Recently

It's been a while since I posted anything!  I've been busy preparing for our Halloween party tomorrow (pictures and details to come!) and dealing with lack of electricity (the power was out all of Saturday and half of Sunday. There was also no water at that time!).  That was interesting... at first, I was like, "Yeah, Peace Corps experience!" and I was very creative and actually pretty productive with no power.  Two groups of students came over to bake on Saturday (we made pancakes on the gas stove) and one group cooked me a delicious lunch of Chinese food (they went to their dorm, got buckets, and found water somewhere...).  I painted a picture, rented a bike, graded some homework, and at night I read Game of Thrones on my Nook (luckily it was fully charged).  The next day, however, I started to feel a little disgruntled and well, dirty! I wanted to shower! Luckily the electricity and water came back after lunch.

  Here are two sentences from my students' homework:
1. As Ann was sitting in the sun, an ant climbed up on her body and attacked her.
2. Meat is also our human growth the necessary food.

Breaking from routine

Today after I said goodbye to my afternoon class and started packing up my things, the students began to whip out materials for another class.  I was intrigued to see them pull out felt mats with red lines, and thin brown paper that looks like the paper used to make patterns for clothes.  They set white trays on their desks, and pulled out bottles of black ink and long brushes.  Their next class was Chinese calligraphy! Feeling nosy and wanting to do something other than flee back to my apartment as I always do, I stuck around and watched some students set out their materials. When the teacher came in, a Chinese man, I asked if I could stay and watch and he said it was no problem. So I sat to the side and observed a Chinese calligraphy class! How fun!  Later tonight I texted one of the students (Jiang Ling Ling) I had been talking to in that class and asked her to teach me, so she came ten minutes later and showed me, and even left all her materials for me to practice!  I asked if she would need them, and she said she could borrow her classmate’s.  I was very touched by her generosity and her willingness to let an incompetent laowai (foreigner) use her precious calligraphy materials.  This is just one example of Chinese generosity that I find so impressive. I’m glad I did something out of the norm- I need to break my routine and do more things with students!  I’m trying to work on taking opportunities in the moment they come- there’s no time like the present.

While Jiang Ling Ling was at my apartment, Sunflower called me to come see her roommates and classmates perform a dance.  They are learning the Gangnam style dance, which they will perform at an event welcoming the new students!  Huzzah!  I think it’s so great that they are doing that dance, because I’m kind of obsessed with it.  It was really fun to watch them practice the dance, and I stood in the back and tried to follow. I’ve seen the YouTube video (and different variations thereof) so many times that I kind of know it.  They were very excited to have the new “student” in their class! I can’t wait to see the real performance.  I will post videos, or at least pictures… for some reason I haven’t been able to post videos on this blog yet.

Sunny

I would like to introduce an awesome student at my school.  Her name is Sunny, and although she is not even one of my students, nor one of Mary’s, she has become one of my best friends at site. Let me tell you how we met.

On my birthday, I was walking back from my classes and as I started to walk past the back of the administration building, I hear someone calling my name.  I look left, and right, and I see nobody.  My name is called again, and I look up to see a girl in a black and white striped sweater waving at me from the fourth or fifth floor of the building.  I wave back, thinking it must be one of my students (I have so many that I often don’t recognize them).  She asks me to please wait for me outside the building, so I stop and a few minutes later she comes running out.  She introduces herself to me and as we start walking, she tells me how excited she is to meet me- a foreigner, wow!  I hear this from a lot of students but I was struck by Sunny’s enthusiasm, especially when I realized she wasn’t one of my students after all.  The fact that she sought me out so energetically was a big deal considering that most students are too shy to even say hello.  On a whim, I mentioned to her that it was my birthday and that she should come eat dinner with me, Mary and some students.  When she heard it was my birthday, she got so excited.  I gave her my phone number and said goodbye.  A short time later, she shows up at my apartment with a bag of candy and marshmallows, and beautiful card with a lovely long note expressing her desire that we can be friends and that I can “love China, love my school, and love me,” the whole thing punctuated with a joyful “come on!” (I’m not exactly sure what the translation should be but it’s my favorite part of the note).

"Happy Birthday to you! Come on!"

My cozy new friends

      Since then, she has come over a few times, and last week she came to give me a pair of cute and comfy slippers that I now wear every day.  She also showed me a Chinese movie called “The Love Song of Kangding.”  Coincidentally, my LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) had taught us PCVs the song it’s based on during language training in PST.  Sunny’s a really sweet and energetic girl, and I’m really grateful to have her as a friend.  There are a few students like her that are not too shy to talk to me, and I really appreciate it.  It’s a nice break from the stares and nervous glances I get from most of the students. 

The Small Things

I’m beginning to see that my time in China as a Peace Corps is not going to be about fanfare and fireworks, but about the small things.  I have been feeling like I am not doing much in being here, and I just can’t wait to get our English club started (we’ve had to wait because of the military training and the national holiday).  I just feel like once I can start that, then I can get to know more students, and find out where their interests lie and then start other clubs like movie club, music club, and crafts club.  I want to make a difference in students’ lives.  But it’s occurring to me that maybe I have already made a difference and I do every day, but it’s in such small things that most of the time I don’t even realize.

For example, today I went to Wal Mart with Mary and two students, Eva and Alice.  Mary and I were overjoyed to find that Wal Mart has suddenly decided to start stocking cheese on their shelves (a wonderful discovery but also dangerous because it’s very expensive for our allowance, and only a 30-minute bus ride away!).  We bought some mild Dutch cheese, as well as some apples, grapes, and crackers.  Eva and Alice had never really had cheese before because it’s not readily available and not part of the average Chinese person’s diet.  They were really curious to know what the big deal was all about, and why these two foreigners were getting so excited! (Actually, perhaps it was just me that was getting the most excited… I love cheese…).  So we explained that cheese can be eaten in many different ways, and they got to try it with crackers and fruit.  They liked it, but they preferred it plain. 

It occurred to me that this is one way that I am making a difference in the students’ lives, by exposing them to different tastes and ways of eating.  Another thing is that Mary has introduced Eva to coffee and to peanut butter.  Eva even brought home two jars of peanut butter, and her brother ate an entire jar while she was at work! 

Today I shared with Eva a recipe I had found using the wrappers they use to make dumplings but filled with chocolate, peanut butter, and banana slices, all deep fried (so healthy, I know).  She and other students never even thought of making anything other than dumplings with those!

The concept of “making a difference” to me often brings to mind amazing people who’ve had books and movies made about them and who have Nobel Peace Prize medals hanging on the wall.  But this process manifests itself in many different ways, and everything takes time.  I have to remind myself of this when my ambition gets restless and I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything here yet.

English names

In order to manage my ridiculous number of students, I asked each of them to create a note card with a photo of themselves, their Chinese name, their English name if they have one, and so on.  Here are some of the stellar, bizarre names that they chose for themselves (otherwise they were boring like Jane, Joy, and Rose- I got tons of those. I'm positive "Rose" is because of Titanic, the only English movie every made, or so it seems because that's the only one they know!).

• Source
• Cricket
• Rice
• Jeremy (weird only because it was a girl)
• Digest
• Seven
• Moon
• Dream
• Sapphire
• Kissy
• Fergie
• Lemon (two of those)
• Venus
• Spring
• Darling
• Sweety
• Panda
• Beenle (I don't know what's going on there)
• Rowling (as in, J.K., perhaps?)
• Star
• River
• Fairy
• Fish

How I (sometimes) spend my free time

I drew these letters with pencil first, and then I used my X-acto knife ( a traveling crafter's best friend! Or at least, mine) to cut out the letters and the designs inside.

The finished poster, with pieces of leftover colored paper behind the main part 

The new addition to me wall

Ta-da!!!

My national holiday

For the week-long national holiday, I decided (for several reasons) to stick around my town and explore.  I had spent the past three weekends visiting volunteers, in Chengdu and in Chongqing.  I had heard there are a lot of beautiful places around my school and I wanted to take advantage of the time to explore some of those places. Plus, so many people travel during the holidays that I figured it would be more pleasant, and less stressful, to avoid long train rides and crowded train stations.

I mentioned previously that I went to visit my host family again on Sunday.  I was hoping we could go to a park because Jerry had told me we would, but instead we just sat around and ate. We played Uno because he’d asked me to bring the cards, and while I was grateful for having Uno the first time I had stayed with the host family to break the tension and pass the time, I am getting so sick of that game because my students always want to play it. We also watched part of Resident Evil and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice (which I actually kind of liked).  Don’t get me wrong, I love eating, playing cards, and watching movies, but I don’t know why we couldn’t go to the park. I was looking forward to running around with the kids because I don’t get much exercise at site and it sounded like fun. Maybe next time?

Monday I went with Mary and Eva (a second-year student who’s really smart and earned a scholarship to attend school) to Fo Ye Dong which was a beautiful place.  From downtown, we took a small van about half an hour outside of town, past countless rice fields and farmers’ houses.  Once we got there, we walked through caves illuminated by blue, red, and green fluorescent lights- it was like Christmas! The rock formations on the walls and ceilings were amazing, and the lights really enhanced the crevices and nooks and crannies. Every once in a while we came across a mini shrine or a series of statues. After walking over slippery stones and steps through the artificially illuminated tunnels, we discovered that the only way out was via a short boat ride over the underground river.  The boatman paddled us through with a shovel (Chinese people are so resourceful!), and sometimes we had to duck our heads to avoid getting scraped by a low ceiling or a low-hanging stalactites.  Soon we emerged into the sunlight and found ourselves on a beautiful river.  We disembarked, and followed the path across a bridge farther down the river to a temple.  After looking at the temple, we hiked up the steps to a stone forest.  There was a giant (and by giant I mean close to 100 feet tall) swing which I of course rode on!  Fo Ye Dong was a beautiful place and definitely worth visiting, although it was followed by a less-than-stellar meal at a restaurant outside the park.

Cave shrine

So pretty!  I guess Chinese caves will have to substitute looking at Christmas lights on people's houses in December.

"Don't crush me!!"

Eva and I on the little boat

Watch your head!

Temple

Stone forest, as they call it

The EPIC swing. Mary has the picture of me on the swing.

Tuesday we went to a park dedicated to Jiangyou’s famous poet, Li Bai.  The day basically consisted of snacking on delicious street food and junk food.  I ate a delicious sandwich made with fried bread, ham, and some spicy sauce, and fried potato wedges with spices.  We wondered through the park, and fed biscuits to the colorful fishies.  The best part was going on bumper cars, which is always so much fun.  I don’t know why, but every time I bumped into someone or was bumped into, I just started busting up laughing. There was one guy in another car who seemed to get a kick out of my laugh, because every time I laughed, he would smile really big, which made my day because I love making other people happy.

The story behind these statues is that the middle guy is drunk... is that supposed to be Li Bai, the famous poet? I'm not sure.

Bumper cars

forever young

"Feed us more biscuit!!"
There was one really fat fish hanging around with his mouth open and I made it a game to see how many times I could land a piece of biscuit in his open mouth. Final score: 3 out of 5

Wednesday, Mary’s friend, Catherine (or Caty, the 17 I mentioned in the other post) and her student, Tobey (a girl- isn’t that a cute name for a girl?) visited us from near Chengdu.  We spent that day baking breads (pear, apple, and pumpkin) for Caty to take home (she wanted to give them as gifts to some of the staff and workers at her school, and she doesn’t have an oven at her place).  Mary made a delicious quiche for dinner and we also had some noodles for only ¥3 ($.50), and then some pumpkin pie.  We got Caty hooked on the TV show, “Being Human,” which is about a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf who are friends.

Friday we went to Bai Long Gong (which means White Dragon Palace), which was another place with brightly illuminated caves because Caty had not been to such a place yet.  We found some tables inside so we had a little picnic inside the cave, of yellow cake, popcorn, sunflower seeds, and peanuts.  I think it was cheaper than Fo Ye Dong, but it was also smaller, and once you leave the cave, you just walk a short path back to where the bus drops people off.  It was fun, but not as cool as the boat ride and hiking that Fo Ye Dong had.  There was a boat ride at Bai Long Gong inside the cave, which was optional but we took for the fun of it.  The guy let us get out and cheap out this awesome underground waterfall. Normally, they give you a free ride over, and then you have to pay to be taken back, otherwise you can walk for free on this little path along the water.  We opted for the latter, but for whatever reason the guy decided to take us back for free.  To thank him, Mary wanted to give him the leftover yellow cake, but when he started to refuse (as is custom), Mary ran behind him and placed the cake on his table, and then ran away yelling every Chinese word she knows: “Zai jian! Xie xie! Hen mei! Hen hao!” (Goodbye! Thank you! Very beautiful! Very good!).  The man, and other visitors, all started laughing, as did Caty and I.  Mary said later that she didn’t have the patience to follow that Chinese custom of gift-giving.  It was hilarious to see her drop the cake and then yell to Caty, Sunflower, and I, “Run, go go go!” followed by her stream of random Chinese words.

...an electric WHAT??!!!  Oh broken English, why do you have to leave me in suspense??  

Awesome underground waterfall! I did feel  a little nervous standing on that tiny rickety platform...

"The safe and careful road in attention is slinnery".... hahaha!!!

The sketchy toilet we used

You go in these barely partitioned cubicles and do your business in a collective trough. Lovely!

This was a hotel before the 2008 earthquake

On Saturday, we took the same train as Caty to Chengdu, where she left to take her bus back home, while Mary, Sunflower, and I went to Ikea.  We were met by Sunflower’s classmate, Jolene (her Chinese name is Zhou Ling which sounds exactly like Jolene so that’s what we call her).  Now, you may be wondering, why would you pay for a train ticket somewhere just to go to Ikea?  First of all, they have cheap western food like hot dogs and Swedish meatballs!  But more importantly, it’s actually a great cultural experience for the students: they can walk through models of western-style bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms and see how other people in the world might decorate their houses.  They also got to try the western food, although I think they weren’t super wild about the hot dogs and ketchup.  They were also asking for the English names of different pieces of furniture. 

Beyond educational and cultural exchange purposes, though, it was a lot of fun to lie on beds and lounge on sofas and comfy chairs (they don’t care if you do that at the Ikea here- score!).  Plus both of the girls found some useful items.  The only tricky thing is that we had to drag them out of the store when it was getting closer to the time we had to leave to catch our train, which is difficult in Ikea when you have to go through everything before you can get to the exit.  They kept wanting to stop and look at things, and every few minutes Mary and I had to stop and yell for them to come.  I didn’t want to stop their fun, but I knew we still had to walk back to the metro, wait for the metro to come, and get back to the train station and make our way through the crowds to our train.   As I mentioned, we got on the train with only five minutes to spare but we would have missed it if we had let Sunflower follow the Chinese custom of gift-giving refusal.

There it is- Chinese Ikea, in all its glory

Awesome pillow case

Conversations with a Chinese student

I learn a lot about Chinese culture just by talking with the students.  There are times when we have starkly different ideas about how things should be done, and most of the time we have to agree to disagree.  It’s a good experience for me to talk to students because I learn about their culture, and I think it’s the first time some of them have had their beliefs questioned, and so they can see that there are other ways of doing things- even if they will continue to do things the way they always have.  Here are some tidbits from the past few days.

1)      Mary, Katie (a China 17 living near Chengdu), a student named Sunflower (that’s her English name), and I went to some caves on Friday (more on that later). Sunflower was very concerned about the quantity of fruit that Mary had brought with her for us to share that day, which was 6 pieces of fruit: a banana, 2 apples, a pear, and 2 oranges.  Sunflower thought that it’s only fair if you bring one of each fruit per person, so we should have had 4 bananas, 4 apples, 4 pears, and 4 oranges.  We explained to her that in our culture, if you were sharing food but didn’t have enough for each person to have one of everything you would just let people choose what they wanted, and if there were more than one person who wanted one thing, they would find a diplomatic way of deciding who gets it (like rock-paper-scissors) or split the one item.  Plus, four pieces of fruit is a lot for one person to eat all at once, and so you would just end up with a lot of extra things to carry.  I guess if it had been up to Sunflower, she would have gone to each person and asked which fruit they like and got a custom selection of fruits to please each person.

2)      Saturday we went to Chengdu, and after our visit we were trying to get to the train station on time to catch our train back to Jiangyou.  Sunflower’s coworker wanted to meet Mary and I, so he met us at the train station.  He had brought a bag of apples and bananas to give to us, and because we didn’t have a lot of time, Mary took the bag when he offered it and we said a few things to the boy and then we said goodbye.  There was only fifteen minutes until our train would depart, and we still had to go through the train station and walk to the platform and then find our seats.  After we said goodbye to the boy and were moving through the station to the platform, Sunflower seemed upset and she said it was because she didn’t say yes to the fruit.  In Chinese culture, if someone offers you something, you’re supposed to refuse it a few times before accepting it- if you take it right away, you appear greedy.  Whereas in America, if someone offers you something, especially something trivial like apples and bananas, you will most likely accept.  There might be reluctance if an acquaintance tries to give you something big like a car or a diamond necklace.  Mary said to her, “If we had had an hour before our train, I would have let you play your ‘yes-no-yes-no’ game.”  We got on our train with only five minutes to spare- if we had stayed and followed the norms of Chinese culture, we definitely would have missed our train. 

Accepting the fruit right away was the logical thing to do, according to us Americans.  But Sunflower was visibly upset for almost the entire two-and-a-half hour train ride back home- she was really quiet and she seemed rather sad.  I respect Chinese culture, and I like the idea of not accepting things so readily.  But there are times when everyone has to compromise their beliefs.  Mary and I both would have been rather upset if we had missed our train and had to buy new tickets.  First of all, it was the holiday so we might not have gotten a train ride back until late at night and we might have had to stand.  The tickets we had bought earlier that day got us seats on the train. Second, it would have been a waste of money, which is something to be careful about when we’re living on a small, volunteer allowance- I can’t afford to be buying train tickets that don’t get used.  Plus it would be a cruel irony to miss a train while at the train station.

3)      Another conversation we had with this same girl revolved around the topic of love, dating, and marriage.  Katie mentioned that she like a guy, and Sunflower said she should have told him that she loved him.  She seemed to think that if you like someone, you should right away say the words “I love you” and then you can spend time together and talk on QQ to get to know each other better.  We explained to her that usually you get to know someone first, and then maybe you will say I love you, if you really feel that way.  We realize that a lot of her ideas come from movies, and we had to explain to her that if someone makes a drastic move upon first meeting someone, it’s probably because they want a physical relationship but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re looking for anything long term.  If someone said “I love you” right after meeting you, you would probably run away from that person! 

It seems also that lust is a foreign concept to some of the Chinese people I have talked to- a person can sleep with someone and not love that person, but in Chinese culture, you only sleep with someone you’re married to.  This conversation (and others like it) make me realize two things: a) maybe Americans are easy like Chinese people think, and there is something to be learned from their culture, b) although it’s good to not be easy, it’s also equally important to be educated about love and relationships.  I was a little concerned with Sunflower’s naïve ideas. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that it’s taboo to talk about sex in China, to the point that the students do not even have sex education at school.  Which to me seems like a mistake, and it’s especially contradicting considering the no-child policy that’s in place.  If a country wants to control the population growth, they should educate their people on how babies are created.  Mary has told me of how students don’t even understand basic sex facts or why they have their period.  I understand the desire to be conservative, but this all seems a little extreme to me.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any of these points.

The power of a stare

This week is a national holiday and many students have gone home to be with their families, which has left the campus with only a few students.  I was talking to a student yesterday about how nice it was to have a nearly empty campus because I didn’t have to deal with everybody staring at me all the time.  She thought the reason it bothered me was because it was the first time I had been to a foreign country.  But that’s not true; China is the 17^th country I’ve been to outside of the US.  So why did it bother me so much here?  I was wracking my brain for a reason, and then I realized that this is the first time I’ve been to a country (or a part of a country) where foreigners are an anomaly. 

All the places I had been to in Mexico and South America had seen scores of tourists of varying skin tones and languages before I came.  In those places, I was just another outsider- one of many.  In Peru, I did encounter many indigenous people who live simply and may be without modern technology, but it was in places like Machu Picchu and other Incan ruins on the tourist radar.  In Guanajuato, foreigners are plentiful because it’s a popular place for tourists since it’s where the fight for independence originated and also many foreigners attend the University of Guanajuato.  Maybe there were people in El Salvador who stared because we were in a pretty remote area.  But in all these cases, I was with at least one, if not a large group of, other foreigners, so any stares were disseminated amongst all of us and it was thus easy to ignore.  The answer to her question is that this is the first time I’ve been in a place where foreigners rarely appear, and this time I am by myself.

I’ve gained powerful insight in to the power of a stare and how such ostracizing actions can affect another person.  My school is in a farming community which is at least a 30-minute bus ride from downtown, and many students come from small rural villages, so naturally they are fascinated with me and stare incessantly.  When someone is staring at you, it’s really hard to know what they are thinking.  I know it’s probably curiosity and most likely they have friendly intentions.  But because of the mystery it can be misconstrued as hostility and judgment.  I know that when I smile, wave, or say hello, the person in question will most likely stop staring and greet me in turn.  But with so many students at my school and if I’m walking around campus when many students are going to and from class, I can’t possibly deflect every single stare or I’d end up looking like some creepy doll with a plastered smile and an incessantly waving hand.  So my solution is mostly just to stare straight ahead or at the ground to avoid the stares.

The other day when I visited my host family in Jiangyou, the son Jerry had invited some friends over, and one girl came late.  I could tell right away that she was afraid of me.  She hesitated in the doorway before dashing in and planting herself among the other girls, even though there wasn’t any room and there was plenty on the couch next to me.  She was hunching her shoulders and cowering and clearly trying to stay as far away from me as possible.  I said hello when she came in but that just made her flinch.  This was the first time in my life that someone cowered in fear at the sight of me (and a young adult no less- she and her friends were all around 15 years old!) and I must say it made me feel really bad about myself.  What had I done?  It made me sad, then angry: She doesn’t even know me! What’s her problem?  I’m a nice person… except I couldn’t help glaring at her in my confusion.  I didn’t want to reinforce her misguided feelings about me so I forced myself to just smile at her and act friendly. 

This was such a brief experience, but it had a profound effect on me.  I realized that this kind of fear and judging based on someone’s appearance is the cause for a lot of hurt and pain in the world.  How many kids have had to endure staring and mistreatment because they’re different?  And it’s not just kids who are affected” anyone who is different for any reason (skin color, race, sexual orientation, physical and mental disability, gender, etc.) has to deal with staring and mistreatment all the time.  My heart aches for those people because, although I have always felt empathy for their plight, this is the first time in my life that I am on the receiving end of that kind of judgment.  It seems that it is in human nature to fear that which is different, and many people don’t take the time to get to know someone and so they never change their mind.  And, I repeat, I know that in my case the reactions are probably due to curiosity and not due to hostility, but it made me realize how much people’s actions can affect others, unintentionally or otherwise.  Everyone needs love and if someone is always seeing people stare or cower at the sight of them, that person will have a very hard time not closing their heart to humanity.  It’s a cruel self-fulfilling prophecy: good people who are subjected to constant misunderstanding may become bad people as a result.  Not to be cliché, but in that moment watching that girl trying to hide from me amongst her friends, I couldn’t help thinking of Frankenstein and how societal rejection and violence turned him into the monster people had always feared him to be.

It’s amazing how only a few moments can lead a person to have such tremendous changes in thinking.  It’s moments like that when I really have to push myself to be patient.  It’s a test for my character to meet such actions with kindness and acceptance.  I have to see from their point of view and not take any of it personally, which is hard but I’m pretty sure I’m up to the challenge.

Language Barrier

One time a student asked me in class, “Was it hard for you to learn English?  How is your English so good?”

If I were talking to an American, I would assume this to be sarcasm and I would reply in kind: “Obviously my English is good because it’s the language I’ve been speaking since I was a toddler!”  But sarcasm does not exist in China, and these questions brought me to some realizations.

These seemingly stupid questions got me thinking.  I was reminded of how cut-off some Chinese people are from the rest of the world.  I am in pretty remote area and I am the first foreigner that many of them have met- and not only that, but I LOOK like an American, with my pale skin, green eyes, and semi-blonde hair, which is something they’ve maybe only seen on TV or in advertising.  I realized that I had had a similar way of thinking when I was a child.  I distinctly remember thinking that everyone in the world spoke English- it was as if other languages were spoken only for show.  I thought everyone thought in English, and any display of another language had to come from English first and then be translated.  If someone spoke or wrote in another language, they first had had to translate from the English thoughts in their mind.  This doesn’t make any sense to even me now, and I can’t really explain it.  But that’s because since then I’ve been exposed to different cultures and diverse groups of people, and I now know that people speak the language their parents teach them, and they probably think in that language, too. 

On the other hand, many people in China have not had exposure to foreigners so it may still be hard for them to fathom the differences.  The exception is people who live in the cities because there are a number of foreigners attending university or conducting business.  This explains why some people here find it so fascinating that I don’t understand what they’re saying and that I can’t read a single Chinese character.  There are many times when people say something really fast in Chinese, see my blank stare, and then laugh and say “ting bu dong” (which I mentioned before means, roughly, “listen but don’t understand”) as if it were a funny joke.  They’re equally surprised when I demonstrate that I DO know some Chinese- some people find that even funnier, which isn’t really encouraging when you’re trying to learn a new language! Or students will point to something written in characters as if that would make everything clear!  Not to be offensive, but it still looks like chicken scratch to me.  It’s pretty, but completely incomprehensible.  I’m always getting texts and instant messages written only in characters- I don’t think they realize that it means nothing to me.

This experience is definitely a lesson in humility.  As close-minded as I feel some people are here, I have to remind myself that from their point of view, I’m equally close-minded.  I want them to understand my culture and that I wasn’t raised speaking Chinese and writing characters, but if I expect them to change in order to accept me, then I also need to make concessions and change to accept their culture.  This means I need to worker harder to learn their language and writing system.

Their reactions to my appearance and what I say are definitely something I have to get used to, and sometimes I have to calm myself down and not get upset, or reply condescendingly to questions like those I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  The more that things like that happen, the more I can understand their point of view and way of thinking- this is new to me, too, and I have to be gracious and accommodating.