Things that...

Today, after a 9am-5pm day in the uni, I caught a tram back at around 5.45pm. While the tram wasn't entirely quiet, the most audible noise came from this little Chinese child.

His mom was holding this small Chinese reading book, and she was reciting and repeating lines after lines for this kid to follow. At one point I even saw her counting down 5 with her fingers, the number of times the kid was supposed to recite a line, until perfection.

When they were done, the mother put the book back into his bright-colored backpack. As if he hadn't had enough, he took that book back and gave it to his mother again. Before asking his mother to give him more practice, he even browsed through the book looking for a particular section.

While the mother wasn't that sort who was looking for attention, she wasn't too afraid of attention as well. And while he wasn't 100% keen, he wasn't 100% reluctant.

This is true Chinese values in action. They might not like what they are doing, but we strongly believe in our ways, especially in cultivating discipline in children.

I'm not being a racist. If you look at United States' statistics, increasingly, Asian kids take up a big proportion of top performing students. The Asian way hasn't changed that much. It's just the rest of you. But I'm not even saying your culture is deteriorating. But if someone else is catching up (or perhaps going past you) at such a pace, a little retrospection wouldn't hurt.