Back in the day...

Since breaking out of the bubble of adolescence and into the collective pool of adulthood, I’ve acquired an increasing hunger for the wisdom of my more youth-impaired acquaintances. My assumptions about people over the age of thirty used to be that their conversations revolve solely around stock prices, arthritis, and nutritional values. Since clearing this mental hurdle I’ve obtained a bounty of valuable information and insight to life, which had previously eluded me. Although there’s times when I miss the feeling of being part of an exclusive mind-state that’s incomprehensible to adults, it’s impossible to turn back now that I know how much they have to offer. I recently had a mind blowing revelation that an entire decade has passed since I was in the identical position as my tenth grade students. My philosophy as a sixteen year old is now so foreign to me that my high school experience may as well have happened here in China. Anyways, I’ll save my viewpoints about my own personal aging process for a later date, but the point here is that as people age, they generally, or hopefully, become wiser and more interesting. This is the model of thinking that recently led me down a historical rabbit hole about a certain tier of the Chinese population.

Like any typical midday Wednesday, I was riding home for lunch on the city bus, staring blankly out of the rickety, blemish infested window. I was snapped out of my teaching induced daze, by a scooter silently blazing through my field of vision. Piloting the vehicle was a trendy looking Chinese kid, engaged in an animated conversation on a cell phone, while maneuvering the handlebars with his free hand. Clutching to his midsection for her dear life was an elderly woman, who I will assume was the kid’s grandmother. For a brief moment, while overtaking the bus, our eyes met, and the look on the woman’s face seemed to echo my exact sentiment of the moment; “China is so confusing.” The look in her gloomy, black eyes conveyed a feeling of being lost in the storm of change that has blanketed China’s recent history. I began to think of the tremendous transformation she's witnessed in her days. As soon as she vanished from my field of vision, my mind departed on a tangent, creating various imaginary biographies of her life leading up to this moment where she made eye contact with a rare lao wai, “foreigner,” on a city bus.

Eventually, I decided her fate as being born in the 1930’s to a large family in a small rural village, while Mao was leading a diminishing group of communist peasants on the long march. Her childhood memories probably consist of various forms of back breaking manual labor interspersed with various wars against outsiders, or between opposing Chinese groups. As a teenager, she witnessed Mao’s rejuvenated group rise to power, proclaiming the Peoples Republic of China. Maybe she met her husband while working in a steel factory, then participated in China's population explosion by birthing a handful of offspring. There’s no doubt she’s endured years of mass starvation, possibly claiming the lives of her own family members. She’s lived through Mao’s death, China’s ensuing economic reforms, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and most recently the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In her lifetime, she’s seen China go from suffering repeated, embarrassing exploitation at the hands of foreign invaders, to recently surpassing one of those countries, England, as the worlds 4th largest economy. Now she’s riding on an electric scooter, clutching onto a teenager in designer clothes talking on a mobile phone, being observed by a Californian.

Realistically, my language skills won’t allow me to directly obtain the information I would like from this woman's generation, but I cant help but wonder about their interpretation of modern China. I assume they must resent the naiveté that's likely rampant among the younger generations. All of my students were born in the era of China’s meteoric rise on the world stage. Certainly, in those 72 hours of weekly schooling they're indoctrinated with volumes of Chinese history, but if they’re anything like me in high school, they likely fail to grasp their position in the grand scheme of things. The only reality they know first hand is a China where you can buy anything your heart desires, burritos not included, where plasma screens and neon lights cover every available public space, and designer pants flash you the peace sign (see below). They can probably rattle off a list of dynasties and famous battles, but how would they possibly be able to comprehend obtaining food with ration tickets, or any of the other day to day realities of their predecessors?
Some members of the elder echelon of society seem to walk around with a subtle, mischievous smile glued to their face. It’s a look that exudes the advice, “Yeah, life is good now, but don’t get too used to it, or you’ll never be able to survive what I’ve been through.” This portion of the population has an unparalleled perspective of the world after living through the majority of 20th century China. Their world is a vastly different place than it was when they were children, or even compared to when they were 50. It's beyond my own comprehension as to how they're able to adjust to a society that bombards them with bizarre new images and icons, such as the aforementioned peace pants, that inspire feelings of intense confusion that I can only describe as WTF?! Who knows if that old woman on the scooter was even born in China, or what the exact sentiments are of the elderly, but one thing is certain, reality is in constant fluctuation in modern China. It's a frightening prospect, but my students could see more transformation in their lifetimes than was witnessed by their grandparents. Where that will leave China is unknown, but hopefully some wisdom and peace signs will be exchanged in the process.