Lona Manning's blog

School Sports Day

5/3/2014

Our students before the parade

I'll be honest -- on my son Joe's grade 7 sports day, I just walked around saying to myself, "this is the last sports day I'll ever have to attend..... this is the last sports day I'll ever have to attend...."

Not foreseeing, of course, that years later I'd be in China, an employee of the Chinese government at one of their state-run institutions of higher learning, where sports day is a serious matter. And so we foreign teachers were asked to march in the opening ceremony with the the students in our department. I think this is because having foreign teachers is like having a nice sports car or something -- they want to show us off. We are not, with the exception of the young French teacher, an especially prepossessing bunch. But there we were, marching with our students, who were charming, or at least I think they are.

The real star of the show was the toddler-age son of another teacher. He has large blue eyes and curly light brown hair. The baby gets mobbed like Michael Jackson where ever he goes. The large crowd reacted with delight as this baby came in sight, carried on his father's shoulders as we joined the procession around the track.

The opening ceremony was impressive and clearly a lot of work and organizing and rehearsing went into it. Yes, it was a flat-out display of regimentation but the whole thing is humanized for me because some of those young people are students of mine, and so I know that they are all individuals with their own personalities.

Baby swarmed by cooing coeds

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This is not your father's Communist China

5/2/2014

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When I was a girl, visiting downtown Vancouver, I would sometimes see small groups of Asian men, dressed in Mao suits, slowly walking down Hastings Street with their hands clasped behind their backs. Even decades ago, Hastings Street was in decline and there was very little to see. But they almost certainly were officials from Communist China observing the decadent West.

Now, what follows will be a ridiculously obvious observation for anyone who has um, followed the news, or been to Shanghai, but for anyone whose image of China is still tinged with Mao and his Little Red Book -- you would not believe how China has changed in the last 25 years.

We don't want capitalism here.

Every day and everywhere I go in the city in Shandong Province where I live, I see people freely moving about while wearing -- fashions! I see young men using a lot of hair product. I can't believe the variety of shoes on display. Commerce is everywhere. It puts dreary old Hastings Street in the shade, as a matter of fact.

And then I went to the Palais de Furniture ( as I'll call the store) with a fellow teacher and caught sight of the painted opera-house style ceiling (above.) And I thought again of the Cultural Revolution and Wang Guangmei. She was the wife of a very high-ranking Chinese official who Chairman Mao and his wife decided to purge in 1967. (One explanation I've read is that Mao resented the fact that his Great Leap Forward had brought famine and disaster to the country, while the economic reforms proposed by his rival were working.)

Wang Guangmei's crime, apart from being a "capitalist roader", like her husband, was that she wore a necklace and an attractive dress while on a diplomatic trip overseas. Here she is being publicly pilloried. Around her neck is a string of ping-pong balls, to lampoon the decadent pearl necklace she wore. Wang Guangmei spent 12 years in prison before being released. Her husband died in prison but his reputation has been posthumously rehabilitated.

The Cultural Revolution must be ancient history for my students and in fact it appears to be an awkward subject that was touched on only lightly in their educations. I, on the other hand, can remember those days and furthermore, can never forget the account that I read in Jung Chang's book, Wild Swans.

So when I see frescoes on the ceiling and enormous purple sofas for sale, and when I walk into a glittering modern mall and see pearl necklaces, how can I help but think of Wang Guangmei?

Incidentally, as I walked through the Palais de Furniture, I left a trail of disappointed salesclerks behind me. A Westerner is a rare sight, as I've mentioned, and we are assumed to have lots of money. I was looking for a chest of drawers because the furniture supplied by my landlord (designated villain of this blog) is rather minimal and the place looks pretty bare. But the Palais de Furniture was beyond my budget.

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School Sports Day

This is not your father's Communist China

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