A friend of mine owns a barber shop here. He and his wife work hard on a regular basic in a tiny shop. Their son is in third grade, and plays outside after he finishes his homework. He's a nice kid, but there's really no place to play. One day, a boy maybe two years younger than my friends' son hits their son with a stick. The son then kicks the boy, and pokes him with the stick. The younger boy runs away. Ten minutes later, the younger boys parents, and other relatives storm into the barber shop with their most menacing demeanor and start berating the parents, threatening to destroy their shop. Nobody (including the shop's clients) thought to call the police.
Interestingly, in addition to cursing out the boys' parents, they ask if this is the way they are educating their son: teaching him to hit a younger child, etc. But it seems that the same question could be asked of the marauding parents: do you want to teach your child not to solve his own problems, but to come crying to you every time? Do you want to teach your child that he doesn't have to solve his problems but that you will intimidate anybody who crosses him? My only conclusion is that they indeed are trying to teach their children thus. My friend ended up making his son apologize to every member of the other family in turn. While maybe he (as the older child in this event) could probably have reacted without kicking the other boy, there's no logical reason to expect that a 10 year old boy would behave any differently. In the end, this experience likely only teaches this poor boy that his family is not powerful, and not wealthy, and that money and power (and intimidating force) is all that really matters. That nobody thought to call the authorities seems suggestive of the low esteem in which that particular body of people is held. Or at least, the way in which people don't exactly see it as a natural pathway for achieving mediated solutions to problems.
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Today, I learn an interesting local way of telling someone to examine their zippers:
In the Khams dialect of Tbtn, people will say bai huo da lou sgo phyes du gi 'the mall [borrowed from the Chinese] is open.' As a quick note on pronunciation: phyes is pronounced "tsee." Fortunately, I learned these before I went outside with my fly open... |
About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |