The past few weeks I have been experiencing an incredible change in my attitude. To be honest, I had to re-examine a bit why I decided to come to China in the first place and think about what were my major goals. I decided that it was time for me to put all my effort into improving my spoken Chinese before coming home this year for the summer. This decision has allowed me to really appreciate my time in China and focus the greatest part of my attention on a noble and attainable goal. I did come to China with a little background knowledge of their history, but I would say that nothing in my life had created a passion in me for Chinese culture previous to coming to China like I have know. The little history I thought I know about China evolved after taking a history course from the visionary guidance of Professor Bohr. The real watershed moment came for me after I made the decision to purchase a twelve-hour Chinese podcast last month. After finishing the first tape, I purchased another six-hour podcast and have been spending a great amount of time each day devoted towards oral Chinese.
The other great change came from the books I had been reading prior to my Kindle’s demise last week. The end of my Kindle came as I was engulfed in the reading of a “George Washington” biography. After falling asleep I forgot to put the Kindle away on the shelf, and you guessed it, I rolled over and elbowed it during the night. The past few books greatly had changed my perspective on a wide variety of topics. I really took the life of George Washington to heart as I began to realize that I shared a characteristic trait with one of the founding fathers. I too believe greatly in self-improvement and lifelong learning which I feel both are noble pursuits. Therefore, I decided that I needed to tackle the one area which I felt most lacking in my life right now and that was oral Chinese communication.
I pushed myself each day and spent countless hours of listening, speaking, practicing note cards, and taking notes on oral Chinese. As time wore on, I discovered that spending time working on Chinese no longer felt like work but seemed more like a passion to me. My desire to learn Chinese grew as I pursued conversations more eagerly. Each conversation seemed to go more smoothly and produced in me a greater sense of confidence after I was slowly improving my listening comprehension. My spoken Chinese is not bad; however, I was really have a tough time understanding what people have been asking me which left me feeling very frustrated at times. The next evolution in my studying of Chinese came when I started watching Chinese movies with subtitles which pushed my listening comprehension skills more. Coupling my personal studying habits with time spent walking with my friend Maggie, an eighteen-year English studying veteran, has helped me to improve my Chinese of late.
In the past two weeks I have gone out and ordered all the food and drinks at a restaurant, done my own dry cleaning, and frequently taken taxis around town. With my confidence growing I spent the past two Sunday’s chatting with my good friend, Emma in Chongqing using mostly Chinese. That change along with the start of a new semester of teaching has really changed my outlook at my entire experience in China. I now feel a lot more passion for being in China and understand that I can one day reach my goals of speaking Chinese fluently if I put my mind to it.
In the past few weeks I have decided that I dream of being able to next year travel somewhere in China using only Chinese. With this being said, I also am planning on visiting Cambodia and Thailand next year, so I know I will need to work very hard to save up my salary as much as possible starting this month. Having this tangible and attainable goal has put a new face on my studying of Chinese and really encouraged me to keep working at it. My Chinese friends are great at being patient with me while I work steadfastly at improving my oral Chinese and have reminded me what it means to be a patient listener.
I really have come to respect the level of friendship which I find very unique to Asian cultures. I have no where in my life been able to say that I would with the same frequency help out friends in need in the United States. I understand now that a lot of Asian cultures promote saving-face and pressuring people to do certain things regardless of their intrinsic motivation. Even so, I have had some very open conversations with friends and found that they would most times do the same things for honest people even without the Chinese cultural expectations. I truly believe that before I came to China I wanted to be a good person in life and do the right things if given the chance. China has shown me a whole other level of kindness which I hope I will remember when it comes my time to help a friend in need.
From really engrossing myself in Chinese culture I discovered a greater personal appreciation and respect for it. I have recently been watching Chinese movies which have covered a variety of topics from Confucius to the Cultural Revolution. After reading the latest Lisa See Novel titled, “The Dreams of Joy” which describes with great detail the disastrous effects of Chinese Great Leap Forward a real sadness developed in me for the people of China. This attempt to pass the modernized western world in a few years time with suspect harvesting policies, propaganda, threats, murder, and fear is but a glimpse into the defects of a unitary state system.
Unfortunately, I often wonder to myself what becomes of a place which celebrates someone responsible for so much destruction and builds them up into a demigod for posterity’s sake. What Mao did to his own people in order to pursue his own personal agenda resembles Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Germany, Cesar in Rome, etc. One of the things which people in China often say is that it was not Mao’s entire fault since he had some bad people in his gang of four running the country with him. My response to that is that a leader is responsible for the people they put around them to run a government. If those around them reflect poor governing tendencies than it is the responsibility of that leader to appoint new leaders. This is especially true in places which do not reflect democratic tendencies.
I found that some of China’s traditional films depicted peace and harmony as being superior to war and loss of life. I feel that at the heart of most Chinese people is a great desire to be at peace with others. This tendency has many different reverberations throughout society some which are positive and others which I feel are negative. One of the more interesting ones I find is the sense of being almost ambivalent towards the outside world and news outside of China. There is a feel that China still and always has been the “Middle Kingdom” literally “Zhong Guo” (pinyin for China”. I believe that many people in China would like nothing more than to be left alone by the rest of the world and left to live their own lives in peace.
I enjoyed greatly my first class of the spring semester this week and believe that I have a good group of students I will be working with. My class schedule has been cut back which is going to give me more time to be able to continue learning Chinese each day which I am excited about. I have learned to not expect a lot from my students in regards to their motivation to attend class, interest in English, and level of proficiency. Therefore, I have come to except that I will not be able to control the destiny of my own course as by the end of most semester I am down to only a couple of students attending class.
The past week I was injured with what at first I feared might be a serious problem with my appendicitis. Luckily, after a few days time the symptoms regressed and I was able to regain full activity level in a week’s time. Going to the hospital again in China reminded me of the incredibly different approach to medicine China has compared to western nations. I also realize that due to China’s incredible amount of patients in the hospital people the system cannot be the same as in the United States. However, the differences are stark as going to the hospital truly feels like going to the market.
First, you will see a general doctor who examines you and hears your symptoms. This doctor will advise you to go get a specific test done at another location which will bring you to a different doctor. At that station, the doctor will usually scan something specific and pass the results on to another doctor which will take another scan and so on. After finishing all the necessary tests you report back the results to the first doctor who decides what to do. That first doctor is also the one who examined you and proscribes a certain treatment for the patient. The patient finishes by going to another counter to pay for his medication. Throughout the time at the hospital you are surrounded by people waiting at the doctor’s desk to get their tests examined, medication proscribed, etc. There can be anywhere from ten-twenty people with a doctor at anytime. At no time will a patient and doctor have privacy in this process. Obviously, in this system personal testing results are verbally broadcasted for all to hear.
After spending over a year in China now I can safely say that visiting the doctor is my least favorite thing about being here. The weather in Chongqing is a constant negative as well; however, I have learned to tolerate that part of the experience as no person can change the weather. The third thing which I feel to be the biggest detractor to living in China is the constant pollution and proximity to people which a person deals with constantly.
Overall, I am excited to begin a new semester and feel that as my first year in China is winding down I can safely say I have made great strides in oral Chinese. Where I go from here in regards to learning the language is really up to me. Two interestingly different traits have increased in me as my appreciation for being in China has increased in ways and digressed in other ways. I feel greater love for my experiences here and treasure them more and also a greater longing to be home to see family and friends. In this way, I believe that I am going to be satisfying both desires by taking advantage of my time in China to speak the language and looking forward to coming home this summer to visit Minnesota.
I wish all of you the best in this early spring season.
E.K.
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