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Published: December 21st 2015
One of my friends, Bruce
I was helping him with English while he helped me with Chinese. Win-win!Hey everyone,
I apologize for not writing last week, but I got pretty busy with finals and the end of our program. I spent last weekend writing a paper for my music class, and this week was full of closing activities, such as group lunches and pictures, and last minute hanging out with friends whom I won't see for a while. I am both glad and sad that the semester is over, as on the one hand I was getting a bit burnt out towards the end of the semester, while on the other, it was hard to say goodbye to some of the friends that I have made this semester.
After spending so much time abroad, I have come to realize that it is less about the program and the location than it is about the people you meet while abroad. And while bumming around South Korea with Tanya for almost a month was awesome, ultimately I think I have gotten more from my time in Taiwan and China, simply because I spent the time meeting new people, which has caused me to grow as a person. Especially here in China, getting to meet locals and pick their brains
about some of the maybe more controversial issues has definitely changed the way I approach these topics.
One major example of this is my approach towards China's One Child Policy, and in turn, general government ability. If you are not familiar with this policy, Wikipedia does a good job at explaining it, although it was definitely written with an American bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_child_policy. I think even before coming to China my opinion on this policy was not the same as most Americans, but since being here, I have become even more open to the idea of the One Child Policy. Anyways, in my experience, the One Child Policy tends to make most Americans uncomfortable, as most believe the government has no right to tell them how many kids they can or cannot have. Family planning in America is a very individual thing, and there is no way the government would be able to get away with limiting the number of children a family can have. On the other hand, China is a much, MUCH larger country in terms of population, and back in the late 70's, when the policy was put into effect, the population was getting out of control.
The Intensive Language students!
From left: Will, Ian, Su Laoshi, Qi Laoshi, Bri, me, Yinka Maybe surprisingly, the majority of Chinese don't have a problem with the One Child Policy, called 獨生子女政策 (dúshēngzǐnǚ zhèngcè) or 計劃生育政策 (jìhuà shēngyù zhèngcè), and understand that there was a need for it. This is especially true for the older generations, although for the most part, even the younger people I have talked to about it agree that it was necessary. I think it also helps that the people I have talked to all currently live in Beijing, where the biggest complaint after the air pollution is how crowded the city is.
As tends to happen in the process of development, China has seen huge numbers of its population moving out of the countryside and smaller cities into China's four major cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. As a result, these cities are overpopulated, amazingly polluted, and living in them is crazy expensive. For this reason, along with the immense competition for jobs, it seems to me that most of the young adults in Beijing agree that it was a necessary move on the part of the government.
As someone directly affected by the 獨生子女政策, my opinion on the matter tends to lean more towards that of the
Chinese people, rather than the traditional American opinion. That is, I think that because China is such a large country, with a government controlling areas at vastly different levels of development, the path that the Chinese government chose in creating this policy was necessary and more or less successful in terms of controlling population growth. And although it would never be successful or even possible in America, it worked for China. The aftereffects that China is now trying to counteract, that is, the inequality in number of females to males, is not a result of the policy, but the revelation of a problem in Chinese tradition.
A patriarchal society, the Chinese have an idiom that goes 重男輕女 (zhòngnán qīng nǚ), which means to value boys over girls. The meaning of the individual characters are literally: important/men/unimportant/women. This preference is due to two major factors: a desire to continue the family name, which is passed down through the men, and the desire to have children to take care of them in old age, a job left to the son and his wife. Ultimately, China currently finds itself in need of daughters, which I think is one of the reasons the
Goodbye selfie with Anna
My weekend roommate (when I would stay on campus over the weekends, I would stay in her room) government recently changed the One Child Policy into a Two Child policy, and have upped their attempts at propaganda in support of having female children. I'm not sure how much of a difference this will make, because it seems like people have gotten used to only having one child, and putting all of their resources into that child in order to make them competitive amongst their peers (and trust me, the competition is crazy fierce). I won't go into detail on the aspects of competition, but basically having a child is crazy expensive and having two seems nearly impossible in today's China.
Okay, well that ended up being a lot longer (and on a completely different topic than it was meant to be on). Anyways, I leave for Shanghai on Wednesday to meet up with the family, and we will be traveling around China for the next two weeks, so keep an eye out for that! Merry Christmas!! Until next time!
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Terry May
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Hi Katie, Congratulations on completing an intensive and productive semester! I'm confident you're a terrific ambassador as well (in an anti-Trump sort of way)! I hope to get a chance to talk with you while you're home (but I know that'll be short) and hear your take on some of the hot topics and how people view Baba Xi, etc. Traveling with your family will be great. I especially envy your going to Hangzhou - Enjoy! Merry Christmas and Xin Nian Hao!