The International Schools Review Forum

You're right. I'm a hater.

I hate lung cancer, COPD, liver damage, and a whole lot of other nasty diseases that don't just kill but kill slowly.

I actually miss the China I left in the mid-2000's but see no fair tradeoff between health and experiencing one of "the world's oldest cultures".

You feel free to take it all in though, pun definitely intended.

whoamI? wrote:
> Let the haters hate, you're missing out on one of the word's oldest cultures. =)

Don't get me wrong. I live in shanghai, and I love it. Shanghai is currently the 3rd largest international school market in the world (behind Dubai and Singapore), and it currently has the highest achieving students anywhere when you look at standardized test scores or any other metrics that get passed between international and private schools.

However, ancient Chinese culture is not something you experience in China. If you stop to think about it, Mao, the Great Leap Forward and all that came after those things really disconnected Han people from their culture and communities. They lost their religion as they knew it, most of their historical buildings and old things were destroyed, most of the educated people were killed off or fled, families and neighbors grew to distrust and fear one another, and people were isolated from the rest of the world. I think that China is kind of moving out of a dark period and into an age of prosperity. In reality, Han culture today is thought of in fairly negative terms - spitting, shoving, pollution, human rights abuses, . corruption, etc.

Now there are minority people groups who live in China and visitors do enjoy their cultures (Tibetan, Miao, Uighur etc). However, many feel that Cultural Sinocentrism or Han Chauvanism are being used to break down those cultures as well.

@nikkor

A recent quote greatly resonated with me during a discussion of the Chinese culture:

"The Chinese culture, it's people and society were "pushed" into their current identity, they did not grow into their place in the world with the benefit of reflection that comes with from evolution".