From summer to winter, what have I learned?

The firewood in the living room makes cracking sound. I look at the fire: it’s yellow and slightly red. I further look into the fire near the burning wood area: it’s blue, slightly purple. I also prepare the fire in the sauna room. It’s getting so hot inside that I come to stand in the backyard. The air is cold and clear. I can hear the sound from far away. I close my eyes and I feel so content. What a beautiful and tranquil winter in my life!

I think of my parent’s house in another village on this planet. Fire there is only used to cook. We burn the dry hay not the firewood. Later on, we started to use gas (stove) and briquettes (stove). Winter there is wet and cold, which is a different kind of cold compared with Finland. We have to wear more inside than outside, thanks to the warmth of the sun. It’s really a pity that we have never thought of build sauna. Nevertheless, we don’t even have heating system inside the house. We had to prepare hot water in the glass bottle and put it under the quilt so as to warm the bed. The glass bottles were usually cleaned transfusion bottles, hence they were leakproof. Nowadays, there are hot-water bags on the market. The first time when I was visiting Finnish school in Oulu, I was filled with jealousness. Students take off their jacket and shoes and leave them in the corridor. They don’t need to warm their hands with their breath or rub their hands together to generate warmth. I thought of my classmates who were suffered from chilblain. They probably will feel more jealous if they visit Finland.

Lately I get more opportunities to look at students here in different circumstances other than classrooms: the Independence Day celebration, the Christmas celebration, the regular performance of music academy etc. More than once, I cried over their talent. It’s not simply jealous but an eye-opening astonishment that human development can be on such different levels. Kalajoki is just a town. If I take a stroll from the town hall to Havula, I feel like going back to my hometown. But I know they are enormously different. The local community here provides all kinds of activities and services for people of different ages. People have the freedom to choose what to do. This benefit is especially evident to youngsters.

Whereas, in my hometown, little is provided for its residents. Yle[1] lately reported one article about China, in which it mentioned that China’s villages have little to do with children. According to researchers, this is one of the reasons why many people are hooked to the phone. Though I would say that: China’s villages have little to do with residents’ life but survival. The article continues: a middle class child in Beijing can have more hobbies than those who live in the villages. The cities of China are full of shopping malls which have activities for children: play schools, places to do handcrafts, toy heavens, pink colored wonderlands, that the Finnish kids cannot even dream of. Villages have barely nothing but fields and silent roads. In the villages, there are a few kiosks, police station and wrinkled grandmas. No wonder kids there are so excited about looking at screens. –Things has changed dramatically in the past few years, the fact that there is a huge gap between Chinese village and city has never been changed but intensified. It explains why I don’t really have hobbies.

Looking back, it has been 4 months since I took my first walk from where I live to Havula. I decided to take another walk before I travel back to China. Not many people on the road but many cars parked outside of K-supermarket, I guess S-market, HalpaHalli as well. People are preparing for Christmas, like what we do for Chinese New Year. Kalajoki, the river, has frozen with a layer of snow on top of it. A man is fishing on the ice. I stop and look at him from far away. I can even hear him making the sound because everything is quiet and still. I take off my gloves to take a picture. Soon my fingers are numb from the cold so I continue my walk. Not much changed from summer to winter in Kalajoki except the weather.

I noticed a letter box with a familiar last name by the roadside. Not many things happened in the past 4 moths, except I have gotten to know more people, mainly my students. Fortunately, I have also gotten to know them more outside of the classroom. Sometimes I wonder, why they are so different inside and outside classrooms? I couldn’t figure it out. But one thing is getting clear to me: they have much more diversified and versatile life after school. Not like vast majority Chinese students[2], who are confined to grades and school life, Finnish students are free to develop as they would like.

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[1] https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10550979 Translated by friends Alina and Kukka.

[2] A few Chinese students from privileged family background can choose not to participate the national exams and apply to schools abroad, for instance US, UK etc.

A letter to my International Studies Students and the others who are also interested

Like many of you, I am also asking myself: who am I? What am I up to? I live on a one-year contract in Kalajoki with you guys. Naturally, I often have to answer the same question from different people: what’s your next plan?

At the very beginning, I was so much struggling that I replied without ever thinking: I simply just want to survive this year, really! Plus, the sudden and thorough darkness sucked away my remaining energy. I was very surprised to listen back to the audio file I made some weeks ago: extremely slow speed and it makes me believe that there MUST be some technological problems.

Nevertheless, I start to think: What have I done with your group? What have I learned from you? What am I going to do with you in the next 4 periods and what am I up to after it? To answer those, I would like to bring the question I have mentioned in the audio file and the same question I have asked many times in Merenojan Koulu: how are you connected to the world outside yourselves? But before answering that question, I want to ask one more: “who we are and how we are connected?”

By meeting me nearly once a week for 2 periods, I think you somehow start to know me more. If not, I would like inviting you to read this part of introduction of me. By meeting you nearly once a week for 2 periods, I slowly start to know each of you a bit more. I started to laugh in my seat when I feel like I get to some of you more by reading the sticky notes (see photos below) you didn’t want from the class. It’s the certain level of curiosity, respect, trust and more importantly the humor (see photos below), I received from you, that I decided to write this letter, which I believe is one way to build the connection between us, which meanwhile help to answer the first 4 questions in the previous paragraph.

If you remember the Middle Autumn Festival we celebrated together, then you must remember the moon cakes: the samples for tasting, the experience we did in the home economics classroom and the final batch of over 200 mooncakes I prepared for that Day. I wasn’t ready/confident/comfortable enough to ask for help from you at that time so I spent almost one month by myself in researching, experimenting, AB testing, optimizing the mooncake recipe and baking. In the end, I even managed to build a production-line for myself in the home economics classroom. It was a very exciting moment to me, at the same time frustrating. Frustrating in terms of frequently failures. No matter how strictly I control the variables, the final products weren’t the same. Exciting in terms of constant learning experience. I have never noticed there were so much I could learn from baking: it’s the first time I had to use oven on my own; the first time I had to use different kinds of precise measurements in baking; the first time I did many times experiments in order to observe the changes of final products if I changed certain variables; the first time I had to plan on the level of scaling the production; and the first time I started to admire the process of making something, even as simple as a mooncake, not even mentioning a car or a software.

I guess all those what I feel excited is very normal to you. It’s like I have to worry about where I will be after my work visa is ended, because my passport has a very high restriction in terms of traveling or staying in other countries. Whereas, the passport that you are holding ranks number 2 around the world. Likewise, the education in Finland provide you equal opportunity to learn what is necessary to know, at the same time leave you so much freedom and autonomous to develop what you are interested into. By the way, I think this is the best part of Finnish education.

It’s not the case in my country. I was very excited about my discovery and learning experience in mooncake making and I told my friends and colleagues in China that I plan to bring the Home Economics subject into Chinese secondary school curriculum after finishing my work in Finland. Most of them again surprised by my rash idea. They said: secondary school students are too busy to learn how to cook because they have to prepare for Zhongkao (high school entrance exam) and then Gaokao (National University entrance exam); upper-class parents will hire helper to cook and do housework, why do they need to learn this course in school; middle-class parents will do everything for their kids and even their grandchildren, why do they need to learn this course in school. I asked my aunt, whose son is now 8^th grader in Shenzhen, whether she wants to let her son attend this lesson. She said: Xiang, I think it’s a good idea. But you may want to try in primary school or high school, because junior secondary school students are too busy. I know what she means. All those criticizes pour into me. I feel suffocated.

I decided to read some news to distract my attention after waking up. There are so many things happening in the world every second, and I normally clicked into the ones which are related to China. On Monday morning, two big news related to China. One is that “In China, Desperate Patients Smuggle Drugs. Or Make Their Own.” And the other is “Young Activists Go Missing in China, Raising Fears of Crackdown.” I read it and I feel deeply ashamed and sad. Finns often feel proud of being Finns when you are abroad, I guess? But being a Chinese, I feel so ashamed. Compared with my friend in New York, I am much fortunate in a way that people in Kalajoki don’t really care about China that much. But my friend in NY often has to face the conversation regarding “what do you think of what is happening in China”… Deeply shameful! Especially when lots of people in my family or my village died of cancer or suffer from cancer; especially when you know some of the people who went missing and you admired and still admire them very much. They were the graduates who fought their way to the so-called top-tier universities and they kept fighting for what they have learned and believed in. For instance, this group of young activists are fighting for ideals of Marx and Mao and align themselves with workers’ right in China. However, in the end, they went missing... One of them were dragged into the unknown car in his university, the Peking University. I haven’t studied there but I have known many people graduated from there.

I don’t know how much you could relate to my anger and helpless. I walked around in the staff room. I don’t know what to do next. I have a job, I know. I can always work. But what’s next?

Many people developed a safe coping mechanism. My sister is one of them. She said: I look down upon people like you, sister! You can’t change anything. Why can’t you just be like me, shut up, work hard and live in the moment? I replied: You are a complete nihilism. Shameful that we have so many people thinking like you and we will cry when the crisis hits us. It’s not our turn yet but it will come!

I learned that nation is a “imagined community”. But it’s in our blood, intertwining with language, culture, taste and so on. I can’t get rid of it because I can’t change all my blood. Can I? Should I try to go back to that Risky Land with my surreal goal? Should I try to find a Wonder Land but change my blood? It’s such a dilemma that I have no idea what’s the next. Fortunately, I still can stay here and have fun, in the darkness but not really as cold.

I like writing. A friend said, by writing, we are looking for people who are similar to us. I agreed so much. I guess you all have you own ways to find people like you. What are your ways? By which ways, we are able to connected? May you please let me know you by your own way? If you don’t mind, of course.

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading and looking forward to hearing from you.