China: A Personal Perspective – Children

I have recently returned from a month long visit to southern China where I introduced Parent Effectiveness Training to several thousand parents. So, of course, I am especially interested in the current situation as it affects children.

A great time to be a child in China.
In many ways this is a wonderful time to be a child in China. With the one-child policy now in effect for some 35 years, almost every child is a wanted child. Even the pro-male baby bias is diminishing. It is true that the latest data still shows almost 120 baby boy births registered for every 100 girl births. It is illegal for medical personnel to reveal the gender of an in utero fetus, so abortions of females have lessened. Also, personal conversations as well as newspaper reports indicate a growing equal acceptance of boy or girl babies and several young couples told me they hoped their child would be a girl.

Children are often so valued that there is a danger of permissiveness as the child is treated as a “little emperor” or “empress”. And since grandparents will have only one grandchild, that grandchild is often the focus of extra attention, love and gifts.

While tragically there are still too many pockets of poverty, hunger and high infant mortality rates, over all trends for these matters are positive.

It was interesting to me that the matter of children participating in household chores is not an issue. “Children don’t do chores. Children study. Any parent who expects the child to participate in household care is irresponsible.” I was told this more than once.

As I watched children go to kindergarten, be on the street, or enjoy food, they seemed to be quite content.

An anxious time to be a child in China. But not everything is ideal. There is tremendous pressure on the child to be perfect, to get into the best school, especially for boys to bring honor to the family name.

Virtually all kindergartens and primary schools now have police guards at school entrances. This is in response to at least 7 attacks this year in which raging “maniacs” have attacked and killed children even as they sat in their classrooms. While the resulting number of deaths is well under 100, the news of this terrorism on children naturally has caused great anxiety for teachers, parents, and children.

There is also obvious anxiety in many youth in their late teens and early twenties. Many, especially from poor rural areas, have flocked t o the city. There they produce all those “made in China” goods. They live in cramped dormitories, work very long hours with minimum days off and send almost all their earnings home to poor parents. It takes its toll. While I was in Shen Zhen the 11th suicide of the year for this group was reported. Anxiety spreads through all of these youths and their families back home.

The national government in Beijing recently called a conference on a new parent-child issue. Surveys indicate that among the most financially successful private entrepreneurs 90% stated they hoped their child would continue their business. Yet when the children were polled, 95% said they did not want to eventually take over their parents’ enterprises.

A time for shaping the future of the world. Each morning I watched kindergartners happily enter their kindergarten. One morning they gathered outside for a moving and very patriotic national flag raising ceremony. As I watched, it hit me again: The 19th century was the century when Great Britain ruled the world. The 20th century saw the USA as the number one world power. The 21st century will be the century of China dominance. I can only hope and pray that those Chinese kindergarteners raising that flag today, who will be the leaders of the world tomorrow, will lead all of us into ways of peace, prosperity and mutual respect and into a world in which all children can live fulfilling lives.

China: A Personal Word on Chinese Food

Of course, Chinese food is the most commonly eaten food on the planet. With its billions of people, multiple ethnic strains, varied geography, vast gap in resources and its long history, the food in China is varied beyond imagination. It has been my good fortune recently to once again spend a month in China and grab a teeny sample of its wonderfully varied cuisines.

Because of my schedule and commitments it was around midnight when I had finally finished my third dinner of that day. The next question from my host was, “Now for breakfast do you want rice noodles or flour noodles?” I made a quick decision, rice noodles. So early the next morning she was in the hotel lobby ready to take me to breakfast. We parked on a side street. I looked for the restaurant. Then I realized that I was standing in it. The restaurant was one of those sidewalk, small shop affairs where the meal is cooked on a simple, single gas burner on the curb. Guests sit on small three legged “milk-stools” and enjoy the fare. I was even asked what kind of meat I wanted with those noodles and saw the cook mix in the half teaspoon of chopped pork. It was all delicious.

In Kun Ming we went in the opposite direction. The walk-way to the very upscale restaurant was through a beautifully long curved tree lined path. At intervals along the way sat beautifully red-robed instrumentalists. Each played marvelously on traditional Chinese stringed instruments, a perfect prelude to really fine dining. It was similar to other 12- course dinners I’ve been served on special occasions. Two things were new, however. The first is that one of the early dishes was a massive platter of exquisitely prepared and presented sushi, something new for me in China. The other was that while, of course, tea, beer and soft drinks were available, this time the options included a steady supply of wonderfully aged French wine supplemented by what other guests brought with them. Several had selected their own special brand of that fiery Chinese drink called mao tie. Toasts were drunk from each variety. Food, fun, friends (old and new) made for a not to be soon forgotten evening

While on the island city of XiaMen across from Taiwan I was taken to “the best sea food restaurant in the city.” I was told that once again 12 dishes were being ordered. Each one came from the sea. Each one was going to be a delicacy that I was guaranteed to never have eaten previously. And so creatures of many sizes, shapes and flavors from the sea supplemented by fungi and other plants made for a wonderful “lunch”. When one of the dishes was served I took a healthy mouthful with my chopsticks and enjoyed it. I noticed a bit of almost imperceptible snickering at my enjoyment of the dish. Then I was told, “There is a Chinese saying attached to this particular dish. The English version is ‘If man eats this dish, woman watch out. If woman eats this dish, man watch out. If man and woman eat this dish, bed watch out!” I got it. This was an aphrodisiac. I enjoyed the food.

In the large and modern city of ShenZhen one can find to almost anything to eat that one might desire. Most of the world food chains MacDonald’s, Starbucks, Papa Johns. KFC. etc .etc.) are all there. A new one simply called Fridays was the site for several good meals. My very sophisticated host enjoyed some very simple delicacies. I especially noted her relishing chicken feet and duck tongue. I preferred the duck tongue to the chicken feet.

Great enjoyment, made both more somber, even more appreciated as I recalled that when I lived in Hong Kong 50 years ago my Chinese colleagues were trying to figure out how to just get a bit of rice across the border to their relatives where millions of Chinese were starving because of Mao TseDung’s horrendous “Great Leap Forward.” And now China is indeed leaping forward and many (including me) get to enjoy more of that marvelous Chinese food!

China: A Very Personal View (I)

China with its thousands of years of history, billions of people and vast spaces of geography defies any simple descriptions or important insights. So while I enjoy traveling there or studying its history and being with its people, my comments must (of course) be very personal, incredibly partial, and severely biased. So having just returned from spending a month there here are a few snippets.

The Chinese: wonderfully hospitable; Once again I was the object of great unreserved hospitality. My hosts made every effort to care for me. They wanted me to have the best accommodations, most appropriate food, highest places of honor at feasts, safety on the streets and the appropriate respect for my role of teacher. When they learned I was 82 years of age and still conducting workshops they expressed a reaction almost of awe. But then they learned something else about me which raised me even higher in their estimation. They learned that the most famous movie director in China, John Woo, was a student of mine in elementary and high school. That trumped age and any other experience or set of skills I might have carried with me.

The Chinese: Ambivalence about children. Of course, Chinese. like parents everywhere, love their children. The child is the focus of love, attention, favors, and the very best education possible. I learned that only in a very few homes is a child expected to do chores, for that may distract from the child’s most important role, namely, that of being a diligent student - twenty-four-seven; year round. In their zeal to have their one and only child be all that s/he can possibly be Chinese (like parents in most parts of the world) tend to swing between severe authoritarianism (this child must do exactly as I teach it and be rewarded or punished to achieve that) or the child is king or queen, so the parent is extremely permissive and “what this wonderful and only child wants, this wonderful and only child gets!” On the other hand, in a much-needed effort to control population growth the one child per family law is still being enforced. Tragically, especially female fetuses continue to be aborted and some children with birth defects continue to be abandoned.

The Chinese: Driven by capitalism. The government may still be socialist but private entrepreneurs drive the economy. When I traveled along the coast at Xiamen, just across from Taiwan, I noticed a building which looked strikingly like the new Goldman Sacks Building on Wall Street, it suddenly hit me: in the month that I traveled only in southern China Government was convening a forum in Beijing to discuss this matter.

Chinese: Atheistic and spiritual. The Chinese “constitution” continues to declare atheism as the official position of the country. And there is plenty of evidence of a secularism in which spiritual values are dismissed as irrelevant. Concurrently there are deep undertones of spiritual yearnings and pursuits. The same organization that is promoting Parent Effectiveness is very successful in offering seminars and workshop on “Your Spiritual Being”, “Meditation” and “Higher Consciousness”. The story of Christianity in modern China is almost beyond belief. There are now many more professing Christians in China than at any time in history. Both the three-self churches (self-propagating, self-governing and self supporting) which number more than 15,000 and the more than 30,000 unauthorized house churches are growing at an unprecedented rate and estimates of the number of Christians in China run from 50 million to 100 million.

Of course, I barely stuck one toe into that vast ocean called China. I will say a little more about one other toe in those waters in my next blog.

I Love New York (II)

There is a buzz of activity and life and hope in New York that comes from places other than its streets, avenues and parks. These sounds of life, energy, frustration and hope come from classrooms and specifically also from the hundreds of classrooms of the Lutheran schools of New York. I had to return to hear them again. I attended the Annual Dinner meeting of The Lutheran Schools Association of Metro New York. There I was with hundreds of those teachers and administrators who bring learning and opportunity and hope to those kids. The energy in the room was palpable. Laugher, and hugs, and conversations mingled with hugs and drinks and congratulations. It is a sad and yet profound truth that there are many areas in New York City where it is flat-out impossible to get any kind of a decent education in the public schools of that community. The system is broken. Parents who seek the alternative of a non-public (often faith-based school) will work three jobs including scrubbing floors to get their kids into one of those schools and pay the necessary tuition. There they meet teachers who care, who work at salaries way below their counter-parts in the public system. The teachers reach out to communicate with parents who in the case of one school in Queens spoke 19 different primary languages. They serve with commitment and faith and sometimes with disillusionment. One of the great things about the dinner I was attending was that it brought encouragement and recognition to teachers from all segments of that cosmopolitan community. So some came from affluent Long Island while others came from tough underserved impoverished sections of Brooklyn. But all were celebrating learning, hope, faith and possibility - and their energy and commitment to kids permeated the room and enveloped me.

The next afternoon I got to be a part of another little piece of New York, that of working the system! My long time friends and colleague Howard Capell, Esquire had always taken on Lutheran schools legal issues. He served us with extreme competence, with all his connections and with a passion for mission. I knew my evening with him would again be special. He had promised to pick me up at 6:00, but around 4:00 the cell phone rang. “I have just crossed the TriBorough Bridge. Get to the corner of 93rd and Second and I’ll pick you up in a few minutes”. Naturally, he was on the phone as I climbed into the car. ”See you in 20 minutes’, was the message to the next contact.” “Just come down to the street.” So some 20 minutes later the well dressed gentleman on the curb of Fifth Avenue in mid-town came to our car door to hand us well placed tickets for that night’s performance of La CageAux Folle. Howie has his police contact who got to the half-price ticket counter in Times Square the minute it opens. He finds out what’s available, puts on hold a couple tickets, notifies the next person in the process who picks up the tickets who gets them to the person who meets our car on Fifth Avenue and hands us the tickets as we roll along.

Next stop is Times Square. Howie identifies the officer patrolling the section. With a quick nod he directs us to a parking garage where an attendant is waiting, the car is parked, and we are back on the street in 90 seconds. The patrol officer had been the one who first investigated and then noted what was going on with that failed bomb attempt recently. He recounts those events to us in vivid and chilling detail. Howie, of course, knows him by name and tells him that he has already sent a generous donation to the Police Benevolent Society in honor for this particular public servant.

But we wanted to eat and had no pre-theater reservation. Howie took one look at the famous restaurant across the street, asked the officer about chances for table, without reservations. “It may take up to 5 minutes”, came the reply,” but come with me.” The Maître de was by-passed; the manager had a table for us and only 3 minutes had elapsed. The service, drinks and dinner were great. The show was even better. The car-parking fee was, of course complimentary and Howie and I continued on our post-theater evening.

That, too, is how the system works in New York and I am fortunate enough to have a friend who knows exactly how to use it!

I Love New York (I)

Blog: I Love New York (I)

I love New York and it was way past time for me to return there to get my “New York fix”. So in between one granddaughter’s wedding in Maine and another’s confirmation in Connecticut I was off to the The City. As the bus rolled down the streets of Harlem the memories flooded in. There was that Lutheran Church just barely surviving while almost across the street the Abyssinian Baptist Church still reverberates with beautiful soul and echoes of Adam Clayton Powell. The Lutheran School On the Hill, which produced so many wonderful black graduates, sits shuttered.

The street-side food hawkers await me at the Port Authority Bus Terminal entrance and I can’t resist that fully loaded New York hot dog, delaying the mustard smeared pretzel for later.

After a good night’s sleep courtesy of faithful friends and colleagues Marlene and Helene, I am off from their wonderful apartment on East 93rd Street determined to walk all the way to Times Square. Second Ave. now is overwhelmed with a new subway going in underground and the blasts of dynamite regularly raise the ire and shake the very building foundations of neighbors.

But business must go on and so I pass the shops showing only women’s hats, or thousands of options in olive oil, delis and fruit stands. I watch in admiration as a young mother is determined to get her photo of her little son trying to maneuver his skateboard in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.

I work my way west into that most marvelous green heaven called Central Park. Baby carriages of all descriptions are pushed in all directions. The pushers are women from every country on earth and usually with a skin color different from the baby being tended – who all seem to be white. Then I notice the competition and yet harmonious sharing of space all around me. That woman is leading a class in yoga. There is the small musical trio with traditional brass while barely out of earshot is the guy beating the rhythms of his country on a set of pots and pans. Tourists mingle with lovers weaving their way around pre-school outings. Horse drawn carriages glide next to skateboards, wheelchairs, and pedicabs while just outside the Park the New York cabs stream by as in an unruly funeral procession.

I leave the Park and enter the Plaza Hotel. I need to stir those memories of high tea in the vast entryway, drinks at the Oak Bar and the remembrance that the last time I stopped there it was on my way home from a grand event at the top of The World Trade Center. I must at least pay a quick visit to the Trump Tower and recall the serendipitous visit I had with a resident of that address who had invited me aboard his big yacht moored in the Bahamas when he was there for vacation and I was there to mediate a conflict at a Lutheran church/school.

I make it to Times Square in time for lunch. I sit at the bar, sip my beer and reflect on my years in New York. I recall those incredibly committed teachers and parents of the more than 50 Lutheran schools there, the hard-nosed negotiations with government officials to ensure that non-public schools get their fair share of allocated state and federal funds, my time as part-time assistant to the Bishop, work at the Center for Urban Education Ministries, church/school conflict resolutions, anniversaries, the AIDS epidemic!

Memories seep in and out-and as I get ready to pay my check. The gal tending the bar looked at me and (out the blue) says “Just notice that I decided not to charge you for that second beer. It’s on me!’ And all of this takes me until only early afternoon. The evening is another story and the topic of my next blog, I Love New York (II).

Wedding Anniversary

Today is the 59th wedding anniversary of Jane and me. As I recall my expectations of that day so many years ago I realize what an optimistic and idealist young guy I was. Yet it’s even more true that my dreams have come true, my idealism was too limited, my expectations too narrow

Who could ever imagines the life we have been sharing. Our five kids, eight grandkids and the in-laws that go with all that continue to amaze and bless us. The shifts in vocation and settings for our life are in sharp contrast to what we then anticipated. Both of us then imagined very satisfying lives as teachers and possibly as principal in Lutheran parochial schools. And that could have been great. But we never dreamed of international career opportunities, service around the world, colleagues at many levels of organizations and foci as broad as our faith and as interesting as interpersonal communications.

All of this in the midst of drama and trauma, Infant daughter Elizabeth in intensive care on Christmas Eve fighting for every breath. Leaving a classroom in Kowloon just minutes before bullets streamed in from a rioting crowd outside. Flying across the Pacific with kids in tow and Jane in a coma with a cerebral aneurysm. Scrambling out of Tiananmen Square as the Chinese army moved in and mowed down protesting students (and then being unable to communicate with home for three days). Years later being stranded for days in the Far East when terror struck the World Trade Center.

Living together in 17 different apartments, homes, condos and a retirement community.

Remarkable evenings out together for dinner at places as exotic as Gaddis in the Peninsula Hotel, the top of the World Trade Center, Hawaiian beachfront lounges; and also including the best available fish stomach soup enjoyed with very poor refugee colleagues in Kowloon.

And how our Christmas card lists have changed through these 59 years, ever expanding, names being deleted, memories being amassed and support experienced beyond all reasonable expectations.

Religious perspectives deepened, faith became more profound, greater acceptance of mystery, ever-expanding inclusiveness of who is within God’s providence and care.

Increased sensitivity and skills in listening, resolving differences, sharing dreams, and disappointment and fears and deep and growing love.

No this is not what I could ever have imagined 59 years ago and yet it has all transpired and I know who and Whom to thank. On this day, too, I look not only backwards but also forward, knowing that forgiveness, love, acceptance and partnership will only be enhanced even as the number 59 moves to the next decade.

Mother’s Day 2010-Mental Images

Last year (2009) for Mother’s Day I wrote my blog on Mental Images of my late Mom. I have discovered there are more. Here is a sample.

Mother as Disciplinarian. Having 9 children with a permissive mother could have been sheer bedlam. At times our house may not have looked like the Sea of Tranquility but it surely was not because Mother did not exercise discipline. I am using the old fashioned definition of discipline as meaning the practice of a parent utilizing power to keep order, instill values, express convictions. On occasion Mother would spank. In retrospect I am a little surprised at how seldom she did this and did it with very little physical force. I do recall one particular incident. My sisters and I were supposed to have done the dishes and had been warned a couple times to get it done. We dawdled. Mother’s patience was exhausted. She lined us up in order of our age and administered the spankings. When she got to my younger sister Dorrie, Dorrie objected (in German) with, “Not me! Not me! Not me! Mama Not me!” That struck me as being very funny and I giggled. Mother did not find it funny and I got my second spanking of the evening. One other example of Mother strongly expressing her unhappiness with me was when I used the expression “son of a gun”. To Mother this was near blasphemy. She ordered me to the bathroom where (as directed) I washed my mouth out with home-made soap until it foamed. Then she set me on the steps to the upstairs and told me to think about how important it is that I watch my tongue.

Mother as Seamstress. Mother and sewing is a constant image. I see her at her trustworthy treadle-driven Singer sewing machine. She sewed dresses for my sisters, shirts for me, and aprons for all. Patches were almost a daily assignment, especially to the knees of my trousers during that season of the year when we “shot marbles” from our knees. Materials for the sewing came from, everywhere: the Henry Doering Mercantile in Walburg, from flour and sugar sacks, from parts of other older garments, from wherever. Just recalling my mom with her sewing machine, her needles, and her patterns stirs my heart with notions of being clad by love and care.

Mother as Host. Our home was always open to all and Mother was the quiet but ever-present hostess. The birthday parties were simple and predictable. No organized games, for of course kids knew how to entertain themselves. Mom saw to it that there were always homemade chicken salad sandwiches, (she slaughtered, plucked and cooked the chickens) lemonade, and an angel food birthday cake loaded with candles…and if we could afford the store-bought ice, also freshly made homemade ice cream. When I went to a boarding school 35 miles from home I knew that I could bring home one or a dozen classmates and there would be food enough for all. I even recall the Concordia High School softball team marching into our home early one morning and Mother scrambling up dozens of eggs for the whole crew. When the congregation at which my dad served as organist bought a new organ it was mom who provided a big lunch every single day for the workers who came (and took over a week) to install the organ. Her welcome mat was always out; there was always one more plate available to set and then fill with fried chicken, mashed potatoes with cream gravy and a couple fresh vegetables.

Mother NOT In Images. While I have all these wonderful mages of an active Mother I find it interesting that there are some things of which I have absolutely no image. Even though I was only number 3 of our 9 children I have no memory of ever seeing Mother pregnant. (Maybe I have no memory because as a child we were not allowed to ever say the word “pregnant” in mixed company.) I have no images of my Mother relaxing with a book to read. No images of my Mother just sitting and listening to the radio.

But there are enough memories to sustain the soul and to make Mother’s Day 2010 a day of thanksgiving for and joyful memories of my mother, Lena Doering Kieschnick.