Way back at the start of the fall term, I wrote that one of the defining differences between my summer and fall semesters at ACC would be the independent project required of every student during the fall. Now, since it’s about time that I corrected my second draft of my final paper to be handed in this Tuesday, I figured I’d post and debunk the mystery of what this assignment is all about for anyone who’s curious.
Task # 1: Pick a topic.
The topics that ACC students pick for this project are about as diverse as we are many (that’s 70 different topics this semester), but they all have one thing in common: they have something to do with China. My roommate chose China’s 60th National Day, and my friends and classmates have chosen everything from China’s modern architecture, sports and exercise in China, traditional Chinese folk music, and Chinese-Japanese-US relations, to the significance of the August 2009 Xinjiang violence, the effects of China’s currency control on US-China relations, and so much more. My own topic, the relationship between China’s media and government, is closely related to my Government major, but over the course of my six months in China, I’ve discovered that this topic has personal relevance as well. The fact that I’ve lived without regular Facebook access for about 2 months now is #1) a huge sacrifice, but also an accomplishment for me and #2) a result of the government’s paranoia that enemies of the government will use this and other social networks to stir up discontent or violence, following the Iranian example of closing Facebook this summer, after Ahmadinejad’s re-election caused doubts about the election’s legitimacy (here’s a good article on the Iranian situation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052401599.html). China’s censored websites include Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and blogging sites such as WordPress, Blogger, and more. Whenever I try to access any such site, sometimes just out of curiosity to see if they are still blocked, I get a “Problem loading page” message, which tells me that “The connection to the server was reset.” Despite the fact that I really should have gotten used to running into this type of problem by now, I always feel frustrated, like a small child who knows that mom doesn’t trust her to understand the real reason why she cannot do something and lies to her instead. I want to tell the Chinese government to just tell me directly that they’re blocking my Facebook access, rather than pretending it’s a technology glitch. So I’m trying not to let all my feelings come out too obviously in my paper, but from personal experience, I can verify that China’s media is still definitely restricted by the government in various ways. And while I have realized, to my own surprise, that yes, I can live without Facebook (though the New York Times, which is not blocked, has replaced Facebook as my favorite procrastination pastime), the fact that these internet restrictions have affected my internship search for this spring and summer make me very thankful that ACC’s computer center desktop PC’s are all equipped with strong proxies to get around the blockages!
Task #2: Interview! Interview! Interview!
Another unique aspect about ACC’s independent project is that it requires some field research, which is supplemented by the traditional background research that I’ve done for many a paper at Georgetown. The nature of the project is to force all of us students to focus on our language skills. Though the topic choice is important, it’s actually secondary to the more important task of using Chinese in all four language areas: reading, writing, listening and speaking. When it came time for me to interview, though, I was less worried about having confidence in my language skills and more concerned with the types of questions I needed to ask. I began to regret that my topic was one of the more sensitive ones I could have picked, since after all, not everyone in China is willing to openly acknowledge the government’s media censorship or criticize them for it, for that matter. From the very start, that my teacher told me I had to protect her friend’s identity and not give away her name to anyone made me both curious and excited, but when it actually came time to call her, I was nervous. You see, my interviewee was a CCTV employee. I had an amazing opportunity to ask her about everything from the content of her work, specific examples of the Chinese government censoring CCTV’s stories, her views on the responsibilities of a reporter, to what problems China’s media still faces today and how China’s situation compares with the US. The interview was invaluable to my body of research for my project and gave me insight into the complexity of China’s media world. I came back from the interview energized, ready to diligently re-apply myself to what at times seemed to be an endlessly confusing topic. Though it was my language ability that facilitated this interview opportunity, it was my interest and my interviewee’s candid answers that made it so worthwhile.
Task #3: Background research and…dundundun….WRITING
Aside from field research in the form of interviews, questionnaires, surveys, and more, we ACC students also have to read a total of seven articles, five in Chinese and two in English, some provided by our teachers and some that we find ourselves. In addition to the reading, we also write summaries and translations of these articles. Now, since my research, like everyone else’s, has relied heavily on finding online newspaper articles on the internet, I naturally ran into a spiraling paradox that has kept my brain banging around from side to side in my head, that is: should I believe what I read IN the Chinese media ABOUT the Chinese media? Or should I be skeptical of anything and everything I read? How can I be certain that my research is accurate? To this last question, the only answer is simply that I can’t be certain. There are days when I believe what I read, and days when I don’t, and trying to make that experience cohere to support an analysis and opinion for my project’s final essay has been one of my greatest challenges. My independent project teacher recently asked me, “Do all the China-related articles in the Western media really negatively portray China?” Her impression, from a comment her boss had made, was that foreigners couldn’t gain a “real” understanding of China because of the media’s portrayal of it. While I told her that this wasn’t necessarily true, I unsuccessfully tried to explain to her that Westerners (or if I can’t speak for “Westerners,” then I) bring a healthy dose of skepticism to most China-related news and to any media in general, but still respect China and its people for their accomplishments (small aside: each student is assigned a teacher to work with for the semester– this is one of my favorite parts of the independent project experience because you get a chance to explore mutual interests with a teacher and have some great conversations). In fact, as I answered her, I realized that this very explanation is part of what made me want to come to China in the first place, to find out for myself what Chinese life is really like, to dig deeper than what I read in the news, and live a reality that doesn’t always perfectly align with what I hear. While I’m not sure that my teacher will ever fully understand my attitude regarding news, or me hers, I’m lucky to find myself in an environment where I can comfortably butt heads with her on this kind of topic and still maintain a friendship.
The culmination of our independent project is an essay combining insights and supporting evidence from our field and background research, all written in Mandarin. Though it’s one of the most tedious parts of the project, for me it’s also been an amazing measure of the progress I’ve made in my language skills. Ideas that in September I thought I would never be able to express effectively are now embedded in my seven-page second draft. Though I’m still not sure exactly what I’ve accomplished in doing my project, and sometimes feel that the name fellow students have given the project, “du li zao gao,” (which roughly translates as “independent terrible mess” and rhymes with “du li bao gao,” the real name of our project), is actually the most accurate, I can’t deny that doing an independent project like this has been an eye-opening and once-in-a-lifetime challenge that has changed my perspective on my topic, on China, and on my own abilities.
