Chinese Retirement System and the One Child System

     For people in the United States and many western countries socialized retirement came into being in the 20th century and caused a revolution in the way families dealt with retirement.  Traditionally, worldwide, it had been the family's responsibility to take care of the elderly.
     But, for places such as the United States social security came into being in the 20th century, and became a partial support and, in some cases, the only support for the most elderly in the society.  Money was taken from all and put into the system with the result of a cushion of cash to rely on when retirement was at hand.
     It was quite surprising to me, when I arrived in China that I found that this "communist" country had no such system in place.  Instead, this country of 1.3 billion people still relies upon the children to support them when retirement comes.  There is no social security.
     In their system, the normal scenario is for the eldest child to be the primary support of the parents and even grandparents living either in or near the oldest male.

     So, what happens in the new China?  The new China includes a new and important wrinkle.  We must remember that in the past, families were made up of a reasonable number of sons and daughters who would share in keeping the retired parents and grandparents comfortable.  Today China has a policy of one child per family with penalties for people who exceed that one child limit.
      China's One Child Policy Scrutinized

     So, the result of this system is a reliance upon ONE CHILD to do what had been a shared responsibility by a family of siblings.  This has created a stressed out society which is more than normally focused on making more and more money than had been the norm in the past because they are now the sole support for an upside-down pyramid of parents and grandparents above them.  In this society parents expect and demand the continuation of the traditional system of the support of the elderly.
     There are also other factors which feed into this growing problem such as a major migration of the population from rural areas to the mega-cities.  These issues will be talked about in upcoming blog entries.

I welcome comments to this and any blogs.  Please join in discussing and feel free to share to other internet outlets.

Up Here With Me

  In 1974-5-6 my family and I were living in Eugene, Oregon. I had just gotten off the road working with my group Johnny Golden and the Family Jewels and I was looking to continue in music but in a creative, current way.  Johnny Golden had been a success built on the 50s craze which raged because of the film American Graffiti, and the spin-off TV series, Happy Days.  But, any success I might have with that group was a derivative success built on a music, although very fun, was in the past.     So, my friend Jeff Patterson  Jeff Patterson's blog and I set about to shape music which we would create from fresh musical experimentation and inspiration coming from more contemporary sources.  We met some people and jammed around a bit, but nothing seemed to be working.  I was working in Valley River Shopping Center where there was a music store.  One of the clerks there, Lee Smith, had a few friends, all ex-navy guys from the aircraft carrier, Enterprise, who were looking to put together an original music group, too.
     So, Jeff and I went to a practice one evening and met Greg Nance and Tom Kinsey and we messed with musical combinations.  Lee played hammond organ, Greg-guitar, Tom and Jeff played drums, and I played bass for this configuration.
     I don't know the exact progression, but we jammed a bit then I introduced "Told You Twice" which I had written while I was still in Johnny Golden.  The second tune I taught them was this one, "Up Here With Me".

Up Here With Me Video

     How this song came about was through a bit of daydreaming which most people might identify with.  For me, I had had a few different out of body experiences when I was teenage and beyond.  Especially when I was young I had this phenomenon and it left me with strange feelings.  One such time (of which I cannot speak in depth) I had a dream which paralleled a publicly heralded police incident.  It was as if I had been there, but I don't believe that I really had been there.  This is still an unsolved mystery to me.
     The opening phrase was very real and remains very real to me, "my mind is floating through the window, I'm a million miles from here" was written in the front room of my apartment as I was thinking about places far from there, the Himalayan Mountains, to which I imagined.
     This was truly a song made for a video.  The entire song is etherial.  If you listen carefully in portions you will hear wind chimes in the mix, an overdub that gives a true haunting feeling.
     Musically speaking, I was going beyond the normal pop song style.  Lots of minor mode sorts of things were here.  Upon careful examination I have seen in this a familiar musical melody which reoccurs often in my writing many years to come.  The jump of a minor seventh happens here as it does in a few later songs.
     But, what really catches my ear now is the final vocal high note.  Ending the song songs on a ninth chord with the main voice holding the ninth is not a common occurrence.  Actually, that note happened in the studio and was a total surprise even to me.  I didn't know it until I did it, which is something that has also followed me in my singing career.  Doing the unexpected.

     A little about the video:  The song was recorded in Eugene, Oregon at Raspberry Studios.  As written above I was the sole writer of music and lyrics.  The recording was a group effort by ME which was Jeff Patterson, Greg Nance, Lee Smith, Tom Kinsey, and myself.
     The compilation of photos you see in the video are an interesting photo montage of musical history primarily shared between Jeff and myself.  Jeff was always the keeper of the camera and historian.
     The first photo is of the second lineup of ME which included Dave, the bass player, who replaced me on bass and I took over on keyboards and rhythm guitar.
     A bit further along was a photo of Bee Bumble and the Stingers (who after a name change became Johnny Golden and the Family Jewels).  From left: Liz, Jeff, Lyle Annis, Don Patterson, and Taco (short for his Japanese name.......we sang "Smoke On The Water" in Japanese)
     A photo further along was in our group's recording studio singing background bits for "Marshall's Madness" another of my tunes that we recorded.
     A photo of guitar teacher:  Jack Frances.
     A photo of Jeff and my long time friend and brilliant musician:  Steve Elmer aka Mike Stands.
     A photo of The Diamonds performing in Sparks, Nevada for an outdoor gig.
     A photo of The Diamonds while in Malaysia.  Kota Kinabalu
     A photo of Juju Lund, a long time friend during a piano lesson.
     A photo of The Diamonds:  Steve Elmer, Bob Janssen (only for the publicity photo....ha ha), myself, and Jeff.


For more Dave Janssen music try:  "Julia"  Julia on Jango Radio

Please forgive me all who I have forgotten your last names.  :) I have always been bad with names. 

The One Child Classroom

     I came to teacher in China in the fall of 2010.  As a teacher in an international school I had a mix of many children from throughout the world.  That is the nature of international schools.  There was a mix of ethnic groups quite different from most US classrooms at least where I had done my initial training.
     As is true of all teaching, discovering who the students are and how they behave and interact is a deciding factor in approaches or tactics to dealing with students.  Getting to know your pupil is the key to discipline and how to dispense knowledge.  What is their prior knowledge?  From that point learning occurs.
     Ethnicity was one factor.  But, what I hadn't thought about, was the family makeup.
     The group of people, which has the most profound affect upon any person's life, is the family unit.  Whether you might be speaking of children playing together, learning in school, funding for college, or whatever steps in life a person might take, the number of siblings, including their order, affects how they act and react to life's circumstances.
     Where am I going with this?  China's "One Child Policy"!  China's One Child Policy/ Invisible Children

     In 1978 and continuing to present day the Chinese government started a course of population restriction for an understandable reason; over-population.  China currently has a population of 1.3 billion people. China's Population counter

     What significance does this have?  The vast majority of children in China are only children.  This has a profound affect upon all aspects of their lives.  Of course, this also has a profound affect upon social life in Chinese life and schools.  The result is a classroom full of only children.
     If you have ever thought about an only child the first thing which comes to mind is that all the family's resources are focused on one person.  One person!  The older generation, which had many siblings prior to the policy, are all devoting their love, affection, and resources into the future of that one individual.
     What affect might that have?  The word "spoiled" comes to mind first and foremost, spoiled in many ways.  It's an upside-down pyramid of flow into one individual.  Father, mother, aunts, uncles, grandparents all watching the every move of this "one child".

Grandfather and grandmother caring for their grandchild

     Back to the classroom.  The student enters the class as any child might but with one major difference; where there might have been a helicopter mom or dad before this, there is a whole squadron of helicopter relatives who are hovering over this child's development.
     Let's get away from this for a moment and talk about learning within a family, prior to the classroom.  I believe that the first learning that any person gets is within the family unit itself.  There are lessons to be learned through the interplay of parents to children and children to children.  These sorts of "real life experiences" and interplay are the child's first exposures to the world. Loving, caring, arguments, good and bad, are all a part of a person's growth and how they might deal with issues beyond the borders of the family. Without this early learning in the home, the classroom becomes the real starting point for many of these behaviors to develop.    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/200907/the-adolescent-only-child

     So, when I came across my first full classroom of one child students, which was during this year, I saw students with curious personality traits.  Although I am generalizing here for sake of illustration, this is what I saw:  students who were mature in many ways beyond their years due to their being around adults for most of the time and cultured due to their parents' input.  These were also students who, socially, were very child-like, or late bloomers.

     Other ramifications of the One Child System will be discussed in future blogs as this one quirky edict has made its mark in many, many parts of Chinese society.
    

Love Of Music in China

     When you wake up in the morning and you are lucky enough to live in a place where the birds still sing at daybreak you know that God has provided the inspiration of music around us, through his creatures.  Sorry to say in many parts of the world that natural music has disappeared.  But, man, in his simplest form, a creature of God, expresses himself through song for the sheer love of the sound he can create.
Noble Court, Clifford Estates, Panyu, Guangzhou, China
     I live in Clifford Estates, Panyu district, Guangzhou, China.  I look out my window each morning to a green forest on a hill opposite my apartment's 16th floor.  In the stillness of the morning from spring to late autumn I am blessed with the natural sounds mentioned above.  In my time in Suzhou, China I was blessed with the sound of buses and cars beneath my balcony.  But, here?  I wake to the sounds of birds, frogs, and on hot days the whirr of cicadas (or their Chinese equivalent.....probably speaking Mandarin).
     This atmosphere is the natural music which I spoke of, which inspires us.
     This morning as I sat on my balcony I heard the distant beauty of a Chinese woman singing.  Because of the distance I couldn't make out the words, but the song was classical in nature almost like a Christian hymn of my early days.  But, this song was sung solo.  No piano, no organ, just the beauty of a mature woman's voice drifting across the air in the same way as the birds were doing.  She was lending her voice to the mixture as another ingredient in God's symphony.  She wasn't being drowned out by motors, or loud speakers but simply singing for "the love of music".

Darlin', Is That You?

     So often songs are written which don't really have a true "subject", meaning a specific and exact person or direct purpose from which the song takes inspiration.  But, rather the mind gleans bits and pieces of emotions and puts them together in the same way a mosaic takes bits of different pieces and reconstructs them into a full picture.  But, the individual parts might not make sense when taken by themselves.
     That is the situation for my song "Darlin', Is That You?"
     My family and I had just moved from our home for the past few years in Eugene, Oregon to the small city of Coos Bay, Oregon.  The move was especially difficult for my daughter Jennifer.  She had been very attached to her friends and wonderful atmosphere there and now was removed to a place quite different.  The town was a depressing place with lots of rain with few if any friends.

The school where Jennifer attended....two doors down from our house

     For me, I found work at Southwest Oregon Community College as accompanist for their choir.  Aside from this I thought that I would devote myself to writing more songs and do things which might develop into income (which didn't occur).
     I had left behind my musical friends and especially my good friend, Jeff Patterson, who was also now left without a musical group, both of us formerly of "ME".  I believe our intention was to now let our demonstration tapes be submitted to record companies with hopes that the group might reform if and when a producer or A & R director bite for our group's sound.
     I had purchased a piano which I had at my disposal to write on.  I put in a certain amount of time each day playing my old tunes along with fiddling with new melodies and lyrics.   But, again, I was all alone for the first time with no group to perform with. 
     With this feeling of distance from what had been a very fruitful musical undertaking I was the one on the edge of civilization.  I remember talking about Coos Bay being the end of the earth, or at least the US before the ocean.
     I began getting images in my mind of this lonely guy who would mistake a perfect stranger for a lover far away.  That is something that I have felt in the past with people of similar body type who "fool you" by looking like the spliting image of a past love.
     Musically I wanted to incorporate a bit of a Barry Manalow sound in the downward riffs in the chorus.  Strangely I also had a bit of a country riff going in the piano part that was just a natural our growth of the lyrical content.  Overall I did envision an orchestra playing in conjunction with backup singers.  Close your eyes with my comments in your mind and you will understand.
     I especially like the middle eight of this song. I truly enjoy the way it naturally grew out of the rest of the song.  Sometimes the middle eight is forever to write.  In this case it was easy.

Enjoy "Darlin' Is That You?"

Darlin' Is That You on Amazon.com

I'm Too Shy To Send You My Valentine

     We had just moved to Huntington Beach, California  Huntington Beach, California (California Street and I occasionally would ride the bus to my job at South Coast Plaza. The nice thing about riding the bus was that it gave me time to think and even write down ideas which I couldn't when I drove.
     I walked to the bus stop one day and found myself inspired, even though it was early fall, with the idea of writing a valentine day song.  At that time I was always prepared for lyric writing by carrying a steno notebook, so I started singing this little tune that just kept coming until I had the whole song, verses, chorus, and middle 8.  I think I made it through the whole day and then sat down at the piano after work and put chords to it.
     This song has a quirky story with it.  At the time that we moved to California the TV show The Gong Show was the rage  The Gong Show.  I was deep into reading about performance rights groups and knew that if a song were performed nationwide it would bring in a considerable amount just for that one performance, let alone reruns.
     So, I set about calling around trying to find that show's production company.  I found it and sent in a demo which was of my daughter Jennifer singing the song.  That would be our gimmick for winning , by the way, she was 2nd grade at the time and cute, cute, cute, especially singing this song.
     Sorry to say the show went "out of production" and was not renewed by the networks, so case closed.
     There was one continuance to the story however, when we moved from Huntington Beach to Azusa in 1980 we joined a talent competition in the Covina Park and took second place (many thought we should have won) which was a thrill for her especially.  She was a real trooper.
I'm Too Shy To Send You My Valentine at Amazon.con
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003C39VO8/ref=dm_dp_trk8?ie=UTF8&qid=1373112378&sr=301-1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003C39VO8/ref=dm_dp_trk8?ie=UTF8&qid=1372734202=8-1