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'Made-in-China people of the West' blindly admire the wrong stuff
By Wang Yong |
October 18, 2012, Thursday
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I had a brief chat with a 15-year-old school girl over the weekend about Mo Yan, the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
"Have you heard of Mo Yan before?" I asked the third-year junior middle school student, daughter of one of my relatives.
"No," she replied.
"Will you buy Mo Yan's books now?"
"No," she retorted, barely lifting her eyes.
"Why?" I asked, bewildered by the fact that I've known her to be a literature fan who read "Jane Eyre," "Sherlock Holmes," and other classics several years ago.
I was not sure whether she was a worshipper of the West, so I ventured to ask: "Is that because Mo Yan is Chinese?"
"Yes," she answered without hesitation.
"If this year's Nobel Prize in Literature had gone to someone from Japan, South Korea or Britain, you would run to buy his or her books even if you might not understand what he or she wrote about, wouldn't you?" I asked.
"Yes, I will," she smiled.
"But what's bad about being Chinese and what's good about being Western?" I challenged.
"Uh ..." she stuttered, lost for words.
Like mother, like daughter.
'Live like an American'
Her mother, an associate professor of education, told my wife the other day that now she wants to "live like an American," now that she has settled in a sparsely populated new town in Shanghai.
Here's what she says of being American: "I drive around like Americans."
Deep in my heart I know there's no use telling her that Americans also go hiking and biking or that most Americans never run red lights. She not only likes driving a car, but also runs red lights habitually in that new town where surveillance cameras have yet to be installed on a large scale, as in downtown Shanghai.
She and her daughter - brainstorming each other in vain worship of the West - are by no means a rare species in China, where daily observation and conversations will convince you that many Chinese families and individuals blindly adore the West. I call them "made-in-China people of the West."
There's nothing wrong with admiring the West for what it is worth. The grass can be greener in your neighbor's garden, as long as you know why it is greener.
Americans are strong and confident not because of their material wealth, even less because of their life on wheels - wealth comes and goes as the Bible tells us through tales of fat and lean years.
Despite all its problems - from gun crimes to debt crisis - America remains dynamic for its love of nature, respect for critics and cultivation of humanity.
Skin deep
Pity my relative, whose PhD thesis compared education in China and America, because she and those like her often admire the West in the wrong way. They are hooked on fast driving and things like that - symbols of convenience and comfort - which they think shape American culture. They talk about American democracy without knowing much about American constitutional history.
If you look beyond these individuals and cast a glance at China at large, you will see that what we've learned from America and the rest of the West over the past 30 years or so is often skin deep if not outright distorted.
We've learned urbanization from the West and yet we've failed to learn how well the West often preserves the countryside.
We've learned free trade from the West and yet we've failed to learn how well the West innovates ideas and products for export.
We've learned car ownership from the West and yet we've failed to learn how well the West respects road manners.
And in learning from the West in a lopsided way, many Chinese people distort and despise their own culture.
My relative would never allow her daughter to learn to play any traditional Chinese musical instrument.
As Zong Lei says in her article on this page today, many Chinese parents demand their children fiddle away on the piano to pass exams and get certificates - only to find that, in the end, their children either give up the instrument or know nothing about the real spirit of music or pleasure of playing the piano.
There're Chinese children learning traditional Chinese musical instruments, for sure, but by and large, these instruments play second fiddle to Western ones - even in the country's conservatories.
Cheng Gongliang, a master of guqin (a seven-string plucked zither with a history of 3,000 years) who is also versed in Western music, laments that a college student of traditional Chinese music is required to take a course in Western music, which is unnecessary. But a student of Western music is not required to study traditional Chinese music.
Misguided aspirations
The emergence of so many "made-in-China people of the West" is partly due to China's relatively short period of opening to the West, during which the craving to be as wealthy or as "cool" as Westerners as fast as possible came to dominate.
In this age of material progress and misguided aspirations, a few cautionary voices have largely gone unheeded.
Had they been heard, we would see more young Chinese pianists devoted to art instead of piano fiddlers bent on passing exams.
Had they been heard, we would see more young Chinese readers lending their ears to Mo Yan for what he writes about rather than for who he is.
(P.S. Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday that many government buildings mimicking the US White House have mushroomed across China in recent years. There're at least eight "White Houses" in Anhui Province alone, Xinhua said.)
"Have you heard of Mo Yan before?" I asked the third-year junior middle school student, daughter of one of my relatives.
"No," she replied.
"Will you buy Mo Yan's books now?"
"No," she retorted, barely lifting her eyes.
"Why?" I asked, bewildered by the fact that I've known her to be a literature fan who read "Jane Eyre," "Sherlock Holmes," and other classics several years ago.
I was not sure whether she was a worshipper of the West, so I ventured to ask: "Is that because Mo Yan is Chinese?"
"Yes," she answered without hesitation.
"If this year's Nobel Prize in Literature had gone to someone from Japan, South Korea or Britain, you would run to buy his or her books even if you might not understand what he or she wrote about, wouldn't you?" I asked.
"Yes, I will," she smiled.
"But what's bad about being Chinese and what's good about being Western?" I challenged.
"Uh ..." she stuttered, lost for words.
Like mother, like daughter.
'Live like an American'
Her mother, an associate professor of education, told my wife the other day that now she wants to "live like an American," now that she has settled in a sparsely populated new town in Shanghai.
Here's what she says of being American: "I drive around like Americans."
Deep in my heart I know there's no use telling her that Americans also go hiking and biking or that most Americans never run red lights. She not only likes driving a car, but also runs red lights habitually in that new town where surveillance cameras have yet to be installed on a large scale, as in downtown Shanghai.
She and her daughter - brainstorming each other in vain worship of the West - are by no means a rare species in China, where daily observation and conversations will convince you that many Chinese families and individuals blindly adore the West. I call them "made-in-China people of the West."
There's nothing wrong with admiring the West for what it is worth. The grass can be greener in your neighbor's garden, as long as you know why it is greener.
Americans are strong and confident not because of their material wealth, even less because of their life on wheels - wealth comes and goes as the Bible tells us through tales of fat and lean years.
Despite all its problems - from gun crimes to debt crisis - America remains dynamic for its love of nature, respect for critics and cultivation of humanity.
Skin deep
Pity my relative, whose PhD thesis compared education in China and America, because she and those like her often admire the West in the wrong way. They are hooked on fast driving and things like that - symbols of convenience and comfort - which they think shape American culture. They talk about American democracy without knowing much about American constitutional history.
If you look beyond these individuals and cast a glance at China at large, you will see that what we've learned from America and the rest of the West over the past 30 years or so is often skin deep if not outright distorted.
We've learned urbanization from the West and yet we've failed to learn how well the West often preserves the countryside.
We've learned free trade from the West and yet we've failed to learn how well the West innovates ideas and products for export.
We've learned car ownership from the West and yet we've failed to learn how well the West respects road manners.
And in learning from the West in a lopsided way, many Chinese people distort and despise their own culture.
My relative would never allow her daughter to learn to play any traditional Chinese musical instrument.
As Zong Lei says in her article on this page today, many Chinese parents demand their children fiddle away on the piano to pass exams and get certificates - only to find that, in the end, their children either give up the instrument or know nothing about the real spirit of music or pleasure of playing the piano.
There're Chinese children learning traditional Chinese musical instruments, for sure, but by and large, these instruments play second fiddle to Western ones - even in the country's conservatories.
Cheng Gongliang, a master of guqin (a seven-string plucked zither with a history of 3,000 years) who is also versed in Western music, laments that a college student of traditional Chinese music is required to take a course in Western music, which is unnecessary. But a student of Western music is not required to study traditional Chinese music.
Misguided aspirations
The emergence of so many "made-in-China people of the West" is partly due to China's relatively short period of opening to the West, during which the craving to be as wealthy or as "cool" as Westerners as fast as possible came to dominate.
In this age of material progress and misguided aspirations, a few cautionary voices have largely gone unheeded.
Had they been heard, we would see more young Chinese pianists devoted to art instead of piano fiddlers bent on passing exams.
Had they been heard, we would see more young Chinese readers lending their ears to Mo Yan for what he writes about rather than for who he is.
(P.S. Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday that many government buildings mimicking the US White House have mushroomed across China in recent years. There're at least eight "White Houses" in Anhui Province alone, Xinhua said.)
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