Teaching Law in China, 1987-88
Fulbright Mid-Year Report, 1988
Foreign Affairs College, Beijing
The following short essay describing my year in Beijing is taken from the Spring, 1989, issue of The Review, the alumni magazine for the University of Kentucky College of Law.
FROM KENTUCKY TO CHINA--AND BACK
When I was in the People's Republic of China for eleven months on sabbatical leave, the world's largest (and China's only) Kentucky Fried Chicken opened in Beijing. Now when Chinese people asked me where I was from, they could associate the name "Kentucky" with something. In fact the association between Kentucky and chicken is ready-made for China since the Chinese for "Kentucky" (Ken Ta Ji) is very similar to the Chinese for "gnaw on a big piece of chicken" (Ken Da Ji).
China has an ancient culture and history far different from ours, and its politics and society are currently in a remarkable state of change. It was a fascinating time to spend in China. No longer do people all dress alike in the way we might think from our glimpses of China during the Cultural Revolution. That brutal period of over ten years of Chinese history will remain unfathomable to non-Chinese, I think. Everything remarkable that one sees or hears of seems to be a result of, or a reaction to, the Cultural Revolution. For instance, during the Cultural Revolution, it was suspicious, if not dangerous, to speak in a foreign language (other than to say, "Long live Chairman Mao.") Now it seems everyone is trying to learn English. It's taught on the TV and radio, and strangers will ride up next to you while you are riding your bicycle and ask to accompany you so that they can practice their English.
As a Fulbright senior lecturer, I received a stipend from the USIA, along with airfare and an amount from which to buy books for the students in China. The host institution provided my housing, a comfortable hotel room in a large complex of hotels and apartments called the Friendship Hotel. I ate most of my meals in the "Dining Room for Foreign Experts" in the hotel complex. The food was consistently good when one stuck to the Chinese side of the menu, which I did. I also ate at local restaurants on occasion, and ate lunch in the student dining room at my school on class days. I enjoyed eating in China, ate plenty of Peking Duck, shrimp, pork, chicken, vegetables (especially Chinese cabbage), and rice, went to numerous banquets, and lost 10 or 15 pounds without even trying. What a deal!
I taught public international law, and American tort law, to graduate students at the Foreign Affairs College. The College is run by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, primarily as a source of diplomats. An Institute of International Law is part of the College. The Institute provides instruction in law to undergraduate and graduate students; it also serves as the administrative center of the Chinese Society of International Law. My classes were small: 10 or 12 graduate students plus one or two auditors. At first I thought my students would all become either teachers or foreign ministry bureaucrats, but not lawyers. But many of them will do what we would consider legal work at the foreign ministry, and several are taking the Chinese version of the bar exam (a post-Cultural Revolution phenomenon).
From numerous warnings at two orientations, I was told that Chinese students will simply not participate in class. This turned out to be untrue for me. At least in a small classroom where the students know each other, where 9 out of 10 students are fluent in English, and where the teacher demands class participation (my excuse is that it's the only way I know how to teach!), Chinese students will talk in class. I was enormously pleased to find that my students asked questions, disagreed with each other, disagreed with me, and generally participated fully as much in class as my students at UK.
Travel took up much of my free time. Two and a half years ago I took a three-week sightseeing tour of China; this was how I originally got interested in the country. Now there were many places to see that one could never get to in three weeks. New places to see included Chengde (emperor's mountain resort); Qufu (Confucius' birthplace); Datong (coal country and famous Buddhist grottoes); Xiamen (across from Quemoy and Matsu); Kunming (springtime all year long); and Chengdu (capital of Sichuan). During the February break between semesters I spent two weeks in Korea on Army Reserve duty, stopping in Tokyo for three days on the way. And in July just before coming home I took a tour of the "Silk Road" deep into Xinjiang Province in the far northwest. Oases in the desert, Moslem people who looked more Persian than Chinese, signs in Arabic script, Kazak horsemen racing by an Alpine lake below snowcapped mountains--it was a whole different scene. Although I traveled sometimes on my own, I usually went on tours arranged for "foreign experts." Individual tourists booking train or plane trips simply cannot book the return trip before arriving at the destination, so if you have to be back by a certain time, you almost have to take a tour.
Knowing that it is virtually impossible to understand a country without understanding the language, I tried to learn Chinese by taking evening classes. People who say that Chinese is a difficult language are correct. I made some progress, though, and enjoyed the class. I also took lessons in taiqi, or Chinese shadowboxing. These lessons decreased my awkwardness for a little bit every day, and also introduced me to a friend through whom I was asked to co-host a variety show on Chinese television: the English Service New Years Eve Gala. Not only did I help introduce (in English) various Chinese song and dance acts, but I was also persuaded, against my better judgment, to sing some songs.
I balked at singing "Jingle Bells," which the Chinese seem to think is every American's favorite song. In addition to "Frere Jacques" in English, French, and then Chinese, I sang "My Old Kentucky Home." So for a few minutes, for a potential television audience of millions of Chinese, "Kentucky" was associated not with fried chicken, but rather with an off-key law professor in a borrowed tuxedo, singing about his home in the United States.
Back in Lexington since August, I'm pretty reaccustomed to life in the United States. I'll never forget my friends and my experiences in China, and I hope to return there in the future, if only for shorted periods. In a way that is hard to explain, though, the way that I look at things in America is affected by having lived for eleven months in a nation with the system, the culture, the history, and the language so vastly different from ours.