Hello China: août 2011

Insomnia… So let’s talk a bit about these interesting Chinese people again!

Friday, I was talking about the last 5 French presidents in my class and somehow, I did not really think about what I was saying and asked them : “Next year, we are going to elect a new president! And you, when do you vote for a new one? Every 5 years/ 10 years?” ** silence**

… Blandine… We don’t vote you know…

And me, surprised “what?! Are you kidding me?” Just when I said that, I thought suddenly “ohlala Blandine, of course they don’t vote, change the topic, you are a teacher and it’s forbidden to talk about politics in class”.

But while I was thinking about this, they were already reacting (my students are really motivated and willing to discuss about everything J ) and told me “yes we don’t vote!! It’s a shame!! We never chose the president! Don’t you think it’s unfair..?”

I looked at them, smiled and replied “you know, I am just a teacher so obviously I don’t have any political opinion “ :p They laughed and understood what I couldn’t say.

We are not allowed to talk about politics in class, we could be fired for that if the Wuhan university finds out this fact (most part of our students come from this university). We cannot talk about religion either because Chinese people are generally atheist; indeed the government doesn’t want to have any rival in his people belief because it could provoke rebellion, so Christianism and other religions are tolerated in some part of the country but they are under control and the priests are almost all Chinese.. So no politics, no religion, no Tibet and Taiwan topic of course, neither the censorship topic, we have to pay attention to never criticize Chinese traditions, habits or government whenever we talk.

I often ask questions to my students about their History for example because they are very proud of it but I will never comment what they say, at least not in a bad way… It sounds hypocritical and in fact it is, it’s the only thing I don’t like about teaching here but still it exists…

Now I would like to introduce the election topic quickly, I couldn’t ask more to my students but fortunately I have 4 flat mates willing to explain me things J So Chinese people don’t vote directly for their president, this one is elected by “very good men” who had been elected in each cities by the ground, and this kind of elections happens every 5 years.

Here I give you more details I found, because they could barely explain more due to their lack of vocabulary. (thanks to Wikipedia)

“ The people's congress at each level of government - other than the village level in rural areas, which hold direct elections - elects candidates for executive positions at that level of government. While some cities and provinces have experimented with competitive elections, most positions are still filled through single-candidate approval votes.

There are two forms of single-candidate approval votes. For "elected" positions such as the President of the People's Republic of China, delegates to the National People's Congress may approve or disapprove the nomination, or may write in the name of another candidate. The single candidate is usually nominated by or with the approval of the Communist Party of China. In the 2008 election for the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, for example, president Hu Jintao, the only candidate, received a majority of approval votes. However, some electors chose to write in other names; the most popular write-in candidate was former premier Zhu Rongji. For "appointed" positions requiring the approval of the People's Congress, such as the premier and cabinet ministers, delegates may either approve or disapprove of the appointment. The single candidate is usually nominated by or with the approval of the Communist Party. Relevant laws provide that if the single candidate does not receive more than 50% approval, the position is left vacant until the next session of the People's Congress. This rarely happens in practice, and has never happened at the national level.”

Chinese courtesy

On Friday, after my class, some of my students invited me in a restaurant for lunch and to go to a karaoke afterwards. It was a very nice experience, they were really excited and proud, I really liked this moment shared with them, it was lovely J Well, the interesting part was the “bill moment”, basically when people have to pay. At first I wanted to pay but it was definitely out of question for them, I was invited so they were paying!! But in fact, just the guys paid!!! We were 6, 4 girls and 2 guys. The first guy paid the whole lunch on his own and the second one paid the karaoke, alone… Same for the taxis! They shared the bill only between the two guys.. It was really expensive, especially for a Chinese student (something like 50 euros each) and when I asked why the girls didn’t pay anything, they replied “it’s the first time we all go out together, so they pay”.

Indeed, when people go out for the first time with girls in China, it doesn’t matter how many guys are there, even if there is just one, he is going to pay everything, the whole day! Restaurant, taxi, karaoke, juices, clothes if they do shopping, everything! It’s their way to be gentlemen !

Same for the bag, Chinese&Korean guys always carry the bag of their girlfriend, even the handbag! So sometimes it’s very funny to see a guy, pretty masculine carrying a glittering pink bag on his shoulder while his girlfriend walks by his side!

Actually, Chinese and Korean guys (remember that I spent 6 weeks in South Korea J ) are the slaves of their girlfriends and not often in a nice way. It’s really interesting because the European cliché about Chinese girls is submission but I tell you, the ones who are limping here are definitely not the girls. Oh my..I wouldn’t like to be a Chinese or Korean guy at this generation, girls are very authoritative, yelling, boyfriends need to buy everything, to do things even before the girlfriend ask, and if they don’t they are “careless”, literally they are slaves here.. And I know, I am living with a Chinese couple ;) And you have loads of couple among our students; it’s interesting to see them. Actually this “authoritative” word often comes back in conversation with my students, the guys say so and the girls agree, proudly, this is funny ^^

It’s the same in rich families, because the man is working and brings back money but the one who manages everything is the wife, the family, the parents from both sides, the food, the cleaning etc. This is why, here the woman international day is so important, I already talked about that but really you should know, it’s important here, they really want to celebrate the women.

When Mao was ruling China, he decided that all men and women would have the same rights and that equality should exists, at work and about salary and it looks like it’s working in China. Yeah it can be surprising but I asked many people, my students (we talked about parity few days ago), my colleagues both French and Chinese, my flat mates, my friends and they all agree. So apparently parity really exists in China. It’s true that in Wuhan which is still a countryside city, I often saw women doing a “man job” and they get the same ridiculous salary. These women carry so heavy stuff, rocks, glasses, items, they are tanned like men, always being outside, honestly when you see them you stand back strongly on your own habits and you think about all the time you were complaining about that and that, well I never had to carry 20/30 kilogs the all-day under a hot weather (about 35°C). I will try to keep it in my mind in the future. So obviously, when you are poor it's not that nice to be under parity law. (can I say that? I am tired :) )

But there is something which is not nice at all here, it’s being old… I already told you, old people need their kids to take care of them either they have to work until they die… This is not a nice thing to see and surely not to experience… But when the children care about the parents, it’s not free. The grandparents stay with the grand children, they care about the baby when he cries at night, they woke up instead of the parents and they stay with them every time there is no school. They feed the grandchildren, clean the house, they carry on their back the babies and little kids when they are fed up to walk (sometimes it’s heart breaking to see a small small and tiny old woman carrying a big and strong 5 years old kid, bending under his weight) :/

I love this country and I enjoy my life here but I also know how lucky I am, they like their life because they don't know they could have a better one... You know, in the bus, there is a TV, always. And on this TV, there is just one channel and the only things you can watch are advertisements about the China greateness or review of Chinese victories at international competition! It's amazing to see that, even the old ones, it doesnt matter, the most important is to see Chinese people winning international competition, always. Swimming, ice skating, gymnastic, basketball, football (actually I didnt know it had happen even once :p ), etc. The propaganda here is...impressive. If it's not Chinese victories, it's documentaries about amazing wonders in China, breath taking landscapes, old History, great and ancient civilization and blah and blah...

To give you an example, here is the video of the "welcome to Beijing" song, when the last Olympic games were in China. You have the subtitles with the song, it's really..instructive ;)

Hello :)

Last week, I had a conversation class with my students and we talked about press! I wanted to make it easy so at first I started my class asking them “ok guys, who can tell me something about recent news in China?” and no kidding, this is what they replied to me.

1^st student: I don’t know if you heard about it but last month, 4 bridges in China fell down and we don’t know why. It was in 4 different cities, maybe the construction was not that good but they fell down while cars were passing on.

2^nd student : Last week in Wuhan, there had been a bus accident. You know we have some tall buses with two floors, the driver of one of these buses decided to take a shortcut but on his way there was a tunnel. He thought the high would be ok but the bus was too tall and it crashed against the tunnel. ==> Don't take this kind of bus anymore Blandine.

3^rd student : Two weeks ago, there was a huge crash between two trains in Hubei province! (The province where Wuhan is). They were going in the same direction but one of the trains was going slowly while the second one was very fast so finally the second one reached the back of the first one and they crashed… è Neither the trains Blandine.

Honestly at one point it started to be funny because they realized what they were saying, especially when I repeated “I asked for news, not especially BAD news but news in general, ok?”
Anyway I share the story with you because I think it says a lot about Chinese transport conditions here. You have so so so many accidents here, it’s crazy.

Afterwards I asked them to make a newspaper article in French and some students from both sexe made something about “7 qualities the perfect guy needs to have”. That was hilarious because first…man needs to have a lot of money. I loved that :D He needs to be handsome and to be nice to girls, to be talkative and funny, to do sport and to buy things to the girls. Well and the interesting part of the story was when I asked “and what are the qualities to make a perfect woman” and I found out that in China, you can take an extra class when you are at the university and this class teaches you how to be a good wife. You learn how to be feminine, how to behave in front of men, how to dress, how to cook, how to sew and blahblahblah. And it’s good for a woman when she says she studied this course.

Finally, I asked what is the most important thing that people seek in a man/ woman è “he needs to have a good job to feed the family and she needs to be able to care about the family, her children, her parents and his parents” è unanimous agreement and they are all between 19 and 28.

And after they remind me that in China, you have more guys than girls because of the only child law and because of that hundreds of thousands of Chinese people won’t be able to marry women. In poor countryside, many men come and buy wives from the girls' parents without asking the girls' permission, to marry and create a family is what the chinese people focus on. Oh and in China, homosexuality is really widespread among people, men should marry a woman because of their parents but as long as they don’t show off they can be both side and you have an incredible number of gay websites, gay bars and gay nightclubs in China, just in Wuhan there are a lot.

Ok and to conclude, I went to a “food district” in Wuhan, I don’t know how to explain in fact. It’s just a district where you have food everywhere and it’s really typical, I thought you might like to see it so I made some videos… Here they are, thanks to youtube which allows me to share them online! J Hope you will enjoy it, I did my best but I am definitely not a reporter J