Confessions of a Corporate Shopaholic

Chinese President Hu Jintao is in the United States this week and it’s all over the news on CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS.  Many nightly news programs are using the opportunity to present news features comparing the 2 superpowers.  Last night, CBS talked about how few American students  (around 50,000) are learning Chinese at schools while 200 million Chinese are learning English since young. 

That former figure is certainly climbing.  In America, the number of schools offering Chinese as part of their curriculum has climbed from 300 in Year 2000 to over 1,600 in 2010.  An 8-year old boy answered CBS reporter that he believes he might get a better job and a raise when he grows up, knowing Chinese.

I just can’t help but burst out to laughter when the same question was raised to Natalie Love, a student at City Terrace Elementary.  In the most adorable and innocent manner, she replied “I think they (her parents) wanted me to learn Chinese because they like to go to Chinese restaurants“.

How cute is that?  Go Natalie!

I was watching NBC’s Nightly News today with a feature on “Tiger Moms”.  Apparently, Amy Chua, a Yale Law School professor and an American-born Chinese, wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.”  The essay was an excerpt from her new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” which will be released Tuesday in the United States.  The essay has striked up very heated debates since Monday, together with over 284,000 “likes” on Facebook so far.

In the essay Chua writes about her personal account of Chinese parenting and to many westerners, the term should be “extreme parenting”.  Chua identifies three key qualities in Chinese parents that enable “success”, namely:

• a lack of fussing over their children’s self-esteem;
• a belief that kids owe their parents everything; and
• an unshakeable belief that the parents know what’s best.

Chua cited examples that her two daughters were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grades less than A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin

According to NBC, “…the article sounds so incredible to Western readers – and many Asian ones, too – that many people thought the whole thing was satire.”

What do I think?  Well I am eternally grateful for the wonderful job that my parents had done raising me and my sister, and honestly I do think my Mom was pretty strict with us.  However I’d like to think that she tried her hardest to ignite that fire and passion within us that triggered ourselves to not take second place as an option, in everything we do.  I do remember I was soon put on autopilot because I myself was worried about my own grades, my performance in school, and how I fared in my extracurricular activities.

Not allowed to be in a school play?  Never, and I really don’t see the relevance here.  My Mom only cared about my grades, and I remember there was only one time in my entire school life that I got an “F” in Math, and I was truly devastated.  I really meant it.  I thought my whole life was coming to an end.  That summer, I worked so hard that I got full marks the next term.  I don’t think it was the pressure from my parents.  Instead, it was me who had been pressuring myself all along.  I could join all the extracurricular activities I wanted, but the few I took already occupied all of my free time other than studying at home.  Again it wasn’t because of my Mom, but rather my school.  The school required every student to pick up a musical instrument, and yes for me it was the violin, picked by my parents.  The school was ambitious to have a strong musical track record in the inter-school open competition every year, and all those who could carry a tune was automatically enrolled to be a chorus member.  Same thing with school orchestras.  It was hard work.  We were required to attend trainings and rehearsals almost every day, after school, including weekends and holidays.  Though for us kids at the time, it was really an honor to be picked to represent the school in the first place.

So in a nutshell I think it was the combined surrounding that made us the way we are now.  My sister and I had been quite mature since we were small, because we had lots of grown-ups coaching us to do “grown-up things” early on.  Getting good grades, enlisted as school prefects, representing the school in open competitions, really got to you in many ways.  What I really appreciate about my parents, in much less superficial ways than no watching TV or not getting straight As, was how they taught us through practicing the very principles themselves.

Don’t you hate it when grown-ups used double standards when they preached?  Not with my parents.  When we were supposed to study, everyone went silent.  No one watched TV or listened to the radio.  When we went out, my parents were polite, courteous and well-mannered to everyone so as to teach us social responsibility.  We were taught about manners and posture like how to stand up straight and  how to eat with others at the dining table.  My parents were not highly educated elites, but they truly made an effort to instill the very best of human values for their children. 

I can’t help to shake my head whenever I see parents yelling at their foreign domestic helpers in front of their kids, screaming at the school teachers that their children are less favorably treated, or barking disrespectful orders at service people in restaurants as teaching material for their 5 year-olds. 

It’s these values training that I would focus on, rather than not getting any extracurricular activities or sleepovers.   For the former, I would opt to bring back the “Tiger Moms” any time!