GHS208-01 Spring 2020 China and the Islamic Middle East

2/13/20

Today the students worked on science which involved the water and carbon cycles. I helped my assisting teacher with one student. Her name was Cece at least that’s what she called herself. She was preparing for the mathematics exam in which adult ed students are required to demonstrate proficiency with basic algebra and arithmetic. She was struggling with fractions/division, inequalities and single variable algebra. The biggest problem we found was that she needed a better understanding of her multiplication tables. We talk about my interest in math and science and I explained to her what got me interested in science. After I explained it to her she appeared deflated saying that she would never get as good as I am with math. I explained to her that she doesn’t need to be good at math to make it and that everything takes practice to excel at. We parted ways and I encouraged her to continue working on her times tables and not to stress about the test. Overall I say it was a good session

China’s communistic practices have isolated Christianity from all aspects of their daily lives. Their current regimen has taken extreme measures to even arrest those who are apart of any religiously affiliated online chat group. As a Christian myself, I found it quite difficult to imagine living in a country where my religion was outlawed. However, this is a reality that Chinese Christians have to face every day.

Within college campuses specifically, Chinese authorities have been vigorously monitoring online activity from students. A group of fifty students from a college located in the eastern province of Shandong were summoned after internet police suspected that they had Christian affiliations (Zhang Feng). Currently, this involvement can be punishable with imprisonment. Although their offenses were not enough to place them in prison, their participation did lead them to intense interrogation and penalizations from the government. They were forced to answer questions about their fellow group members’ levels of involvement and attend specific anti-religion classes created by the authorities. Students involved were then subject to cancellation of scholarships and grants. Eventually, they were all pressured into fully giving up their previous religious beliefs.

Some of the students penalized later reported that they were still unaware of how their previous religious affiliations had been discovered, as nothing had been explicitly mentioned within their online chat group. Although before researching this subject matter I had originally believed that I would still be able to live out my faith silently as a Chinese citizen, I know have started to realize that it would not be this easy. Chinese authorities have clearly intensified their search for identifying “undercover” Christians.

The past five readings that have been assigned in Ha Jin’s The Bridegroom have been nothing short of depressing in terms of the way that women are viewed and treated in China. In “An Official Reply” the gender discrimination was not quite as outright as in “Broken” however, it is still very prevalent. The author genuinely seems confused as to why a young woman would feel compelled to engage in sexual relations with an older man who has the final say in if her poetry gets published. Zhao says, “I couldn’t imagine that such a fine girl would allow an old man like Mr. Fang to explore her carnally”. It is appalling that being an academic in the 1980’s he still has no concept of gender and power relations. This young girl’s situation is similar to that of Tingting in “Broken”, who felt compelled to lose her virginity to a man in a position of power who pursued her. All of these situations could easily have taken place in the United States and it is important to recognize that gender discrimination can be found in all parts of the globe.

In “The Woman from New York”, the gender discrimination was more blatant, but also gave an interesting third person perspective. This point of view made me ponder whether females were included or if it was a collective male perspective and if that would make me think differently about the thoughts presented about Jinli’s life. Anyhow, I was appalled that Jinli was not hired for the tourist position when she was more than qualified for the job merely because there had been rumors spread about what she”may” have been doing when she spent some years in New York. This is where I think gender discrimination in China differs the United States. In the United States, a woman would most likely be hired for being fluent in Chinese and having traveled abroad there while applying for a tourist job. A woman’s personal life is much less poked and prodded as compared to China, where even the government knows about supposed rumors surrounding your name.

Usually when reading a textbook, I tend to skip the asides; anything that isn’t a part of the main text. In the case of the Craig chapters, I’ve found the side passages to be really interesting. My favorite from chapter three was “The Peach Blossom Spring.” It is a poem from Tao Qian, and it tells of a fisherman who stumbles upon a lost village, with a community of people living in simplicity and peace.

The poem is very visually descriptive, so I decided to look up Chinese art influenced by the story. Here are my three favorites:

• Growing a beard
• Making international calls
• Having a passport
• Having too many kids
• Wearing a vail

What do these things have in common? According to CNN, they are reasons the Chinese government has been detaining citizens.

Recently, a report was leaked that contained highly detailed information on over 300 families, with the majority being of muslim heritage. These reports listed information on why these citizens were detained, and many of the reasoning is due to superficial charges.

There are four detainment facilities in western China (Xinjiang), which the Chinese government has publicly described as “vocational training centers.” However, after the reports were leaked, many former prisoners have come out to say that they are crowded, prisoner like facilities where the inmates are subjected to torture (i.e. concentration camps).

These camps are believed to have approximately one million prisoners, but the Chinese government says the reports are fake news and 100% rumors.

It is my hope that the full extent of this injustice is revealed. I will continue to check for updates.

Click here to view the report on CNN.com

In a global historical studies class a discussion was struck on the topic of family loyalty. Whilst researching and discussing this topic you can very easily find that loyalty and honor in China are almost unbelievably unparalleled in the rest of the world. In fact in some philosophers words, there is no option but to completely respect your family and never turn your back on them. A question was raised in this discussion on whether or not people would turn their backs on their family if something bad/illegal happened. Many people responded that it depends on how bad this action was, but how would you really know unless something like this had really happened to you? Is it possible that this culture from China has bled into the United States, or is it completely lost? I may have an answer to these questions.

Listening to others claim that they would turn their parents in if they did something illegal, was really almost one of the most frustrating things on the face of the planet. They’re even claiming they would, when it was things that don’t even affect them as a human being. While as a person who has lived through an abusive household, I never told anyone what I went through. I could’ve told the police, I could’ve moved to my mom’s house. Yet I chose not to, because of an innate respect for family that I was just born with. Why didn’t I say anything? Why would I still care about the family members that did this thing to me? Because we’re human, and we don’t know how much we rely on our parents until we don’t have them. Sometimes people don’t say things about events even worse than this.

One of my good friends has known that his mother was having an affair for years, and still hasn’t told his father. He can’t bring himself to, in his head if he said anything he would be the reason that his parents separated.

The point here through these darker stories, is that I think people would be surprised how much they wouldn’t rat their parents out for. Some of me wonders if this Chinese culture isn’t necessarily just theirs, but that they actually just understand these things that people are born with. Not just something we study, but something we all also experience. I believe firmly that this “cultural” thing, is actually just a factor of the Chinese culture being able to accept the fact that this is “The Way”.

Feel free to agree or disagree, always love great discussion!

This past week, we talked about the excerpts from Chuang Tzu, Flame, and Broken. This blog post will be about my opinion on these stories.

My favorite section from the excerpts is definitely section J. I love the first sentence-“Is there such a thing as perfect happiness in the world or isn’t there.” This section is about what people find happiness in and how people feel bad about when the perfect happiness can’t be reached. In my own opinion, I think many people believe that happiness is associated with tangible items. Having money, having fancy items, being the best at one’s job and so forth. But for me, happiness comes from within. There are more internal reasons to be happy rather than external objects. One of my favorite quotes in this section states “I look at what ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing around as though they couldn’t stop – they all say they’re happy with it. I’m not happy with it and I’m not unhappy with it.” Happiness comes from within, so if people are trying to obtain some object that they think will make them happy, they don’t understand true happiness. Personally, I rather be poor and happy than sad and rich. Friendships, love, connections and relationships should make people happy, not having the biggest house or fanciest phone or whatever. That’s just my opinion on how happiness is different for others, but people shouldn’t strive to obtain this happiness. It should just happen naturally without effort.

We also talked about arranged marriages because that was the theme for Flame. The main question was whether we would disobey our parents to marry our true love or accept this arranged spouse because you were told to. Personally, if one finds true love, go for it. I know this doesn’t happen in our culture, so I can’t imagine what it would be like if I was forced to marry someone against my will. So I tried to put myself in Nimei’s shoes. I would go for the love of my life even though my mother wouldn’t approve of it. Hopefully, my mother would come back around and see that I’m truly happy and that she could still be associated with my life. However, that’s not a given and one’s relationship with their parents could be ruined forever. But then after discussing with my classmates, I may have listened to my mother because my arranged spouse was able to feed me while the other villagers weren’t able to have a steady supply of food coming in. Would it seem selfish that I refused free food for the love of my life knowing that other villagers would appreciate the food income. All I know is that if you find someone you love, don’t let anybody hold you back or prevent you from being with that person.

The last story was about how men and women aren’t treated the same. This story is about how people stereotype men and women when it comes to having many relationships or sleeping with many people. I felt bad that this story accurately describes our own society for a fiction novel. Tingting is sleeping with Benchou, who is already married and having an affair. First of all, it shouldn’t be the coworkers business who is sleeping with who. If there is an affair going on, there should be at least four people who know about the current situation-the two people having the affair and their respective spouses (if married). Second of all, Tingting gets verbally attacked when being interrogated, while Benchou easily acts like nothing has happened. Eventually, our main character gets himself in a dilemma. He is approached by some unidentified human at the movie theater, who ends up doing some unusual sexual things during the movie. Manjin then tries to find this person after she leaves and approaches the wrong woman, which results in Manjin being interrogated for his actions. I’m surprised he is told that he has a minimum of three years for attempted sexual assault.  Most news stories in our society involve the men getting away with stuff like this. The worst part of this story is the ending, where Tingting is the assumed woman in the movie scene dilemma. Just because she was considered “broken” in the beginning in the novel and how she had her confessions about Benchou earlier in the story, that doesn’t mean she is the unidentified woman. There was no clear evidence she was even involved in this problem. She eventually commits suicide, which absolutely makes this story depressing at the end. Men and women should be treated the same with the same rights, but because our society praises men when sleeping with other women and demoralizes women by calling them whore or slut when sleeping with many people, that can never happen in this society. That’s my opinion on this book and unfortunate scenario will live in throughout our society.

I’ve been busy with all of my math classes, so I haven’t done a journal in a while. This blog post will be about the contents we talked about two weeks ago, which were the Tao te Ching and about Mencius.

Of all of the Tao te Ching poems, 49 was one that stood out to me because the middle section explains how people should act towards others. “People who are good, I treat well. People who are not good, I also treat well. Trustworthy people, I trust. Untrustworthy people, I also trust.” I think this is important to understand because you should treat others the same way you would want to be treated. We shouldn’t treat people differently based on how we perceive them. What is the true definition of “good”? Everyone has a different meaning, so I may think people are good while others don’t. We should treat everyone the same way even if they aren’t “good” because nobody is perfectly good. People have their ups and downs, and people aren’t just naturally untrustworthy or not good. There’s good in everyone, and that’s something that everyone needs to understand. Just treat people positively and everything will be okay for everyone.

The second day of class, we reflected on Mencius and the question whether people are born good, evil, or neutral. Prior to class, I thought that people were typically good. I haven’t met anyone who is just pure evil and is full of negativity. But after reading Mencius, I think people are born with a clean slate and they decide if they want to be good or evil. Most people who start neutral end up good, and that’s what I believe now. I liked how in the Man’s Nature is Evil article that every paragraph usually ends with “that man’s nature is evil, and that the goodness is the result of conscious activity.” I don’t think people just wake up like, ‘I’m gonna be evil today.’ But I also don’t think people also wake up trying to be good. People just naturally are good…people don’t try to be good. From my perspective, people are just good. But that doesn’t come from our own conscience at first. Based on however we grew up, people will have more good inside them, but everyone will have some good in them nonetheless. We start out as neutral, but we usually end up good. That’s my opinion, that evil doesn’t really exist in this world. There are just different levels of goodness and everyone has a different definition of what being good means to them.

Last week, I was excited to learn that I would be helping to tutor a music class, within the “IPS Newcomer” program. Music has always been a passion of mine, and something I pursued in various avenues growing up. I jumped around between guitar, drums, and piano in my early years, but by far the one that I have kept up the most is piano. So, when the first words of the teacher when I walked in were “do you play piano,” I took that as a good sign.

The classroom is mostly hispanic students, so there was a bit of a language barrier at first, but it was cool to see the students take to my instruction on how to play basic chords. Many of the barriers I thought were going to be an issue, faded, and I think it is because that is the nature of music. It brings people together who may not have much in common, or concrete means of communication. I am eager to return to class this week and experience more of that feeling.

In “The Wisdom of Confucius,” Mencius explores mans’ nature. He compares it to a forest on a mountain, saying that, at its origin, it is beautiful and good. However, over time, as men have chopped away the trees, the mountain has lost its luster. So much so that people do not even remember that it was once covered with trees. The mountain has lost its true nature. Mencius believes man is the same. He says, at their core, humans have a “heart of love and righteousness,” but have lost it due to the continual hacking of the human spirit. This teaching reminded me of the class discussion on if man is inherently good or evil. There were some who believed that man leans toward being inherently evil, and that is understandable, but I can’t help but wonder if it is because we live in a culture that has forgotten mans’ original nature. Maybe, with “proper nourishment and care,” we can return to a place where the obvious answer to that question is that man is inherently good; return to the full forest on the mountainside.