Summertime, and the living is, crap.

Interesting assumptions break down here for me all the time. At the beginning of the summer, I had been talking to my students about what summer is like in China. At first, I was really confused, but the more and more I dug into it, the more I understood my students inability to understand what the heck I was talking about.

Summer, I have always felt, is a magical time. Things just feel different. BBQs, the freedom of being off from school, (or taking long weekends at work,) going to the beach, or camping, or a lake, drinking a beer outside with friends, playing frisbee in the park or basketball, the fourth of July, ice cream parlors... this is really just the beginning. In short, summer is really different. I tried to get my students to talk about this earlier in the summer, with mostly black stares coming back.

It turns out, summer is no different in China than the rest of the year, and actually, kind of worse for all concerned. There are few individual vacations, everyone has the same national holidays off, and kids, while they aren't in school, are pressured by parents to take more outside of school classes, (like my English class,) plus, they still have to do a few hours of homework every day for their regular school (this was a real surprise to me) and they don't get to see their friends. Plus, it's too hot. All of this adds up as the answer "nothing" to the question, "what's special about summer in China?"

Kids actually like school, really really like school. They get to play with their friends, and, since there's no alternative, they don't know anything else. You might have liked school too if "not school" actually meant more work and less play with your friends. School, for them, is life, and so, since they like life, they like school.

Keep this in mind as you read about China, about how families aren't grieving after the earthquake (see my last post,) or about the post "A beautiful but disturbing day."