There are a few sticking points that I know are true and won’t change anytime soon:

-I love writing about video games and my analysis is worthwhile

-I am very fortunate to have such a wonderful girlfriend

-I still wish to invest many more years into my Chinese study, transition into native speaker-esque lifestyle

-China makes me pretty happy and I have some good friends here

-I want to keep living the independent life

-Teaching English is a favourable, flexible job in China

So, my plan is to structure my future around these permanent-enough factors. This means moving to Shanghai to be with my girlfriend, continue to write about video games and teach English and practice more Chinese. My current situation, bar the fact that I don’t live in Shanghai is pretty favourable to my sticking points. However, one can always make life better.

I am enjoying my writing more than I ever thought that I would have and have therefore decided that this year I want to start working on same game-specific books full of analysis. Putting out a book, particularly while I am still quite young, would make me an authority, popularity and credibility, so long as I can get them off the ground. Also, what I am finding now is that I have to sacrifice one part of my goals with my current time table. I can’t work a full time job and be a good boyfriend, writer and Chinese student.

So, my plan is to hopefully work part-time from this June and live in close proximity to my girlfriend too. This way I have more time for us, more time for Chinese and the time allowance needed to write my books and improve my teaching.

Currently I’m feeling frustrated at my current teaching job, which is not necessarily a bad one, mind you. It’s just that the corporate aims and the aims of the teachers often clash which can infuriate me at times. I often stew over how much of my feelings towards my job are related to my approach, the situation of the school/classes, the types of classes I have—really, what I want to know is, where do the problems lie and how can I remove them so as to make my job and the student’s experiences more enjoyable.

The following is a list of detrimental factors that have strong affects on the classroom environment:

-2hr long classes (especially with kids)

-lack of local assistant in low level classes (this is utterly ridiculous at times)

-some inadequacies in materials (flash cards, books)

-disciplining students

I guess what I really want is to teach adults. Sure, there’s a sort of trepidation in teaching adults and sometimes they go dead quiet on you or can be unreasonable, but it sure beats having to discipline a classroom filled to capacity with young children. I think that this is what I want more than anything. The challenge now is trying to find such an ideal job, I could transfer thorough my current company (which would be the safest option), but it’s hard to know yet. I have to ask some questions and fire off some emails to check and make sure it’s possible. I know that there are positions open in Shanghai for adult centres and I know that I fit the bill, which is great. All I’d have to do is negotiate my work hours down. I guess I’ll get cracking on the first part of that plan earlier this week.

ShareThis

Over the past two articles, most of what I’ve been saying is straight out Marxism and I don’t have any beef with that. Marxs is a genius, frankly. His understanding of economic systems is dead-on and I agree what most of what he says, particularly that of anti-capitalism and the need for a more democratic distribution of power. Socialism is effectively softcore communism and I agree that socialism ought to be the future, however, I am apprehensive about socialism as a phase into communism. Maybe because I am not as “forwarded sighted” as Marx or I just can’t envision a class-less society, but I think that, at least in my lifetime, class is necessary to maintain social order. I think that Marx’s views on communism are perhaps too idealistic. It seems like he visions a utopia and personally, that’s too far forward than I have currently contemplated. Right now, I am interested in how we can stop capitalism and replace it with a system which won’t kill the planet and our own humanity. This much is relevant to me and everything that will probably happen in my life time, from then on it’s too difficult too judge.

Leading into my last point, I disagree with Marx that a revolution from the workers will be necessary to debunk capitalism. I believe that people win arguments through persuasion, not by overthrowing the discussion. Whatever happens in the future, I think the best approach is a transition from, not an upheaval of capitalism. Maybe there will be some upheaval from the workers, but you can’t just turn society on its head and rebuild from scratch, you must evolve from a base. This transition is already in motion, but for things to really get going it’s going to need mobilisation of the political left.

The Mobilisation of the Political Left

Capitalism will be defeated by the unrest of workers due to their activism against the grave consequences of modern capitalism. The greatest issues facing the world today are all due to the unrestrained free market: global warming, widening gap between rich and poor, monopolisation, depletion of natural resources, the obesity epidemic and the destruction of democracy are a handful of examples. These issues are too big for people to ignore, and with politics playing to the tune of big business, change has to occur from the ground up, so by the people. At one point, the workers will have to become fed up and revolt. There is no way we can continue to let the planet and our own human resources deplete before our own eyes.

In a world dominated by conservative politics attempting to reinforce the status quo, the left, who stand for the rights of people and the planet over profits, must mobilise. The problem with the left, however, is that they’ve been practically demonised out of existence in the public’s consciousness by the overwhelming power of the right. Frankly, media commentators (never we forget that the media is a mouthpiece for the right, in order to conserve its own interests), like, say Andrew Bolt, can’t even form proper criticisms of left-ish thinking besides the broken-record slander of being too radical, unrealistic, bad for business or simply flawed by the virtue of being “left”, of being something alternative to the free market.

People need to launch into action on these issues because the government obviously isn’t representing us when they won’t even support something as simple as gay marriages, despite the public clearly being in favour for it. People need to rally around these issues to force change. As activism and protests continue, the pressure placed on government increases, pushing it into the public agenda and then into the consideration of politicians. In just a few years, there’s been a major movement from the left regarding climate change, and now, climate change is a huge public issue. Unlike modern politics which disempowers people by choice of the “less worse” candidate, activism empowers people as the issues are those of the people. Once you get the snowball rolling, and people start realising “oh, we did this together, now we can work towards the next problem”, people can feel empowered, will act and change will occur.

So, to conclude, in order to defeat capitalism, I believe that the political left need to mobilise on the issues of our times, those consequences of the capitalist system. When mobilisation occurs through activism and pressure is placed on politicians to reform the system to meet the needs of the people, then proper discussion can begin on how to get out of this rut known as capitalism. By putting a lid on profits, and channelling the excess into public expenditure via increased taxation on big business, while at the same time, extending democracy into the workplace by allowing workers to own their production and therefore work for their profession and not for the company’s bottom line, the world will be a better place. We have some dark times ahead of us, however “the night is always darkest just before the dawn”.

Resources

Big Ideas that Changed the World – Democracy

Counterfire

Noam Chomsky

David Harvey

David Harvey Speech

Marxism 2009

Chris Harman – The Crisis Now

David Harvey – The Crisis Now

Arguments for Democracy – Tony Benn

ShareThis

In defence of capitalism, the free market has brought many people out of poverty, stabilised our society and delivered us many wonderful products which have enhanced our lives. The problem, however, is that capitalism depends on growth and without it, everything goes to the shits (ie. world financial crisis). That is, when the number of people consuming/the amount that they’re consuming is not increasing or the means of production cannot be further cheapened, companies can’t make more money and therefore we have a crisis. As consumers and production are maxed out and can’t be squeezed any further, these crisis become like contractions when giving birth, they become longer, more frequent and more intense. Artificial growth, such as bailouts and economic stimulus work for a while, but they are a band aid solution as, in the end, the system needs growth through customers or cheaper production. So capitalism works and has worked for a while, and now, as resources strain, it’s beginning to choke and splutter, the future then is to witness the system spasm into its eventual death.

Aside: Conservative Politics and the Dominance of Capitalism

The last 30 years of politics have been a pivotal in securing the dominance of capitalism through conservative politics rather than reform to quell the negative impacts of capitalism. In the US, UK and Australia, the overwhelming majority of elected politicians over the past 30 years have served conservative interests vested in supporting the power structures of the corporate elite. George Bush Senior and Junior, Clinton, Thatcher, Blair, Howard have only forwarded the cause of capitalism.

The Answer

Capitalism obvious cannot and should not continue as it depends on continual growth which as we know is depleting the world of valuable resources (human and environmental). What we need is a new economic system, one that shifts the motivation of corporations away from profits and redirects them towards human need. We have the capacity to solve all the worlds problems if the systems of economics support it.

I believe in that socialism can break the profit motive and focus on human need through democratic ownership of production and taxation against greed.

Worker’s Owning the Means of Production

It’s funny how we say that companies are made up of people, when in fact its only a relative handful of people who are involved in the decision making. I don’t believe in centralised power. I think that the more people involved in making an important decision, the better the decision as different people will run into different ideas. I therefore think that it is right for workers to own the means of production. That is, each worker has a stake in the production side of the company. So workers therefore make up a greater balance of power and have more influence in the company (as the company is dependent on production). Then when it comes to making decisions the constituents go to the polls and vote. The workers, being professionals in what they do, understand their job more than anyone else and therefore they should have more right in influencing the workplace. As a teacher, I know what I need in the classroom, what I’m not getting and how some changes can help me teach better.

Now, I am not an advocate for communism, so unlike Mao and others, I’m quite aware that workers are workers, they’re not bosses, managers or CEOs, they don’t know how to run companies and nor should they, it’s not their job. (Animal Farm is a good metaphor for that). So, I believe that workers should have full entitlement over what matters to them and that’s the work place. Business, management, advertising and so forth ought to be handled by the people who understand it and they should have sufficient control over it. A hierarchy should be maintained, since some people choose to work harder than others and deserve that entitlement.

When workers own what they produce, a class structure is maintained, the right people are doing the right work and the balance between workers and bosses is fair, the workplace suddenly becomes more democratic.

(So much hinges on class and balancing of power, a dilemma of a more democratic work place which does not want to allow workers to overthrow bosses or bosses to rule over workers. However, despite the complexities of forming such systems, so long as workers control production, quality of life and the production will become the new motivation.)

Taxation on Corporate Capitalism

Pretty self-explanatory. By tightening the tax rate of corporations as profit increases, the motivation to earn more profits decreases, since once an upper limit is reach, all of the money goes to the public. High taxes on big business kill any incentive to make more money than is deemed necessary to run a business.

So by workers exercising more democratic control over the work they do and by limiting the amount of money a company can earn, the profit motive is replaced by a motivation to improve production. This would lead to more innovative and creative products, as opposed to following whatever makes money. It would also ensure that workers are happier since they have more control over their work and therefore their destinies.

ShareThis

There’s been a series of movies which have kick-started my interest in politics, in order of importance they are The Corporation (full public download), Capitalism: A Love Story, Food Inc and Sicko. Each of these movies, either directly or implicitly links the capitalist system to injustices of human rights, health, food and the environment. I won’t go into each movie’s arguments—you’re better off watching them yourself—however, the shared point is the same.

Capitalism

Capitalism, having a free market where any company can enter the market place and secure capital (the measure of profit, be it money, land etc), is a naturally competitive system. That is, for a company to retain its position in the market it needs to be competitive, otherwise other companies will overtake it and swallow up their market share. The principle is therefore that in order to hold onto valuable market share, companies will work to produce continually better product. This is only an ideal. The easiest and most widely used technique to be competitive is to cheapen the means of production.

Think of the big companies of today, they all got their starts through cheapening the way their products were made. McDonalds turned the restaurant into an assembly line by having one personal repeat one menial task over and over, just like a factory. What this means is that McDonalds can produce more burgers, more cheaply and quicker than anyone else. The job requires no real expertise, so finding replacement workers is relatively easy. McDonald’s cracked the code for riding the free market almost 90 years ago, no wonder they have so much power today.

Of course, by cheapening production, there are detrimental side effects, here are some simple examples:

• Humanity – workers participating in menial pointless tasks which make the best out of the system, but fail to serve the creative talents and humanity of the workers
• Food – the cheapest to produce materials in food (salt and sugar) have obvious negative effects on health
• Environment – having an environmentally friendly workplace costs money, it’s better to not care
• Ideological – a competitive economic system breeds competitive culture, rather than a co-operative one

And the effects that these have on society are significant:

• Humanity – workers looking forward to weekend and loathing work, a search and abuse of escapism (alcohol, drugs, video games, internet)
• Food – the obesity epidemic, diabetes
• Environment – the current environmental crisis
• Ideological – rifts between cultural groups of people, racism

The heart of all this is the profit motive. The market is free, everyone is fighting to get their share and then keep hold of it, therefore if profit cannot continually be maintained, companies face extinction. Profit is therefore the chief motivation for all companies (if it wasn’t they’d die) and it takes priority over everything else (see examples above) which is to the detriment of the workers and the planet.

The other issue is that those with power (companies like Maccas who cracked the code early on) will always work to maintain their power. This is where big business spills into the political realm through lobbyists etc in order to serve their own needs and secure growth. That is, big business honchos enter politics to change policy to meet their needs.

This is why only the rich can eat healthy in America, since government legislation supports the production of salts, sugars and corn (the latter for making animals fat beyond their capacity) which make them cheap options in the supermarket as opposed to fruits and meat. CEOs from food corporations enter politics where they can change policy to serve their vested interests, such as the modification of legislation to benefit and facilitate the production of cheaper food. Let us not even begin to discuss how media corporations and banks skew politics and break democracy through their efforts to keep us consuming and thereby providing growth.

ShareThis

“But I also meet people who love what they do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. If you said to them ‘don’t do this anymore’, they’d wonder what you’re talking about. Because it isn’t what they do, it’s who they are. They say ‘but this is me, it would be foolish of me to abandon this, because it speaks to my most authentic self’ ”.

Over the past two days I’ve been considering the prospects of changing my teaching contract over from full time to part time, that or effectively working less hours for a respective decrease in salary. Although I enjoy teaching, I am not really a teacher, I am working so that my employer gains more money. This is the foremost point of the modern corporation. I am not working for the profession, my students or myself and therefore teaching crushes my spirit.

On the other hand, I feel lucky to have stumbled upon writing, in turn unearthing my natural talent to think and think deeply. Most people never realise their natural talents, even after a life time of searching, so I feel blessed to have discovered mine and to have discovered it so early on in life. Being analytical through writing is my passion, I love it because it is who I am, so writing feeds my soul.

Selling my labour so that my employer can increase their market share, does not serve my humanity, it squanders it. Our society accepts that we cannot own our labour, and therefore we forfeit our destinies to our employers driven by the profit motive. There is an obvious contradiction between the corporation and the workers. My school wants to make money; it needs growth, otherwise it’ll die. Me, however, I just want to do my job and do it as effectively and happily as possible. When I work, I am not working for my own interests (the production), I am working for the interests of someone else.

It’s clear then why I want to “work” less. I want to work to enrich my life and not the balance sheets of a company. Teaching English, as I am now (and while it’s not as soul-crushing as most jobs, I’m quite lucky), dilutes my life, it stops me from better realising my capacities I’ve found in writing and I can’t accept that. I therefore have two choices: try to channel my talents to work within the free market or to decrease my dependency on it (via the companies which exist inside it). I am opting for the latter, hoping to somehow reach the former. It might not make me a rich, but then, I’m already pretty well off.

ShareThis

Lately I’ve taken a strong interest in German expressionist films from the 1920s. It all started with my interest in the character Count Orlock from the unofficial 1922 Dracula adaption Nosferatu. This type of film making is a real marvel. Black and white expressionist films use light and shadow to portray and exaggerate character. The silhouette of Orlock walking up the stairs is a classic as it evokes so much dread with such a simplistic approach.

After the success of Nosferatu director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was given a blown out budget where he could let his imagination run wild, and Faust is this creation. In Faust, alchemist Faust (protagonist) is tricked into becoming evil by Mephisto in order to win a bet and thereby allow the devil to rule the earth. It’s an intriguing tale observing the manipulation of intent. Mephisto is played with so much spite, heightened by the angle of shadows which only exaggerate his menace. As seen in the video below, he’s truly a frightening character. Furthermore, the technicality of the flight scene where Mephisto delivers Faust to Italy is nothing short of astounding. How did they ever manage such a scene 90 years ago? Yet, while I love these effects-driven sequences and the simple use of light to add menace to Mephisto or to portray Faust as tired and irrelevant, the rest of the movie, with Faust transformed into his younger self (convinced by Mephisto that he needs to be young again) ditches the fantastical for more of a drama. Alas, it’s quite a shame, but for the excellence of its production and the cohesiveness of cinematography and narrative, it’s more than worth your time.

(Scenes of Mephisto deceiving Faust and the flight to Italy)

I still have The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and two of Fritz Lang’s movies; Metropolis and M in my downloads folder. Of the three, I’m most anticipating Metropolis. If you are interested, please find links to the respective movies below, they are all under public license.

Extra Readings

A Primer on German Expressionist Films

Faust (download)

Nosferatu (download)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (download)

M (download)

(Can’t find a link to Metropolis unfortunately)

ShareThis

A few weeks ago I was complemented by four different people on the shirt I was wearing. While I do try to maintain a sense of fashion, I must confess that I was caught by surprise by their comments. While I agree the shirt (pictured) looks nice on me, I wouldn’t claim it all on the shirt.

In Australia, I often find it difficult to find comfortably fitting clothes due to the fact that I do not fit into one of three sizing brackets: anorexic thin and oblong tall, biff and broad shouldered or obese. Due to all this improper sizing, this shirt in particular was a just a tad larger than I would have liked. So, to remedy a puffy-shirted appearance, I rolled the sleeves up and tucked it in firmly. The shirt is also a little more open-chested than my other shirts, so overall (again, see picture) it creates a sort of sexy, flamenco dancer look.

Now, it’s always great to be complemented or looked at, which is why I’ve decided to extend this dress code to my other shirts and see if I got some, if any, different reactions. So, that is, tuck my shirts in firmly, roll up the sleeves and undo an extra button. So far, and admittedly it’s probably just because I am more concious of it now, I’m noticing some differences. In any case, I’ll be sure to keep you updated on how this experiment unfolds.

ShareThis

Allow me to share my brief reasoning on why I hate the rich, with an unrelated, and highly illustrative paragraph:

“Money makes the world go around”, or so chanted those who continue to murder the world and plunder our humanity. That is our celebrity friends of business and hollywood; of fame and finance, the shallow, material fixtures we aspire to be and the string-pullers who ensure we never can. We are slaves to them, the capitalists, and they know it. In this world, the pen, the idea, the thought, holds no rolling weight against the dollar sign. Money is power and those who hold it work only to maintain it, keeping the rest (us!) with less, content and silent, more silent than content however. Never should we trust powerful people since people with power only work to secure their power, and as we know, money is power”.

I don’t see value the value of currency, only in personal currency.

ShareThis

There are three significant characteristics which define the children who study at the school and thereby my teaching methodology.

Same Language

The first is the fact that all the students are of the same background and can therefore speak the same native language. This is a nuisance, particularly in a culture like China’s where students dare not to make a mistake in front of their peers, and therefore box themselves into their native language. Teenagers are particularly bad for this. Often times you’ll ask a class of teenagers a basic English question (ie. is he a boy or a girl? (hint: ‘he’)) and everyone will gaze between their legs at the floor in avoidance. Other times, the students flatly use Chinese to minimalise their connection with English. When I ask a question, one student will translate it and the rest will respond to the translation. Or if one student doesn’t know, they’ll communicate with the rest of the class to get the Chinese meaning. They do not listen for the English words, but instead for the translation and in effect skimp out on learning anything whatsoever.

Low Morale and Great Tiredness

Every one of my students, and I mean practically every student I have always looks exhausted, particularly the younger students. These poor blighters live a life of continual work and pressure. This affects their mentality in the classroom as they simply do not wish to be laboured as they are on the outside. This in itself is fair enough, but it can be obtrusive to study. Since we are not as strict as their overbearing Chinese masters and mistresses, they are more likely to want to play up as well, or at least, be averse to language theory. Also, the smaller classes, less intense teaching and more socialable environment is a great chance for kids to relax a little and occasionally bring their new-found sense of freedom to the classroom with detrimental effects. It can be very difficult to teach a class of low morale and great tiredness.

Money, Money, Money

All of the students at the school are stupidly rich and that just peeves me off cos I hate rich people. Sometimes you can see the way their attitudes reflect their wallets, but for the most part their okay. Still, that doesn’t stop me from looking down on them somewhat.

ShareThis

The Chinese like to hide their real feelings, intents and ideas, so, as a westerner, crazy on all things frank and direct, I like to unearth the innards of Chinese thought. I do this because ultimately I like to create a chaos and see how the events unfold. This procedure, as hazardous as it may be, can help us understand more about each other.

“Playing the game” is actually very simple. You just have a deeper-than-usual conversation with a Chinese person and probe when appropriate. Unlike in western conversation where westerners just love talking about themselves and will gladly tell you all their secrets if you simply listen to them long enough, Chinese people aren’t so forthcoming. There’s a lot to be learned about conversational strategies in this way; the art of courting the right answer your trapping your interlocutor by covering all the escape exists and eliciting an answer. Even though it all winds up frivolous and without purpose, I do enjoy debating with Chinese people, trying to push the hard questions and not get a soft answer.

This should all be interpreted as bullying, if you mean to understand it the wrong way. When I argue with Chinese people (all for fun, never seriously), I play by their rules—after all it is their game and they will only play fairly if you play by their rules. So, by this, I mean, just have some bloody tact. Don’t attempt to push people into uncomfortable places, because that _is_ bullying, rather draw people to the question, all the while getting them to agree with your invalidation of the answers you assume will later come out of their mouth. And once you get use to debating the same topics with Chinese people, the answers all become rather predictable, so it’s easy to corner them in this way.

If this seems all very manipulative and sneaky, then well yeah…I suppose it is. I guess, trying to actively participate within their culture warms you into this stuff. Ultimately, I am not conniving, because such behaviour is natural for most people, even if we don’t think about it or come to write blog articles about it. Since I’ve come back, I’m finding that I’m managing to loosen up my arguments and simply gather information from people without being so aggressive. I’m becoming more Chinese in fact, the tactical elements of secretism is permeating into my subconcious. Yikes!

ShareThis

The Chinese sure are a secretive bunch, and as an individual looking to integrate, this gives me plenty of headaches. Personally speaking (and I in no way represent the western world), I am a man of reason. I like to break things apart and make sense of the way things operate in order to understand the world around me. For this, I am always looking for answers, and in my quest to understand Chinese culture, it is the people whom hold the answers I seek.

Yet the Chinese don’t always want to fess up, and that’s fair enough. China has an incredibly selfless culture where the private is kept well out of plain sight. People are not direct, since directness is seen as individual and individualism leads to suspicion and social exclusion and criticism. In order to avoid this overbearing weight largely built up by the older generations, but, by virtue of this pertinent within all generations of Chinese people, Chinese people contrive ways around expressing individual wants, desires and emotions.

Foreigners may feel that Chinese people don’t give clear answers, when in actuality, Chinese people are perhaps naturally acting out their defensive habits in order to protect themselves, to stay in line. Personally, I find this to be incredibly awkward since, at least in my mind, there is rarely anything face-threatening in our conversation, so the very act of avoidance arouses suspicion alongside the invariable confusion that follows. As a foreigner, I also find Chinese relationships to be extremely apathetic and cold. I guess Chinese people are just not quite use to expressing warmth in ways that I am personally familiar with. As opposed to a westerner using touch (say, a hug, for instance) or directly commenting on the good points of others, a Chinese person may drops signs of appreciation, such as ensuring that others have eaten well and looking after others when they are ill.

These differences are brought to the fore with my relationship with my current partner. She cares very deeply about me, perhaps more than I will ever know, however, she goes to certain lengths to conceal direct expressions of her feelings and personal wants. I struggle to deal with this, I honestly do, and sometimes being in a relationship with a Chinese person can feel like an insurmountable burden, a crushing weight of misunderstanding and contrivances.

There are benefits and detriments for both practices, as my brother suggested, when two westerners break up, others must hear the long-winded tales making a mockery of the other half of the relationship, the pathetic narratives which people use to hold their ground of dominance. It can seem that everyone in western culture is screaming to be heard. On the other hand, Chinese social structure is a spider web of face and face protection, needless one might say. Then again, so is western politeness.

I guess, sometimes you do have to just accept things for what they are and have faith, even if this isn’t made obviously apparent. I hope that in the future I can use this blog to pan out some more of these ideas.

ShareThis

A good friend of mine once said that to me that westerners “respect Chinese culture, but will never come to accept it”. I believe that her statement is true and can in fact be broadened to assert that “people of one culture can come to respect, but may in fact never come to accept the culture of different people”. Just because us westerners are easy targets (in that we act directly and directness can be inferred as arrogance), doesn’t mean that we are always deserving of the vilification our white skins earn us (of course, there are many exploitative western bastards in China, may God piss on their graves). After all, we are just as guilty a party as any other race.

This may come to some surprise, however, I don’t find that westerners who believe that Chinese people are weird, complicated and have strange mannerisms are all that terribly racist, because, after all, the Chinese are saying the same things about us, just as anyone else would. It’s only natural that a bunch of people going to a new and foreign place, no matter what cultural orientation they may well be, would find the foreign land to be strange and exotic, because, in relation to their lived experiences, it is. Sure, we’re talking about racism, but it’s not serious, deep-seeded racism. Mild racism, the racism that dictates that foreign things are strange, is an unavoidable byproduct of human nature. The human brain simply cannot comprehend ethnical and cultural gradients, it must break our existence into pre-package archetypes like Asian, Caucasian, African and so forth, and then assign these classes attributes (read: stereotypes) based on shallow inferences.

For the brain to operate it needs to continue to break the world and all of its constituents (that includes people) into digestible chunks, understanding foreign culture therefore works against the brain’s natural process. The brain seeks to typecast and simplify, cross-cultural communication seeks to add depth and complexity. In the end, we were born to destroy each other.

ShareThis

I feel that the past two years have been a pivotal time of personal development in my life. I feel content in that I know within myself that I have developed into the person I’d always hoped to be. But 2 years ago, I hadn’t found that identity quite yet, and it’s through my experiences both at home and abroad that I have hastily matured into adulthood.

It’s strange saying that, because rarely before have I considered myself as an adult, and even now I am still hesitant of the once grand moniker. I don’t know what qualifies a person as an “adult” besides the obvious legal requisite of being above 18 years old, but I reckon that maybe I have hit that nebulous mark of maturation.

I guess China has played a big part in my maturation in that it has provided a mirror in which reflects the differences between life abroad and life at home. Being an active participant in Chinese culture has, I think, allowed me to better understand my own identity and everything that had previously come to define it in Australia and why. In which case, I have realised that I don’t necessarily have to accept what is good, fine and acceptable anywhere as being good, fine and acceptable. When you’re given a point of comparison it’s easier to see more clearly through the social and cultural fabric of the world. That is, you can see things for what they really may well be. From this, I think that the past 2 years have genuinely been an experience of letting go of the constraints which have become apparent and through that finding and nurturing a newer self.

In Shanghai, one night a year and a half ago, it all came back to me. I was vividly reminded of how taking the bus, playing video games, having longer hair, wearing glasses, not binge drinking, wanting to actually make something of my life (as opposed to adopting a devil-may-care attitude) and trying to act intelligently and speak with articulation would all result in a sort of social scorn. These were items of leverage, tools to demean me as an individual. Living in China made me realise that I can in fact refuse these things, that I can go to a different place, a place where these variables do not make logical sense within the social concious, and in such a place I can flourish and evolve. Right there and then, I made an agreement with myself to refuse the constraints of the commodified world which push us towards blind slavery.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure about my convictions. Perhaps I was just fraught with anxiety in a rather turbulent time, making me think so foolishly and all. However, it did seem to me that this moment of spiritual enlightenment did hold some weight, so going back to Australia was great in that I could see if my convictions held any credence. And to my surprise they did.

It took me a while, but after a few months into Australian life, everything that had come to the forefront of my mind in Shanghai were evidently apparent. And so, based on my agreement, I refused them. Everyone in my life who had previously held back my potential I cut contact with. When confronted with people who judged me on some assumed social make-up, I tried to spin their critique the other way and make their comments transparent. Did I lose a lot of friends? Yes I did. But something within me had changed, I was fast becoming intelligent. I had found something which made me totally content and for no one else would I ever let this go. There was the person I had wanted to be and I was walking towards it.

The byproduct of all this is my writing, namely the writing on my games blog. My blog has been an outlet for me to creatively pursue my ambitions and this makes it a cornerstone in this new found self. I would also attribute my then and current girlfriend whom also acted as an avenue into Chinese culture.

So now I’m back in China, I’ve made the realisation, made the comparison and can firmly say that I feel spiritually free here. I want to stay here for some time since the things I have attributed to my change survive better in this habitat. More than ever, I feel detached from this previous social nonsense. Actually I am only reminded of the fact when I occasionally peer into the world of Facebook once a month or so, as I did before I wrote this piece. I’m quite pleased with where I’ve come, which I guess can be considered some form of adulthood.

ShareThis

I had a real Lord of the Flies moment the other day. I was walking home from work and saw a mob of people gather around the adjacent bicycle lane, spilling onto the road and courting passers-by stopping to enjoy the spectacle. There had seemingly been a traffic accident between a lady in a car and a lady in on a bicycle, not that it was of much interest to the people. One of the ladies, the lady on the bicycle; the poorer of the two as noted by her wrangled hair and lack of front teeth, was hurling obscenities at the other, launching for her arms and clawing at her silk dress. The other lady, tried vigorously to defend herself, but was visibly beaten down by the summer’s heat. Supposedly the poorer lady had stolen money from the lady in the dress, yet the latter lacked the aggressiveness at hand to wrestle it back. Chaos had erupted and the mob had swarmed in to observe the festivities of man’s primal tendencies.

This scene is not uncommon in China. Every time a road accident occurs or people find themselves in physical confrontations, the surrounding patrons simply become immobile in the their walk and flock to watch—not to aid, but to watch.

The crowd surrounding this debarkle had obscured much of the traffic on the narrow pavement and bicycle lane by now, only contributing to the growing number of observers. As the people grew, the tension mounted, the women became visibly more distressed and eventually the lady in the car had to flee for the cotton strap on her dress had been torn, leaving only the plastic support. The poorer lady walked slowly in the opposite direction, breathing deeply through her chest as if to offset a potential anxiety attack. On this confirmation, the crowd dissipated and returned to their regular commute.

I would like to say that such a common event is a symbol of the primitive state of the Chinese mindset, but doing so would be both unfair and incorrect, since I don’t think that such acts are absent or less common in other places of the world either. Perhaps in other countries, like Australia, they are less of a public display, but still prevalent in places, particularly those of squalor. In any case, what sickens me is the silent mob of passers-by who come to observe, lacking basic humanity and accountability in their inaction. Their presence alone asserts that such confrontations are normal and thereby acceptable. It worries me, but I guess such instinctive behaviour is an urge we sometimes can’t resist, after all, it’s not like to tried to break the fight, is it?

ShareThis

The image at the end of the clip of the milk-like substance flinching to the bass of the speaker is a powerfully abstract metaphor for the cause against using music as torture. In fact, I was so compelled by this video that I followed the link to the site and will at some stage place a donation to respective organisation, ZeroDB. There is a video you can watch on the site about a documentary on the use of music as torture, currently it doesn’t appear to be released.

ShareThis

On the way to my potato and beef noodle dinner, I was thinking about the future. I kind of surprised myself too, after all, lately I haven’t had the time nor head space to think past the next few days in front of me, let alone my long term prospects.

Maybe this is extremely naïve of me, but I feel all set for the future. I mean, I can’t see myself wanting to change my current scenario very much. Given it’s a bit rough now, the following 10 months ought to be rather comfortable. I live well on my own, I have a comfortable salary and a great relationship with my girlfriend, I love my apartment, and I have more than enough time to continue playing and writing about games as well as maintaining my other hobbies. I find that this environment and my job is very challenging and satisfying, but at the same time I can also limit that challenge if I wish. Otherwise, as I become more acclimatised to China and my work, day-to-day life will only become progressively easier. Also, I haven’t even began to scratch the surface of what this place has to offer. Lately, I’ve remained focused on my writing, since going out is too tiresome after more than 8hrs of straight labour, but soon enough I’ll have time to practice my Chinese out of class and with people my own age.

When I was a teenager, I concluded that if in the future I could work a satisfying, but not overly demanding job and have sufficient time to maintain my enthusiast interests, then there would be nothing else in life that I need. I am more or less on the road to realising this future and I’m only 21. Theoretically, I could keep this job going until I retire, become a senior teacher or whatever, have my hours reduced and my pay increased. Not a bad deal.

Besides rounding up some more games and seeing the family, I also don’t think much of a reason to go home either. A quick glance on Facebook always verifies the reasons why I didn’t want to stick around. If I was in Australia, I figure that everything would be more difficult. Living costs would be expensive, I’d have to drive a car everywhere, cook my own food and I’d have a smaller net of potential jobs. I’d have less interesting friends, be speaking English all the time and be wallowing in regressional modern society.

So long as I continue my relationship with 女神, I know that it will be roughly another 2 years before I can leave and come back. Assuming, that is, I am still with her and want to move back to Shanghai. I guess I’m pretty fortunate then that I’m so relaxed here.

ShareThis

Last year I spent a lot of my “thinking time” (which is incidentally most of the time) pondering why I so desperately wanted to return back to China. Right before I came back, I found my answer, being an act against the oppression of my own humanity. This probably isn’t new for a lot of foreigners living in China. I was talking to a workmate 12-years my senior yesterday and he shared the same sentiments for coming to China, to escape the growing circus act of western society and instead become a cultural misnomer in some other part of the world. Escapism is sometimes a requisite for rediscovery, but I don’t wish to delve too much into the complexities of it all.

I’m just sick of a culture which has transcended larrikinism and delved right into wankery, idiocy and regression. As much as I love some things in Australia, I couldn’t keep living in that environment, I needed to hoist myself out of that cycle and feed my soul.

It’s ironic then that China, of all places, given the stereotypes, would be such a place that I’d find myself. Since China, after all, lacks a decent amount of humanity, but fortunately the country has an iron clad compassion for the communal and in-group friendship, a sort of purity which, among other things (part-in-part with escapism and the challenge of the unfamiliar), makes this place a place worth living.

One is no better than the other, but being here just feels ‘right’ and that counts for a lot. Despite all the hardship of living abroad, when you know you want to be here and you can feel the environment positively affect you, then you know you’re on the right track. And this is how I feel.

ShareThis

Stuff happens in class too which makes me mad, but once it happens it’s internalised and the curbing process has already began. I can’t let it out physically. I guess if I’m mad then I let it out the same way I’ve observed members of my family doing it: through a tizzy of smarmy commentary, often ladened with swear words and politeness-transcending exaggeration on the aggressors behalf, which is then directed at others for affirmation. Genetics aside, I’m not sure why I do this. I suppose we all let out anger in our own way.

ShareThis

This past week I have started teaching kids, and while I can’t say that I have any bad students in any of my classes, I’m frustrated that I’m forced to grapple around the language barrier. Or rather, the language barrier with early language learners.

Before I started, I asked a colleague “how do you get the get the kids to sit in a circle?”. I mean, if I’m teaching them greetings like “hello” and “what’s your name?”, I can’t just tell them to sit in a circle. My answers to this question have been to mime or model the activity. Now, imagine that you’re teaching a class and you’re trying to order 10 kids to follow a simple activity without the aid of language. Naturally, by virtue of the fact that I can’t just say “get in a circle”, I’m going to waste time fumbling about trying to not only get the kids in a circle but get them to understand the basic rules of the game…

…and this is what pisses me off about teaching kids: why am I doing it when clearly a native Chinese speaker could complete the activity without fuss or complication? In my mind, there’s little benefit to having a native speaker churn out simple English. The authenticity of my language or my presence itself does not outweigh the fact that I “cannot” give out simple instructions.

Fortunately, I can give out instructions in Chinese, because unlike the other teachers I can speak Chinese, but it doesn’t help since the kids are not primed to hear the teacher speak Chinese, so any of my Chinese spoken in class will likely be interpreted as English of which the students themselves don’t understand: a problem unto itself. Furthermore, like the majority of Chinese people, the students either lavish praise upon or fail to understand Chinese which is spoken from the mouth of someone outside of their own nationality. (Even though some Australians might dish out flak to non-native speakers, we accept that they can speak our language as opposed to the Chinese whose view of the world’s ethnicities in the lens of archaic stereotypes. (Thank God I’m not a black man!)).

The other part of my frustration stems not just from discipline but lathering the kids up for education. As I learnt from my teaching assistant for my toddler class “you need to make the kids happy and then teach them”. Happiness equates to games and games I do not like. I was employed to teach English, not to let the kids colour in or run around. I paraphrase my American workmate in saying, if the kids can sit in class and listen to their Chinese teacher for an hour, then they can sit down a listen to me an hour. But games are pivotal to teaching kids, or so the culture tells me. I don’t like this, in my eyes it’s time wasting, the stuff lazy teachers do, the stuff my expensive CELTA course would disregard and most of all, a highly unorthodox way of teaching English. At least it’s not the other way around, at least I can nail the exposition, now I just need to appease the inner child.

Waving my arms about to convey instructions or playing games makes me feel like a joke. I don’t want to manage or lather people into education, I want to educate. At least I only have 4-6hrs of this a week and most of my students 10 and above are well above their age in maturity.

ShareThis

Mainly, I use it to listen to music when either at or on the way to work. If there’s too much conversation going on in the staff room, then I’ll flick on the iPod and drown it out with something less distracting. For this article though, I want to talk about how this all ties into my walks to school.

I live a 15-20 minute walk away from my school, so everyday I’m getting a good 40 minutes of exercise in the Chinese humidity. This is great for my health, sweaty arm pits and also a great chance for me to use my iPod. But I’m not really use to the phenomena of walking and listening to music at the same time. There’s some bizarre quality about walking which enhances the impact of the music to make it more epic; larger than life almost. By walking to music, you’re enacting it without forwardly dancing to a beat. Or something like that.

Recently, I’ve found myself quite moved by some of the music I’ve been listening to. I’ll walk to work and by the time I reach the China Unicom building I feel emotionally displaced. I’m quite assured that my science about walking and listening to music is grounded in some form of fact, but there’s more too it, I think.

There’s two more reasons. Firstly, some of the music I’ve been taking an interest in lately (two examples below) is just gorgeously written and meticulously composed into quite an emotionally stirring package. The other reason is that some of the music, plays on two of my biggest fears. Or rather, I have reversed engineered this deduction from my initial reactions to walking and listening to music science.

I think that the two fears are the feeling of being alone and living in a unengaging, environment with does not interest or stimulate me. Both of these fears are probably what prompted me to come back to China. My current situation seems to exacerbate some points of the former fear. It’s not so much being alone, because actually I often like being alone, doing my own thing, but rather the feeling of loneliness, a lack of connection to the people that are of spiritual importance, people that nourish the soul. Of course, when I come here I am saying goodbye to other people, so it’s inevitably all about grief management.

The second fear is what has prompted me to schedule my life here around pockets of free time. I am trying to plan lessons, buy food and care for myself around a system which increases the time I get to read and write for myself. I don’t want to stop writing, because writing is my bridge to deep thinking and without it I’d be murdering my soul.

(I realise that PrimeScape is just a mental dump of ideas and emotions without wax or sharpness, but crude life blogs do have some benefit. Think of it as draft writing for thoughts in progress. It’s the games writing though, which really stimulates the brain cells and I hope that some of my future articles can be a fine display of this.)

These fears connect to the following songs, I have handpicked one song per band:

The Lightning Strike – Snow Patrol

(Other songs: Set Down Your Glass, The Planets Bend Between Us, If There’s a Rocket Tie Me to It)

Youtube Link

Lyrics

The first part of this 16 minute song is the focus point for this article, the last 3^rd is also brilliant though. I have really fallen in love with the album Hundred Million Suns. It’s gorgeously romantic underlined by human despair and fault. The lines “What if this storm ends and I don’t see you, as you are now, ever again?” when met with the crescendo and closing at the either end of the piece are frightening to say the least.

Live with Me – Massive Attack

(Other song: Unfinished Sympathy, Protection)

Youtube Link

Lyrics

The film clip to Live with Me is typically excellent. There’s something uncertain about the singer’s voice, as though his words are warped by the circumstances at hand and although he is speaking of tragedy, he himself may not be innocent of influence.

Bright Lights – Matchbox 20

(Other songs: Unwell, Bent, Hand Me Down, Downfall)

Youtube Link (Live)

Lyrics

Dad always use to listen to Matchbox 20, so their music holds special importance to me. Rob Thomas is a fantastic singer/songwriter and I’ve found the group’s music to always be a bringer of meaning in my life ever since they first became popular over 10 years ago. The line “Baby, baby, baby, when all your love is gone, who will save me from all I’m up against out in this world?” is just iconic.

ShareThis