A late self-introduction from IS teacher assistant

你好！

I am Xiang, the current International Studies teacher assistant at Kalajoki Lukio. Sorry that I came here to introduce myself after almost 3 months’ life in Kalajoki. Time flies, isn't it? I am right now listening to Khalid’s songs when writing this blog. One of the most amazing parts of working as teacher here is that I have learned a lot from my students, especially their taste of music. J

I was born and raised up in a small village near Shanghai. The total population of that village is about 3,350. However, the usual residents is probably less than half because most of us work in the cities to earn money. We normally come back for family dinner during Chinese New Year’s Eve.

As the “so-called” top student in my town, I got admitted to one of those prestigious universities in Beijing, capital city of China, to get my university’s degree in 2005. That supposed to be the most successful moment in my life because we all thought my residential identity would change from village to city. If I managed to get married and own a house in Beijing, then I could probably lift my whole family from the village.

China developed and transformed dramatically during the past 30 years. My family were incapable of understanding what is going on all the time, so I was. We survived to the extent what we could see and reach. By then, we all believed that I would get a decent job if I finished my university degree in that top university. That’s what we were told by the society.  

I did an internship as an assistant to the owner of a loansharking company in Beijing after 4 years’ study in International Business. During those 4 years, I had won National Scholarship and School Scholarships because of my good marks in school. Here came my first time to book a flight ticket online for my boss. I searched on Baidu (equivalent to Google in China) and it linked me to Hainan Airline’s website. I input all the information and soon I received a call from the company. I didn’t remember the details anymore, but I was asked to go to the ATM and put some confirmation number. I did what I was asked to and after I pressed the “Enter” button on the ATM, I realized that I just transferred about RMB60,000 from my boss’s bank account to another person’s account. By then, my tuition in university is RMB5,000 a year and I had 2 years loan, which was RMB10,000 in total. I asked the bank to stop the transfer, the staff in the back said they couldn’t do it. I went back to the office and tried to open the website again and found the website was invalid. I went to the police station and reported everything to the policeman. When I was waiting in the lobby, the other staff said to me that: you were tricked by someone else and people normally wouldn’t get the money back in case like this.

I was astonished. And that’s what I got after studying 16 years in schools and always as the top student in terms of all kinds of tests. All the trust (towards bank, police system, big companies like Baidu) I have learned in school went bankrupt. That’s the moment I started to question the education I have received in general. You could argue that I didn’t receive enough parenting education, I was/am stupid or whatever. But I want to change something in the education that stupid people like me can start their real life smoother and easier.

This incident planted a seed inside me, that I always wanted to make some change in education. Later on, I got chance to work with people from different walks of life: Chinese people from different social classes and different generations, foreigners who are experts in different areas and want to get a slice of the cake from the huge economic development in China. They more or less shed a light on my way in searching of how things work in this country, which by the way is almost as big as the whole Europe. My last job before heading to Finland (to get my master’s degree in Education and Globalisation in University of Oulu in 2016) provided me opportunities to visit many places in China: from south to north, from east to west. Many foreigners know one of the greatest Chinese artist called “Ai Weiwei”, however, I admire his father “Ai Qing” the most. Ai Qing was a poet. My favorite line from one of his powerful poems says:

为什么我的眼里常含泪水？因为我对这土地爱得深沉。Why are teardrops always welled in my eyes? Because I’m deeply in love with this land.

The more I travel inside China, the more I love this country, its people and how they struggle to live in such a enormously transformative society, as the projections of my own life. From the media, you can only see parts of it; whereas from your own eyes and heart, you see deeper and further. The seed of changing tiny part of its education starts sprouting.

My current boss, Mr. O'Gorman :) said, you could introduce yourself by posting pictures you have taken during your traveling. But in my opinion, pictures are so powerless since we can easily find them online. There are enormous information on line, how much do we really care? Furthermore, why should we care?

By the moment I wrote here, I suddenly want to post some pictures of the cities I have been to. For your interest and for my memory on this cloudy Sunday. The pictures are listed chronologically.

Annual dinner party in January 2013. @ Beijing

After the 1^st marathon in my life in 2014. It’s a very smoggy day. @ Beijing

@ Xiamen, south China

The Terracotta Army. @ Xi’an

Winter in Beijing.

With my reading club friends. @ restaurant in Beijing

My home village in a Sunny winter.

The Annual Family Dinner I have mentioned above.

Kitchen at my parents’ house.

@ Dalian in May, north China

@ Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Snow mountains, clean lakes, desert and sweet fruits.

Jiuzhaigou, southwestern region of China. Its elevation ranges from 2,000 to 4,500 meters.

I finished my second Beijing marathon in 2015 with the little boy in the middle. He was 7 at that time.

Farming in our village, without the helper from tractors.

By visiting them back in my home village in October, 2015, I made the decision to apply my master’s degree in Finland, a county has the highest equality in education. The little girl in the picture said to me: I like running. I asked her: why don’t you run then? She answered: my mother will not like that. I said: Did you ask her? She answer: No, I am afraid to… The boy right behind him asked me: what is the difference between Meiguo (USA in Chinese) and Waiguo (Foreign countries in Chinese)? He was 10 years old and it was her second year in studying English by that time.

Please let me know what else you want to know about China if it interests you. You can find me in schools and you are also welcomed to write your comments here. I am sorry if I somehow made the first blog of our International Studies 2018-2019 course a bit personal. I will start to regularly post more about what we have done in our course. Thanks for reading it and I hope you enjoyed.