Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Relationships

Well, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later — I found romance in Xi’an.

I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it just happened. Too bad it’s already over after only lasting a few days.

She was my good friend who I met earlier this year. But last weekend we admitted our mutually affection for each other.

How relationships exactly work in China has been a mystery to me (as well as a lot of other things). At this point I can say that they aren’t a whole lot different from how they work in America: girl wants commitment, but guy fears it.

Or in my case, the guy doesn’t feel it’s realistic since he’s going to be leaving Xi’an soon, and heading for Beijing. I had to be honest.

This is what ended my short relationship with her.

“You shouldn’t have liked me. You are selfish,” she said to me a few days ago. We then agreed not to see each other again.

It’s regrettable. I lost a friend.

As I’ve said before, it seems like everyone expects that I find a girlfriend in China. (Some people even assume that I want to settle down here and start a family.)

But part of me is hesitant to pursue a relationship here. I don’t know how long I want to stay in this country, and I have no idea what the future will hold. If I did have a relationship, commitment is something I could never totally give.

“Which one do you love more: your career or love?” my friend had asked me jokingly before. “You only love your career,” she added.

Now the fallout with my friend has made it more clear to me the difficulties of having a romantic relationship here. As for my friend, she wants to stay in Xi’an, and hopes to get married within the next two years.

“This (relationship) could never happen,” she said to me.

About a week ago, I was telling her about how I like both America and China. “There are advantages to being a part of both countries,” I said.

“But you can only choose one,” she replied.

Oh well.

King of Pop

It's funny. Michael Jackson has appeared in my lesson twice. Once in the beginning and once in the end.

For my first class here, I tried to explain to my students how Americans receive their names. Sometimes parents like to name their child after someone they know I said.

"I was named after a very famous singer," I told my students. "Do you know who this is?"

I then played to my students a bit of "Billie Jean."

"Yea, it's Michael Jackson," I would then add. "My mom really liked Michael Jackson, so she named me after him."

This past week, I've been seeing my students for the last time. The topic of my last lesson has been music, and so I've been showing them a few music videos I think they might like.

One of those videos has been Michael Jackson's "Beat It."

"So maybe Michael Jackson is saying: don't fight, just dance," I've explained.

I'm not sure what my students think of the song. Most just seem to be lukewarm about it.

(Perhaps they were more astonished at how Michael Jackson originally looked like. Another foreign teacher recently told me that one of her students was wondering if black people want to become white people, and used Michael Jackson as an example.)

But now that Michael Jackson has died, it feels like a strange coincidence that I've been having my students listen to one of his famous songs.

"You must have felt the psychic energy from M.J. warning you of things to come," one of my old high school friends told me today. "So you started playing 'Beat It' in his honor ahead of time."

Rest in piece MJ.

The test

This weekend my students will take the College English Test (CET for short), which we’ve been preparing for all this semester.

“Do you feel ready to take the test?” I asked one class.

“Nooooo!” the collective groan went.

Not exactly the most reassuring response. But it’s a tough test.

Many of my students will be taking the CET-4, an exam all Chinese college students must pass. There’s reading, writing and listening. And topics can range from global warming to Robert Frost to even the more esoteric:

"Speeding off in a stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in for an unwelcome surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobilizer, and a radio signal from a control centre miles a way will ensure that once the thief switches the engine off, he will not be able to start it again."

Makes me feel sorry for my students; at my college I never had to pass an examination like this.

I feel especially bad for the students who aren’t even majoring in a field that relates to English.

One of my best students recently told me she hasn’t been preparing much for the CET-6, a harder version of the exam. Her major is water purification, an engineering field, and with just so many other more important tests coming up, English has taken a backseat.

Later I asked, a senior at the school: “Will you ever use English in your career?” She had passed the CET-4 and is majoring in water purification as well.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said in Mandarin. “We won’t have to use English in our jobs.”

For other students, like my international finance majors, English is important. But still, I’m not sure it’s so necessary for all college students to pass a test on the language.

Recently I had lunch with a student named Lois. “Your class is different from my other classes,” she said. “We have to actually use our heads and think. In the other classes we just have to memorize for tests.”

Her comment makes me think the Chinese education system just decided to have the CET examination, for the sake of having a test. The criticism I often about Chinese schools is that all students learn about is how to pass exams.

Raised to be Chinese

I met my Chinese language tutor today, and she told me she plans on having four kids. Already she’s pregnant with the first one.

Four kids? That’s fine and all, I thought to myself. But this is China, and you are a Chinese citizen. How can that work?

“Because my husband is Australian,” she said. “So I can have as many kids as I want.”

My tutor then smiled; I guess that’s a nice benefit of marrying foreigner, I replied.

She later explained that she doesn’t plan on raising her kids in China. For one, it’s much cheaper to do so in Australia, where the government is paying people to have kids due to the population rate. The schools are also better, and there are more opportunities, she added.

“I want my kids to be Australian,” she said, referring to their citizenship.

But she acknowledged raising her children in a foreign country would at least pose a cultural challenge. This recently came to light with one of her new foreign students she's been teaching.

“His mother is from Taiwan, grew up in Hong Kong for a while, and then went to America," she said of this student. "But despite this, he has no interest in China. He knows nothing of China’s open door policy or the country’s history.”

“In my eyes, he’s not Chinese,” she added.

Now she’s thinking of how to prevent that happening to her own future kids.

“What are other Chinese-Americans like?” She asked. “Do their parents try to teach them about their culture?”

I just said it depended on the person. In my experience, many Chinese-Americans know how to speak Mandarin, but don’t know how to write or read it. Some are even near-fluent in Chinese. Yet then there are others who know little of the language, and of its culture.

I guess it all comes down to interest level, I surmised. But in terms of advice to give, I wasn’t sure.

“When I was younger, I just thought if I didn’t learn Chinese, I would be a disgrace,” I jokingly told her today.

Yes, I had some culture/parental pressure to learn Mandarin. But still, I struggled with the language when I was young boy, and I often dreaded going to the local Chinese language on Sundays. My situation, however, influenced my cousin Jeffrey. He’s another Chinese-American, who is 13 years old. But he now lives in Taiwan.

“His parents must have looked at me and thought ‘Michael’s Chinese is not very good,’” I told my tutor. “So my cousin was sent to Taiwan so that he could become fluent in the language.”

I guess he’s lucky, I said. "It will benefit him in the future," I added. I, however, am still learning Mandarin.

"I hope there are good Chinese schools abroad," my tutor then said. "I hope they can really teach more about the Chinese culture."

“It’s good that my kids can be raised in a better environment,” she added. “But I want to make sure that one half of them will still be Chinese.”

Pretending

Every once in a while I’ll see one of my foreign neighbors on the street. I want to say “hi,” but often times they’ll just pass me by, without even glancing at me.

It’s easy to miss someone on the street. But I wonder if it’s because I’m a Chinese-American. Maybe I just blend in better.

When I first moved in, there was one girl in particular I’d see on the sidewalks. I must have waved at her at least three or four times on separate occasions. And yet, she didn’t even look at me once.

“Why don’t you say hi to me?” was the awkward question I wanted to ask.

Oh well. But I don’t really blend in that much.

There’s a local convenience store I go to every morning, that’s just down the street. One of the clerks there knows I’m a foreigner (maybe it’s my accent or just the way I look). So whenever I buy something, he’ll put up his fingers and sign to me how much it all costs.

I know he’s being courteous. But I sort of want to say to him: “Come on, I’m Chinese, and I speak Mandarin. You don’t have to put up the fingers.”

It can be funny occupying this strange middle ground of my Chinese-American identity. When I go to a certain book store here, saleswomen will come up to me and ask in Mandarin: “Are you interested in studying English at our school? You can learn a lot.”

I’m not quite sure how to react. Should I just unleash my English and perfectly say, “No, I’m American and I teach English. But thanks for asking. Heheheh...” and then happily grin?

Nah. I just usually say in Chinese, “????” or “I’m not interested.”

Makes me feel like I’m pretending to be Chinese, if that makes any sense.

Freelancing

I freelanced my first article this month. Finally.

Xi'an has a local English magazine meant for foreigners. In this past issue I wrote an article about Epang Palace, which I posted about some weeks back.

It's nice to be published again. This was all part of the reason why I came to China. To try to be a foreign correspondent.

But I wish it were easier. And more broad in scope. Writing about tourist attractions is so far my only outlet.

Also, interviewing people can be cumbersome. This past week I was trying to find someone to talk to for a story I was doing. I ended up scavenging the Internet for what seemed like hours, and calling 5 or 6 different people, before finally finding the right person.

"What is the name of the publication you are writing for," the woman I wanted to talk to asked.

"Uh, China Grooves..." I said awkwardly.

"What does that mean in Chinese?" she replied.

"Uh... I'm not sure how to translate that." I said.

She later said that she'd be happy to answer my questions. But first she wanted me to send a document with the publication name and my journalist ID. Then she'd talk with her colleagues, and get back to me and maybe I could come and speak with them.

I just wanted to interview someone to get a human voice in my article. Three questions, that's all. But it was clear that I was asking for more than I wanted to deal with. Journalist ID? I think she was referring to me having a journalist visa. Sadly, I do not have that.

I decided to send in my article without any quotes. I sighed as I did that, because I would never do that when I was a reporter back in the States.

I'm looking for more writing opportunities. But it doesn't help that the newspaper business isn't doing so well. Now I'm looking at in-flight airplane magazines.

---

Once my teaching contract ends early July, I plan on leaving Xi'an and heading to Beijing.

It was a tough decision, since I really enjoy this ancient city and I'm not sure how much I'll like the capital.

But my Chinese teacher recently summed up the career opportunities in Xi'an: "Basically you can only be a teacher or a student," she said.

We'll see what Beijing has to offer. I plan on studying Mandarin at a school there with the hope my Chinese will improve and that I'll have more time to freelance.

But I have to say, I feel like a struggling artist. Along with my teaching job, I also have another weekend job updating an Internet website. And then I have all this Chinese I need to study too. Work, work, work.... ugh crap.

As for my freelance article that recently got published, I didn't get paid for that.

Mofo

I’ve been wanting to teach my students more slang this week. But it can be a little awkward when you have to explain certain terms.

“Motherfucker is a very very bad word,” I said today. “Motherfucker means someone who is very unpleasant. Someone you don’t like.”

That was about the extent to which I would define this particular dirty word. Short and sweet.

This all came up after I showed my students a clip from the movie Predator. “Your one ugly motherfucker,” Arnold Schwarzenegger mutters upon seeing the alien’s face for the first time.

There’s a lot of swear words in American movies, and so I thought I mine as well explain what this one meant. (I’m not sure how the school would feel about this). But I noticed my students seemed a little shocked that I was taking the time to describe its meaning, rather than just skip the dirty word.

“So if you use this word, make sure you are very careful,” I said. “It’s a very very bad word,” I reiterated.

Normally, when teaching a new word to my student, I’ll ask the class to say the word out loud together, so as to refine their pronunciation.

But this time, I decided to skip doing that. Still, I could hear at least one student working on its pronunciation.

“Motherfucker,” he said to himself. “Motherfucker.”

A gift

A student named Melody gave me this little gift yesterday. Along with it, she also included a small note.

"I am writing to express my gratitude for your teaching. Had it not being (sic) for your teaching, we wouldn't have improved so much," she wrote.

I was quite touched upon reading this. From the outset, this whole teaching experiencing has been riddled with doubts and frustrations. Often I wonder, are my students improving?

According to Melody, yes.

There is a funny irony to me being a teacher. Back in the States I was an education reporter for a year, where I covered a school district. And man, was it easy to nitpick and criticize.

But now I’m in the role of the instructor. The flaws are easy to see and write about it. Yet to be the one to actually do the teaching, well, it makes me want to ask: “How the hell do teachers back in America do this?”

I suppose the other funny thing is I’m only 24 and I’m teaching college students. Wasn’t it just a few years ago I was sitting in class studying and doing homework?

I look at this little yellow bunny now, and there is one thing that makes me sad. I hardly know anything about Melody.

“What do you think is the most useful invention?” I recently asked her. The computer she replied.

Those are the generic exchanges I usually have with my students. I wish I could hold classes more often, where I could talk to my students more and get to know them. But under the current conditions Melody is just one face, among the 400 students I teach.

My students are a mystery to me. I have a little over a month left in the semester and yet I feel like I’ve only gotten to know a handful of them. But I guess that’s just how it is. I’m busy and so are they.

"I am extremely grateful for your teaching!” Melody wrote on. “This is a present represent my thanks I hope it can bring you power and happy when you are in trouble."