On Duty: Part 2

by franderam

If my students know the Chinese equivalent of “treat others the way you want to be treated,” then they certainly fall short of upholding it as an honored mantra. Outside of the usual shoving and hair-pulling, I have seen worse cases of downright hatred, including a recent incident involving two girls scratching each other’s faces bloody. A more expansive list includes a group of boys bullying another boy to quit school, two rival girl gangs consistently meeting out on the basketball courts to throw punches until none of them were allowed back to school, and “townies”—students who live in the main part of the village—cursing out and kicking those students who come from more rural (often less developed) areas.

To make matters more intractable, parents oftentimes fail to nullify the situation. In the three-way parent-teacher-student discussions, tension runs high while mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, and other relatives are quick to curse the opposing family unit. As fists are raised again, teachers try to calm down the scene at the expense of a few nasty words in return. No one leaves these dialogues completely satisfied. At least an outcome that nobody can object to is that all the students involved must return home for a couple days to cool-off. One might reasonably figure that if the school kicked out every student who was in a fight or initiated an instance of bullying since they arrived in grade seven, not many students would be left.

Maybe it has to do with village etiquette. A close Chinese friend from rural Henan province, who now works in Shanghai, pointed out that the standards for manners in his village are vastly different from those he has experienced in developed cities. Even small gestures of politeness to both strangers and locals, such as waiting in lines, helping out an old person, or holding the door open for another person, seem virtually non-existent in remote towns. Not-so-little children will say directly to both relatives and their peers “Geiwo!” (Give it to me!) when they want something. If you walk through a market day, where tables line up on either side of a dirt road overflowing with the season’s best produce, crowds will unflinchingly jostle one another in order to get where they need to be, pushing their way to the front of a table with money in hand in spite of the person who arrived before them. Nobody mutters a quick “excuse me” or “sorry” and items that were knocked down in the fray are never picked up and returned to their original spot on the tables.

This isn’t to say that local people in rural areas are brutish or uncivil; actually, this is very far from the truth. As a guest, you may be treated exceptionally well. Locals, of whom I have never interacted with before, have seen me only once and  taken it upon themselves to invite me inside their homes to share a meal with them. At other times, old ladies who are in the process doing their cross-stitch work will suddenly bundle up their cloth with strings freely hanging and abruptly stand in order to offer a seat to me. Some of the conversations that I have had with farmers passing by have been the most pleasant and enlightening ones in my two years spent here.  In the past, I have received huge bags of fresh apples, carrots, corn and other crops from local families upon entering their household. Twice, I have been asked to become the bridesmaid for newlyweds who I did not even know their full names.  Thus, I would go so far as to say that much of the hospitality and generosity I have experienced here has even surpassed the so-called American “Midwestern politeness”. But, then, whence originate the onslaught and strife?

While people in this area have proven to be uncommonly welcoming and inviting into their homes and lives, it seems they have a completely different set of reactions when they face something frustrating and angering. I have noticed that punishment for superior-inferior relationships (e.g. parents and their children) usually includes a dimension of harsh physical returns. While it is not the case for every family, many of my students have confessed to me or to their other teachers that they have been hit or slapped severely at home for making childish mistakes, like not listening to their mother or father’s instructions, playing for too long, causing problems at school and so on. During home visits, parents will encourage me to hit or slap their child if they do something out of line (I have yet to take them up on this offer). Though I have never paid witness an unhappy work environment here, I have heard of occasions in which bosses will curse out or scream at employees for making small mistakes in their jobs. Swearing is rampant among all ages.

Violence does not only occur between people of different social statues. Young children watch in on as gang members take out their hatred in fist and knife fights, while sons and daughters watch their parents claw and kick at other adults, only to mirror these cruel actions later on. Old retirees will bitterly bicker and make threatening moves with other aged men and women. Anger management thereby seems to be left literally in the hands of the people angry with each other.

As far as the case with my students goes, there are more factors that aggravate these vicious outbursts. Firstly, in farming communities where parents must leave home for months to work and earn a living, nobody can stay home to take care of their son or daughter. Even if these parents want their child to grow up in a way that is more becoming and warm-hearted, the fact that they are not physically present in the household isolates them from becoming a dominant role in their child’s maturation. Students who return on the weekend to an empty house have nobody to dissuade them from hanging out with the “wrong crowd” of peers and falling into bad habits like smoking, drinking gambling, and gang fighting.

Yet another problem is that within minor village disputes there is no ‘higher authority’ that villagers feel they can appeal to. Last year, I listened to one student recount a story of his middle-aged neighbor. The woman, after being sworn at by another villager, took retribution by biting off a piece of the other villager’s ear. In spite of the sickening mess, not a single witness out of the huge group that had clustered to gawk had notified an officer. Utterly shocked, I asked the student why. He shrugged his shoulders and replied that no one thought the local policemen would do anything to remedy the situation, adding that he personally thought that the police were too afraid to confront this kind of violent episode. Rarely there is someone who has a good enough relationship with the majority of the people in the town to help smooth over the situation and is able to successfully encourage both fighters to return peacefully back to their lives.

For students, I believe this attitude has carried over to their perception of their teachers at school. When tempers rise and an outbreak is imminent or happens, teachers only find out after-the-fact, in spite of the large number of students who knew that such a thing would happen. We are very seldom notified in advance, even if there are dissenters among the witnesses or informants. Of course, there may be students who, out of curiosity, might even want the fight to occur, or those who fear that simply being involved will yield punishment; however, these case are few and far between. Some students have expressed to me that they believe teachers cannot help resolve or prevent the fight, even if they were present. In these episodes, the idea of running to find a parent or a school leader is a fleeting one that is erased by the feeling of hopelessness and lack of faith.

In instructing my students to look out for one another, even for another peer they do not like, I have been fighting an uphill battle. As an American who grew up in a privileged area and by parents who taught me by firm compassion and love, my methods for dealing with anger are inherently different than how my students have seen throughout their lives. Truly, I am an outsider to these villagers and do not completely understand lines of hatred that have existed over the ages between town-people and remote hut clusters as well as those of different ethnic minority backgrounds. Still, through my interactions with students and “no-hitting” policy in my classroom, I try to find simple ways to demonstrate how a friendlier and more respectful environment for everyone can be formed via empathy and logical reasoning rather than over-emotional tumult and physical aggression. I’d like to think that it has been working: while I have been on duty, students have become more patient in their words and actions, and they have become bolder with their smiles.