OnHongKongIsle 在香港岛

Two days were spent in Fudan's (somewhat controversial) new skyscrapper of a campus building. I used to watch this structure grow when I taught at SHUFE. It is about the size of the NYC city hall and the interior, with floors of elegant conference rooms and tea-pouring xiaojies, doesn't take away from this impression.

Before the question list had been let loose on the Internet, we'd ask them:

This question would usher a brief moment of silence, as it is relevant but slightly tangential (as HK itself is tangential) to the mainland experience. If they lived here, and read the SCMP or HK China Daily Edition, they would know all the nuanced-levels of debate and Beijing's official HK language-policy line, but as mainland high-school students, almost all had never come across or thought about this issue.

And then, the silence would break and the critical magic would begin.

In some groups, the students quickly circled this issue, attacking it from all-sides and dimensions, speaking in five to ten second English bursts, raising objections, making connections, arguing, debating, evolving points of view were nothing had existed just minutes before. A Jiangsu boy had introduced himself in sweeping nationalist terms, "I love robots. And one day I hope to build robots for China to send to the moon." Yet, his argument evolved into supporting the local Cantonese in HK classrooms over a more nationalist putonghua. The other students kept picking away at the issue, breaking it down in the context of history, "colonial identity", education policy, popular culture, Taiwan, business and market needs, dialects in China and personal stories of hometown (and Shanghainese) languages.

But it was the speed of thought (in English) that was fantastic! The rapid coinage of phrases like "stimulating consumer power" (not searchable on Google). And yet all of it so very different than previous experiences.

For example, a girl sat down and - articulating a confidence I might have considered un-Chinese - looked at me and said, "I'm eighteen, female and single. That is all the relevant information you presently need to know."

Vivian had chocked a laugh, but the student's femininity didn't waver.

In a related case, when asked:

A question that often threw my blushing first year students into abstractions. One female asked directly, "So are they sleeping in the same bed?" And when the rest said, "No! They can sleep in separate beds" (although another did start talking about birth-control). She gave a well-what-would-be-the-point look, later summarizing, "I think it might be bad for the girl. Maybe she'd have to have an abortion."

In so many of the students, a social consciousness permeated the way they spoke. A well-dressed, perfect-postured female from Pudong defended her reasons for selecting a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) as her first choice, even when she was told that this major typically doesn't lead to a lot of money. Student after student introduced themselves with stories of volunteering and countryside work. Even if viewed skeptically, I imagine the same skepticism must also be applied for the "service hour" culture of Western university applications. When asked, 'Has the Internet helped the poor or simply made the rich richer?" The students not only felt comfortable with the question, but produced specific examples of Chinese, Indian, African and UN efforts to bring Internet into places without regular electricity or even computers.

In a similar vein, when asked:

The students had no trouble arguing the negatives from China's recent rapid development. One student, already accepted at Jiaotong, argued, "China has now become the "global factory" and production has given us many jobs and supported our economy. But as our home produces the products of the world, the pollution of the world is left here as well, so the environmental cost is very high." Other students were quick to talk about dominance of foreign brands, cultural losses and a new rich further disconnected from the common people.

These two topics (i.e., social consciousness and globalization) might seem quite ordinary, if not in sharp contrast to my own previous experience of asking similar questions in final exam settings. When I first arrived in China, students struggled when asked to talk about China's "poverty" or negatives of globalization. In these interviews, they rushed in this direction.

In fact, it was all a rush, a blur, the pen flying fast over evaluation sheets, sometimes even scratching out Chinese characters, mouths slightly open as some students rocked on in English with speed and metaphors that I wondered if I could match. A female in Nanjing announced that "Yesterday [she] passed the CET-4" and later explained that "[She] had to open a small business on campus, so [she] chose Mondays, as nobody chose Monday, to monopolize the market. [She] then distributed surveys to determine market need and bargained with three different suppliers in different parts of the city for the cheapest price." But throughout the interview she turned such ambition to trying to help her classmate present herself in the best possible manner. Or, as another female began, "'Hello. I think we are all nervous here today. Well, at least I know that I am. May I invite all of you, my new friends, to stop and take a breath with me."

When asked:

The students laughed then pushed forward without blinking, discussing questions of psychology, homosexuality and societal norms, until one said, "I have trouble talking about this in such an abstract way. Perhaps we could role play this situation. Would someone volunteer to be such a person?"

And a 17-year-old male - who had already studied architecture for a year at Tongji - leaned forward, and what followed was the most memorable bit of role-playing, maturity, discussion and thought I'd ever witnessed in a China.

But they also "imagined" more than I remembered. Three years ago, I had a favorite question taken from the IELTS exam book, "If you could go back in time, where would you go and why?" Ninety percent of my students always answered word-for-word, "I would want to go to the Tang Dynasty because this was the high point of Chinese civilization."

When it became clear that some of the provided questions might have been over-prepared, Vivian and I created a new group task (that became the benchmark for all the Shanghai interviews):

Within seconds, proposals emerged from students around the table. "I'd like to go back to the Cultural Revolution and be an economic advisor. As we all know, during the Cultural Revolution, China fell far behind. I'd like to go there and help create better economic policy." "I'd like to go to New Zealand about fifty years ago and save the kiwi bird from extinction."

"I'd like to go back to the United Nations before World War II with photos of today's environmental destruction and make them think more about the environment." Another student offered, "The UN didn't exist then, but you could present your photos to the League of Nations."

"I'd like to go back to the 1870's and stop the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing," one said. And still another followed, "Yes, we could also go back to the time when Japan begins to break further away from China and learn more about this so that we can have a better understanding of the relations between our two countries today."

One student, in a vivid pink shirt, said she wanted to make a video about the decision to begin the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad, and delegated tasks to others based upon the abilities mentioned in their respective introductions.

And another female student said, "I would want to go back to the Tang Dynasty and tell them, 'Even though your culture is at the height of the world today, do not think that you are the best because everything can fade so fast. Do not be too proud of yourself as Europe and the West will catch up to you very soon."

Another added, "Yes, perhaps we could go there and abolish the bagu [the official eight-paragraph essay exam] as this is the foundation of the test-taking culture that has held China back for so many years."

Everyone laughed. But right on the heels, still another added, "Yes, but how exactly might we accomplish this once we arrived there?"

And I was so excited that I wanted to dance.