The Law Dawg – unleashed
What I saw in China
By Jim Walsh

Having returned from a 12-day tour of China earlier this summer, I offer the following observations. China is hot and humid in the summer — like Houston, only worse. China is way overcrowded, even though the one-child policy has been in effect for a generation now. There is very little privacy in China; people are always around, and many activities (cooking, shopping and socializing) that we do inside in the United States are done outdoors in China. I even saw dental work going on outside.

Our tour included a visit to a public school in a rural area. The school is partially sponsored by Viking River Cruises, which is the tour company my wife and I used. Although it was summer vacation, the students and their teacher came to school for the day for the sole purpose of meeting and greeting the 250-plus visitors from the West.

The classroom we visited was Spartan, to say the least. Plain, old-fashioned, wooden desks were lined up in rows. A few old pictures hung on the walls. Very little color and no technology at all. If the Chinese are going to take over the world, they are not going to do it from this classroom. The children — ages 8 to 12, or so — were delightful. They were enthusiastic, friendly and interested in their visitors. They sang for us, and we sang “The Wheels on the Bus” for them.

We learned a lot on this trip as we traveled from Shanghai to Xi’an to Beijing. We learned that capitalism has come to China. The Chinese people are griping about real estate speculators, the high cost of condos in the city, and the growing gap between rich and poor. Western culture is fully evident in the big cities and among the young people. We not only saw many KFC and McDonald’s restaurants, but also numerous Yankees caps and NBA-related jerseys.

We learned that education is compulsory for nine years only. Moreover, it is customary for well-off parents to provide “red envelopes,” containing cash payments, to the teachers. One of the tourists asked the tour guide why such bribery would be necessary in a public school. The guide explained that there might be as many as 60 children in the classroom; a cash payment to the teacher guarantees that the child in question will not be ignored.

Looking at China through my lawyer’s eyes, I noticed right away that the country’s infrastructure is not at all accessible to people with physical disabilities. And after a while, I took note of what I was not seeing: bumper stickers. Estimates are that there are somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000 new automobiles on the road in Beijing every day. The only bumper stickers I saw on cars said: “Baby on Road.” (Their unique phrasing of our “baby on board.”)

I asked our excellent tour guide, a Chinese native who uses the English name Patrick, about the absence of bumper stickers. He seemed unfamiliar with the concept, so I explained that we Americans like to express our opinions on the bumpers of our cars.

“Oh,” Patrick said, “so you can say something funny?” And I replied: “It might be something funny, or it might be something political. It might say: ‘I like Obama’ or ‘I don’t like Obama.’”

Patrick said, “Oh, no, we could not do that here.”

I was very aware that this conversation was taking place in Tiananmen Square, with the picture of Chairman Mao looming in the background.

I was impressed with the resourcefulness, industriousness and friendliness of the Chinese people. The Chinese are appropriately proud of their history and culture, and they are eager to take their rightful place as one of the great nations of the world. But no bumper stickers. That tells me all I need to know about the level of personal freedom these 1.5 billion people enjoy.

It was good to get back home to the land of the free, the home of the brave and the birthplace of the First Amendment.

JIM WALSH is editor in chief of Texas School Business. He is also a school attorney with the firm of Walsh, Anderson, Brown, Gallegos and Green PC. He can be reached at jwalsh@wabsa.com.