Christina in China

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….

More quotes.  Here we are:

“The more often [a person] feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” -C. S. Lewis

“I’ve found that it’s relatively easy to raise a voice in protest, but unfathomably hard to invest in a life.”

and also…

“When did you last spend time with a poor person, an at-risk individual, or someone in need? When was the last time you were close to them for an extended period? I ask, because that’s what Jesus did. He was close to the poor who needed justice. The Messiah was sent to preach Good News to the poor, to proclaim freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, release for the oppressed, and the arrival of the Jubilee year (Luke 4:18-19). He did this first by becoming incarnate, one of us. He did not commute from heaven in a fiery chariot. “The Word became flesh,” says John, “and made his dwelling among us.

In urban ministry circles, we call this relocation. Many urban ministers intentionally live in the neighborhoods they seek to serve. Proximity builds trust with neighbors, especially if a racial divide must be crossed. Relocation also helps urban ministers discern the roots of need. A man may ask me every day for money. He’s down and out, he says. But if I live in that community, I’ll be able to discern if he is down and out because of systemic injustice or because he does not want to work. Then I’ll be able to share with him what he truly needs.

People in need of justice are not just in the inner city. Individuals and families are struggling in suburban and rural settings as well. In many cases, you do not need to relocate in order to meet a need. But when working for justice, it is crucial to have personal proximity to injustice.

Up close, the protest-oriented injustice-fighter may discover that some matters are best settled by a personal intervention, not a new law. The personal-responsibility injustice-fighter may discover that impersonal systems often devastate the lives of the poor, and that these systems must indeed be protested.

In either case, the best way to get closer to doing justice for the poor is, quite simply, to get closer.”

-Rudy Carrasco, from this article

 

I’ve been looking at some Master’s degree programs recently, some in peace studies/conflict resolution and some in international or urban economic development.  And I’ve also been thinking so much about the importance of dwelling together with people.  With actually knowing people, not just knowing about them or their problems.  Or how to “fix” their problems.  The longer I live, the more I don’t think protesting is the answer.  I think it can be a solution to some problems.  But I feel like I have to root myself in relationship…

I’ve also been thinking about hospitality.  What does it mean?  What is good hospitality?  In the Bamboo Sea (in Yibin, southern Sichuan) this weekend, my students’ families bought me gifts.  Way too many gifts, in my opinion.  They stuffed me with food, delicious food, and toasted me constantly.  They bought my tickets to sights and took me to eat local food.  They washed my clothes when they were dirty, and, heck, bought me a pair of underwear and a towel without being asked, because they thought I might need it.  I was in the honored laoshi role (and, for the record, it makes me more than a bit uncomfortable to get this many gifts) and definitely couldn’t take all of this for more than about five days.  To these families, I was doing a huge favor by teaching their kids English. 

China isn’t always this over-the-top.  But there’s a definite sense of hospitality, that I often find wonderful and sometimes find incredibly fatiguing.  Of the fact that people don’t need to call–they can just drop in.  Another bowl and pair of chopsticks will be found.  Tea or hot water will be poured, fruit or some little snack (if it’s there) will be given.  I’ve also been reading a book Tommy Warf gave me before I came to China, about four guys that traveled the world supporting local Christians.  It’s good.  More evangelical than the stuff I normally read but good.  A big theme of the book is about this, about community and hospitality and what that means.  Things that I know are important but that I don’t quite know what they are yet….And yet it’s on my mind, these thoughts.  Of ministering beside, thoughts that I started having sophomore year with my international lit class and kept having throughout talks with MCCers, short times in Buffalo during my Houghton time, time with the kids at church, a couple memorable chapel talks at Houghton, Menno Groupers, and now through books and life.

Where will I be in ten years?  Perhaps not in the middle-class suburbs, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Will I have the chance to be serving overseas somewhere?  Or maybe in the inner-city or rural communities (I’ve also been thinking a lot about rural Appalachia and “my roots” of late)?  Who knows.

Sorry.  All this rambling.  Later, I promise I’ll tell stories about all the bamboo, toasting, and food of this weekend…

Yup, that's right. No guilt about not blogging. I do, however, have some guilt about not emailing/writing more often. Maybe there will be letters written during my time in Yibin. Does this mean that I'm depraved ... [Continue reading this entry]

To risk sounding like a feeling-sorry-for-myself whiner, today was a crappy day.  Crappy in that my not-knowing-what-to-say-in-Chinese-ness feels like it's out in full force this week.  Crappy in that I got a bunch of the, "Ta ting bu dong!" ("She ... [Continue reading this entry]

To risk sounding like a feeling-sorry-for-myself whiner, today was a crappy day.  Crappy in that my not-knowing-what-to-say-in-Chinese-ness feels like it's out in full force this week.  Crappy in that I got a bunch of the, "Ta ting bu dong!" ("She ... [Continue reading this entry]

This is a quote I got from another blog--the blog of a SALTer in Egypt.  She was writing about a party she was at with a lot of Egyptian Muslim men, breaking down stereotypes, the fact that we get our ... [Continue reading this entry]

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 ... [Continue reading this entry]

This weekend, Julie, a friend from Chongqing and CEE pastoral care person came to visit. I'm sure it was memorable for her because she got to have rice porridge at my host family's house this morning and take pictures ... [Continue reading this entry]

This was an article recently printed on British newspaper The Guardian's online site.  It is, incidentally, about Chongqing, a municipality very near Sichuan Province, which, according to the article, now has a population bigger than Peru or Iraq (and adds ... [Continue reading this entry]

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]