Yellow Dog [Part 2]

Marx continued:

In China, there's an air of optimism and a feeling that they can and will control the world one day. Everyone feels like their best is ahead of them. Here? We seem to be struggling just to hang on. I'll show you the difference. Florida cut our salaries this year. I lost about $300 a month. In China, as I left, ALL their teachers got a 10% raise. They were told, with inflation, it’s the least we can do. AND, teachers get a bonus every quarter plus a "Chinese New Years Red Envelope" filled with about a thousand US dollars. Taxes seem to be voluntary. I worked there every summer and they don’t seem to want it. They get three months off every year plus a month during the Spring Festival. Teachers only work half a day in China. Students go to school from 7 am until 9 pm but, a new set of teachers rotates in every 6 hours. They have an extremely close society. The grandparents always live with their kids and take care of the grandchildren. Every morning, their outside in the courtyards with the babies and doing Tai Chi. Friday and Saturday nights, the whole city heads to the city square for dancing, singing and just hanging with friends. In my wife’s hometown, they even have a band-shell. In my mind, it looks like the America we are all told about of the 1950's. Everyone goes out all the time for get-togethers with friends or maybe to the local bar or karaoke place. I'll tell you, every year I go, it gets harder and harder to come back. Last year, they offered to make me the principal of a school if I would please stay. My wife wants us to move to Guilin, a pretty, beautiful, picturesque town, open up a bar and I could play every night. Who knows? Maybe one day.

Finally, their medical system is head and shoulders above ours. I have NEVER had to wait to see a physician and, when I get in, they fix the problem for an extremely low cost. Apparently, the Chinese decided that they need a lot more doctors than anything else, so, it’s free to go to med school and it costs a lot to go Art School. I went to a dentist in Guangzhou. The dentist here said I need $7,000 in work. They did EVERYTHING, in two visits, for about $350. Their offices are all shiny and new with the BEST, state of the art equipment.

I really wish everyone would go there, they'd realize EVERYTHING we've been told about them is a flat out lie. I have met MANY Ex-Patriots there and not one of them wants to go back home. What does THAT tell you?

Marx


Marx

About China:

That's a damn shame about the Internet porn filters!

Seriously, I don't doubt at all what you said about China's educational standards. I know we're dangerously behind, but this reality doesn't shake up my world view too much. In the global economy, as within these United States today, national borders [like state borders] will mean very little. It's not, the US v. China. It will be individual Americans v. individual Chinese. People with ability, people who can adapt to the changing global economy, will win, globally. The people who cannot will continue to squeak out their existence working one of the evermore fragmented local economies, repairing cars, stocking shelves in Walmart, cutting hair, waiting tables...and [if the left has their way] their existence will continue to be subsidized by the producers.

I also don't doubt the hospitality of the local Chinese...particularly for teachers, particularly for an American English teacher. Weren't the Mandarin teachers? Didn't the government spend the last decade preparing China to show its best face for the international community during the Olympics? Local people across the globe [particularly in formerly authoritarian states] have great reverence for people they been taught to consider "their betters." In America, everybody thinks they're "the sheet," even if they're a know-nothing, low-life, thug-rapper. In this respect, I wish we were more like the Chinese.

The fact that you report everything is shiny and new, confirms my point that China's growing middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon. For the past couple of decades China's government is communist only in name. A kind of state-capitalism has grown China's economy... government-approved entrepreneurship, currency manipulation, protectionism, and trade created the China you are witness to...not communism. The regime could not ignore what free markets created in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong...good for them. They did the right thing. They moved away from socialism even as Europe sinks deeper into their own pool of sloth, tangled-up in their own, unsustainable, social safety nets. And half of America wants to follow Europe's lead into the very same disaster. China is definitely moving in the right direction.

Of course there are no guns in China. The first thing authoritarians do when they take over a country is disarm the people. It's a lot easier to control an unarmed populace. "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms," Thomas Jefferson. "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed--unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms," James Madison.

I'm quite sure, Marx, that everything I've read about China is NOT a lie. Tiananmen Square DID happen in 1989. Political and religious dissidents are imprisoned in China, denied liberty because of their thinking and "im-permit-able" speech. If I taught there I would probably be joining their ranks.

But none of that matters. Clearly, YOU have found a woman and a country you love. If you're happy, then that is all that matters. I've heard stranger truths. I wish you nothing but the best.

Donn