An Insight to China
My favorite guest speaker joined my table during lunch. I had some questions for him about China and India and then I realized that he could probably give me an insight into China’s behavior during the Dance Festival.
I explained how they were pretty much the black sheep of the Festival, not socializing with the other groups and not participating during the Nation’s Nights. He explained things, comparing it to the USSR and their gymnastic teams during the 80s.
A “minder” is assigned by the government to the groups as they travel outside of their country. The minder’s job is to make sure that the participants do not say inappropriate things about China to other people. The government is also concerned with “cultural pollution”, or being negatively influenced by all things not Chinese. Because of this, the participants, will usually have anxiety about who they can talk to or what they can say. Instead of trying to figure it out, they just don’t talk to anyone.
He explained to me, that there is always a government hired minder in all the US colleges. In fact, while teaching in Kansas, he called one out and threatened to give him an F if he continued to harass the other Chinese students on campus. Let’s just say, he made a huge Chinese Fan-Base after the Dean supported him on that decision.
It was eye-opening to say the least. In situations like Brazil, we tend to forget that not all countries come from a Democracy. They play by different rules…rules that they may not always agree with. I feel a little guilty for forming judgments without knowing the background of their country.
I explained how they were pretty much the black sheep of the Festival, not socializing with the other groups and not participating during the Nation’s Nights. He explained things, comparing it to the USSR and their gymnastic teams during the 80s.
A “minder” is assigned by the government to the groups as they travel outside of their country. The minder’s job is to make sure that the participants do not say inappropriate things about China to other people. The government is also concerned with “cultural pollution”, or being negatively influenced by all things not Chinese. Because of this, the participants, will usually have anxiety about who they can talk to or what they can say. Instead of trying to figure it out, they just don’t talk to anyone.
He explained to me, that there is always a government hired minder in all the US colleges. In fact, while teaching in Kansas, he called one out and threatened to give him an F if he continued to harass the other Chinese students on campus. Let’s just say, he made a huge Chinese Fan-Base after the Dean supported him on that decision.
It was eye-opening to say the least. In situations like Brazil, we tend to forget that not all countries come from a Democracy. They play by different rules…rules that they may not always agree with. I feel a little guilty for forming judgments without knowing the background of their country.
posted by Mur at 12:31 PM
2 Comments:
very interesting!! i wonder who the 'minder' was.
those were my same thoughts when i read the postings on brasil, but didn't really have proof to post. good thing you asked so next time we all come across something like that then we know how to respond to it. it's funny how he mentions they are afraid of cultural pollution when they had the cultural revolution and basically started destroy anything that reminded them of the old ways in order to create the illusion of uniformity they have now.
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