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<font color="black" size="2" face="arial"><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Laodong Jie, </i></b><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: large;">Workers’
Day</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I subbed for a
colleague from Hawaii in his English tutorial classes for children in
Shenyang. He hightailed it to Hong Kong
to renew his Chinese business visa. We both
volunteer weekends to teach young Chinese students oral English.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Last week, in dealing
with one of his 10-13 year old groups, I got them talking about themselves, a
subject they do not need to be told about, nor do they need to do any research to
be knowledgeable about it. In exchange, I
gave them permission to ask any question of me.
Anything. The object was not in
the getting-to-know-you realm as it was to get the dialogue/Q&A going.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The students used a
lot of abstract terms to speak of themselves, like “I am energetic and I am an
optimistic person”, or, “my parents, they love me very much, and I love them
very much, too.” Which was fine because
it left open questions of grounding, on describing the concrete data of what
may be seen, heard, smelled, tasted and touched behind the terms they used. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Nor did they talk of
their feelings. Chinese are culturally coached
that being a peon in the heap of mass humanity, their individual feelings do
not count much unless they are aligned to acceptable social sentiments appropriate
to their age, gender, and station in life.
So I pushed them to recall “sense experiences”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">A general context in
my pedagogy is always to leave the “face” <i>(mianzi)</i>
outside the classroom; I also encouraged students to express what they felt. Emotive discourse among Chinese is not normal
(it is personal and secret) so avoidance was ingrained. “Exhibitionists” (like me, a playful term I
earned from a psychologist acquaintance) are deemed the exception.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Of the questions of
me, I responded in a way that coursed through the path of experience and
feelings. I modeled my response to the
way I expected them to talk for clarity and substance. One of the animal science students (she loves
pets, particularly the “one that chases the mouse”, the “domestic cat”), ask
the innocuous question: “What is your
favorite color?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">For more than a decade
in the 70s and early half of 80s, I was a member of a family “religious Order”
that appropriated “blue” as the color of our “habit”. The words in quotes were internal to us, for
in public, we were not distinguished from the ordinary Joe Blows and Susie Wongs,
not like the medieval monastic Orders whose members sometimes were seen with habits
of woolen frocks, soutane, or cassock, even in the heat of the tropics. Inversely, Opus Dei guys I knew, the Pope’s
storm troopers that replaced the Jesuits, wore business suits in offices that specialized
in economics, the queen science of the times.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I was called a “Blue
Shirt” in the Marshall Islands, Samoa and Tonga. My colleagues and I were not shunned by
intellectual liberals and policy wonks because we did not debate ideology, nor lobby
to legislate mandates. We were out to
influence cultural behavior, so the question of what we thought took a back
seat to what we did. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">“It is the
intensification of our Knowing and our Doing that manifest our Being,” was my
favorite conversation and dialogue starter, which got me disserting well past
midnight, weaving a circular discourse that invariably baffled linear logicians
and disciplined academic thinkers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">My questioner was being
chatty. I told her and the class that
most of my attire was “blue”, and the navy blue in my outfit was in solidarity
to the common laborer and worker of the world, often referred to as the “blue
collar” worker. I didn’t tell her that “blue
movies” are for indecent films, and getting the “blues” meant wallowing in the
basement level of depression and despair. “Blues” in American jazz proceeded from
the soul, and it hankered close to lamentation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I have always been
partial to the common worker since I smelled copra in the coco grooves of
Sanchez Mira in Northern Luzon of my childhood.
My mother was once offered to buy a Philippine Sweepstakes ticket that
she did not bother to take but she remembered the number. When it won one of the top five prizes, she
was curious who bought it. The shop that
offered it to her closed shop quickly and went the way of the nouveau
riche. The family did not survive well
the intrusion of wealth into their family budget. No sour grapes here. It is just to say that I stayed with the army
of struggling workers, like the coconut gatherers and copra huskers, in my
career.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">“International workers
of the world, unite”, was once a political cry from the Haymarket incident in
Chicago that birthed the labor movement on the first of May from which the
International Labor Day got its start.
The US chose September for its Labor Day so as not to identify with the
disgrace of the incident.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I am still a “blue
shirt” at heart and discipline, albeit, not too fond of the limited directions organized
labor took in fostering its course. But
today is a reminder that those who toil at the behest of other’s investment (aka,
imported workers in the CNMI) have a long way to go to see their humanity at
par with privileged and elitist <i>homo
sapiens</i>, in China and across the globe.</span></div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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