My students are in the middle of a three-week project that I assigned them. At this point, they have written up a dialog, which they will be performing next week. Because they are international trade majors, I asked them to act out a lunch meeting wherein they would get a chance to work with business and trade vocabulary as well as general usage (i.e. ordering lunch) vocabulary. So one of the things I've been hearing a lot about is transportation costs.
Then, yesterday I went to buy train tickets for the upcoming national holiday. I discovered that the biggest problem with national holiday is that everyone is off. So by the time I (well, actually, one of my students) got to the ticket counter, there were no more sleeper tickets to Guilin (where I was hoping to meet an old friend from Beijing), there were no more sleeper tickets to Chengdu, none to Lanzhou, none to Hangzhou... Would I like to get a seat instead of a bed, asked Jiang Wei (my student). Well, lets see...all of those destinations are 16-20 or more hours away by train, so that doesn't really seem like a vacation to me.
We went to the travel agent next door to the train station to see about buying plane tickets instead. I knew they would be more expensive, but I didn't especially want to be stuck at Shengda for the week. And I figured they wouldn't be much more than two or three times as expensive as the train (which would have been about 300 RMB [about $35-40 US] to most of the destinations I mentioned). The quoted price to Guilin: 1680 RMB, more that $200 US; to Chengdu 1680 RMB. One way. To round-trip, plus add in the cost of a hotel and food for the week, and I would have been looking at an entire month's salary. Highway robbery. Part of the problem is that, at least from the air, Zhengzhou is a relative backwater (although it is a major train hub) and I would have to fly through Beijing or Shanghai or Guangzhou.
Backwater, highway robbery, these are terms from a previous age of travel. But the fact that they are still in heavy use indicates something about the state of the world; transportation costs are still a limiting factor. Furthermore, it seems that transporting goods or information or even money is still a major source of wealth. If you look at the richest people in the world today, most of them attained their wealth through what amounts to either a bridge tax or to highway robbery. That is to say that they made money by charging people to use some type of transportation, or they took it from people who were on the road. Bill Gates essentially bought up railroad land (intellectual property in the digital world) when it was cheap and made a fortune on it when the track was laid. Many other rich Westerners made their money in investments; they bought a boat and then charged people to ferry across the river. The alternative paradigm in more overt kleptocracies is to just rob the people, whether in the form of oppressive taxes or just taking their stuff.
The Nazi ideology (if they can truly be said to have had one) made a distinction between this sort of parasitic capitalism (which they attributed to the Jews) and productive capitalism (which they attributed to good Germans). This is clearly a false dichotomy, not to mention racial essentialism: without roads and boats and Internet Explorer, other businesses that actually produce things would not function. At the same time, it is bothersome to notice the enormous amount of money that goes to people who did nothing more than own land in a good location or have money to invest or have an army to tax the people. It seems to me that the farmers and craftsmen or musicians or writers aught to see the lions share of the profits. Instead it is the investors in and owners of the companies that make French fries and sell jeans and CDs and books who take the most money home. I tend to find this system of ownership problematic; the system is primarily at fault, not the owners and investors (although I still have major league issues with unethical owners and irresponsible investors; what you do with your money votes much more powerfully than anything you do in a polling booth).
The problem, a problem encountered by a million armchair revolutionaries before me, is that you can't fight a system. The Nazi's ideology was simplistic and reductive, but it provided a concrete enemy; a scapegoat certainly, but nevertheless concrete. There is no such simple solution if you consider the problem in its greater nuances. The Chinese Communists solution was a bit closer to reality: they targeted the actual parasitic capitalists, as well as the Japanese imperialists, rather than those perceived to be parasitic based on some racial characteristics. The problem that emerged was two-fold: despite the egalitarianism of the WWII-era Red Army, a new sort of class divisions emerged; and once the true class enemies had been dealt with; there was no longer an easy target for the revolution.
I'm still uncertain how to resolve this, which I suppose puts me in some pretty good company since thousands of years of thought have done little to change this. In the days of the Roman Empire, Northern and Western Europe was undeveloped because it wasn't on the Mediterranean. River transport was an order of magnitude more expensive than sea transport; land transport was two orders of magnitude more expensive. Hence the term backwater: any place off the major sea routes, even those on river systems, was backwards compared to the open-water ports. This is to a great extent still true. In America, even the major rail hubs and river ports are backwards compared to the coastal cities. In China, development is clustered, as it has been for two-hundred years (since the West forcibly reopened China to ocean trade), along the coast. Beijing is a bit inland, but all the other major development areas are on the ocean: Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen... The other major exceptions are Wuhan and Chongqing, which are on the Yangzi (a very navigable river, especially compared to the Huang He). Even though Zhengzhou is the biggest rail hub in Central China (it has the biggest rail station in all of China), it is a backwater compared to these port cities. Hence, I am at the mercy of the bridge trolls and robber barons. And I am going to Xi'an for vacation, not because there were any sleeper beds left (there weren't), but because it is only six hours away, so I can deal with being stuck in a seat.
Sunday, September 25
Sunday, September 18
Big Brother: A Narrative in 3 Parts (with analysis to follow)
Part One: Marching
The first years have arrived and they march. Every morning I wake up to the sounds of them marching, and they march at night when I go to the basketball courts. They march in every avaiable open space - the afformentioned basketball courts, the volleyball courts, the soccer field, the amphitheatre, the open square in front of the library. Accompanying the marching, or leading the marching, depending on your perspective, is the rhythmic sounding of a whistle and yelling of "yi er san si" ("one two three four").
Interesting is the fact that they didn't bother to issue the students fatigues. At first, this makes them appear to be highly irregular groups wearing pink and white and yellow shirts and blue jeans and sneakers. This impression is pretty quick to fade.
Part Two: Xiao Di (Little Brother)
Students and teachers have a variety of reactions when they first see my tattoo. Some of them are turned off; others are impressed, not least of all that I had enough awareness of Chinese culture to know who Laozi is, let alone to put him on my arm; others barely seem to notice. Among the everyday working-class Chinese, however, there is one universal reaction - a mixture of disapproval and fear. This is not entirely without reason.
In China, especially outside of the major population centers of the Southern coast, Tattoos are the sole providence of two groups: the so-called "heishi hui" (literally "black societies," the mob), and outsiders. Both of these are gruops of whom everyday Chinese workers have reason to be, at the very least, wary. Usually, I will quickly explain that in America, tattoos are increasingly common among everyday people. This explanation will receive mutterring acceptance. A few days ago, however, things occurred a little differently.
I was on my way back from buying groceries, from which I was planning to attempt to cook a Western-style meal for some of my students. I stopped off at a restaurant to get some lamb soup. However, I didn't know the third character in the name ("yangrou xian mian" as it turned out). I tried to order the dish anyway, omitting this part. When the waiter replied that he didn't understand my language (a common response that I recieve when people don't bother to listen to my fairly decent Chinese), I started to yell at him that I was speaking Chinese.
This drew the attention of two formidible-looking characters who were also in the process of ordering soup. They praised my Chinese (the other common response), and yelled at the waiter to bring me some of what I wanted. He immidiately became defferential and brought me my soup. I ended up sitting at the head of a table, with these two characters on either side of me. I noticed that I was drawing even more stares than usual. Then, I noticed that one of the men had a rather substantial tattoo on his formarm. And when the two of them left, I don't recall that they paid.
I did pay on my way out, and made a joke ("5 yuan or 5 dollars?") to dispell some of the tension. Somewhat amused by this whole experiance, I told some of my friends the story of how the restaurant workers briefly thought that I was not only a gangster, but a gang boss. This is how my friend Maple began insisting that I call her "xiao di" ("little brother," but also a term gangsters use for kids who run them errands), while she in turn began to call me "da ge" ("big brother," a corresponding term of respect), or even "lao da" ("boss").
Part Three: Marching Redux
All the freshman are gathered in the amphitheater. Their units take turns marching back and forth and executing turns, yells and salutes in unison. The rest of the units sit around the venue giving thunderous applause to each repitition of the same manuevers. This ceremony lasts for several hours.
Analysis
I cannot help but be somewhat impressed by the order that the military cadres manage to inflict upon the freshman in such a short period of time. It almost makes me wonder if the military training is something the government requires the universities to inflict on their students, or whether the military does it at the request of the schools. As I have pointed out in previous posts, the use of mass control tactics is universal at Shengda (and I would hazard to say, within greater China). With this many students, the need for group control is extreme. It's no wonder that all the couples descend on the benches by the lake at the same time, even though this time is not the subject of a rule (so far as I know).
Almost every aspect of life in China these days is regulated according to a set of rules adjusted to control group behavior, and not without reason, the population is simply too big to do otherwise. As Ye Dong, a teacher and worker in the FAO and the most independant thinker I have encountered in China (probably due to his master's degree education in England), pointed out to me, China would simply not work if it encouraged a higher degree of individualism at the expense of rule-following. I responded that it is easier to get people to respect the rules if the rules are fewer in number and each one is of higher importance. This last comment, I have come to realize, is subtley influenced by my upbringing in a culture that encourages free thinking.
See the thing is, I have been raised in a singularly friendly environment to free thought, including exploration of the limits of both the rules of nature and those of government. Not only does the Western world in general place a higher emphasis on individualism, but the family and school environments I grew up in tended to explain the reasons for rules, rather than just insisting that they be followed. On the one hand, this is a particularly good way of encouraging people to be good at thinking (and writing) for themselves. On the other hand, it carries with it the implication that if a rule is not grounded in the proper reasoning, it is not worth following. This is a dangerous implication to impart to a population the size of China's.
Rules in China exist beyond the immidiate dictates of justice; they exist for the preservation of order. This is actually, I believe, a better standard for a system of law, at least as far as criminal (as opposed to civil) law is concerned. In fact, I have often thought that certain laws in America should be done away with because they exist to impose morality, rather than to impose order. Paradoxically, it appears to me that in America, basing rules on the need for order would result in the need for fewer of them, whereas in China, basing rules on the normative morality would result in fewer.
This seems to be the result of a number of factors, but the most striking differences between America and China in this respect can be summarized basically by a difference in population (and population density) and a difference in core morality. In that China has a much bigger and denser population than America, it's need for order is substantially greater and penetrates into areas that we would consider unacceptable. Conversely (and bear in mind, this latter is based on a very topical examination of habits and a rhetorical rather than strictly factual use of history), Americans seem to have a stronger sense of what constitutes proper behavior in public than do their Chinese counterparts. This can clearly be seen in the way that Chinese people (especially Chinese men) think nothing of throwing garbage anywhere, spitting, yelling at waiters, yelling at each other, being publicly drunk and so on, whereas most Americans feel the need to be relatively quiet in restaurants, polite to their waiters and to look for trash cans and keep their drunk friends under control. I posit that this is in part due to the Chinese cultural acceptance (necessity?) of being dismissive to any inferiors and sycophantic to any superiors developed in response to the particular needs of dealing with the everyday running of business in the context of a distant but demanding imperial government. Counterpose this against American neo-Puritanism (if you think that Puritinism died with the witches, consider that the presence of a secret and difficult-to-unlock sex scene in an already rediculously violent video game not recommended for children [GTA: San Andreas]caused as big an uproar [led by Hilary Clinton, potentially the first female president; sex revolution nothing!] as the developments revealing that we were lied to about the Iraq war).
Regardless of the reasoning, Americans have attempted, with varying degrees of sucess, to impose order by getting it internalized in the form of guilt. This has the advantage of being potentially more proactive, people will think about what they are doing in terms of whether it is the right thing to do. On the other hand, when it doesn't work, people cause problems. The Chinese appear to have attempted to impose order by getting it internalized in the form of fear. Everyone knows that they can be replaced if they are caught doing something against the rules. Rules are made numerous so that basically eveyone has something to fear. And they have realized something that Stalin didn't: it doesn't matter if Big Brother is always watching, all that matters is that you don't know when he is; and it doesn't matter that purges are massive, all that matters is that everyone knows of someone who has been affected. When one of my students accused me of breaking school rules by talking politics, I learned what they already know: anyone could be the cause of your downfall. And in China, someone is always watching.
So when I look at the first years marching, I don't really see anything heterogeneous about them at all. The Chinese have recently realized something else that is central to the particular American genius of mass mobilization. See, in America, we don't care about everyone marching, but we do care about everyone buying, we don't care about everyone singing, but we do care about no-one rioting. So we have given the broad population a way of expressing their individuality through what they buy and we have given them enough access to the market that they can't really complain. Is the real American Army the one fighting in Iraq, or the one shopping at King of Prussia? They certainly both wear uniforms. The next time you are out shopping, look at groups of people of similar social classes, and see if they aren't all wearing the same thing (barring small differences in color; often even the brand is the same!). Individualism means choosing your cellphone's ringtone, order means not caring all that much about Iraq or Abu Grahib or Katerina. So all these Chinese freshman have adopted the style of uniform of the modern American military.
And was I talking before about order by fear vs. order by guilt? Because now that I think about it, I'm not so sure that there is that much difference between the two. And I'm not so sure that America doesn't use fear and Chinese doesn't use guilt. Same carrot, same stick; maybe it just takes some time abroad for a black sheep to realize how much of an ass it is.
The first years have arrived and they march. Every morning I wake up to the sounds of them marching, and they march at night when I go to the basketball courts. They march in every avaiable open space - the afformentioned basketball courts, the volleyball courts, the soccer field, the amphitheatre, the open square in front of the library. Accompanying the marching, or leading the marching, depending on your perspective, is the rhythmic sounding of a whistle and yelling of "yi er san si" ("one two three four").
Interesting is the fact that they didn't bother to issue the students fatigues. At first, this makes them appear to be highly irregular groups wearing pink and white and yellow shirts and blue jeans and sneakers. This impression is pretty quick to fade.
Part Two: Xiao Di (Little Brother)
Students and teachers have a variety of reactions when they first see my tattoo. Some of them are turned off; others are impressed, not least of all that I had enough awareness of Chinese culture to know who Laozi is, let alone to put him on my arm; others barely seem to notice. Among the everyday working-class Chinese, however, there is one universal reaction - a mixture of disapproval and fear. This is not entirely without reason.
In China, especially outside of the major population centers of the Southern coast, Tattoos are the sole providence of two groups: the so-called "heishi hui" (literally "black societies," the mob), and outsiders. Both of these are gruops of whom everyday Chinese workers have reason to be, at the very least, wary. Usually, I will quickly explain that in America, tattoos are increasingly common among everyday people. This explanation will receive mutterring acceptance. A few days ago, however, things occurred a little differently.
I was on my way back from buying groceries, from which I was planning to attempt to cook a Western-style meal for some of my students. I stopped off at a restaurant to get some lamb soup. However, I didn't know the third character in the name ("yangrou xian mian" as it turned out). I tried to order the dish anyway, omitting this part. When the waiter replied that he didn't understand my language (a common response that I recieve when people don't bother to listen to my fairly decent Chinese), I started to yell at him that I was speaking Chinese.
This drew the attention of two formidible-looking characters who were also in the process of ordering soup. They praised my Chinese (the other common response), and yelled at the waiter to bring me some of what I wanted. He immidiately became defferential and brought me my soup. I ended up sitting at the head of a table, with these two characters on either side of me. I noticed that I was drawing even more stares than usual. Then, I noticed that one of the men had a rather substantial tattoo on his formarm. And when the two of them left, I don't recall that they paid.
I did pay on my way out, and made a joke ("5 yuan or 5 dollars?") to dispell some of the tension. Somewhat amused by this whole experiance, I told some of my friends the story of how the restaurant workers briefly thought that I was not only a gangster, but a gang boss. This is how my friend Maple began insisting that I call her "xiao di" ("little brother," but also a term gangsters use for kids who run them errands), while she in turn began to call me "da ge" ("big brother," a corresponding term of respect), or even "lao da" ("boss").
Part Three: Marching Redux
All the freshman are gathered in the amphitheater. Their units take turns marching back and forth and executing turns, yells and salutes in unison. The rest of the units sit around the venue giving thunderous applause to each repitition of the same manuevers. This ceremony lasts for several hours.
Analysis
I cannot help but be somewhat impressed by the order that the military cadres manage to inflict upon the freshman in such a short period of time. It almost makes me wonder if the military training is something the government requires the universities to inflict on their students, or whether the military does it at the request of the schools. As I have pointed out in previous posts, the use of mass control tactics is universal at Shengda (and I would hazard to say, within greater China). With this many students, the need for group control is extreme. It's no wonder that all the couples descend on the benches by the lake at the same time, even though this time is not the subject of a rule (so far as I know).
Almost every aspect of life in China these days is regulated according to a set of rules adjusted to control group behavior, and not without reason, the population is simply too big to do otherwise. As Ye Dong, a teacher and worker in the FAO and the most independant thinker I have encountered in China (probably due to his master's degree education in England), pointed out to me, China would simply not work if it encouraged a higher degree of individualism at the expense of rule-following. I responded that it is easier to get people to respect the rules if the rules are fewer in number and each one is of higher importance. This last comment, I have come to realize, is subtley influenced by my upbringing in a culture that encourages free thinking.
See the thing is, I have been raised in a singularly friendly environment to free thought, including exploration of the limits of both the rules of nature and those of government. Not only does the Western world in general place a higher emphasis on individualism, but the family and school environments I grew up in tended to explain the reasons for rules, rather than just insisting that they be followed. On the one hand, this is a particularly good way of encouraging people to be good at thinking (and writing) for themselves. On the other hand, it carries with it the implication that if a rule is not grounded in the proper reasoning, it is not worth following. This is a dangerous implication to impart to a population the size of China's.
Rules in China exist beyond the immidiate dictates of justice; they exist for the preservation of order. This is actually, I believe, a better standard for a system of law, at least as far as criminal (as opposed to civil) law is concerned. In fact, I have often thought that certain laws in America should be done away with because they exist to impose morality, rather than to impose order. Paradoxically, it appears to me that in America, basing rules on the need for order would result in the need for fewer of them, whereas in China, basing rules on the normative morality would result in fewer.
This seems to be the result of a number of factors, but the most striking differences between America and China in this respect can be summarized basically by a difference in population (and population density) and a difference in core morality. In that China has a much bigger and denser population than America, it's need for order is substantially greater and penetrates into areas that we would consider unacceptable. Conversely (and bear in mind, this latter is based on a very topical examination of habits and a rhetorical rather than strictly factual use of history), Americans seem to have a stronger sense of what constitutes proper behavior in public than do their Chinese counterparts. This can clearly be seen in the way that Chinese people (especially Chinese men) think nothing of throwing garbage anywhere, spitting, yelling at waiters, yelling at each other, being publicly drunk and so on, whereas most Americans feel the need to be relatively quiet in restaurants, polite to their waiters and to look for trash cans and keep their drunk friends under control. I posit that this is in part due to the Chinese cultural acceptance (necessity?) of being dismissive to any inferiors and sycophantic to any superiors developed in response to the particular needs of dealing with the everyday running of business in the context of a distant but demanding imperial government. Counterpose this against American neo-Puritanism (if you think that Puritinism died with the witches, consider that the presence of a secret and difficult-to-unlock sex scene in an already rediculously violent video game not recommended for children [GTA: San Andreas]caused as big an uproar [led by Hilary Clinton, potentially the first female president; sex revolution nothing!] as the developments revealing that we were lied to about the Iraq war).
Regardless of the reasoning, Americans have attempted, with varying degrees of sucess, to impose order by getting it internalized in the form of guilt. This has the advantage of being potentially more proactive, people will think about what they are doing in terms of whether it is the right thing to do. On the other hand, when it doesn't work, people cause problems. The Chinese appear to have attempted to impose order by getting it internalized in the form of fear. Everyone knows that they can be replaced if they are caught doing something against the rules. Rules are made numerous so that basically eveyone has something to fear. And they have realized something that Stalin didn't: it doesn't matter if Big Brother is always watching, all that matters is that you don't know when he is; and it doesn't matter that purges are massive, all that matters is that everyone knows of someone who has been affected. When one of my students accused me of breaking school rules by talking politics, I learned what they already know: anyone could be the cause of your downfall. And in China, someone is always watching.
So when I look at the first years marching, I don't really see anything heterogeneous about them at all. The Chinese have recently realized something else that is central to the particular American genius of mass mobilization. See, in America, we don't care about everyone marching, but we do care about everyone buying, we don't care about everyone singing, but we do care about no-one rioting. So we have given the broad population a way of expressing their individuality through what they buy and we have given them enough access to the market that they can't really complain. Is the real American Army the one fighting in Iraq, or the one shopping at King of Prussia? They certainly both wear uniforms. The next time you are out shopping, look at groups of people of similar social classes, and see if they aren't all wearing the same thing (barring small differences in color; often even the brand is the same!). Individualism means choosing your cellphone's ringtone, order means not caring all that much about Iraq or Abu Grahib or Katerina. So all these Chinese freshman have adopted the style of uniform of the modern American military.
And was I talking before about order by fear vs. order by guilt? Because now that I think about it, I'm not so sure that there is that much difference between the two. And I'm not so sure that America doesn't use fear and Chinese doesn't use guilt. Same carrot, same stick; maybe it just takes some time abroad for a black sheep to realize how much of an ass it is.
Sunday, September 11
Crowd Control
Appologies, first of all, for the enormous delay. I am once again writing from an internet cafe because I still have not gotten a working connection in my appartment (I've been a little too busy and a little to lazy to deal with that). Therefore, the pictures I took to go along with this will have to wait.
Shengda has a student body of about 15,000 crammed into a campus about twice the size of Swarthmore. This creates an enormous problem of control that must be very familiar to the Chinese, given the enormous population of pretty much the entire Eastern Seaboard of the country. I knew that it would be like this, coming here, but it is nevertheless amazing to see the vast groups in person. And it is even more amazing to see the ways in which they are controlled.
Every morning at 6 o'clock, the students are woken up by a broadcast on the PA. They are essentially kicked out of their dorms, at which point they procede en masse to the cafeterias. They have a chance to go back to their dorms to wash up afterword, untill they are locked out untill about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Then, they get an hour and a half for a nap before being kicked out of the dorms again until after dinner. Finally, they must all be in by 10:30, when the gates are locked, with concequenses for any students caught outside. They are only allowed off campus on the weekends or with special permissions or if they are with a teacher.
The rules do not end here, however. Students are not allowed to bring any books into the library. The reason stated is that this makes it clear if they are trying to steal a library book. The actual reason is that the library is way too small for all the students to study in it's relative comfort. It is about the size of the main Swarthmore library (McCabe). Keep in mind that Swarthmore also has a separate Science library almost as big as McCabe, as well as smaller libraries in the music building, the women's resource center, the black cultural center, the educational materials center, and probably some other centers that I never went to. For 1/10th the population of Shengda! Instead, the students have to study in their classrooms.
The library is undersized largely (pardon the pun) because it was designed with a smaller student body in mind. Remember that Shengda is a for-profit college, so it is constantly expanding its enrollment in an attempt to make more money. The library is not the only resource that is squeezed. The cafeterias are completely mad during lunch-time. In fact, this has reached the point where the students are not allowed to use one of the cafeterias during certain periods so that the teachers and staff are assured the possibility of getting a seat. The impact of all of these rules is enormous.
First of all, the students all seem to internalize the rules to an astounding degree. The main road through campus is a mob scene starting about 1/2 hour before classes in the morning, for most of lunch hour, and starting about 1/2 hour before classes in the evening. It is almost completely deserted during the rest of the day. This is despite the fact that some of the student are not in class during this time. In the evening at about 9 o'clock, it is a mob scene again, althogh I'm not really sure why. The massing of students at lunch time and such is not that surprising. The same pattern can be seen at Swarthmore. What is strange is that there is almost never a medium amount of students hanging out, walking leasurely along; the streets are either packed or almost deserted. And you will never find students waiting to have a slightly later lunch. Even though the cafeterias tend to clear out a bit around 12:30, they go from packed to empty; there are no students coming in half an hour late to avoid the worst of the crowds. When I decided to hold my English corner at 1 o'clock, the students were mystified. 1 o'clock is their nap time, and it was totally foreign to consider doing anything else then.
The student mob plays a major role in the order of the community in LongHu Village as well. Because the students are not allowed out during the week, business on the nearby streets is a moderate trickle. There are maybe six or eight street vendors out and small groups of locals in the conveniance stores and restaurants. Starting Friday afternoon, the students descend onto the streets, and a croud of small businesses take up residence to meet their demand. Six street vendors becomes thirty. They sell sandwiches and wraps of various types, skewers of lamb, chicken, eggs and vegetables, skewers of fruit, skewers of fruit dipped in syrup, peanuts, sunflower seeds, fried noodles, fried rice, cold noodles, cold rice noodles, stinky tofu... Four fruit carts becomes twenty, selling apples, pears, plums, little apple-like fruit, kiwis, grapes, oranges, melon... Other carts appear selling tea, crackers (by the half-kilo), house plants, goldfish. Other vendors set up blankets on the ground, selling big thermoses, water bottles, toilet paper, bowls, towels, shoes, trinkets, magazines, socks, basins for doing laundry, soap, basketball jerseys (this last rack, in fact, operated by a student, a friend of mine from the basketball courts). Suddenly, busses cannot pass, people dismount their bicycles, etc. The population of the street probably increases one-hundred-fold for these three days.
The community is institutionalized to an enormous degree that can be a little depressing in class. Individualism and creativity are not traditionally celebrated virtues in China. Given the mob-like behaviour of the students around campus, I can hardly be surprised that they don't like to speak out when they know something, let alone when they don't. They are unhappy to write about anything remotely political that requires thought as opposed to regurgitation. Threre are, of course, exceptions, but on the whole, Shengda is doing an amazing job preparing these mindless drones of students to be mindless drones of businessmen.
Shengda has a student body of about 15,000 crammed into a campus about twice the size of Swarthmore. This creates an enormous problem of control that must be very familiar to the Chinese, given the enormous population of pretty much the entire Eastern Seaboard of the country. I knew that it would be like this, coming here, but it is nevertheless amazing to see the vast groups in person. And it is even more amazing to see the ways in which they are controlled.
Every morning at 6 o'clock, the students are woken up by a broadcast on the PA. They are essentially kicked out of their dorms, at which point they procede en masse to the cafeterias. They have a chance to go back to their dorms to wash up afterword, untill they are locked out untill about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Then, they get an hour and a half for a nap before being kicked out of the dorms again until after dinner. Finally, they must all be in by 10:30, when the gates are locked, with concequenses for any students caught outside. They are only allowed off campus on the weekends or with special permissions or if they are with a teacher.
The rules do not end here, however. Students are not allowed to bring any books into the library. The reason stated is that this makes it clear if they are trying to steal a library book. The actual reason is that the library is way too small for all the students to study in it's relative comfort. It is about the size of the main Swarthmore library (McCabe). Keep in mind that Swarthmore also has a separate Science library almost as big as McCabe, as well as smaller libraries in the music building, the women's resource center, the black cultural center, the educational materials center, and probably some other centers that I never went to. For 1/10th the population of Shengda! Instead, the students have to study in their classrooms.
The library is undersized largely (pardon the pun) because it was designed with a smaller student body in mind. Remember that Shengda is a for-profit college, so it is constantly expanding its enrollment in an attempt to make more money. The library is not the only resource that is squeezed. The cafeterias are completely mad during lunch-time. In fact, this has reached the point where the students are not allowed to use one of the cafeterias during certain periods so that the teachers and staff are assured the possibility of getting a seat. The impact of all of these rules is enormous.
First of all, the students all seem to internalize the rules to an astounding degree. The main road through campus is a mob scene starting about 1/2 hour before classes in the morning, for most of lunch hour, and starting about 1/2 hour before classes in the evening. It is almost completely deserted during the rest of the day. This is despite the fact that some of the student are not in class during this time. In the evening at about 9 o'clock, it is a mob scene again, althogh I'm not really sure why. The massing of students at lunch time and such is not that surprising. The same pattern can be seen at Swarthmore. What is strange is that there is almost never a medium amount of students hanging out, walking leasurely along; the streets are either packed or almost deserted. And you will never find students waiting to have a slightly later lunch. Even though the cafeterias tend to clear out a bit around 12:30, they go from packed to empty; there are no students coming in half an hour late to avoid the worst of the crowds. When I decided to hold my English corner at 1 o'clock, the students were mystified. 1 o'clock is their nap time, and it was totally foreign to consider doing anything else then.
The student mob plays a major role in the order of the community in LongHu Village as well. Because the students are not allowed out during the week, business on the nearby streets is a moderate trickle. There are maybe six or eight street vendors out and small groups of locals in the conveniance stores and restaurants. Starting Friday afternoon, the students descend onto the streets, and a croud of small businesses take up residence to meet their demand. Six street vendors becomes thirty. They sell sandwiches and wraps of various types, skewers of lamb, chicken, eggs and vegetables, skewers of fruit, skewers of fruit dipped in syrup, peanuts, sunflower seeds, fried noodles, fried rice, cold noodles, cold rice noodles, stinky tofu... Four fruit carts becomes twenty, selling apples, pears, plums, little apple-like fruit, kiwis, grapes, oranges, melon... Other carts appear selling tea, crackers (by the half-kilo), house plants, goldfish. Other vendors set up blankets on the ground, selling big thermoses, water bottles, toilet paper, bowls, towels, shoes, trinkets, magazines, socks, basins for doing laundry, soap, basketball jerseys (this last rack, in fact, operated by a student, a friend of mine from the basketball courts). Suddenly, busses cannot pass, people dismount their bicycles, etc. The population of the street probably increases one-hundred-fold for these three days.
The community is institutionalized to an enormous degree that can be a little depressing in class. Individualism and creativity are not traditionally celebrated virtues in China. Given the mob-like behaviour of the students around campus, I can hardly be surprised that they don't like to speak out when they know something, let alone when they don't. They are unhappy to write about anything remotely political that requires thought as opposed to regurgitation. Threre are, of course, exceptions, but on the whole, Shengda is doing an amazing job preparing these mindless drones of students to be mindless drones of businessmen.
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