Mei Fong and the far-reaching effects of China's one child policy

Mei Fong and the far-reaching effects of China's one child policy

  11:06 PM    Jlu17

---

Last Monday, Mei Fong came to Poly to talk about different aspects of Chinese culture that was affected by China's One Child Policy. I had the wonderful opportunity to introduce her, eat dinner with her, and get my copy of One Child signed.

In preparation for her talk, I read One Child over winter break. I highly recommend that everyone read her book—even as a Chinese-American who has lived in China for 9 months, I learned so much about China, especially rural China, from One Child. The policy has affected so many aspects of Chinese culture that we do not normally consider when thinking about China as a whole.

Reading One Child also influenced me to change my capstone project's theme from environmental policy to the one child policy. I taught two World Cultures Pacific Rim classes the week before Fong came to Poly so that the students in these classes could better understand the context of her talk. Even though it was a lot of work to have many different strategies of engaging the students in the discussions, seeing the students have insightful conversations about the differences between Chinese culture and other cultures they learned in class made the effort completely worth it.

Before her talk, I joined a dinner with Fong and the group of students who will travel to China over spring break. We all ate as students asked her questions about Chinese culture. I never really realized many of the differences that she discussed between American and Chinese culture until she mentioned them, so that was an interesting experience.

Then came the presentation. Fong first talked about China's overall population's age demographics and how the population is, as a whole, growing older. Other topics she covered included shidu parents (parents who lost their child and, as a result, get pushed to the bottom of the social ladder), population police, the military scientists behind the planning of the one child policy (because the intellectuals were prosecuted or scared off by the Cultural Revolution), the effectiveness of two-child zones, the pressures put on only children to support their parents, bachelor villages (and runaway brides), and adoption. She also talked about her own story through motherhood, paralleling her experiences with the stories she discovered during her investigations in China. Even though I had already read the book, Fong still gave me new insight into issues I previously overlooked. As I learn more about China's efforts at population control, it becomes clear that historical context is so crucial for understanding China's modern society.

Preparing for this GIP event has had a huge effect on my experience as a GIP student and how I see Chinese culture. Not only did reading One Child influence me to surround my GIP classes around the policy, but it also forced me, someone who has only been exposed to urban Chinese society, to consider my urban bias or ignorance on national issues. Many of China's issues occurred in rural areas because of the CCP's (and the world's) neglect of these areas in terms of press, healthcare, economic support, and more.

I'd like to thank Mei Fong for her invaluable insight on these issues. It's journalists like her that help readers like me better understand other cultures and societies.

Read More

Teaching freshmen about China's one child policy

Teaching freshmen about China's one child policy

  9:40 PM    Jlu17

---

I had the exciting opportunity of teaching Mr. Tyau's World Cultures Pacific Rim classes about China's one child policy and its effects on different aspects of Chinese society. I originally wanted to focus on China's environmental regulations, but for reasons I detailed here, I changed my path to go in this direction.

I taught two classes over the span of two days. For each class, I had a PowerPoint about the background behind the one child policy and readings for the students prepared. My background info included a (very!) brief summary of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, along with their effects on the Chinese population boom in the 1960s and 70s. Once I reached the point in time when the government dropped the one child policy, I started a quick simulation. Each student received a random number from 1-15 and randomly chose a candy from a bag that I brought that would end up being their "child" (half were Snickers, the other half were 4 other different kinds of chocolates. I didn't expect there to be so many Snickers, but it didn't matter in the end). After every student picked one, I labeled the Snickers boys and everything else girls. There were several exceptions that I made for some students to receive more candy:

• For students with an even number, they represented China's rural population. Thus, the students with an even number and a candy that was not a Snicker's was able to pick a second candy.
• A student with the number 13 represented China's ethnic minority population. They could grab as much candy as they wanted.
• A student with the number 3 represented the physically disabled rural population in China, and could receive a second candy.
• A student with the number 5 represented the parents who had their children outside of China. Even though this student received a second candy, in real life, the child born outside of China received no public benefits (public education, healthcare, etc.) and had no Chinese passport. 
• A student with the number 7 represented the Chinese population who worked/studied overseas but returned to China. This population received many benefits, such as skipping the primary school lottery system and choosing the schools in the district for their kids, having multiple kids, etc. The Chinese government heavily encourages overseas Chinese to return to China.

I then went over the exceptions through the PowerPoint and continued my timeline up to the institution of the two child policy. Afterwards, I divided the class into three groups, and every group received readings (full list here) on a certain topic: one examined how the policy affected China's growing elderly population, another examined how the policy affected China's only-child population, and the third examined how the resulting male-female imbalance affected China's overall population. Every student received a different reading--a news article or an excerpt from One Child--so after they finished reading, I had the groups discuss what they read to each other.

After the small group discussions, I had the students write about the themes they read about in Chinese culture that the policy affected on white boards, and once they wrote what they learned, I had them connect these themes to American culture or cultures that they learned about throughout the year in this class. Most of them drew contrasts between Chinese culture and American culture because they knew American culture best.

Courtesy of Ms. Diederich, who came to my second class!

I then had everyone share their results and discuss their thoughts about these issues. I prepared several videos in case we finished our discussions early, but there was no time in either class to watch the videos. The first video documented several people's lives one year after the two child policy was instated. The second and third videos expanded on the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, respectively, in case the students wanted to learn more about them.

I hope the simulation and discussions really helped the students learn what I wanted to teach. They seemed more interested when they were participating in their own learning rather than watching me lecture. I was initially nervous before both classes on how well I could engage the students, but the students' friendly enthusiasm and sharp insight helped create a productive discussing atmosphere.

In conclusion, I had a great time planning out these classes and teaching freshmen about a topic that they were completely unfamiliar with. I would like to thank everyone who helped me out with my project--my classmates, Dr. Kim, Mr. Caragher, Ms. Diederich, and most of all, Mr. Tyau.

Read More

Change in GIP plans

Change in GIP plans

  12:35 PM    Jlu17

---

I've done what I consider to be a complete 180 on my GIP topic. I'm still teaching Mr. Tyau's 9th grade World Cultures: Pacific Rim class, but I decided to go down the route of how China's one child policy affected its culture.

Over the course of the last few months, Mr. Tyau and I struggled to figure out how to connect such a large idea—environmental regulations—to his students in a meaningful way. His class is more focused on cultures in the Pacific Rim, so I tried to figure out connections between government regulations and the public response.

However, when I read One Child by Mei Fong, I realized one thing: the one child policy is an issue with tangible effects that every student can understand. Not so many kids can connect to the idea that some families suffer from indoor air quality issues from burning biofuels in their home, but most people know someone who suffers from high expectations from their parents and can imagine an exacerbated version of this. For example: when I studied in Beijing, I lived with a host sister who was the same age as me. Because I was born in Beijing, it was easy for me to see what could have been my life in my host sister's life—endless homework, stressful tests, and hours of tutoring every week. Thus, Mr. Tyau and I have decided to focus more on how the one child policy, the CCP's attempt to securely control the Chinese population, affected Chinese culture, specifically from the lens of a "little emperor," or the only child.

My host sister!

Here are my plans: After giving background information on the origins of the one child policy (Cultural Revolution), I will divide the students into several groups and give them excerpts from One Child and news articles that are relevant to the themes that I want them to focus on—how the younger generations deal with the elderly, how rural populations differ from urban, and how the general population deals with a gender disparity. After the groups have read and discussed these readings, they will write on the board areas and overall examples where they think this policy affected Chinese culture, and then they will draw parallels or contrasts between these themes and themes in other Asian cultures that they have been learning about throughout the year. For example, they might compare the implications of aging populations in Japan and in China or the ideas of filial piety in Hawaii and China.

I'm excited to see what comparisons the students come up with!

Read More

Before the Flood and Q&A with Dr. Jess Adkins

Before the Flood and Q&A with Dr. Jess Adkins

  9:37 PM    Jlu17

---

I had the opportunity to attend Poly's screening of the documentary Before the Flood and the Q&A session that followed. This documentary demonstrated different effects of climate change around the world and brought up actions our society could take to prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems, and native communities across the planet.

The narrator, Leonardo DiCaprio, travels to different parts of the world to examine how climate change has affected people’s lifestyles and their surroundings. He talks to experts and influential figures who are working toward a sustainable future, and he also addresses the political nature of climate change denial in the White House.

DiCaprio first visits Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, where he sees first-hand the detrimental effects of climate change on the ice caps. He is accompanied by Dr. Enric Sala, the National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and Jake Awa, an Arctic guide. Sala tells DiCaprio, “In 2040, you will be able to sail over the North Pole. There will be no ice left.”

Later in the documentary, DiCaprio visits former president Barack Obama in the White House to discuss the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris agreement and how the White House is addressing climate change. Regarding the Paris agreement, Obama says, “I was happy that we put the architecture in place, but the targets that were set in Paris were nowhere near enough for what the scientists tell us we have to do eventually to solve this problem.” I agree.

DiCaprio also stops by Tesla’s Gigafactory to watch robots create lithium-ion batteries from solar energy. When DiCaprio is discussing the possible transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Musk estimates that it would take 100 gigafactories to transition the entire world to solar energy. “The only way to encourage this is with the carbon tax,” he says.

After the documentary, Adkins, Professor of Geochemistry and Global Environmental Science at Caltech, answered questions from the audience. Adkins obtained his bachelor’s degree from Haverford and his Ph.D. from MIT. His research at Caltech entails geochemical investigations of past climates as well as chemical oceanography and metals as tracers of environmental processes.

Questions ranged from the politicization of environmental science to how individuals could contribute to the environmental movement. When I asked about the possibility of the reversal of  climate change, Adkins replied that most effects could reverse with time, however, some of the devastation was irreparable. “There are tipping points in the systems. For example, if Greenland goes away, it is not coming back. The time and energy that climate systems spent to build the Greenland ice sheet up in the first place is much larger than what is available to the system,” he told me.

This stuck in my mind as I left the room. Although what he said about the Greenland ice sheets was devastating, the fact that he thought that most effects were reversible surprised me. I thought that coral bleaching destroyed the underwater habitats forever and that deforestation was permanent. Even though we can never bring old ecosystems back, I'm excited to see what happens to the environment as (or if) we transition to sustainable energy. I'm excited for the possibilities of the future.

Read More

Viet Thanh Nguyen and his analysis of the Vietnamese diaspora

Viet Thanh Nguyen and his analysis of the Vietnamese diaspora

  12:38 PM    Jlu17

---

To kick off the theme of "Borders, Boundaries, and New Frontiers", the GIP hosted its first talk of the year with Viet Thanh Nguyen, who discussed the making of his Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Sympathizer and the different problems that come with writing and living as a Vietnamese-American.

Nguyen and his family fled to the United States after the fall of Saigon, settling in San Jose, California. Interestingly, he attended the same high school as one of the organizers for GIP. After receiving his Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, Nguyen began teaching at USC. He is currently an Associate Professor of English and of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. His debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a long list of other awards. He also promotes Vietnamese arts and culture in the diaspora through The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) and diaCRITICS. He's also written Nothing Ever Dies, an analysis of how the Vietnam War has been remembered by the people of different countries affected. I hope to read this book soon.

During the talk, he discussed how he always felt the urge to appeal to a white audience because the publishing industry was around 80% white. However, when addressing the Vietnam War, many Americans often have a completely different perspective on these issues than Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Americans. However, with The Sympathizer, he sought to speak from a Vietnamese-American to another fellow Vietnamese-American. It was an unapologetic Vietnamese-American interpretation of the Vietnam War that did not cater to a white audience.

I unfortunately wasn't able to finish The Sympathizer before the talk, but what I have read so far has already personalized for me much of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese experience in a way nothing else that I've read has. Every page is brilliantly written--the elements of sharp humor and articulate descriptions complement well with the story about war, identity, loyalty, and understanding. (I heard that the ending of the book was the best part of the story, so I will update this blog post once I have finished.)

As a Chinese-American, I often generalize many of my issues to be that of the collective Asian-American identity. It's important for me to remember that recognizing the diversity of the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) community is crucial for better understanding of the American identity and for better representation in media and in the government.

 

I'm excited for the release of his next book, The Refugees, which is coming out this February. The book consists of a collection of stories from people affected by the Vietnam War in different ways, whether that be through immigration or culture shock. Nguyen mentioned that he wrote this before The Sympathizer and left it untouched until The Sympathizer became widely successful and that it was written for a white audience, so I'm interested in seeing how these two fiction novels differ in their writing styles and developments because of this.

Also--I recently wrote a paper on Kissinger's influence in the White House because I wanted to learn more about normalization of Sino-US relations. As I delved deeper into his influence with Vietnam, I saw how he encouraged much of the bombings and the bombing expansion into Laos and Cambodia along with contributing to the betrayal of South Vietnam. Nguyen's take on Clinton supporting Kissinger's ideas that "America is great because it is good" was especially insightful because I never really thought about Kissinger's current connections to both Clinton and Trump. Not directly related to the talk, but interesting nonetheless.

Thank you for coming, Mr. Nguyen. You are an inspiration to not only the Vietnamese-American community (I'm sure) but also to the Asian-American community as a whole.

Read More

Reading "One Child"

Reading "One Child"

  1:31 PM    Jlu17

---

I spent most of my break writing college essays. During these writing marathons, I would have long periods of time where I physically could not look at my essays. So, I turned to my copy of "One Child" by Mei Fong. The GIP program had generally loaned me this book so that I could read it before welcoming Mei Fong to Poly in March. 

Mei Fong (方鳯美, Fang Fengmei) grew up in Malaysia and attended the National University of Singapore. After getting her master's degree from Columbia, she worked for The Wall Street Journal, reporting in Hong Kong and Beijing. She left WSJ in 2013 and began writing her book, One Child, about the socioeconomic implications of the CCP's one child policy, which was replaced by the two child policy in late 2015.

For context, here's a timeline of how the CCP addressed population growth: 

• In the 1960s-70s, China experienced a huge baby boom. The CCP was encouraging people to have more, saying that China needed the huge population boost for rapid industrialization with popular slogans like "More kids means more grandkids means better fortune" (多子多孙多福气). 
• Then, as the government realized that China did not have enough resources to account for a rapidly expanding population, they began releasing slogans promoting fewer children with "Later, Longer, Fewer" campaign (晚稀少). 
• In 1980, the government dropped the one child policy, completely halting this boom. 
• From 1980-2015, there were several changes to the one child policy, granting exceptions to certain conditions in rural China and letting ethnic minorities escape this regulation. Also, at some point, some parents could have two children if they were both only children.
• In late 2015, the government replaced the one child policy with the two child policy. 

“计划生育好处多", "The benefits of family planning are many"

“独生子女光荣”, "Only children are glorious"

One thing that I noticed in China was that there were two ways to say one child policy—"一胎政策" (one child policy) and "计划生育" (family planning). Chinese people preferred to use the latter, perhaps as a euphemism. Fong addresses this difference in her book too.

Fong begins the book by talking about the Sichuan earthquake. When the quake hit, a generation was wiped out because of a mixture of shoddy school infrastructure and the one child policy. She followed a Sichuan couple in Beijing who rushed back to Shifang to find their child, who had died from the quake. The couple was later forced to sign a government agreement saying "I pledge to come back to normal life and normal production as soon as possible" (p. 21). The stories that followed this one example of the failures of the one child policy are vivid and heart-wrenching. 

Fong then examines many more perspectives on this policy than I thought existed. There's the idea of raising a generation of "little emperors" and runaway brides. She also describes the unequal gender balance and its social implications. She wrote that "In 2008, economists showed that a 1 percent increase in China's gender ratios increased violet and property crime rates between 5 and 6 percent. Researchers estimated that the 'increasing maleness' of China's young adult population could account for as much as a third of the overall rise in crime" (p. 115). Furthermore, "one in four women in China confronts domestic violence" (p. 115). It was increasingly harder for men to marry, and women who are still single after 30 are shunned and called "leftover women." Also, the legal age for marriage is 20 for women and 22 for men. This marriage issue, Fong pointed out, is further exacerbated by the hypergamous culture where "women marry up and men marry down." Thus, educated women are finding it hard to find men to marry and are turning to adult education workshops that promote deference to men. 

She points out that the policy has, overall, benefited the urban Chinese female because more women are receiving a college education than ever in China, but the trade-offs are great. Infanticide for women in the countryside is prevalent, and trafficking in surrounding countries is being a serious issue for rural China. 

Another facet of Chinese culture to consider is the growing elderly population. The average lifespan has extended significantly since WWII, from 39 to 74 years old. By the mid 2020s, there would be an additional 10 million elders and a loss of around 7 million workers in Chinese society. By 2050, it was estimated that 1/3 people in China would be older than 60. Fong mentioned the rise of the saying that "China will grow old before it grows rich." Deference to one's elders is a huge part of Chinese culture, but the one child policy makes it difficult for a married couple to take care of 2 sets of parents, a child, and sometimes 4 sets of grandparents. This is why even when the one child policy was lifted, few couples chose to have an extra child. In 1996, a law required children to support their aging parents because of China's growing elderly population. Later, in 2013, a new law that children must visit their parents frequently was established, with one of the most popular cases ordering a woman to visit her mother once every two months. However, neither of these laws are easy to enforce, but they echo China's fear that the elderly population cannot be taken care of. On top of this, even though most city residents are covered by government pension, only a fourth of rural residents are covered.

Fong also discusses adoption. American media sensationalized the idea of helpless female infants who were abandoned in the countryside because of the one child policy, and as a result, China became by far America's largest source for adoptions. It seems most ethical to adopt from China, a place where stories of baby kidnapping were initially nontexistent. However, human trafficking and kidnapping has also become a huge problem in the adoption industry because of the one child policy. 

Finally, Fong consistently highlights her own pregnancy issues throughout the book as a parallel to her journey around China. After experiencing a miscarriage and more fertility issues, she decides to undergo IVF treatment in China, which fails. During this time, she examines how Chinese people sometimes use IVF treatment to obtain twins or surrogate mothers to have more kids. There are a multitude of ways for Chinese couples to go around the law, but they all involve a significant amount of money, whether that be through fines or treatment. In general, the richer have more opportunities to bend the law and have more kids, while the poorer have to abide by the restrictive and sometimes inhumane regulations. Finally, she has a boy after an IVF treatment in America.

While reading this book, I constantly thought back to myself—a Chinese-born immigrant with an American-born brother. My parents were the elite who could escape the one-child restriction by moving to America. When I studied in Beijing, I lived with a host family similar to my own family but who only had a daughter my age. My host family hosted so that their family could feel a little bigger during the school year. I saw what could've been me in my host sister—one trapped by the suffocating education system with no sibling support and with traditional Chinese values crushing many of my aspirations.

I'm glad to have had the opportunity to read One Child, and I'm excited to hear Mei Fong continue her discussion at Poly in March.

Read More

Watching the procession at Olvera Street

Watching the procession at Olvera Street

  8:05 PM    Jlu17

---

Photo courtesy of Jessica, another GIP student.

Last Thursday, GIP hosted a trip to Olvera Street to watch the Novenario procession.

Día de (los) Muertos, or Day of the Dead, originated in Mexico but is widely celebrated around the world. It's often believed to be an around 2500-3000 year-old tradition from different pre-Columbian cultures in Mexico. During these few days, family and friends gather to remember and celebrate loved ones who have passed away. People usually built private altars and ofrendas or visit cemeteries of their loves ones so the souls of the departed can return to hear the celebrations and prayers of the living.

We first explored Olvera Street during the half hour before the procession began. Many of the stores were already closed for the holiday, but the restaurants were bustling with eager customers. One of the girls in my group decided to get her face painted calavera-style.

 

I've never seen anything like the procession before. Music, copal (incense), and stories filled the air around me as the participants marched down Olvera Street. Most, if not all, of the participants were dressed up with their face painted. They walked all the way to the band stand, performing different dances and poetry for their loved ones.

We came a few days before Dia de los Muertos, so we experienced the festivals and atmosphere without the huge crowds. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and I highly recommend the grades below me to come out next year.

Read More