad until the day he decided that he would try for the lacrosse team, as an attacking forward. I didn't know what that meant but I didn't like the sound of it. Any guesses who took the honor of the goalie position when it was time to practice his new hobby? His first few shots were wildly off target, or dribbled in at my feet. I started to feel a little better about my lack of any real protective gear except an ill fitting helmet and a youth sized catchers chest pad. A moment of underestimation was all the opportunity he needed. In a flash, he wound up and found his rhythm. Now while I don't remember the exact moment of impact of the hard rubber projectile, I do remember lying on the ground moments later gasping for air, clutching both of my now shattered hopes of fathering children. My brother was delighted at the speed and accuracy of his shot and collapsed to the ground howling with the joy that can only come from inflicting pain to an older sibling.

He ended up passing on even trying out for the team. "I'd better stick with soccer," he decided one day after a painful shoulder injury suffered during a pick up game. Couldn't we have skipped the lacrosse phase!? Few things bring a grin to his face faster than recounting that "lacrosse-ball-incident".

But through all the scrimmages, sprints, surgeries and a collection of soccer shoes that would make Salvatore Ferragamo very proud, and slightly envious, Matthew has remained focused on his goal of making the beautiful game a life's work. With the prospect of my brother leaving for Europe I wondered when I would see him again as I packed the last of my things for my flight to China. As I set to work settling into my new job in China I heard stories of the rumors of tryouts everywhere from Portugal to England to France to Spain. While I put together an English consulting side job to earn some extra cash Matthew trained, twice daily, waiting for the call that I thought might never come. Finally a date was set and contacts aligned for the trip. It was on. The destination: Italia.

Giving rise to some of the greats like Alessandro Del Piero, Dino Zoff, Paolo Rossi, Paolo Maldini, Fabio Cannavaro and the current King, Francesco Totti, Italian soccer has developed a tactical style of play that suits patient teams and unselfish play. The globalization of the sport has yielded some blending of styles among European and even South American teams but the European system remains far more refined than any American teams playing today. Matthew has followed European league play closely for years and would now travel to some of the same stadiums that hosted its heroes. I followed the events of the trip by phone as my brother made his way to Italy.

Wrapped up in the thoroughly unglamorous but rewarding job of student/teacher in my sleepy Chinese city I was excited by images of the Alps, Italian food, and surging throngs of dedicated fans. I went about my daily routine with a renewed sense of pride knowing that the Arrington boys were both out in the world doing what they loved. I started to direct my lessons towards football vocabulary, trying to guide my students to become better fans. This remains an uphill battle in a country that has embraced basketball with the national zeal that only a centrally administered communist country can muster. Kobi Bryant remains a wildly more popular name than David Beckham, but my classes were doing their small part to turn the tide.

Teaching class on a warm spring day last week, windows open to let a breeze filter in along with the golden afternoon sunshine, I was interrupted by The Boss looking unusually flustered. I've seen this look far too many times to be concerned so I smiled and excused myself from the class. I walked behind him as he scurried down the stairs, ushering me outside. I followed him to the school van waiting for an explanation for the interruption. Finally as we climbed in he briefed me.

"We need you for promotion. Talk with some kids and talk with them on our school. Yes?" He asked in his standard request for confirmation that I understood. "Yes," I replied. "No problem." I didn't care to ask for any clarification and just went with the flow, sure that more direction would follow.

The ride was leisurely and slow as we bounced along towards an outlying section of town with only low lying homes and shops. We drove down craggy side streets through a sleepy neighborhood of tiny red mud houses. I held my hand out to cup the warm air passing outside my open window and reached for the soft new leaves budding on cherry trees and weeping willows on the sidewalk cascading out over the street.

I bobbed my head to a reassuringly tranquil James Taylor track coming through my ipod, thinking about my brother in a different foreign place, on a different path, but with a shared sense of determination and pride. In my daydream I didn't notice that the van came to a stop inside the gates of a large school yard. I stepped out and could see a few kids peering out their classroom windows. I waved only to see their faces flash back into the building.

As I approached the front door of the 5 story school I heard a kind of rumbling like a train passing in the distance. The sound came through over the music in my head phones so I put them away as I entered the front hallway. There was a small advance party of student greeters waiting for me hand in hand in a line of about 8, each with a smart looking red sash. It was a cute gesture. They all seemed to be suppressing the the tip-toe dance of a kid that really needs to pee. "Poor kids," I thought, "They've probably been waiting for me and couldn't leave for a bathroom break." I shot them a wide grin and offered an exaggerated "Hello!" Almost at once one particularly urgent looking girl, about 13, broke into a full bounce, jumping in place and surging against the grip of the other greeters in the chain. Then another broke rank and rushed towards me with a hand extended. "Ha-loooo!" she exclaimed with the endearing tone of someone who had clearly not spoken with a foreigner.

They led me deeper in through the halls of the school. The rumbling seemed to be growing in intensity. We approached a set of double doors with a few characters I didn't recognize written across the front. The source of the sound was clearly behind this gate. The doors seemed to swell and creak under the pressure of the roar, now shrill like a steam whistle. I passed through into a blindingly loud auditorium packed with about 700 kids from 4th through 7th grade. It was too late to turn back at this point and the boss had already slipped away. The kids had me in their sights and they rose to their feet and roared with approval even though I had done nothing but stand before them with my white face, curiously green eyes, and brown hair. Apparently this was enough. They were enthralled. I stepped up onto the small stage at the front of the long auditorium.

Concerned

The demonstration, despite my complete surprise at the sheer number of students, went pretty well. I did my best to play games that could accommodate the group while maintaining some semblance of order. The kids were energized and animated about learning a few new words. I waved goodbye from the stage and slipped out those same double doors to screams and cheers even louder than before. Two teachers closed the doors and gave me a thumbs up as if to say "You made it. They didn't eat you. We've got it from here."

"Wow!" I thought. "That was surreal." I walked back towards the front door of the school and replaced my headphones for the ride home. Behind me I began to hear the rumbling again, but it was coming my way. I turned and listened as it grew louder. Suddenly a tidal wave of students burst around the corner and enveloped me. The levee had broken the group screamed and waved and pulled at my coat trying to reach in to shake my hand.

"我认出你! 在电视!" I know you! I know you! From TV! One of them yelled as he craned to pass me a notebook. I took the notebook confused at the parting gift. Then he threw a pen to me. "请你 !" Please! He said. "That's a strange gift," I thought.

"谢谢!" Thank you! I said inaudibly over the din of the melee, with a confused turn of the head, unsure of the meaning of the gesture. Then another notebook came towards me, and a pen, then another, soon the four foot tall sea of black hair and smiling faces turned into a swaying flutter of paper and pens. A teacher motioned towards me, waving a pen in her hand. "他们要你的签名!" They want your name! She yelled.

You Don't Know Me

"I'm Justin! My name is Justin everyone! Now let Justin go outside, please." I said and turned to try to leave but the crowd was swelling as more kids flanked around and started pouring in from the front door. My exit was cut off.

"They want your name!" she repeated, this time in English. Finally it dawned on me. "他们觉得我闻名" These kids think I'm somebody famous! I yelled back to the teacher, barely audible now.

"You are famous!" She replied, laughing. I thought of my brother, the one toiling away on practice fields and here was I, the humble student teacher now being accosted for a signature by a crazed group of tweens. I decide my only hope is to sign my way out. I start writing furiously as fast as I can, for as many kids as I can. This only encourages the ones rushing into the entryway to push more frantically to get closer. As I'm writing my arm feels stuck as I try to reach for the next notebook to sign.

"我爱你! 我爱你!" I love you! I love you! There is now a shorter boy with glasses attached to my arm, apparently not interested in an autograph. He seems to have decided on keeping my arm as a souvenir. "我爱你." OK, that's nice, let go now.

A girl in the front row of the mob takes his idea and latches onto my leg mid thigh. "WOW, OK that's enough, time to leave." I start motioning, more emphatically now, to the teachers. They are trying to channel the torrent away from me, but the Army Corps in the 9th Ward was more successful than these teachers. I find that a swimming motion helps me work closer toward safety. Finally I emerge. I can see The Boss standing by the van at the gate. It is now a strait shot to freedom. I take out a packet of promotional materials and attempt a diversionary tactic employed by low flying fighter aircraft called flaring. Launching the packet high into the air I create a fluttering Jaspers English School mushroom cloud. I take off for the van. I make it inside and it takes us another 20 minutes to get the kids to stop climbing the vehicle before we could evac.

Back at Whitman High School I was voted "Most Likely to be a Backstreet Boy". They left out the part where it was "in China". I'd better leave the fame thing to Matthew. It's all yours brother. I'll take my quiet teachers life back on the other side of town.

I turn to The Boss, stunned.

"Uhm, that went well." Is all he said. Then added, "We will have another next week. Yes?"

Getaway

The Abroadcast

This is a preview of the forthcoming series: "The Abroadcast". I will put some of my thoughts and experiences into short documentary form for the attention deficient among us. The pilot episode is titled "Evil". I woke up this morning to a very strange sound coming through my window. This is my search for answers... As it turns out there is an entire industry of dedicated engineers working to accomplish the goal of driving all foreigners from China. They have come pretty close with this latest invention. I won't let them win.

Love

On my walk home from school I see many things I don't understand. Most words on signs remain mysterious characters. Conversations still sound like blips of meaning like a radio station just out of reach. A word here and a phrase there are all that come through. But some things transcend language.

Most days I see an elderly couple; a stoic, dignified looking man with a terrible limp and a cheerful, sunny, hopelessly small woman by his side. Every day they walk together, the man bracing himself on his bicycle and the tiny woman pushing and encouraging him.

Every few steps he stops, mutters a curse down to his feet long past being fit for much, and rests a moment. And everytime she pats his back, smiling, and becons him to take another few steps. Sometimes they have vegetables in their basket, bought from the outdoor market downtown, but most days it is empty and they seem simply to be out for a stroll.

Mentally, I'm on a hampster wheel trying to keep up with a new language, lifestyle and countless daily lessons. There remains so much that I don't understand. With newspapers, journals, books and now this blog I cram words together to try to extrude something meaningful from the complexity. But then I see this old couple. For a few minutes the gears in my head stop churning and I can simply share in their daily ritual. Two people, in love, walking side by side. This I understand.

Spread Some Word

The boss called me in for a briefing last week. "Jaspers School is business," he said in his broken English. "We need many student for success. We should spread some word." Without even a moment to quip silently about what that word might be he cut in and issued directions. I was told to prepare a demonstration with three of my best students. The Jaspers School was going on a promotional tour.

I thought about what I was tasked to accomplish, what I had to work with, and how I could organize it, quickly. I was given a week. Even my best students are just 9 years old and have only a few years of classroom English. This limited my options. Even if we exhibited all of the phrases they had learned so far, it would make for a short, not terribly compelling demonstration. So to compensate I worked up a system that I'll call "Key Phrase Flagging". I'm sure someone smarter than I already wrote the book on this, but I ain't read it. Basically, it involves embedding key phrases that the kids recognize into a longer, more fluent, English dialogue. The kids don't have to know the filler. While I converse with the audience the kids just listen for their flagged phrases and respond accordingly.

I really liked that the boss gave me a goal and the room to figure it out my own way. I was proud of my students and they seemed to really enjoy performing. After a few days of practice, I felt ready to present our little demonstration. Through a connection at a local public school, we were scheduled to address a group of parents assembled for a "back to school night".

My boss invited the public school Principal and some staff out for a banquet style dinner to consummate the partnership with dumplings and liquor. All restaurants here have small private dining rooms in the back. This is the setting for most Chinese business dealing, so demand is pretty high for back rooms and banquet meals. Our dinner was intended to develop Guanxi 关系 (gwahn-shee). This is Chinese for establishing a relationship or having a connection. Guanxi can be thought of as a series of favors between friends, partners or associates. It is often confused with corruption 腐败 (Fubai or literally to be defeated by decay). Corruption certainly requires guanxi but guanxi is not necessarily corrupt.

The scale of corruption here is staggering. It is the result of a lack of political accountability and a deep inter-reliance between local government and industry to achieve development goals. The powerful relationship squeezes out room for social justice. A muddled and often contradictory Chinese justice system does little to interject. There are relationships that exist here that just wouldn't pass any level of scrutiny in the west. If it wasn't hurting so many people, some of it would be just damned funny.

I recently welcomed a local official to the school. He is the local health inspector and was interested in a tour of the school kitchen. After a quick chat with the principal he left with a smile. The next day a truck arrived, a delivery of new kitchen equipment, a sink , a stove, a steam washer. Who jumps down from the passenger seat to direct the unloading of the equipment? None other than the health inspector. He smiled again as he handed over a certificate of cleanliness. "I thought he was a health inspector?" I asked later. "Yes. And he owns the kitchen supply store. You won't get a certificate without buying his stuff."

So back at the business dinner, on a chilly March night, I was ushered up to one of the private dining rooms where schmoozing and toasting can happen behind closed doors. At the table sat the principal, about 10 administrators from both the public school and ours. One female administrator had brought her son along for the chance to talk to the American.

"I think you can have some special attention for him. Mom can make so many help for us, be nice for him, yes?" Was my last piece of advice from the boss as I entered the small dining room. "Piece of cake." All the guests rose to greet us as we entered. The boy, about 10, sat in his school's ill fitting track-suit style uniform, unconcerned with the formalities of our arrival. He was tucking into a plate of fried dough balls as though he was in a race for his life. I mean this kid was committed. I didn't see him come up for air. And, not to be unkind, but if the phrase, you are what you eat ever applied, it was here. And as proud mom administrator motioned for me to meet her son I was graced with a quick glance up from his plate of dough balls. "Ni hao," he grunted through a mouth full, one dough ball, making a last dash for freedom, sailing from his open mouth and landing back on to his plate. "Delighted."

I exchanged formalities with the group and sat down. The Chinese "business dinner" involves a few key things. First, business is not the first order of business. The first question is what kind of liquor are we drinking? Food and drink are communal, so the decision is communal. It might be considered rude for someone to actually decide on a type of alcohol because it would presume that you are important enough relative to the other guests to make such a decision. After a few minutes of platitudes they looked to me to decide for them.

I am relieved because this means that I can guide the group away from the traditional Chinese drink of choice: Baijiou (buy-joe). It is a clear spirit between 80-120 proof distilled from sorghum or wheat or barley or hay or kerosene, whatever is conveniently available. Forgive my unrefined western palate but the taste falls somewhere between vodka from a plastic jug and anisce flavored diesel. I decide that the men will drink beer and the ladies red wine. Chinese red wine is almost undrinkable. I notice they cut it with a can of Sprite, the Chinese version of a wine cooler.

The night inevitably devolved into toast after toast after toast. Through the fog I tried to keep my mission in mind: chat with kid, chat with kid. I thought, "Oh, well I'll just wait for him to stop eating." This plan had a major flaw.

A waitress attempted to clear the table of some dishes and was struck with a chopstick launched by the boy in a fit over her affront to his unsatiated appetite. His mother giggled. As the rest of the party sat back, satisfied, the boy began belching, clearing room for the next course. His mother giggled. I asked the boy a few questions and his only response was to cock an eyebrow between bites and share with the table a generous fart. The mother giggled. Mission: Impossible.

Asian kids are smart, well behaved, shy and good at math, right? And hey, while we're at it, black kids deal drugs and Mexican kids are illegal. Right. It can be argued that kids with a background in character based language systems (like Chinese) learned by rote memorization have some advantages in the development of math skills. But beyond that, aside from being pretty insulting, this view of Asian kids, partly reinforced by TV, is misguided.

About the only fair generalization of Chinese children is that this is a country of mostly "only children". The one child policy was an expedient attempt to limit the population growth at a time when famine and unemployment were real dangers. Parents who have more than one child pay heavy fines. The population growth rate has slowed considerably compared to India or the USA. So parents who only get one shot at parenting and their extended families put a lot of attention into kids. "She is like a diamond in our hand," beamed one mother after school.


The combined hopes, dreams, and ambitions of Chinese families are being shouldered by this generation of only children. As a result, children seem to range from being spoiled rotten to accepting tremendous pressure to achieve financial success. Speaking with one couple helped me understand what children mean to the Chinese. The two are farmers on the outskirts of town and carry their produce to market every weekend. In addition to sacks of carrots and pumpkins, the woman now carries her newborn daughter. I asked them about their daughter and what they hoped for her. "She is our future. We are just peasants. We couldn't go to school so we have no future. But she can be the future for us." Parents generally rely on their children for care in old age. It is a complicated family dynamic that is playing out countless times all over China. So, of course, Chinese kids are not all well behaved, hard working whiz kids. But they aren't all spoiled "little kings" either.


Aside from my failed attempt to communicate with the little charmer at the restaurant, the dinner went pretty well. The principal announced that we were welcome to address the parents at his assembly. So the next night I joined my student presenters at the public school. We played games in the "Green Room" (an adjoining classroom) waiting to go on stage. The act of public speaking is compounded when it involves using a foreign language. But the parents were charitable, smiled, and applauded. My kids shined and performed brilliantly. I'm proud of them. They got to be the stars. Their parents, also in attendance beamed, cried and took photographs. In the end the message is about their success. I wish them all the best. They have a lot riding on them.