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.

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.

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