The China Teaching Web

It is Tuesday morning around 10 AM when I saunter into an Internet cafe on the third floor of a mostly empty shopping complex. As soon as the door closes behind me, I am greeted by a familiar heaviness in the air which can only be attributed to cigarette smoke and poor ventilation. It is also dark inside. All I can see are dozens of faces which glow eerily in the lights of their computer monitors. I inquire at the front desk about the price per hour; the lady barely looks up at me from the computer game that she is playing when she answers. I wince. The price is more expensive than what I had expected but I pay anyway. My computer is being repaired and I have some work that I must do.

As I walk past the desk in search of an empty terminal, I notice that no one looks up. Usually, when I walk into a public place in China, I suddenly feel as if I have grown a third nostril because of the many stares that I receive. Not here. Everyone seems to be very intent on whatever it is they are doing on the computer.

What are people doing on the computer? While I wait for my computer to log into Windows, I take a discreet look around me. Most of my fellow surfers are young men who are playing video games: NBA,War,Poker,etc. Close by however, a man seems to be enthralled by a low quality porn flick. He does not seem to care that anyone who walks by would immediately know what he was watching.

I put my eyes back on my own screen. After all, I have a lot of work to to. As I open up Internet Explorer, however, I cannot help feel sorry for many of the people around me. Although I rarely use an Internet cafe these days, I feel as if I have seen these men many times before. Many have been sitting in their seats long before I arrived and many will still be sitting there long after I have left, their expressionless faces peering into a colorful box that helps them to escape from reality for a little while. Hours later, when they hazily stagger out of the Internet bar, reality will be there to greet them and it will be back to their mediocre and tedious jobs.

“Internet addiction is one of the biggest social problems in China today,” a friend explained to me recently. That was not hard to believe. I remembered walking outside my apartment complex one morning to discover a large group of people and local authorities gathered outside an Internet cafe across the street. When I asked a bystander what had happened, he explained to me that a dead body had just been removed from the Internet cafe. Some poor guy had been playing computer games for 40 straight hours and had experienced a seizure and then ‘keeled’ over. The Internet cafe reopened a day later and was full of people as usual.

Months later, the problem of Internet addiction in China became a personal problem for me when my apartment was robbed. The police determined that the camera I lost (with 500 photos from a recent trip to Chengdu), as well as a computer and a Gerber knife had probably been pawned by local schoolboys to fund their Internet game addictions. Two weeks later, I caught two of them climbing over a wall and sneaking into my apartment building. I chased them halfway down the street in dress shoes before I finally gave up.

Sadly in China, Internet addiction is not a phenomenon that everyone just ’grows out of.’ In the past, I have taught English to post-graduate students and the most common hobby amongst them is immersing themselves in war and other role playing games on the Internet. While I am generally surrounded by young men at the Internet cafe, I am always surprised by the number of middle-aged men that I encounter. Many of the intense gaming sessions are accompanied by chain smoking which is why the air in many internet cafes in China is perpetually cloudy and dirty.

The Chinese government has recognized that there is a problem with Internet addiction and as usual, it has attempted to insert itself into the daily affairs of Chinese businesses by forcing a number of rules and regulations on Internet users. These regulations have included but are not limited to imposing time usage restrictions and requiring Internet cafes to scan in a copy of each user’s government issued ID before they are allowed to access the internet. However, as is the case with many other Chinese ‘laws’ these policies have been difficult to enforce. Many Internet cafes are tucked away out of sight from the street or located on the third or fourth floor of a non-descript building. Of course, there are plenty of Chinese people now who can afford to buy their own computer systems and play games at home whenever they wish.

In fact, this problem is not one that can be solved by direct government intervention. After all, there is an important reason why Internet addiction persists so strongly in China. For many in China, there is still simply too little to hope for. There is still too little to get excited about. People may have their dreams but to attain them is often still too difficult in this fast developing country.

While some people use the Internet to escape from the harsh reality that still is China, others simply have nothing better to do. Besides, for the cost of a movie ticket in China or an hour of badminton, a person can spend 6-10 hours playing games, watching movies, and chatting with friends at all hours of the day and night. It is no wonder that so many of my Chinese counterparts are blurry eyed and half asleep when I encounter them every morning.

It is important for ESL teachers in China to understand this widespread phenomenon of Internet addiction in China. Knowing about this issue has helped me to better understand why so many of my male students seem restless and generally uninterested in English. There are other reasons, of course, that may contribute to this, but internet addiction seems to be one of the biggest. Awareness of this addiction has also allowed me to know how to help my students better. Often, I will make suggestions about other activities that they can participate in to enrich their lives. I encourage them to go to the library and practice reading English books. I will also ‘push’ university students to join local English clubs and attend other English activities. For those students who simply cannot peel their eyes away from their computer monitor, I remind them that they can use their English skills to read English news and expand their knowledge base online. As I have written about previously, it seems that many English students do not realize what a valuable tool English is for acquiring information.

It is only in China’s development itself that a remedy can be found for this problem of Internet addiction. At present, there is not much to hold onto or work towards for millions in China but hopefully more and more dreams will become attainable as China’s economy and social infrastructures continue to improve.