Eye of Modok

After a few months, I can say that my kids are doing very well in the Chinese school system. My older daughter Blysse had a few years of international school, but had to stay at her Oma’s (grandma’s) house Mon - Thur as the school was right downtown next door to Oma’s and the travel time through rush hour traffic was torture. This worked reasonably well as Salomae and/or I would generally stop by during the week and eat dinner there, tuck Blysse in and go home. Of course, it was not very satisfying to Blysse, as she would much rather stay with us during the week or anytime. So, when they built a brand new school right across the street from us for the kids in our complex, we gave the kids a choice. International school or being the only two Americans in a Chinese school. Without hesitation they chose the local school. I must say, I believe it is working out for the best.

I talked about this with a German friend of mine who has lived in China for years and has always sent his daughter to the best private international schools. He pays over US$10,000 a year for the service, and I’m sure it’s worth it for him. We have very different objectives, however. One of the main reasons we moved to China is to provide an international perspective for the kids. This, to me, means breaking down barriers, not putting them up. Mind you, they are already up to begin with. When I told my friend that we had decided to take Blysse and Ellie out of international school and put them in the regular Chinese school system, he was horrified. It turns out, he was very concerned about the amount of communist indoctrination they would receive.

Now, even back at Fangcaodi International School, looking through Blysse’s books, I could see a degree of political thought in the text, especially in the poems they memorize. Where I disagree with my friend, however, is his apparent assumption that similarly questionable thought patterns are absent from his private school. Sure, they might not be teaching them about great communist heroes, but I believe what they are teaching them is actually in many ways worse. Even if we’d stayed in the States, we would have been very careful to make sure that we tell the kids that what they learn in school is largely controlled by the government, and has the ultimate unspoken objective of turning out vast quantities of wage slaves. Compared to the US, schools in any part of Asia are far more packed with rote memorization, especially of tedious details, that prepare kids for even more memorization at the university level. They also ensure that all of the top universities in the states are now utterly reliant on Asian grad students for scientific research.

The danger of education in any country is not what propaganda they get taught, but whether or not they accept it without question. As parents we have to pay attention to what goes in to their heads, and talk about it and to get them to come up with their own ideas. Usually its pretty obvious that they are already taking in what they want and ignoring the rest. I hope they can keep it up. For me, if my kids emerge from their schooling absolutely suspicious of everything they’ve ever learned, I will feel I’ve protected them from the most damaging aspect of education. If they still have an active imagination in the face of all the memorizing, we’ve done well.

In the end, my kids are in fact, still very American, and yet… more than simply American. Our household language is still English. Blysse and Ellie communicate to each other in English, unless their Chinese friends are over playing, which is now almost every day. Which is the best part of having a school across the street. We are actually part of our community. And the kids are learning more than just school subjects. Yesterday Blysse told me that it was her turn to clean the classroom with a few other girls and that the other kids finished up in about five minutes and went out to play. Having been subjected to this when I was studying at Bunka Fashion College in Japan, where I initially reacted with outrage but later learned to accept it, I realized that if everyone takes care of their personal environment, that can lead to a healthy work ethic, I was very pleased when Blysse mentioned that the other girls didn’t really know how to clean well, so she went through the whole classroom wiping all the surfaces that regularly got missed, cleaned all the chalk dust off the tray and put out new pieces of chalk for the teacher. I remember doing the same thing when I was her age back in Ohio. No one saw her do it. But she was proud. So, I’m proud.

When I first got to Japan back in the eighties, I frequented Hong Kong for visa trips. Each trip brought new adventures, which serve as milestones in my life. Chung King Mansions was the hub to a whole new, somewhat nefarious lifestyle. I got my first dose of backpacking culture. I heard tales of lands afar, that I just had to visit. But, I had a life back in Japan that took priority.

The first thing you notice is the smell. A unique clash of strong scents, insense, spice and musk. Hmmmm, I smell Indian food! Plus thrown in a bit of grime. There was a certain dinginess to the place but it was relatively clean. Stalls all around where you can buy cheap clothes, electronics, bags… touristy kind of things. The real action took place upstairs, but you had to ride the world’s slowest elevator. This place could get pretty full, so lines could get long. That is, if there was a line. Sometimes, there was more like a mob. Imagine standing in line, waiting for the world’s slowest elevator to labor up and down14 floors, sweat dripping from the sweltering heat of the mid-afternoon. It can try your patience. Once you get on, you see these quaint buttons that light up faintly through the cutaway numbers and bell that dings on each floor. Pretty hi tech for whatever generation produced it.

The hostles upstairs were not bad. I generally got a small single room but on one occasion had to settle for a bunk. Once on the upper floors, there were travel agents that served as message hub and networking center. It was always infinitely cheaper to buy my ticket there than in Japan. For there more daring, you could also hear news of milk run opportunities, where you could go to Korean with a bunch of watches and come back with shoes or something and make $200 out of the deal. The rooms were small but not ridiculous (like the one I just stayed in) and often had decent airconditioning. I eventually learned it’s wise to test the airconditioner first.

This time, it was eleven years since my last visit, which was the last of a long chain. There was drastic change everywhere, tall building having sprouted all over, even in the New Terriotories. Chung King Mansions is largely unchanged. If anything, the Indian element is more embedded than ever. The crowd has changed though. It somehow seems to have gotten much seedier, though there were plenty of straitlaced travelers about. I’m glad I don’t have to stay there any more! Though, if I were to arrive here now in my twenties, I’m sure I would have.

I just spent a couple of days in Hong Kong. Wow! I had a wonderful time!

Hong Kong has a special place in my heart. I used to travel to Hong Kong on visa trips from Japan before I managed to get a permanaent visa sponsor, so for I while I was going there every few months from Tokyo. I used Hong Kong as a hub to go to Thailand and even the US. I nearly always stayed at Chung King Mansions in a youth hostel or small hotel room. It was certainly shoestring traveling but it was good enough for me and had a certain character. That was how I first got on the backpacker curcuit, which I would eventually explore in detail upon my 30th birthday when I left Japan for good. Ironically, I met Salomae during my round the world sojourn and ended up taking a couple more visa trips from Taiwan.

One thing I always enjoyed about Hong Kong was it’s amazing skyline. Every time I came back I was treated to a new really cool looking skyscraper. I was amazed with the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank building when I first saw it. Back in 1987, I visited Bank of America (I have no idea why I needed to go there but the trip remains vivid in my mind) and it was housed in the coolest building I’d ever seen. It was black and had bulding windows poking out. That building is now hidden behind the towers that have grown around it. The tallest now dwarves it.

Kowloon has changed a lot too. Chung King Mansions is in Tsim Tsa Choi on Kowloon, so I know it well. When I last visited in 1996 when I was living in Taiwan and Salomae and her sister Evah were burgeoning pop stars, all of these fancy shopping malls had showed up where the old pier used to be and some of the buildings had been replaced with newer versions of themselves. Now, it is fully developed. In fact, Hong Kong is fully developed, in the sense of “developed country.” I doubt they’ll ever be done putting up the coolest buidlings in the world though. I was amazed to see skysrapers in Kowloon. I stayed in Mongkok this time, a few stops from Tsim Tsa Choi, and stayed nearby a building that would put any going up in Beijing to shame, the Langham Place. I’ve been watching the buildings go up in Beiijing, but it will be 20 years at least to get where Hong Kong is now. And by that time, Hong Kong will still be twenty years ahead!

(c) Sherman Sham