Christina in China

(Wow, all these blogs!  I’m finally finishing all the blogs I’ve had saved and hadn’t finished before.  Who knows why?) 

I may have written this before.  I know I’ve said it.

When I was in college, Elizabeth Weaver told me that I should be on an island somewhere, somewhere without time or schedules.  It was kind of an interesting revelation for me, out of the mouth of someone else, which is where these things come from.  Not from my brain.  It was the same semester that I was learning to be not-quite-so-cerebral-and-esoteric, interacting with RAs and girls on my dorm floor.  The same semester that I was beginning to unguiltily sleep until eleven or noon on Sundays, enjoy the day, and go to Menno Group in the evenings.  And Menno Group, although I rarely keep in touch with people from there, taught me a lot, too.  How to go to church in a living room with no pulpit and no sermon, to worship in my own way with songs and guitar, to pray and light candles.  And then there was lit theory class and Lanthorn, which taught me that a lot of people that I think are brilliant and interesting might actually think I’m worth hanging around.

Eunice says that her first year in China was the best year of her life, when she was freed from all the expectations people had for her, when she came into herself.  I feel like that year was my senior year at Houghton, when I figured out what I thought (well, approximately) about war and peace), when I had some friends who started to hammer the idea into my head that it was important to do things like sleep for at least seven hours and clean a path across the floor, when I realized that I need to look for beauty, in words, in song, in people, to survive.  I started to find my voice in writing and value it.  I learned how to, along with Josh, build a friendship into a “relationship,” whatever that means, and preserve it.

And, with Elizabeth’s comment, I realized that I’m the type of person who just likes to be, just likes to be with people and also be alone to think, just likes to listen, to find enjoyment in work but work unhurriedly and in a way that preserves relationship.  In a way that I haven’t exactly learned how to do yet.

It’s odd.  I love China, but the same time pressure type things are here, at least in a teacher’s life, as were there in high school, at Marshall, at Houghton.  Sometimes I wish I’d found that island, or that little village, or wherever, where I can forget time.  I forget time more at my host family’s house that anywhere else in China, but even there, I can hear the school bells, the medley of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “Jingle Bells,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” that plays every 45 minutes during the day and every hour or so every evening, to signal the beginning or end of classes, or as a warning to get up or go back to the dorms.  7:00 am to 10:00 pm, divided up in intervals, reminding you that time is still ticking on.  But they people there know how to shua, hang out.  Shua de ban tian, hang out for a really long time.

I realized the other day that the need to shop or buy the latest things or “make up” (as Chinese students often say) or really look in mirrors apart from brushing my hair in the morning was just not there anymore.  As was the need to measure up or compare to or compete with old high school or college classmates, at least not on the same scale, as it was before.

Maybe I’m never going to find the island.  Or the little village.  Maybe I just need to make the village wherever I am, in Gainesville, Florida, if need be.  I’m not afraid, of staying here for the next four months.  Or of going back to U.S., moving to Gainesville and finding a job and a community there.  And then wherever life takes me.  I’m not afraid of being in a “serious relationship” or working through the “Hey, now we live in the same city and have to relearn how to interact in everyday life!” fun.

Josh gave me a CD for Christmas that I’ve been listening to a lot this term.  Andrew Peterson.  Listening to Andrew Peterson is, at least for me, always a good idea.  It gives me that dose of pure beauty and affirmation that pain exists melted into one that I need to survive not just in China but anywhere.  In one of the songs it talks about being in “the far country,” not at home.  I’d be mistaken if I said that the far country was China.  At the risk of sounding over-spiritual and sappy, the far country is the world of parents leaving and ladies dying of cancer (“without any meaning,” as I literally translated my auntie’s words the other day) and power plants that belch out smoke that hides the mountains past Pingwu.  I’m convinced that good life and good work are not a dichotomy; somehow they fit together, but I don’t know how yet.  I don’t think that heaven is an old folks’ home where we all sit around playing bingo (or mah jong, if you will).  I think that we’ll work and know how to balance it at last.  Maybe that’s what heaven means, good rest and good work and good worship.  Time and grace to do it all.

Tags: China, Sichuan, Travel, Work

This entry was posted on Monday, March 27th, 2006 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.