China – Perspectives

Confident and ready for the New China

They are learning English, they are able to surf the internet, they are confident, they are curios and they are very proud to be Chinese! There are many subtleties of the Chinese culture that are now becoming more clear for me, as I get deeper into the Chinese culture of today and as I become more accepted. Of course many things are improving because I can speak a few basic sentences in Mandarin and understand quite a few, in return people also open up a lot more to me.

I suppose that it is no surprise to find that the older generation still gawks at me as if I came from another planet, but young (I mean children) people readily will approach me to try out their best “hello” in English. Many of the older generation Chinese still believe blindly that Europe, the USA or Australia are the promised land. I mean this in the sense that they believe these countries are the panacea to poverty, sickness and lack of opportunity for the poor. The “Hollywood” view of the world.
The generation in the middle for the most part feels that being in China right now is a good option, however given the opportunity would love to visit these lands were the streets are paved in gold, everyone has a mansion and three cars and there is no poverty. However, they rarely talk about wanting to live outside of China, in many instances because they are terrified of having to learn English. As an interesting point that many of us westerners are not aware of, the vast majority of Chinese younger than 60 years of age are fully bilingual and in many cases trilingual. For country, business and education sake they all have to learn Mandarin when they enter elementary school, but for family and tradition sake they have to learn the parents “country language” or in some cases two, one for mother and one for father. In essence this family language is the birth language and is what is spoken at home with the family.

They are ready to try their English on any foreigner.

Young Chinese women in their teens have been targeted by exporting businesses to be their customer service, sales, translators and negotiations representatives. Occasionally you find a young man in this type of job, but generalizing the young women are more fluent and also less afraid to engage in conversations in English beyond the required. Most notable of the young Chinese (late teens early twenties) is that they very often sing while doing their jobs, no matter how mundane their job is. When asked why they sing, they reply because they are happy, I actually doubted this, so I asked a few older people why someone making $200 USD in one month, no car, family 20 hours away, sharing a bedroom with 4 or 5 other people, would want to sing? I was told two reasons, one they have a job and two they have a future.

Children 7 to 12 years old, I have call them the “new” Chinese because they are noticeably very different. They exude confidence and often will engage a foreigner in conversation at the supermarket or anywhere. This young Chinese boys and girls are growing up with internet access, some foreign television and an extreme influx of influence from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. You could say that they are getting a flavor of the western world “second hand”. I actually though that Chinese children would be like most children in other countries and that they would express their wishful desire to live in the USA, England or other foreign countries, but I found quite the opposite, they speak respectfully of foreign countries, but have an exuberant and very firm love for China and no desire to leave it.

They are very proud to be Chinese

I have been able to speak to a few children and although it is not a scientific poll, this children believe that they have a bright future in China, they love their culture (old and new), they are proud of their country and will openly state how lucky they feel to be Chinese. It is true that the central government in Beijing does a phenomenal job at marketing their “open-transparent” government, maybe only rivaled by new president Obama’s approach to politics. On a daily basis people are informed via all media of every project that has been approved, meetings on this and that and almost what Mr Hu Jintao ate for lunch that day. The Chinese army has its own TV channel and has a regular schedule of entertainment with singers, choirs, opera and documentaries, all produced and presented and performed by the military.

The interest in old Chinese culture is actually on the rise, many Chinese are still discovering many cultural facts that had disappeared decades ago, so the final face of China maybe something no one can predict, even the Chinese government. But, China is changing and is happening very fast and this is well before this “new” Chinese generation reaches the point of effecting change. It will be very interesting to see the effects of the new “open China” once this generation that was born in it reaches adulthood.