I know this is no longer a secret, but China is changing.  Rapidly!  On Wednesday this week, I made my 49th trip to China.  My first trip was almost a quarter of a century ago, in April 1982.  China then and China now are like two vastly different places, not just like different countries but different worlds.

This 49th trip was the first time I have been to China and not seen a car crash.  Okay, I was only in China for seven hours, and most of that time was spent inside a school, but on my previous trip (last month), which lasted 8 days, I saw three car accidents just in the first hour and a half while driving from Shenzhen Railway Station to the Airport.  During another trip, while standing on a street corner in Shanghai, a car crash happened right in front of me.  And as my students know only too well, we were almost in a very nasty crash ourselves last month when two large trucks came hurtling towards our bus as we were making a painfully slow three-point turn on a narrow highway in the middle of the night between Lijiang and Kunming.

I recall the China of 1982 moving at a much slower (if not necessarily any safer) pace than the speed demanded by today’s tiger economy.  My photos of China in 1982 show people clothed uniformly in blues and greys (except the babies, who were dressed like rainbows), with no neon signs in the streets, with street advertising largely focussing on navigation equipment for submarines, with bicycles vastly outnumbering cars (which were very rare indeed, and never privately owned), and with the the first uncontrolled farmers’ markets being so rare that they warranted photo stops.

I have many photos of peasants walking behind water buffaloes from that time - if we see farmers walking behind a water buffalo today, they are probably talking into their mobile phone at the same time!

My photos of Shenzhen in 1982 show just a few buildings under construction in a handful streets dominated by single-storey shop-houses.  Today, just 25 years later, Shenzhen is a vast, sprawling high-rise metropolis of somewhere between 10 and 13 million people that spreads almost without a break through Dongguan tens of kilometres to the provincial capital of Guangzhou (formerly Canton).  Today’s China boasts levels of pollution, congestion and consumption - and wealth - that were almost unimaginable a quarter of a century ago.

The photo at the left shows part of “Civilization Wall”, an extravagantly sculptured feature in the school that highlights many aspects of Chinese and Western culture.  For me, it is a powerful symbol of New China opening up to the world in a spirit of harmony and peace.

My conversation with Jason about Chongqing brought back some fascinating memories of a China that has all but disappeared during the past 25 years.  For example, I recalled that at the time of my 1982 visit, Chongqing had only just opened up to outside visitors and foreigners were still extremely rare.  Wherever I walked, I was followed by a small (and sometimes not-so-small) crowd of curious onlookers who certainly did not share the Western concept of personal space!  My image at the top of this blog shows a crowd of onlookers in Chongqing at that time staring in at the foreigners through the window of our bus  - we were the travellers, but who was really the subject of the observations?  On one occasion, I was walking down the street with a tall (Western) colleague with bright red hair, and I remember feeling guilty because so many young children saw us, screamed, and ran to their parents for comfort.

But perhaps the most telling experience of my visit to Chongqing occurred when I called into a small stationery shop to buy a writing pad to send some letters home (yes, this was before e-mail had begun anywhere in the world!).  At that time, I had no Chinese language, and the shop assistant had no English.  As always, a crowd had gathered to watch the foreigner (me!) trying to communicate using sign language, when an elderly man emerged through the crowd  as said in perfect though very slow and deliberate English “Perhaps I may be of assistance”.  With his help, I made the purchase, and then I said to him “Your English is perfect.  Where did you learn to speak English so well?”.  He replied that he had been taught English by the American soldiers in Chongqing during World War II, and that this day - it was 12th April 1982 - was the first time he had spoken English since they had left in 1946!

Relating all this to my experience as an educationalist, I recall an interesting incident in 1989, the first year of my first headship (at St Paul’s Grammar School in Sydney, Australia).  At the time I arrived in that school, the only foreign languages taught were French and Latin, and I was very keen to broaden the students’ perspectives by introducing an Asian language.  Following a period of consultation, the language chosen was Chinese - at that stage, a pioneering and courageous decision (as Sir Humphrey Appleby would describe it).  My job was to convince the parents attending a meeting that Chinese would be a better choice than Japanese, which many parents favoured because of Australia’s important trading relationship with Japan.  I remember going through many points, including the important idea that the main reason for learning another language is not for business, but to experience different thought patterns, different ways of viewing the world and opening up new fields of literature.  To be honest, though, the parents at the meeting seemed more interested in business opportunities!  So I made this brave prediction: “If you want the language of business for the PAST 30 years, learn Japanese.  If you want the language of business for the NEXT 30 years, learn Chinese”.  It was a “courageous” prediction in the context of 1989, just a few months after the Tian An Men Square incident - but with the benefit of hindsight, it is one case where I am prepared to suggest that I was indeed right!

This exercise led to a discussion on consistency of thinking and the nature of consensus, which in turn led me to share an experience that I had in 1993 while attending a conference of Heads of IB schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  There was a session in which each of the Vice-Chancellors of Argentine universities was asked to speak for about 5 minutes on the skills that he/she believed schools should be doing better to prepare students more adequately for university.  Some spoke about global awareness, some about time management, some about maths and science skills, and so on.  But one Vice-Chancellor stood up, looked at us, spoke just one sentence, and sat down again.  His sentence - which was his entire speech - made quite an impact on me and I have never forgotten it (it is not often that I memorise someone’s entire speech!).  He simply said this: “We need students who understand the difference between truth and consensus”.

What is the consensus in China today about socialism - with or without Chinese characteristics?  What is the consensus about the costs of economic growth - the pollution, the congestion, the increasing disparities in wealth?  And regardless of the consensus, what is the truth behind these profound questions?  As the Argentine Vice-Chancellor observed, truth is not the same as consensus, and it is important to know the difference.

What will China be like 25 years from now - following yet another quarter of a century of change after my first visit?

Let us hope that the authentic ideals of peace and sustainability embraced  and promoted by the United World College movement will have a significant role in shaping that future - because many aspects of China’s future look bleak indeed if we simply extrapolate today’s environmental trends.

FOOTNOTE:

Monday 11th December marks our 30th wedding anniversary.  Wow - three decades!  It seems more like three days.  I must still be on my honeymoon :-)  Thanks Di for thirty great years.  We’ll celebrate next weekend after I have cleared the backlog of writing all the school reports.  For those of you with the password to the family image galleries, the photos of our wedding just 30 short years ago can be seen HERE.