Dandelion School

            The Dandelion School motto reads in Chinese characters ‘confidence, happiness, looking for truth, and creativity’ painted over rainbow streaks.  The Daxing campus glints with glass and ceramic mosaics in dancing flower shapes, an art project created by the students in collaboration with the artist Lily Yeh.  The color, as well as the four goals, attempts to hide the pain that pervades the school, which provides middle school education for the children of migrant workers.

         According to statistics provided by the school, China has 236 million migrant workers, most of whom are peasant workers.  3.7 million of those migrants live in Beijing, accounting for 490,000 school aged children in need of education.  Most of these students lack the fundamentals of education because of the poverty of their native villages.  Though Chinese middle schools focus on preparing students for the highly competitive high school entrance exam, Dandelion School aims to give students a broader academic foundation by fostering critical thinking, interdisciplinary studies, literary and artistic pursuits, and a healthy lifestyle.  This nurturing approach seems a hefty task to accomplish in just three years.

            I entered a middle school classroom packed with five rows with six students each.  All the children folded their hands together, elbows resting on their metal student desks.  A few kicked their legs in anticipation.  "Hello," they sang in unison.  My Global Scholars classmates and I lined up at the front of the room, pointing to the countries where we were from: the United States, India, Benin, South Korea, Taiwan, and Nicaragua.  The students only knew where the United States and Taiwan were.

         For a challenge as vast as that of the education of the migrant worker community, the Dandelion School has succeeded in many areas.  Though the class sizes are large, teachers give attention to the children by dividing them into levels based on math scores.  Testing serves only as a method for assessing the school's success – the seventh grade teacher assured us that the curriculum focuses on student progress and a passion for learning rather than statistics.

            The school structure uses collaboration and small group learning, veering away from the standard Chinese system in favor of catering to the students' unique backgrounds.  The computer teacher gave me an example of an objective assignment: her students would look through manuals and figure out the answers for themselves instead of memorizing given answers.  The extracurricular activities also stimulate curiosity through alternative approaches to environmental conservation by maintaining a waterfall that powers the electricity, a social enterprise program that combines the cultural tradition of handicraft with business experience, and performing and visual arts clubs that foster confidence.

            I sat with four students, trying to convey with as few and simple words as possible the task we had given the class.  The project involved creating a new world, using categories such as food, technology, and clothing.  Give eleven year olds the freedom to develop their own world and what do they draw?  Chopsticks with a fork and knife set at the ends, cows that milk orange juice, white and brown rice that tastes like white and dark chocolate, and apple pizza burgers.  Though eager to imagine a place outside the Dandelion School, they hesitated to share their imagination with the class.

            Most of the resources for their extracurricular activities, as well as renovations, supplies, and food, have all been donated by foreign companies.  The Dandelion School does not solicit aid--companies traveling in Beijing often seek out a token underprivileged school.  But despite all of the unsolicited contributions of basketball hoops, library books, and solar panels for hot showers, the students' future seemed grim.  Without hukou, the government social security and identification system for Beijing citizens, the students will never receive the same career and healthcare opportunities as the true urbanites.

            China repeats the word "innovation" as the key for future development, but creating innovation is a nebulous process.  That afternoon's exercise on utopias sparked a pathway to development, the topic of this year's Columbia Global Scholars Program.  But these students may never have the opportunity to develop their imagination beyond the classroom.

Running from the Smog

Because I am a human alarm clock, I enjoy the color blue.  I have the unfortunate habit of waking up at five in the morning regardless of what time I fall asleep.  At Peking University in the northwestern corner of Beijing, I would wake up to run as the sun rose.  Circling the campus lake called No Name and the small pathways through willow trees and monuments, I chased the sun as it turned the sky yellow and peach, settling on a vibrant blue.  Then the smog set and all turned grey.  Beijing's pollution won the battle every morning; when it robbed me of color, I declared my jog over.

The mornings were my time to observe quiet Chinese daily life, with just my huffing and Ke$ha's music as a backdrop.  The red haze of grit cast shadows on the teenage couples, the tourists taking photographs of campus statues, and the shirtless men playing basketball and tennis in the outdoor courts.  Some late mornings I could taste the grit as I ended my jog and circled back to my room.  The polluted red atmosphere seemed like a jab at a Communist agenda.

Every morning locals flocked to No Name Lake, a dark and dusty teal-colored body of water separated into sections by three footbridges.  The lake had floating vegetation and swarms of insects, but the tranquil atmosphere attracted elderly tai chi practitioners, power walkers, fraught Peking University students taking a short library break, and even a film crew.  One man gestured dramatically at the water one morning, reciting a Shakespearean soliloquy in emphatic iambic rhythm.  While I ran, no one stared or approached me even though jogging is uncommon in Beijing.  I felt like one of the local university students--maybe one of the misfits.

After a breakfast buffet of vegetables and sweet buns with my professor Dr. Xiaodan Zhang and some of my Columbia Global Scholars classmates, discussing our observations from the previous day's site visits or questioning the political theory readings for that week, I embarked on another grey day of polluted air and scintillating conversations at site visits planned for us.  Our trips comprised of state-owned enterprises, non-government organizations, companies, schools, or government ministries.  Sometimes we visited three sites in one day.  At each place I felt distinctly foreign; they treated us with nervous respect, hoping to convey enough information without defying the political agenda they represented.

Beijing's notorious pollution blurred the details of setting, allowing my imagination free rein.  The clouded neon lights created colored fog, muting the city.  The air indicated that the city had its imperfections and the language barrier did not stop me from observing this.  At many of our site visits the Chinese officials tried to show us rapid economic growth, a diminishing GNI coefficient, new cities, bilateral and multilateral trade, and innovative business models.  However, when questioned about healthcare policies, unemployment, poor education systems, labor rights, media censorship, and urbanization, they shirked our queries.  The Chinese officials replied in a smog of obfuscation.

Da Hongmen Market

Da Hongmen Market's facade looks like a sports arena, with white concrete spanning a whole city block.  Outside, fruit vendors stand silently by their carts of mangosteen, cherries, bananas, and apples.  Crowds of people mill about in every direction, slapping against the transparent plastic strips that cover the entrance.  Da Hongmen does not seem like a social mall: customers arrive with a specific purpose and leave quickly with those items.  The market sells an overwhelming number of things.  Since the market organizes its products by floor, people go directly to the area that features the products they came to purchase.

            On each floor, the rows of stalls sell very similar items.  On the second floor, specializing in women's cotton shirts and skirts, the clothes blur as customers walk down the aisles.  Adjacent stalls often sell the exact same garment style, including mistranslated English phrases, misspelled designer brands, bright colors, sequins or rhinestones, or lace.  The notable stores were those that differed from the trend, selling clothing from Chinese ethnic groups or specialty clothing like wedding dresses.

            Since the Da Hongmen stalls lack variety, merchants distinguish themselves through quality and customer service rather than creative design.  The owner does not always oversee the stall, instead hiring a young woman to handle business transactions.  These women sit on small stools, wearing the clothes they sell.  No one tries to usher passersby into a stall.  No stalls advertise limited discount sales or a new commodity.  Incentives do not seem necessary in Da Hongmen Market.

            After asking the bored stall clerks if they were the owner, their boss would rush over and tell us about slowing growth or new business plans.  He--always the owner was a he--would stand with his hands on his hips, nodding emphatically.  If the owner were not at the market, the young stall clerks would discuss the doldrums of market work more honestly.

            "Would you move somewhere else?  What would you do?" I asked.

            Most had never considered deviating from the paths set out for them by their family.  If they had dreams, they did not care to share them with an inquisitive foreigner.

            "I'm the third generation in this business," a fur merchant boasted, twirling the silver rings on his fingers.  "I wouldn't change my life for anything."  The front of his shop was composed entirely of a large swath of shiny metal to attract customers.  His store was on the top floor, the level designated for expensive goods. 

            Location seems to affect business almost as much as the actual products sold.  With only one staircase in the market, those stalls next to the stairs have a greater advantage over those stalls further away.  If a stall sells items that do not match the floor's theme, the rent is cheaper.  For example, on the third floor, which specializes in trousers, I spoke with the owner of a stationery supplies stall.  The owner could not find a space on the first floor, but has been doing well regardless.  Most of his customers are other shopkeepers because they know where he is located.

            Da Hongmen Market vendors have their origins outside Beijing.  Most are the second or even third generation in that business, even though I expected Da Hongmen to be the destination for first generation entrepreneurs hoping to pursue greater opportunities outside of their rural hometowns.  Some vendors spoke of their hometown with nostalgia, and chose to send their children to school back there to expose them to their traditions, rather than a school in Beijing.  But they all associated Beijing with prosperity and no one wanted to leave the city permanently.

            Beijing carries a sense of hope for migrant workers, as if it were the city of possibility.  After learning about the discrimination that migrant workers face in Beijing as strangers in their own city, their positive connotations associated with Beijing perplexed me.  The overwhelming bustle of people, schools churning out business majors like a factory, and factories churning out smoke and nitrous oxides seem to counter that optimism.