I wanted to write this post a month ago, didn’t have time,
and now all the brilliant thoughts I had on this topic have been edged out by
all the busy that has happened since. We’ll see how this goes.
It all started with Christmas. More accurately, it began
with the Christmas shopping season, which in China involves a hellish worst
nightmare of tinny pop versions of Christmas carols set to a pop beat and
backed up by the most frightening children’s choir available. It also involves
sales and demented-looking Santa Clause faces plastered everywhere. In short,
it involves all the worst parts of Christmas without any of its redeeming
qualities.
I am not allowed to evangelize to my students, nor would I
want to, but Chinese Christmas was invented by WalMart to sell crap and all the
hype made me sick. My students had absolutely no idea that Christmas was
supposed to be about anything but buying things. There was no sense of
togetherness or goodwill or any of the lovely things I associate with the
season. Christians in the US are upset by the commercialization of Christmas,
but they should see China. Many people in the US no longer celebrate Christmas
religiously, but they still have the cultural background of Christmas, which
gives the holiday depth. China’s big togetherness holiday is Spring
Festival/Chinese New Year, so it doesn’t matter that Christmas is a big buying
spree to them. But it mattered to me.
They were pretty perplexed by Thanksgiving, spending a whole
day being thankful and all that, so I decided to teach them about giving back
and charity during the holidays.
The Chinese don’t have the same concept of community service
that historically Judeo-Christian or Muslim countries do. Confucianism, filial
piety, and communism essentially made it unnecessary. If you lived with your
family for your whole life, nobody was truly lacking. Giving to the less
fortunate is also unnecessary in communism. Regardless of reality, in communism
everyone is equal, nobody experiences need and charity would probably be considered
bourgeois and counter-revolutionary. There is also no need for volunteerism
because the state takes care of all those causes people would normally
volunteer for.
The problem now is that the old ways are fading away. The
one child policy means that there are only two children caring for upwards of
four relatives. And the move away from communism means that there is virtually
no safety net for the old and dispossessed. Community service is necessary for
the first time in China, and people are beginning understand why.
For the lesson, I had the students close their eyes and
imagine their perfect world. In groups they then had to agree on a pressing
problem and create a poster for a community service project to tackle it. I
explained how Christmas and the holidays are traditionally a time of giving and
that many people participate in community service projects during this time. I
was intrigued to see what problems they chose. The most common issue by far was
the environment.
The second most popular issue was the ubiquity of stray dogs
and cats in Linyi.
I was delighted to see the students care about issues. The
environment is a huge issue here, not just smog, but trash. But I also found it
intriguing that they cared more about homeless dogs and cats than homeless
people. Granted, homelessness is not a huge problem in Linyi. In a farming
community, it’s unlikely that anyone will be homeless. However, this does not
mean that there is a lack of want. So that lesson was a mixed bag for me
emotionally. On that one hand I was so proud of my students for having opinions
and for caring about an issue, on the other hand I was disappointed that they
didn’t seem to care very much for their fellow human beings.
But then Mama Li came over. In my eyes, Mama Li is the
epitome of all that is good about the Confucian family system. Apparently the
Li house was undergoing some serious renovation, so Mama Li decided to come
visit her daughter for a few days. It was glorious. She cooked for us, cleaned,
never let us do the dishes. She showered love and affection on us in every way
possible. She pushed food like crazy. She taught me how to make dumplings!
Having her around made the constant ache for my own mother
subside slightly.
If every family were as caring as Mama Li and insisted on
caring for its members in the same way that she cares for Mary and I, then I
can understand why community service isn’t necessary. If you family is your
community, then the service happens every moment of every day. If the system
works as it should, then your whole life becomes one long act of service. In a
way it’s far more sincere than volunteering, which comes into most people’s
lives when it’s convenient. But when you live with the community you serve,
there is no convenient time. You serve. And that can become a greater act of
love than any seasonally-dictated giving ever could be.
