Tag Archives: China

Propaganda machines

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It is fascinating to see Americans on TikTok discuss their experiences on the app RedNote. The main things that they are surprised about are related to learning more about other cultures, (particularly the American and Chinese), and seeing how the ‘others’ live. The Americans are shocked by things like grocery prices and the fact that America is one of the only countries in the world where medical bills can bankrupt you.

I lived in China for 2 years. I saw the way that country has embraced a form of capitalism that is tiered to markets in a way that wouldn’t work in many other parts of the world. While there I could walk into an almost empty, expensive mall where the purchase of one item would pay the salary of the three employees in the store for the entire day. I could then walk out of the mall into an outdoor market where I could buy much cheaper but still good quality knockoffs of the same items in the expensive stores. And then in the back alleys less than a block away are the cheap buyer-beware knockoffs and trinkets where you can get affordable items for any budget, but the quality is very suspect and you need to be savvy about purchases.

But rich or poor, there are places for any Chinese citizen to find items they can afford. And while there is a definite hierarchical class structure, with ‘haves and have-nots’, the vast majority of the have-nots are way better off than a significant number of people here in the Western world that live below the poverty line.

The fascination I have watching these Americans is that they are, in rather large numbers, recognizing that other countries are not the only ones that spit out pro-national propaganda. They are seeing with their own eyes that they are being fed propaganda too… like this TikTok post of woman reading warm new year’s wishes from a Chinese friend she met online.

There are simple kindnesses to foreigners that me and my family received in China that were totally unexpected. For instance, a young couple exiting an elevator so that my family of 4 could fit, or asking for directions and having someone walk two blocks in the opposite direction to make sure we got where we wanted to go. I generally don’t see this kind of thoughtfulness to strangers here in the West.

China is a socialist country with some odd rules, but it’s also one of the most capitalistic countries I’ve ever visited. The people do the best they can within the governing rules of their society, just like most Americans. And people coming together on an app and learning about each others cultures are a way of breaking down propaganda barriers that are put up to villainize or to ‘other’ countries that are seen as economic enemies.

Here is another TikTok where a comment by a Chinese RedNote user is being read aloud, sharing his view of America after spending time getting to know them on the app. I’ve seen dozens of videos similar to the four I’ve shared here. Most of them are from shocked Americans realizing, for the first time, that they have been living under a façade of American exceptionalism.

In short, this Chinese run App is breaking down cultural biases and introducing a more global perspective between two cultures that have been fed miss-and-disinformation about each other. The propaganda machines are falling apart, and world views are becoming a little more worldly.

Dead links

I started my Daily-Ink blog in China in September 2010, but this name and site came a little later than the original blog. Originally it was created using a blogging platform called Posterous, which you could use via mail. Simply send an email to your personal blog address and it automatically added any pictures, links to videos, and your writing to a post with the email Subject as the title of the blog. Living in a country with a very challenging filter wall, this was a simple way to get a small blog post out without actually having to access a blog or having to upload pictures etc. It was a great tool. But then it died and I just started using WordPress, like I do now. However, I guess I didn’t follow the process to preserve my data and now all the links for images and videos are dead. So this is what my May 2010 archive page looks like.

But it’s not just my blog that’s the issue, it’s the blogs of others as well. The first post seen above, ‘Memorize This’ has links to two other bloggers, Joe Bower and Will Richardson. The link to Joe’s blog just goes to a “HTTP Status: 404 (not found)” page. However the link to Will’s page goes to this:

That is NOT the Will Richardson post I was looking for! I did a search on his updated blog location and found the post, “Is it Really Learning?“. I also went to my post and changed it there so I no longer link to this web-address stealing essay site, instead I link to the correct and intended post.

But realistically, I’m not going to go through my entire blog to do this. Even if I did, I’d probably spend more time trying to replace my own work, and not links to other sites. Because as I shared in my “Goodbye Posterous” post 11 years ago, “I decided to move my little-used Posterous site to this [‘Daily-Ink’] address, as a place to easily upload photos of what I thought would be a daily hand-written journal“, and the only record I seem to have of any of my journal writing is the screen shot I took of my first hand-written daily-ink for that post.

And while I’d love to recover all of these hand-written posts and the videos and pictures that I shared of ‘TIC’ – This is China moments, the reality is that most of them are gone forever.

And that makes me wonder, where will all this go in 20 years? In 50 years? I know I can find my original Pair-a-Dimes blog on the Internet Archive… is that where this blog and my current Pair-a-Dimes blog are destined to go? I guess so. I’ve paid for DavidTruss.com for another decade, but I haven’t paid the web host for that long. How long until this is just a series of dead links? I really haven’t given it too much thought, I just know that for now I plan to keep writing, keep sharing, and keep my links alive a little longer.

14 years ago

I shared this on my Pair-a-Dimes blog, May 13th, 2009:

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Sometimes you can’t just take baby steps, and you’ve got to commit fully to experience something…

I’m leaving my job, my home, and my country.

I have just accepted a Principal’s position in Dalian China for September. My wife will be teaching at the school and my daughters will be attending it. We weren’t actually looking for different jobs, they found us several years after my wife and I had applied to a number of International Schools for teaching positions. A path opened up before us… it wasn’t the planned path, but it was certainly worth investigating.

I can’t describe the turmoil my wife and I went through deciding whether or not we should uproot our family, and leave great jobs, friends and colleagues that we care about. Then finally we asked ourselves a simple question, “If we don’t do this, will we regret it later?” The answer was ‘Yes’.

And now that the decision is made, I am so excited about the new adventure!

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My close friends, my principal, and my assistant superintendent were told about my plan before publishing this, but I know it was an unusual way to share such information back then. Nowadays people expect to hear about things like this on Facebook or on other social media platforms, but that was far from the norm in 2009.

I remember an acquaintance saying to me at a meeting a week later, “So I had to read your blog to know you were taking off on us.” This perturbed me a bit because first of all we didn’t have the relationship where I’d be ‘informing’ him of this news in the first place, and secondly, I was sure he never read my blog and it was either shared with him or he just heard about it.

That was a different time. Looking back, and reading the comments I realize that I had amazing connections from my district, the province, and the rest of Canada, the US, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and China commenting. But I had many people in my district that thought it was completely weird that I’d share something like this on my blog. Meanwhile outside of a small but amazing group of local friends, it was my blogging and tweeting community that was genuinely excited for me.

They also stuck with me, reading and commenting on my blog and sharing in my China adventures.

I often say that I live my life without regrets, but if I had just one it would be that I wish I had travelled more when I was younger. This China trip opened up a world of experiences and holidays that I never would have had if my wife and I hadn’t realized how much we would regret not taking this trip.

My oldest daughter just finished an 8-month assistant teaching job in France and is currently holidaying in Greece, having just left Croatia, and is having exactly the kind of experience I wish I had at her age.

There’s a saying, that says, “No matter where you go there you are.” And I totally understand this sentiment… you can’t run away from yourself. But international travel creates contexts, experiences, and exposure to cultural differences that opens up your eyes and expose you to opportunities to grow in a way that’s hard to do ‘at home’.

We couldn’t have had the opportunities we did as a family had we not taken the plunge and moved to China… I would do it all over again if I had a chance!

The nod

When I lived in China, if I passed a foreigner, an ex-pat, I got ‘the nod’. It didn’t matter if the person was British, East Indian, Australian, Japanese, or American, they were from another country and I got an acknowledging nod. We were in Dalian, North East China, and of all the foreigners, the Russians were most abundant. The Russians would not give you the nod, even if you gave them one. It was weird.

I got to know a few Russians while in Dalian and they were all very nice, but seeing a Russian stranger on the street, or in a shopping mall, they would give you a quick glance, decide you are not ‘one of them’, and look away. Never the nod.

It’s funny, one of my daughters once asked, “Do you think that they think we are American?” Because we were often asked (in Chinese) by locals if we were American? (Nǐ shì měiguó rén ma?) To which we would answer ‘Canadian’ (Jiānádà rén). Then the person would smile and be even more friendly. My kids picked this up pretty quickly and figured the Russians were assuming we were American.

Here in Canada I get the nod from people of Middle Eastern descent. It happened last night, when I was in a Lebanese Donair shop. I ordered my large, spicy, extra lamb donair, paid and walked along the counter to where I pick it up. Directly in front of me I made eye contact with a young man sitting and enjoying his meal, and he gave me the nod. I returned it with a smile. That was the whole exchange, nothing more. The knowing, ‘you are one of us’ nod.

Oddly enough, I have a Russian grandfather, and my Middle Eastern ancestry is that I’m 50% Ashkenazi Jew. So, the Russian in Dalian that shrugged off without the nod had no idea I actually had heritage, and the Middle Eastern in Canada would probably be surprised to know that my heritage is Jewish. And the Chinese in China had no idea my Grandmother was Chinese.

I’m used to not fitting in a cultural box. As I mentioned before, “I have a look that Italians mistake for Greek, and Greeks mistake for Italian. I am neither.” I am ‘white’ but with a combined heritage of being 75% Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese, I don’t readily identify as white… other than the privilege I know that I ‘wear’.

But the nod is not about that. The nod is not really about nationality or heritage, it’s about sharing a common experience. It doesn’t matter if the nod is a case of mistaken identity, it doesn’t matter if you are from different parts of the world. The nod is a way that two human beings connect and say “I see you.” And it’s a beautiful thing.

I don’t like the decorations

Before we moved to China, I spent 7 days there meeting the previous principal of the school. One of my tasks was to find an apartment for my family. My future secretary, whose English was pretty good, toured me around 8 or 9 apartments, over 2 days, before we found one that I thought my wife would approve of.

Walking through a few of these places, my secretary remarked, “I don’t like the decorations.”

I thought this was an odd statement, since we would be moving in with our own ‘decorations’. I didn’t understand what she meant until months later. As it turns out, when you buy an apartment in China, the structural walls are the only thing in place. Nothing else. A drain in the kitchen area, and one drain in the bathroom areas.

Almost every apartment I went into in China had a step up to hide the fact that the plumbing for the sink, toilet, and shower all had to be put in after purchase, and had to be directed to a single drain pipe. In fact, there could often be odour issues in bathrooms, with little room for the bathtub drain to have a water trap to protect against gases (and smell) coming up the pipe. When we went on holidays, I’d leave water in our tub and sink to protect against this.

When my secretary talked about not liking the decorations, she was literally talking about the design of the apartment, where the walls and doors were, how the apartment was laid out. You could go into two apartments side-by-side, or even one floor above, in a building and the layout could be completely different.

One apartment we went to had a completely enclosed kitchen with two doors on either end to get to the living room and dining room. Another apartment had a bathroom with access only from the kitchen. I thought I was opening a pantry when I opened the bathroom door. Both of these were places where my secretary didn’t like the decorations. And I didn’t like the layout. Same thing, except what I didn’t know was that the layout was a design (or decoration) feature that the first owner chose, not something the builder did. In this way, the word ‘decorations’ made a lot more sense.

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Related post on my Pair-a-Dimes blog: Slowly by Slowly.

T.I.C. Chinese School PE Program Inspection

via qik.com

This routine is practiced almost daily for a few months before the inspection. At the start of the year it involved skipping ropes, but our school (neighbouring theirs) showed a lot of interest in basketball, so they incorporated basketballs into their spring routine.

Every student was asked to bring a basketball from home. The small items on the ground near them are cardboard rings that they made to keep their ball from rolling around at the back of their classrooms. Often during PE classes you’ll see the younger students wearing these like bandanas on their heads. Cute!

Watch to the end to see the speed at which they run to their line-ups to head back into the school. It’s that fast even when there isn’t an inspection happening.

A neat look into a very different school culture.

Looking into North Korea

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We arrived in Dandong at about 9:15pm. This is the view of the Peace Bridge heading into North Korea. The lights on the bridge end at the border. Apparently a city of almost 2 million about 200,000 people sits in the darkness. Any hint of light is probably a military installation.

We’ll learn more in the morning, but this one image tells quite a story.