Funkiness lost
Anybody remember my little black, green, and orange peacoat? Like a wonderful mom, my mom scanned in some pages from the Houghton yearbook and sent them to me. The applicable pages, which of course are the pages that either Josh or I (or both) are on. My senior picture was taken by either Danielle or Alex, lying in the fall leaves, with wearing my coat with the orange and green leaves. I miss my coat.
I always think of this coat when I see people wearing cool things in China. The art teacher in our department, Ms. Zhang, always wears cool things, funky pants, long denim coats, plastic glasses. Ms. Feng, who is one of the Chinese teachers (similar to an English teacher at an American college) is another person who wears cool pants. Anna, Eunice’s former student who’s now at Sichuan Normal in Chengdu, taught me a phrase: Ni de kuzi hao ku o! Basically, “Wow, your pants are cool!” I sometimes say this to Ms. Zhang or Ms. Feng. I feel sad because I miss wearing cool pants, at least pants that I think are cool. Or cool coats for that reason.
I took the bus to Nanchong last weekend to shua with CEEers and have a birthday party for Phil and Justin, two CEE friends. It was fun and relaxing, and I think part of what makes it so fun is that I feel like these people retain their personalities so well in China. Catherine is very interested in ideas and has all these experiences, like teaching in the primary school from hell or growing up in Singapore or backpacking in her 20s, that she can extract funny stories from in a moment’s notice. Holly is learning to play the erhu, a Chinese instrument, with old people in the park, brings her bowls to a restaurant for makeshift “Chinese takeout,” writes on her bathroom wall tiles in erasable marker, and plays a bunch of eclectic folk and rock and country and stuff on her Ipod. Phil has this loud voice, is funny and sarcastic, goes off on rants about babies or Da Shan, this Canadian expat in China who’s a celebrity because of his perfect Chinese. Justin is bookish in this dryly funny and interesting way that reminds me of Rachel Ingraham and other Houghton people.
I think the thing I miss about my couch coat is that it’s not just my couch coat that I don’t have. I feel like I was kind of quirky in college and high school, and I’m not really quirky here. Weird (qi guai)—I am a foreigner after all—but not quirky. When I came here, I kind of thought that I should be “professional,” since I am 22 years old, after all. I brought my practical sweaters, my practical black coat, my practical knit pants.
How much of my identity can I keep here? It’s odd because so much of what I love—literature, writing, playing music, singing in a choir or even just at Menno Group, somewhat thought-provoking music and movies (well, at least more thoughtful than most Chinese pop music or the Hilary Duff movies that students like) just feels a world away here. I can’t believe that last year about this time, I was writing a paper on Oleanna, stories for Writer’s Workshop (or at least trying to convince myself to write stories), and helping people struggle to get the Lanthorn put together.
Today in my Chinese tutoring with Mrs. Lai, I learn how to talk about my college life. Last night, as my auntie sat in bed, her feet under the covers, watching TV and waiting for my uncle to come home, I used my dictionary to find words that my little Chinese textbooks hadn’t taught me: editor, graduate student, transferring. We sit in the classroom on the third floor of Building 8, the stark concrete walls decorated with posters students have made, with inspirational messages on them.
Mrs. Lai looks tired as she often does but yet so patient, me pointing to places on my Chinese map of the U.S. and trying to talk about my experiences in college. I pulled out the scanned yearbook pages, the copy of the Lanthorn, my graduation program. I show her the artwork, and she teaches me words: abstract, self-portrait, humor piece, essay. She laughs as she tells me that slang for “ugly” in Chinese literally means “abstract,” as in an abstract painting. I laugh, too.
And I laugh as I stumble over sentences, trying to use words that I know to convey more abstract ideas. I tell her that in school, I liked to read modern American and international novels, that I enjoyed religion and philosophy. That next year, Rachel is going to Boston to study in seminary. That my mom likes teaching better than studying, but that her school wanted her to get a doctorate. That I was a dorm leader in college and got a free dorm room for helping the students on my floor.
Mrs. Lai, as usual, wears her tinted glasses, her pair of jeans, her red scarf, a pair of tall boots. Her face is round, her hair stretches past her waist. She, I realize, is an individual, is distinctive, and yet is kind enough to teach me Chinese from scratch, writing each character stroke-by-stroke, telling me each tone, stopping my bad grammar with a “time out” sign with her hands. I tell Mrs. Lai that I lived at home for two years because my dad was sick, and she tells me how to say “help care for.” Her daughter’s experiences, she tells me in a sentence that I can surprisingly understand every word of, are the same as mine. Her father, Mrs. Lai’s husband, died when she was four years old.
She’s a good girl, too, Mrs. Lai tells me. Studies hard. And somehow, I catch that Mrs. Lai is telling me that my father would be proud of my Chinese study if he knew. It was something that countless people have told me in English, and yet it strikes me when she says it in Chinese. Not at the time, but as I think back. I don’t really understand a lot about Mrs. Lai or even what she says. In my relationship with her, like with so many people, makes her a much less rounded character than I would like.
Every week, we both become less flat characters to each other. New words add lines to the caricatures that we unwillingly are. I realize that so much of my identity feels tied up in ideas—ideas that I write about, listen to in music, read about in books, talk about over cups of coffee with friends at bookstore cafes or late-night diners.
And without the ideas, I feel somewhat lost, somewhat directionless. I comment on how much dirt is in the air, how many classes I have today, how delicious the food is, how it’s warm because the sun’s out. I envy my students sometimes, the four-year students, who can tell me stories they read about househusbands or explain the educational system in China or give me dormitory gossip or name off various types of pollution. And yet I am still struck by Mrs. Lai, who I communicate with haltingly at best. She is one of the people that I admire most at this school, because she is a single mother and a teacher teaching ancient Chinese literature and standard Mandarin in the English department (a pretty thankless job), because she treats me like an adult and not like a child despite my vocabulary.
I know a lot of personality can be conveyed just by mannerisms, the way you do things, the way you carry yourself and such. I’ve felt freer recently, like I wasn’t trying to impress anyone or appear more like a lao da, an authority or experienced person. It’s nice to be goofy, to ride a kids’ bike around the concrete courtyard of Auntie Pu’s and Uncle Wang’s house, to whistle, to sing as I’m walking up the stairs in the office building, to laugh at myself.
I still miss the ideas, though. How’s that for an anticlimactic ending?
Tags: Travel
Christina
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