During that English “Ask a 老外” Q&A session at Tianjin University last week, a student asked two questions together near the end of the session: “What did you say when you proposed to your wife?” – they liked that answer – and “What is the essence of love?” I knew immediately that my reply to the second question was going to be glaringly counter-cultural, possibly to the point of being absurd. But for some reason it felt good to swing hard anyway, with short, slow sentences that had a good chance of being understood. Maybe I needed to let off some culture stress steam, I don’t know. I told them, as best I can remember:

“Love is something you choose to do. It’s a choice you make. You choose to love. It doesn’t ‘just happen.’ You don’t ‘fall in love’ or ‘fall out of love.’ You make love.”

I opted not to expound on the various facets of truth connected to that last point, though I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t so much fun getting to preach innuendos to 200+ people on the far side of the world who probably wouldn’t/might not pick it up anyway. Pretty sure I did it with a straight face, too. Anyway, I then briefly talked about love being a decision to put another’s needs before your own, and not confusing love with the great feelings that are often associated with it.

The students reacted strongly as soon as I said “choose,” which I tried to say slow and loud, deliberately overemphasizing. We could see and hear their disagreement/disbelief/surprise throughout the room. We’d fielded questions on touchy, charged issues all night (Taiwan, Iraq War, Western criticisms of China), but this was the reply that got them going. A big chunk of it – I think – has to do with their general worldview heritage. Another big chunk has to do with prevailing perceptions of Westerners.

I asked my Mandarin teacher about their reaction today. She was hesitant to generalize (the teachers at our school have had to put up with more than their fair share of foreigner generalizations about Chinese people), but she said a few things. Fate is a prevalent belief. Many Chinese people think that Westerners don’t take love very seriously, like it’s just an emotion (I couldn’t disagree, even if the pirated movie market skews peoples’ perceptions of typical Western relationships… then again, Western entertainment media skews Westerners’ perceptions of Western relationships!). For the record, China doesn’t exactly have a rosy tract record of widespread marital bliss by comparison. Divorce is an epidemic on both sides of the Pacific. She also said they probably didn’t believe me. I told her that’s OK, a group of American university students probably wouldn’t believe me either.

The video in this post provides some nice anecdotes when the interviewer asks some Beijing young people about love, and they talk about fate. In general, by comparison, Westerners are typically more oriented toward agency, whereas East Asians more toward adaptability. That’s not to say that both these traits aren’t easily found in people on both sides of the world; it’s a contrast of relative emphases. To read a little bit more about the emphasis on fate in contrast to the West, see this post: Negotiating Life: Accept or Revolt?

ps – The photo is of a little Tianjin traffic tenderness (we could use more of that!) at the intersection near our school.
pps – I realize that I actually ended up describing love was a verb and a noun. But it’s really a verb. So I guess then you actually don’t “make” it. Shoot. Bad English teacher!

Confession time. When we were at Tianjin University the other day, some students had a big white banner with something written on it, and student signatures were scrawled all over it. When we walked by one of them approached us: “Excuse me. We now are having this activity. Can we have your autograph?” They were celebrating the 30th anniversary of the re-opening of the university (the restarting of the national entrance exams I think) after the Cultural Revolution. Since we’re big fans of education we said OK, but I signed it Wayne Gretzky.

Today after a culture lecture in the morning I went for a haircut on a street corner. It was actually a lot of fun. The guy was really friendly and talkative, and the 7 or so people that gathered around to watch and chat were really friendly, too. It’s a good deal; language practice and a haircut for 39 cents! He had more English than the average Old Hundred Names, and claims he learned it
from the radio. He officially welcomed me to China in English — it was kind of cute. It got funny when he started replying to the Chinese speakers in English: “You are right.” “Three yuan.” “Excuse me.” It got even funnier when they started teaching me old slogans, like: “Study hard for the revolution!” and “The working class is the highest class!” The haircut itself got a mixed review from Jessica, but I gotta go back to that guy. The photos are of the people who stuck around to watch the 老外 get his hair cut. It felt kind of weird that they didn’t ask my name and so I didn’t ask any of theirs, especially with all the questions flying around in the conversation. I’ll make a point to ask him next time I go by.

This weekend’s slogan comes with a bonus Inspiration Thought, which I found on a fish tank in the lobby of our old apartment building:

Yearning for the ocean, sailing to the ocean and embracing the ocean, Enriched concentration shapes a wide expanse of Secret Ocean and forms a vast land of fortune

I think Koreans made the fish tank… here’s the photo.

And here’s this weekend’s slogan. This weekend would’ve been a twofer, but no one, including our teachers, knows what that last character is in yellow. These banners are right near the JHF office.

(Red)
遵守社会公德，维护公共卫生！
zūn shǒu shè huì gōng dé, wéi hù gōng gòng wèi shēng
“Observe social ethics, uphold public hygiene!”

Pronounced: lì hai
Means: talented, sharp, clever, capable, ferocious, fierce, strict, severe, terrible, devastating, or serious. A strict mother, serious illness, a tiger, or a ruthless warlord can all be 厉害.

Extra fun day today! For homework this morning I had to phone a Chinese person and talk on the phone in Chinese, so I skyped PEI in Taiwan and talked to Neil, Kiki, and Mr. Wang. It was so much fun to inflict them with our Chinglish now that we have substantially more than last time we talked with them.

After Chinese class we went to the park to chat with some students from the teacher training college. But we had to cut the homework time short today because we were both helping with different activities tonight at Tianjin University. Jessica was helping with a class with Bright Future, a JHF program started by a friend that offers university seminars for relationship and sexual health. I was helping out a different friend (in the same building) who teaches an oral English class where they just listen to people speak in English. Since that’s really boring sometimes, she has “Ask a 老外” nights every once in a while where she brings in foreigner friends and the class (200 or so students) can ask them any questions they want. It’s grad student heaven; 90 minutes devoted to your opinions!

Anyway, here’s what they asked the two of us, in the order they came… some of these are pretty amazing, I thought:

• Can you tell us about the two parties in the US election?
• How do you feel about the Iraq War?
• What are some differences in university education between China and America?
• What do you think about the Taiwan issue?
• What do you think about the NBA?
• What do foreigners think can be improved in China?
• What are your favourite movies? Favourite actors?
• What are some experiences you’ve had studying Chinese in China?
• What do you think about the way technological advances make God feel farther and farther away?
• Why do Americans like crude sports like football?
• How do you feel about having a boyfriend who is shorter than you?
• What is the essence of love? What did you say when you asked your wife to marry you?
• What do you think about evolution?
• What do you think about environmental protection?
• What do you think about Spider Man 3?

I was impressed – they asked good questions, and weren’t afraid to ask loaded ones. We had to think fast for some of that stuff, but it’s actually kind of fun to dance around sensitive issues while still trying to deliver a satisfying answer. I’ll try to get Jessica to write something about Bright Future.

ps – Click the photo of Neil and read his paper. Can you believe that Kelly and Houston said no to that? Heartless.

Tourist + Moron = Touron

Ok, this isn’t really a Chinese word, but it’s worth meditating on… deeply meditating on. All of us. Together.

And while you’re at it, you can check out this site:
Where Am I Wearing? (a guy travels to the countries that make his/our clothes.)

“Eat bitterness” (吃苦) is an old Chinese phrase, and it’s the best that I can think of to described China’s 20th century history. We recently finished a 6-hour documentary full of fantastic interviews and archive footage from the last 100 years or so. It literally makes you want to cry. At one point an interviewee tells how he repeatedly banged his head against the wall of his cell, screaming out, “The Chinese are so pathetic! In my next life I won’t be Chinese!” Not everyone interviewed felt that way of course, but it’s heartbreaking to hear the stories, even when the people don’t conclude in total despair. Sometimes I marvel that some people haven’t.

In many ways it’s hard to connect the slice of China that we experience every day with the China we study in books and documentaries (although some Tianjin footage was in there!). But when you stop to think about the numbers of people that were affected by various events, and then think about how old they would be today, you suddenly look at the people you pass by or chat with on the street in a whole different way: your teacher’s parents, your landlords, the old folks in the neighbourhood. These people have experienced a lot, and not just the elderly. My parents’ generation were students in the 70′s. The guys that repair my bike on the sidewalk and laugh at my Chinglish, or sit on the park bench to chat while I’m studying – they’ve lived events that I can’t wrap my head around no matter how much I read about them.

Pronounced: ch? k?
Literally: eat bitterness
Means: bear hardship

Dà Shān (大山) is a Canadian celebrity in China and easily the most well-known foreigner ever. He got his start doing Chinese comedy routines back when it was a big deal to have a foreigner on TV speaking Chinese. He’s still here doing all kinds of stuff, and he often appears in ads on buses and TV and stuff like that. He speaks Chinese better than most Chinese people do. And every single time I talk to someone, they bring him up. I have nothing against the guy, but I’m getting sick of hearing about him!

Usually the first or second question I get is, “What country are you from?” Then, 9 times out of 10, it goes something like this:

“Oh, you’re from Canada. Dà Shān is from Canada. Do you know who Dà Shān is?”

“Yes, I know who Dà Shān is.”

“His Chinese is great!”

“Right, not like mine.”

I can’t say I blame him. If I spoke Mandarin that good (instead of Chinglish) I’d probably be milking it for all it was worth, too. But the mixture of language envy and constantly being compared to the greatest foreign Mandarin speaker ever – in every conversation – has got to be one of the biggest curses for language students in China, especially Canadian ones!

Weekend Slogan #4
We see this one every day. It’s right outside our gate, obstructing the view of the kids playing ping-pong by the bicycle park.

实现创卫目标需要您的支持和参与
shí xiàn chuàng wèi mù biāo xū yào nín de zhī chí hé cān yù

“To realize the sanitation goal, we need your support and participation!”

Today I had whiskey with dofu chasers.

On the way out to the park to do some homework, I stopped at the bike repair guy’s corner to see if Mr. Lu would tighten my bike seat. Every time I went over a bump the seat would go vertical. He told me to sit down with his buddies for a snack, which turned out to be peanuts, shredded dofu, and whisky, with the dofu as the chaser. We ended up ‘chatting’ for almost an hour (not that I have anywhere near enough Mandarin to sustain a conversation that long).

We’ve read and heard lots about Chinese drinking customs, about how they should be avoided at all costs, and how they’re hard to avoid. At informal occasions like mine today, but especially at banquets, there can be a lot of toasting with strong drinks. It’s mostly the men; apparently it’s a manly-man thing to drink a lot, and there can be lots of goading and pressuring to get reluctant participants to drink more than they should. (Ironically, ethnic Chinese have one of the lowest genetic tolerances for alcohol, meaning that on average they get drunk easier than everyone else. Manly-man indeed…) Our friends that have lived here long enough, especially those that work in some sort of official capacity, have had to face the banquet scene a few times. They told us they just tell people something like, “We’re Christians so we don’t drink,” even if they do drink occasionally, and the rationale was that your only other choice is to get hammered. I never understood why it was apparently so hard to just stop after one drink. Can’t you just tell people no?

Today I got a small taste of how hard it can be. I only had one, but man I had to fight to keep it at one! These guys were persistent, to the point of trying to grab my cup and fill it for me, or trying to fill it when I was holding it and not paying attention for split second, or giving me all kinds of arguments and guilt trips (I imagine… Mr. Lu doesn’t slow down or simplify his speech for foreigners like others sometimes do so I don’t know what he was saying aside from the non-verbals). I wonder if a little bit has to do with you giving them face by accepting their hospitality, and saying no can be a little loss of face or something. Since you have to work so hard to refuse more, to the point of almost making a little scene, I can see how the pressure would be even greater at formal banquets where there’s a lot more face going around.

Still, tough rocks. I’m not going to be your drunk foreigner entertainment, and I’ve got more interesting ways to affirm my masculinity.

But we still had a good time. After the snack, I found a bench in the park and ending up talking with someone else for another hour. Then he saw one of his friends and we sat and talked with him. Jessica found us by then, and he and his friend (an erhu musician) sang us this song:

I’d tell you what it’s about, but, ah… it has something to do with “Who are you?” and the army… I think.

While I was talking in the park, this was going on. I promise you won’t get this stuff back home:

The guy I was chatting with asked me if I liked it. I told him it was interesting.

Tomorrow is May 4th, officially one of the most important holidays in China. Workers get a week off of work. Every gate on every apartment building around us (hundreds) is flying a Chinese flag. Fireworks almost every night. You can click here to see how a government site explains the significance of the May 4th Movement. It would be interesting to compare this to what is written in your history textbooks. From said government site:

Under the influence of the October Revolution in Russia, China’s May 4th Movement arose. During this great anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary movement led by patriotic students, the Chinese proletariat for the first time mounted the political stage. The May 4th Movement marked the change of the old democratic revolution to the new democratic revolution. It enabled Marxism-Leninism to further spread and link up with the Chinese people’s revolutionary practice, and prepared the ideology as well as the cadres necessary for the founding of the Communist Party of China…

This new place is great. I just spent a beautiful afternoon sitting on a bench along the canal surrounded by green trees and flowers studying Chinese and watching people. I didn’t even have to seek out people to practice on; if you sit here, they will come. Old people, young people, toddlers in “chiney-hineys” (I hope that’s not an offensive term… pictures coming soon!) – everyone’s out for walks or naps in the park, and that bench is less than a minute from our gate. This new apartment is a bit of work on the inside, but we’re so glad we found it.

Several weeks ago we first went to look for apartments and had a friend help us out. He showed us a neighbourhood rental agent that he’d used before, and they took us to what we thought was the perfect apartment. It was old, cheap, in a run-down neighbourhood full of people that one of our Chinese friends called “Old Hundred Names” – the common people. It was totally livable, a great deal, and had a nice community feel to the neighbourhood with large inner courtyards with dirt/grass and trees where kids play, people hang laundry, and old people do their tai-chi. Basically exactly what we wanted. But when we returned about four hours later with friends to do some negotiating with the landlord, we met his messenger instead: “Yǒu shì.” He “has some matters” to take care of and couldn’t make it. We phoned back the next day, and were told that it had been rented. Our Chinese friends interpreted this as a situation where the landlord just doesn’t want to rent to foreigners. It’s too much “má fan” (hassle/trouble). We were disappointed. But we put off hunting because our Chinese was at the point where we were completely dependent on others for this, and we really didn’t want to be that kind of burden on our newly-made friends.

A few weeks later, armed with substantially more Chinglish (I hesitate to call what we speak “Mandarin”), we went out ourselves to different rental agents and looked at a bunch of apartments, two of which were in the same block as the first one, and one of which was in the same gate just two floors below. I asked the rental agent point blank if there were people in that first apartment, but he wouldn’t give a straight answer. I asked him two more times just to make sure since my Chinese is so bad. Still no straight answer. This didn’t bother us, though, because on this second trip things were different. The large neighborhood courtyards in which we’d envisioned a ready-made community on which to regularly inflict our Chinglish were crawling with migrant workers who were digging trenches, laying pipes, and uprooting the trees. The whole place was torn up! One of the landlords said that they were paving over the courtyards. I asked about the grass and said that we liked the trees. He said it would be paved. We were suddenly very grateful for that first landlord who didn’t want foreigners! We had no idea why anyone would choose concrete over grass and trees, so Jessica asked her teachers. Apparently a dirt courtyard reminds people of peasant life. Concrete has more status, or something like that.

That same day we found an apartment that, according to our teachers, is older and very average. We brought in reinforcements (a Chinese friend) to do the negotiating (that kind of Mandarin is WAY out of our league), and it all went smoothly. We moved in last weekend with the borrowed diàn dòng sān lún chē. We’re out of the overpriced and foreigner-filled (but very convenient for new people) apartment that we’d been placed in for one that’s almost half the price and better all around.

We want to be sensitive and intentional about our standard of living. In Taiwan we had zero language and were pressed for time to find a place. We ended up in a very comfortable place that was unfortunately rather high class. It was really nice, but most Taibei residents don’t live in places like that. Figuring out at what level to live at as a foreigner is complicated, and it gets compounded by the lack of language skills. With the information we have right now, this place is a little old and average for this district. Those are relative terms, and the change depending on how wide a circle of comparison you draw on the map. But we’re just glad to have a place that won’t seem embarrassingly posh to the kind of people we meet in the parks or on the buses, should they ever stop in for a visit.