River Town

I finally started reading River Town a few weeks ago. I'd never heard of it before coming to China, but apparently it's quite famous amongst ESL teachers in this country. It was written by Peter Hessler, a man who spent two years in the mid-90s teaching English in Sichuan province in central China. He and his colleague were the first foreigners in Fuling (the "village" of 200,000 or so where they taught) for 50 years. He says that they'd draw a crowd of about 30 whenever they went somewhere to eat. That makes my occasional annoying "hello" seem trivial.

I wish I'd started the book earlier. I'm finding it quite inspiring - particularly his commitment to learning Chinese. I admit to being jealous of any foreigner who can speak Chinese with reasonable fluency. As Ken noted in a post some time ago, Chinese is considered the fourth hardest language for an English speaker to learn. Yet it sounds like Hessler was able to converse with the locals within a few months. I am nowhere near that and that has been a barrier between me and Chinese society. I'm limited to speaking with those who can speak English. I can have simple (and I mean really simple - and slow) conversations with my tutors, but I get very shy about trying my Chinese in the general public. Actually, I haven't found the Chinese public particularly helpful in my Chinese learning. The blank stares, dialects and rapid-fire speech aren't exactly what a "newbie" needs. When I arrived, I understood 0% of what was said around me. Today, I'm probably still at a miserable 2 to 3%. It feels like an almost impenetrable language, which can be frustrating. Thankfully, there is Chinesepod... but that is a post for another day.

Maybe Peter Hessler is a genius or some sort of amazing polyglot. After all, the man did go to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He even adopted a Chinese alter ego - Ho Wei - whom he kept separate from his western identity. Maybe if I'd been 爱米 (ài mǐ) more often, my Chinese ability would have taken off. Maybe! There are certainly days I feel "more Chinese" - perhaps I'm experiencing the beginnings of an alter ego. 爱米 puts her hair up (to better hide the laowai hair), carries an umbrella in the hot sun, can push her way onto a bus, steps out into the middle of traffic without a second thought, and walks slower, taking daintier steps. It helps that 爱米 happens to have a figure more like a Chinese woman! Amy, by contrast, is much more aloof from Chinese society. She wears her hair in full laowai curls, has the walk of a western businesswoman (i.e., a strut), has the iPod on at full blast to drown out any "hellos" or "laowai" remarks, and gets annoyed at the Chinese tendency to push (as pedestrians) and almost run people over (as drivers). Maybe it's my imagination, but I feel I'm stared at less when I'm 爱米.

I'm into my last few weeks here. I'm happy to be going home, but something tells me that if I was staying longer - a year or more - 爱米 might have started to prevail over Amy.