Christina in China

It’s odd how I, a lover of people, sometimes feel scared of them here. I rely on people so much, for my energy, inspiration, and laughter. But somehow it feels threatening and fascinating all at once: hundreds of people chatting in a language I don’t know much of, in a dialect that would be hard to understand even if I spoke good Mandarin, good putonghua. Mandarin Chinese already has an astonishing number of what I (and the Lonely Planet) would call homophones, distinguished only by a different tone or sometimes only a different character.

Here, they call the dialect Sichuanhua, the language of Sichuan, where the “zh” sound becomes “z,” the “ch” sound becomes “c,” the “n” sometimes becomes an “l,” and the second tone or third tone (I can’t remember which) becomes the quick, falling fourth tone. I’ve heard someone say that Sichuan people often sound angry even when they’re not at all because of the sharp fourth tone and the way they speak furiously fast.

Or maybe it just seems furiously fast. During my first weekend in Jiangyou, I had dinner with Eunice and two of her friends and former students, whose English names are Janet and Anna. Janet is apparently very intelligent, at the top of her class, and recently got a job teaching in nearby Mianyang because she could teach an entire language in English. Anna is extremely bright, too, Eunice tells me, with very good English. We sat at the table after dinner, as Janet tried to eat her muffin with chopsticks (kuaizi). Eunice, Janet, and Anna switched back and forth between Chinese and English, almost like it was a secret language, sometimes saying three English words, then two Chinese words, then three English words again.

Anna wears blue-tinged glasses and has a longer, more angular face than many Chinese. She was recently baptized in the Christian church and has been a Christian for about six months. That night at dinner, she was talking about the creation account, an interpretation that ranged from the orthodox to the quirky and weird–like how ever since the Fall, women have never been able to resist eating. This, according to laughing Anna, was why pregnant women eat so much and eat so much junk food.

Halfway through her explanation, I stopped trying to pick out words that I know, as I normally do when listening to people speak Chinese. I just watched her, saw how her dark eyes flashed, listened to her foreign speech, observed her lips moving faster than I think I’ve ever seen lips move before. As Eunice and Janet nodded, I couldn’t help but think how odd and amazing language is: that a people can choose a set of sounds and somehow, over time, build up a system that conveys such complex meanings. Arbitrary and conventional (with an obligatory nod to Mr. Saussure). I’ve never given much thought to how much of a uniting or dividing factor language is. The simplest tasks suddenly seem daunting.

It’s a nice place to be, very good for my humility and for my spirit. I thank God for helping me buy apples, helping me pay the check at a restaurant, helping me ask the price at the internet bar, helping me have a short conversation in Chinese with some students who don’t speak much English, all of which I’ve done in the past weeks. There have been bad moments–one Chinese class I was put into, where the teacher spoke impossibly quick and then fired questions at me, which made me upset, so I sat there crying and, even better, trying to disguise the fact that I was crying. But then there have been little triumphs–when I successfully tell the yogurt man that I don’t want to buy yogurt; I want to get the refund for bringing my bottles back. Or when I ask someone’s name, order at a restaurant, pay for something, make some small talk, or tell a waitress that the food is delicious. Even when, at Jiuzhaigou, the national park, I make a friend and hang around with her for two days, using only very poor Chinese. (More later.)

But there are hilarious moments, too, usually seeing the English that’s on signs (even official-looking signs) and products for sale. The other day, I was at the supermarket looking for a towel. I am now the proud owner of one that has the phrase “INNOCENT CATS IN BOSTON” written on it, complete with a little semicoherent poem, two or three marching soldiers, a green and tan Union Jack, and, of course, the two innocent cats. The students here call the funny, sometimes nonsensical English “Chinglish.” I get a kick out of it, while at the same time realizing that the Chinese on signs in English-speaking countries is probably equally hilarious and awful.

It all reminds me of the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis, the story way back in chapter 11, even before Abraham sets off for the Promised Land, far back where history and myth and religion and our collective unconscious, if there is such a thing, all seem to intermingle. “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech,” the verses read. The people have an idea and say to each other, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

In the beginning, the Scripture says, God created the heavens and the earth, saying, “Come, let us,” just as the people at Babel say. Their language is the same. And language is powerful–God knows this. He scatters them throughout the earth, and the place is called Babel–“because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.”

It is humbling to be deaf and mute and illiterate in a different language, I think as I sit at my ancient computer, with Chinese characters labeling all the buttons and programs, with students in the dormitory behind my building laughing and shrieking and babbling in Chinese. Sometimes I feel like, with my pronunciation exercises and dialogues and role plays and English corners, that I’m helping to build the tower of Babel again. But I am not in Hong Kong, not in Shanghai, not in Beijing, not even in Chengdu. I am in Jiangyou, a town with only six foreigners and little English spoken. God scattered the people at Babel. And he scatters us still.

This morning, I read this article (one of the headline articles on Yahoo, which automatically pops up on my computer) about the growing gap between rich and poor in China. I would recommend giving it a read; I think it’s a pretty well-written article.

This is something I’ve been able to observe here, even in my short time so far. In Beijing and Chengdu, I saw technology and relative wealth to rival that of the U.S., but last weekend, on a trip to Nanchong, a city a few hours away, I saw the other side of this. Farmers’ houses, some even made of mud and mud-bricks, which Eunice told me was a sign of the poorest farmers. CCTV9, the English channel, features shows on travel, art, culture, and other things that tell about a growing number of rich elite in this country, but even just a thirty-minute walk away from campus brings me in contact with manual laborers (“workers”), women and men digging through trash to get the recyclable paper or plastic bottles in order to get some money from turning them in, farmers who definitely don’t buy designer shoes or hand-tailored silk clothes or BMWs.

A couple Sundays ago, a lady at the Jiangyou church was talking to Eunice. She was a social worker from Beijing and was talking about her recent trip to Gansu Province, north of Sichuan, sandwiched in-between Sichuan, Qinghai (which borders on Tibet), and Inner Mongolia. The farmers in Gansu, the social worker said, were the poorest in China, and she said that she was afraid that if something didn’t happen soon, there might be an uprising.

There are definitely big differences between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” between businesspeople who send their kids to private schools and the less affluent, some of whom can’t even pay the fees to send their kids to primary school (elementary school). Thoughts to ponder. And definitely to pray about.

I had a week after I arrived in Jiangyou to settle in a little before I started teaching. I had to go to Chengdu (about three hours drive) for a medical exam in order to get my visa changed ... [Continue reading this entry]

Before I go further, I guess I should write a little about this crazy place I'm living. I may have blogged before about this, but the word that epitomizes my China experience so far is "contrast." Jiangyou fits ... [Continue reading this entry]

My first few days in Jiangyou felt very full and very strange--but a good kind of strange. The kind of little-kid excitement that I normally have, except up another level. My apartment is not bad--in fact, sometimes I ... [Continue reading this entry]

Four days and a bit less jet lag later, I got to board a plane from Beijing to Chengdu, the closest airport city to Jiangyou. This was my first experience with intra-China air travel, and it mostly went smoothly. ... [Continue reading this entry]