Random Stories

Story #1:

One of my office mates was asking me if we use honey in America.  Several of the women in my office have a large container of honey on their desks to sweeten drinks with.  I said Yes, we also use it in drinks, and then added that we also spread it on bread.

I don't think I've ever seen a Chinese person looked so shocked by anything that I said.  She was caught between gasping, laughing, asking me if that was really true, and declaring that she was going to try it.

Glad to be such a horizon-broadening person...

Story #2:

It was three hours after class when I thought to myself, Maybe Charles playing with a butterfly knife in class should have concerned me a little more.

I mean, I told him to put it away because it was being distracting and he kept dropping it, and I was afraid that he was going to slice his own hand open...

But that was it.

However, I decided that if he is messing around with it in class next week, I'm going to confiscate it.

"You don't have authority to do that," Bridge protested when I asked her if students were allowed to have knives like that.

I'm pretty sure that if I can take cellphones away, I can also take butterfly knives...

"Do you speak Chinese?"

This is one of the most frequent questions that I get from students, along with Can you use chopsticks? (do I look like I'm starving?) and Do you like China? (do you think I would have come back if I didn't?) and Do you have a boyfriend? (no).  

It is not the most straightforward one to answer though.  My general answer is "A little."  However, students' interpretation of what "a little" means varies drastically.  My spoken Chinese is honestly really pathetic and something that I need to invest a lot of time in if I plan to come back to China for longer.  My comprehension of Chinese is better and has definitely improved this year, but there are always a lot of variables, like what the topic of conversation is and how much context I have and how thick the speaker's accent is.  

I have always operated a lot by trying to understand the context, no matter what language is being spoken, and I definitely exploit that in listening to Chinese.  When Cassie and Alicia and Jonathan and I were hanging out last week, looking at pictures from traveling, Alicia pulled up her pictures from Macao.  She and Cassie were discussing something in Chinese and these are the pieces of that conversation that I understood.

"Xibanya" [Spain]

"bu zhidao zenme shuo..." [I don't know how to say it...]

"It was settled" (see, I'm forgetting English... I meant colonized!) "by Portugal," I said.  "The English name for that country is Portugal...."

"You understood us?"  Cassie asked, floored.

Yeah, not really.  I understood that the context was Macao and then they were talking about something related to Spain that they didn't know how to say in English and I made a wild guess that it was Portugal.

Welcome to my life in China.  

Two more moments from today.

At lunch with some of Depreena's students, Jan was astounded that I knew the word la (spicy -- a VERY important word to know when ordering food) and that I knew the word suan (sour) was part of the compound word for yogurt -- "suan nai"... literally "sour milk".  (Appetizing, right?)

"Can you read Chinese?" she asked, pointing at a sign in the dining hall to test my abilities.  "What do the yellow ones say?"

[Please bear in mind that she is a freshman student having an extended, lunch-long conversation about a variety of subjects with us in English, and clearly is quite competent.  My Chinese is nowhere near that level of proficiency.]

"Um, fruit," I said, chickening out of trying to say it in Chinese even though I think I know the words for both of the characters.  

"WOW," Jan said, looking at me with a lot of shock.  "Your Chinese is so good."

"Jan," Depreena said firmly.  We're trying to teach critical thinking skills along with spoken English, and this was a great opportunity.  "It's a fruit stand."

Which is precisely how I had learned those characters... from seeing them hundreds of times on fruit stands.  

Anyway, that was lunch... impressing someone else's students with how awesome my Chinese is.  

Then there was dinner.

At dinner I was eating with my student Lola and a few of her friends.  

"Do you go outside to shop?" they asked.  I'm not sure how they think it's possible I would have been on campus since August and not gone outside the gate to a store.

"Yes, of course," I said.

"ALONE?" they asked, eyes widening.  

"Yeah," I said.  Going to Qinhuangdao alone would have been interesting, but I'm pretty confident in my ability to get to the nearby markets and back without mishap.

They marveled for a minute about how difficult this must be since I can't speak Chinese and since communication is so important (guess what class was about this week... yes, communication) and so on.

I tried defending myself. "I can say some things."  I can never remember which classes think I'm fluent and which ones think I know no Chinese.

"For example...." said Lola.

"Things like how much does it cost and that's too expensive!" I said, an answer which usually they laugh at and are satisfied with.

"But not everyone speaks English," she said.

I laughed.  "In Chinese I can say those things, of course," I told her, and then had to demonstrate to prove it.  She still wasn't very convinced and the next questions were about if I knew how to get back to campus when I went out.

Yes... taxis in Changchun are not too rare and I can say Huaqiao WaiYuar like a native DongBeiRen (north-easterner).  Okay, well maybe not quite like a native, but it does generally get me back to campus.

Do I speak Chinese?

Still open to debate, obviously.

difficulty that drives

Rob Gifford's China Road remains by far the best book I've read about China: good stories and very truthful.

For one of our Wheaton classes, we had to write about what the most significant part in the book for us was.  I wrote about the end of the chapter "Women Hold Up Half the Sky."  I thought it was poignant then, and the words have been floating around in my mind ever since.

The context is the author, Rob Gifford, interviewing a girl who works at a KTV (karaoke) bar.  Her job is to accompany patrons -- to sing, chat, dance, and for a higher price to accompany a man to his hotel room.  Gifford was asking about her life.

We often fail to see that Chinese people are living, breathing, loving, hating individuals, who do things for complex psychological reasons, just like Westerners.  And as Wu Yan sits talking about her life, her story doesn't have that standard tone, which says, "I must do this or I won't be able to eat."  She is slightly laconic, and cynical and angry.

"So why are you working here?" I eventually ask her.

There is a long pause.

"There was a boy..." She pauses again for a long time, rattling the dice in the cheap plastic cup.  "Wo ting xihuan de... who I liked a lot."  She is looking at the floor.

"But he liked another girl."  She stops shakring the dice, then looks up at me with large, hurt eyes.  There is a long silence as I try to compute what she is saying.

"So... you're... doing this to punish him?  ...Or to punish... yourself?"

She doesn't answer but reaches out her arm to me, the palm of her hand facing up.  There are two jagged scars on her lower arm, as though her wrist had been cut.  She looks angrily into my eyes.

"It's difficult being a person, isn't it?" she asks finally.

I look at her and nod slowly.  She shakes the cup with the dice inside and slams it down on the table.

The last thing that he records Wu Yan saying -- It's difficult being a person, isn't it? -- are words that have haunted me for months.  

It is difficult.  And that is a good thing.

In the movie adaptation of City of Joy, one of the characters tells another, "Maybe the world is meant to break your heart.  From the moment we're born, we're shipwrecked, struggling between hope and despair."

It makes me think of Paul's words:

And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined alloted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek Him, in the hope that they might feel their way towards Him and find Him.

Over and over, from my students and my friends, I hear the repeating theme that it is difficult to be a person.  There is the pressure of family and academic tests, the pressure to rise above the hard life that many of their parents have known, the stress of human relationships and all the normal craziness of being in college.  There is a void that many of them acknowledge, as China becomes more modern and farther away from the traditions that many trusted in for centuries.  A lot of them have questions about what the meaning of life is; some ask outright and others just tell stories about the way their lives are now and their voice aches.

Last night I was chatting with a friend on qq, and in the middle of the conversation, she said, "So it's hard to being human beings."

Yes, it is.  But it is a hardness we need so that we realize our need for Hope. 

Chinese maintenance... More like POSTventitive than preventative.

Door doesn't open? Chip out the concrete pad.

Friday Dinner

On Wednesday, my student Peter and I made plans to have dinner together on Friday evening.

This afternoon he called me, asking if it was okay if he brought a friend.  Of course, I said.  

This evening he came to my apartment building to pick me up and walk me to dining hall IV.  Which was additionally sweet as there are several inches of new snow outside.  We went to the dining hall (the farthest one from my apartment, but the closest to the guys' dorms).

"What?  Peter, your friends are Ansel and Savis?  They're your classmates!  Why didn't you tell me that?"

He laughed.

So the four of us ate dinner together, and I had a great time.  They're from the class that I'm most comfortable with (yes, I heard about the Waterbottle Incident), and we talked about a lot of things -- English, travel, families, future plans, the weather.  We joked and teased a lot.  I think that one reason I enjoy their class so much is that I feel like I am their teacher in class and their friend outside of class.  I can be absurd with them at dinner and be comfortable with them and feel like I'm hanging out with friends and not like this is something that it is just my duty to do.

Probably my favorite conversation:

Peter:  "Hello, Keeler."  [which is how he gets my attention even in the middle of conversations]  "Do you like small things?"

me:  *totally bewildered*  *looks at Savis and Ansel to see if they understand*

Savis and Ansel:  *look at Peter blankly*

Peter:  *goes on to explain*

me:  "Oh, like jewelry!  Ah.  Okay.  Well, most of my jewelry has some meaning to me.  Like this necklace, I got the first time I came to China.  And this bracelet, my roommate in China gave to me so that I would remember her.  And this other bracelet, a friend in Thailand gave to me so that I would remember them."

Ansel:  *without missing a beat*  "I'll give you a bracelet!"

me:  "Yeah, then I'll remember you forever!"

Ansel:  "We can all give you bracelets, then --" *motions to bracelets covering my entire arm*

me:  *laughing*

other guys:  "Yeah, he sells bracelets..."

Ansel:  "Yeah!  Do you want bracelets?"

Peter:  "I think it's a really good way to start business!"

me:  "Yeah!  So your bracelets, are they beautiful?"

Ansel:  "Yes!  And not as expensive as the supermarket!"

other guys:  "The MARKET!!"

me:  "Yeah, the market -- so are they good quality?"

Ansel:  *something between a loud snort and laugh*

me:  "Well then, okay... that answers that..."

Peter:  "I told one of my friends to buy an umbrella from him... and it broke on the second day!"

me:  "Um... okay Ansel, I appreciate your honesty, but I don't think I will buy anything from you."

After dinner, Ansel and Peter walked me the entire way back to my dorm.  Such gentlemen!  (Even though they argued over if a gentleman would SAY that he is a gentleman or not...)

Anyway... I really love and enjoy my students.

text messages

Snapshots of my life from my phone.

SOS!  jonathan said no break time today!

[from one of his students; this totally messed up our plan for pulling an April Fool's joke on him.]

we were so happy this eveing, thank you and Tempestt.  I hope to visit your apartment Again.  Linda

[from one of the 30+ students who jammed into an apartment for an Easter party/games night]

That is UNBELIEVABLY amazing!!!!!  "Coincidental" surprise specially planned for Easter!

[from a brother who was not thrilled that it was snowing here on Easter... and then we talked about Is 1:18]

Oh oh I know teacher sank you sank you

[from Emily (another teacher), after we were talking about the fact that /s/ and /th/ is a significant pair in English... something that our students know but have a lot of difficulty with.]

Send me a message when you get there and on the train safely.  Call if you have any trouble.

[from a friend in QHD, since Mel and I were leaving quite late... it was just super thoughtful.]

Notice:  Dear Ms. Hannah, tomorrow evening there will be a mysterious package to your apartment.  (Contain Phoenix. Iris. Donna. Vicky. Kiro. Ashely.)  Massage (sic) passed by deliverywoman Phoenix.  AHAAAAAAAA...

[Phoenix got points for the most creative RSVP-ing.]

Oh no!  time to buy a new one...?

[Mel, after I texted her to tell her about what happened in class this morning... possibly one of my worst in-class ideas ever.  One of the vocabulary terms was "heavy sleeper."  To demonstrate, I decided to drop my water bottle.  I mean, it's a Camelbak waterbottle that I've had since my freshman year of college and has been through many miles of adventures and many falls and served me faithfully.  It cracked and water went everywhere... much to the amusement of both me and my students.  But yeah... time to buy a new one.]

These Crazy Kids

During presentations:

V: Why do you like your school?

S: You asked me to say so.

T: Personally I'm not very homosexual.

Q: Very?

G: So... a little bit?

"In order to be environmentally friendly, I made an e-manuscript."

&

"If everyone learns to be a manager, who will be employees?" ~ Q

During a normal class:

We were talking about some terms related to schedules, habits, and personality, such as "power nap," "night owl," "heavy sleeper"... and so on.

Jack Black (who has incredible English): to Oliver "Ni shi night owl!" [You're a night owl!]

me: "Ni shi night owl???? Speak English!"

Gaston and Charles sit in the front row and are not very quiet.

me: introducing the concept of things central to your identity

Gaston: to Charles "Shenme yisi?" [What's it mean?]

me: "SHH, I'm going to explain."

Charles: laughing at Gaston for me yelling at him "Tingdong le –" [She understood/caught that]

me: "Yes. Now STOP SPEAKING CHINESE!!!!!"