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September 29, 2005
Everyday graces
Things I'm thankful for today:
The sweet-scented osmanthus, which is blooming and covering the pig-farm stink the Yangtze river-wind has lately been blowing in from the north
A surprise lesson with my favorite new Chinese teacher: I had asked another student to teach me this week, but at the last minute she found out about a meeting this afternoon she had to go to
A cute email from a Chinese friend who is in Nanjing right now
Motivated students
A week of vacation starting Saturday
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September 27, 2005
Mrs. Gu
Yesterday evening I got another “Hello!” from a “grandma” (that’s the polite way to call/refer to women of that age here, and she does, in fact, have a grandchild). It was the second one in three days, and is pretty unusual, as the hello-ers are usually obnoxious younger or middle-aged men, and the “hellooo” is howled at your back, not said to your face. But this lady actually wanted to talk to me.
“You country?”
“I’m an American.”
“America! Me, Canada, seven years!”
“Oh, you’ve lived in Canada for seven years?”
“Yes! Come back, finished, Canada!” (vigorous waving of the hands)
“You’re finished in Canada? You’re not going back to Canada?”
“Yes! Three months, finished, back Canada!”
“So you’re going back to Canada in three months?”
“Yes! You here do what?”
“I’m an English teacher.”
“You singerrr? No married?”
“Yes, I’m single.”
“What’s your name?”
I told her and she repeated it carefully, replying, “I’m Ying!” (tracing the letters on her hand) “Y-I-N-G, Ying! You call me Ying! Family name, Gu!”
“Do you like Canada?”
“Yes, yes, like Canada! Very beautiful, very crrean! Not like here, here not crrean!”
Melody (whom I was walking with) asked her, in English, how she had the opportunity to go to Canada.
“My daughter, teach at university! I stay help her, cooka Chinese food!” (with a stirring gesture)
“A traditional Chinese mom,” Melody suggested, before parting with us for her evening class.
“In Canada I study English, free! Because I…immigration!”
“Oh, because you immigrated, the Canadian government gives you free English lessons?”
“Yes! I in Canada, me speak, people no understand!” (Mrs. Gu, I find that quite easy to believe) “So…the body language!”
I laughed, thinking that explained the spirited hand gestures, which are rare in your average conversation with a Chinese person.
“In Canada, live P.E.I.!”
“You live on P.E.I?” I asked, incredulous. “Prince Edward Island?”
“Yes, P.E.I. Island!”
“I think that must be a very beautiful place! It’s very famous, you know!” Something in the picture of Mrs. Gu living on P.E.I., cooking Chinese food for her university professor-daughter, made me inordinately happy.
“Yes, very beautiful! People not many, not crowded, like here!”
We commiserated for a while on the differences between English and Chinese, and she told me she had a grandchild at university and that she was currently staying with her "big son", who is a computer instructor at the university. Her second son is an electrical engineer. When it came time for us to part ways, she said, “N-….next week five – Friday, I go to-- to dance!” (little boogie to demonstrate)
“Next Friday you’re going to a dance?”
“Yes! No, this Friday! At…at Teacher’s Home!”
“Teacher’s Home?”
“Yes! 教工之家!”
I repeated the Chinese name; it did in fact mean “Teacher’s Home.”
“You go too?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” I replied, thinking I might just have to find this place to make sure I see little Mrs. Gu again.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand enthusiastically.
“You too, Mrs. Gu,” I replied, “Good night.”
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Absence note #257
Dear Madam:
I must beg your pardon. Yesterday I borrowed a novel from library. It’s so interesting that I can’t stop reading it. I forgot I was standing in a cold place where blowed wind. Now, I got a bad cold. So I can’t come to your class. I’m really sorry. Please give me your permission.
Jo
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September 25, 2005
Strange encounters
We were walking home in the dark, a little after 9:00 last Thursday evening. Suddenly someone on a bicycle next to me braked, thrust out his hand and asked my name. I realized we’d been surrounded by four of the Indian students who arrived on campus last week.
They’ve come to spend four and a half years studying Western medicine in English. Yes, in China. There are quite a few of them; I’ve heard people say 40, 50 and 70, so maybe the real number is around 30. They’re staying in a newly built international student dorm and have brought their own chef.
The boys were very friendly, introducing themselves and getting our cell numbers. I was instinctively on guard. Why were they so eager and assertive? After we said good night and were continuing on our way, it hit me: Chinese culture feels normal to me now. The shy voices, unsure pauses, indirectness, rare handshakes. I know how to judge a Chinese person’s intentions toward me, and how to respond – like last Tuesday on the bus, when a slightly-creepy Chinese man in his 30s started talking to me (in English) and asked for my phone number. “Maybe it’s not convenient,” I said, which must sound weird to any native English speaker; but he knew exactly what I meant.
In theory I’m not opposed to being friends with the Indian students. We’ve got the rather substantial bond of being 老外 – foreigners – in China. But when Harish called me yesterday and asked if I were free to go shoe shopping, immediately my guard was up again: I know what the international stereotype of American women is. He was insistent, and I reluctantly told him I’d be free today. This morning, however, I learned that the huge concert held in Zhenjiang tonight is going to be broadcast live*, and I just can’t miss it. Thankful for the excuse, I asked if he could find someone else to help him.**
It’s not just the boys. Walking home today I met two Indian girls and got the same immediate handshake and what’s-your-name. I told them where the post office was. I should have gone with them, I suppose, but it was sprinkling and I was drowsy and just thinking about getting home.
All this to say I don’t find Chinese people or Chinese culture so strange any more. Interesting, yes. And of course I still feel awkward in some situations – hey, I feel awkward in my own culture often enough; maybe it’s a personal problem – but I usually have an idea of what Chinese people are thinking, and how I should respond. These past few days it’s been the Indians, with their eager hand-thrusting and weird bobbling head-shakes, who have shown me just how familiar China has become.
*I just missed the chance to attend the concert myself in the VIP section – a friend of mine’s mom had an extra ticket but at the last minute it went to her friend’s daughter, instead of her daughter’s friend.
**Our conversation over text messages yesterday was something like the following:
Harish: this is harish indian shall we meet tomorrow i think you are free
Me: Ok, that's fine.
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September 23, 2005
Construction with Chinese Characteristics
Today’s “nap or no nap” question is decided: there is some major remodeling going on somewhere in our building. From the sound of it, somewhere very close to my room. The building I live in is five stories high and divided into two parts. In the western part are rooms and apartments for foreign teachers and exchange students; the eastern part consists of (or consisted of, apparently) dorms for grad students, a couple exercise rooms, and a large, round, windowed area used during inclement weather by the retired folks who do tai chi in the mornings.
The eastern side of the building isn’t accessible from where I am; there are doors leading to the old dorms at the end of my hallway, but they’re locked. Thus, I can’t really be sure what part of the building they’re tackling without a fairly heavy-duty investigation, requiring leaving my building and the “foreign experts” section of campus, walking around a little landscaped area and several apartment buildings, and coming in from the other side. I think the gate to the other side of the building is currently locked, so it seems a hopeless business.
This morning I was actually grateful that I have to teach early Friday morning: I was up and at ‘em long before 7:15, which was when the sledgehammering started. If I hadn’t been getting ready to teach, I might have been trying to catch up on sleep. Now lunch break must be over; there are a few hammers of various sizes pounding away at various speeds -- a Mines-of-Moria effect -- and now and then some glass shatters. My goldfish must be traumatized, poor little guy. I can see the water in his bowl vibrating.
Last year our half of the building was remodeled: the apartment I’m currently in was made from one and a half old dorm rooms. One room became my bedroom and bathroom, and half of the other became my kitchen. Four apartments like mine were made on each of the five floors, meaning Naomi and I were subjected to 6:00 am-6:00 pm sledgehammering for about three months. I hope this doesn’t last that long.
To do the sledgehammering – and for countless other construction and manufacturing projects in China – migrant workers are employed. These migrant workers are small farmers from the countryside (still called peasants) who arrive en masse in the “big cities” looking for more lucrative work, leaving wives or other relatives at home to care for the farm. They are often taken advantage of by their employers and, as they total somewhere around 100 million, their treatment and living conditions are considered one of the most challenging problems modernizing China is facing. Migrant workers, or 农民工 “nongmin gong”, are bringing China into the 21st century – carried on bamboo poles laid across their backs.
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September 20, 2005
Floating
Walking to church this evening with three Chinese friends, I suddenly felt left out. An odd feeling: I know each of them individually much better than they know each other. Culture is a powerful connector.
It was bittersweet, really. I’m ecstatic that they like each other and get along well, but I had to realize: as much as I like China and love living here; as often as I’m told I’m “like a Chinese girl” (which is quite often – I don’t begin to fit into the American-girl box the young Chinese have), I will still be an outsider.
It wouldn’t bug me so much, except: when I go back to the U.S., I’m an outsider there, too.
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September 18, 2005
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Today is the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar -- the middle of autumn. The moon is full; I'd be able to see it if it weren't so overcast. In ancient Chinese culture, circles represented reuniting with family, making Mid-Autumn Festival a little like our Thanksgiving (with a much longer history and minus the historical controversy): you get together with family if you can, and miss them if you can't. In addition to missing family and looking at the moon, Chinese eat mooncakes to celebrate. Mooncakes come in various sizes; about two inches in diameter is common. Usually they're round but they can also be square or triangular. They're filled with lots of different things: fruit flavor, bean paste, meat, pickled vegetables, preserved egg yolk. My conclusion is that they're more traditional and symbolic than they are tasty.
One of the first poems every Chinese student learns is by Li Bai (701-762 A.D.). Here's an English translation (it sounds much better in Chinese!):
Thoughts on a Still Night
Before my bed, the moon is shining bright,
I think that it is frost upon the ground.
I raise my head and look at the bright moon,
I lower my head and think of home.
There's your encyclopedia entry/cultural lesson for the day. I like Mid-Autumn Festival. I just hope I don't get too many mooncakes.
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September 17, 2005
Loose on the streets of Zhenjiang
It reminded me of my teen driving years, with more honking and less turn signaling.
Tonight I had dinner at a student’s house. That itself isn’t a very common occasion, but a couple other things conspired to make it downright extraordinary. First of all, I taught this girl’s class for the very first time yesterday morning. Second of all, she drove me home.
Private cars in China are coveted and controversial items. They are a status symbol, a mark of China’s development, they make life a little more convenient; but they blast (leaded) exhaust fumes into the already smoggy skies. I’ve been in a few of them in the past year and a half – a student’s cousin, a random friend, a friend’s dad’s friend, etc. – and from my students’ reports about their summer vacations I gathered that learning to drive was a popular (though quite expensive) summer activity. But I hadn’t been in a private car with one of my students driving.
I would not want to drive in China. It’s America with four times the population density and one fortieth of the people obeying traffic laws. A few hundred people die from traffic accidents every day here. It takes guts, audacity, stupidity or all three to get behind the wheel.
Fortunately, her dad came with us to coach her – and try to make conversation with me, with his daughter as the translator. She drove slowly, cautiously, swerving now and then; and it must’ve felt similar to my driving at 17 or 18 except every couple minutes she’d honk (repeatedly) at a cyclist, truck, or motorbike. The honking must be a learned skill.
I survived; I understood a few things her dad said, and as we passed the orphanage in the city, where I’d spent an hour or so playing with the kids this morning, he told me at the end of this year he’s planning to get a 300,000 RMB (almost $40,000) Japanese car.
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September 11, 2005
Those who can't do...
It’s a little romantic.
She sat in front of him in middle school. After they graduated from middle school, she went to the city’s top high school – going there is called “getting one foot into university” – and he went to a technical school. They often exchanged letters (no computers or cell phones), and after she graduated from high school they started dating. Now she’s a junior English major; he’s been working at a power plant for a few years. He monitors the coal burning to make sure the furnaces don’t get blocked.
There is an expression in Chinese: 门当户对 “men dang hu dui”. It means that, when choosing a mate, you should choose someone who matches you, someone on your level. Her parents say: a power plant worker is far from good enough from a soon-to-be university graduate with a marketable Business English degree. They’ve tried their hardest to get her to break up with him – unsuccessfully. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this kind of story.
This summer they gave her an ultimatum. She has three choices: 1) break up with her boyfriend; 2) pass TOEFL or IELTS and go study overseas; or 3) become fluent in English by the end of this year (her fluency will be tested by native speakers). If she fails to do one of the three, they’ll stop paying her university tuition.
Thus I got an urgent e-mail this July: she had chosen option 3 and wanted my help. She couldn’t offer me money, and her Chinese teachers wouldn’t help her without it. Her appeal was her desperation and her love for her boyfriend. He’s hardworking, she says, he just doesn’t like studying. And he already earns enough money to support her – almost as much as I make as a foreign teacher. She’s sure they’re right for each other, if only she can get her parents to agree.
And so I’ll be helping her every Saturday afternoon with “everyday English”. She made a plan of the things I can teach her – things like making phone calls and going shopping. I like her; it should be fun to hang out. And I have a nice warm maiden-aunt-helping-young-lovers-overcome-obstacles-to-a-happy-life-together kind of feeling.
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September 07, 2005
Better than a department meeting?
On Wednesdays from 2:00-3:40 no students have class; department meetings are held. I usually show up at ours. Today Naomi and I walked into the office, plopped down on the black pleather couch and opened our Chinese books to do a little studying, since it looked like not much was going on (not that we ever really understand what’s going on). One of the Chinese English teachers was handing out little pink tickets. He came over and offered us two: a movie about the Chinese Communist Party was showing in the big campus auditorium. Naomi and I looked at each other, shrugged a “why not” and agreed to go: Chinese practice and a new peek into CCP propaganda.
Zhang Side (pronounced like “jahng sih-duh”) is named after the main character, a soldier in the Anti-Japanese War and bodyguard of Chairman Mao. Mao was moved by Zhang’s selflessness, and after Zhang died in a coal-mining accident, Mao memorialized him in a speech called “Serve the People,” exhorting the Chinese to give their lives for their country just like Zhang Side.
The theater was hypnotically warm; students, professors and retired teachers filled the thin wooden seats. Naomi and I followed along with much of the closed captioning (in Chinese characters); we watched as Zhang adopted an old dumb man as his father and a young dumb boy as his son (whom he taught to talk), helped a friend of his who went to jail reconcile with the girl he loved; advised Chairman Mao to get enough sleep; urged a wayward, harmonica-playing subordinate to return to camp. Halfway through the movie wooden chairs started clapping sharply as students and teachers left to go to class, or find something more interesting to do. At the end of the film – after Zhang’s death in the avalanche and Mao’s speech in his honor – we got up to go, feeling inspired to do we-weren’t-sure-what; an older teacher asked if we understood Chinese. “Some,” I replied. “You are also Party members!” he said, and laughed.
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September 02, 2005
Green tea haiku
Antioxidants
Tinged with caffeine, bitterness:
The East's refreshment
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September 01, 2005
What did you do this summer?
This week in class I’ve been playing Two Truths and a Lie in groups of three to five with my new students. This game involves telling your group three stories, two of which are true and one of which is a lie. The other group members then ask questions about the details of the stories, and vote on which one they think is false.
The stories we’ve been telling are about what we did over summer vacation.
After this morning’s class was done playing the game in their groups, I had to have one of my students share her story with the whole class. As I was circulating the class monitoring the activity, I had overheard Tracy. These were her three stories:
Story 1: Because we had to do social practice*, I went to a clothes factory and worked there with my mother.
Story 2: My grandfather became ill and went to the hospital, so I had to help him take care of his sheep. It was a large group of sheep, maybe there were thirty of them. Every morning I had to take the sheep to a land in the river, by boat. In the evening I brought them home again.
Story 3: I became a home teacher for a boy who was the son of my father's friend. I taught him English. [Home tutoring is the most common “part-time job” Chinese students find to earn a little money.]
I had the class vote; a few said Story 1 was the lie; the rest said it was Story 2. But no, it was Story 3.
“So you really took 30 sheep on a boat across the river every morning?” I clarified.
“Yes,” Tracy answered. “My grandmother helped me.”
You’ll be glad to know her grandfather recovered and can now care for his own sheep. Tracy the Erstwhile Shepherdess has returned to being an English major at Jiangsu University.
*See last entry, Exhibit B
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