Christina in China

This week, I was talking about telephone protocol in class, and I had the bright idea of telling my freshmen to practice calling me on the phone this evening.  So here I am, in Eunice’s house, with the phone ringing every minute and a half with my freshmen.  I don’t know what came over me, but it’s certainly a trip, hearing all these freshmen call.  Just a minute, I said “hello” and got a receiver-full of laughter.  I hung up.  They can call back when they’re not laughing.  I figured that a phone call was a useful skill to be able to have in English, and who knows if any of them will practice with each other.  So here I am, telling 65+ freshmen that it was nice talking with them.

The saddest part is the fact that some of them have incomprehensible pronunciation of their English names.  Zolas that sound like Ronas, Serenas that sound like Srees, Cheryls that sound like Sarahs.  I can hear all of their dormmates in the background, prompting them, or, usually, giggling at their fumbling.  So this is a blog entry interrupted by phone calls.

The highlight so far is tiny, bright-faced Brandy from class two, who not only gave her “ask for leave” speech (a very Chinglish phrase that means that you want to be excused from coming to class) but gave it unhesitatingly and with a plausible excuse (a headache) and concluded her phone call with, “Well, I need to be going.  It was nice talking with you,” that sounded rather sincere.

This year, I’ve been stressing proper politeness: adding intro phrases like “May I ask” to personal questions, giving a proper goodbye.  In a few weeks, I’ll be doing proper ways to invite people to dinner, etc.  I told a sophomore boy, Star Lee, that it was nice talking to him, and he just laughed and said, “Why?”

Yeah, it’s a cliche phrase, but it’s one we use.  And I’ve started to believe it, sometimes.  It is nice talking with them, most of the time, except when I’m in class and feel like I’m a dentist pulling teeth, except that the teeth are English sentences. 

Recently, though, it hasn’t been.  This is partly because I’m been recklessly skipping English Corner, with the excuse that I’ve been hanging out (another phrase I’ve been emphasizing this year) with my host family.  So my interactions have been more interesting–a trip to Xi Shan (West Mountain) Park with a group of girls from class five, among them Angelina, who drew Chinese out of me and confessed rather easily that she missed her parents.  They are in Guangzhou, da gong, which just means working, often away from your city.  She hasn’t seen them in a year.  And Petrel and Future, who don’t have the best intonation or pronunciation in the world but with whom talking never seems like dentistry.  Emma and Judy at Hugh’s house two weeks ago, who talked, of all things about househusbands and San Francisco and David Beckham and how George W. Bush likes to cook.  Emma is bubbly and pop-culture aware and very smart, a four-year student.  She has kind of a goofy face with teeth that seem a bit crooked.  “I chose my English name because of a famous person,” she said.  “From a famous novel, right?” I asked, thinking of Austen.  “No, the actress from Harry Potter, Emma Watson.  I like her very much.”

And today, after class let out, after four periods straight of prepositions of position (against, beside, underneath, and all the like), quizzes, telephoning dialogues, and the listening book, I met my Monday night girls from last semester.  It rained yesterday, hard rain like I’ve never seen in Jiangyou, and again last night, but the sky was clear today.  The sun was big, as I say in Chinese.  “If we walk together outside, our small group will become a very large group,” said Sharry, and I laughed, agreeing.  So we carried desk chairs out to the side of Teaching Building 9, by the ping-pong tables, and talked.  About funerals and weddings, Chinese and American.  How dates (zaozi) would make you have children early (zao).  How, when people die, the family wraps a white cloth around the deceased’s head and stays up all night, playing music, the family gathered together.  And later, someone throws corn seeds, which people must catch in their garments.  Men wear black arm bands for a week after the death, and the next day people set off firecrackers to scare away evil spirits.

I’d forgotten what a treat it was to be with them.  I hadn’t gotten together with all of them in a group, Cathy, Sharry, Silvia, and Veronica (minus Wendy and Joan, who didn’t come) since I’d come back from Spring Festival break.  Sometimes it takes a long time without seeing people to remind me–or even let me know–who I consider dear.

The phone had stopped ringing for at least twenty minutes and startled me when it rang again, with someone whose name sounded like Nell.  I have no Nell in these two classes, and she didn’t ask any question, just asked me what I was doing.  She hung up before I could ask her to spell.

This weekend was a Chinese immersion weekend, or as much immersion as I get.  After I left Eunice’s on Saturday morning, I went to the market with my auntie.  When she asked me if I wanted ribs or duck for lunch, I told her ribs, and two people complimented me on my Chinese from the two or three or words.  It would be nice if it were true.  We bought herbs and dried dates, meat straight off the hanging rack and chopped with the cleaver, twenty fresh farm-raised chicken eggs, and, later, paper money and tiny paper sets of clothes and shoes to put on grandparents’ graves.  I talked to the men working on the road, to the ladies gathered at the house of the other “auntie,” who, despite living in the countryside with water pumps and chickens, have a niece getting a Ph.D. in the United States.  To Wang Shushu (uncle) who came home late and jolly having had a bit of Chinese liquor.  And then on Sunday, as I sat in church, in the front, between Yuan Cao Hui and some old ladies who added their own whispered prayers to Pastor Yao’s, I took notes on parts of the sermon without having them translated.  It was easy stuff, talking about Luke 2:52 and Jesus’ upbringing, Jewish education.  But having a few notes–that they memorized the Law of Moses and started religious school when they were six, notes about Jesus going to the temple, about his wisdom, that we should also teach our children–made me feel somehow connected, a part.  Understanding more, finding the often seemingly endless sermons less incomprehensible (though still something I can only get a basic meaning of) and actually something that it pays to pay attention to.

And then after church and the family of a lady from the church who’d died, another story in itself, I went with Yang Jing, the retired-steelworker-turned-church-worker-and-song-leader, to her apartment.  Eunice calls her the “aggressive chorister,” and to be honest, she often turns me off, with her fawning over my use of simple phrases like “God bless you,” or my use of chopsticks, her constant squeezing of my hand or pulling me in certain directions on the road.  But at her house, I felt more comfortable, looking at her pictures and seeing her when she was young, with her daughter, with her vocational seminary classmates.  And then letting her take me to the bus stop and put me on a bus back to the school and my home.

It was nice talking, and not just in that eating-your-granola-sort-of-way.  Maybe that’s the greatest victory of the semester so far.

This week, I sat at a rice porridge (xifan, for all you China-experienced folk) hot pot dinner and spoke little to no English.  Granted, I didn’t speak much Chinese, either.  But I could keep up with the approximate meaning of the conversation.  I got a joke, after it was explained to me.

And yesterday, I initiated two conversations with my colleagues in the department in Chinese, showing the pictures in last year’s Lanthorn to Zhang Laoshi and talking to Liu Ya Ping, who is already patient and taught me Chinese children’s games last weekend.  I learned how to say confidence (zixiang, I think, but maybe I forgot).

I told my auntie about how I missed my family in the U.S. and semiunderstood her response about mother-daughter guanxi and how it’s special.

I asked Petrel to find someone to tutor me informally in Chinese, rote memorization of sentences and phrases with a tape recorder to improve fluency and vocabulary, and she offered to do it herself.  For that matter, I’ve started speaking a little bit of Chinese to people I normally speak to in English.

I had a Talk with Josh on the phone last week.  The important but good kind.  (No break-ups in the future.)

Last weekend, at the little country retreat (nong jia le) where the foreign language department teachers went to shua, I stubbornly refused to give up on the kids jumping game the kids and Wei Dan and Liu Ya Ping were playing.  I kept trying until I got it.  I asked Xiong Hui Xin (Wendy) to explain and teach me shen ji, a card game.

I tried to explain some of the conditions of West Virginia to Lai Laoshi in Chinese.  All the sentences were muddled and had to be corrected, but it was a step.

I washed my clothes in the brown stream again, this time a bit more easily than last time but still with aching legs.

I spoke to little kids riding their bike home from school and understood the response they made under their breath.  (How guai ya!  “Wow, weird.”)

I’ve started taking others by the arm (Petrel, Future, Chen Fang, Anna) when we’re walking instead of waiting for them to take my arm.

It’s small steps, I think.  Little steps toward bravery.  I want to keep taking them–to seek out relationships instead of just hanging out with the people who most aggressively pursue me.  I want to not be afraid to raise topics that encourage my students and friends to think.  I want to read and write instead of surfing websites in my free time.  I want to try to penetrate the Western membrane that coats China and get to the culture underneath.

After seven months here, I feel like I’m just starting to tap what’s underneath.

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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 ... [Continue reading this entry]