We're so different we're the same
This week in class, I had the students partner up and play journalist: introduce yourself to your partner, ask at least 10 questions about him or her, record all the answers in your notebook, and then introduce your partner to the class. No Chinese, ever! Only ingles in this clase.
The kids took to it no sweat. They asked great questions, gave great answers, and not a word of Chinese was heard. Bueno.
As each student introduced their partner, a pattern emerged: the interviewer would point out all the ways he or she is different from the partner. "While we are different in most ways, we do have one thing in common," was an often repeated phrase.
I wonder, psychologically, if this is a reflection of the blatant conformity -- the sameness -- of Chinese culture, especially youth culture. Before I meet a student, I can guess, with certainty, their interests: basketball, football (soccer), ping-pong, badminton and Brittney Spears or Backstreet Boys. No Chinese student is into jazz. No Chinese student is a mountain climber. No Chinese student collects stamps. It doesn't matter what a student looks like -- twiggy computer kids will profess undying love for Yao Ming; meek girls will swear their favorite activity is playing basketball; fat kids can't get enough of playing football. It's the same the same the same, student after student after student.
And college, a dream that only a quarter of the population realizes, only deepens this sense of sameness. First-year students live either eight or sixteen to a room. The only recreational activities available are basketball, football, ping-pong and badminton. There are no pubs, no dancehalls, no karaoke studios, no privacy in which to have a boyfriend/girlfriend, no Outdoor Learning adventure courses.
Long into the night, every night, after dark, you can hear the endless bouncing of basketballs on the 12 campus courts. And when I awake every morning, at six, bounce-bounce-bounce go the basketballs. Other than carhorns blaring and cellphones tooting, it's the most pervasive sound in Chinese society.
And, so, perhaps the eagerness to point out all the differences between the interviewer and the interviewee is tacit recognition of this sameness. Unconsciously, we understand how alike all of us are, but we want to be independent and feel like our own people, not a bunch of clones. And it's the same in America: go to a Johnnie-Tommie game. What you'll see are 10 thousand clones: affluent Catholic Midwestern white kids, half in red, half in purple, wearing shirts and chanting cheers about how very different they are because one group is Tommies and the other is Johnnies. Unconsciously: God, we're clones, but let's bash each other to make it feel like we're SOOOO different. And it's great fun to bash Tommies, so I don't begrudge my students for pretending they're very different from their classmates.
