The last several weeks I have been in China with a team of 8 other individuals teaching elementary and middle school teachers computer skills. This has been an awesome experience and I enjoyed every moment of it. While I was there I noticed several things that American’s could learn from the Chinese.
1. The Desire to learn
The weeks leading up to the computer training camp we were expecting 20 teachers, but on the first day we had an overwhelming 57 teachers registered in a 45 person classroom! Some of these teachers came from remote villages hours away just to attend our computer camp. With a pen and paper in hand many teachers were doubling up on computers and excited to learn. All of our lessons were translated from English to Chinese, yet the teachers were still eager to listen and participate. Also keep in mind that this was their summer vacation and class started at 8:30am.
For some, this was their first time using a computer and tackling basic drag and drop mouse functionality was a stretch. Yet though our very limited Chinese and an awesome translator many of the teachers were able to manipulate images in Photoshop and produce animations using Flash at the end of the camp.
The desire to lean and continue to better oneself is strong in China. Learning doesn’t stop when we leave school. Learning is a life long journey. We are fortunate to live in a society where we can download books in 60 seconds, instantly Google answers to pressing questions, or attended world class universities. Continue to learn something new.
2. Don’t need to live in excess
Witnessing the daily lives of many Chinese I was able to see people living within their means and hardly ever wasting. Even though food is relatively cheap, we found many people usually eating in, meat is considered a treat, and portions are considerably smaller yet I found myself feeling full and satisfied. Even something as simple as napkins are not freely given out.
Coming back to hardwood floors, granite counter-tops, flat screen TV’s, and Big Gulps I feel somewhat guilty. We live in a society were we pride ourselves on bigger, faster, louder, brighter. Yet how many of these things do we really “need”?
3. Importance of Community
In China there is a great sense of community. Every night the city comes alive and there are community events for all ages. Kids are free to run around and gather across the river to play carnival games, teenagers catchup with one another while window shopping around town, old men sit and play music by the river, while in the town squares women gather in uniform lines for dance aerobics. These are not one-off occurances, people are gathering together daily to meetup and be part of a community.
We live in a hyper connected society with the ability to tweet, keep up with news feeds, share our plans, and check-into locations. Supposedly we are more “connected”. Yet strangely the several weeks without these mediums and an iPhone holstered to my hip I felt as though I was forming deeper more genuine relationships with the locals. We should take the time to evaluate and see if the tools we are using are a catalyst or an excuse from forming genuine community.
4. Hospitality
As we got to know our class better, we were receiving invites to visit their hometown villages. Due to our time constraint we were unable to visit their homes, so some of the teachers took us around the local village and paid for our meals and made sure we had a good time. Even though we had known some of them for a couple days they already felt like life-long friends.
The organization that we worked with also provides scholarship services to the local orphans. I had the opportunity to see the living conditions and visit the foster families looking after these kids. Most of these families are living in conditions that we would deem unlivable by US standards but they are doing everything they can to make ends meet. Simply put they do not have much, yet when we came to visit they lavished us with their very best foods and drinks. Nothing was held back.
5. Three Hour Long Lunch Breaks
This one requires no explanation :)
