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“Welcome to our new friends”

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

There were American students that came to visit yesterday, on a 3-week study tour of China, hosted by Myrrl and Rod.  Students were all excited for me.  “Christina!” they said.  “Your homemates are coming to visit.  Are you excited?”  To be honest, not particularly.  I didn’t feel like I had half as much to talk to these random college students (who were fulfilling a requirement to graduate) as with my students.  The Chinese students took the American students outside the gate to give them a taste of Jiangyou and college life.  But, to be honest, they didn’t seem that excited, just kind of whiny.  When I was with them, there wasn’t much to say.

Myrrl (or Rod or someone) brought a cross-cultural communication book for our library called Encounters with Westerners written by this guy named Don Snow who’s like the Christian ESL China Expert.  I was flipping through it and feeling depressed at the idea of anyone successfully communicating across culture.  Even more dismal was a statistic about Chinese international students studying in a grad program in the United States.  According to the (1998) article, these students said that after a year, 39% of them would say that they have no relationships or contacts with Americans.  Another third said that they only had maybe 1 or 2 American friends.  Sometimes I get sad about my lack of connections, despite all the people…but then I think that maybe this problem is mutual.  Do we create this ourselves by not being proactive and assuming that people will seek each other out?  Are there just unbridgeable divides?  I know a lot of people that say that they’ve been here for a while and lack close friendships.

And yet, for some reason, I feel closest to the students.  I don’t know why, but maybe because I still feel like a student myself.  Because I’m still young and have no baby or family.  Because they’re excited and more honest.  And I also feel close to my ayi (auntie).  Because I laugh and make jokes, and she laughs and makes jokes.  Because she sits on my bed in the evenings and looks at my stuff and gives me advice (well, this sometimes grates).  Because I feel like she’s comfortable, and it makes me comfortable, too.

What is a friend, anyway?  A person you tell secrets to?  A person you hang out with?  A person who understands you?  A person who just wants to be with you with nothing gained?  How odd that it would be in China that I ask these questions first, if I try to figure out friendship.  If I can be friends with people I’ve never told deep secrets of my life with.  Those people that I pick pipa (kumquat) or watch TV with, are they friends?  The people that banquet me, are they friends?  People who I work with or spend time in the office with or at lunch, are they friends?  The students that know more about me than I do about them, are they friends?  Anyone have ideas about this–especially people with international experience, but really anyone?  Who do you think are friends (as cheesy as that question sounds).

There are a few that I don’t have to question, and I’m grateful for that.  And I’m also grateful for having to think about this in the first place, as strange as it may sound.  I’m also grateful for the fact that I have many wonderful memories, just as many, interspersed among the hard ones.  But the hard ones are there, as they always are in stretching situations.

Post later about watching people harvest wheat and rapeseed.  It’s an amazing sight to see it done by hand before your eyes….

Gettin’ culture

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

I told somebody in my host family community the other day that I was here to learn about their culture, and they laughed and said they didn’t have any culture.  Translation: Culture equals education, learning, knowing to read well, knowledge of all this classical Chinese stuff.

Yesterday, Dean Zhao called Eunice and said that he needed to see us.  What did we do, the two of us, that we were getting busted for?  I thought.  That Hugh didn’t do?  When we got to the office, we learned that we’d been invited to participate in this big Li Bai culture festival that Jiangyou has been gearing up for for months, that people had heard that there were a couple American teachers at Jiangyou Normal that could speak some Chinese.  Li Bai, in case you were wondering, is one of THE Tang Dynasty poets and hails from none other than our fine little city.  Kids start memorizing his poems in school in first grade.

So Eunice and I are going to be on stage, along with an Israeli woman and some Japanese people and about 80 primary schoolers, reciting a Li Bai poem about a waterfall.  The first two lines, Eunice have to say by ourselves.  It’s been good practice for tones…and, for sure, the topic of the week for my Chinese lesson will be to have Ms. Lai teach us how to properly read a Chinese poem.  (People read very slowly and expressively.)  I’ve almost got it memorized, about the purple smoke and the waterfall falling for thousands of feet.

All the buildings in town have new faces on them, roads have been cleaned and repaired, new pedicabs are wheeling down the streets, and seven interpreters have been trained.  There are billboards everywhere about “building Li Bai culture.”  The man in charge says that over 75 foreign journalists are supposed to be here.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but for sure, with all the fan dancing, fake soldiers waving flags, kids waving flowers, middle-aged ladies dressed in pink banging drums, and people dressed in dragon suits, it should be an good time.

Yidian xinku

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
The Chinese above = possibly butchered.  (Supposed to mean "A little busy/hardworking.") Today's one of those days in which I planned it out this morning, in 45-minute increments.  5 periods.  Lesson prep during my breaks.  Home for dinner quickly, then back ... [Continue reading this entry]

Shua de ban tian

Monday, March 27th, 2006
(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 ... [Continue reading this entry]

It was nice talking with you

Monday, March 27th, 2006
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 ... [Continue reading this entry]

“This is a strange thing we’re doing.”

Monday, September 19th, 2005
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]