Need2LearnChinese Blog

Just because China has embraced Christmas does not mean the country is becoming Western. Looks can be deceiving.

Christmas tunes play on radio stations. Every Grade A and Grade B office building in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou is decked out with holiday displays. Christmas music is piped into elevators far and wide, even in Communist Party buildings. Santa, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf, are ubiquitous. Department stores never used to have Christmas sales. Now they all do.

What's going on? One thing for is sure: the Chinese have not discovered Jesus. The meaning behind Christmas - the birth of God's son who died for our sins - can be articulated by a small percentage of the population. True, evangelical Christianity is spreading, particularly in the countryside where adherents can be quite passionate -- and brave -- as they proselytize the word of Christ. But, as a rule, mainland Chinese know very little about the deeper meaning of his teachings. In the eyes of most, China's Jesus is, more often than not, interchangeable with China's Buddha. He is someone to pray to, someone to turn to particularly in periods of uncertainty or fear. The idea of having a relationship with Jesus through acceptance of his "golden rule" in exchange for salvation is a nuanced abstraction. It is not a powerful offer for today's pragmatic, ambitious, worldly new generation of Chinese. In the PRC, morality is relative; standards shift based on ever-morphing external circumstances. But Christian morality is absolute. Jesus' word - charity to others, including the weak, particularly strangers - is non-negotiable. The tenets of Occidental Christianity are poorly understood and, frankly, unattractive as a consumer proposition. (By the way, most Chinese do not know the difference between Jews and Christians, let alone the difference between Catholics who acknowledge the Pope and Protestants who do not.)

So why is Christmas hot? There are two reasons. First, Christmas is win-win. It fuses fun, a universal release, with transactional gain. Second, and more subtly, Western holidays, particularly Christmas and Valentine's Day, are useful tools in reinforcing individual identity within a Confucian - yes, a Confucian - context.

To the Han, Christmas is not "Western." Instead, the holiday is "international" and "modern" and carries a whiff of status, the ultimate commodity in face-driven China. Santa is a symbol of progress. He represents the country's growing comfort with a new global order, one into which China is determined to assimilate, without sacrificing national interest. Individuals who make merry are making a statement. They are declaring themselves new generation players, able to absorb new elements and apply them in a Chinese framework.

On an even deeper level, Christmas is an investment in the future. Men here carry a heavy burden. In matters of the heart, women are demanding. Mothers-in-law will not approve of a prospective groom unless he can afford an apartment, an increasingly elusive requirement given skyrocketing real estate costs. Cars have become "must buys" for couples intent on entering the ranks of the middle class. Chinese relationships are rooted in dependability, not romantic love. Of course, the desire for passion is universal. But, in anti-individualistic China, a society in which the clan remains the basic productive unit, love is not enough to seal the deal. Men need to, first and foremost, prove themselves. They must establish their commitment in terms of both emotional dedication and material potential. The Christmas gift is one more opportunity for young Chinese men to proclaim, "Darling, I would do anything for you." It has been embraced by as a means of demonstrating steadfastness.

In 2010, Christmas festivities are still rather new fangled. (Chinese New Year, an extended-clan affair is inviolable, even for hip, earring-sporting cool guys.) For 15 years, however, Valentine's Day has been de rigeur. If a boyfriend does not give his girlfriend an expensive present, he will no longer have a girlfriend. The reason is obvious. Valentines Day's raison d'etre remains unadulterated: "show me your love." This drive explains the phenomenal spread of engagement rings. Diamonds are a new cultural imperative; they have achieved 85% penetration in primary cities, up from less than 10% in 1995. In China, DeBeers' tagline, "A Diamond is Forever" has been translated as "For you, anything is possible." (Pardon the generalization but marital practicality also reveals why a Chinese wife often looks the other way if her husband has a "happy ending" massage. She will, however, ask for divorce if he has a mistress, a much graver threat to a domestic "harmony.")

Chinese adoption of Christmas rituals does not imply "Westernization." It has been co-opted to advance a distinctly Chinese agenda: projection of status in a culture in which individual identity is inextricably linked to external validation.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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More than 40 million foreigners around the world are learning Chinese, a senior official with the Confucius Institute Headquarters said at the organization's fifth annual conference in Beijing, which ended on Saturday.

This year, 40 new Confucius Institutes and 97 Confucius Classrooms opened worldwide, while eight countries also joined the program, Xu Lin, the headquarters' chief executive and director-general of the Office of Chinese Language Council International, or Hanban, told China Daily.

And more expansion is on next year's docket, she added.

"We expect to dispatch 2,000 teachers and 3,000 volunteers from China, train 10,000 Chinese teachers and 10,000 local teachers, and release revised Standards for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL) next year," she said.

"A better benefits package will be offered to teachers from China. Tentative efforts will be made to establish a team of full-time directors and teachers for Confucius Institutes."

Confucius Institutes are affiliated with the Ministry of Education and are committed to educating people worldwide about Chinese language and culture

A total of 322 Confucius Institutes and 369 Confucius Classrooms have been established in 96 countries and regions. Among them, 303 institutes and 265 classrooms are already operating, Xu said.

There were 360,000 registered students in 2010, which was 130,000 more than last year. More than 16,000 teaching programs and 8,000 cultural events attracted about 5 million participants in 2010, which was double last year's record, she said.

She also said the organization's teaching staff has been growing, with 4,109 teachers working on full-time or part-time bases, which was 1,000 more than last year. Half are from China.

"It's necessary to encourage more local teachers' participation in the long run, as the Chinese universities have limited teaching resources," Xiamen University President Zhu Chongshi said on the conference's sideline on Thursday.

Jilin University President Zhan Tao said the country should develop a "Chinese-language teachers' talent plan" to meet the soaring global demand.

"We should discuss what kind of favorable policies attract more volunteers and whether it's a good idea to fast-track postgraduate program admission for university graduates who have served Confucius Institutes," he said.

The institutes seek to equip every country willing to offer Chinese-language programs with quality textbooks within three to five years, Xu said. And the Confucius Institute Online will be enhanced to provide more educational resources for Chinese-language learners.

"We will also set standards for Confucius Institutes' establishment and operation, propose guidelines to strengthen the work of Chinese partner universities and conduct performance evaluations of institutes," she said.

The organization's funding has reached $167 million. About half the contributions come from overseas, the headquarters said in a report.

The average Confucius Institute receives $500,000 and a Confucius Classroom gets $60,000, the report said.

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Whatever you think of her acting, Zhang Ziyi has without question been the most visible thespian to break out of China for the last ten years and now, CineAsia is recognizing that by naming her the "actress of the decade".

Back in 1999, the young dan actress was given the Star of Tomorrow award by CineAsia (an annual regional film trade show) and the award couldn't have been more spot on - her international career from that point onwards has been nothing but an upward trajectory.

Her break out role came the very next year in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She continued her successful career with star turns in Memoirs of a Geisha, House of Flying Daggers, and Wong Kar Wai's 2046 for which she won the HK Film award for. Zhang is said to be currently working on another English-language film slated for 2011 - a retelling of the classic Chinese story, Hua Mulan.

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Her first taste of reality came later the same day, as she lugged her bags through a tumbledown neighbourhood not far from the Olympic Village where tens of thousands of other young strivers cram four to a room.

Unable to find a bed and unimpressed by the rabbit warren of buildings, Ms Liu scowled as the smell of rubbish wafted up around her. "Beijing isn't like this in the movies," she said.

Often the first from their families to go to university, graduates like Ms Liu are part of an unprecedented wave of young people all around China who were supposed to move the country's labour-dependent economy toward a white-collar future. In 1998, when then president Jiang Zemin announced plans to bolster higher education, Chinese universities produced 830,000 graduates a year. Last May, that number was more than six million and rising.

It is a remarkable achievement, yet for a government fixated on stability such figures are also a cause for concern. The economy, despite its robust growth, does not generate enough good professional jobs to absorb the influx of highly educated young adults.

"College essentially provided them with nothing," said Zhang Ming, a political scientist and vocal critic of China's education system. "For many young graduates, it's all about survival. If there was ever an economic crisis, they could be a source of instability."

In a kind of cruel reversal, China's old migrant class - uneducated villagers who flocked to factory towns to make goods for export - are now in high demand, with spot labour shortages driving up wages.

But the supply of those trained in accounting, finance and computer programming now seems limitless, and their value has plunged. Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant labourers grew by nearly 80 per cent; during the same period, starting pay for graduates stayed the same.

• China: Tough times are no deterrent

Chinese sociologists have created a term for educated young people like Ms Liu who move in search of work: the ant tribe. It is a reference to their immense numbers - at least 100,000 in Beijing alone - and to the fact that they often settle in crowded neighbourhoods, toiling for wages that would give even low-paid factory workers pause.

"Like ants, they gather in colonies, sometimes underground in basements, and work long and hard," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

The central government, well aware of the risks of inequitable growth, has been trying to channel more development to inland regions like Shanxi, Ms Liu's home province.

But despite government efforts, urban residents earned on average 3.3 timesmore last year than those living in the countryside. Such disparities - and the lure of spectacular wealth in coastal cities like Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenzhen - keep young graduates on the move.

"China has really improved the quality of its workforce, but on the other hand competition has never been more serious," said Peng Xizhe, dean of social development and public policy at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Given the glut of graduates, Mr Peng suggested that young people either shift to more practical vocations like nursing and teaching or recalibrated their expectations in order to get decent jobs. "It's OK if they want to try a few years seeking their fortune, but if they stay too long in places like Beijing or Shanghai, they will find trouble for themselves and trouble for society."

A fellow Datong University graduate, Yuan Lei, threw the first wet blanket over the exuberance of Ms Liu and her friends not long after their July arrival in Beijing. Mr Yuan had arrived several months earlier for an internship but was still jobless.

"If you're not the son of an official or you don't come from money, life is going to be bitter," he said over bowls of noodles, their first meal in the capital.

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