So, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve had essay on essay on homework assignment on internship stuff, so this past month has been a mess. However, things are starting to wind down, so I bring you a quick catch-up on my life for these past two months, complete with teaching opportunities, fashion contests and a new family (those Hamiltons were just too boring, ya know?).
AMERICAN HISTORY
It all started when I accompanied Kristen to the gym. Night had fallen, and as we strolled along the road to the entrance, a black car slowed in front of us. Weird. I paused, expecting the windows to roll down, but nothing happened. We kept going. Finally, the car stopped, and a man’s head peered out the window.
“Excuse me… are you American?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” The man rolled up his window after this interrogation was over, and the car continued on. Curiouser and curiouser— perhaps inquiring after countries of origin was his evening hobby. “Are you American? No? Well, how about you?” And after finally having found one, he’d leave, satiated, knowing that there were indeed Americans wandering around Chinese college campuses.
Suddenly, the car stopped, and he jumped out and jogged over. “I’m normally a shy guy, don’t do this, but…” He gave us his card. “Would you like to teach American history?”
Hmm. Why not?
The students were all headed out to American high schools at the beginning of the summer, so their English was pretty good, but I knew it was going to be a struggle after the first day of class when I tried to explain Puritans. My students did not know the word, which was understandable. I said that they were Christians.
There were blank stares.
“Do you….” I stared back, slightly shocked. “Do you know what Christianity is?”
One of the students raised his hand hesitantly. “Jesus?” he guessed.
The rest of the class was spent discussing the Catholic Church, the Protestant reformation and more. Afterwards, the assistant director of the teaching company tapped me on the shoulder. “The students say you’re talking about material that isn’t very important,” she said shyly.
They seemed stunned by fairly commonplace facts— the practice of bleeding, for example. “Wo cao,” the boys breathed whenever another European medical mishap occurred, and everyone burst out laughing.
They also enjoyed rating the physical attractiveness of the current day’s batch of historical figures. John C. Calhoun got hands in front of eyes out of disgust, Ernest Hemingway was a resounding success (until his 60 year old picture was also shown), and Abe Lincoln simply elicited guffaws. “God! What did his wife look like?” they asked. I showed them. They laughed even harder.
Overall, I really enjoyed the experience. I got to teach them things they’d never heard of before: for example, introducing them for the very first time to the Beatles and Elvis. After showing them a clip of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” one boy hummed along and bobbed his head. “I think it’s catchy,” he said. “Have you heard this before?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “I’ve never heard the Beatles.”)
I was also able to give them a view of history from an American perspective. My last class was on the Vietnam war, and I showed them pictures that I had seen when I was their age. One was a monk who had set himself on fire in protest of the Catholicization of South Vietnam (instigated by an American-backed dictator). I mentioned that this photo disgusted and repulsed Americans, who began to wonder why they were involved in the war effort there. One student shook his head vehemently.
“But monks do this all the time! All the time! They love setting themselves on fire! Don’t like Tibet policy? Set themselves on fire! Don’t like the government? Set themselves on fire! They all do that! It’s their favorite thing to do! Why do Americans think this is special?”
I suppose if the American public in the 1970s thought more like the Chinese, the Vietnam War might have gone on for quite a bit longer.
HOST FAMILY
I moved in with a host family right after my visit to the Philippines. I wasn’t entirely sure it was the right choice, but for practicing Chinese, I figured it would probably be the best thing. My “father” is a feisty, talkative Beijinger who is extremely friendly and always makes me feel at home. He runs his own company, creating technology to clean up China’s water. I’d imagined him as some great crusader, burning with a passion to save the lives of millions of Chinese who drank polluted water every day.
“I thought I could make a lot of money,” he said when I asked his reasons for the start-up.
He loves cooking, and gets no greater pleasure than hearing that his meals were well-prepared. “See!” he crowed, after I’d proclaimed his noodles excellent, “I am the best cook! I should open up my own restaurant in the United States! Seven dollars a bowl! Authentic Beijing food!” He doesn’t speak English well, but loves trying out simple phrases. In Chinese, he’ll tell me to eat dinner—chi fan, a phrase you learn in the first week of Mandarin. Then he’ll repeat, haltingly but faintly proud— “Eat. Food.”
Once, he told me that I had come home “shizhun.” I asked him what the phrase meant, and he replied, in his one-note, staccato manner, “On. Time.” His wife patted him on the arm, and his daughter squealed with surprise. He grinned widely, thumping his hand on his chest. “God, my English is fantastic,” he said in Chinese.
He also has a penchant for asking questions that may be considered rude by American standards. “How big is your house? How many bathrooms? Do you have a boyfriend? Have you ever had a boyfriend? What score did you get on your ACT? What’s the best score you could get? How much is your college tuition? How much merit money do you get a year?”
Once, he asked about the price of my house. I’d answered several of these types of answers already, so after couple seconds’ hesitation, knowing that it was acceptable in Chinese society, I answered.
The daughter hit my arm. “No!” she wailed. “He asked how many square meters it was!”
My “mother” is a dentist who works in a hospital. Apparently, dentists in China are not the same as they are in the States, and here they usually deal with aching teeth or surgery instead of cosmetic issues or general checkups. She is much quieter than her husband, but is just as welcoming. She only uses Chinese to speak, but I soon realized that she was hiding a wealth of English vocabulary up her sleeve.
When I talk with her husband, asking about the meaning of a word he used, she will always break in regardless of what activity she is doing at the time.
“Flex-ib-le,” she says behind a magazine. “Mus-cle,” she says in the kitchen. “Treach-er-y,” she says while peeling an apple.
One of my favorites was when they were discussing their cousin, who enjoyed fast cars and was going to see some type of show. After inquiring what type of car show, the family kept repeating one word over and over. A stunt show? No. A NASCAR thing? No. Finally, Xianmei broke in.
“Dri…ft….” she said faintly.
“What?” I said.
“Drift,” she repeated with more confidence.
“Like… Tokyo Drift?”
She shrugged, embarrassed. “Drift,” she repeated.
The daughter is the official translator of the family at the tender age of 12. She performs extremely well in school, and loves to practice her English with me. Frankly, I’m astounded with how much she works—she gets home, sits down at her desk and goes for it. Many times I try to ask her how her day was, and she responds slightly glumly, “Sorry— I have to work.”
She sees her best friend once every three months, and on the weekends, she is shuttled from extra math classes to English classes to another math class. When they say that Chinese parents put an emphasis on education, I wasn’t aware of the scope. She is almost fascinated to the point of obsession by my sisters, pouring over the one photograph that I have of them (thanks for sending that, Mom). Each one she analyzes. “She’s so pretty. I think she’s nice. Is she nice? Your little sister looks so cool…”
Several times I’ve come home to find the picture moved around—on the bed, on the kitchen table, on the desk. Anytime there is a visitor, she grabs the photo to show it off and recite my family’s names— Sydney, Elise, and Cameron (although she does wonder why Sydney was named after a city in Australia and thinks Cameron is not fitting for a 12-year old).
Overall, it was a fantastic fit, and I love living with them. It’ll be pretty sad when I have to leave them… but I guess that won’t be for another week or so, so I’ll hold off on the wah-wahs for a while.
QIPAO CONTEST
One of my American friends heard about a qipao (traditional Chinese dress) contest going on at our school, and suggested I take part. So, on a whim, I did. I had to prepare a “special talent”, and on the list of recommended acts was ‘poem recitation.’ So I thought, hey, I act sometimes, I’ll just do Shakespeare.
I performed Romeo’s balcony scene (a throwback to my participation in a very odd, ultimately doomed gender-swapped college version of the Bard’s most famous work), and the judges nodded appreciatively, and then paused.
“Uh… that’s in English,” they said.
“Yes,” I said, and then realized much too late why this was a potential problem.
“Can you do something else? Sing?”
Oh dear God. I hate singing publicly, and this was just about as on the spot as you could get. I chose the overdone but utterly sing-able “I Dreamed a Dream.” They started checking their cell phones halfway through.
I left, knowing that I had failed… but at least I missed half an hour of class for it, so there’s a plus. So, much to my surprise, I got a text the next day saying that I had been chosen for the final 12, and would I mind going to a qipao store near Tiananmen Square to choose my outfit?
Well, of course I could. All the “waiguoren” (foreigners) came with, and there were seven in total, ranging from Japanese to Korean to Indonesian to Russian. The dresses were all built to an Asian body (AKA, no butts), so I had to choose the only one that could be jimmied up over my hips. Things got infinitely stranger after that, as we were then required to go to a professional studio to have hair and makeup done. The heads of the competition also brought baijiu—to “loosen up” before the photo shoot, they said. The time was two o’clock in the afternoon.
I had no idea that this was going to be an America’s Next Top Model type shindig, and I entered the photo shoot area just like I did for fifth grade school pictures— replete with an innocent, wide smile and awkwardly stiff back posture. The photographer took two pictures of me, then pulled away from the lens. “Um… more… cool,” she suggested.
I put my hands on my hips. She took a few more, and then gave up again.
“Just pretend you’re cool,” she said again.
I put my right foot in front of my left. She shook her head.
“Like… sexy…”
I put my hand on my face, but judging by their faces, it seemed less the act of an enticing, nubile young lady, but rather an alternate pose of “The Thinker.”
I had to get a few tips, but ultimately, I came away with one or two photographs they deemed “hai keyi”: just barely acceptable.
Perhaps it was for the best then that I recently received a text from the competition folks asking me when my last day in China was. I told them June 7th, knowing that the competition was the 6th.
They sent back a little emoji of a broken heart. As June 4th is the 25th anniversary of the Tian’anmen Square incident, the Chinese government has banned any activities or large gatherings until June 7th (especially those involving foreigners, the contest runners informed me).
Also, instead of writing “June 4th”, they instead wrote “64″ (which caused me a hell of a lot of confusion before I asked a Chinese friend to translate). Why? Because if they’d written it any other way, the censors would have blocked the text.
If you are shaking your head in disbelief, I say what my program director said— “Well… it’s China.”
So, thanks a lot, Chinese Communist Party. The world will never see my catwalk and warbling impression of Susan Boyle.
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