Modern Chinldren

A picture of three classmates (from left: Frazer Henderson/Hanfei, Rebekah Brooks/Baijia, and Leise Hook/Lidun) and I standing in front of a massive Mao statue in the middle of our campus.

So - the Chinese government has sought out this "Super Shanghai Summer" as a threat and therefore blocked it from viewing in China. Yeah I'm being melodramatic. But for some reason all of my friends here that have a blogspot website (moosedung.blogspot.com for Frazer Henderson's if you're interested... and I forget what Napatra's link is, sry) are UNABLE to view it anymore.

Luckily for you all, though, I can still make posts that you can see in America (or wherever you may be). The blockage also continues on to the comments section. So if you really hate my blog you can totally post nasty comments and I won't know about it. Just delete them all before I return to America on the 21st. Thanks.

This also means, though, that if you want to add something to what I've written, just say hello, tell me you miss me so much, etc, then write me an email! leonelli.stephen@gmail.com. It'd be great to hear from you and I will get back to you as soon as I can!

But yeah! It has been a while because I couldn't figure out how to get this work, but I have been having an extremely interesting time here. Last Thursday we interviewed parents regarding the 高考 gaokao (similar to the America SAT except 42942050 times more intense), I visited the 上海博物馆 Shanghai Museum and 静安寺 Jing'an Temple on Friday, and we went to 杭州 Hangzhou this weekend (a smaller tourist city three-ish hours south from Shanghai).

I hope to write about all of those at some point, but right now I want to talk about something very important to China: 孩子们 Children! I started to notice a bunch of munch-kins wearing a red scarf around their neck. Below is a picture:

These poor, unsuspecting kids still don't know I took their picture. Maybe it's good my website is blocked in China.

So anyway- as you can see the young fellow on the right is not only eating a Popsicle, but also wearing a small red scarf. Eventually I just really needed to know what holiday I hadn't heard about, so I stopped a young girl and asked her in Chinese, "Why are you wearing this read piece of clothing?" She responded. I didn't understand a word she said. So I replied, "Is it a festival?" And she responded, "No it's not." And then I didn't understand another word she said.

So, I've been trying to tell myself that this little 8 year old was speaking the local Shanghainese dialect--which is completely different from the standard (meaning the sounds you hear on the television, what is spoken in Beijing (approximately), etc.) "Putonghua" we study--and that's why I didn't understand her. But I obviously couldn't be satisfied with only knowing that it wasn't a festival, so I asked one of my teachers.

the 红领巾 honglingjin, or "Young Pioneer Scarfs" are worn by children that--as far as my understanding goes from my teacher's explanation in Chinese (sadly she was speaking putonghua, and I'm still not clear on some things)--earn not only outstanding grades in school but also exemplify moral excellence. I am not sure where the standards of morality come from, but my guess is from communist tools like the Little Red Book, which glorifies communist soldier Lei Feng from the revolutionary China period (late 1940s). The schools award these scarfs to children who are "outstanding," and as you can see not everyone wears them.

This is also a tool, according to my teacher, to expose children to the "benefits" of joining the communist party. I was surprised to learn that there are actually several governmental Parties in China, though my teacher said that in reality it is always 共产党 gongchandang--the Chinese Communist Party--versus everyone else, lumped into one group. Reminds me of how our biparty system in America similarly gives nearly no chance to "third-party" groups.


Well there's much more I'd like to say but I had better go to bed. I'll leave you with a picture I took while walking around with some friends the other day. It's something that I've seen three or four times now: uniformed workers getting prepped for the day (this was around 11:30am). This group actually had a little song/chant that they all said together after the boss was done speaking. If you love Star Trek for the uniforms, come to Shanghai for a great time.