Wonderful article in the January 6, 2008 edition of the NY Times: 1977 Exam Opened Escape Route Into China’s Elite. Enjoy.
This is one of the things I love about China and its people — many (but I recognize in a country of 1.3 billion people not all) who are treated poorly and/or fall on hard times just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and stay focused, and keep fighting to move forward to try to make a better life.
7th grade I went to school from 730am-530pm and cramp school 3 hours a night 3 nights a week. 8th grade we went to school six days a week. 9th grade, the year before High School entrance exam, we went to school seven days a week for the whole year. that was, 730am-930pm Monday to Friday, 8am-5pm saturday and 8-12pm on sunday (i went to a christian school nonetheless). I seen my classmates and my teacher more than my family as I ate 3 meals at school, took 8+ tests every single day, and got beaten by a stick or slapped on the face or kicked by my teacher whenever I failed to do a homework, score above 90% on a test, or anything he disliked. once he beat me when i told my english teacher that he liked her (which was true). he slapped me twice and made my glasses flew away, in front of her, during her English class.
i guess students at my time had a different understanding of “stress” at school than our american counterparts.
when i moved to California at 10th grade, i studied three years of math in American high school and I didn’t learn a single thing that I didn’t learn already in junior high, except English, which i simply sucked at then.
oh, we also had to clean our living quarter. every day we spent time brooming an assigned campus area, restrooms, and our own classroom. every week we had to remove all our chairs and desks and scrub the floor with our hands. if for any reason the teacher didn’t like me, he would tell me (or anyone) to stay after to scrub more so i couldn’t go home. this is not exclusive to my school, but common to all education in taiwan, china, japan, and korea. (not sure about HK since they were under British system). this continued to college and career, as employees still are responsible for cleaning the office, bathroom, kitchen’s etc in companies, and they have different assigned duties everyday.
beside cleaning, we were also taught to DIY. every class was provided with tools such as hammer, screwdriver, sort, for students to fix things that were broken.
did all of these education help me to become resourceful and independent? not really, because every thing was based on punishment, close supervision, fear and responsibilities. in fact, i couldn’t adopt when i moved to america because no one would “force” me to do anything.
that’s what happened w/ a lot of asian immigrants who are too used to have elders pushing them on their back, because parenting don’t stop at age 18. parenting stop…never. maybe when one gets married, but children are pretty much “assets” of parents. my parents expect me to support them financially till their death. that’s how they are to their parents. conversely, they support me financially now too, and they consider that their duties. i don’t see anything wrong with that, but when i see my American born Chinese friend, after becoming dentist, unwilling to give his poor father any money, really bothered me. i understand it’s a difference of culture and expectation, but for me, in my culture, children have duties to do anything, to sacrifice anything, for their parents. actually, we are brought up that way, the importance of family, parents, community, leader, teacher, caretaker, society, government, etc. in the same way, when we are in those high positions, we are given with the responsibilities and calling to serve, to protect, with a duty to guide and provide.
and now you probably understand why asian (easter asian) are mostly passive aggressive.