I pulled on my jacket and headed for the packed streets. Wool scarf pulled around my neck, I let the brisk air nip my ears as I wove among the walkers. It was 9:30, when the sidewalks are dense with pedestrians—all ages—talking, walking arm in arm, animated, waiting in line for a dumpling, or tasting skewered meat morsels and pan tossed dough stuffed with vegetables.

I slowed my step to inhale the pace of China, a more leisurely stride than mine—one that stops to investigate and to talk with others or ask questions of a vendor. The evening streets of China have always pulled me to them to soak up the rise and fall of conversations interspersed with car horns and the whir of electric bikes and motor scooters.

In a delightful book about how Paris fuels good writing, Eric Maisel underscores the human scale of that city—the cafes and streets, the bridges crossing the Seine, the small parks. They evoke a desire to linger and to notice. That is my exact feeling about China even though it seems improbable for a country that claims the most people, the most students, the fastest construction of buildings and expressways. While California and New York City shops and eateries are entered purposefully to shop or eat, those of Paris and China ask you to meander and pause and try a little something.
Parts of China in the evening have always reminded me of Paris. The first time was decades ago when I walked the crowded streets of Xi’an, a city in the middle of China, its ancient wall still standing. At night, sidewalk cafes were filled with people, their small tables and chairs gently lit with fairy lights strung in the trees and along walls. Smoke rose from small charcoal grills and sizzling woks produced clouds of steam, while patrons gathered at tiny tables, talking, playing cards and Chinese chess, or sitting in silence slurping noodles. Though the cafes and shops attracted five times more people than the west could imagine, the scenes were of human scale, beckoning people to saunter into them.

I don’t always find that human scale in China. Recently in Guangzhou I tried to reach the river that cuts across the city in too short a time. New to the city, I walked fast, determined to get there. I reached the park that edged the Pearl River with only enough time to turn around and head back to the hotel. I realize now I cut through two neighborhoods that could have drawn me in to explore. I should know better than to rush through China

Better to meander, with a map and a way to find my way back to where I’m staying in case I’m not quite sure where I ended up. In Nanjing not too long ago, I headed to the bank, and then wandered unfettered into the neighborhoods behind it. Past a junior high school, then a church and a square where buses idled, waiting for passengers. I crossed small squares where I stopped to sit and watch and write a bit, to soak in the environment and what people were doing—talking, arguing, exercising on metal equipment painted in primary colors, meant for retired folk but used by all ages for limbering up or leaning against. Then on down other streets, one in a serious state of repaving. Canary yellow rollers lumbered back and forth while trucks dumped black steaming macadam. Temporary pedestrian walks hugged trees and crossed warm and sticky paving at intersections. I headed down a side alley so as not to spend the evening cleaning my shoes and stumbled across a street of large 1920s houses. They sat behind walls, the late afternoon sun glinting gold from windowpanes. Several had bright red paper lanterns
hanging from the nearly black winter bare tree branches.

These walks pull me on and on. Just one more block, one more turn, one more square or park. And then, as the sun begins to sink and long shadows edge across sidewalks, I begin to feel nervous that maybe I am making too many turns that are not in neat grids, but wander at oblique angles, probably tracing ancient paths along old farm plots. I begin to head in a direction that I think will take me back to a familiar street. It’s often farther from my home base than I thought, so the walk goes on until my legs complain. But back in my room, as the water boiler gives promise of tea, I’m filled with the satisfaction of having wandered once again into the byways of China, tasting the rhythms of every day life.

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I dusted off some very old emails and let “Paul” in Guangzhou know I would be there. We had done some work on educational assessment when he was in Los Angeles five years ago. To my surprise, a response bounced back the same day. “Yes, it would be great to see you after all these years. I’ll get some of my friends together and we can have dinner.”

Navigating Hong Kong metros and trains I made it to Guangzhou for a day of conversations with educators and an unplanned fast two-hour walk in an attempt to reach the Pearl River that bisects the city twice. Returning to the hotel dripping with sweat, I stripped, sat for a bit to re-center, and found some decent suitcase smashed clothes for dinner with Paul and friends. He’s the head of assessment and evaluation for the teachers and schools of Guangzhou, a large vibrant metropolis. His friends, all from upper echelon offices of the city or provincial government, had been in LA for a Sisters City program. They had attended a course at UCLA about administrative practices, completed reports related to their fields, and had some time to travel. The dinner was a chance for “their class” to get together.

The reminiscences began, and although we talked about their work and some of the issues they face, the evening was peppered with a hilarious set of tales about their adventures. All the things they learned, later, that they shouldn’t do. Beginning with the little things. They lived in an apartment together, and Paul was obviously the penny pincher. One-pot meals were the rule. Make the rice in the cooker first. Then use the same pot for cooking everything else.  Period.  Paul discovered that Americans don’t eat fish heads, so for $3 he could get a large, delicious salmon head to feed everyone. They shopped in a super market and were pleased that there were shopping baskets provided for taking their purchases home. They had no idea this wasn’t common practice. Everyone else seemed to have cars and not need a cart.

Next they turned to their travels.  Chicago to Key West in 15 days.  Seven of them flew to Chicago, rented a van, piled it high with their luggage, and the cooking pot, and set off. Ohio, New York State, Boston, Connecticut, New York City staying in economy hotels and motels. Philadelphia, Virginia, Washington, D.C.  Then on to Atlanta. They couldn’t remember all the cities, they said apologetically.  Next, to Miami.  “We cooked in the bathrooms,” said an elegantly clad woman who is a high-ranking official, savoring the memories. “The signs said no cooking, so we figured with the fan on in the bathroom, we could do it.” Cook the rice first. Then the rest of the food.

I began asking questions. Had they ever driven in China? “Oh, yes,” said a quiet, bemused real estate developer. What kind of license did you have? This brought a burst of laughter from all of them.

They had gone to an office of some kind in Guangzhou that handles overseas documents. They were told all they needed was a translation of their Chinese licenses. So, that’s what they got. However, south of Miami their schedule was tight and they were going fast. Flashing lights appeared behind them and they kept driving.  Then a siren.  They didn’t know what that meant and continued on. Finally, a police car passed and cut them off.

They must have looked pretty sincere, is all I can say. After a lecture about what you’re supposed to do with flashing lights and a siren behind you, the officer looked again at their license he was holding. “Where did you buy this?” was all he could say. Following their detailed and nervous explanation, he delivered a lecture saying it would do no good to fine them because (a) they wouldn’t be able to pay it through the courts and (b) they were leaving the country. Therefore, his task was to educate them.  And he let them go.

Dinner dishes began arriving, a few toasts were made, and other tales tumbled out gleefully.  It felt like true confession time.  All the tales they’d never told anyone. They went from one story to the next.  Three of them being stopped in Alabama and searched by police at gunpoint, suspected of being drug dealers. They waited while the police went through everything in their car and then apologized for keeping them so long. Another time Paul made a short trip to Alaska, and he and his friend walked up to a house window and looked in to see what was there. The burly woman of the house appeared with a shotgun and suggested they move on.

Eventually the dinner conversation turned to more serious things. Paul was dealing with issues of how to rate teachers and schools and pacify irate parents without giving in to them. We moved on to schools and how to get creativity into a system driven by exams.  Paul’s department has tried to break some of the tradition that drives parents to do almost anything to get their children into the “top” schools, and parents are furious.  The most nightmarish issue, they agreed, was handled by the woman they insisted was the boss of their LA class.  She’s in charge of quality control for all foods and drugs in Guangzhou and the situation is a morass of problems.  They are working toward having one bureaucratic overseer, like the FDA, but she said they are a long way off and the issues are immense.

The dinner wound on with genteel toasts—tiny splashes of wine in lovely wine glasses—interspersed with talk. With each toast a few more gleeful memories erupted, an enjoyable contrast to the daily issues they face.

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I often turn down the nearest small street, trying to gauge its direction. Running at haphazard angles to main streets, they lead me into neighborhoods veined with networks of smaller lanes and alleys, all begging to be explored. Recently in Nanjing I wandered down tree-lined streets, past a pocket park with yellow and blue exercise equipment for neighbors, and came across a crowd of parents and grandparents waiting for an elementary school to let out. I stood to one side and waited too, so I could enjoy the lively hoard that would soon tumble through the gates.

The adults chatted, read newspapers, talked on cell phones and inspected the wares of a newspaper and magazine kiosk where a tidy pug lapped water from a shiny basin. They looked up periodically when a teacher crossed the schoolyard or it seemed time for the children to emerge. The waiting soon erupted into a sea of bopping, chattering children wrapped in colorful, puffy winter jackets. They connected with their parents, handing over backpacks or putting them in motorbike baskets, climbing onto the back seats of bicycles, and hoping just a little that there might be a treat. The crowd thinned and I moved on, inspecting small shops, a sidewalk shoe repair shop, and neighborhood restaurants. A vendor pulled out a large umbrella and set it up as drizzle dampened the sidewalk. I turned up my collar and walked on, finally succumbing to opening my umbrella and thinking about heading home. Stepping into the protection of a shop entrance, I found where I was on the map—not too far from where I hoped to be. But without the map I could have wandered much longer before finding familiar territory, even though street signs on larger roads are in Latin letters as well as Chinese characters.

I turned onto a main road as drizzle turned to steady rain. Dusk had settled over the crowded sidewalk. Dodging among colorful umbrellas, men and women, many with children in tow, stepped around sidewalk food vendors peddling their wares. Taxis, motorbikes, buses and occasional bicycles lumbered past. Puddles everywhere, I squeezed past women selling bright pink, yellow and green neon blinking toys and balloons and parents coming from the nearby hospital holding tight to heavily bundled children. (The Chinese take their children to the hospital in the same way we take ours to the doctor.)

Waiting to cross the street to my small hotel I was drawn to the warmth from a big oil drum a sweet potato vendor had filled with red-hot coals. Cooked potatoes were stacked neatly around the top absorbing the heat. I warmed my hands over the coals and bought one. Wrapping my hand around it, I tucked it in my pocket, bringing back memories from years earlier in Xi’an when rooms were frigid and winter sweet potatoes were one way to find warmth. Back in my room, rain slid down the window.   I poured a glass of wine, cut up a tomato and apple, settled into an old armchair, and bit into the still hot sweet potato.

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January 13, 1990. We were warned that it would be cold in China—especially inside—but little did we know what that meant. Not even a year in Scotland in a drafty flat with no central heating prepared me for this. But tonight I was better prepared for the dinner we went to. I have just peeled off the layers that kept bone-chilling cold from making me shiver uncontrollably. On the bottom—two pairs of English ribbed panty-hose, one pair silk long underwear, high ski socks, lined wool slacks. On top—tank top (=undershirt), long-sleeved silk underwear, cashmere sweater, turtle neck sweater, high-necked lambs wool sweater. With these on plus a small coal stove (a great luxury and quite unusual) I was able to eat dinner minus my down jacket. Even so I am still aching from the cold. (At most banquets all assembled guests eat with their heavy jackets—often down—buttoned up to the neck, and in school classrooms the children wear heavy cotton padded clothes and outdoor jackets.)

Preschoolers, Winter 1990

Our rooms—in the Foreign Experts Building of Nanjing University—are heated twice a day for about ½ hour at 6:30 a.m. and an hour in the evening. (At 8 a.m., though, the maids come in and open the door and windows wide to ‘air it out.’) The rest of the time we work in the room in sweaters, scarves and jackets. Average indoor temperature in our rooms, people’s home, and schools seems to be about 40 degrees. COLD!!!

But, ahhhh—the hot water—in the tub, in gallon thermos flasks, in schools. Boiling hot water to pour into cups to warm the hands, to make tea, to warm the insides. Every morning the gentleman in the room near the front entrance to our building boils water in two large blackened teapots on gas-fired hot plates—filling 30 or so red-plastic flasks and depositing them at our doors. At every school the first thing offered to us is hot tea—steaming and constantly replenished. It keeps us, and China, going.

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Nancy Pine in Educating Young Giants: What Kids Learn (And Don’t Learn) in China and America provides a marvelous tapestry of experiences through which to experience teaching and learning in China and in the U.S. and to appreciate the realities and nuances of American and Chinese schooling. Pine uses her unique experiences with her research and teaching in both the United States and China to provide in depth profiles of the historical and cultural influences on their education, to highlight their strengths and challenges, and to consider what each country can learn from the other.

Through her personal narratives, she examines rich vignettes to document how each country’s education history continues to influence the education practiced in today’s classroom instruction and in the nature of their examination systems.  Educating Young Giants is illuminating for all to read. And for those who teach or visit classrooms regularly there are careful considerations for pondering how what they are understanding may benefit education in China and the U.S. —Yetta Goodman, Professor Emerita University of Arizona, College of Education, Department of Language, Reading and Culture

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 Never again can we feel secure within the boundaries of our two oceans. It is a small world and the peoples in it will and must learn to know each other better, to understand each other better than they have in the past. We Americans do not possess the only way of life; there are others, different and yet desirable for the locations in which they exist. We must learn to understand the conditions and heritages which have determined those various cultures….But the East, Asia and its countries, have been neglected in most [Western] curricula. We have been brought up on the maxim that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” This may have been true in a century of European domination; it cannot be true in a world where mutual cooperation will be necessary to preserve peace. East and West must meet and share.

In no case is this more true than in our relations with China. There are many reasons for us to attempt to know and understand this country which has long been an enigma to us and to most Western minds. By her geographical position, China is extremely important in the share of the future world. Her peace and prosperity will be necessary for world peace. China’s political status is also highly important; the policy we adopt toward this country will determine future order in the Pacific. And lastly, we must recognize that we have much to learn from these peoples who have fought for long years against an enemy that now faces us, fought through years of struggle without equipment or organization. We owe them the deepest respect, and it would be to our advantage to know more of this dauntless, patient country.

An appreciation of the innate sturdiness and dignity of the Chinese people, their present position in the world, and some aspects of the culture that makes the Chinese character what it is: these are the subjects to which the greater part of this book is devoted, out of present respect for a great people and towards a closer relationship in the future.”    L.H. ’46,  The Firebrand: The Dominican College of San Rafael   MCMXLV

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Deb Meier, Founder of Small Schools Movement & MacArthur Fellow

In her widely distributed Education Week dialogue with Diane Ravitch about their very different views of schooling and how to give children the learning opportunities they deserve, Deborah Meier wrote recently ~

I wish I had read Nancy Pine’s Educating Young Giants, What Kids Learn (And Don’t Learn) in China and America before I went to China in 2007! It’s a thoughtful and thorough account that starts with classrooms in both nations that come alive in her telling.

Meier is often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement, is a MacArthur fellow, and the author of many books on school innovation. Her full commentary, that weaves Educating Young Giants together with her vast travel experiences, can be read on the Education Week blog.

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But junior high school is different. Not only does he like his more student-centered

Zheng Zheng and others attempting to solve algebraic puzzle

teachers better, but significantly, the highest achieving students have been skimmed off to a different class. This leaves him among students who are still competitive, but not to such an exacting degree of perfection. When I last visited, I spent time in Zheng Zheng’s math and biology classes. (I selected the classes to observe when I arrived at the school; they were not preselected and practiced ahead of time.) There were twice as many students in a class than he had had in elementary school, but the atmosphere seemed more congenial, the pace less relentless. The teachers kept a steady rhythm with high expectations, and as usual, students needed to be completely prepared.

What does this mean? After school, it is not relaxed by any American standard. Zheng Zheng now comes home at 4:30 or 5:00, has a snack, and heads for his room to complete homework. This is the normal life of a Chinese student. He sets a timer, and at the end of an hour can come out for a 5-minute break; then back he goes for another hour and another. This was true even when new foreign friends visited with their children. He still could take only a 5-minute break each hour to get to know them. As far as going out to dinner with family friends, that can only happen on Friday or Saturday evening.
He’s in the equivalent of the 7^th grade, and this is a relaxed year for him. His last middle school year will be much more intense.

7th grade biology textbook

I wrote about the college entrance exam preparation in Educating Young Giants and how Chinese students survive their final year of high school. I’m beginning to think that the 9^th grade exam is just as bad because the students are so much younger.

Chinese compulsory and free education ends with 9^th grade. If students wish to go to college, they must take a high school entrance exam. And competition in China is fierce. Zheng Zheng’s father said, “As a result, the students live a sort of secluded life their whole 9^thgrade year. I mean, they are rarely seen outside their schools or apartments. Nobody is hanging out with friends. No TV, no storybooks, no games, no fun! And this goes on for a whole year. I don’t know how they survive the one-year imprisonment?”

Mid-morning exercises on a crowded middle school campus

Parents worry a lot about the pressure on their children. Plenty of stories circulate about middle school kids who disappear into Internet cafés where their parents can’t find them and about others who commit suicide. It’s impossible to nail down numbers as to how often this occurs, but Chinese parents worry continuously and try to provide support for their children to remain happy while also achieving at a level that will get them into high school.

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Beijingers enjoying a sunny day

Adjusting my pace to China’s, I slow my quick, tense American stride. I move with the flow of pedestrians, look in shop windows, navigate intersections, and listen. Stores selling CDs and DVDs pipe loud music into the streets—sounding to me like romantic modern pop. Vendors peddle by calling their ancient cries of services rendered.

In late evening, my favorite time, pedestrians gather around sidewalk grills and small restaurants for meat on skewers or noodles salted with red-hot sauce, squinting through the smoke of the grill or squatting at the edge of the sidewalk relishing the noodles and chatting. But most of all, I soak up the sound of thousands of people talking to each other in Chinese. As I walk, the river of sound, rising and falling in cadences so different from English or Spanish, captivates me and carries me along. It pulls me away from the long flight and hectic trip preparations and draws me into China.

Finally saturated, I head back to my room to hook up my computer, call friends and colleagues to let them know I’ve arrived, and get ready for days of meetings, interviews, and classroom visits. But those first hours of walking have gotten me ready.

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“This is quite a remarkable book that should be required reading for students preparing to become teachers, for practicing teachers, and also for educational leaders and policy makers engaged in educational reform. The author, Nancy Pine, brings her extensive experiences in education in the US and China to the comparison of teaching and learning in these two countries. But this is not a standard academic study or a simple contrast and therein lies its strength. Nancy is a skillful writer and has used detailed colorful descriptions of her many observations of classrooms and conversations with educators to allow us to see what she saw and hear what she heard. In a strikingly unbiased and non-judgmental way, she reflects on these stories drawing from the literature and her deep knowledge of the history and cultures of both countries to deepen her own understanding and enrich ours.”

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