Just yesterday (02/21/2014), I had to teach a junior high school aged girl how to hang up her own coat. I was astounded. Annoyed. Flabbergasted. Just beside myself because I was having to take care of nearly a dozen other kids at the same time, and I just didn't have time for that.
Either she really didn't know how to hang up her coat, or she was quite simply passively aggressively trying to avoid the chore. But like so many behaviors here in South Korea, it is often incredibly difficult to tell what's going on inside all those black haired heads.
I'd watch again and again as she'd loosely drape the coat onto the hanger and it'd slide right off and hit the floor. I'd look into her eyes and she'd appear to be smiling that typical inner smile I've seen in Asia in a host of different countries in this region. That little smirk, that satisfied infinitesimally tiny grin that is almost indiscernible. Almost.
She'd then turn to walk back to her seat. I'd have to pick the coat up yet again, and again, just to show her, "here, button the top button." Then I'd shake the coat on the hanger to clearly show that now it would not come off easily. Naturally, all I got in reply was a barely discernible nod. No thank yous. No other acknowledgement. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Then, she went back and sat down.
Now, in an attempt to be as fair as possible, and to give as much of a benefit of the doubt as humanly possible (because I'm not a jerk, and I always try to be fair, kind, patient and open minded - AND I DID NOT COME HERE TO GET FED UP WITH THE BEHAVIORS HERE, on this half of the Korean peninsula - often to the point where I just want to smack the whole passive aggressive lot of them), most Koreans don't hang up their coats. But I have frequently seen them fold them up and put them on the floor somewhere. Which doesn't really work all that well in "modern," rapidly westernizing South Korea, as one might guess.
So, more often than not, the kids just set their stuff down on the floor any old place when they come tearing into class, and of course their stuff gets a bit dirty and banged up, as their little discarded garments, books and what have you, frequently fall off the back of their little chairs and off the tops of their small desks.
Sometimes, the coats just get tossed onto a nearby desk or even directly onto the floor. And then the other kids carelessly trample it in their carefree haste. Or even worse, I have to watch the little owner of the coat step on their own sleeves from time to time. Kids, right?
But most days, it's an enormous amount of work trying to pick up after even the older people here, as even they tend to just casually discard trash in the streets. Seems it's somebody else' job to clean up after them! And it's just always been that way, I gather. Ah, the poison that still lingers from the old imperial Chinese system. The system of master versus slave. What I call the GOD/DOG way of doing things. Somebody either waits on you hand and foot, or... you wait on someone else hand and foot.
That's a pretty pathetic excuse for equality. But we are talking about the medieval way, aren't we? All that old stuff is nowadays going the way of the Dodo in rapidly moderizing Asia, isn't it? Well... isn't it? Not really, I'm afraid. No.
But, I guess I should try to remember that most Koreans have slept on the floor for centuries. Slavery as a national institution, and servitude to god emperors and kings in general, is a very big part of Korean history. Likewise, wardrobes, until very recently, in these hopefully modernizing times, have been virtually non-existent for most everyday folk. Until at least the late 20th century, anyway.
Either way, it's often a pretty tough job, having to serve as a little foreign "pooper scooper" for all the people here in Asia. And sadly, some days, I can do little more than stare up into the sky, the only place where there is yet not much human litter, and mutter in exhaustion, "Lord, lift this burden from me."
So, I guess the moral of the story is:
If you happen to chance upon someone doing something that you already know how to do, in a somewhat slow, careful, or even what may appear to be a clumsy fashion, do back off and think first. Odds are, they are simply trying to methodically teach themselves the proper way. Or they haven't yet quite figured out how.
So don't jump in to selfishly show them up for your own public face and sense of smug satisfaction. If you really are "better," you will seek to serve and teach them gently and carefully. You will genuinely help, not just show off. Because it might be you who doesn't know how the next time around. Remember that.
Unless... that is, they're just being PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE little people who can't be bothered, it often seems, to wipe their own damn butts! But that IS the parenting style here in Asia - despite the deceptively "positive" stereotypes about homogeneity, good study habits and mutual cooperation that Westerners are taught to believe and idolize about the Far East. And I shouldn't even have to say it ain't all so. 'Cause it just ain't.
You see, most Asian parents want to ultimately score big face from their little ones, so they try to always make a public display of valiant servitude! They pick up all the kids trash. They wait on the kids hand and foot. UNTIL, that is... they get to be older and harder to control!
And let's FACE it, even though this charade is kept up in public, in private (and unknowingly IN PUBLIC) most Asian parents caught up in this rush and hurry CULTure actually ignore and neglect their children by never having any time for them, while they pursue their famous "work ethic" for everyone in their communities to see.
But wait! That's the effects of rapid westernization showing, right? I personally don't think absolutely everything can be ultimately blamed on the west (or the US specifically), but hey! What do I know? I'm just the little foreign pooper scooper that could! Well... not really. I'm getting pretty tired of being forced to play that woefully lopsided traditional role, I'm afraid.
Whomever may or may not be to BLAME, most Asian parents are so damn busy, that they send their little ones to one private school and "academy" after the other, keeping their own children constantly just as mindlessly busy as they are. Or even busier! Constantly tasking them, as if they were little Asian robot soldiers and dutiful laborers. CULTurally driven zombies, who grow up to do pretty much exactly the same unquestioningly mindless thing to the next generation.
And let's be HONEST, for a change, shall we? These poor kids, I see them. I KNOW them. I've taught them in Taiwan, China and now South Korea for more than a decade. I know their parents. I know the drill. I see exactly what's going on, despite the face generating masquerade. Most of the poor kids I have taught also can't even remember the vast majority of what they've studied.
In fact, most of the poor, overly tasked kids go through English book after English book but STILL CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH or communicate - even, it often seems, to communicate their most basic feelings effectively, in their own repetitive, overly polite and actually rather robotic native tongues!
Because they don't genuinely study hard. They study too damn much. And most of it simply goes in one ear and out the other. They missed most of it, because it all went by too fast! And they may not have even had the aptitude in the first place. So it all got lost. Tossed out with the last bunch of English books their hurried parents worked so hard to buy for them.
But then, there is a big thing in Asia about not focusing the real blame on the school system, but on the "dumb, unqualified foreigners" whom they draft, fresh faced and inexperienced, fresh out of college - regardless of whatever their major may have been in school.
It's always good to have a scapegoat though, you know. After all, they all work so very hard to have BIG FACE. So it can't possibly be all their own fault. Nah! Gotta be them dang foreigners. Gotta be.
And so it goes. And so it has been in China, Japan and Korea for thousands of years, since the old Imperial Examination System began. And the vicious cycle continues. And the vicious cycle continues.
But hey! Don't listen to little old western (constantly "misunderstanding" THE PEOPLE) me! Read all about the Chinese Imperial Examination System. The following link presents mostly just the positive side of the system that eventually, though started with clearly good intentions, finally faltered and fell into hopeless stagnation and corruption in the end. And so it goes.
http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html
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