One of my students, mid-40′s, manager, mom to an elementary aged son, this week during class:

“I like watching Desperate Housewives. I used to think Americans are all selfish and don’t care about others. But now I think they do care about others because the wives in Desperate Housewives always help each other.”

“Really? But you know the stuff on T.V. isn’t always real.”

“Of course, but I think Desperate Housewives is like the real America. Americans are like this.”

If you’ve ever wondered why grandparents follow their newborn grandchild through the hospital immediately after birth, and why most Chinese kids get picked up by parents or grandparents rather than walking home themselves, here’s one reason: rampant child trafficking. See China’s Child-Trafficking Epidemic

Jiang Xueqin, a “curriculum director at Shenzhen Middle School, China’s leading centre for progressive education reform”, blames the education system for Mainlanders’ lack of psychological and emotional development and their noted inability to get along:
“Everyone says that Chinese are terrible managers, and an ordinary Chinese office will have more political drama than Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Clinton household combined. Western managers know that Chinese have issues co-operating… co-operation is much harder to instill in Chinese because of a fundamental failing in China’s high schools.
[...]
“The result of all this unreasonable and unnecessary repression is that Chinese students are remarkably polite and well-behaved… They will matriculate at a top university, but they will lack sympathy and empathy, which will hinder them from developing and managing personal and professional relationships; they won’t understand trust and tolerance, only power and fear. They may rise to a top management position, but lacking in self-understanding and self-reflection they’ll curse and criticize their subordinates, making the workplace a cold stagnant repressive regime.

“Having skipped the tumultuous teenage years, Chinese are forever doomed to live as teenagers all their lives. Whereas Americans may be stubborn, moody, quick to anger, insecure, impetuous, condescending, extreme, and paranoid in their teenage years, Chinese may suffer from these psychological issues all their lives.” See The Trouble With Teens.

This piece argues for an updated and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between China’s unregistered groups of believers and the State: “In other words, The Heavenly Man or Randy Alcorn’s Safely Home must no longer shape our paradigm.”
Related:

• More official media coverage of house churches
• The China Daily covers… house churches in Beijing?
• China’s grinches play hardball
• Religious (Re)Awakening and Chinese Society

From: A Study of Sex Selective Abortion in China
“Today, almost 20% of the pregnancies that happen in China are manipulated using the simple method of ultrasound scan to determine gender, followed by abortion in case it is a female.
[...]
“This shows that sex selective abortion is not a minority problem practiced by a few rogue parents. It is a very common occurrence, with large parts of the population and the health sector taking part in it. In spite of the illegalization of ultrasound scans for sex detection in the 90s, it is obvious that a large part of the doctors are colluding with the public to ignore the law. In short, in most parts of China practicing sex selective abortion is extremely easy and extremely common. Practically anyone can do it.”

Related:

• October’s propaganda: anti-”gendercide”
• Largest gender gap seen in China’s youngest generation

In the wake of a series of copycat mass murders targeting children, Mainlanders are asking why. According to one writer, suicide — traditionally the ultimate Chinese protest against injustice — no longer makes an effective statement in Chinese society: “When suicide alone is no longer effective, the most horrific crime – mass killing of children — becomes the most effective option to some of those desperate enough to end their own lives. More than a manifestation of individual problems or even of social injustice, it is an act of war against China’s collective future. It is a sign that now is a time of extreme desperation, for all China’s great strides toward prosperity.” From Killing Children – An Act of War Against China’s Collective Future

Long, long ago in course called Spiritual Development of Children, our prof criticized The Giving Tree for promoting unhealthy male-female relationships. The tree is female, and in relationship to the male just gives and gives and gives until she/it has nothing left to give but a stump for the old man to sit on, while the male just takes and takes and takes until he’s too old to take anything else. I can see her point, but hopefully having this book on our bookshelf when we were kids hasn’t turned me into calloused selfish misogynist. ;) As a kid I can remember thinking that the tree was really nice, though I wasn’t sure what kind of relationship it was supposed to represent. Anyway, one of our students did a presentation on The Giving Tree this week for an English competition, and I thought her interpretation of the story was interesting. (You can watch the story, read by author Shel Silverstein, here or below.)

My student didn’t know that it was a well-known English children’s book. The story, unattributed and in various forms with various titles, is apparently floating around the Chinese internet (she used this version, called “Boy and Tree Story”). In her English version for the performance, the boy sells the tree’s apples to buy toys, chops off the branches to build a house, chops down the trunk to build a boat so he can go sailing and relax, and finally as an old man returns to sit on the stump, where he smiles with tears in his eyes. She acted out the story with some classmates and then gave this speech:

This is a story of everyone. The tree likes our parents. When we were young, we loved to play with mom and dad…… When we grown up, we left them, we just came to them when we need something or when we are in trouble. No matter what, parents will always be there and give everything they could to make you happy. You may think the boy is cruel to the tree but that how all of us are treating our parents. Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who are in fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

I thought it was interesting that she saw it as representing child-parent relationships. It makes sense, but as a kid growing up with this book I’d never thought of the story in that way. Coincidentally, a different student in an unrelated class told me about “gnawing the old” (啃老), which, according to her, refers to the way adult children still depend on their parents. The image on the right is one that came up when I googled the Chinese term.

(P.S. — I don’t understand why Chinese EFL students insist on including platitudes or vaguely profound inspirational sayings in everything, but that last line of her speech is very typical. So was playing Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up.”) YouTube video below:

This time from the Global Times: “House churches in China used to be barely covered by the media. Official sources have started giving them a higher profile … House churches, most of which are small in size, are popular everywhere in China. And governments at all levels have so many problems to focus on that they don’t want to make the issue of house churches their priority.”

See: “Reports of house churches may hint at policy change”

Also see: The China Daily covers… house churches in Beijing?

One of my male Chinese co-workers says her selections are a little feminine, but here’s a list of five books for understanding China from Xinran, author of The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices and China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation

What Chinese homework looks like after your Chinese teacher shows you what’s wrong with it: