20221231 LangCult 9

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202111080018 Wellsand, Benjamin 英语笔译(English translation)

Chinese Culture and A Child’s Education

In Chinese culture, the family name is displayed prominently before the individual’s given name as a clear indicator of the honor given to the family unit and the collective nature by which the individual is viewed within foundational societal institutions. China is a culture that is overtly centered on kinship. “Male offspring were especially valued for their role in carrying on the family name, explains Li Liu of Beijing Normal University, “without a male heir, a family line originating from its ancestors is terminated, and the family’s place in the universe gets lost forever.” (2007: 57) China is world-renown for having the largest population. Beginning in the 1950s, the population grew on a steep trajectory from 540 million to 940 million by 1976. The booming industrialization caused concern of famine and housing shortages as more people were expected to start searching for higher-paying urban jobs as opposed to working on farms. In response to these concerns, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started limiting births provincially in 1979 and finally standardized the one-child policy in 1980 which limited ethnic Chinese to only one child per couple. The fertility rate dropped from 6.1 in 1990 to 1.16 in 2021. (Master & Zhang 2022)

It is the cultural importance placed upon a male heir to carry on the family name that explains the resulting current skewed sex ratio. (Statista 2021) Charles Kraft shares, “Family and relatives are the big things to [kinship cultures]. Those with family are wealthy (whether or not they have any money).” (1996: 121) Great financial responsibility is placed upon a son’s family who is seeking to find a wife for him. 房子, 车子, and 票子 are viewed as the requirements that should be met in order for a daughter to agree to take a man as her husband. While housing prices have steadied (Aljazeera 2022), the job market continues to be a challenge do to an economic slow from the COVID-19 pandemic. (Bloomberg News 2022)

There is an inordinate amount of competition in children’s education that accompanies these high social demands. Laurie Chen (2018) reports that more than sixty percent of primary school children (up to seventy percent in larger cities) were tutored outside of the classroom and parents paid an average of 120,000 RMB on up to 300,000 RMB for extracurricular education. The 双一流 higher education ranking leaves limited space for academic success. Zhang Duanhong (2019), writes of “the ‘exhausting high school, carefree university’ paradigm, in which university life is treated as a reward for making it through the rigors of the country’s college entrance exam.” The 90 percent graduation rate further limits the space available in universities and increased entry competition. The highly competitive nature in higher education has conditioned both sexes to pursue the greatest quality of education and the highest paid positions obtainable. Students must place their entire life on hold and focus all attention on study.

To ease the high societal demands of childrearing and encourage population growth, the CCP has made significant policy changes in areas such as private education (Koty 2021), maternity leave (Huang & Huang 2021), afterschool childcare (Zhang 2021), along with child subsidies (Ma 2022). Yet it remains an uphill battle to change the social conditioning of a country built around a single-child family. The 鸡娃 parenting mentality continues on despite best efforts to curb this longstanding trend. (Feng 2021) Private education has not disappeared but has simply undergone a transformation as is the case with English tutors turned online product salespeople. (Jia 2022) Private education companies are believed to shift as well from educators to a rebranding as providers of AI products, software, and services for public education institutions. (Knox 2021)

The philosopher, Confucius, upon whose teaching pillars Chinese society is built, was a strong advocate of the family. He recognized human flourishing occurring within five complex relationships and three of these are familial: father/son, elder/younger brother, and husband/wife. Confucius felt that it was “in the context of the family that we acquire the building blocks for navigating the wildly complex relational networks that comprise human society.” (Ten Elshof, 2015: 14) Filial piety is no surprise in the face of a culture that centers on the family. Liu explains, “Filial piety is more than just showing filial obedience to parents: most importantly, it indicates raising sons to support aging parents and having sons to continue the family line.” (2007: 56) This too is a practice that finds support within Confucianism as a “value that calls on adult children to fulfill obligations to respect, obey, support, and care for elderly parents.” (Shea, Moore, & Zhang, 2020: 29) 养儿防老 is the Chinese parental motto that shows the expectations placed upon the children to care for their aging parents. Caring for the aged will only increase in difficulty as the average age of Chinese citizens rises. (Campbell 2019) Further exacerbating the age demographic phenomena is that this comes on the heels of the one-child policy that leaves two sets of aging parents on the shoulders of one married couple. Tang Youcai and Jeanne Shea discovered that those coming from rural areas “have both higher proportions of elderly folks and lower levels of economic development.” (2020: 92)

A collective, kinship country that is culturally conditioned to associate the wellbeing and preservation of the family with social and economic success finds itself in the face of a challenging future. The CCP is working tirelessly to show it supports and recognizes the need for the Chinese family, only that it has one major issue with it: it’s size. The battle for the family that started in Confucius’s day continues in the present. The academic atmosphere that crescendos at standardized testing (Li 2019) and a highly competitive job market that leaves even college graduates in a tight spot (Pike 2022) places the child’s education at front and center in the battle for social survival. The weight of the future of China predictably rests, from a cultural perspective, on the shoulders of the family unit.

Questions

1. What is significant about the Chinese name coming first? A) Honor for the family unit B) Tribal units in China’s history C) Record keeping habits D) All of the above

2. The fertility rate in China has A) grown B) leveled off C) fallen since the 1990s.

3. What are the three commonly expected requirements to be met prior to marriage? A) Good looks, education, and hobbies B) Love, laughter, and musical taste C) A house, car, and salary D) None of the above

4. What was the average amount a couple paid for the education of their child outside of public school? A) 300,000 RMB B) 210,000 RMB C) 120,000 RMB

5. The government has done what to encourage couples to have more kids? A) Created more video gaming systems and animated movies B) Provided free annual winter vacations to 三亚市 C) Offered various child subsidies

6. China is no longer a collective, kinship culture. True or False

References

Aljazeera. November 1, 2022. “China’s Property Slump Continues as October Prices Fall.” Aljazeera. [[1]].

Bloomberg News. October 9, 2022. “China Job Market Prospects at Record Low as Economy Slows.” Bloomberg. [2].

Campbell, Charlie. February 7, 2019. “China’s Aging Population Is a Major Threat to Its Future.” TIME. [3].

Chen, Laurie. December 4, 2018. “Chinese Parents Spend up to US $43,500 a Year on After-School Classes for Their Children.” South China Morning Post. [4].

Feng, Emily. “Forget Tiger Moms. Now China’s ‘Chicken Blood’ Parents Are Pushing Kids to Succeed.” NPR. [5].

Huang, Fiona & Christine Huang. December 23, 2021. “China: Beijing and Shanghai Extend Maternity Leave by 30 Days; Parental Leave Entitlement Introduced.” WTW. [6].

Jia, Cui. June 15, 2022. “Former English Teacher an Online Sales Sensation.” China Daily. [7].

Knox, Jeremy. 2021. “How the ‘Taming’ of Private Education in China is Impacting AI.” On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 4 (12).

Koty, Alexander C. September 27, 2021. “More Regulatory Clarity After China Bans For-Profit Tutoring in Core Education.” China Briefing. [8].

Kraft, Charles H. 1996. Anthropology for Christian Witness. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

Li, Xuanmin. July 24, 2019. “Resumption of Gaokao Propelled China’s Economic Takeoff.” Global Times. [9].

Liu, Li. 2007. “Filial Piety, Guanxi, Loyalty and Money: Trust in China.” In I. Marková and A. Gillespie (eds), Trust and Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives, pp. 51—77. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Ma, Josephine. August 17, 2022. “China Tries to Lift Birth Rate with New Measures to Make it Easier to Work and Raise a Family.” South China Morning Post. [10].

Master, Farah & Albee Zhang. August 16, 2022. “China to Discourage Abortions to Boost Low Birth Rate.” Reuters. [11].

Pike, Lili. “China has an Unemployment Problem. Why Nearly 20 Percent of Young Job-Seekers Can’t Land a Job.” Grid. [12].

Shea, Jeanne, Katrina Moore, & Hong Zhang, eds. 2020. Beyond Filial Piety: Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies. New York: Berghahn Books.

Statista. 2021. “Sex Ratio in China from 1953-2021.” Statista. [13].

Tang, Youcai & Jeanne Shea. 2020. “Old-Age Support in Rural China Case Study of the Jiangxiang Model for Community-Based Filial Piety.” In Shea, Moore, & Zhang, eds. Beyond Filial Piety: Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies, pp. 92-142. New York: Berghahn Books.

Ten Elshof, Gregg A. 2015. Confucius for Christians: What an Ancient Chinese Worldview can Teach us About Life in Christ. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Zhang, D. H. January 15, 2019. “The Problem with Chinese Universities? Not Enough Dropouts.” Sixth Tone. [14].

Zhang, Phoebe. July 5, 2021. “China Creates Thousands of Free Childcare Centres to Help Parents Cope with After-School Tutoring Crackdown.” South China Morning Post. [15].