Teaching cooking and self-reliance
Source: Xinhua |
April 15, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SHOPPING, cooking and cleaning house all by himself, Cantonese Zhang Chaoqia left home for far-away Beijing to live independently as a trial run before further study in Japan.
The 22-year-old graduate spent two months trying to live alone in Beijing. He finally got used to his solitary new existence in a big, empty house and got used to Beijing's dry weather.
"To study abroad not only entails language ability; more important is learning how to live by yourself in such a different, even harsh, environment," he says.
But Zhang acknowledges that the level of culture shock he has felt so far will be nothing compared to Japan. After all, Beijing is still China.
For many other students, all kinds of preparations for studying abroad are also under way after they received acceptance letters from overseas universities in recent months.
Earlier this month, at Beijing's Huatianjude vocational and technical school, dozens of young adults clustered in the kitchen classroom and focused on how the teacher transformed dough into cakes and cooked traditional Chinese food.
"In summer and winter holidays, almost 70 percent of the trainees are junior or high school students who tend to study overseas," says the school's manager, Chen Li, adding that the number of these students has been rising noticeably in the past few years.
It points to a decades-old problem of young Chinese struggling to acclimatize to unfamiliar foreign settings, and the lengths to which they and their parents are now willing to go in order to ease the transition.
Students attending Huatianjude often choose a 10-day training program which costs 1,500 yuan (US$238). Parents think it's worth it since they worry that their offspring may struggle to fill their bellies in nations of strange, new food, says Chen.
"The phenomenon of young students priming their ability to live independently is delightful, but it's also disappointing since it reflects their lack of this ability," says Li Yinhe, a noted Chinese sociologist.
This kind of basic competence is needed if young people are to be better equipped for today's fast-changing society and it is very significant for their futures and their whole lives, she adds.
Chinese students are famous for their abilities to take exams and perform well, but they are often criticized for lacking creativity and practical ability.
At the start of each year's college term in China, it's easy to find an army of parents accompanying their charges onto campuses everywhere. To make sure their fledgling birds feel at ease, many parents stay with their children for many days after their arrival, sometimes sleeping in the open air when hotel beds are all occupied by others taking the same approach.
In addition, some parents even rent rooms near their children's colleges to accompany them through four years of study.
Li says children's self-sufficiency ought to be nurtured and encouraged when they are very small, but that early learning opportunity is often lost when parents spoil and smother their children.
"Children are raised like little emperors and parents do everything for them; that's why they have to make up for their lack of independence when going abroad," she notes.
Li says part of the reason for spoiling is that most Chinese parents have only one child under the nation's single-child policy, and she places some of the blame on the nation's exam-oriented education system, which makes Chinese students fish out of water when they go abroad and more creativity and interdisciplinary work is required.
The sociologist suggests parents build the idea that domestic chores are easy and encourage them to master basic skills like cooking to sustain themselves.
The 22-year-old graduate spent two months trying to live alone in Beijing. He finally got used to his solitary new existence in a big, empty house and got used to Beijing's dry weather.
"To study abroad not only entails language ability; more important is learning how to live by yourself in such a different, even harsh, environment," he says.
But Zhang acknowledges that the level of culture shock he has felt so far will be nothing compared to Japan. After all, Beijing is still China.
For many other students, all kinds of preparations for studying abroad are also under way after they received acceptance letters from overseas universities in recent months.
Earlier this month, at Beijing's Huatianjude vocational and technical school, dozens of young adults clustered in the kitchen classroom and focused on how the teacher transformed dough into cakes and cooked traditional Chinese food.
"In summer and winter holidays, almost 70 percent of the trainees are junior or high school students who tend to study overseas," says the school's manager, Chen Li, adding that the number of these students has been rising noticeably in the past few years.
It points to a decades-old problem of young Chinese struggling to acclimatize to unfamiliar foreign settings, and the lengths to which they and their parents are now willing to go in order to ease the transition.
Students attending Huatianjude often choose a 10-day training program which costs 1,500 yuan (US$238). Parents think it's worth it since they worry that their offspring may struggle to fill their bellies in nations of strange, new food, says Chen.
"The phenomenon of young students priming their ability to live independently is delightful, but it's also disappointing since it reflects their lack of this ability," says Li Yinhe, a noted Chinese sociologist.
This kind of basic competence is needed if young people are to be better equipped for today's fast-changing society and it is very significant for their futures and their whole lives, she adds.
Chinese students are famous for their abilities to take exams and perform well, but they are often criticized for lacking creativity and practical ability.
At the start of each year's college term in China, it's easy to find an army of parents accompanying their charges onto campuses everywhere. To make sure their fledgling birds feel at ease, many parents stay with their children for many days after their arrival, sometimes sleeping in the open air when hotel beds are all occupied by others taking the same approach.
In addition, some parents even rent rooms near their children's colleges to accompany them through four years of study.
Li says children's self-sufficiency ought to be nurtured and encouraged when they are very small, but that early learning opportunity is often lost when parents spoil and smother their children.
"Children are raised like little emperors and parents do everything for them; that's why they have to make up for their lack of independence when going abroad," she notes.
Li says part of the reason for spoiling is that most Chinese parents have only one child under the nation's single-child policy, and she places some of the blame on the nation's exam-oriented education system, which makes Chinese students fish out of water when they go abroad and more creativity and interdisciplinary work is required.
The sociologist suggests parents build the idea that domestic chores are easy and encourage them to master basic skills like cooking to sustain themselves.
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