In anticipation of visiting our son and his wife who both teach in China, my wife and I have been “studying” the country.  We’re examining maps, reading books and working our way through 5,000 years of Chinese history in 36 half-hour lectures on DVD.

Much of what we read is about a terribly crowded and dangerously polluted nation where the opulence of many ancient sites and a few modern cities contrasts sharply with the extreme poverty in much of the rest of the country.  This country of contradictions holds some of the world’s most aggressive free-market capitalists but remains at heart a centrally-planned society under the ferocious grip of a totalitarian government.  Chinese people still show respect that borders on reverence when they visit the tomb of Chairman Mao whose brutality rivals Hitler and Stalin, who are pariahs in their home countries.

The central party purports to run everything in China, but a black market flourishes for almost every commodity you can name.  The government mandates only one child per family, while prostitution is apparent everywhere.  It’s supposed to be a well-ordered dictatorship, but the population does not know how to form a line to board a bus or train; and Chinese drivers motor six abreast down four-lane roads. 

Of course, I will have my eye on what’s happening in education.  I want to see if the beautiful schools of the major metropolitan areas that have been built to attract the world’s business are operating at the expense of domestic educational opportunities elsewhere in this vast country.  I want to see if the investment in teacher development in the cities is replicated in the country, and whether the competition we’re supposed to be losing to the Chinese is really a nationwide fact or only the result of selective comparisons.