Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Day after Thanksgiving

I guess I had a belated Thanksgiving dinner.

The day after the holiday I bumped into a few students at the school, who asked me to play basketball with them. After we played I took them out to dinner as my treat. We ended up playing this memory game, where everyone has to count off from 1 to 15. On a certain number you have to do a gesture, like clap or say a certain word. If you messed up you had to eat from a plate of tofu we had left over. I must of had ten pieces from the dish but it was hilarious. My Chinese students are quite good when it comes to playing dinner games.

I enjoy getting to know my students, but its often hard to find things to talk about. Since I'm their teacher, I try and force myself to only use English when speaking with them. Our conversations, thus, often feel like they're stuck in the realm of the elementary, hardly ever getting beyond simple questions and responses. Students, who I'm sure can give me entire speeches on their backstory, instead give me a "Yes" or a headnod, sometimes before giving a short pause. Answering back also requires a bit of mental work on the part of the students, making me feel like I'm back in the classroom.

Though I'm trying to teach them English, it recently occurred to me how much of a barrier it can be.

Yesterday I was with a student trying to help her prepare for a test. She's very nice. But up until that day my impression of her was that she was often nervous, unsure of herself, and shy. But when I spoke to her in Chinese I felt I was with a completely different person. She seemed much more confident, her speech straight-forward and clear, no longer riddled with small accents and errors like her English speech.

It was also strange how when I spoke with her in English, she seemed more curious, perplexed at, times and more interested in what I was saying. But then when I spoke to her in Chinese, she seemed a bit bored; just one other normal conversation to her.

It's interesting how language can make someone into two different people. Sometimes I feel the same way. I have the English side of me, and the Chinese side of me, both created and perhaps limited by the language I'm using at the time. I can be myself when using English, saying accurately whatever I feel. But when using Chinese, I sometimes feel I've become a dumbed-down version of myself.

It's easy to explain yourself in the native tongue when all you want is some noodles or your Internet fixed, or even your own concise backstory. But with Chinese people I'm often asked complex questions like, "Do you like America or China better?" "What do you think of the Taiwan issue?" "What do you think of Barack Obama?"

In English I would give a long elaborate answer to thoroughly explain what I think. But with Chinese, I often find myself scratching my head, trying to remember vocab words, and instead giving a long "um" as part of my answer, hoping whomever I'm talking to can fill in the blanks. "How does one say recession/democracy/unification?" I think. "God, I can't believe I forgot those words."

I suppose I'm just acting like some of my own students. When I can't express myself in Chinese, I'll instead just nod, purse my lips, and give my mind a mental break. It makes me extra quiet.

Being able to come up with the words is one thing. But how I say them is also important too. In English, sometimes my speech is sadly, littered with expletives, especially when I'm with friends. "Crap" "Shit" "Sonuva..." and so on. It's also just a form of sarcasm too. But resorting to Chinese dirty words, not the same. "Wang Ba Dan" "Hun Dan" "Ma De Bi" words I learned from movies and my parents when they were angry. It's funny to say them, but still, not quite same.

Lately at night before I go to sleep I'm finding myself thinking in Chinese now. In my head, I'll rehearse what it is I want to say when faced with a more complicated question. Like silos of Mandarin are spilling all into my head. "I should of said this," I'll think.