China: the oldest continuous society in
existence. So much history. So different than America. Though I studied
the various dynasties end in “ang” and “ing” during high school and lived in
the infamous Chinese-American city of San Francisco for several years, I knew
very little about China before I started working at Quest in 2010. In my
day-to-day life at Quest, I seem to learn something new about China and Chinese
students every week. Heck, it might even
be everyday. Full disclosure: I don’t speak Mandarin, so my insights are
heavily reliant on my smarter, Chinese-speaking colleagues or when our Chinese
students quickly realize that I know next-to-nothing about China and take a few
moments to explain something to me. I’ve
also learned a thing or two while helping some Chinese students and American
host families to resolve certain issues, mainly related to our Chinese
students’ extreme focus on studying above anything else.
I have had the good fortune of traveling to Beijing
twice since joining Quest. The first
time was a quick trip for a conference. Because of a wedding, I had to quickly
depart China once the conference ended, leaving little time to experience much
outside of the conference room of the internationally branded hotel. However, I
did briefly enter the Forbidden City, and my mind was completely blown by
something so incredibly old, ornate, huge, and intact. I now know that my
initial reaction to the Forbidden City on that trip is not much different than
my overall conclusions about China: it is enormous, filled with infinite
nuances, diverse beyond description, precise, and ever-evolving so that once I
understand something about China, I should let go of it because it has probably
changed already.
I want to share my most recent experience, in which
I traveled with Quest’s Operations Manager, Tara Charles, to Beijing in March
2015. Besides realizing (again) that I have so much more to learn about China
and probably won’t be able to successfully learn Mandarin in this lifetime, I
was reminded of the incredible awe that one must have for Chinese society and
Chinese people; their values, their commitment, their order.
Upon arrival Tara and I were met by our partner,
Beijing International Center, OULU, and were swept off to a dinner fit for a
king. This is typical; if you are
lucky enough to be received by Chinese people when you arrive to China, you
must be prepared to eat your face off.
The next day, Tara and I started our adventure with
a little tourism and headed to The Great Wall of China. Sure, I knew that The
Great Wall was big – you can see it from space, right? (That is a myth, by the
way). But to truly comprehend how mankind could have built a structure that
covers so much ground…….well, truth be told, I don’t truly comprehend how this was constructed by man, so I won’t
dole out advise here. The Great Wall is
not terribly high; I think the average height from the ground is about 16-18
feet. However, the Great Wall of China covers
over 13,000 miles. Think about that:
thirteen THOUSAND miles. The entire
equator is about 25,0000 miles which means that the total distance of the Great
Wall of China is more than one half the distance of the equator. (I will leave your brain to process that for a
few minutes, but just keep in mind that the equator was not built by man). If you are reading this and you are a teacher,
think about how difficult it is to coordinate and control a classroom of, say,
15-20 students (of any age really). Now
think about coordinating efforts and controlling millions of soldiers,
prisoners, peasants and common people to construct something more than half the
circumference of the planet.
The Great Wall was constructed by army units to
protect the Chinese dynasties, headquartered in the Forbidden City in what is
now Beijing, from Mongolians to the north.
My favorite fact is that they used sticky rice to bind the bricks
together.
My other favorite fact is that
it is half the length of the equator. (Did
you catch that?) The big point I am
trying to make here is that not every society could have constructed something
like the Great Wall of China. Not every
culture has the discipline, the perseverance, the unity, the humility, or the
ability to serve what is perceived as the greater good in exchange for one’s
own self-interest. I am obviously omitting
a million intricacies about Chinese history and society during the hundreds of
years that it took to undertake this project.
However the simple fact that so many people could be mobilized to risk
their lives and construct something so enormous will always astound me. And I
think the miracle that is the
construction of the Great Wall gives us, foreigners, deeper insight into the
dedication and commitment that is at the root of Chinese civilization.
At Quest, we see this intense level of dedication from
Chinese parents who, perhaps, are entirely devoted to the education of their
children. Sure, as Americans, we go to school too, and our parents often force
us to do homework. But the baseline assumption of how much one should be
educated and how seriously one should pursue academic endeavors in China is
something that is truly unparalled to any other culture I have known. This is not to say that the Chinese’s emphasis
on education - above all and at all costs - is necessarily a positive feature
in all cases. This is to say that, maybe because of its Confucian roots (I’ll leave
that for an anthropologist and a historian to explore), the value that Chinese
people place on education is greater than the cumulative value of all of Donald
Trump properties and probably greater than the cumulative number of bricks
contained in the Great Wall, which spans more than half of the distance of the
equator.
Tara and I spent much of the rest of the week
visiting our partners, who recruit Chinese students for our inbound programs.
We were wined and dined, and we even had the good fortune of meeting with some
of the students that are joining our program this coming year.
We chatted with parents, our Chinese
partners, and even several American and British expatriates living in Beijing. There
were some features of the education system in China that we already understood,
and our conversations and experiences further underscored these points.
- Chinese parents will spend every single
disposable dollar on their child’s education and will hire private tutors
galore to further train their kids to perfect everything from playing the piano
to acing the SATS.
- Once a student leaves the Chinese education
system, there is no going back. So the
decision to go to an international school or to go abroad is a long-term
decision that will affect a child’s educational career path. It is not a
decision that should be taken lightly.
- A Chinese student can get straight As in all
classes from the time they are in elementary school (yes they are graded in
elementary school) through high school.
But, if they don’t do well on the gaokao,
the one test that all students must take to enter university, they will not be
admitted to college. The gaokao is EVERYTHING for a student in
China who wishes to pursue higher education, and I think it’s safe to say that
every family wants their kid to go to university. In other words, the gaokao is the most important thing on a
Chinese student’s life.
- If you ask a Chinese student what he/she likes
to do in his/her free time, then the student will look at you like you have
monkeys growing out of your shoulders.
There is no such thing as free time. Chinese
kids just study.
- Though the Chinese government passed a
series of reforms in 2013 to try and reduce anxiety in younger students,
schools simply do not comply. These
reforms included a ban on homework for first graders and limits on homework for
older, primary school students. On a
Friday, we met with a 7th grader who told us she probably had 8
hours worth of homework that was due on Monday, and, in addition was expected to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
another book I don’t remember. She pulled the books out of her HUGE backpack
and showed me. I felt so grateful to not
be her, and I instantly recanted all my complaints about how much reading I had
in college.
- International schools are starting to pop up in
China as an alternative to the Chinese system, which is known for its rigor and
rigidity. Chinese parents are starting
to realize that the paradigm that shapes the traditional Chinese education system might not
be the best fit for their own children, and hence, attending international
school and studying abroad are growing in popularity among Chinese students.
- Despite the growing number of international
schools, and their emphasis on developing the whole character of the student,
there is still no place for the “average” academic student. Admission to
international schools is still cut-throat. If your kid does not happen to be
Einstein, then you are out of luck. You will need to hire an Educational
Consultant (see below).
- Educational Consulting companies are big
business in China. Consultants collect
thousands of dollars from families and advise them on everything from where to
send the students to school to where to invest in real estate overseas, and
everything in between.
- Unrelated, but maybe tangentially related,
is this: cell phones are even more pervasive in Beijing than in US cities. Imagine
that. Hop on the metro and find a single
person that is not on a smart-phone in some capacity. Impossible.
On this trip, we also learned a great deal more
about education in China, detailed below
Even though the years of China’s crazy,
double-digit GDP growth are behind us, China continues to change at a pace that
no one can really keep up with. As this incredibly old, not to mention
populous, society weaves more and more into the modern world, new traditions
and cultural norms are constantly born and reborn into different forms. I think
we Americans that work with or study China will always have to accept that Chinese
society is ever-changing. Like an onion,
China is layered with thousands of years of history, and once you peel back one
layer, you realized there are a hundred more layers to tackle before you can
truly understand what is at the core. But unlike an onion, once you peel back
one layer, another layer instantly grows back and it is unlike the one you just
peeled off.
This is China.
It’s a place where a small city that is not even “on the map” of China
contains 4.5 million people. (Thank you Brother Orange and Buzzfeed for that).
It is a place fast approaching 1.5 billion people: that’s 1,500,000,000 people
for those of us who like visuals. It’s a
place that sends hundreds of thousands of students to the US and uses 80
billion disposable chopsticks very year.
Hate it our love it, China is indisputably
fascinating. The Chinese quench for education is insatiable while their
dedication to education is unwavering. It may be taking various new forms, but
the commitment will never wane. We at
Quest will continue to travel to China and explore how we can best serve a
market of students whose pressure to succeed academically is incomparable to
anything we will ever know. All I,
personally, want to give these kids is the gift of free-time to explore
themselves, but in lieu of that, we will continue to offer programs aimed at
developing the full person and at supporting each student wherever he or she
may be in his or her academic journey.