Epilogue

It’s been a few months since I got back from China. Throughout the summer, I’ve been able to use journal notes, memory, and photographs to catch up on my blog, which sadly I was not able to update regularly do to the difficulty of accessing BlogSpot in China (the Great Firewall) and problems with my own computer. I’ve decided to add this entry to reflect on how I’ve readjusted to life in America and how what I learned in Harbin has influenced me since I came home.

Right away the Chinese I’d learned came in handy. After a three hour layover in Tokyo, I was on a plane back to America when one of the passengers came down sick. The airplane staff asked if anyone was bilingual in English and Chinese. I came forward and translated for the sick passenger who said that she was having heart palpitations (we had just come through some awful turbulence) and needed to lie down. They brought her to an empty seat in business class. Once she had recovered, the flight attendants came over and thanked me for translating. They even gave me a bottle of wine!

Back in New York, I found work as a tour guide on the double decker tour buses. Right away I used my Chinese skills to communicate with the bus drivers, 75% of which were Chinese. Since the job depended heavily on cooperation with the bus drivers, being able to communicate with them more easily was really helpful. For instance, if I wanted the bus to go slower so I could point out sights better or speed up in an area with fewer sights to talk about, I was able to let the driver know this. I also learned some Cantonese from the bus drivers. Mostly, I used my Mandarin to have discussions with the bus drivers while hitching rides back to Brooklyn late at night or heading to certain locations on what were called “deadheads” or empty buses sent to stops which were especially crowded at certain times of day. I learned a lot about life from those conversations, be it the bus drivers’ view on women and love, or their view on the owner of the company. We chatted about life in America, cheap tourists, tourists who tipped generously, and the weather. Later, I also did two all day private tours in Chinese, one for a family from Taiwan and another for a group of travelers from Beijing.

Since March 2010, I’ve volunteered on and off with two organizations in New York City, the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, and the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops. The organizations both operate as workers’ centers on the Lower East Side and focus on a variety of campaigns from organizing restaurant and garment factory workers to fighting gentrification and unfair development in the city. Over the past thirty years, their battles have brought them into conflict with various employers, the Triads (Chinese mafia), Mayor Bloomberg, developers, and also many other organizations. My Chinese and Spanish language skills have allowed me to volunteer regularly there and learn a lot more about New York City, especially the economic and political issues in the city. I have been deeply influenced by their philosophy, particular the organizations’ belief that the leadership for change in America will come from the super-exploited, the undocumented immigrants, women workers, and people of color as opposed to the middle class, the working class, or the well-educated. That’s not to say that the well-educated don’t have a role to play in bringing change to American society (the rezoning plan the organizations have been pushing to stop the trend of displacement in the Lower East Side was drafted by Hunter College professor Thom Angotti), but the leadership for that change will always come from those with the least to lose and fresh perspectives birthed from their experiences. For instance, immigrants have a wide perspective, because they’ve experienced life in two different countries and often bring fresh ideas. This is true not only of Latino and Chinese immigrants in New York City today, but also of immigrants throughout America history. Jewish, Italian, Russian, Polish, and Irish immigrants in America during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries were the ones who fought for rights we now take for granted.

Now I’m getting ready to go back to Yale. I know I definitely want to take at least one more semester of Chinese there and many more China-related courses. I’m excited about continuing my studies at Yale and readjusting to life in New Haven.

In the end, I’m extremely grateful to the Light Fellowship for this once in a lifetime experience.

Obstacles

One of the goals of studying abroad should be to learn how a different country works and how people from another culture see the world. Students should try to use the new perspectives they gain not only to examine the country they are staying in but also to reexamine their own nation. They should steer clear of open criticism of the country they are staying in and the people they meet. This was my attitude during my previous trips to Taiwan and to mainland China, as well as to Mali, but while in Harbin I often found myself harboring negative attitudes about the land and its people. This may be because I was in Harbin for a much longer time than I had been in Beijing in 2009. Furthermore, after having been to Taiwan, a country with a similar cultural legacy, it was harder for me to excuse annoyances as simply cultural differences between America and Asia.

My impatience with differences perhaps made my time in Harbin less enjoyable and rewarding than it could have been. I grew tired of the terrible drivers who ignored things like red lights, signaled the wrong way as they made turns or failed to signal at all, with no regard for terrified pedestrians. I grew tired of the terrible service at restaurants and stores. In grocery stores, clerks often didn’t know where items were stocked. In restaurants, waiters often got orders wrong. I grew tired too of the dishonesty of venders and the open corruption just about everywhere. Taxi cab drivers often tried to pull fast ones. On multiple occasions, I remember being harassed by train ticket scalpers trying to sell me fake or stolen tickets in plain sight of police officers. The officers didn’t care, most likely because they were taking a cut. Facebook and Youtube were blocked online by the government, but brothels and drug dealers could do business with few real impediments.

All of this was very stressful for me while in China, but maybe it helped me to gain a broader perspective on the country. China has a lot of people, and this is important for a foreigner to remember. People are often far in excess of jobs available and as a result the cost of labor is often quite cheap. The education system – especially in the countryside – is terrible and few people have good training in what they do. A massive bureaucracy tends to fan the flames of nepotism, corruption, and incompetence rather than bring the good oversight one would think a strict dictatorship could offer. Whereas in America a supermarket might have fifteen people working at a time, in China it might have thirty, all of them being paid maybe forty cents an hour with little training and no opportunity for upward mobility. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that they often do not know where things are located in the store. Waiters are also paid very little and unlike in America they are not given tips, so there is often little incentive to do a good job. Sometimes the Chinese drive to find the cheapest team possible to do a job baffles the mind, such as the crew of 4’10” subway construction workers, many middle aged women, who we saw in Dalian. They were from Guizhou, a very poor province in the southwest. Without a doubt hiring them was a lot cheaper than hiring Dalian locals. The irony is that Dalian is in the northeast with plenty of big strong young people to do construction work. But rather than hire locals, the City chose to bring in people from over four thousand kilometers away. The bad driving usually has its roots in China’s inequality. Private car owners are often relatively well off and do not care about the safety of pedestrians. Especially after seeing how bus drivers were able to manage the icy winter roads in Harbin and winding country lanes through hills, I have a lot of respect for China’s bus and truck drivers and know that China is certainly home to some of the world’s finest drivers. The bad driving of many private vehicles in the end says less about China’s drivers than it does about class tension, inequality, and entitlement in this rapidly growing country.

In the end, it’s best to be patient with dishonest street vendors, cab drivers, and others who may try to rip one off. Despite its recent economic growth, China remains a country where most people live in relative poverty. It is hard to make ends meet and many people have to work very hard to support their families and put their kids through school. As a foreigner, you stand out and invariably some people will try to rip you off. Whenever in one of those situations, I tried to think of how greenhorn Chinese immigrants are treated in America. Being overcharged a little on a souvenir pales in comparison to being paid well below minimum wage, being cheated by one’s landlord, employment agency, and snake head (human smuggler), or having one’s boss threaten to call immigration if one complains about unsafe working conditions, not to mention the host of scams someone with poor English in America will doubtlessly be confronted with, though maybe by this point no one is literally trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.

CET-Harbin’s program often failed to plan reasonably around the realities of the country. They would allocate certain amounts of money to students to buy snacks for group studies on Wednesday nights or for students to go out with their roommates, but require receipts. This is China. Having to meet three layers of managers at the supermarket in order to get the receipts or getting receipts from the movie theatre or a restaurant could prove an extremely complicated affair. Most businesses in China cheat on their taxes, and as such are not used to always having receipts. Part of this is the fault of the Chinese officials whose taxes can amount to extorting as much as 30% from a small diner’s profits. For the student, the program’s requirements can prove very stressful.

At worst, obstacles and frustrations can make one’s stay abroad uncomfortable, but at best they can be used to better understand the country you visit and even your own country. During my stay in China, I learned never to make generalizations, because you always meet someone who shatters all expectations. One of those people was my roommate, who I called Brother Zhang. When speaking English or abroad, many Chinese nationals can be very nationalistic, hesitant to criticize China’s government, and defensive of a terrible regime, despite often knowing very well that much of what they are saying doesn’t match up to the facts, the Chinese feel an obligation to defend their country from outside attacks. Conversations with my roommate were a nice break from that. He felt comfortable talking about his life in China, and may have found in me the open ears of someone he could openly talk to, letting out decades of frustration and anger. He grew up growing onions in northern Jiangsu. He lost his father to lung cancer. As he explained to me, the Chinese government profits tremendously from the sale of cigarettes, which are produced and distributed by state-owned firms. “They make billions and give us cancer in return.” He had similar criticisms of China’s agricultural policies, nepotism, education system, and corruption. When it came to his views on Chinese society, he talked openly of how materialism had eroded traditional values. “Men today just want a trophy wife, women only care about a man’s car and real estate. It’s so sad, things like love and family don’t matter anymore”. Brother Zhang seemed unsure of his future in China: “An engineer here gets paid pennies. All the money goes to the boss. To get a good position, you need connections.” He was fascinated with Western ideas of meritocracy, however imperfect they are actually put into practice in America and Europe.

At one point, Brother Zhang applied for membership in the Chinese Communist Party, a necessary move for anyone hoping to boost their career. After examining his academic record and family background, his interviewers asked him to respond with all honesty if he thought China could achieve a Communist Society to which he responded, “No.” They were not pleased with his answer and said he could not join, so he changed his answer to “Yes”. They were satisfied and granted him membership. He found the whole episode hilarious.

Farewell to China

I did some more traveling after the CET Program ended. First, I traveled with the other students back to Beijing, where I stayed a few days, visiting the area where I had studied in 2009 and meeting up with Mr. Xu for dinner. I also took a trip with several other students to a portion of the Great Wall in Hebei Province.

From Beijing, I headed to Shanghai, where I spent a few days. The city was pleasant, though much more expensive than Harbin. I met up with several other CET students, including one who was doing a summer internship there. From Shanghai, I caught a train back to Beijing and a flight back to America.

One-on-One

My one-on-one class was one of the most challenging classes I took at CET Harbin. This class was the main reason I chose to study in Harbin, as it provided a real opportunity to do research in China, using Chinese language sources and with the support of a mentor. My first mentor, who I really loved, was a reporter in Harbin. Unfortunately, less than a month into the program she had to leave to take care of her mother who was struggling with terminal cancer. For another week the program’s director, Professor Ren, was my mentor until she found another teacher who was able to be my mentor until the end of the program. At first I did not like the new teacher, Professor Liu, as much as my first mentor, but over time we grew to get along really well and I made a lot of progress in the class.

My topic centered on Heilongjiang Province’s agriculture, rural development, and rural environment. I read newspaper articles on erosion and deforestation in Heilongjiang, summaries of changes China’s rural economic policy over the past 40 years, the history of migration to northeast China, corruption in rural areas, displacement, modernization, and the modern rural-urban migration. I studied all of China’s recent changes and challenges – an incredibly broad array of topics – through the narrow lens of their effects on this one province.

Heilongjiang Province is in the northeastern part of China often called Manchuria in the West. The area was sparsely populated until the 1600’s when the Manchus conquered China. They tried unsuccessfully to prevent Han migration into the northeastern part of their empire, but the Han came anyway, fleeing poverty, famine, and political unrest in northern and central China. Some came by foot and others by canoe. The migration continued well into the 20^thcentury. Today, Heilongjiang province, the northernmost part of northeastern China, is home to over forty million people.

Heilongjiang is known for its cold weather and its rich black earth, similar to the rich soils of antebellum Mississippi and the Ukraine. Its rich soil is so fertile that it feeds over 200 million Chinese with one growing season. Unlike other parts of China where the average farming family has less than one acre of land, families in Heilongjiang often have five or ten acres of rich soil. However, in recent years a combination of deforestation and excessive cultivation has caused horrific erosion, threatening a province which 16% of all Chinese rely on for food.

Starting in the late 1970’s, China began a process of de-collectivization of farmland, allowing farmers to work and manage their own plots instead of working on large communes. The process fueled rapid economic growth in the Chinese countryside in the 1980’s. However, excessive taxation, corruption, and policies aimed mostly at urban development caused rural incomes to lag throughout the 1990’s as costs of living increased. Faced with poverty and a lack of opportunities, young men and women began fleeing the countryside by the tens of millions, heading for jobs in the cities. Today, China’s farms are worked mostly by the elderly and children. Despite the new opportunities created by de-collectivization, China’s farmers remain tied to a system in which while they can manage their land, true ownership lies in the hands of the government. In practice, this means that the land is owned by local officials, who since the abolition of agricultural taxes in 2006, have been making their fortunes selling farmland out from underneath disenfranchised farmers to developers, loggers, etc. The trend has displaced tens of millions more, and has caused China’s farmland to come dangerously close to 300 million acres, the “red line” set by the government as the amount of farmland needed to feed China’s people.

In one case I read about, local officials in Heilongjiang in 1996 were inspecting a thousand acres of pristine land up for auction and decided to take the land for themselves, giving the adjacent thousand acres of farmland to the buyers. However, 48 farming families lived and worked on the adjacent land, which soon became the property of a company which later leased the land to a shady figure who wanted to rent the land out to new farmers. In 2006, he showed up and found the land already occupied by hundreds of people. He called the police and the farmers learned for the first time that the land they had grown up on and worked their whole lives had been stolen from them. Instead of the land being returned it to its proper owners and the local officials being put in jail, the farmers were driven from the land by the police, arrested, and put through a sham trial. Some fled the province; others went to jail or into hiding. Many of the youth went to the cities to work as prostitutes and petty thieves. The article was very disturbing, but reading it helped me better understand modern China and its issues.

The class culminated in two very long papers and two presentations, one before spring break and one at the end of the term. I learned a lot about Heilongjiang, vastly improved every aspect of my Chinese, and had a lot of fun working with articles and sources in Chinese.

Dandong

In early May, CET arranged a class trip to the city of Dandong. We visited the Great Wall of China’s easternmost point, saw the Yalu River and North Korea in the distance across from it, ate at a Korean restaurant, and took a trip to nearby countryside where we saw stunning views, did a little hiking, and ate at a Manchu village.

On the last night in Dandong, we had some free time, so I took two classmates to visit the parents of my former teacher and good friend Mr. Xu. We spent several hours at their farm, ate delicious food, drank unbelievable amounts of beer and liquor, and had a great time. At one point, Mr. Xu’s mother asked my classmate Melvin how old he was and upon hearing that he was twenty three, announced: “You’re a kid! No hard liquor for you! Have some beer.” At one point, we toasted in honor of their son, who’d been offered a position in Singapore. At another, Mr. Xu’s father toasted to Bin Laden’s death. Sitting on the family kang yet again, enjoying good food and their warm hospitality, I felt such a sense of joy. How wonderful that three Americans, from Boston, Rhode Island, and Brooklyn, are bonding so closely with two middle aged farmers in Manchuria.

One-on-two and Chinese Accents

While certainly not the most challenging of my four classes, my one-on-two class was easily the most fun. The class consisted mostly of memorizing dialogues and drills and going over them with a teacher and a fellow student. I worked well with my one-on-two partner, Kenny. Zou Laoshi was an excellent teacher as well. Our dialogue topics ranged from Harbin's history to the Siberian Tiger Park, and from drinking tea to China's polluted rivers. We were able to learn from each other's mistakes to improve our spoken Chinese.

I felt teachers in Harbin, especially Zou Laoshi were very willing to teach local colloquialisms and really gave me the tools I needed not only to speak very standard Mandarin, but also to understand the Northeastern accent. In contrast, teachers in Taiwan often discouraged being influenced by local accents. All of this made me think a lot about the idea of standardization in language. Mandarin, what I study, is the national language both of China and of Taiwan and was created at the turn of the last century as a National Language for the Chinese people by taking the Beijing dialect of Chinese, which is mutually intelligible with dialects spoken by over half of China, as far away as Yunnan in the Southwest and Harbin in the Northeast, modifying it, and then teaching it in schools across the country. However, each region still either has its own dialect which is mutually intelligible to Standard Mandarin, or its own completely separate dialect, in which case Mandarin will be spoken with a regional accent. In such a diverse environment of accents, how important is it for me to hone my own accent? Should I try to speak with the most standard of accents or should I adapt my accent to what I hear around me in various regions. Back in the US, particularly in New York where most Chinese are of southern stock, should I speak with a southern Chinese accent or a Beijing accent? I often thought about such questions while studying abroad and I encourage future Light Fellows to do the same. Answers may depend on what one's goals are. If someone plans to work in Taiwan and San Francisco, learning to speak Chinese with a southern accent might make the most sense. If someone wants to teach Chinese in America, learning to speak with a Beijing or Harbin accent would make the most sense.

This leads me to another thought: if I was teaching English to someone, what accent would I want them to imitate? Many people in China study the English spoken in the UK as a model of Standard English. Many people in America might consider the English spoken in the Midwest as the most standard. However, as a New Yorker, I naturally feel the English spoken in the English-speaking world's largest city and the world's economic and cultural capital should be seen as the most standard, laugh though you may about how we say the word "coffee."

Trip to Harbin Botanic Gardens with Roommate