Job Discussion Forums

[toteach]

Is there a list of books that are restricted from being brought into China?

I've submitted the list of resources I need for next year, but my school's ordering department has deemed some as "Sales Restriction."

Are they just being lazy, or could my list of fairly normal requests really be prohibited from entering China? I'd like to look a list to see for sure.

On my list:

Grickle (graphic novel) by Graham Annable
World Literature: Reading Skills Practice by McGraw-Hill
Glencoe Language Arts 9 by McGraw-Hill (though Grades 7, 8, and 10 were approved)

Can someone point me towards the banned in China list, if one exists?

[zacharybilton]

There is no official banned list from the government. ANYONE, any school, etc. can ban anything they like and I understand why your list is banned. You must not know anything about Chinese culture, education, communism, and another dozen things that are relevant to this issue. A few years ago when I was in China the first time, my public high school banned Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Many schools have banned Harry Potter is light of its witchery and magic. Foreign literature is permitted in the realm of Shakespeare-era stuff. Otherwise, exposure to western modern literature is off-limits.

There is no list. Your job is to teach literature in the aspect of English learning, not learning culture and criticism and such.

[hdeth]

[toteach]

[Son of Bud Powell]

One year, somewhere between my American airport and my school my copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" disappeared from my luggage. It was banned in Boston in the '20's, so i guess the Powerz That Bee thought it was a good idea to ban it in Bao Ding too.

I have encountered the problem of a school objecting to a textbook only once when another FT downloaded a Longwood English book and had it bound. The head of the foreign languages department cited copyright violations. (!)

If the OP's supervisors favored Chinese books over western books, it might be a matter of the school wanting to restrict competition with its favored Chinese publisher/ distributor. Many state schools in the U.S. allow only a small range of books to be used in lecturer level classes. This is to protect the sales of the distributor or publisher. It also makes life easier for the graduate faculty. Fewer allowed books= fewer books to review.

Other than my issue with Ulysses, I've had no problems. I've used copyright-free short stories taken from the internet but experienced no objections. I know that some Chinese teachers have gotten copies of my handouts and have used them in their own classes.

I suspect that at the OP's school, unless the books are obviously crummy books or below grade level, it's a control issue more than anything else. The school doesn't want the FT to use anything that they aren't familiar with, and they want to restrict the teachers' autonomy. I've always had free rein.

Re: Harry Potter. I don't know if it is a national ban on the books or just a local ban, but I've seen the books in Chinese book stores written in both Chinese and English. I have read neither version, so I don't know if they have been edited or not.

[Non Sequitur]

The head of the foreign languages department cited copyright violations. (!)


Hell SoB that's the most amazing thing I've read on Dave's in a while.
Was this paragon Chinese?

[Son of Bud Powell]

[kev7161]

I once had ordered atlases from our book distributors, and customs had torn out the Chinese map pages from all of them before sending them to us. In some fashion, they somewhat referenced Taiwan as being separate from mainland China (and not physically if you know what I mean). Not a big political statement or anything - - maybe a line saying - - Taiwan is a country known for it's . . . (or something akin to this)

Luckily, we had an intact sample of this atlas given to us by the distributors so we just made copies of the torn out page and taped them back into our books.

[kungfuman]

Sales restrictions usually means that a book is produced for and sold in certain parts of the world only - legally.

I have to research books for my school and the top distributors WON'T sell me a copy - or many copies - of a book that is not intended for distribution in China.

So a book that can be sold in HK may not be sold or shipped to me in Mainland by the distributor's rule. Ditto for many books made only for the North American market and UK market.

Same goes for some Amazon purchases.

So not all books can be sold to and shipped to all locations for licensing agreement and copyright issues.

[Non Sequitur]

Can anyone remember a recent thread on class resources?
Who buys etc?

[toteach]

[Non Sequitur]

thanks toteach: I've clarified what I'm interested in on that thread.

[LeiFeng]

"Exposure to Western literature is off-limits" (?). I heard this a lot before I first went to China, and the "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" image of sent-down youth spending months of hard-earned work point tickets on flashlights so they can read Proust or whatever under the covers at night is kind of appealing, but I have seen no evidence that Western books are still taboo. I had a lot of books sent into China over the years, including texts for teaching, gifts for Chinese friends and reading material for myself, and nothing ever had pages torn out or got "lost." Booksellers on the street in Beijing have more subversive English titles than the average bookstore shelf in the U.S. And if you read popular Chinese fiction, there is very little that isn't blatantly subversive.

I think the school's ordering department is just reluctant to let you actually spend all of your allotted funds for teaching resources, or encountered some minor hurdle and is making an excuse. But I've never worked for a school that actually gave me funding for teaching materials.

[Non Sequitur]

I was given a copy of Wild Swans to read by a Chinese in a small town in 2004.
When I asked about risk, the lady said basically 'Up the Regime'.

[Son of Bud Powell]

"Exposure to Western literature is off-limits"

Generally, not so. You might have problems with Lady Chatterley's Lovers, and some of Lord Byron, but I've found Chinese western literature majors to be pretty well-read. Be ready for Marxist criticism of some pretty strange choices, though.