My latest on the rise of female smokers in China

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 | posts | No Comments

This story appeared this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Affluence prompts more women in China to light up

A female smoker browses a wide array of cigarettes and lighters on sale on a Beijing street. Photo credit: Kevin Lee

There is a smoking room in Zhang Pei Pei’s office in Beijing, China.

At any time of the day, men crowd the small space, lighting up and puffing away until they’re enveloped in a thick, cloudy haze.

But when Zhang has a craving for one of 10 cigarettes she’ll smoke each day, she doesn’t join her male colleagues. “There’s not one woman in there,” she says. “If I went in there, the men might not be too happy.”

Instead, she treks outside to light up, and if she looks left or right, will typically see other women doing the same.

It is becoming an increasingly common sight in China.

In a country of 350 million smokers, more than 60% of men, and 4% of women, are smokers.
But the latter percentage is set to rise, say experts at the World Health Organization. They estimate that 20% of women worldwide will be smokers by 2025, as compared with the 12% who smoke today.

Chinese health experts say the trend is exacerbated in China because of the country’s new affluence, which has brought about rapid economic, social and cultural change, particularly in cities and booming coastal regions.

But there’s been a simultaneous public health toll in terms of soaring incidence in obesity, diabetes, hypertension, lung and breast cancer, and cardiovascular disease rates. The Chinese are consuming more fat, more sugar and more salt.
And more tobacco.

China is already the world’s biggest consumer and producer of cigarettes, manufacturing 2.2 trillion smokes every year.
But women have traditionally shied away from smoking, largely because of cultural taboos.

No more.

“Women are becoming more independent. They’ve got more money. They listen less to their parents and teachers,” says Dr. Judith Mackay, a senior WHO policy advisor who has led anti-smoking campaigns across Asia. “It’s the right culture for the introduction of thinking wrongly, thinking that smoking is associated with emancipation. We have to make them realize it’s addictive. It is a [form of] bondage.”

In a bid to tap the female market, tobacco companies have started using colourful packaging and marketing long, slender and flavoured cigarettes labelled “low-tar” or “light.”

To the chagrin of her parents, Zhang began smoking five years ago because she was curious and indulging in a quasi-taboo activity seemed fun and exciting.

Menthol-flavoured cigarettes helped clear her mind and smoking quickly grew into a daily habit as a result of stresses at her job in the information technology industry.

“I started pulling a lot of overtime,” she says. “Smoking is a way for me to vent. It’s like all the pressure comes out of me, along with the smoke. It’s a great feeling of freedom to know I can do this.”

According to the tobacco control office of China’s Centre for Disease Control, that feeling of freedom is costly: more than one million Chinese people die annually from tobacco-related illnesses, about one quarter of all smoking-related deaths worldwide. By 2020, the WHO estimates that toll could climb to 3 million.

“You can look at swine flu or SARS, but it’s clear nothing kills like tobacco does,” Mackay says. “It’s not like a mine collapse or a road accident where people are killed immediately and there’s a national response to it. This is a long term disease and there should be a national response to this, too.”

The Chinese government is taking tentative steps. It has banned tobacco-advertising on television and radio (but not billboards), while adding health warnings to cigarette packaging. Smoking was prohibited at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and at the World Expo in Shanghai. More than 200 million reminbi (roughly $30 million) worth of Expo-related donations from tobacco companies were returned after the nongovernmental Chinese Association on Tobacco Control pressed for the organizing committee to honour its promise of hosting a “smoke-free” event.

China was a signatory to the 2003 UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which obliges it to ban all tobacco advertising and smoking in all public places, while raising tobacco taxes, before January 2011.

But few believe those goals will be realized, including government officials.

“There’s a very long road ahead of us,” says Jiang Yuan, vice-director of the Centre for Disease Control’s tobacco control office. He adds that regulations banning smoking in indoor public spaces have only been adopted in seven provincial capitals.

There’s no way a prohibition will be achieved by 2011, adds Xu Guihua, vice-president of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control. “This goal needs related national laws and regulations. The result of China’s tobacco control and its progress highly depends on the Chinese government’s attitude and determination.”

That attitude may be predicated on a conflict-of-interest: China’s largest tobacco company is state-owned. Critics say that has prevented the government from raising prices. A 2009 tax increase was modest and absorbed entirely by the industry. A package of cigarettes now retails for as little as $1.50 in Beijing and Shanghai.

Nonsmoking campaigns appear the government’s preferred option, including a special appeal to women made during the release of the China Center for Disease Control’s annual tobacco report, which warned of the increased danger of developing tobacco-related illnesses and appealed to a woman’s cosmetic sense by asserting that smoking will bring on early signs of aging and damage the skin and teeth.

The report also cited data linking smoking to low fertility rates, miscarriages and infant deformities, noting that a survey of 1300 families indicated that 47.9% of pregnant women are exposed to second-hand smoke.

Those kinds of nonsmoking pitches may eventually sway the 30-year Zhang, who hopes to one day have a child. “But that time hasn’t come yet,” she says. “I want a healthy baby. So when it’s time, I will quit smoking for the child. It might not be easy, but it’s an important enough reason to try.”

Tags: Centre for Disease Control, China, hong kong, smokers, smoking, taboo, tobacco, UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, WHO, women, World Health Organization

Low Voter Turnout in Hong Kong Spurs Government Propaganda, Calls to Trust Constitutional Plan in 2012

Thursday, May 20th, 2010 | posts | 1 Comment

I just saw this commercial on the television today.

My jaw dropped because I really had no idea what the ad was about, until the very end. Take a look.

Government propaganda.

The ad was released this week, just a day after a failed by-election here in Hong Kong, in which five legislators asked the city’s residents to show their support for democratic reform.

There was a lot of noise as they campaigned on the streets, shouting into megaphones, handing out leaflets, and canvassing at dim sum restaurants in the morning hours.

Alas, there was not a lot of voting going on.

Just 17% of Hong Kong’s eligible voters came out, less than 600,000 people.

It was enough to get the five legislators, who hail from two pro-democracy parties, voted back into the Legislative Council.

But what a disappointment.

You can call it voter apathy, but to me, this is the latest example of how Hong Kong residents are becoming more complacent and too comfortable with the decisions made by Hong Kong officials in line with the mainland Chinese government.

As long as Hong Kong continues to have a steady economy, stronger political ties to China and the steady disintegration of civil liberties is fine by most.

It was also extremely disappointing that Hong Kong’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, made it a point not to vote in the by election. He stayed at home all day as a small group of the movement’s supporters rallied outside the estate.

The by election was co-ordinated. The five legislators had who stepped down from their elected positions in January, forcing a referendum. They called it a symbolic push for “electoral reform.”

Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai, a member of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee told the Hong Kong Standard that the low turnout was a vote against confrontation:

“I think this should be something that all the politicians should think about. The end does not justify the means. … In Hong Kong, if you want to fight for democracy, you must use the right means, then the people will be with you.”

Of course, the organizers of the movement, hailed it a victory.

Audrey Eu, a spokesperson and one of the organizers of the movement, compared the voter turnout to the July 1 rally of 2003 when 500,000 marchers took to the streets to protest Article 23.

The Hong Kong government cannot ignore the result, she said.

But I think they can.

The five legislators and their supporters are protesting the government’s “constitutional plan” for 2012. Hong Kong officials have hailed the plan as a means to broaden the scope of political participation and incase democratic elements in the 2012 elections.

But members of the Democratic Party say otherwise. They argue the plan fails to bring in dual universal suffrage — for the elections of the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive — by 2012. They have demanded that the functional constituencies — a professional or special interest group involved in the electoral process — be abolished.

Eligible voters in a functional constituency may include persons as well as other designated legal entities such as organizations and corporations.

Al Jazeera has a succint video report on this:

…And a short but interesting exchange on comments on Youtube regarding the vote:

One Hong Kong resident seems to heed the government’s call to “trust” in them:

to say that I m disappointed at this demorcatic movement! We never had DEMOcracy UNDER British occupation! & I do not think imposing western system which is still at its infancy, to an ancient civilization like the Chinese would ever work! 5000 years of ups & downs, from dynasties to the cultural rev’ then Tian’men! China is a seasoned veteran in politics, policy & systems! I believe China is heading in the right direction & I have faith in it’s governing!

While another resident expresses disappointment:

Tags: China, constitutional plan, democracy, democratic reform, election, hong kong, politics, propaganda, voting

The China Bug

Saturday, May 15th, 2010 | posts | 1 Comment

HONG KONG — I arrived safely back to Hong Kong Friday afternoon, after a week-long research trip in Zhejiang. I got a lot of work done. Met a lot of people, made a lot of contacts and learned so much. There’s still so much to do.

But before I continue, the first step is getting my health back.

I’m sick. It started off, like it always does, with a sore throat. Then sneezing. A stuffy nose followed. And then, the coughing.

It is truly amazing how strong the mind is. The symptoms began to surface last Monday, just days into my trip. But I surpressed them. There was just too much work to be done and I didn’t have time to have my body fail me. Tylenol Cold pills kept my runny nose and sore throat at bay as I went out for interviews.

On Friday, after getting to the Wenzhou airport for my flight home, I began to let my guard down and my symptoms, like a sudden hail storm, hit me hard. The worst part is the green chunks of phlegm I’ve been coughing up.

Every time I go to mainland China, I get sick.  In Beijing, I put off going to see the doctor, thinking I could fight a simple cough and cold on my own. It got so bad that I developed bronchitis and had to go to the local hospital. Not something I want to repeat.

I can’t say what it is that got me sick. Was it the busy schedule? The pressure I put on myself to get the story? The air? The garbage? The wholewheat/handsanitizer/toocleanforChina Canadian in me? I’m just not used to it, I suppose.

The next trip will be better. For now, sanitized Hong Kong is very much a relief for me.

And oh, there’s plenty of quality whole wheat bread to be found here. You’ve just got to pay 22 -30 Hong Kong dollars (about $3-$5 USD) for it.

Tags: air quality, China, hong kong, sick, zhejiang

Stranded at Shenzhen airport

Thursday, May 6th, 2010 | posts | 4 Comments

SHENZHEN — Heavy rain and violent thunderstorms delayed thousands of passengers at Shenzhen’s airport Friday, causing havoc at airline counters where irate Chinese passengers scrambled to find alternate flights out of the city.

At the Shenzhen airlines counter, men slammed their fists on counter tops and shouted loudly.

Delayed travelers at Shenzhen airport crowd in front of and behind an airline counter.

The women, many of them on their cell phones, whimpered to loved ones to say they’d be late, then turned around to bark at the frazzled young ticket agents, struggling to handle the dozens of hands waving ID cards and overdue boarding passes.

Behind them, dozens more were pushing and shoving their way to the front of the line.

Wait, did I just say “line”?

There was no line. Just a hoard of people thrusting themselves in front the counter while another angry mob had gone behind the counter by unlatching the side door and jamming themselves right next to the three ticket agents.

The lightning, thunder and flash floods began Thursday night in Hong Kong and the south-eastern parts of Guangdong Province forcing thousands more to spend the night at the airport.

One of those travelers, a Canadian named Jordan, was trying to get to Shanghai since Thursday evening. He’s working at the Canadian pavilion at the World Expo. But China Southern airlines couldn’t tell him what flight he’d be able to catch and when he could leave.

“I have never experienced this in my whole life,” he said. “This is f***** up.”

En route to Zhejiang province, a Dutch traveler edged his way behind the counter of Shenzhen airlines.

The crowd pushed up against each other. People were sweating. And shouting.

Wedged between Wenzhounese businessmen in blazers and a pushy mother clutching her baby, he waited patiently next to a male ticket agent who was quickly re-booking travelers whose flights had been canceled Friday morning.

Next to him, a young female ticket agent in her 20s, stood up and threw her hands up in the air. Near tears, she pleaded with the crowd to get out from behind the counter and line up.”你们出去啊！GET OUT!” she screamed.

But it was no use.  The people only grew more distraught. One woman grabbed her by the shoulders in protest. “小姐，你去哪儿？Miss, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!”

It had been nearly 30 minutes. It was becoming unbearable. The Dutch traveler, clutching a Canadian and EU Passport, never liked to ask for special treatment when in China. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

He edged closer to the male ticket agent and held the passports in the agent’s peripheral vision, hoping the shiny booklets would catch his eye in the sea of Chinese IDs.

“Excuse me,” he said softly in English. “Could you please change my flight going to Wenzhou?”

He did this repeatedly, quietly and subtly, until the agent acknowledged his presence.

Then, the Dutch traveler switched into Chinese. He whispered in the agent’s ear while pointing at the passports:

“温州，温州。 下一个。下一个。Wenzhou. Wenzhou. I’m next. I’m next.”

The mantra worked. After booking several Chinese passengers, he grabbed the passports and began his work. An 8:50 a.m. flight from Shenzhen to Wenzhou was rebooked for 5:05 p.m.

The Dutch and Canadian celebrated over two bowls of noodle soup.

Tags: airport, chaos, China, crowds, mob, Shenzhen, traveling

Into the mainland, and to Green Fields…

Thursday, May 6th, 2010 | posts | No Comments

Much of the last few weeks have been spent preparing for my first trip back to mainland China.

Part of that preparation has involved getting my Mandarin back up to speed. I spent just a year in Beijing learning how to read and write, cramming more than 50 new Chinese words a day into my mind by writing characters over and over again in my notebooks.

The last 2 years in New York, I had the opportunity to use my Chinese while reporting on Manhattan’s Chinatown. But without reading and writing characters on a regular basis, it has all started to fade, fade away.

In China, and especially Beijing, schools and tutors geared toward foreigners wanting to learn Chinese were readily available and super cheap. Here, tutors can cost as much as they do in the U.S. and Canada. So I’ve been doing a lot of self study and I also enrolled myself in a local Putonghua language course, geared toward Hong Kongnese who want to work on their Mandarin pronunciation. It’s not the ideal course. The books are in traditional Chinese characters (beautiful but so very difficult to learn) as opposed to simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China since the 1950s and 60s as a means to boost literacy. And half of the class time is dedicated to pronunciation. I need more help with the reading and writing than the speaking parts. BUT, the class takes up very little time (once a week for an hour and a half),  gives me a chance to mingle with locals, AND I get to learn traditional Chinese characters while I’m at it.

The bags are packed. I’ll be traveling to a town in Zhejiang province early tomorrow morning. I think there are some great stories there. I am hoping to share them with you soon.

Tags: China, Chinese characters, Putonghua, simplified Chinese, travel, zhejiang

in Hong Kong

Monday, April 19th, 2010 | posts | 6 Comments

The stunning Hong Kong Harbour from Kowloon

It’s called reverse migration. Years ago, my parents left Asia for America to find a better life, to get a good education, and to raise a family. They’ve now been in Canada so long, in fact, that they really don’t feel at home in their places of birth. My Dad left Taiwan when he was 10. My Mom left Hong Kong when she was 17.

I don’t remember my first trip to Hong Kong. I was a year old when my parents took my brother and I on our first overseas family vacation. I’ve heard the stories so many times, especially the one where I smash my face into a table and I lose my front baby tooth. That’s why, for years until my big teeth grew in, I had a big gap where my front tooth should have been. It made for pretty adorable toothless grins on school Picture Days.

I was a shy girl who grew up around excellent dim sum and frequent trips to Toronto’s bustling Chinese supermarkets. I went through years of painful Saturday mornings sitting in Mandarin classes. But we didn’t return to Hong Kong for another family vacation. I returned to this place when I started traveling on my own – first in 2002 when I visited Taiwan, and then in 2005 when I went on a college exchange program to Hong Kong Baptist University for a semester. It was after that exchange when I knew I wanted to spend more time in this “motherland.” In 2007, I moved to Beijing for a year to learn how to read and write Putonghua. I couldn’t have asked for a better China experience.

Days before the Olympics, I left to New York to start my Masters degree.

“Why do you want to go back to China?” I get that question a lot, especially from Canadian Chinese of my parents’ generation. There’s so much land in Canada, so much space and comfort. Things are cheap and abundant in Canada. We have cars! Blue skies! There’s good bread in Canada – whole wheat!

And ohhh, how I miss the whole wheat. (I went to three supermarkets today in search of good whole wheat bread. No luck.)

But maybe because I was born into such luxury that is whole wheat bread that I yearn for something else, somewhere different yet familiar.

So I’ve come back to Hong Kong – I arrived Saturday – and it’s here I’ll begin my Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. I am going to be traveling throughout SE Asia, mostly in China, and I’ll be writing and blogging about it all.

My next post: Beheading a (dead) chicken.

Stay tuned!

Tags: China, Chinese Canadian, hong kong, pulitzer, pulitzer traveling fellowship, reverse migration, Toronto

GFW down?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 | posts | No Comments

Happening NOW – Google.CN seems to be scouring the Internet as any normal Google search engine should.

Meaning, you type in a few words and you’ll get whatever you are looking for. No strange message saying the website you are trying to seek is forbidden. No watching the cursor load and load and load and load… to no end.

Want to search about the Dalai Lama? How about the Tank Man? Go for it.

That’s because Google has officially said that it is no longer willing to censor search results.

When Google.CN launched in 2006, the company agreed to censor sensitive material – details of human rights groups, certain sources reporting on peasant protests and reports from Tibet and Xinjiang, and references to the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

On Google’s blog, the internet giant explains why they’ve put their foot down: they detected a cyber attack in mid-December, originating from China, and they believe it was aimed at gathering information on Chinese human rights activists.

From the Google blog:

“We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Really interesting stuff.

“In the last year, China has ramped up Internet censorship denying netizens access to social networking services and websites hosted overseas. Friends in China disappeared from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube for weeks at a time, only to resurface again with status updates like this: “finally get access to facebook,GFW go to hell.”

Chinese authorities have said the ramped up censorship was a move to stop “vulgar” content, but clearly Chinese internet users are not amused.

So what does this mean? It means Google may close it’s offices in China.

Not far from my old stomping grounds in Beijing, is the Google office in WuDaoKou 五道口。

Apparently, some locals are dropping off flowers - have they come to pay their respects?

Tags: censorship, China, firewall, GFW, google, google.CN, internet, netizens

China focus?

Sunday, January 10th, 2010 | posts | No Comments

Someone asked me about what direction the blog will take in the coming year. You may have noticed the change of the banner, from a bubbling Sichuan hot pot to a beautiful night panorama of the Manhattan skyline taken from a Brooklyn pier.

You also may have noticed my last two posts have been about my job at DNAinfo, an exciting local Manhattan news service. Since September last year I’ve been immersed in the local neighborhood news of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. I must admit, I was opposed at first to covering the Chinatown beat. It made total sense, since I am a Chinese speaker and the only Chinese speaker on staff at DNAinfo. But having reported there during my year at Columbia, I felt like I needed to branch out and have a change of scenery.

Alas I was assigned the beat and off I went.

For the past 5 months, the reporting in Chinatown has surprised me. I am making contacts in the community and what’s interesting is how deeply rooted and passionate people are about their neighborhood. After all, it’s where they live. It is home.

People really care about a local Charter school expanding, about that new luxury hotel opening up around the corner on the Lower East Side, and about the speeding trucks racing off the Manhattan bridge that have crashed into other cars and pedestrians on narrow, busy Chinatown streets.

I have come to care about these issues too.

So I changed my banner, seeing as I’ve been in New York City for a year and a half now. This is my home, for now. This is the place I’m writing about every day.

My Tweets follow big Manhattan stories we cover, but I’m keeping my finger on China, too. I’ll tweet a good selection of news from China and about the Chinese diaspora in America.

Over wonton noodle soup last night in Chinatown, a friend and I contemplated life in the world’s big cities. She has spent considerable time in Paris. We have both lived in Beijing. We now call New York City home. We both agreed life in the big city is stressful; the rhythm of the city is exhilarating yet draining, the people here are passionate yet at times that passion is transformed into aggression and attiTUDE. Still, the stresses of our city lives are in many ways self-fabricated. We work hard (it’s that Chinese work ethic) and we’re competitive (it’s that type-A personality).

But we worry all the while, mulling over decisions and fretting about the future. Maybe it’s because we have too many options in this day and age.

We choose to live in New York City. Where will we be next year?

Tags: China, chinatown, city life, decisions, DNAinfo, Girls Prep Charter School, Lower East Side, Manhattan, Manhattan Bridge, new york city, stress

Shanghai’s ‘Cosmopolitan’ Mix

Saturday, August 15th, 2009 | posts | No Comments

Shanghai is going through a transformation. It’s not unlike the kind of makeover Beijing went through in the year leading up to the Olympics. But it appears Shanghai wants to ‘one up’ the capital – the city is reportedly spending way more than Beijing did with massive construction and city beautification projects going ahead full steam for Expo 2010.

When I was in Beijing in 2007 and 2008, I witnessed new subway lines built, newly planted trees and greenery lining dusty streets, expanded bicycle lanes, taxi drivers telling me they were forced to take basic English lessons in order to better server the flood of foreigners, and of course, (my favorite) the “Supervisor Riding Politely” on subway platforms making sure people lined up and allowed passengers off the train before climbing onboard themselves (New York could use a Supervisor Riding Politely). 

In this latest letter from China by my former professor and NYTimes correspondent Howard French, we see through his eyes the changes going on in Shanghai in preparation for hosting the Expo in May. Especially disheartening for him is seeing the destruction of Shanghai’s old, historic neighborhoods — a place he spent a lot of time in during his years as a NYTimes correspondent in China, documenting the faces he encountered as he made his way through the maze of narrow streets, with his camera in hand. You can see his amazing photos here. 

As China’s big cities continue to participate and spearhead so many flashy, “world class” events, something crucial is missing from this cosmopolitan cocktail. French writes:

But amid all of this busy re-engineering, both physical and social, Shanghai has overlooked what is perhaps the most basic campaign of all: a hospitality campaign aimed at persuading Chinese people that they are the common siblings of the rest of mankind.

 

Why, one might ask, should there be such a need? The answer lies in the daily experience of any foreigner who wanders off the main streets, and it sometimes includes experiences on the main streets as well. Foreign visitors can often still draw stares as if freshly descended from the moon. People may talk about you in your presence, on the assumption that you don’t understand their language or, worse, that it doesn’t matter if you do. And the term “lao wai,” a less than endearing word for foreigner, hangs thickly in the air. Even the English word “hello” can take on a strange new meaning here, delivered as it sometimes is more as a sing-song taunt than as a true greeting.

The stares. The not-so-subtle attempts at taking your picture. The “Ha-looooo”s; all part of the foreigner’s experience in China. It’s funny at first. When it happens to you every 30 minutes, it’s not. I’ll never forget this one night at Tiananmen Square in late 2007 when my friend, an African American who speaks and writes Chinese fluently, overhead a group of Chinese talking about how unnaturally dark and therefore unattractive her skin was. My face was hot with anger. I was embarrassed and enraged at the same time. Somehow, I felt it would have been better if she didn’t understand. But she did understand. She heard every word.

This makes me think about how “One World, One Dream” really meant nothing during the Olympic campaign. It was China’s world and China’s dream and the laowais were invited in for a few weeks to see the glorious accomplishments of modern China. In order for Shanghai to be truly cosmopolitan, then the Chinese have really got to get over the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. It’s a change I hope to see next time I’m there.

Professor French is in Shanghai for the summer, teaching a course on China at East China Normal University. He’ll be back in New York in September for the start of classes at Columbia’s J-school. It’ll be his second year teaching.

Tags: Beijing, China, discrimination, expo, expo 2010, Olympics, shanghai

Chinese school in China

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | posts | 4 Comments

A Newsweek article this month criticizes Chinese language programs for foreigners in China, describing a money-grabbing program based on old fashioned Confucius-style teaching methods (i.e. ME, teacher, YOU underling student), outdated textbooks and an emphasis on memorizing characters as opposed to practical conversation skills.

False false false. I was one of the 100,000 foreigners to “flood” into Chinese campuses in recent years. The tuition was relatively (i.e. very very) cheap compared to US tuition and yes, we did get put in nice dorms (with maid service and our own ensuite), but our teachers in the classroom were engaged, down to earth people who emphasized all aspects of the Chinese language: reading, writing, listening and conversation skills.

I learned a lot while I was traveling in China, but the foundation was built in the Chinese classroom. And let’s be very clear on one thing: it’s a huge advantage to learn a language in the mother country. It’s called immersion and it’s always the better way to go. I’m not sure where this Newsweek writer is getting her information. It seems that, like the alleged outdated textbooks, her information may be out of date.

Tags: China, chinese, confucius, language, newsweek, universities