Context?! What's that?

Julie: My questions is for the students... Do you think there is racism in China?
The students: No.
...
*silence*
...
Julie (slightly stunned): But... okay... But some people seem to be having an opinion that all the foreigners are rich!
The students (smiling): YEEEEESSSSSS!
Julie: You see, that is NOT true! This is a prejudice based on the physical appearance of a person. This is a form of racism!
The students: NOOOOOOOO!
Dasha (whispering to Julie and I): Haven't you read their textbooks?! There is no racism in China!


Félix: So, what do you want to do after your studies here?
The students: Go to post-grad.
Félix: Do you want to go abroad?
Student 1: Well, it costs much money, I don't know if I can get a scholarship...
Student 2: I got a chance to go to Canada. But Canada is dangerurs.
Félix: *puzzled look*
Student 2: Well yeah, people have guns in Canada, right?


(Félix is looking at the sexy video on Chinese friend's computer)
Félix: Damn she is (*********censored********)... Hey, that's some japanese script, isn't it? I thought you hated the Japanese!
Chinese friend: Yes I do! But I don't hate the beauty of the girl.



OK, OK, for the Chinese-Japanese relations, I can understand a bit, or try to at least. Because, there's one thing I can put myself into, called CONTEXT.

Now, because of the said importance of context, I can't even write this damn text without thinking about every single word I put down because of the consequences it may carry and what it may imply. You see, it would be simplistic to affirm that the Chinese are racist or ignorant. It would be also simplistic to put it on cultural differences, history, or lack of information (let's be honest for two seconds... I looked up "China" on wikipedia not earlier than two hours ago and got firewalled). The sad truth, as with any contorversial story (T-words anyone?), is that to some extent it is just a huge heteorgen mix of all the above. Anyway I'm not a fucking sociologist, just a dude who lives in China and notices the facts.

Every Monday in the college, there is an activity called Multicultural Corner. It starts with a 30-minute presentation by a foreign teacher on a given topic, followed by a movie usually about the same topic. 30 to 40 minutes is pretty damn short to introduce students (who speak English as a second language and at various levels) to things they have never even been exposed to, but yeah... Therefore, most of the time they get it completely wrong, and I fully understand, I mean how could it be another way?! Expose a bunch of Canadian students to something they have never heard of with a minimal contextualization and see what happens!

For example, after the presentation of SuperSize Me and the long and semi-exhaustive contextualisation given by two of my colleagues, some students had some odd questions. Sure, they're not dumb and fully understand that not "every" American is morbidly obese, but one student asked me "Wow, people in America eat McDonald's 3 times a week? They must be very rich!" You see, in China, McDicks, KFC, Pizza Hut and all the other fast-food chains are widespread and pricey. It is seen as a sign of upper-middle-class wealth to have a Big Mac or a fried chicken deal once in a while... So despite the contextualisation, they still look at the movie from a Chinese perspective (I mean, they ARE Chinese!).

Also, a few weeks ago I presented the movie about Maurice Richard. I worked pretty hard on my Powerpoint presentation in which I tried to contextualize the relations between Anglos and Francos (15 minutes of simple English for a topic that people write PhD theses about...) and also, of course, hockey. I explained in every way possible that while violence is present in nowadays hockey, it is quite marginal and severely punished, but when I told them that I like to play hockey, they all said "WHAT?!", thinking that I'm some kind of hardass that hits guys on the head with wooden sticks.

These two anecdotes are quite harmless... but when it comes to a touchy topic like "Race relations in the USA", the topic for tonight, well... You can only cross your fingers.

My buddy Phill, who was handling the slideshow, nailed it in my humble opinion. He managed to cover such an extensive topic without just sailing the surface or going on a one-way trip to pointless-stupid-ass-anecdote-with-irrelevant-picture-Land. He introduced the key words, went at the right pace, everything. He concluded with something along the lines of "Racism is considered shameful by most Americans. We can only acknowledge the complexity and importance of the issue instead of trying to ignore it."

Then, there was a question period from which the very first exchange in this blog is from. Contextualization, sociocultural perpective or not, the Chinese students just did the exact opposite of what is in Phill's conclusion. Seeing things from one perspective is one thing, but openly denying the facts that jump in your face is another. I'll let you (my faithful 8 readers) draw your own conclusion about this.