Reflections on 04/21/12 Covering China Workshop

Attending Saturday session at USC campus was an unusual treat for us educators. We had the opportunity to hear three gifted, awards winners, correspondents sharing with us their experiences in China. Having Robert Schmitz, the lone reporter for Marketplace, telling us of his experiences about living in China. The challenges of selecting items of interest from such a large country, while maintaining high standards of professional ethics and veracity in his reports. Then, we had Ching Ching Ni, a LA Times reporter whoe proved to be a delightful story teller. She told us tales from her own family and personal experience. about life of the poor in search of a bettere living conditions, desire for self improvement, more education. She helped me to discover the great influx of chinesese immigrants coming to southern California. The great concentration of these immigrants in the San Gabriel Valley area and bringing China to the US. The rapid developments changing the ethnic characteristics and economy of the Valley. You do not have to go to China Town to enjoy a great Chinese meal, now you go to the towns in the San Gabriel Valley.
We also met Mei Fong, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She told us about the economic effects of China joining the WTO - World Trade Organization and changing the life of million of chinese and the economies of countries around the world thanks to high quality manufacturing produced at low wages. Ironic cases such as the Chinese girl working in a factory making "Top Form" bras and other female interior items for export, while she very likely is not wearing them.

I was unable to attend the Saturday seminar due to chaperoning a field trip, it sounds like it was a great experience. I have a friend that has lived in China off and on over the last 5 years. He moved to Shanghai prior to the 2008 Olympics to teach English to Chinese school children. I followed his blog throughout the time he was living there and often refer to the roadblocks he faced in everyday living situations at the post office, using the internet and learning the culture of the people (to name a few) as real world examples for my students of different life is in a Communist country. His blog was sometimes comical and sometimes eye-opening to the extreme differences. My friend has traveled the world and currently works for a non-profit that raises money for charities in Australia, he still says China is a place where he would like to settle permanently.

Unfortunately, I was at a different salary point class on Sat., which I previously had committed to, so I missed your forum. But, I am enjoying reading your comments and making connections. In today's LA Times I just read and then blogged about an article by Mei Fong on the op-ed page. She is noted as the former Wall Street Journal correspondent, now a lecturer at USC school for journalism. She came from abroad to study in the U.S. as a Malaysian citizen, and admits the difficulties of being a student in a new land.

As my 3 classes of seniors spend just a few more weeks with me, I remind them "this time next year" -- where will you be? For some, a "junior year aboard" is a possibility, and they will be part of the "informal" diplomatic corp, representing Americans -- albeit Mexican Americans or Chinese Americans -- in another country. For other of my students, even sharing a dorm room on campus or attending a college in another state is not in their foreseeable future, due to economic and parental expectations that they stay at home in the family household.

Mei Fong addresses the anti-America sentiments by some Chinese, understandably resulting from the news of the Chinese students deaths at USC. While Chinese studying in the US was once hailed as a upward mobility trend, some now disdain the American-educated students. From her coverage of China, Fong seems to be a credible voice to listen to, having been the student studying abroad herself, as well as the highly respected journalist.

I have to shout a "ditto!" to the previous comments about how amazing the seminar was on the 21st. The journalist shared intimate and intriguing stories that I am thankful to have heard. I have been trying to think of a new unit that applies some of the information that I am gaining from these wonderful classes. Rob Schmitz's story on Mike Daisey turned out to be it. Currently, I am teaching Zeitoun to my eleventh grade students and had just arrived to the moment where controversial news reports from Hurricane Katrina were being discussed. In order to seize the moment, I paused our reading and implemented a series of three lessons in which the students grappled with the idea of the fabrications within the media. Many of my students enjoyed the unit and even had it on their mind the following week. I, too, enjoyed the lesson and happily labeled it "nerdy fun"--a phrase that I use for the students to describe those moments of great learning. They, in turn, humor me.

Thanks for the lesson idea Prof. Dube and Rob Schimitz!

When we were at the half-day seminar at USC, I thought about how difficult it was to be a foreign journalist in China. It seems you have to walk a tightrope, reporting honestly even if it means being critical of the Chinese government without being too critical of course. Recently, Al-Jazeera's sole English-language reporter in China has been expelled. It seems that Melissa Chan was expelled for reporting on sensitive subjects such as illegal seizures of farmland and the imprisonment of petitioners from the countryside in unofficial jails. She had also participated in a documentary, which was about China's system of sentencing minor criminals and political prisoners to labor camp prisons. The Chinese government probably sees these foreign reporters as a challenge to their authoritarian power, because unlike Chinese reporters, they cannot be thrown in jail or suppressed. The reality is that the Chinese government worries about the image they project around the world and they would like control it as much as possible. They must also have been spooked by Al-Jazeera's connection to the Arab Spring. Their reporting was crucial in bringing down some of these totalitarian regime. For more information, here is a link below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/08/al-jazeera-closes-beijing-bureau?newsfeed=true