I had a roommate in college in the US who was raised by expat parents in Beijing. She proved to me that you can live in a country and benefit nothing from the experience. She went to an international school and only spoke English. She spoke 2 words of Chinese (despite having been born and raised there), and only interacted with 2 Chinese people: her driver and her maid. She was used to Chinese people fawning over her, and couldn’t seem to adjust to being “normal” in the US. I realize this is not the norm, and I actually blame this failure on her family. Yet I do feel it is more incumbent upon the family to prevent the negative aspects of the culture (both in the US and in China) on influencing the children too much.

Not playing, just studying is very common. My friend’s daughter could also not find any friends to play with. They preferred cramming for English tests to playing with a native English-speaking child. This should not be interpreted as “Chinese children study harder.” I taught a Saturday morning English class for a year. They may be in class, but they do not want to be there and they are not listening. Really, they aren’t retaining anything and would do better to be out playing.

Trying to get your children into regular Chinese schools is not actually so easy for all. If 1 parent is Chinese, then it is a snap. Some friends of mine (Taiwanese woman, white American man) tried to enroll their son at a preeschool. Since the son was not “Chinese,” they would not allow it. She ended up calling the Ministry of Education and obtaining permission. She had the same problem getting their older son into elementary school. Maybe it’s just Suzhou…

I apologize to all Chinese people reading this, as I know this negative aspect is changing and will continue to do so. I hate Chinese racism. I would not want my kids thinking that such views are acceptable. While racism is present in the US, there is a general understanding that it is unacceptable. I’ve found that most Chinese people do not recognize it as racism, simply regarding their statements as fact. Examples… “You should marry my son. Chinese people are smart, but ugly. Americans are stupid, but beautiful. Your kids would be smart and beautiful.” “Black people look like monkeys. My teacher told me they are not as evolved.” On my first day of class, my teacher saw I was the only foreign student in the class. In a deliberate attempt to embarrass me, he asked me to introduce myself, cutting me off to tell me that I had no place in his class. When I told him the dean had assigned the course, he said, “The dean should know you are not smart enough. Americans are stupid, Chinese people are smart. That is why Chinese people speak English perfectly, but Americans can’t speak Chinese.” He proceeded to write ‘English’ with an A and a backwards g. This will change over time, but I would not want my kids growing up thinking this is alright. I assume bigger cities are different.

While in college, I was assigned to write a paper on economic anthropology. I decided to narrow it further and write about feminist economic anthropology. After I turned it in, the teacher asked why there were grammatical errors. I told the instructor that I had run out of time, and was unable to have a friend proofread it. She didn’t realize I’d actually written the paper. She told me that I could download them off the internet, or pay my study buddy to write one. Cheating is widely accepted, as it is a way to get ahead. I blame Confucianism, as there’s no set “right” or “wrong.”

Many have spoken about memorization. Americans are amazing with analysis. We learn, innovate, and create new ideas. I believe it is Confucianism which hinders the Chinese. Not only do you memorize, but you never question. You never actually synthesize information. Instead, you stay on the lower levels of learning. Even in an anthropology course we only memorized what previous anthropologists had written. There was no meaning given to it, no ethnography conducted, no synthesis. No one asked questions of the instructor, as Confucianism does not allow this. Instead, classmates asked me after class (I’d finished my degree in the US already). Our univerisities may be more expensive, but they’re much better.

I currently work at a college in the US. Most of my students barely made it through high school. In my experience, this is largely not the fault of the US education system, but of their families. No one in their families cared about education, so neither did they. Also, many are caught up in the culture of poverty. Even more, we’ve created so many colleges of varying quality that we’ve inflated the market. Really, someone barely literate should not be getting a degree. I’d advocate closing many of the crap colleges… now back off my tangent.

Yes, Chinese schools do not have the drop out rate. You see, poor kids generally don’t make it that far in a city school. Their families don’t have the money, so they dropped out long ago. In the countryside, many have dropped out to go to the cities to work. Also, those not able to perform (learning disabilities, etc.) have already been weeded out through middle and high school entrance exams. This brings to mind a very intelligent sock vendor at the Fuzimiao. He did not pass the middle school entrance exams, yet would sit and discuss America’s foreign policy with me. Chinese schools also do not have as many incidences of violence towards others (metal detectors), but they do have higher suicide rates I’d assume (try finding stats for that).

My biggest concern for my kids would be that they would never truly integrate. After all, speaking Chinese and living in China does not mean that others view you as “belonging.” Instead, you are always an outsider.

I do like that China is safer. I routinely went out alone after midnight, and never felt like I was in danger. I think this will change, unfortunately, but I really appreciated it. I would like my kids to learn to be a good friend. Chinese people do make very deep friendships, and are extremely loyal. In terms of costs, marry a Chinese person or live in a big city. I am white, 5’6″, 25 yrs old, 130 lbs, size 8.5 (40-41 shoes), and female. As I am not Asian, I have a long torso, hips and a butt. Even when I was 19 and weighed 115 lbs, I wore an XXL and the shirts were never long enough. I cannot buy pants, and I can only buy men’s shoes. I could go to Shanghai or Beijing to shop, or the ritzy stores ($40 for a shirt???). Occasionally I can order clothes directly from factories. Sometimes my parents buy the clothes and ship them (not good for long-term, and means I wear the same clothes forever… what if they discontinue my jeans?). Make-up is impossible to find for my skin tone. Tailoring clothes has not worked out well, as tailors have a habit of doing what they think looks good (not what you told them). If I married an Asian and had Asian-bodied children, then it would be cheaper. If, however, my children were built like me (and I lived outside of Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong), then the US would actually be cheaper.

Sorry for the rant, but I couldn’t pass it up.

Sorry for dropping the ball on the response. Don’t worry about citations, I believe you. I’ll have to go back and do some rereading anyways as the idea of the W’ern/wolf relation is really interesting and I didn’t give it enough notice on the first go-round. Was the ending when he goes back 20 years later or was that a postscript? My memory of that is pretty faint as well I’m afraid. I’ll look at it again and get back to you. Your thoughts?

First “papa” compliments Western Societies most notably for keeping their wolf-like attitude. How they still eat with aggressive forks and knifes instead of passive chopsticks. How they fight wars, etc. Later on, the author goes on to say just about the same thing. I’ll look for the citations (as you know, its a long book).

How do you feel about the ending?

“I’ve always thought that children should be raised by wolves, just like I was. Reading “Wolf Totem” convinced me that Chinese wolves are definitely superior to the American variety.”

You obviously didn’t read Wolf Totem. First off, they were MONGOLIAN wolves not Chinese. The book is very critical of Chinese people (eg. calling them sheep, no nothing farmers/peasants and so on).

They actually complement Western Societies constantly throughout the book.

http://www.escapefromamerica.com/2009/11/options-for-educating-your-expat-child/

Schools aren’t really an issue because there are tons of international schools and they don’t even have to be american schools. With this your child could speak english at home, say korean at school, and then chinese while out and about all at a young age. It sounds good to me.

I’ve heard that it is difficult for children to grow up between cultures. We feel like outsiders as expats now but if we had no real culture identity? I’ve heard that most of these children turn out fine but some do end up… odd. I say I would have liked growing up abroad but studying abroad in high school already changed me enough to not be considered “american” among my peers.