The Paralympics, and "Cultural Difference."

The paralympics have begun!

Interestingly enough, "para-" in paralympics does not stand for paralyzed, or paraplegic, as I'd assumed before looking it up on Wikipedia, "para-" instead coming from the Greek, and meaning, "besides." So, it means, basically, an athletic competition to take place besides the Olympics (as in, next to.)

Of course, this was just quick thinking. Originally it did stand for "paraplegic," but the inclusion of people with other disabilities made this unsuitable. That's a pretty lucky coincidence, or it would be if the root of "para-" in paraplegic were not the same. But it is.

Anyway, from the official hooplah here you'd think that the Paralympics were as much of a big deal as the Olympics. (I don't mean to be dismissive, I am merely noting that in spectators, number of sports, number of participating athletes, number of advertising dollars spent, etc. etc., the Olympics overshadow their disabled brother.) I have no recollection of this being the case in Atlanta, and of course, there are basically no news stories about athletes or television coverage, what have you, in the western newspapers, unless a story makes a headline for a different reason (say in an article in the Times recently about the benefits the Paralympic athletes get as opposed to those the Olympic athletes get from the USOC.)

At first, I just thought this was China, well, being China, going graciously over-the-top as a host. They are, after all, trying to win us over. (And win over us, but that's a different matter.)

But, as I've been thinking about it, though the above is certainly still a part of the reason for the overwhelming coverage (the games are on T.V. and are similarly unavoidable on the newspapers and newscasts, plus, in Chinese, the Olympics aren't over yet, by which I mean the Olympics and the Paralympics are considered as one big event rather than, as in English, two entirely separate, if related, ones) I've come up with some other possible reasons.

China, as I've mentioned, is trying basically to pull itself one-hundred and fifty to two-hundred years forward in a generation, plus maybe a half. Part of process is acculturation. Party Elites have to do quite a lot of tugging in many different arenas to do this, since it is so drastic, and one of the areas is in manners, basically. There has been a significant improvement in the spitting all over the place, though you still see some egregious examples, like while walking in the subway tunnels, or (not kidding) hocking one up and spitting it out on the inside of the subway car door. That, of course, doesn't count on the streets, where I am far less grossed out. Lining up, too, is a fraction better than it is in Shaoxing, though mostly, still, the line is a foreign concept, and I usually just wait until everyone else is on the Subway before getting on, since, as I am accustomed to waiting for everyone to get off before I get on, I wouldn't get on before everyone else anyway. (Figure that one out, and you should chuckle.) So, I actually half-agree with the statements of the Director of the Paralympics for China below, when he mentions "cultural difference."
Beijing withdraws advice on disabled
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Olympic organizers said Thursday that they had withdrawn parts of an English translation of a guide for volunteers because of "inappropriate language" used to describe disabled athletes. Zhang Qiuping, director of the Paralympic Games in Beijing, did not offer an apology and attributed the problems to poor translation. "Probably it's cultural difference and mistranslation," Zhang said.

The Chinese-language version of the text remained online and was nearly identical to the English, using essentially the same stereotypes to refer to the disabled. A section dedicated to the disabled says: "Paralympic athletes and disabled spectators are a special group. They have unique personalities and ways of thinking." To handle the "optically disabled," the guide advised: "Often the optically disabled are introverted. They have deep and implicit feelings and seldom show strong emotions." It added, "Try not to use the world 'blind' when you meet for the first time."

Regarding the "physically disabled," the guide said: "Physically disabled people are often mentally healthy. But they might have unusual personalities because of disfigurement and disability." It went on: "Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial and introspective; they usually do not volunteer to contact people. They can be stubborn and controlling; they may be sensitive and struggle with trust issues. Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially when they are called 'crippled' or 'paralyzed.

The bit about "mistranslation" is pure crap, and usually "cultural difference" (you have no idea how often this comes up) is a desperate excuse for, say, why it's perfectly appropriate to arrest two women in their seventies for "disturbing the peace" when all they had done was apply for a permit to protest during the Olympics. (If you haven't been following that story, they were released a week after being sentenced to a year of "labor reform," with no further penalties, which also probably includes being under surveillance to a greater or lesser extent for the duration of their natural lives.)

But in this case, strangely, I actually think the guy's actually right. In the mad rush to modernize, the culture (which always lags behind the edge of innovation and social change) has been scrambling to figure out what's going on. One of the biggest changes in the west over the last two-hundred years is the changing relative importance of intellectual and physical labor. Two-hundred years ago, all you needed to be a worker was a strong back and a stupid mind, which of course favored young men. As work became less and less physically oriented, it opened up opportunities for older people (I mean, late-thirties and up,) women, and the physically disabled to enter the workforce, and, as they became more valuable to society, mistaken notions about these groups of people's intrinsic value began to change. But, in the west, this has taken a few hundred years, and lots of fighting. China still has not reached this level, either in percent of workforce engaged in mind work and not manual, or in valuing those who are not "the man," in this case, Han Chinese men.

The gap between most people's thoughts (let alone the more rural part of the population) and the guide for volunteers, then, is still rather large, and the document, even if somewhat infuriating to westerners, actually represents some sort of progress along these lines, even if it's hard to believe that as a westerner. The document, in a way, splits the difference between the cultural mind of the West and the East. Of course, since people have fought for so long to elevate the cultural conception of the disabled in the west, having an official document like this come along and enshrine stereotypes feels like regression. Again, though, this is mostly the effect of juxtaposition.

Having said that, one of the preparations for the Olympics was getting all the cripples out of sight. When I'd first gotten here it was rather common (like a few times a day) to see horribly disfigured people, some who'd obviously had work-related accidents, others with birth defects, pan-handling on the streets. So, obviously, enlightenment is coming slowly. It's another mind-numbing Orwellian contradiction, that is, that a McDonald's could have a poster outside advertising specials and marking it as a Paralympic sponsor, where just a few months ago a man who had his face burned off by something was begging for the equivalent of less than two pennies on the bench next to the store. Where did they go, exactly? I'd really like to know.

They haven't come back quite yet. But the workers have. They're pretty unmistakable. And their camps, say, next to the light rail tracks, are also rather obvious.

To be cynical, the blitzing news coverage and hangover news about the Olympic Champions and all gives the almost straight-forwardly government run news the opportunity to talk about this and relish in the distraction rather than move on to other things, like the fact that the central government just admitted that "maybe" some of the schools that fell over in the SiChuan earthquake only fell over because of "possible" faulty construction, (though no mention of corruption and why those schools were so faulty. It was blamed on the lightening fast growth.) So China's changing after all. "Maybe."

I had a conversation with one of my students recently about Sarah Palin recently that led to some of the above. In some ways, it appears as if there's been progress, and in others it's the same old China.

My student was amazed that Sarah Palin was warmly supporting her daughter (obviously she is not very familiar with the American political process) instead of being visibly angry with her. I tried to explain to her that support is exactly what this young woman needs at this point, and getting angry at her would help no one, leading to bitterness etc. at the perfectly wrong time. In China, she said, a seventeen year old would be kicked out of school immediately for this, along with the boy who got her pregnant. I was trying to get her to see the point of view that that's a terrible terrible punishment, taking away their only means of bettering their lives and supporting their child, and I think she understood that, but the dominant feeling was still, they've done something terribly wrong, they have to pay for it.

Again, very Chinese. Everyone is one huge happy family. But if you step out of line, even a little bit, you're thrown to the dogs.

My girlfriend, when I laugh about people spitting in the subway, always says the same thing "they're definatly not from Beijing," and she, modern as she is, holds a fair amount of contempt for anything not Beijing (or QingDao recently, because of a vacation we took there that was great.) Family matters stay in the family, city matters stay in the city, and country matters stay in the country. If you're in, we love you, but if you step the littlest bit out of line, you're an outsider, and you're never getting back in.

I don't necessarily advocate high-schoolers having sex (not since I graduated highschool, anyway) but they do it. It takes the most draconian of social controls to keep this from happening commonly (it still does happen in China, though it's about as hush-hush as possible) and there's always a trade-off.

So the question is, what are they losing by denying this urge?