At Ease, Soldier

During our two years in Hong Kong, I have had the chance to visit several Chinese schools –both locally and in the Mainland- doing service projects. I am sure that the students at both of these schools are very good at a wide variety of things. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to bear witness to most of those things; except for one.

Chinese students in both Hong Kong and the Mainland are very, very good at lining up. Their lines are impeccably straight. If you have a gymnasium full of students and you ask them to line up by class, they will give you a perfect 20x20 grid with equal spacing between students.

Impressive.

The Big C

A graduate of our international school here in Hong Kong now teaches eighth grade in a poor, inner-city school in Baltimore, Maryland. Randy contacted a colleague and me earlier in the year to see if we would be willing to have our students swap short stories. We just got our first batch of stories from inner-city Baltimore.

To say that the kids in Baltimore lead very different lives than our students here at our private Christian school in Hong Kong would be an understatement.

That point was driven home when one of my students stopped midway through the story that she was reading, called me over, and asked “Mr. VanNoord, what’s ‘crack?’”

-Jack

Enough Already

A central piece of my eighth-grade writing program is written teacher-to-student feedback and written student-to-student feedback. The kids are surprisingly good at giving each other insightful and constructive feedback. But, to be honest, some students are more helpful in their feedback than others.

Over the course of two months last quarter, my students wrote three short stories for me. By the time we are done writing and re-writing and proofing each others' writing, they had become pretty familiar with each others' work.

The following is from a recent email that one of my eighth-grade boys sent to a female classmate.

“The story was kind of weird and I also don’t know why you always write kissing stories. You should write about different stuff.”

Hey how about this? She’ll write a story without kissing just as soon as you write a story without blowing something up.

Doc, it hurts When I do This.

In the States, we have doctors and we have chiropractors. And ne’er the twain shall meet.

Well actually, every chiropractor I have ever known goes to the doctor regularly. And I have known plenty of doctors who visit a chiropractor on occasion.

But that’s all at the personal level. At the official level, there is no love lost between the two industries. In the 1980’s the American Medical Association tried to legislate the entire chiropractic industry out of existence. They didn’t succeed.

The situation could not be more different in Hong Kong. Here if you want to go visit a chiropractor, you actually have to get a note from your physician.

Must be the influence of that 3000-year old Chinese medicine.

Sounds like too much bureaucratic hassle to me. I’m just going to go downstairs to the security desk and ask that big fellow who works nights to give me a big ol’ bear hug.

That ought to do the trick.

"Whoo-hoo. My pants are finished!"

Buddha and the Mouse

Twenty years ago, a community of faithful Buddhists pooled their resources and built the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island here in Hong Kong. It is the largest, bronze, outdoor, sitting Buddha. (Apparently there is a larger Buddha sitting indoors somewhere?)

It sits on top of a mountain next to a Buddhist monastery. For twenty years, the faithful made pilgrimages to the Big Buddha. So far, so good.And then came the Disney-ification of Buddha. Some enterprising soles just could not pass up the opportunity to cash in. First came the massive cable car that takes tourist on a twenty-five minute ride over mountains, valleys, and ocean on its way up the peak. Not surprisingly, you alight from your cable car directly into a gift shop.

It is then a ten-minute walk to the base of the Big Buddha. Along this route, the developers of the cable car have built a “themed village.” It is a direct take-off of Main Street in Disney World. But, instead of clapboard siding, green shutters, and wrought iron railings; it was built in the traditional Chinese style complete with circular moon gates and ceramic roof tiles. The two dozen shops that make up the “village” are almost entirely souvenir shops and restaurants. For an extra $5.00, you can go to the “The Monkey’s Tale” theater and watch a Disney-like movie based on a Chinese folktale. Across the cobble-stone street is a second theater that houses a “multi-media experience” that tells the story of Siddhartha the Indian prince who became the first Buddha 2500 years ago.

Out front of The Buddha Experience is a Bodhi tree like the one under which Buddha first achieved enlightenment. This one is made from plastic though and has rubber fruit hanging from it. Under the plastic bodhi tree is a wooden rack with pegs sticking out from it. Hanging from the wooden pegs are thin wooden boards on which the faithful have written prayers and submitted to the bodhi tree.

And where can you buy one of these wooden prayer boards? You can’t. They come to you free if you spent US$25 or more in any of the gift shops.Now all we need to do is get Buddha a fast-talking, wise-cracking side kick and he will be all set.

Torah! Torah! Torah!

Today, Bibles are much more available in China than they were just a few years ago. Beijing likes to point out that Amity Publishing -the one state-sanctioned publishing house that is allowed to print Bibles in China- has printed over 50 million Bibles since it began printing 24 years ago in 1987.

Sounds impressive.

But that works out to just two million Bibles per year -this in a country with a population of 1.3 billion. Assuming none of those Bibles has worn out over the years, China now has one Bible for just every 26 people. Suppose for a moment that the goal was to have a Bible available for every man, woman, and child in China. At this rate, it will take Amity Publishing another 62 years to print enough Bibles for everyone.The bottom line, there is a huge demand for Chinese-language Bibles in China which outstrips the supply. So Beijing’s claims that they have the Bible-supply thing under control and that there is no need to import Bibles into China are a little disingenuous.

To further impede matters, Bibles are not allowed to be sold in standard book stores. They can only be sold in state-sanctioned religious bookstores. So not only is there a supply problem, there is a distribution problem.

The shortfall is most severe in rural areas. Outside of urban areas, Bibles are hard to come by and when available, they are prohibitively expensive.

In an attempt to overcoming these deficits, Christian bookstore owner Shi Weihan printed and distributed Bibles free of charge. Last June, Chinese courts found him guilty, fined him US$22,000, and sentenced him to three years in prison. All for simply having the audacity to work outside of sanctioned channels.

While religious repression in China may not be as draconian as the dark days of Mao Zedong when simply getting caught with a Bible in your possession was a serious matter. Religious freedom –in particular the right to produce and distribute Bibles- still has a long, long way to go.

Look Boss, All we need to do is add a "t" and ...

Easter doesn't make a big splash here in Hong Kong -especially up here in the New Territories.

But its nice to see our friends at Maltesers have given the nod to the holiday.

How clever of them.

Of Births and Borders part 3 of 3

Because The States grants citizenship to almost everyone who is born within her boundaries –even if they are only there for a weekend visit to Disneyland- a cottage industry has sprung up around birth tourism. Citizens of South Korean, China, Taiwan, and yes –Hong Kong- are the ones who probably take fullest advantage of this legal anomaly. Several travel agencies in South Korean actively market to pregnant women and offer travel packages that provide all travel arrangements, accommodations, and a little gift basket for the new mother.

One of the big draws is that once a child has a U.S. passport, it is much easier –and cheaper- for them to gain admittance to a U.S. university later in life. An initial investment of $20,000 up front by mom and dad, can reap a savings of tens of thousands of dollars once junior is of college age.

A colleague of mine taught in Seoul, South Korea, and she pointed out that another advantage is that the South Korean government makes it much easier to get a coveted spot in one of Seoul’s international elementary or secondary school if a person holds a foreign passport.

Great Britain, Ireland, India, and Australia used to have jus soli citizenship laws like the United States still does, but in the last few years they have modified their birthright laws to no longer automatically extend citizenship to every child born within their borders.

I think that it would be really cool to have grandchildren who hold Chinese citizenship. I imagine that these might come in really handy one day in the not-so-distant future. Wouldn’t it be great if one day my married daughters could book a vacation to China for a few weeks, take in the sights, deliver a baby quick a minute, and then be handed a Chinese passport for the newborn on the way out of the country?

That would be awesome.

Unfortunately, that is not how the world works.

Well, at least not most of the world.