This Week's Miscellany

Here is some commentary on things that have either happened to me this week or have been rolling around in my head....

Challenging Gender Roles

There are some topics I won't go near with my students - but gender roles is not one of them. While China is not as traditional as Japan when it comes to gender roles, it's also not as progressive as North America. Some of my fellow teachers have commented on how female students will say they're not as smart as their male classmates.

So you can imagine that I - with the business background and aiming for the top of the corporate ladder - get great joy out of presenting students with a different perspective on male/female roles. At English Corner I was asked whether I want to get married and have children. I think I mildly shocked some of them (especially the guys) when I said that though I'd like to meet someone to share my life with, I don't want children. I've just never been the maternal type. Even "marriage" doesn't have to be a traditional marriage - I could do common law. It's almost unheard of here for men and women to live together before getting married. I was a little surprised to see a few of the girls around me nodding and agreeing when I explained my views. Things are changing here, especially for the younger generation.

I think it's no secret that although I'm quite career focused, I'm also very conscientious about the way I look - my vanity doesn't allow me to step outside my apartment without make-up! I make an effort to be the "whole package" - and I do this for me. I feel better when I look better. So in that respect, I hope I'm presenting my female students with a different view of femininity. You can take pride in your appearance and still be smart and successful.


Things I Miss

I'm starting to really miss some things that you can't get over here - or at least aren't as easy to get. I did a presentation on Canadian food and drink for some older students at another school. (Yes, I did talk about NL food, though I don't like much of it myself - e.g., fish and chips). Of course I had to mention Tim Horton's! When I arrive in the airport in Toronto, you can be sure my first stop will be Tim Horton's. There are days when I really crave a Tim's sandwich or chili - and of course, their coffee. The Chinese don't really do coffee. I have to make do with a cup of instant stuff in the mornings. McDonald's has "real" coffee, so sometimes I'll stop in for one when I'm in the Nan Da Jie area. Ironically, my consumption of tea has dropped here. I can't seem to get into the loose tea leaves. You can buy tea bags, but I don't bother with it. I drank a lot more green tea at home. The most tea I've had over here was the week mom and I were in Beijing.

Also on the topic of food, I miss steak! I'm really looking forward to a nice, juicy, BBQ steak when I get home. I miss happy hours with the girls at The Keg and Keg-size glasses of Pinot Grigio. Wine isn't very popular here and it's hard to find good wine, unless you want to pay a bundle for it.

I miss big, North American-style breakfasts - hash browns, sausages, toast.... yum! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Here, what people eat for breakfast doesn't differ much from lunch. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Chinese don't eat bread like we do. Once again, in Beijing it's much easier to live like a westerner. So I reveled in toast a few mornings there.

I also miss orderly lines....


Bu Hao Yi Si

I was having none of it this morning. After my early morning class, I stopped to get something to eat at one of the small snack places on campus. There were maybe four people in front of me. They were orderly. And just as I get to the front of the line, I see her coming.... I knew exactly what would happen next. She immediately skipped the line and started to push her money at the server. I don't think so girlie - not today. I was too tired and too hungry. I go right up beside her and say in a very annoyed voice "bu hao yi si" and hand over my money first. One of my tutors told me this means "excuse me". Now, I don't know if the annoyed-sounding "excuse me" translates well culturally in China - maybe there is a stronger phrase - but she knew what I meant. She was quite taken aback. Her friend started to laugh and I got a comment, but I only caught "English". Maybe she was saying "damn English speaker". I don't care. Damn line jumper!

In all fairness, I experienced some unexpected politeness this week too. A man (besides Teddy or Steve) actually held the door open for me and a male student let me go ahead of him in line in a convenience store. There's hope yet for chivalry in China!


Expectations Management

Thinking back to December and January, when I was preparing to come over here... it's like I can't even remember what my expectations were. I've learned so much and seen so much since arriving that it has completely obliterated any hazy images I had in my mind about China and its people. I think I was mentally prepared for more culture shock, which was good. I expected to find more differences. I didn't know what to expect from Changzhou. Not knowing what I'd find in stores here, I lugged over tons of toiletries (making my bag too heavy at the airport) - all things you can buy here, like contact solution and soap.

Having lived here now three months, I feel that the similarities are greater than the differences. I strongly believe that regardless of language or culture, people are essentially the same. Everyone wants to be listened to; everyone wants to be understood. My students laugh and smile. In fact, one of the things I'll miss most when I leave is all the smiling in my classes. I smile a lot, so maybe that's why I get a lot of smiles back. The smile is pretty much universal. Like young people at home, my students love to eat, sleep and hang out with their friends. People love a long weekend. Everyone is gearing up now for the Lao Dong Jie (May 1) holiday. I'm not travelling anywhere (technically, every weekend is a long weekend for me), but a friend is coming to visit and next weekend I'm going to Hong Kong.

And so concludes this week's miscellany :-)

Happy English

Back on campus, I'm reminded of why I made the right decision in coming over here. I love my classes, especially my smaller Oral English classes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Here's a photo we took the other night (I just wish you could see the three girls behind me).

Also this week, my culture classes did their country presentations. Their group project for the term was to develop a tourism ad for a major English-speaking country (yes, you can see the influence of my business background in my teaching ;0). There were two components to the project: The ad itself (though most students did a PowerPoint) and an in-class presentation at a "Travel Expo", aimed at convincing their classmates to visit their assigned country. The presentations ran the gamut, and some were truly standouts. Some groups made a poster to complement their presentation; others adopted a TV show format where they interviewed people who'd already visited the country. Others had good taglines like "Canada - waiting for you" and "Take a journey, find your true self".

Selling America

Performing a skit about a Chinese student new to the UK

Coming from my Wednesday afternoon culture class, I came across a banner for the University's English Festival, which kicked off this week. When I saw it, I actually stopped, laughed out loud and took a photo.

Oh the irony: Celebrating English with some questionable English

"Happy English, I'm lovin' it!" Poor English plus a direct rip-off of McDonald's tagline, right down to the dropped "g" in "lovin'". I guess this is the slogan for this year's English Festival. Wow. Amusing, yet sad at the same time. They've gone to great effort and expense to bring five so-called "foreign experts" here to teach English, and it never occurred to anyone to ask one of us whether their "slogan" made sense? Is this the English they're holding up for students to model? I see this and I'm reminded of why students persist in saying things like, "I wish you happy every day."

Another funny thing about the McDonald's rip-off is that many students are under the impression that all "Americans" (i.e., I'm included) live to eat hamburgers. Perhaps this is an unconscious - or conscious - equation of English with the land of hamburger eating? Though I'm not sure that anyone thought about it that deeply before having the banner made....

A few other things about English Festival have left me scratching my head. After seeing the banner, I noticed a large crowd gathered outside the library. As it turns out, it was the opening ceremony for English Festival. I managed to catch the end, but wondered why the native English speakers hadn't even been invited to the opening ceremony. If I hadn't stumbled across it, I wouldn't have known it was happening. There were a number of University dignitaries there, and apparently there had been a student talent portion. It would've been nice to have been invited to a celebration of English, given what we're here to do.

At least the school involved us in their English Festival lecture series - though not without a hitch. The five of us each delivered a lecture on a subject of our choice. Sticking to what I know, last night I presented "Success in the West: Tips for Doing Business with Western Business People". But if it hadn't been for students at English Corner on Thursday night, I might not have made it to my own lecture! Again, unbelievable.... the school told us weeks ago the location of the English Festival lectures. I mentioned to some students at English Corner that I'd be speaking in the library lecture hall on Friday at 6:30 pm (yes, I know, a crappy time for a lecture - many students are gone home for the weekend by then.... I'm amazed that 30 to 40 people attended. At home, I'd be speaking to an empty room). They quickly informed me that the location of the lectures had been changed. Apparently the students had been made aware of the change, but not the guest speakers! I heard Dan didn't find out until he showed up at the library and nobody was there. Another frustrating head-scratcher. I asked one of the University administrators why I hadn't been informed about the change - no answer on that one.

I should add that none of this lies in Teddy's domain. Those of you reading my blog know that Teddy has been nothing less than fantastic.

Anyway, the students brighten my day, even if other aspects of the school don't. Forget us - the University could have gotten a better slogan by talking to some of my culture students.

The Sandal Question

I'm back from Beijing. A post on my trip to Beijing will follow shortly!

This will be a fairly short post. I don't know.... maybe China is getting a little to me at the 3-month mark. Maybe it was seeing my mom for a week that is making me miss Canada a little. Oh, to be in a country where people don't stare at you like you're a zoo animal and will actually form a line. And Canada would surely be close to the top of the list for polite countries. I find myself doing things here that I'd never do at home.... today, pissed at people getting onto an elevator before I had a chance to get off (as always), I practically rammed a young woman with my laptop case. Like many expats, I'm starting to wonder if China is turning me into a jerk - or at least a public jerk.

Anyone following my blog surely realizes that I'm loving it in China. Once you get to know them, the people are some of the warmest you'll ever meet. But there are just some things that I'm sure would remain appalling no matter how long I stayed here - namely every manner of disgusting public behaviour. I had high hopes for Beijing in terms of public behaviour, having heard about the pre-Olympics campaign to make people more polite/hygienic in public. But that wasn't the case at all. I was met with as much public spitting and line jumping as in the south.

The weather is quite warm now in Changzhou - about the same as a nice summer day at home. My mom brought sandals over to me, but I'm debating whether I should wear them at all given questionable hygiene standards. The campus is probably okay as (thankfully) rude behaviours seem to be much less common among students. Perhaps there is a correlation between youth and/or better education and more polite public behaviour. But I think I'll don shoes again for anywhere off campus. In addition to the spitting, we have children "watering" the flowers and sidewalks thanks to split pants. I seriously wonder if any of them end up with infections. Watching the little one sitting with split pants in the Muslim Noodle Shop, I think of the germs that must be all over that place.

Anyway - this a less than complimentary post about my time here. I realize that it wasn't all that long ago that most Chinese were poor - and many still are. Genteel behaviour is a luxury of the rich. Perhaps over time public behaviour will catch up with economic development. It also has much to do with being just one out of more than a billion. In our largely uninhabited land, can any Canadian ever truly comprehend that staggering figure?

I hope my readers forgive the temporary lapse in positivity. If nothing else, my ability to cope with life in China - me the part-germaphobe - shows that it is possible to adapt to anything. You don't have to like it, but you adapt.

Doing the Cha-Cha in China

This will be my last post until I return from Beijing on April 20. My February trip was very short, so I'm glad I'll have a week to discover the Chinese capital. I almost can't believe I'm meeting my mom in Beijing tomorrow - yeah! Mother/daughter travels continue, this time in the most exotic locale yet. We've been to England, Scotland, France, Belgium and Germany together. We were in New York last year. Mom is also coming with me to DC in August to help me settle into my new digs there. Clearly, Mom and I are good travel companions.

Besides Beijing, I've been to Nanjing and Suzhou - though I haven't recounted those excursions on my blog. I'm going to be totally lazy now and direct my readers to Peter Youngblood's blog: http://pwyoungblood.blogspot.com/ Peter has an excellent and funny recap of last week's Suzhou journey. My camera battery died as soon as I got to Suzhou, but thankfully Peter and Adrienne (our other travel buddy) took tons of photos.

Returning to the topic of my last post - learning another language - after I posted it, I had a recollection of me and my brother sitting at the dining room table, singing the Mr. Christie tagline in both English and French: Mr. Christie you make good cookies! / M. Christie vous faites de bons biscuits! Ahhh..... to be learning a language where the main concern is whether something is masculine or feminine. Those were the days.

The topic of my last blog came from a frustrating day with Zhong wen... Chinese. Today was much better. I met my new friend "Eva" at Nan da jie and went with her to a Latin dance class. She invited me a few days ago.... how could I pass up the chance to do the cha-cha in China? I took a few lessons in Latin jazz dance a few years ago. Well - I discovered that it becomes much more difficult when you can't understand what the instructor is saying. It was a challenge, but lots of fun. I should have taken a photo.... I may have another chance as Eva has invited me to attend regularly. Almost all the other participants are her colleagues. This was the first class. They have to decide on a regular day and time. If I can manage it with my teaching schedule, I think I'll sign up.

After dance class, we decided to walk around a nearby park. One of Eva's colleagues, "Vivie", joined us. We spent a very pleasant day together and I had two friendly and patient native Chinese speakers to practice with. I feel like I made real progress today.

In the park

Vivie and Eva in the park - and some amused onlookers

A good day for flying a kite

They taught me Chinese and I introduced them to that most sacred of expat hangouts - the coffee house

Prior to the dance class, Eva and I had lunch and she showed me how to write my Chinese name in characters. Yes, I now have a Chinese name! I asked students at English Corner last week to give me a Chinese name. I think it's cool they get to pick English names..... so naturally I want a Chinese name. They gave me one that sounds something like my real name - "ài mǐ " (爱米). It's pronounced roughly as "Eye-Me". Translated it means "loves rice", though Eva assures me it is a lovely name. Their names carry more meaning than ours, though I believe my parents picked "Amy" because it means "love". So I have a very fitting Chinese name for a few reasons.... but I'm not so sure about loving rice. I eat it here at least once, something twice, a day. Something tells me that when I go home, rice isn't the first thing I'll want to eat. That honour goes to a nice, big, juicy BBQ steak! (Hint, hint Dad)

And finally - Happy Easter to everyone back home!

Discovering Dashan

Since coming to China, I've discovered the most famous Canadian on the face of the earth. It's not Jim Carrey, Mike Myers or Shania Twain. In fact, he's barely known in Canada. But based on the sheer number of people who know his name in China, I'd say Dashan (a.k.a. Mark Rowswell) easily takes the title. I had no idea who Dashan - which means "big mountain" - was until I got here. He came to Beijing as a University student more than 20 years ago to study Chinese, and ended up mastering xiangsheng, a Chinese comedic art based on witty dialogue. He's a hugely popular actor, performer and host on Chinese TV and is said to be known by more than one billion Chinese. Dashan even has his own website: http://www.dashan.com/ Ironically, his website notes that you can watch his videos on YouTube.... sorry Dashan, but YouTube is now blocked in China!

Looking at his site, I realized Dashan is gradually becoming better known in the west. He was chosen to be the attache for the Canadian Olympic Team during last year's Beijing Olympics. He's been awarded the Order of Canada and Ford Canada uses his image in TV and print ads aimed at Chinese-Canadians.

Dashan in a Ford ad.

What I find most fascinating about Dashan is his purported ability to speak better Chinese than most Chinese people. Since embarking on my own attempt to learn Chinese ("attempt" being the operative word there!), I am in complete awe of such a feat. With few similarities to English, Chinese is an extraordinarily difficult language for a native English speaker to master.

It's one thing to learn French or Spanish or even German, which have many cognates (e.g., langue - French / language - English) and similiar sentence structures. Putonghua is something else altogether, requiring a speaker to not only know the right word, but to also know the right tone for that word. Depending on tone, ma can mean either mother, numb, horse or to scold. And as I've told Steve, one of my tutors, when translated directly into English, Chinese can sound an awful lot like Yoda - "Me very happy with you talk". This is certainly giving me an appreciation for what my students must go through in learning English.

Today was a particularly frustrating day, as I had a few instances of trying to speak Chinese, only to be met with blank stares. I had to resort to showing the characters friends have given me. At times it's tempting to say "why bother?" It's easy enough to get around here knowing only English. But I hate feeling like a baby having to point at things or having to rely on friends to translate. That doesn't exactly instill a sense of independence. In fact, my commitment to learning Chinese seems to have doubled since last weekend when I went to Suzhou with some teacher friends. They took some Chinese classes in the States before coming here and it shows. I felt like a bit of an idiot not knowing some very basic words.

I've never been a great language learner, which I mentioned in my last blog. I tend to dabble in languages based on my current interest. I do a work term in Germany and suddenly I want to learn German. My interest in French revives after a semester in France. I can't quite remember why I decided to take Spanish in University.... I sometimes forget that I got half-way to a minor in Spanish. If I'd just stuck with that instead of switching to German, I'd probably have the minor. So, I studied three languages before even coming here, and can't claim fluency in any of them.

Beyond the language ADD, my biggest problem is being afraid to just speak it. In some ways, I'm very much like my students. I hate making mistakes. I hate losing face. I focus too much on knowing how to write a language, rather than how to speak it. I've always been fascinated by the written word, which perhaps explains the English degree. But knowing how to write a language is not nearly so useful as knowing how to use it in conversation. I'm now making more of an effort to use whole sentences - however short - in stores and restaurants on campus and I'm insisting my tutors ask me questions in Chinese.

I am committed to becoming fluent in a second language by the time I finish my MBA. After all, I'm doing international business! And depending on what school I choose, a second language may be a requirement. The question is whether I'll continue Mandarin studies or go back to French. I have no doubt that French would be the easiest to re-learn.... got to love having gone to school in Canada! Language acquisition capability is largely gone by the time you're an adult, so maybe that explains why I've retained some French years after elementary school. I feel any Canadian under 35 owes a huge debt to Trudeau.... thanks Pierre for all those bilingual cereal boxes! It's amazing how much vocabulary you can pick up from constant exposure to French labelling.

That said, I highly doubt that French will be the second-most important language in the world 10 or 20 years from now. That language is being spoken around me every day. Dashan was ahead of his time.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

I can't believe that it's already April. My time here is flying - and I think that says something about how I'm finding China. Summer will come too soon. I absolutely can understand how China wraps itself around the hearts of many foreigners.

I'm off to Suzhou this weekend. It is a holiday weekend here (Tomb Sweeping Day), so many people will be travelling. I'm again meeting up with Peter and Adrienne, also from CIEE. We travelled together to Nanjing last month, though I haven't gotten around to posting photos from that trip yet. Suzhou isn't far. It's still in Jiangsu province.

Before I go, I thought I'd present a round-up of several recent funny events/observations that show why life here is so unpredictable!

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

I studied German for some time in school and through private lessons, but sadly - and much like French and Spanish - I've long forgotten most of it. (I'm a terrible language learner... but more on that another time.) That's too bad because I actually could have used it here.... yes, here in China. I've had several students attempt to speak to me in German. See, there are actually more German teachers here than English teachers. The university has a partnership with a school in Germany. So for a whole segment of the student population, being foreign is associated with speaking German, not English. I find it very cool - and indicative of our globalized world - that a Chinese student would turn to me in an elevator and ask me something in German.


Speaking of Elevators....

I met two Africans in the elevator in the hotel today. Foreigners are a rare sight here, so they were probably just as surprised to see me when the doors opened as I was to see them. They immediately said 'hello' and asked if I spoke English. They were walking in the same direction as me on campus and we had a good chat.... but did we ever get some stares! To see a white person here is one thing - but to see a white person walking with two black people is something else altogether. One man was from Zimbabwe and the other was from Cameroon. It turns out they're here for two weeks for a seminar. They told me I would like Africa. I don't know.... Africa has never been very high on my list of places to see, but coming here has whetted my appetite for more exotic travel. Maybe Russia and India first. Then we'll see about Africa.


Drama Club

Much is said about Chinese students' unwillingness to speak up in class for fear of making mistakes. It's important in China to not stand out in any way - good or bad. It's important to save face in front of classmates. Although many of my students are quite shy, I'm realizing that I do have a few characters in my classes. For instance, the other night in Oral English we were practicing telephone English. I took them through the standard business telephone/message role plays, but then I told them to mix it up. Get a little crazy! Leave a bizarre message! After they practiced for 10 minutes or so, I asked for volunteers to demonstrate. I was completely floored when two guys stood up (they were working in pairs) and proceeded to treat the class to a mini-drama. One of them set the stage: A man has been hit by a bus and is now dying. He calls his girlfriend to say good-bye. He only gets her answering machine. The other student then stood up.... I thought I was going to bust a gut laughing when his phone message included lines like "hello girl", "I'm going to Heaven now" and "I'm calling to tell you 3 words.... I love you". It sounded like dialogue right out of a cheesy boy band video! The rest of the class was cracking up too. He was so earnest in his acting that is was hard to keep a straight face. It was just awesome to watch. Fantastic! They got a big round of applause.


Honesty is the Best Policy

One of the most striking things about people here is how honest they are. I've been in numerous situations when it would have been easy to rip me off - the foreigner who can't speak Chinese. In a restaurant I accidentally dropped a 1 yuan coin into a menu. The waitress actually came back to my table with the coin. Where else would anyone do that? It's not much, but in a country where they don't even accept tips, it's something extra. I left it on the table when I was finished, but then scooted away quickly - just in case she came running after me with it.

Another example.... I often eat at a restaurant that we like to call the "Muslim Noodle Shop". Last week I tried a new dish and didn't know the price. Now - I at least know my numbers in Chinese, along with a few basic words and sentences. But the problem is that they have to be spoken to me in perfect putonghua (standard Mandarin) in order for me to understand. Many people in China speak two languages: Putonghua and the local dialect. I suspect that many of the people working in restaurants, shops, etc. here in Changzhou are speaking the Changzhou dialect. I asked whether the dish was qi (7) yuan - and he responded with something that made no sense to me. So I just guessed and gave him 9 RMB. As I obviously didn't understand, he could have just taken it. But he gave me back 1 RMB..... very honest.


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I'll finish this post with a comment about how bizarre I find the contrast between what I'm experiencing here and the way China is frequently portrayed in the media back home. It seems that in the lead-up to the G20 Summit, western media have been particularly obsessed with China's growing assertiveness. On the Economist website, 3 of the top 5 stories have to do with China: "Rejoice, Damn You" (about Tibet), "China Takes Centre Stage", and "How China Sees the World". You read these articles and it's hard not to feel like China is on its way to being the west's biggest nemesis, much as the Soviet Union was in the Cold War.

I find it hard to reconcile that portrait of China with the image of three girls hovering outside my class 5 minutes before the bell rings, asking permission to enter because they're "late". I guess this points to why it is so important to distinguish between policy and people. Yes, there is much to criticize here. I'm a huge fan of democracy, so I feel no particular kinship with the Chinese government. But the people are a different story altogether. I already know that I'll be very sad to leave here in July.

This is a land of contrasts indeed.