China loves Steve Jobs & Chinese soul searching

Today the second round of the english speaking contest was held for the students who'd made it through last week. At least this time there were only 9 speeches, so it didn't take too long at all. Unfortunately, the topics were still the cliche ones you hear all the time, and again the theme of the speech was ''a word that has changed the world''. So again i heard Steve Jobs being praised over and over again by the speakers, and connected with various topics ranging from innovation, to dreams, to imagination. There was also a repeat of a speech given by another student from last week about three apples that have changed the world - the first being the apple of adam and eve from the bible, the second being the one that fell on Isaac Newton's head from a tree, and the third, well you can guess what that was.....

Obviously that speech had been lifted off somewhere else, and one of the other speeches sounded suspiciously too good in terms of their expression, spelling and grammar. Though, all four of us judges eventually chose that one as one of the two to go through to the next round since it was delivered so well. Being the second round of competition, there were fewer errors this time, and all the speakers were loud and clear enough for us to comprehend. There were still some long and awkward silences though while students tried to recall their lines, and the majority of answers given to our questions didn't address the question at all or they went off on a complete tangent.

but coming back to Steve Jobs, I don't know what it is with Chinese (or all asians), but they just all seem to worship the man like a god. I mean, yeah he changed the way we consume media, but he didn't radically change my life personally. I just touch my screen more now than press my buttons or mouse. Maybe it's cuz asian people are so much more attached to their technological devices vs western people? When i read all my student essays, one of the most common past times was surfing the web. Students either love sleeping, surfing the web, surfing the web for shopping, or playing computer games. I only read one art form being listed twice, and that was dancing.

Out of the 9 speeches we heard, two were going to be about China, and how great and perfect it was Ra Ra Ra, a speech I'd heard at least twice last week. However, after seeing the video footage for the first time of that little 2 year old chinese girl Wang Yue being hit by two cars and not aided by 18 passerbys, I wasn't in the mood to hear some glorified speech about how China and it's society was perfect and peachy. So I decided to ask a question about what bad effects she could identify from China's rapid economic growth. I wanted to see if she would talk about morals and ethics in China (because this incident has been reported here in china and has shocked the people), but she ended up talking about pollution instead.
I didn't consider this as overstepping the line since i was indirectly critiquing the society, and not the government. Indeed, even the local and federal governments here have been deeply reflecting on this incident and have vowed to take action to cure this malaise in morals and ethics.

The news reports have explained why people in general don't help out injured strangers in the street, and it's not because they are simply inhumane. those 18 people didn't stop to help the little girl after the famous case of an unscrupulous old lady successfully sueing a good samaritan who tried to help her. The woman had fallen down and the good samaritan had been kind enough to take her to hospital, only to later have this old woman turn around and accuse him of pushing her down! In the end the judge (from nanjing unfortunately), ruled that the good samaritan must have been guilty, since only the guilty would have helped a victim out!! The man was later ordered to pay for all her medical expenses.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/only-the-guilty-help-the-injured-legacy-of-the-nanjing-judge-all-too-apparent-as-passersby-ignore-hitrun-toddler-20111019-1m6sv.html

Now i can understand that reasoning, and that people are scared of being wrongfuly sued, but my god it's a bleeding two year old girl! Chinese citizens are so weary and distrustful of strangers that it has now come to this.

But from my experiences with Chinese people, they are some of the most friendliest and warmest of people to their friends and familes. It's just strangers that they seem to hold with little regard.

Some people and commentators are now looking at the broader issues of how it's come this, namely the obsessive pursuit of money and wealth. There was even some other Chinese citizen who tried to cash in on this tragedy and become famous, by playing a hoax and claiming first to be a driver, and then one of the bystanders who later helped out!

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/hit-and-run-hoaxer-wanted-to-become-famous-from-chinese-toddler-tragedy/story-e6frf7jx-1226176509442

really sickening stuff. Anyway, like i said, theres been a national outcry from the people and media here, and governments are lookng at measures to address the problem, like introducing ethics and morals education into schools. One of the shorter term fixes they've been toying with is to introduce fines for not helping citizens in need. It's something a government shouldn't have to do, but unfortunately to influence the chinese people's behaviour its going to have to come back to money again. It's so sad. I really hope the mentality changes over the next few decades.