China Blog Feb 1, 2009
I feel a sense of contentedness and anticipation. I'm writing this aboard an Air China 747, China-bound and somewhere over the Pacific. This will be my second time in China in three years. My plan is to live in one place (Shanghai), establish a routine and social network, and see how much Mandarin I can learn. The seeds of this project I'm now embarking on were sowed nearly three ago when I first went to China. For ten weeks, I traveled from one corner of the other, spending between one and seven days in each of dozens of locales, from major cities to small, remote towns. It was a whirlwind of a trip, and my memories are almost all good. Now, looking back on the places I went, the things I did, the interactions I had with people I met, I marvel at my naivety. In the intervening years, I undertook and completed a Master's degree in geography. I didn't formally study China in graduate school, but I read a lot about China and made a number of friends in international classmates who were from China. Suffice it to say that I feel a lot more knowledgeable about China this time than I did before.
I also feel more grown up this time around (and I am, by three years). In 2006 I showed up in China with a single backpack full of "travel clothes" and a mosquito hat, as if I were expecting some sort of wilderness. I'm bringing more stuff this time, and a nicer wardrobe.
And my reasons for going are quite different. In 2006, I was fresh out of college and had never been outside of the "West". Although I'm sure I thought otherwise at the time (being always weary of clichés), the travels I undertook that spring and summer (in India as well as China) definitely had something to do with me "finding myself". That, plus it was a chance to just let loose and see the world after being cooped up in school for the previous seventeen years. And so I gravitated to landscapes of leisure in China: the urban playground of Hong Kong, the backpacker-friendly mountains of Yunnan and Sichuan, the exotic remoteness of Xinjiang. I partook in that rhetorical dual between "tourist" and "traveler". I kept vigilant record of my impressions, observations, and experiences in my blog. As I re-read that blog for the first time since I wrote it over the course of the last month, I see in my words the voice of a young man at awe with the world around him.
The China of my travels of 2006 surpassed and disproved many of the images, stereotypes, and preconceptions that had been formed throughout my life. So startled, excited, awed was I by the newness of everything I saw that I think I developed a bit of an inflated notion of the cogency and originality of my insights. Re-reading in 2009 the words I typed that summer in internet cafes across China, some of what I had wrote embarrassed me, so I edited it, cleaned it up. I know that may run counter to the spirit of a blog, which is supposed to reflect the writer's state of mind and need not follow the conventions of written English. But you know what? I take pride in my writing, and for me, this blog will be forever imprinted in cyberspace, so I might as well make sure it's publishable from the get-go. So this time around, I will be holding my writing up to greater scrutiny. The fact that I have my laptop with me this time helps tremendously, as I don't have to worry about paying by the minute to compose entries from scratch in internet cafes.
And so I make my return to China this year with a bit less naivety and a bit more understanding of China. I know more about China—its economy, politics, history, culture. I know more Chinese people. And most importantly, I know more Chinese. Last time, I used a pocket phrasebook to get train tickets, hotel rooms, and other necessities of travel when English was not spoken. Somehow it worked, because I successfully criss-crossed China entirely on my own. But my "Chinese" at the time was awful. My phrasebook didn't contain tone markings. There are four (or five, if you count the neutral tones) tones in Mandarin Chinese, and they make an enormous difference when it comes to the meaning of any given word. While I make no pretense to being anything other than a beginner language student, I can say that I feel supremely more confident heading to China having completed a semester of Mandarin this past fall. I made a lot of progress during that semester and am eager to try it out in real world situations.
I already got a chance not one hour after boarding this airplane. The plane, flying from San Francisco to Shanghai via Beijing, is less than half full (I wonder how much drop-off there's been in passengers since the Great Economic Crisis of 2008-? hit), and so I am enjoying the window seat in an otherwise vacant row. The young man sitting in front of me, however, migrated back to chat me up for about an hour. I practiced some of my Chinese with him, and he helped me by correcting my mistakes and teaching me some new words, which he wrote in my notebook (he told me that the Chinese name I'd chosen for myself is "strange", so I might want to see about changing it). But he mostly wanted to speak in English. He is flying back home to China after his first semester as a freshman at Kansas State University because he doesn't like it there and wants to reapply to other schools in the U.S. His top choice, apparently, is Penn State, so he naturally had lots of questions for me (namely of the "how do I get in?" variety). He then tried to enlist my help in brainstorming strategy for a lawsuit against Kansas State University he says his friend wants to file (it just occurred to me that this "friend" might be his way of face-saving way of explaining what is actually his conundrum, but I don't know that for sure). It seems his "friend" had an altercation with a professor in which he threatened to shoot him, and was subsequently kicked out of the school. He explains that his friend never had any actual intention of shooting anyone and chalks the threat up to cultural misunderstanding. What sounded like a violent threat in English was just a poor cultural translation of a harmless expression in Chinese. He now wants to sue the school for wrongfully expelling him and seems to be alleging discrimination because he's Chinese. It's hard for me to judge the situation too strongly without knowing what really transpired, but I have to say it's not at all surprising to me that a school would take such a threat so seriously (especially, fairly or not, in the recent shootings involving Chinese graduate students in the U.S.). He wanted to know what this friend should do, and whether I know any lawyers from my time at Harvard (I don't). I tried in several ways to explain that while lawsuits are as American as apple pie, and while he could certainly try, he would face an uphill battle, not to mention incur considerable legal fees, but he didn't seem to take the hint. I thought that odd, in light of what my Chinese etiquette book said about all the indirect ways Chinese people have of saying "no" (such as "it's difficult" or "it's inconvenient").
I probably ought to prepare myself for lots of encounters like this. Especially in Shanghai, where English is spoken by many. Although I say I know a lot more about China this time around, I would like to make clear that I still have much to learn (both in language and culture). I'm going to make a concerted effort to keep an open mind, to learn, to ask questions, and to suppress any urge to make snarky or know-it-all comments. While I'm sure this blog will contain a healthy dose of critical observations, I will strive to keep it free of ethnocentric judgments. That said, even the most cognizant globalist cannot escape the reference frame of his own culture and upbringing. But I'll try to make fewer broad-brush proclamations about "Chinese people" vis-a-vis "Americans" or "Westerners", and keep my commentary focused on and informed by specific events and people.
To conclude this initial entry, I'd like to offer a quick preamble to my objectives for anyone reading this blog who doesn't know me, or who doesn't already know what my deal is. I'm going to China this time around not so much to travel (though I will definitely do some of that) but to live. Instead of moving from hotel to hotel, I'm planning to take up (at least semi-) permanent residence in a house or apartment in Shanghai while I take up Mandarin classes at the Academy of Chinese Language Studies. I learned about this private language institute through online research and chose it (as opposed to language programs at Chinese universities) because it allowed for more flexibility in my schedule, which I needed because I didn't want to miss four of my friends' weddings in California this June. This initial stint will last four months, February through May, but my language classes don't start until March. I'll use February to get my bearings, figure out my living situation for the spring, and then hopefully do a little traveling before I hunker down. This relatively short spell in China will most likely be followed by a more extended one beginning later in the summer and lasting through at least the next school year. During that period I want to continue studying Mandarin and building my network, as well as work as an English teacher. This will be a way to not only pay the rent, but build on my previous teaching experience and to do something I think I'd be good at and enjoy. Mind you, that's still a long way off, and right now I'm focused primarily on the next four months and on learning Mandarin. But I will be using this period to investigate job opportunities and hopefully line up a good job for the fall.
I also feel more grown up this time around (and I am, by three years). In 2006 I showed up in China with a single backpack full of "travel clothes" and a mosquito hat, as if I were expecting some sort of wilderness. I'm bringing more stuff this time, and a nicer wardrobe.
And my reasons for going are quite different. In 2006, I was fresh out of college and had never been outside of the "West". Although I'm sure I thought otherwise at the time (being always weary of clichés), the travels I undertook that spring and summer (in India as well as China) definitely had something to do with me "finding myself". That, plus it was a chance to just let loose and see the world after being cooped up in school for the previous seventeen years. And so I gravitated to landscapes of leisure in China: the urban playground of Hong Kong, the backpacker-friendly mountains of Yunnan and Sichuan, the exotic remoteness of Xinjiang. I partook in that rhetorical dual between "tourist" and "traveler". I kept vigilant record of my impressions, observations, and experiences in my blog. As I re-read that blog for the first time since I wrote it over the course of the last month, I see in my words the voice of a young man at awe with the world around him.
The China of my travels of 2006 surpassed and disproved many of the images, stereotypes, and preconceptions that had been formed throughout my life. So startled, excited, awed was I by the newness of everything I saw that I think I developed a bit of an inflated notion of the cogency and originality of my insights. Re-reading in 2009 the words I typed that summer in internet cafes across China, some of what I had wrote embarrassed me, so I edited it, cleaned it up. I know that may run counter to the spirit of a blog, which is supposed to reflect the writer's state of mind and need not follow the conventions of written English. But you know what? I take pride in my writing, and for me, this blog will be forever imprinted in cyberspace, so I might as well make sure it's publishable from the get-go. So this time around, I will be holding my writing up to greater scrutiny. The fact that I have my laptop with me this time helps tremendously, as I don't have to worry about paying by the minute to compose entries from scratch in internet cafes.
And so I make my return to China this year with a bit less naivety and a bit more understanding of China. I know more about China—its economy, politics, history, culture. I know more Chinese people. And most importantly, I know more Chinese. Last time, I used a pocket phrasebook to get train tickets, hotel rooms, and other necessities of travel when English was not spoken. Somehow it worked, because I successfully criss-crossed China entirely on my own. But my "Chinese" at the time was awful. My phrasebook didn't contain tone markings. There are four (or five, if you count the neutral tones) tones in Mandarin Chinese, and they make an enormous difference when it comes to the meaning of any given word. While I make no pretense to being anything other than a beginner language student, I can say that I feel supremely more confident heading to China having completed a semester of Mandarin this past fall. I made a lot of progress during that semester and am eager to try it out in real world situations.
I already got a chance not one hour after boarding this airplane. The plane, flying from San Francisco to Shanghai via Beijing, is less than half full (I wonder how much drop-off there's been in passengers since the Great Economic Crisis of 2008-? hit), and so I am enjoying the window seat in an otherwise vacant row. The young man sitting in front of me, however, migrated back to chat me up for about an hour. I practiced some of my Chinese with him, and he helped me by correcting my mistakes and teaching me some new words, which he wrote in my notebook (he told me that the Chinese name I'd chosen for myself is "strange", so I might want to see about changing it). But he mostly wanted to speak in English. He is flying back home to China after his first semester as a freshman at Kansas State University because he doesn't like it there and wants to reapply to other schools in the U.S. His top choice, apparently, is Penn State, so he naturally had lots of questions for me (namely of the "how do I get in?" variety). He then tried to enlist my help in brainstorming strategy for a lawsuit against Kansas State University he says his friend wants to file (it just occurred to me that this "friend" might be his way of face-saving way of explaining what is actually his conundrum, but I don't know that for sure). It seems his "friend" had an altercation with a professor in which he threatened to shoot him, and was subsequently kicked out of the school. He explains that his friend never had any actual intention of shooting anyone and chalks the threat up to cultural misunderstanding. What sounded like a violent threat in English was just a poor cultural translation of a harmless expression in Chinese. He now wants to sue the school for wrongfully expelling him and seems to be alleging discrimination because he's Chinese. It's hard for me to judge the situation too strongly without knowing what really transpired, but I have to say it's not at all surprising to me that a school would take such a threat so seriously (especially, fairly or not, in the recent shootings involving Chinese graduate students in the U.S.). He wanted to know what this friend should do, and whether I know any lawyers from my time at Harvard (I don't). I tried in several ways to explain that while lawsuits are as American as apple pie, and while he could certainly try, he would face an uphill battle, not to mention incur considerable legal fees, but he didn't seem to take the hint. I thought that odd, in light of what my Chinese etiquette book said about all the indirect ways Chinese people have of saying "no" (such as "it's difficult" or "it's inconvenient").
I probably ought to prepare myself for lots of encounters like this. Especially in Shanghai, where English is spoken by many. Although I say I know a lot more about China this time around, I would like to make clear that I still have much to learn (both in language and culture). I'm going to make a concerted effort to keep an open mind, to learn, to ask questions, and to suppress any urge to make snarky or know-it-all comments. While I'm sure this blog will contain a healthy dose of critical observations, I will strive to keep it free of ethnocentric judgments. That said, even the most cognizant globalist cannot escape the reference frame of his own culture and upbringing. But I'll try to make fewer broad-brush proclamations about "Chinese people" vis-a-vis "Americans" or "Westerners", and keep my commentary focused on and informed by specific events and people.
To conclude this initial entry, I'd like to offer a quick preamble to my objectives for anyone reading this blog who doesn't know me, or who doesn't already know what my deal is. I'm going to China this time around not so much to travel (though I will definitely do some of that) but to live. Instead of moving from hotel to hotel, I'm planning to take up (at least semi-) permanent residence in a house or apartment in Shanghai while I take up Mandarin classes at the Academy of Chinese Language Studies. I learned about this private language institute through online research and chose it (as opposed to language programs at Chinese universities) because it allowed for more flexibility in my schedule, which I needed because I didn't want to miss four of my friends' weddings in California this June. This initial stint will last four months, February through May, but my language classes don't start until March. I'll use February to get my bearings, figure out my living situation for the spring, and then hopefully do a little traveling before I hunker down. This relatively short spell in China will most likely be followed by a more extended one beginning later in the summer and lasting through at least the next school year. During that period I want to continue studying Mandarin and building my network, as well as work as an English teacher. This will be a way to not only pay the rent, but build on my previous teaching experience and to do something I think I'd be good at and enjoy. Mind you, that's still a long way off, and right now I'm focused primarily on the next four months and on learning Mandarin. But I will be using this period to investigate job opportunities and hopefully line up a good job for the fall.
posted by Matthew Hartzell at 9:16 PM
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