Region In China

In my essay, I am going to consider an incident that happened one summer Friday of 2001 when I was still a young boy. I will discuss this incident with reference to Richard Miller’s text, Writing at the End of the World, and Edward Said’s text, After the Last Sky Palestian Lives.

It was my first week school since I transferred to Shanghai school from Guangdong school. The Friday class was just over and everybody was walking down to the school restaurant and went back home after dinner. I was then a young boy aged nine years old and as usual our parents waited for us at the parking as we went to the school restaurant to finish the dinner. At the time, the restaurant only had three windows open and there were about 50 students in the restaurant.(There were two windows for “Shanghai food” and the rest of one is for “GuangDong food”). In order to avoid crowding and ensure efficient take the food, we were made to queue. However, what happened on that Friday made something that had never bothered me to be a big concern.

Because of most of students were from Guangdong, they went to Shanghai to study. The school made a special window for Guangdong students to provide Guangdong food. However, the “Guangdong line” moved so slow and too many Guangdong students were waiting. So, some Guangdong students decided to go to the Shanghai windows. When two Guangdong students got at the windows, they were surprisingly blocked by some Shanghai students. They yelled at them and ordered them to go back to where they belonged. They were too young to realize what the young boys meant and disobeyed their order. They then moved to the nearest office to air their grievances, but still they got more surprised when the Shanghai elderly man still ordered them to go and use the “right” window. Having been surprised too by this incident, I walked back to the parking where my parents were waiting for me and narrated to them what had just happened. However, it was hard for them to explain to me why Shanghai students hated the students who came from another places. Culture different, language different, food different and most of Shanghai students are rich and Guangdong students are poor and Shanghai students think they are more high level than Guangdong students.

Miller in the collection of his essays, Writing at the End of the World, provides a vivid form of an institutional autobiography. In the book, he strives to reconcile the opposite worlds of the institution and the personal. Just like Miller, I strongly believe in the personal world where any individual is free to make new decisions and experiment new activities so long as they are not beyond the law. Currently, a child born in a poor family can stand a chance to work hard on his or her career to gain the upper class status. Likewise, one born in a wealthy family can as well be reduced to a poor status. Additionally, racism, though still largely practiced by some few individuals, more so whites, has currently become a topic of less concern. People of different racial origins have currently come together and live like brothers and sisters, do business together, and socialize irrespective of their color or origin.

This is in the same manner as Miller reflects his life within institution. For example, he talks about the erosion of his belief about some facts and myths he acquired from his parents and teachers. In the Chapter about “Smart Bomb,” he dismantles what is known as the “schoolhouse melodrama (p52), which surprises his teaches who further believe that he has gone against the strong forces of the school’s culture. He reacts to the teachers’ sentiments by telling them that what he did is a way of becoming smart, and “smartness” means that knowledge is inherent and natural. This is a significant means of showing young children out there, including those people who are bound to some history and traditions that mind is power and we can use it to change the world.

The power of the mind that has made me change my perceptions about race and class is what has made me freely interact and socialize with anybody no matter the racial background. Miller even supports this perception when he says that, “Ideologies of schooling shape our experience at every stage (121). This ideology holds a special advice to parents that they should never teach their children to abide by some historical ideas that inconvenience a society and yet they can be changed at any time whenever a need arises.
Edward Said’s too in his text, After the Last Sky Palestian Lives, is perplexed at why some people still rely on history to frustrate change. In his article, he is primarily concerned on why Palestinian’s photos cannot be hanged on a hall in the white dominated city of Geneva. He is further questioning why even if the photos are allowed the officials never want them to include any text. However, he gives a valid response to why such a thing has never been allowed because it is something that begun two centuries ago and the belief is still entrenched in most people’s minds.

He says that Palestinians have for a long time been discriminated and associated with all terror and crime activities. Most European countries despise them. In fact, the U.S has ever since fought them and even financed Israeli forces to fight and kill them. They have, therefore, since 1948 been on the run and they have no place to call a home. In summary, he is questioning why most people currently cannot change their perceptions about Palestinians now that they actually know the truth about the cause of Palestinian war with other nations. He too believes in Miller’s ideology that if we erode the past ideas that were fixed in our minds when we are young, then we can acquire new knowledge through schooling to change the world.
In summary, my text perfectly matches with Miller and Said’s. This is because we all believe in change, which can only be brought about knowledge, which is only acquired if we refrain from believing in false knowledge that we acquired while we were still young. It is, therefore, advisable to review all the facts and myths told or read in the books and try to find their relevancy in how they determine what we are or even what we believe in. In my word, why we need to care about the culture different? We are in the same country, we are the same. The good news is my 6 years old cousin who from Guangdong and go to shanghai to study and he has a lot of Shanghai friends right now.