Thumbing my way

As the great American singer/songwriter Eddie Vedder once put it, "No matter how cold the winter, there's a springtime ahead." This lyric has never struck such a chord with me as it did today, while I was listening to my iPod and walking down the street as a warm Spring breeze caressed my face. It is absolutely beautiful here, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s, and a high of 71F tomorrow! We can only hope this weather lasts for months to come.

Anyway, one of our devoted readers has sent a laundry list of questions about life in China, so I am going to do my best to answer a few of them. Here goes...


1. Please tell us about Chinese tv (if you have one), radio, newspapers...how do you get the news? Is satellite unknown where you are? If you have a tv, do you pay for that service (like cable)?
We do have a TV, but we only get one channel. This channel comes in only when it wants to. We have tried messing with our antenna and tying a metal spatula to the antenna, but all to little or no avail. This one channel is the local Harbin channel, which shows Harbin news and weather and a lot of extended commercials for local hospitals, etc. When the Winter Universiade (worldwide college sports competition) was here in February we were able to watch a few of the competitions on our fuzzy channel. We could pay for cable if we wanted it. I had a Chinese woman tell me that it was quite cheap, maybe $15 for the whole year. Cable consists of almost all Chinese language channels, with the exception of CCTV9 which shows some English language news and has short Chinese lessons. I have not heard of anyone who has satellite TV, but I honestly don't know if this is an option or not. We catch up on most of our news at CNN.com and TheOnion.com, because these are the two most reliable news source to which we have access.

2. What do the Chinese think of Obama? Do they like him? Do they even know who he is?
Steve and I have had several university classes called "one-offs" wherein you teach a university class that is normally taught by a Chinese teacher for one class period [of their semester] so that they can get some exposure to a native speaker. In these classes I often talk about Obama. All of the Chinese people know who he is and most seem to like him very much. However, they know almost nothing about him. The most common things you hear are that they like him much more than Bush (when I was here two years ago they all hated P. Bush) and they realize that for America to have a black president is a big step in our history. Sometimes they don't understand why, so I use the example of their attitude toward the Japanese and say, "It's kind of like if you had a Japanese president 100 years from now." I think this usually paints a pretty vivid picture for them. Many of the students ask me about the economic crisis as a side note to this conversation. I tell them that Americans have a lot of faith in Obama to "fix" things. The English level of these students is usually quite low, so I explain to them using a few key vocabulary words how we feel about Obama and it usually goes something like this: "Things in America are very bad right now. I know many people who have lost their jobs. We hope, we hope (I usually repeat a lot and re-emphasize things because their listening skills aren't great), that President Obama can fix the economy. But, Obama is very young, yes? and doesn't have very much experience, yes? so we do not know yet. We like Obama and we hope that he can do it. What do you think?" Often, students respond that they believe in America and have faith that things will be set right quickly. This is always interesting for me to hear and I'm not sure if they mean it or not.


3. What does a Chinese map of the world look like? I suppose China is at the center; does it feel funny to look at it like that? Do the Chinese know world geography very well?
Yes, a Chinese map has China at the center, with America across the Pacific to it's right. It does seem a little odd sometimes at first glance when I look at the map. It's like, "Wow, something is really off with South America.. oh wait, that's Africa." It is difficult to know whether or not they know geography very well because of the language gap, but I would lean toward saying no to this question. I have tried to talk about Mexican food and the reason we learn Spanish in America, but I often can not get them to say either the Chinese or the English for Mexico. I'll draw a little map and be like, "You know, the country under America..?" They just shake their heads. There have also been other instances when students couldn't name a country in Chinese or English, so I think that geography is not as emphasized in school as other subjects. I do know that most of their curriculum is based around math and Chinese language.


4. Do the Chinese teens/young adults listen to American music? What do they listen to? Do they all have IPods? Blackberries?
Yes, teens and young adults do listen to some American music. I would say more than half of the older students I've taught could name a few American artists. However, not all. And the artists they know are often a bit out of date or odd picks... For example, boys here love the Backstreet Boys and are shocked to learn that this was 13 year old girl music many years ago in America. Avril Lavigne is also a very common name that I hear, which I think is strange. Their main focus is on pop music, because that is what they can find. I do have a one-on-one student who likes "underground" music, but I haven't discovered which artists he means yet. They also like techno and club type music. Just about every person with any money in China has either a really nice cell phone that plays MP3s or an MP3/MP4 player. iPods are quite rare, but people do have them. MP3 players are so plentiful and cheap that an iPod seems like somewhat of a waste to most of them. However, they seem to spend a lot of money on phones. Phone prices are about the same, without the bonus of 'free phone with contract' deals. So people are regularly spending a few hundred dollars on a phone that will do everything (with text messaging, internet access, and MP3 player being the most desired qualities) when they might not make this much money in a month. It's just an important purchase for them and has quickly become a 'must have' for all Chinese people in cities.