Week 3 Part 2: 第二周
Dear Mom and Dad
I'm glad you're safely back in the US. I know you're reading this because you support me in everything I do. Thank you so much for spending the past few weeks showing me where my roots are. I had a wonderful time with you both. Thank you for always going the extra mile to make sure I'm okay. Thank you for everything you've given me over the years through your unending love and positive example. You guys are my heroes, my role models, my protectors, and my friends. I've always known you both had good hearts, but I'm old enough now that I'm just beginning understanding what life was like for you when you were younger, why you left China, and how hard that must have been. I know I will never really understand the hardships you faced. But really, that's only because you both worked so hard in order to ensure I would never have to overcome the same obstacles as you. Thank you for making my life a life of joy, learning, and love. Thank you for bringing me to this point in my life where I can spend a semester here. I don't know what I would do without you. 爸爸妈妈我就爱你们一点点。
I forgot what pants feel like
Last week I was talking about how cold it was. Well guess what. It's not that cold anymore. I guess it's March already so that's fair. But I'd spent a while wearing 2-3 layers of pants that I forgot what it feels like to just wear one pair of pants. I was walking around in jeans and for several hours I was acutely aware of how it felt to wear pants like a normal person. It feels odd to not be a part of Oklahoma's classic hot-cold-hot-cold transition to spring. It just kind of became warmer...? Crazy stuff.
Neil deGrasse Tyson said so, so it must be true
Neil deGrasse Tyson said the Gregorian New Year is astronomically insignificant and Chinese New Year isn't, and I'll believe almost anything that man says. Mostly because I don't understand space. But basically he said the Gregorian calendar picked a random point to call a New Year, but the Chinese New Year is based off the lunar calendar, so it lines up with some kind of lunar event. I can't tell you what the event is, because I don't understand it already and I'm not willing to Google it. Well, Google is blocked in China so I'm not willing to Baidu Search it.
Keeping up with the times
The Chinese language has an insane way of keeping track of time.
For days of the week, I am used to:
Monday,
Tuesday,
Wednesday,
Thursday,
Friday,
Saturday, and
Sunday.
Chinese people use a much better system. It goes:
week 1,
week 2,
week 3,
week 4,
week 5,
week 6
and can you guess what Sunday is?
"Week 7" you say?
Wrong.
It is "week day."
Since Sunday is called "week day" Chinese OBVIOUSLY has a word for "day", so I don't at all understand why Monday is "week 1" instead of "day 1". Obviously it's meant to be the 1st in the week, but if you translate it literally from Chinese to English like my half-Chinese half-American brain does, then it's cruelly confusing. And sometimes I kind of feel like Sunday, not Monday, is the first day. So then Monday is the second day of the week, but it's called "week 1" instead of "day 2."
Furthermore, "up week" means the previous week. "Down week" is next week. I have to picture a calendar in my head to visualize how on paper calendars, previous weeks are above the current week and future weeks are below. Otherwise I can't remember which is which.
To make things more confusing, "back day" is the day after tomorrow. "Front day" is day before yesterday. I have to visualize myself walking backwards into the future, just haphazardly not looking where I’m going and hoping I won't trip. And that’s why the day after tomorrow is behind me and the day before yesterday is in front of me. In English, when I'm think about the future, I say "I have a good future to look forward to." I don't say, "I have a lot of things I will carelessly meander backwards towards despite the fact that my eyeballs are on the front of my head." When I think about the past in English, I say, "The past is behind me." But in Chinese, the past is in front of me, just staring at me while I back away from it.
I'm probably thinking about this too much, but that's how my brain works.
My two favorite fruits are friends
I've spent a lot of time eating these large grapes and tiny oranges. It took a while for me to realize that they were the same size. I don't think the grapes and oranges I usually eat are usually the same size.
Bamboo is more than just panda food
The people who clean the city streets sometimes use bamboo brooms. Not only are the broom handles made of bamboo stalk, but the bottom part is simply a bunch of bamboo leaves tied to the handle with twine.
You can also make bamboohand railings, benches, floors, mats, and even roofing. Bamboo can also be used as people food although it's kind of hard to chew.
My favorite thing about bamboo is that it makes for a pretty stroll through the park.
So many cute dogs
To me, a normal dog has a collar and no clothes. Some of the dogs here don't have collars and register in my mind as stray dogs, even if they have owners. Some of the dogs are dressed in frilly fluffy foo foo dresses. I want to be friends with all of the adorable dogs. Also, it took 3 weeks, but I finally lost the urge to constantly say cringey things from stupid American memes like "doggo" and "fake news." That was honestly one of the harder aspects of culture shock for me.
Boom Soon forever
All of the pictures on this blog up until now have been taken by me, but this one is from the lovely interweb machine. These are the hand signals of the numbers one through ten. Six is my favorite number and my favorite hand signal. It's like a motionless shaka (hang loose) sign.
Eight confuses me. On Monday, the teacher came over to whisper that I had eight minutes left on my placement exam. I looked at her hand and thought she was trying to convey, "Go Pokes" and I was thinking "Boomer Sooner baby" and then I realized she wasn't cheering on a college in Oklahoma, USA and I shouldn't either. Anyways, it's good that when I saw the sign for "eight" that I didn't actually make the sign for "one" and say "Boomer Sooner" in a classroom full of students silently taking exams. I am so culturally engaged; look at me go.
Are you American or are you Chinese?
I've had Americans looks at me and ask if I can speak English. I've had Chinese people look at me and ask if I can speak Chinese.
I've had Americans call me the Chinese girl. I've had Chinese people call me the American girl.
I've been told I look like every other Chinese person out there. I've been told I don't look like most Chinese people.
When I was in Denmark, there was a group of Chinese people whispering about me. They said "I don't think she's Chinese. Maybe ask her if she is." They asked, "are you Chinese?" I responded, "I am Chinese, but I grew up in America." Their smiles quickly faded and they turned away from me, clearly uninterested in making any effort to include me in their friend group. The rejection I felt was valid, but their disinterest in me was equally valid. I don't know anything about their fashion, their celebrities, or their slang. But when I'm in the West and I have the somewhat rare experience of seeing a Chinese person, I still immediately feel a connection and want to talk to them.
Now that I'm in the East, when I have the somewhat rare experience of seeing an American, I've found that I immediately feel a connection and want to talk to them.
My American friends read my blog and tell me they're interested because they've never seen these things before. My Chinese family members read my blog and tell me they're interested because I view mundane things with such curiosity. (To them, I'm like the tourists taking pictures of squirrels.)
When I talk to my American friends, I think about how they love and accept me just as I love and accept them. But I can't help feeling I'm not the same they are. When I talk to my Chinese family, I think about how they love and accept me just as I love and accept them. But I can't help feeling I'm not the same as they are either.
I'm not saying I feel as if I don't belong anywhere. I think I'm capable of adapting to most places. What I am I am saying is that I feel confused sometimes.
Several people have asked me if I thought I was Chinese or American. In the moment, I shrugged and said I didn't know. I really didn't.
But I've thought about it. I actually said one of the reasons I wanted to come to China was "I want have an identity crisis." (Strange, I know.) I thought that if I made myself feel lost and start to question things, then I would start to really know who I am. That's a normal part of growing up.
I realize that my parents are pretty clearly Chinese at heart. They were born in China. They feel most comfortable with the Chinese language, food, values, and people. And if I stay in America, the generations that follow me will be American at heart. They will love American food, they will follow American celebrities, they will feel connected to American people, and they will be completely assimilated into American society.
But being the first generation born in America, I exist somewhere between those two identities. I am a Chinese person, but I was born and raised in America. I am an American, but my roots have always been and will always be in China. That's what it means to be Chinese American.
How much of my Chinese identity I chose to hold on to is entirely up to me. How much of my American identity I chose to embrace is my decision alone.
At this point in my life, I don't think I even know how to make that call. It feels sort of like it's just happening to me and I'm just watching it all from the sidelines. So instead of focusing on that right now, I will choose to appreciate sitting at this crossroad. From my vantage point, I can see the good and not-so-good parts of both cultures.
Beyond just learning the English and Chinese languages, I was gifted a richer view on life. I was given a more dimensional take on atheism and Christianity, democracy and communism, wealth and poverty, city life and the countryside, social conservatism and liberalism, immigration and emigration, and tradition and innovation. All of these lessons were from perspectives greater than mine would be on its own.
With all of these lessons, and with being asked if I'm Chinese or American, I guess my main takeaway is that there's sometimes more to the story. And one of the purest joys in life is trying to figure all these great stories out.
Language
I've been learning Putong Hua, known in the states as Mandarin Chinese. I'm not completely fluent in Mandarin, but the larger problem the last few weeks is that not everyone in my extended family can even speak Mandarin Chinese. Their local dialect that sounds nothing like the Mandarin Chinese I've been learning. Both sides of my family are from Jingjiang, which has about 600,000 people (that's extremely small for China) and the name of the dialect is Jingjiang Hua.
Even though I don't know and will never know Jingjiang Hua, after spending some time in the countryside, I'm able to understand and speak a couple of phrases. It's pretty fun.
The first phrases I could understand were:
"Wow the American girl is really tall."
"How is the little girl this tall?"
"I don't think she can understand me."
"Can you understand what I'm saying?"
"She didn't understand me."
Eventually I could understand a few more sentences beyond people commenting on my height and wondering if I could understand them.
Some of the phrases I can say are:
"Thank you."
"The food tastes good."
"I'm not going to eat anymore. I ate so I'm full."
Chinese is confusing because pretty much every city has its own dialect or two, none of which I can really understand. Now that I'm in Shanghai, a lot of people speak Shanghai Hua. But more and more young city people are learning English and Mandarin Chinese, so you can use Mandarin Chinese across most of China. Older people out in the countryside will probably stay with their local dialect.
So I'm focusing my efforts on improving my Mandarin. I think it's going well! I can speak and understand a lot more than when I got here three weeks ago. I was able to converse with my roommate for several hours.
Sometimes I find myself saying things that I picked up, but I don't know why I'm saying it. Someone was saying goodbye and I said, "good, slowly slowly go" which is apparently just a thing you say when someone is leaving. I also said "don't want" as a contraction instead of as separate words. I learned that it's a contraction in two ways: The pronunciation "biao" is a combination of "bu" and "yao" and the character 嫑 is just 不要 written on top of each other. Double contractions are so cool.
I'm also just remembering how I once momentarily thought banana was in Chinese was "bai na na" but it's definitely "xiang jiao". I was wondering where even I got that from, and I concluded it's probably from the minions in despicable me. How embarrassing.
See you next Thursday!
That's it for this week! Thanks for sticking around and reading all the way to the very end.
"And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That's why the best trips... never really end." -Pico Iyer