 |
On Chinese TV news the other day, Kerry triumphing over other Democrats for the Democratic nomination was compared to The Lord of the Rings triumphing over other movies for an academy award. This neatly illustrates the entertainment aspect of U.S. politics for the Chinese. However, it is entertainment with an edge, since, at the risk of sounding U.S.-centric, no matter how amusing the race may be, the outcome will greatly affect China and the rest of the world. When the White House changes inhabitants, U.S. foreign policy and trade are often modified and in some cases reversed or scrapped. Chinese businesses, the numerous people working in factories making U.S. products, Chinese wanting to study or work in the U.S., and many more are all potentially affected by the outcome.
Now with a little better idea of the U.S. and China's roles in the world and a better idea of my role in China, I am faced with my third report. The third report means three quarters of the year, when my mind still clings to the closeness of the half-way point. The third report is awkward. I cannot report many new things, so I am left with my blooming store of new ideas, much less developed and more difficult to report on. I am not equipped with the background or resources on China to draw conclusions about my ideas, so what follows is merely meant to give an impression of the issues that currently engage me.
Spring Festival Travels
For the Spring Festival vacation (the equivalent of our winter break, also known as Chinese New Year) I traveled around Southern China. The break was very welcome after a long semester. First, I rode a train for 40 some hours (my longest train ride to date) to get to Chengdu in Sichuan province. Sichuan food is as good and as spicy as rumored. You know the food is hot when the second favorite spice after peppers is numbspice, a spice which, living up to its name, numbs the mouth so that we can consume very spicy food less painfully. Sichuan was also my first opportunity to take a short tour with a Chinese travel group, an interesting experience in Chinese culture, from souvenir-shopping to the little emperor syndrome. The little emperor on the trip was a plump 12-year-old whose parents doted upon him and bought him food and souvenirs at every stop. Luckily one of the other group members was some one with enough English to translate the guide's warnings about how not to anger the monkeys (I still had a
monkey take a swipe at me).
During Spring Festival it is almost impossible to buy train tickets if you do not know some one who works in the travel office. The tickets are usually gone by the time the official sell-time begins, one of my many encounters with Chinese "guanxi." "Guanxi" is the network of relationships that Chinese people develop and then rely on to get things done. Consequently, knowing some one who works at a train station means that I can call on her to help me get tickets. As part of the relationship, I expect that she will request a favor from me at some later date.
When I returned to Nanjing and wanted to continue on to Yunnan (a southern province), there were no train tickets to be found. So I flew to Yunnan and traveled around for a couple weeks before finally taking a train to Hong Kong to visit a friend and former Grinnell fellow. Yunnan is a great place to spend a month. The "land of four springs" has much milder weather than the rest of China and it is also home to a large number of China's minority groups.
Hong Kong awoke a few tinges of homesickness as I was re-exposed to parts of western culture that I had pushed back to the corners of my mind. I could indulge in things I missed from home like dental floss, my favorite brand of gum, and time in coffee shops. Although Hong Kong is officially part of China now, experience dictates otherwise. Hong Kong has a different currency system, different stamps, different international calling code, many more western affects, etc. Most telling for me is that I am still required to get the quite expensive reentry visa to return from Hong Kong to China. China covers for this by calling Hong Kong a "special administrative zone," but even locals prefer to think of themselves as independent and regularly stage protests when Beijing tries to assert itself. Perhaps Beijing will win in the end, but for now I have a valid argument.
Returning to Nanjing was once again a home-coming. I even avoided being cheated too badly on the cab-ride back to Xi-Yuan. Thankfully, I had a few days to rest, prepare classes, and do laundry before jumping into the next semester.
I want to give a brief description of one of China's most important holidays: the Chinese New Year. All of China seems to turn out to travel and celebrate, clogging trains, hotels, streets, parks, and restaurants. It's also big business: prices were raised on many things and there were ubiquitous stands selling red paper cut-outs of monkeys and characters, red calligraphy scrolls, and red fireworks. In case you were still wondering, red is an important color in China.
The closer it got to the first day of the New Year the more people set off fireworks for the rest of us to dodge. I was lucky enough to share New Year's dinner with the family of Naxi -- a local minority -- that ran the guesthouse. They left food for dead relatives and encouraged me to drink lots of their home-made brew before I went out with the sons (as part of a minority, the family is exempt from the usual one-child rule) to see the fireworks.
In Seattle, where private fireworks are illegal, I am used to watching big choreographed firework displays visible to large portions of the city. In Lijiang, Yunnan, the plan was that there was no plan. By some sort of mutual understanding people seemed to gravitate toward larger intersections where random people dodged in and out, setting off as many fireworks as possible. The noise was deafening and lasted for many hours. I later learned this was the point and I believe that even the most persistent bad spirits must have been driven away. The New Year seemed to be a time for those things most important to the Chinese: food and family, and both were there -- in the spirit of true Chinese hospitality -- in excess.
2nd Semester Classes
As the semester began and I repeated some of last semester's lessons I was able to see just how much I've improved as a teacher. I made the same introduction that I raced through first semester last the whole period, and I'm pretty sure this time that most students understood most things. By second semester I'd figured out what students would find most difficult, what I needed to spend time on, and what I should probably forget. It is a challenge explaining to students that the major classroom rule is respecting others, when they don't know what the word "respect" means. Discipline continues to be a problem but I am getting better at involving the whole class and dealing with distracting students. Being firm, but reasonable is the best formula so far.
A few weeks ago I had an American friend come in to talk to my senior students. They were very excited to meet some one new, and listening and talking to a new person, with a different speaking style, was good practice. We went over American stereotypes and what perhaps a "typical" high school student's life is like. My students got to learn about life in America (one of their most frequent requests) and my friend got to learn about the Chinese school system. Both my friend and my students walked away from the experience with a broader perspective on the world. The students are now working on dialogues based on my friend's presentation. One of my bigger challenges is still to get everyone talking in a class of 30 with only 40 minutes a week. I think my best solution so far combines group work and classroom discussion where I make an effort to involve even the quiet students.
Second semester, I am much smarter about keeping track of and encouraging classroom participation as well as how I want to grade the students. Recording participation and scores on the computer makes calculating grades much easier at the end of the semester. Keeping track of students' English and Chinese names and the changes that occur throughout the semester is also essential to the success of grading. Justin found out last semester that the grades we give students are sent home on the semester report cards, but do not appear on the students' permanent records. It is good to know that grades laboriously calculated do go somewhere and also that the students' parents do see the grades.
My Chinese is improving and I have moved beyond basic needs like hunger, thirst, and price to more difficult grammar and nuances. Studying Chinese not only teaches me sympathy and comradery with my students, but also gives me some ideas about trouble spots for Chinese English-learners. Language-learning is also kept in perspective for me by the other English teachers. Whenever I complain about my difficulties with Chinese, they never fail to point out similar difficulties with English. While Chinese may have many words that share the same sound but have different characters or that have the same characters but different sounds, English also has words that are spelled the same but are pronounced differently or spelled differently but pronounced the same.
MSG: The Central Spice and Chinese Food
My listing of spices at the beginning of the report left out the ubiquitous MSG. In China, the "central" country, MSG is truly the central spice. On my last visit to a Chinese person's house I made it into the kitchen, a rare feat since guests are normally supposed to sit in the living room and eat, and have little to do with cooking food or other preparations. I noticed that the most prominent flavoring container in the kitchen had three drawers. The outer drawers I recognized immediately: sugar and salt. It took me a minute to realize that the middle drawer contained none other than MSG.
In America, MSG is the infamous spice that quality restaurants advertise not using and most people accept as bad for our health, though most also occasionally indulge in cheap Chinese food. In China, MSG is the magic seasoning that enhances the taste of every dish. Got moldy vegetables? Got old meat? The best way to face most culinary problems in China is MSG. If the occasional strict foreigner asks for no MSG, she finds her dishes topped with an extra healthy dose of red peppers to cover the less-than-optimal flavor of the food. A past fellow commented that he knew a dish did not contain MSG when it did not taste very good.
Food is important enough socially and culturally for the Chinese that they seem willing to sacrifice a large portion of their income and perhaps part of their health to it. Guests never leave a host's house without food and drink and most entertainment seems to take place at restaurants. Hosts make sure there is always too much to eat (no cleaning your plate here). Much of the Chinese free time is also spent eating. One frequently sees people chatting together or playing cards, happily sipping tea and munching on sunflower seeds. I believe that these periods of great bounty are offset by simple food on a daily basis. But while overweight people are still extremely rare in China, I have noticed that more children are plump. Perhaps people's increasing affluence leads to more consistently rich and ample diets as the principles behind celebratory eating can be extended to the everyday.
The theme of food and eating is woven into the fabric of Chinese society, manifesting itself frequently in the Chinese language. The Chinese word for surprise "chi jing" literally means "to eat surprise." The Chinese word for the jealousy that occurs between men and women is "chi cu," which literally means "to eat vinegar." The list goes on. So not only does food make every occasion, it is also a part of how Chinese express their thoughts and feelings.
Chinese: Not Just a Language
As I mentioned in my last report, it is often clear to me while talking with Chinese that the assumptions we make about the rules governing different situations are not the same. In America I am used to interacting with people from many backgrounds, but I usually assume that they know some English and that even if their English is not very good, we can at least communicate some things. Some Chinese assume they cannot understand me because I look foreign and so will not even listen to what I have to say, no matter how well I can say it in Chinese. Such conversations are not only fruitless, but also increasingly frustrating.
Another point of confusion I have run across is the simple, but loaded term "home." Chinese have asked me where my home is and I innocently try to explain that in college I lived in Iowa… Then they ask me where my home is… I answer somewhat confused that my parents live in Seattle and they seem satisfied. The Chinese translation of "home" can mean either "home" or "family," which I used to assume lead to some confusion. Recently I learned that in China "home" is not "home" without a family. (In fact home may really be where your grandparents are from, but most Chinese are not so strict anymore.) In other words, even if I lived on my own for several years (something that Chinese girls rarely do), my "home" would be where my parents lived until I married and had children of my own. I wonder where this would leave me if I decided never to marry or have children.
The Chinese concept of "home" illustrates the importance of family in China. It also contrasts sharply with the concept of "home" favored by many of my peers: home is wherever you are. In college, students affirm their break from their parents when they began calling the college "home." Perhaps because Americans are too mobile, because too many families separate, because young people often move out long before they marry, or because our definition of family has changed over time, we have lost the idea of a home strictly tied to a traditional "family." Many people may go "home" for Christmas, but after the tree comes down they also go "home" to return to work. While my "home" with my parents will always have a special place in my heart, I lean toward the American notion of "home" because I don't like to think of myself not at home until the day I marry, and because I like to think that I have made China a home, at least for now…
Please send your questions and comments. Mail and email are always extremely welcome ties to life back in the states.
Katie Michaelsen
Nanjing University Xi Yuan
Room 1703
20 Jin Yin Jie
Shanghai Lu
Nanjing, China 210093
michaelk@grinnell.edu
|
|
