Living in the two Chinas. (In Real Life: first-person America).(differences between lower and middle classes in China)(Brief Article)

BEIJING--Going off to China to teach English early last year was one of those "I can do anything now that I'm a college graduate" decisions that took exactly 30 seconds of intense deliberation. The sensible reservations caught up with me later.

Nervous and filled with dread, I walked into my first class at Wan Quan Elementary in Beijing. There I stood, confronted with 45 antsy eight-year-olds who all looked the same to me. I had never been an elementary school teacher. Part of me wanted to turn around and head straight for the door. But I stayed--that morning, and the rest of the school year.

My average day required teaching three second-grade morning classes at Wan Quan, then shifting to Yu Ying Elementary where I conducted three afternoon classes. At Wan Quan I taught alone, struggling daily to keep my exuberant students happy, learning, and under control. Yu Ying offered me a Chinese aide, whom I accepted gratefully.

The longer I taught, the more apparent the differences between the schools became. Yu Ying had been established in the early years of the Communist Party at the Party's headquarters. Mao's own children had attended the school, and it became one of the premier institutions for the children of state officials. Even by American standards the current version has many luxurious amenities, including three music studios, a dance studio, a recording studio, state-of-the-art science equipment, excess teachers, and an extremely dedicated staff.

Only three miles away from this bastion serving the offspring of the Party elite, my other school--Wan Quan--seemed to exist in a different era. The children there came from working families. They arrived at school in dirty, tattered clothes and rarely had paper or more than a pencil or two. Cold and dark in the winter, uncomfortably hot in the summer, the school lacked everything from basic teaching supplies to adequate plumbing. In the summer it wasn't unusual for the rank smell of the toilets to permeate the air.

While my students thrived at Yu Ying, I felt stymied at Wan Quan by the increasingly difficult task of keeping a rein on the children for more than two minutes at a time. Every time I disciplined a child, it caused trauma. I made Harold cry; ...