A Day in The Life . . . . . . Of China: Free to Fly Inside the Cage

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(6 of 18)

As we walk in Guangzhou, the professor notices an old woman with a broom made of twigs and straw methodically sweeping dirt from one side of the street to the other. "You see that?" he says. "That's what it is all about. Is the street really clean? Of course not. But she is making it look clean, right? That's the important thing in China. Everything here is appearance. Everything here is pretend."

Feigned compliance is the term used by Lucian Pye, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to describe such self-protective make-believe and the obedience it spawns. As a trait central to the Chinese character, feigned compliance has distinct Confucian roots, and Confucius is very much in vogue in China today. Not for that part of his philosophy that extols good-heartedness and broad-mindedness, but for his celebration of authority, hierarchy and anti-individualism. For the purposes of China's leaders, what counts is that Confucius presumed the ruler's right to rule.

The Chinese believe it is never too early to teach children that their elders should be respected as models of benevolence and sobriety. Children are dissuaded from expressing hostile feelings toward authority of any description. The concept of self exists only as it is expressed in terms of the other, usually the group. Even if taught at home, such discipline is inculcated most strikingly at school.

The typical Chinese nursery school combines day attendees and quan tuo | (literally "whole care") students. From Monday through Saturday, with the exception of Wednesday evenings, a quan tuo student lives at his school around the clock, a situation no one seems to think the least bit odd. For despite filial devotion and the supposed centrality of family life, long separation is common in China. It is not rare for spouses to work in different cities and see each other infrequently. Similarly, far from signaling neglect, paying to deposit a three-year-old in another's care for a week away from home is often taken as a sign of affluence. In fact, since the economic reforms have raised the living standards of so many Chinese, a complaint about quan tuo is that without guanxi -- connections, a word I was to hear repeatedly -- no amount of wealth can secure a coveted sleep-away space.

I visit two schools, one near Guangzhou, the other in Beijing. At both places, two teachers handle a class of approximately 40 four-year-olds. Instructive slogans adorn the walls: THE NAIL THAT STICKS OUT GETS HAMMERED DOWN and THE LONG POLE GETS SAWED OFF. Creativity, experimentation, even simple play are discouraged. Handed blocks, the children erect structures pictured in workbooks; once completed, the buildings are torn down and put up again and again until the time allotted for block-building expires. And "No talking, while you're building," a teacher scolds. Or while you're eating, for that matter, or while you're going to the bathroom. "Sit upright, with hands clasped behind your backs," says another teacher. "That is correct behavior."

Later, over lunch with a psychologist, I try connecting the phenomenal spread of television in China with the West's greatest contribution to childhood education. "What about Sesame Street?" I ask. "You must be kidding," says the psychologist. "Sesame Street is about individualism, about accepting differences. Don't you get it about Communism?"