Who shi...

...worried

Prepping for a study abroad to China is really like nothing I have ever done before*. Obviously part of that has to do with the fact that I've never been to China, and so really don't know what to expect in terms of, well, everything. Questions like, will we have central air? Do Chinese stores sell feminine products? Will we all have to carry our own toilet paper around? Will people speak English? Will they stare?  pop up in my head (preferably in the middle of the night), making me feel like the most ignorant semi-tourist to ever get on a plane. A large part, however, has to do with the fact that China is just nothing like any other country I have ever been to.

For one thing, there is no access to Google products like blogger or wikis, and limited (or none at all, opinions are divided on this one) access to websites like Facebook and Youtube. That means that I've had to actually download all the videos I use as examples (hello semi-legal downloading website!), have my students complete their wiki assignments before we leave (goodbye free time!), and have had to install VPN on my pc, so I might possibly, assuming the Chinese IT gurus don't figure me out, write a blog every now and then, skype with husband-dear, and check my gmail.

Additionally, there's the whole food/language thing. Now I have visited Asia before, but this was when I was a student, and was very much used to eating lots and lots of rice (Go Ramen!), and not understanding the local people was an adventure! And a challenge! And not a potential roadblock standing between me and a lost student. Or, heavens forbid, me and a sick student.

Then, there is the thorny issue of teaching in a country where the concept "freedom" might not have the same meaning it does here in the US. While my Chinese co-workers will insist that China is just as free as the US, recent reports about friends and family-members of dissidents being harassed by local authority figures would prove otherwise. Laws limiting the number of bibles one can take into the country and prohibiting bible study also don't do much for the idea of a "free China". At any rate, the debriefing for the Professors participating in this study abroad included a warning about the fact that China is still a communist country, and therefore discussion about anything political should be avoided.

Now imagine having to teach a course on the history of the Chinese media. Media which, in the past, have been severely restricted by the ruling party, and at some points even completely suppressed. What do you do?  Do you adopt the line touted by the books about media coming from mainland China, which call the China after 1949 "new China", and argue that the media were "guided" by experts put in place by the government? Or do you stick to the accounts written by non-mainland Chinese (it starts with a "T" and ends on "aiwan", and let's just say relations have been troubled), which talk about "suppression of media freedom" and "ideological pressure"? How do you decide who's right? And that's just the class on media history, I have yet to develop the chutzpah to think about my class on persuasive communication ("look at all these GREAT examples of Chinese propaganda" is probably not going to fly).

There's simply no telling what's OK and what's not. Based on my discussions with my Chinese co-workers (who argue that Chinese media is definitely free, only in a different way), I can't just put American/Western labels on a situation and leave it at that. But I also don't want to tout a party line when I believe it's wrong.

You know, I could just go and make it all up as I go along. Take my students to a tea house and talk about Confucius. Or, perhaps more up their alley, "Happy Girls" (the Chinese version of American Idol). Forget ideology, suppression, freedom, and make one big cultural experience instead. Hm. Not a bad idea. I'll let you know :)

*For those of you who missed the post, or can't read Dutch, I am going to be taking a dozen of our brightest students to China on a study abroad in a week or two.