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Q: How are your kids treated in school?
I'm talking about mixed race kids here of course, and how they're treated by other kids, not the teachers. If you don't have kids I'm not really interested in what you have to say, if the Chinese were anything like half the people describe them on here, I'd have left long ago. No, I'm just interested to hear the experiences of the actual three dimensional kids from their actual parents. Have they ever come home with stories of racially motivated bullying for example? This is my main concern.
My 4 year old goes to a local government school. She loves it. She gets a few comments about "looking different", but that is mainly from the parents. She just explains that she is Chinese but her dad is a foreign devil. The teachers are great, the other kids are great. She is actually looking forward to the summer holidays finishing. I should add that she is the only non han kid in the school.
mArtiAn:
My oldest is the same age. Been in school a year but only mornings. So far all is good. I tell him he's a foreigner though. British, even though he's never been out the country. He's registered as British so he's British. Not nationalistic myself but I don't think he'll ever be accepted as Chinese, so I think it best to not try. I have a friend in another city whose kid got a lot of flack for insisting he was Chinese, the other kids wouldn't accept it. Poor kid went nuts insisting he was, had fights and ended up getting kicked out of school. His dad is a dick though, doesn't guide him or spend time with him. Kid doesn't know 'who' he is. Poor little fucker.
ScotsAlan:
We went the full Chinese route with ours. Chinese passport etc. Has right of entitlement to UK abode in it. She definitely identifies as chinese. Her English is poor but getting there. She refuses to speak English in front of other Chinese tho. Because when she does she gets the finger pointing and the "wow she speaks English" comments. So she tends to hide her English and only use it with me, her mum, and my UK work colleagues who visit now and then.
mArtiAn:
The only time I ever told kids my son was Chinese was in the park one time and they quickly picked up on it and started saying he wasn't. I learnt then that it might cause more trouble than it was worth so I've told him since that he's foreign, just like his dad, and that that's fine. I hope your daughter has a smooth time of it in school, kids can be cruel if they find ammunition to niggle a fellow student.
ScotsAlan:
I have a passport wallet I always carry. I have my daughters Hong Kong visa card in it. The id card they give to GD people that allows them easy entry to HK. If I come across anyone who says my daughter is not Chinese I show them that. But more often then not they don't know what the card is anyway. So I just shout at them. If I shout loud enough they back down. If I am lucky, my daughter will point at them and say," Alan, they are tuhao?"
My 4 year old goes to a local government school. She loves it. She gets a few comments about "looking different", but that is mainly from the parents. She just explains that she is Chinese but her dad is a foreign devil. The teachers are great, the other kids are great. She is actually looking forward to the summer holidays finishing. I should add that she is the only non han kid in the school.
mArtiAn:
My oldest is the same age. Been in school a year but only mornings. So far all is good. I tell him he's a foreigner though. British, even though he's never been out the country. He's registered as British so he's British. Not nationalistic myself but I don't think he'll ever be accepted as Chinese, so I think it best to not try. I have a friend in another city whose kid got a lot of flack for insisting he was Chinese, the other kids wouldn't accept it. Poor kid went nuts insisting he was, had fights and ended up getting kicked out of school. His dad is a dick though, doesn't guide him or spend time with him. Kid doesn't know 'who' he is. Poor little fucker.
ScotsAlan:
We went the full Chinese route with ours. Chinese passport etc. Has right of entitlement to UK abode in it. She definitely identifies as chinese. Her English is poor but getting there. She refuses to speak English in front of other Chinese tho. Because when she does she gets the finger pointing and the "wow she speaks English" comments. So she tends to hide her English and only use it with me, her mum, and my UK work colleagues who visit now and then.
mArtiAn:
The only time I ever told kids my son was Chinese was in the park one time and they quickly picked up on it and started saying he wasn't. I learnt then that it might cause more trouble than it was worth so I've told him since that he's foreign, just like his dad, and that that's fine. I hope your daughter has a smooth time of it in school, kids can be cruel if they find ammunition to niggle a fellow student.
ScotsAlan:
I have a passport wallet I always carry. I have my daughters Hong Kong visa card in it. The id card they give to GD people that allows them easy entry to HK. If I come across anyone who says my daughter is not Chinese I show them that. But more often then not they don't know what the card is anyway. So I just shout at them. If I shout loud enough they back down. If I am lucky, my daughter will point at them and say," Alan, they are tuhao?"
My wife and I teach my daughter at home. She is so popular, that 4 other families pay money to attend classes with her. We had to limit the class to 5 students because of potential chaos. They treat her like one of them, but one of the students wants to kidnap my son, LOL.
mArtiAn:
You charge for this, right? I won't ask how much but I've heard it can be lucrative. Thought of doing it myself. What do you do to get you daughter interacting with others her own age though, besides those kids that come to your home? And how long do you plan to keep her out of public schools?
xinyuren:
To be honest, I dont know how much my wife charges. Its her school and I just teach her how to do business and run the classes, but yeah, these parents will pay top dollar for this. My daughter usually interacts with older children better and her classmates are older. I dont push her to interact with children her own age because I think it will come naturally. She and my son will never set foot in a Chinese school. If we have to teach them ourselves, we will happily do it.
mArtiAn:
Why not set foot in a Chinese school? I mean, I know it's a by rote system and not especially conducive with creative thought and all that, but I've been here a long time, and I've got to say, I like the people here, I like the kids, they seem pretty well balanced on the whole, and the most important teachers a child has will always be their parents. Me and the wife are attentive, caring parents. I'm not really worried about my son losing himself to the indoctrination of the Chinese schooling system.
xinyuren:
You answered your own question. No creative thinking. I've seen a lot of children pass through our school. I dont want my children to be like them. Everywhere we go, my children stand out among the locals. Its one of our most effective marketing tools. The parents want us to make their children like ours. My wife is turning down business. If I decided to cheat the system and work, we could easily double our income. But we cant give the parents what they really want because the problem is the system. Unlike you, I have no plans to integrate my children into the system. We are preparing to sail to South America in 2 or 3 years (when my son is 4). After that, who knows? They need to get used to learning at home because home will be wherever the boat is moored.
xinyuren:
You're absolutely right about the most important teachers being the parents. But in Chinese culture, parents dont take care of the children. Grandparents do, along with the Chinese teacher and piano teacher and the LEGO teacher. The system is adapted for Chinese culture and their way of thinking. Concepts arent taught the way you might expect because of this factor. The whole system is skewed to accommodate Chinese thinking. This may affect more things than you anticipated. Later, you may find that the influence of the many outweigh your parental influence. I am not willing to take that risk.
mArtiAn:
No offense but it sounds like you think you've got an angle that puts you somehow above the Chinese, like you're in some enlightened position with regards to how they raise their kids or teach their students. Maybe you have. I can see plenty of flaws, sure, but compared to life back home and the schooling system I was raised in in London, I can't say I'm concerned. I want the best for my kids, of course, but that 'best' is peace of mind and the freedom to discover their passion in life. I don't imagine I can control what the world will do to them here any more than I can anywhere else.
xinyuren:
No offense taken. All I know is I have never anywhere (and I have traveled) seen so much neglect in the family as I have seen in China. The wife is neglected once she squeezes out her baby boy, the children are raised by grandparents and teachers, coddled and treated like glass vessels, they study harder and play less than any children I hung out with when I was young, and somewhere through the school system, they turn into zombies. This is what I will never forget: that blank look on their faces when asked to make a decision on their own. I dont want that for my children. I value a sharp mind. China's system is designed to dull the mind. You do understand that it is in the best interest of the state to discourage free thinking? That outside cultures, particularly western culture is viewed as dangerous? If you plan to stay in China for the rest of your life, this may not be a problem. But I already have an exit plan. I want my children to know their culture, but I dont intend for them to consume it. This way of thinking may be good enough for the Chinese, but its not good enough for me. I don't view my thinking as enlightened (though many of our customers do), I just view it as my thinking and it is diametrically opposed to what I see here. Of course every family has different goals and aspirations. I dont look down on Chinese or anyone else's ambitions. I only know the best way to accomplish mine.
xinyuren:
I don't want to give you the impression that I feel superior to them, so I will give you a practical example of what I mean.
Upon moving in to our current house, I had negotiated with the landlord to allow me to redecorate it to suit our needs. As a designer I was always curious as to why Chinese houses lacked variety in their decor. It seemed everywhere had the same white tile floors, concrete or tile walls, and so on. I chalked it up to the Chinese being uncreative. The truth is more complicated than that. Anyways, I was determined to make our rental house a more comfortable (and stylish) place to live.
It was then that I slowly began to discover for the reason for the sameness in the decoration of a common Chinese house. It starts with the system of building houses in China. A fast developing China needs many workers. Most of those workers are unskilled. There is no formal system to train workers in the skilled trades of construction. In China, a carpenter is a person who owns a hammer. So house construction, for cost and practical reasons, is very rudimentary. As you know, a Chinese house is basically a concrete box Even the expensive villas have the same cheap construction. How does this trickle down and affect the decoration of houses? Because of lack of insulation and basic concrete construction, the house sweats, causing humidity and mold problems. This limits the treatments you can apply to the walls and floors (you notice carpet is uncommon except in hotels?) Tiles on the walls are practical for combating mold and making it easier to clean. Ceramic on the floor for similar reasons. Plumbing is not a trade in China. It's done by the electrician. What passes for wood studs here is scrap wood in the United States.
So as I began decorating the house, I slammed into these limitations one by one. Because only a limited amount of materials were suitable for a concrete box, workers are only comfortable working with those materials. When I ordered real slate tiles directly from the quarry, the system in China didn't have a way to handle it because nobody in China decorates their house with that. My carpenters installed it wrong. They didn't know how to finish it. Grout? what is grout? I realized what was common practice in my country was completely alien here and the system of construction here had no way to accommodate it. Wallpaper is used here, but you gotta be careful. It will be moldy in a couple of years (at least in the South). These things I didn't take into account when I began designing the decorating. Chinese culture had surprised in ways I never imagined. There is a good reason for the sameness and it's not just they being uncreative.
The point of my experience is to illustrate how the culture difference can affect things you had no idea were connected. Chinese people do the most puzzling and frustrating things that leave me astonished and angry at times. But since I have been here, I have tried to find the reason behind their behavior. Often, what I found surprised me. Everything is connected in our lives. There is an cause for every effect and often it is not the cause we thought it was or should be. When I decide to place my child into a system that will influence their entire lives, I need to be comfortable that I fully understand the effect that will cause. I don't claim to know a lot about the Chinese school system, but I know two things:
1.) They go in as relatively normal children.
2.) They come out the other end as worthless.
A lot of that has to do with home training, but keep in mind the amount of time Chinese students spend in school. I've seen students studying for gaokao or some other exam come home at 9pm and later. The system is making them this way. And don't say you won't let your child study that hard because if she is in the system, she's committed. This is what you signed up for. There is no halfway. This is China's way of doing things and you will be more successful trying to fight off a herd of buffalo than change it.
An interesting ending to my story..... After the decoration (I spent about 100K), my landlord came to take a look and he was very disappointed. He scolded me on my color and texture choice of the floor tiles (black slate) and demanded that I remove them. He criticized the color of paint in the living room (custom ordered American blue-grey paint). He said Chinese people don't like these colors. He practically terrorized my wife constantly every week with phone calls intended to intimidate her into changing the decor. He complained about everything! I was beginning to regret my decision to make a more practical and stylish home. Until......
One day he came to the house with two other guys (friends? family?) They looked through the house and praised me. My wife translated that they thought my decoration looked "special". After that day, I never had a problem from the landlord again. He never again mentioned the "ugly" tiles or bullied my wife again. We pay the rent and he leaves us alone. This is China. What kind of cultural rules give birth to thinking like my landlord's, someone who attitude depends on what his neighbors or friends think or have? This is the prevalent thinking here, to be the same as everyone else. Different is bad. And where does it start? It's not in their genetics, they aren't born this way. It starts in school. I don't discourage other Laowai from putting their children in public schools. I just like to remind them that the consequences may not be what they intended. There is a lot of difference here both on the surface and underneath.
mArtiAn:
I know where you're coming from, I've seen that blank expression in the eyes of many I've come across but it's not like it's a universal trait of the Chinese, on the contrary I find the Chinese to be far more creative and expressive than most westerners give them credit. Just take a walk in any park and you will find yourself surrounded by music and creativity. I'm a musician myself and used to go to the park regularly to play my sax. In London, an apparent fountain of creativity, that used to be seen as unusual but here it is commonplace. I love that.
Not worried about my kids in their ability to think for themselves or outside the box either or that they'll be so over-schooled that their minds will switch off altogether and go zombie on them, this is rather an extreme example that by no means equates to all or most Chinese. For a start they will immediately be released the burden of studying English, a hefty part of the school curriculum, and they'll not be pushed into after school study either, a child's free time is valuable, all work and no play and all that. Truthfully I'm not that big on school myself, I believe in finding one's gifts and passion. Without that life is an uphill battle. My job is to give my kids every opportunity to discover those for themselves, and when they do, to feed that passion with increased opportunity to grow. For example my mother was a concert pianist. Her parents discovered her passion for music at an early age and practically took her out of school to pursue it. It became her whole life. A formal education is valuable but it is not all important.
xinyuren:
It seems our thinking is similar. Anyways, you're retired and are able to give your child the time and guidance she needs. I wish you the best.
mArtiAn:
Haha, I'm not retired, I'm younger than you, 48. Got a private teaching practice and plenty of free time. Wife works from home so between the two of us we manage to give them plenty of attention. Our eldest is only going to do mornings at school till he's seven and we'll probably move to England for their secondary schooling, but I'm not bothered, I think they'd do just fine here. Cheers though.
