China and the American University

While teaching at Case Western, I was asked to pair up with other professors as the writing instructor for the SAGES writing program.  One particular pairing was with a teacher who was running a class on China.  He, himself, was ethnically Chinese, though I think he was, by profession, a German instructor.  This sort of thing happened all the time at Case.  Well-to-do professors were allowed to teach classes where they weren't credentialed because... why not?  I once worked with a Polymer Engineering teacher who taught a class on World History, for instance.  I suppose, though, a guy from China knew enough to teach a basic course on China, so at least in this pairing the subject matter 'kinda sorta' fit, but it had that weird sting of academic racism one encounters when one assumes that, for instance, African American English professors know enough, innately, to teach courses on African American literature... even when they're medievalist, or something like that, by profession.

In any case: ethnically Chinese professor teaching a class on modern China.  Now, to make matters more interesting, a few of the students were Chinese nationals, who, according to the logic being used, knew about as much about China as the professor did.  In fact, the only thing the professor really had on the nationals is that he had seen Western documentaries on China, the kind of thing that would have been otherwise censored in China.

Now, here's the memory I had that inspired me to blog about it.  I was tutoring one of the students, and he was seriously mad as hell about our professor.  His complaint was that the class was basically a love letter about China and that really all it was doing was indoctrinating American students into thinking China was great.  Once he had said it aloud, I found that I agreed with him.  Something had seemed off about the class to me, and he had expressed it:  the basic tenor of the class was that China now was not Mao's China and that the West ought to think about China the way it thought about countries like England or Germany.  I was, however, taken aback at the vitriol that the student had for the professor, and I asked him what the problem was.

At first, he was reluctant, but eventually, he explained it.  He was from Taiwan.  He was raised in the nationalist ideology of Chiang Kai Shek.  He hated the communists, Mao, and probably had good, historical reasons for that hatred.  He saw our professor as an obvious enemy.  I assured him that the professor was not a representative of Communist China, but he didn't believe me.  Finally he asked, "how did I know?"

After that, I started becoming more and more suspicious, not just in that class, but all around Case.  The #1 city that the students at Case Western came from that year was Beijing (#2 was Seoul Korea).  I noticed that students were reluctant to talk about certain ideas in class.  Once, a group of Chinese students asked me about Ai Weiwei in hushed whispers.  I asked them why they were being secretive.  They told me they didn't want to be overheard and have their interests reported back to officials in their home country.  I'm not exaggerating.   That was what they told me.  When I started asking my students about their lives back in China, I learned that many were the children of high ranking party officials in their region. 

So, no joke.  To this day, I still wonder: how many of those students were really there just as students, and how many of them had another job as informants, spies, handlers, etc..  I would like to say, none, but that clearly was not the opinion of the various Chinese students who would talk to me from time to time.  They were convinced they were being watched.  Maybe it was a holdover from being raised in China... maybe their fears were real.  And that teacher?  We're now a decade past this, and I don't think any one, in this day-and-age, would expect a cuddly bear description of China.  What was that?  I still don't know.  And why would he take time away from teaching his German classes to teach a love-letter class on China?