November Update
I haven’t posted anything since shortly after the earthquake, because we were travelling all summer and I’ve been too busy or lazy since then. We visited family and friends in Europe and the US, and enjoyed being away from the aftershocks for a couple of months and losing that dizzy feeling. All apart from one moment at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California, where Isaac built an earthquake-proof structure out of wooden blocks, then pressed a button to simulate an earthquake. The sound of the table shaking and the blocks tumbling down really unsettled me and I wondered for a moment if I really wanted to come back.
We did of course and there continue to be aftershocks even now, but we’ve only really noticed a couple. One at 11 pm on a Friday night sent me scurrying to repack an emergency bag and make sure all our papers were in order, just in case we have to do a runner. That momentary sensation of instability brings everything back.
That 11 pm aftershock was the first experience of earth movement for Xiao Long’s husband Zeng Jun, as he was away for most of this year and missed the earthquake. Apparently when he felt the tremor, he jumped up and tried to rush the family out of the building, but they all laughed at him and told him to sit down – this was nothing compared to the real event. Of course any of us would have reacted the same way as he did if one of those rattling moments had happened a year ago, but it’s all relative. I gather that’s how Californians feel, they just get used to it.
Zeng Jun just returned to Chengdu from a city near Tianjin in the north of China, where he has been running a hotpot restaurant since April. This was a new business venture after he decided to sell his car: at a big loss, much to Xiao Long’s annoyance. Originally he planned to open a hotpot place in Chengdu, but after making a down payment to rent somewhere, he found out the building was scheduled for demolition, so he decided to head north, where he has an uncle and a few army buddies. He and Xiao Long ran a restaurant successfully up there for a few years when they were first married. It is incredible how quickly people make these decisions here and how quickly they act. Within a week of arriving he had rented a place, hired some staff and was serving customers, making about 200 yuan profit per day. It was hard work though. He and a buddy worked around the clock, 7 days a week: shopping for the food, doing all the cooking and cleaning up at the end of the day.
Xiao Long took their daughter Zeng Jing to visit him in the summer, but it doesn’t sound like they had a very good time. She said the place was dirty and ugly and too hot, and Zeng Jun was living in a dormitory with minimal facilities. He really missed home and every day was a grind. Millions of people all over China are living that way in order to support their families and improve their lives. At least he was running his own business, not working at a factory or construction site where he could lose his job at any moment. But in the end he did lose, due to a stroke of extremely bad luck. One night a drunken customer picked a fight about paying for his meal and punched Zeng Jun, threatening to come back and beat him up properly. After that Zeng Jun lost heart. He was afraid the guy would follow through with his threat, or else find some way to close him down. As Zeng Jun was not a local and didn’t have good contacts it would be difficult for him to argue his case if trouble occurred. So in early November, he packed up and came home with nothing to show for his hard work. Because he broke the lease on the restaurant he ended up losing money, about 20,000 yuan, a big hit for the family finances. He arrived home with 200 yuan in his pocket.
Xiao Long took it well overall as she and Zeng Jing were happy to have him home. Zeng Jun was over the moon to be back with his family, able to sleep in a comfortable bed and be looked after by his wife and sister. His older sister Xiao Zeng and her husband and son have been occupying one room of familyy’s small apartment since the earthquake. With the family matriarch joining them as well every other week it’s a tight squeeze, but it means there’s always someone to look after the two kids, and the cousins are growing up more like brother and sister, an advantage in a one-child family society.
For a couple of weeks Zeng Jun celebrated his homecoming, inviting his relatives and army buddies over. One night he and his friends stayed up all night and polished off 5 bottles of baijiu (like vodka but stronger). Xiao Long said she had to mop the floor 4 times to clean up all the sticky mess from spilled toasts. But Zeng Jun knew he couldn’t sit around forever. It’s a stretch for the family to manage on Xiao Long’s salary even though we recently gave her a large raise. She now earns 1750 a month, compared to 700 when she started working for us 3 and a half years ago. That raise is roughly consistent with the cost of living: local families were paying 600 to a full-time live-in ayi when we arrived and now they are paying 1200. The cost of everything has risen, and in the meantime exchange rates have plummeted, from 8.2 to the US$ to 6.8 and from 15 to the pound to less than 11, so our spending power has really declined.
Xiao Long announced that she was going to buy a bicycle and let her husband use her electric bike to look for work. I said we would buy her the bicycle as a Christmas present and we got her a nice one at Decathlon, but it’s a long and often cold 50 minute trek to and from work. When I pointed out that in her family the women were the main breadwinners, as well as looking after the home and children, she defended her husband and said that he had been unlucky the past few years, but up until then he had done pretty well. He used to earn 5,000 a month driving a taxi, but because he isn’t a Chengdu resident, he can only drive someone else’s cab on the night shift and they both agree that’s too dangerous and tough on family life to start doing again.
Then a few days ago Xiao Long reported that Zeng Jun had earned 200 yuan the previous night. When I asked what he was doing, she shrugged and said “That’s his business. I don’t ask, I don’t want to know.” This makes it sound shadier than it probably is - most likely he’s operating her motorbike as an informal, illegal taxi, ferrying goods and people around the city after dark. It’s all OK with her as long as it keeps the family moving onwards and upwards.
Speaking of upward mobility, Xiao Long has to go to school for a parents’ meeting tomorrow, a meeting with the principal for a select group of the best students, to talk about options for middle school. Zeng Jing warned her mother that she would probably be called up on stage because Zeng Jing is doing so well in school, so Xiao Long is dreading the meeting. I thought she might have been happy to be commended in this way, but she says it’s embarrassing. The principal is not so much praising them as using them to criticize everyone else. Soon after they moved to Chengdu they were called up in front of the whole school because Zeng Jing’s grades had improved from mediocre when she first arrived, to near the top of the class. The principal harangued the other parents, asking if a girl from the countryside could do so well, why couldn’t their children who grew up in Chengdu? She managed to make everyone feel bad: Zeng Jing and her parents for being poor peasants from the countryside whom no-one expects much of, and everyone else for being outshone by them.
This kind of public shaming technique is an everyday part of the education system. The good students are constantly praised and held up as examples and given more attention, while the bad students are berated. The ten students with the lowest grades in each class at the end of the month are made to stay behind after school for an extra 50 minute class every day, where they teacher supervises their homework and lectures them about falling behind. Despite growing up with this approach, Xiao Long thinks it’s ineffectual. The bad students just get used to thinking of themselves as hopeless and give up. They’re only 10 years old but they’re already clear about where they’re going and it isn’t very far. I wonder what will happen to them, but I also wonder how Zeng Jing and the other kids who are tipped to succeed will meet the expectations everyone has of them.
We did of course and there continue to be aftershocks even now, but we’ve only really noticed a couple. One at 11 pm on a Friday night sent me scurrying to repack an emergency bag and make sure all our papers were in order, just in case we have to do a runner. That momentary sensation of instability brings everything back.
That 11 pm aftershock was the first experience of earth movement for Xiao Long’s husband Zeng Jun, as he was away for most of this year and missed the earthquake. Apparently when he felt the tremor, he jumped up and tried to rush the family out of the building, but they all laughed at him and told him to sit down – this was nothing compared to the real event. Of course any of us would have reacted the same way as he did if one of those rattling moments had happened a year ago, but it’s all relative. I gather that’s how Californians feel, they just get used to it.
Zeng Jun just returned to Chengdu from a city near Tianjin in the north of China, where he has been running a hotpot restaurant since April. This was a new business venture after he decided to sell his car: at a big loss, much to Xiao Long’s annoyance. Originally he planned to open a hotpot place in Chengdu, but after making a down payment to rent somewhere, he found out the building was scheduled for demolition, so he decided to head north, where he has an uncle and a few army buddies. He and Xiao Long ran a restaurant successfully up there for a few years when they were first married. It is incredible how quickly people make these decisions here and how quickly they act. Within a week of arriving he had rented a place, hired some staff and was serving customers, making about 200 yuan profit per day. It was hard work though. He and a buddy worked around the clock, 7 days a week: shopping for the food, doing all the cooking and cleaning up at the end of the day.
Xiao Long took their daughter Zeng Jing to visit him in the summer, but it doesn’t sound like they had a very good time. She said the place was dirty and ugly and too hot, and Zeng Jun was living in a dormitory with minimal facilities. He really missed home and every day was a grind. Millions of people all over China are living that way in order to support their families and improve their lives. At least he was running his own business, not working at a factory or construction site where he could lose his job at any moment. But in the end he did lose, due to a stroke of extremely bad luck. One night a drunken customer picked a fight about paying for his meal and punched Zeng Jun, threatening to come back and beat him up properly. After that Zeng Jun lost heart. He was afraid the guy would follow through with his threat, or else find some way to close him down. As Zeng Jun was not a local and didn’t have good contacts it would be difficult for him to argue his case if trouble occurred. So in early November, he packed up and came home with nothing to show for his hard work. Because he broke the lease on the restaurant he ended up losing money, about 20,000 yuan, a big hit for the family finances. He arrived home with 200 yuan in his pocket.
Xiao Long took it well overall as she and Zeng Jing were happy to have him home. Zeng Jun was over the moon to be back with his family, able to sleep in a comfortable bed and be looked after by his wife and sister. His older sister Xiao Zeng and her husband and son have been occupying one room of familyy’s small apartment since the earthquake. With the family matriarch joining them as well every other week it’s a tight squeeze, but it means there’s always someone to look after the two kids, and the cousins are growing up more like brother and sister, an advantage in a one-child family society.
For a couple of weeks Zeng Jun celebrated his homecoming, inviting his relatives and army buddies over. One night he and his friends stayed up all night and polished off 5 bottles of baijiu (like vodka but stronger). Xiao Long said she had to mop the floor 4 times to clean up all the sticky mess from spilled toasts. But Zeng Jun knew he couldn’t sit around forever. It’s a stretch for the family to manage on Xiao Long’s salary even though we recently gave her a large raise. She now earns 1750 a month, compared to 700 when she started working for us 3 and a half years ago. That raise is roughly consistent with the cost of living: local families were paying 600 to a full-time live-in ayi when we arrived and now they are paying 1200. The cost of everything has risen, and in the meantime exchange rates have plummeted, from 8.2 to the US$ to 6.8 and from 15 to the pound to less than 11, so our spending power has really declined.
Xiao Long announced that she was going to buy a bicycle and let her husband use her electric bike to look for work. I said we would buy her the bicycle as a Christmas present and we got her a nice one at Decathlon, but it’s a long and often cold 50 minute trek to and from work. When I pointed out that in her family the women were the main breadwinners, as well as looking after the home and children, she defended her husband and said that he had been unlucky the past few years, but up until then he had done pretty well. He used to earn 5,000 a month driving a taxi, but because he isn’t a Chengdu resident, he can only drive someone else’s cab on the night shift and they both agree that’s too dangerous and tough on family life to start doing again.
Then a few days ago Xiao Long reported that Zeng Jun had earned 200 yuan the previous night. When I asked what he was doing, she shrugged and said “That’s his business. I don’t ask, I don’t want to know.” This makes it sound shadier than it probably is - most likely he’s operating her motorbike as an informal, illegal taxi, ferrying goods and people around the city after dark. It’s all OK with her as long as it keeps the family moving onwards and upwards.
Speaking of upward mobility, Xiao Long has to go to school for a parents’ meeting tomorrow, a meeting with the principal for a select group of the best students, to talk about options for middle school. Zeng Jing warned her mother that she would probably be called up on stage because Zeng Jing is doing so well in school, so Xiao Long is dreading the meeting. I thought she might have been happy to be commended in this way, but she says it’s embarrassing. The principal is not so much praising them as using them to criticize everyone else. Soon after they moved to Chengdu they were called up in front of the whole school because Zeng Jing’s grades had improved from mediocre when she first arrived, to near the top of the class. The principal harangued the other parents, asking if a girl from the countryside could do so well, why couldn’t their children who grew up in Chengdu? She managed to make everyone feel bad: Zeng Jing and her parents for being poor peasants from the countryside whom no-one expects much of, and everyone else for being outshone by them.
This kind of public shaming technique is an everyday part of the education system. The good students are constantly praised and held up as examples and given more attention, while the bad students are berated. The ten students with the lowest grades in each class at the end of the month are made to stay behind after school for an extra 50 minute class every day, where they teacher supervises their homework and lectures them about falling behind. Despite growing up with this approach, Xiao Long thinks it’s ineffectual. The bad students just get used to thinking of themselves as hopeless and give up. They’re only 10 years old but they’re already clear about where they’re going and it isn’t very far. I wonder what will happen to them, but I also wonder how Zeng Jing and the other kids who are tipped to succeed will meet the expectations everyone has of them.
posted by Cat Platt at 12:18 pm
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