TIANJIN, China — The railway station in Wuhan is typical of most such structures in China. The building is flat and sprawling, and it is mostly comprised of one large, non-partitioned waiting room. There are designated waiting areas, and these have seats and gates. So, if you are looking for a train to Shenyang, you might be looking for Waiting Area 10, which might already be fully occupied, and you might start forming a line in front of the gate that keeps the public separated from the escalators, which lead downstairs to the tracks. And as you wait, you might begin writing metaphors in your head.

The people form a sea around you. The gates open like dams, and passengers stream through the bottleneck and swarm around the trains, oozing into the cabins.

And these gates—how like the Chinese examination system. It is bigger and badder than the SAT, because Chinese colleges look at nothing else but this single test when accepting students. Gao kao—a phrase feared among high school seniors—represents a one-time chance to determine a significant portion, if not the rest, of your life. It is one of China's most unrelenting dams, after which students trickle into universities and later ooze into the job force.

These metaphors are abundant and easy to create, because they all revolve around the same, very familiar problem: There are too many people in China. In a hole-in-the-wall bun shop in Tianjin (the famous Tianjin goubuli baozi), three people are arguing about the People's Communication Party while pinching dough. Human rights, they complain. Disrespect for human rights. My cousin turns to me and says, yes, he thinks there are problems, but the government’s method achieves efficiency and growth. He's a member of the Party. It is the only party in China.

Impersonal, bureaucratic, and practical—these have been key words involved in defining Chinese Character for a long time. Parents invest suicidal amounts of energy and money in creating a super-child who will make the bar and beat the odds. And there is nothing more expensive than space, and nothing more rare than silence. Yoga is a new and lucrative business in China, because its centers (expensive and exclusive) offer both.

But practicalism is coming to a boil. Now, there is only one child per family, and the importance of birth order and gender is an obsolete concept. Now, the New Oriental School is singing a self-important and idealistic tune. Now, drunk Leo at the bar is asking me what I think of the Chinese. There is a struggle for self-definition, for introspection, for something newer, more ideal.

Idealism is a sputtering flame, a fragile sapling, a whine and buzz in the ear.


Maria Y. Xia ’11, a Crimson news writer, is an English concentrator in Mather House.