| Blogs > swallowtsui > Hopping Swallow 鍋爐焰焰 |
|
China in My Eyes Forewords: I stayed two days in our China southern metropolis - Guangzhou, guidiing a visiting foreign friend's China tour . The first day we walked in old town (Xiguan, Qingping,Shifu...) aged, shabby and still exists persistingly; the 2nd day we toured new town, modern, brandnew and booming like a monster. Its 3000 years history and its 27 years opening and expansion co-exist, separately and inharmoniously. The 1st-time young visitor said, China's great, Chinese brave, they built Great Wall, they built... What's China in your eyes? Hereunder is China in Chinese eyes - worth a reading, to avoid shallow misunderstanding like that of the AC Milan Club big boss and many others' China in My Eyes Jiang Shuidong A few days ago, when I phoned my father-in-law, he was excited about my . My is 7 and a half by now. She is in grade two in primary school. What my father-in-law was excited about was her school performance. She is a very independent girl. She loves reading, dancing, scating, and loves music, too. Last week, the teacher wanted a student to be elected as a singing and dancing representative of the class, who can take the lead while they have some music classes and dancing classes and while they dance their morning exercise during the break time. Among the 56 students, there are two who can play the piano fairly well, including my . Because her school performances are always good, and because she has already danced before others for some time when they exercise, she won 54 of the 56 votes---the only two missed might be from the other candidate and from herself. Such a scene is not at all surprising to me, it is even similar to the days when I was a school boy. At that time, I was a country boy, or you can say, I grew up hicks with my peers. But since I work hard and had good school performances, I was always elected head of the class to help the teacher collect and hand out exercise books and help with cleaning the blackboard as well as the classroom. School performances helped me to go from a small mountain village to bigger village schools, helped me to go to the best middle school of our county, helped me to the best university of our province. Upon graduation, I refused the kindly offer of staying as a teacher, among several choices, I chose to go to another city. This was also because my school records were one of the best. After working over a dozen years at college as a lecturer, I gave up the chance of being promoted to associate professor, left the college, and became a government employee after taking entrance exams for public servants and by beat the other competitors. You can see, brothers and sisters, I am a very ordinary person in China. China in my eyes, is the China in the eyes of a very ordinary Chinese. One who comes from a poor family, one who experienced the different developing periods of the country, one who worked his way from the bottom of the society to middle class and one, who is a typical miniature of many Chinese boys and girls who worked their way out of the large population of 1.3 billion. My dear friend, the reason why I can thread my way out lies in our education system, lies in China’s Education Philosophy If we say Abraham Lincoln was an American hero, was an example of success of American philosophy, the Chinese also cherished an education philosophy which has deeply rooted in the culture from ancient times. Once an ancient poet put it this way: I was still a farmer in the morning, at sunset I was at the hall of the emperor. Until nowadays, we Chinese still believe that there are houses made of gold from volumes books, there are beauties hidden there, if you work hard, you may get both fame and power. Until today, we Chinese still believes that school education is the chief way of rising from a poor situation and the chief way of changing one’s life. Countless examples prove and strengthen their beliefs again and again. In America, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, if you strive hard and succeed, you will be an American hero. This is the American philosophy; In China, no matter how poor you are, no matter how remote you live, if you study hard, you will most probably go from villages to cities and finally change your life and the life of others----because the parents of other families will ask their to follow your suit. This is the education philosophy passed down from generation to generation in China. The Dream of Democracy of the Chinese To be honest, the dreams of democracy and ways of achieving it differs between China and the western world. In your country, your democracy emphasizes the individual. The right to the individual. In our country, our democracy pays much attention to the benefit of the whole, of the collective, of the majority , if not all, of the people. To be honest, our democracy, in the eyes of western politicians, is not democracy. They still think that our country is a tyranny，is a dictatorship. Just a few days ago, one premier of a member of the western big powers, told his countrymen that China once boiled babies as fertilizers for the crops. Maybe this sounds weird to every Chinese, but it is not weird to some people in the western world. In my eyes, there are still lots of people, both in America, and in other countries of the western world, they don’t know anything about China, they are afraid of China, and they want to do everything possible to be against China. Why it is so? Why China is not a friend? Why China is so frightening----boil babies as fertilizers?? Can we call this misunderstanding? Can we call this inadequate communication or mal-function of communication? Dear brothers and sisters, I can assure you that, the Chinese and the Mormon Church share a lot values in common: from the love and respect of family members and family concept; from the honor codes of being kind and modest and behave properly, from the traditional teachings of leading a moral life….we do share a lot in common. My friends, I become very curious now, how many of you, think China a threat? How many of you, think China an undemocratic country? You have reasons to be afraid of. The reason is that you know very little about China and the Chinese people, and lack of knowledge always brings people anxiety and fear. John Moana, Vice president of the personnel in PCC, was frightened nearly to death when he first stepped his feet on China’s land in the 1970’s. In his eyes, China was a country of demons, everybody might look like some evil spirit. To his surprise, he found that the Chinese were friendly and kind and it was just out of his imagination! Ever since then, he began to love this land and her people instead of being afraid of them. Maybe I am too far away from the subtopic of democracy. Ever since ancient times on, the Chinese had cherish a dream of dividing all the farm lands among all the population, and a dream of never paying taxes so that no one could exploit them. What do you think about this dream? Divide all the land so that everybody is equal and has a means to feed himself? What do you think about this dream, not paying taxes to any person, any organization, any government? Do you think it is possible? It is not only possible, it is no longer a dream now. It has become part of the reality in China. Democracy in China, in its own sense means public good, public benefit, public interest. We did not learn it from others, it is deep in the Chinese culture, deep in the dreams of ancient Chinese of everybody being equal. It is not easy to achieve this dream of democracy. We had some difficult times and made significant mistakes in our history. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, we divided the land to every household. People were excited to have this democracy and worked very happily for both the country and for their families. But not long after, the leaders wanted to experiment with a more ideal society, a utopia, a commune, where every member of the society can eat together, work together, share everything together. All the wealth of the society was divided among the members of a commune equally, no one could take a bit more, but there were always someone that was willing to give out their share to help others. This dream came to an end disastrously. During a natural famine that lasted over 3 years, it was said that millions of people died of hunger, and during the 10 years of Cultural revolution, lots of leaders was persecuted and some even died of persecution and of wrongs from nowhere. I was only two years old when my father, a former army officer and then a low rank government employee, an extremely honest man, suffered from the persecution and died. It was a dark page in our history. And the dream to democracy ended in a undemocratic way. The second phase of democracy began from the end of the 1970’s. Sino- American relations broke the ice when Nixon was the president. This period is known as the Reform and Open-door policy period which lasts until today. At the very beginning of this period, we divided the land of the country to each household. We divided not only the land, but also mountains and woods, lakes and reservoirs are rented to families and individuals for better economic profit, too. Before the reform and open-door policy, about 250,000,000 people had not enough to eat; about two dozen years later, about 98% of the population are fed and the number of utterly poor people who have not enough to eat has been reduced to 26,100,000, according to the data released by the Stat Council of China in 2005. Last year, the government had two important policies that will affect the majority of the people: one is getting rid of agricultural taxes, the other is eliminating the schooling fees for student from the countryside and poverty stricken families. We still have a long way to go in our dream for democracy. Because we know, no matter how perfect a dream is, it takes great efforts to realize it. Thanks for listening. |
|||
4/3/2006 5:05 pm |
费了点时,匆匆读完, 感觉是, 上当受骗. 于是想概括一下,作review: By title, the author wanted to show us what she thought about china (that is a big topic!). First one thirdth,she talked about the goal of a farmer's kids (certainly her common chinese =farmers because hehe, city kids are ignored) is to entering the college. The rest 2/3, she tried hard to explain the democracy of china with little knowledge.(brave!!!) Well, she seemly did not do much research because she translated a lot from the text books. i feel you are selling chinese value, which I would support. But please sell in an appropriate way. Linking chinese to Mormon i am afraid is not a good idea............ I am sure you probably said all the above to the foreigners during those two days. pretty good amount of material for two-day's job. I just have one request, 大姐,下回能不能写简单点, 直接点.xiexie
| ||
|
Thanks for reading PPtan. Sorry this is a quoted article fm sohu blog by Jiang Shuidong. I spent some time reading it and found there's something worth a reaing. Come on. Not all that mentioned in such a short (though it's lengthy for a blog) essay covers all Chinese values and all aspects of China today. Just read it for a bit info. and fun. The author has his perspective but it does not mean readers should accept all he says(sells). As for farmers' kids, dont forget we China had been a feudal country for over 2,000 years, dont forget our rural population still consists a great part of general population. In the long past history until now, many Chinese have realized their dreams - happy or unhappy- through education and study (as the author put it). The system has been there, the traditional value still exists too - by studying hard and being outstanding, people fight their way to better life, to make dreams true, especially for remote rural kids, though today the education system is more more for the riches. We have many renowned big names rising up fm famers' kids, if you are a Chinese, you may know a lot. Why you deny, you city kid? Check your family tree, I'm sure yr grandfather or grandgrandfather were from farms and tried hard to build a home for you in a city. And now, in China, undergoes urbanization, many farmer kids would entrer cities, in their many struggling ways. Today, ppl have more choices, not only by studying hard and getting good scores. So i'd like to ignore discussing democracy w/ you. Such a big&empty topic. Maybe you may object to what i said, I welcome diversity. 關於簡單, 應讓事情簡單, 而不是更簡單. 簡單是最難達到的. 否則, 這世界怎麼那樣複雜, 那麼多庸人自擾(我就是其一  .
| ||
4/3/2006 7:44 pm |
hehe, actually, I came here this time to delete my comments as I felt it might cause some misunderstanding. well, bingo, it did. at the beginning, i was gonna accept that you were not the author. but, after reading three paragraphs on the same point, i started to feel you were the author, at least same style. Well, i support your view on the greatness of farmer's kid. I am one of them. I would be interested to know why you think that I had the negative view towards farmers. Read it again, don't you think I was trying to be objective by pointing out that city kids was missing in the context? I am not one who is fond of argue. No. But I do feel, most of us, at least many chinese I met, tend to jump to the conclusion by feeling, not by logic and reasoning. if you go to my blog, u will see one good example, a story i copied. Here you are another one. You assumed that I had negative attitude to the farmers, which is not true. Do you agree?
| ||
4/12/2006 4:18 pm |
hi, Davinci, You got me. " I am sure you probably ..." has a problem. problem could be solved by removing "I am sure"  This happens when you try to pour things out in shortly no time. Thanks for pointing it out. However, this is not "jumping to the conclusion by feeling". I meant to guess, which is shown by "probably". A conclusion I don't think should go with "probably". Swallow thought I was born in a city and had a negative attitudes towards farmer kids. Both are not true. She had this feeling because I mentioned "city kids are missing in her context." Correct me if I am wrong. there is nothing in the context that would lead to the above two conclusions without the help of emotion. Again, she could have guessed, which would not have problem.
|
