In China, many people
believe in the importance of saving face, which means that they don’t like to embarrass
themselves or make mistakes in front of other people. They will not outright tell you things, but
maybe try to communicate in an indirect way.
This can be very frustrating for an American like me who is used to
being told things straight up. It also
means that sometimes people will not call someone out for doing something rude
or inconsiderate. For example, whenever
you wait in line for anything- buying train tickets, getting on the bus, and so
on- there is never actually anything that could be called a line. Instead there is a shoving, shuffling mob,
and many people cut to the front. Even when
there is a line to buy train tickets, for example, there will be people that go
straight to the front and shove their money under the window and holler out
their destination. The thing that gets
me is while I’m standing their glaring, no one else seems to care. Nobody says, “hey dude, wait in line, we’ve
all been waiting for fifteen minutes!”
But watch out China, because I’ve learned the words to stay, “please
stay in line” (qing pai dui) and “don’t cut” (bu yao cha dui). The thing is that if you do call them out, then they get embarrassed and stop
(usually). So I don’t understand- some
Chinese people do things are rude or inconsiderate but it’s ok as long as you
don’t call them out and make them lose face.
Right
now I’m reading a book that I recommend, called Fried Eggs and Chopsticks, by Polly Evans. It’s about a British woman who travels for a
month in China, and it demonstrates her frustrations with the language and
culture (as well as the rewarding things that happen, such as kindness from a
stranger). I can totally relate with a
lot of things she shares. For example,
she talks about being in a restaurant and the waitress says, “Would you like
some gobbledy gobbledy gook?” That
happens so many times to me! Before traveling
she did take a course in Chinese but of course it’s never the same as dealing
with speaking for real. Another time she
talked about being in a taxi cab, and after exhausting the few sentences she
knew, the driver kept talking and asking her questions, and no matter how many
times she said ting bu dong (I don’t understand) he kept jabbering at her a
mile a minute. That also happens to me
all the time. I tell people I only know
a little Chinese but they think that means I can understand everything spoken
at full speed. Even if you spoke slower I
couldn’t understand you because I don’t know that many words! I’m not saying anything against the Chinese people
because this happens in other places too.
It is hard to know how much of a language someone knows. But you’d think that once they start saying
they don’t understand, you’d stop talking!
She mentions also about being a patient person but finding herself
constantly short-tempered and frustrated.
I know the feeling. I feel bad
that I get so frustrated but all the simple daily things can be difficult to
complete. Luckily our Peace Corps
language training was pretty thorough in teaching how to order in restaurants,
so that’s not too bad. It’s just that
the language barrier can be rather inhibitive and many things are done
differently than we’d expect.
This
is a tangent, but another thing that frustrates me is that I often don’t find
out about schedule changes with my classes until right before. I don’t understand why there isn’t a school
calendar with the dates of holidays written in- I mean, they’re the same time
every year! I just found out today that
there are no classes next Monday through Thursday because they give time off
for the New Year. I didn’t expect to get
a holiday for the western New Year. I know we don’t have classes during the
Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival) because our semester’s done by then. No one told me about these classes, until I happened
to tell my class monitors that next week would be our last week of classes this
semester. Then they all said, “Oh but we
don’t have classes!” Oh. Well now I know. Who knows when I would have found out if I hadn’t
mentioned it!
I hope
you don’t get the wrong impression. I am
happy here. But there are definitely things that continue to be a challenge
even after all this time. I still get
stared at all the time and it still sometimes bothers me although now I just
try to look above people or at the ground.
Sometimes to help myself cope I talk or sing to myself. Which doesn’t help with the staring but it
calms me down. It’s something I will
have to deal with the whole time I’m in China. At my school it’s not a problem
anymore, but anytime I leave my city I have to deal with it all over
again. And I seem to be leaving my site
quite frequently! It’s nice to get away
and see something new and be with other volunteers.
