By AIDAN PERRICONE Special to the Palisadian-Post China has always been a bit of a mystery to me because I could never find more than little tidbits of information about its modern culture and teenage life. That changed last summer, when I was accepted into the Junior Statesman of America (JSA) Diplomat Program and traveled with 24 other American high school kids to Beijing for a month-long program. The smog was thick and the air muggy, making it nearly impossible to see the city on the flight in. When we got off the plane the sky was dark gray, and that didn’t change for much of the trip. Usually all we could see was the street we were on; everything else was turned into gray, vague shapes. Chinese sanitation was awful. The sidewalks were uneven, the streets smelled like a mix of human and machine waste, and most toilets were just holes in the ground. We couldn’t drink the tap water, either. Once we were inside the dorm at University Normal, things got better, since the walls and floors were generally clean, and the furniture was nice. We had class five hours a day, divided between Chinese history and language. We were required to write 10 essays and take 15 tests. We were assigned Chinese ‘buddies,’ who asked to be paired with a JSA student in order to learn more about our culture and language. Over the next few weeks, we got to know our buddies really well as we went boating, explored the city, visited the Beijing Zoo, searched for ancient temples in the historic Hohai district, played video games and walked around Beijing’s art districts. We learned that Chinese students go to school five days a week from 7:20 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and have vacations during the Chinese New Year and during the summer, although many go to private schools during that time. All of the students we associated with had cell phones and aren’t allowed to have girlfriends until college. Most of the boys we met love sports and video games, with shooting games like “Call of Duty” the favorite. Soccer and basketball are the most popular sports, and my buddy “Wheet” played hoops every day. After school, we had free time for study, field trips or exploring. We went to many different restaurants, and my personal favorite was a little shop called “Dumplings” that sold pork dumplings for 5 yuan (77 cents) a bag. I noticed that people on the street, in general, have a different personal body space. One vendor started shouting “red dragon,” and showed us a red marble dragon in a case. When I said “bu yao” (don’t want), he grabbed my shoulder, and I had to pull myself from his grip. When I was in the Forbidden City, my friend Miranda and I were trying to take a photo when a young Chinese man walked up beside us. He stood next to me and stared for a few seconds, before giving me a big smile. I also found that the Chinese have a more relaxed attitude towards the death of animals. At the Beijing Zoo, we stopped at a lemur exhibit and my friend noticed that there was a small pile of dead chicks under a lemur play structure. Out of nowhere, a hedgehog, which is an herbivore, ran up to a baby chick, grabbed it by the throat, and killed it. The locals were unfazed, but we Americans were horrified. On a different trip, a barely alive bird was flopping around on the sidewalk, and I watched people walk by and kick it to the side. Despite these differences, China is a lot like America with its capitalist economy and culture. It is modernizing incredibly fast, but it seemed that the Chinese culture was strangely empty. The traditional, thousands-of-years-old culture that I had expected was hard to find. I began to realize that the policies of Mao Zedong, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, had taken an enormous toll. During the Cultural Revolution, thousands of historical monuments were destroyed and urban residents were sent to the countryside while teenage ‘Red Guards’ looted homes of traditional items. Because of this, I believe China lost a lot of its historical culture and has since been adopting the West’s. From hiking the Great Wall to boating with my Chinese buddies to trying to communicate with shopkeepers, I dove into Chinese society. Learning about another country has helped me understand my own, and that kind of objective understanding is hard to come by staying in the States. I enjoy belonging to Palisades High JSA, a nonprofit that is responsible for organizing the Diplomat Program and provides the next generation of lawmakers and staffers a place where they can learn and practice political skills. We attend conventions, but they are expensive and discourage many of our economically disadvantaged members from going. I have spearheaded multiple fundraising campaigns to remedy this problem, but we also welcome contributions, which are tax-deductible. Checks, made out to Palisades JSA, may be sent to P.O. Box 1328, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272. Perricone is the son of Michael Perricone and Nora Jahna of Pacific Palisades and a junior at PaliHi.
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