My Great Aunt Pearl

I always thought I would get oral histories from my Chinese family here too. But the idea of "oral history" doesn't really exist here. And there's a different way of remembering when a lot of what you remember are tough times.

When I ask her if she has written down some of her stories, Great Aunt Pearl says she’d rather be happy now in life. She’d rather have people bring her food and gifts now than wait until she’s dead and gone. What will those things be worth to her then? When I’m dead, that’s it, she says.
She’s like my Granny who passed away a year and half ago. Except her body matches her gutsy mind. She just had surgery and she’s not infected and dying like both grandmothers did. She lies on her bed and when we need help, she pulls herself up, tells her Parkinson’s-forgetful husband not to bother, and shows us what to do. She admits she’s in pain, but she remains the strong and independent woman she’s always been. Her doctor told her not to do the operation without asking her children first—after all it was they who would have to care for her, he said. But she said no, she would decide to have it and hire a helper herself. Hiring help was something my grandparents could never agree to and so it’s my father who is unemployed and commuting once a week to take care of my grandfather. Strange that he’s the one in America.
Sometimes I do get stories from Aunt Pearl though. She told me this time that when my grandfather left China, even though they were in the same city at the time, she didn’t know he had gone until he was in Hong Kong. It was too dangerous for her to know, my grandfather would say.

So my grandfather snuck into Hong Kong in 1950 and then applied for scholarships to study Engineering abroad. He was accepted by Cornell University and met my grandmother there.

He didn't see his sister or the rest of his Chinese family again until 1979.

Finding roots in China

When I lived in the U.S. I never really identified much with being part-Chinese. It was as though a quarter-blood and two generations later was not enough to claim a likeness. Sure, I knew my father's father was from China (山东，济南）, but I didn't realize that he looked different from other people's grandparents until my classmates pointed it out to me in Third Grade. I didn't even realize that he had an accent until my classmate from college tried to imitate the way he talked. I knew my grandmother was born in China too, to missionary parents. Maybe that was why I didn't think anything of my grandfather's face being American--faces say nothing about where you come from.

But I remember how my tallit (a special shawl that Jewish people where once they become adults in the Jewish community) was made by my mother out of silk she brought back from China, how most of my friends in High School were either born in China or Taiwan or their parents were, and how we always had at least 3 Chinese trinkets on our shelves for the 1 American or other country's trinket. And yet, that's just how it was--somehow it never fully registered. I felt bad writing on applications that I was mixed ethnically, because it felt like 1/4 just wasn't enough to claim I wasn't white. Sure, sometimes people asked where I was from and would ask again even after I told them I was from Boston, and friends have outright told me I look "exotic" (not my favorite comment by the way). But nobody could peg me as part-Asian. If I hung out with my Chinese American friends at a restaurant, I would be the one stared at by everyone else in the restaurant. It was as though I could feel their question shooting out their eyes, "What's that White girl doing with all those Chinese girls?"

But now, after coming to China and seeing my grandfather's sister in Beijing and his little brother in Jinan, and all of their children and children's children, I will never ever question that I'm part-Chinese.

Living in rural Shanxi has given me a whole new perspective. For the first time in my life, people ask me as soon as they meet me, "Why do you look Asian?" I hear arguments behind me as I walk down the street. Within the first week that I was here, the store owners just outside of the campus were discussing and one asked me, "What are you? Foreign or Chinese?"

One young man told me that the first time he saw me playing badminton, he said to his friend, "why does she look so foreign?" The friend replied, laughing, "Because she IS foreign."

When I tell people here that my father's father is from Shandong, they are so proud. "Chinese people trace their ancestry by their fathers," said one taxi cab driver, "that means you're 60% Chinese."

If I'm not with other foreigners can sometimes get away with pretending I am Chinese until they ask. Especially on trains with dim lighting and with older men who don't see very well or don't inspect you very closely. On trains people seem more unsure, because I say excuse me in Chinese and have started mumbling to myself in my second language. Even when I pull out an English book and start reading, I've still had people ask me, "Where are you from?" instead of "What country are you from?" because, as they will explain to me after I reassure them that I'm foreign, "I wasn't sure if you were Chinese." A couple of times an older man has babbled to me in Mandarin (usually in a very thick accent) about this or that for about 10 minutes before realizing. This is somewhat common, because older men and women are quite respected by the younger and they know if they would like to talk and give advice, young people are a safe and (at least superficially) attentive audience. And who better to talk with than a young woman who is rather quiet but seems to be listening intently with lots of smiles and nods. (My giggle is a blessing and a curse, as my friends have figured out that a giggle doesn't mean I know what they're saying, it means I'm watching other Chinese smile around them or it means I'm completely lost.) And so goes this one way conversation with this older man: him telling me what he thinks about this or that and me smiling and nodding, struggling to understand his thick country-side accent and wondering how I can gracefully insert into the conversation that actually, I am a foreigner and could he please speak a little slower? Eventually, a younger man sitting across from me, who has been watching me intently the whole time, asks me where I'm from and I am given a moment of silence in the conversation in which to tell the truth. Then the older man turns his head toward me and inspects my face as if wondering why he still didn't see "AMERICAN" written in Neon letters across my forehead before. He nods and settles back into the stiff seat and conversation, asking me how I adjusted coming back to China after being in America for so long. The young man across from me looks with soft, dark eyes at my face and then back to the old man, seemingly shrugging at the whole situation with his gaze.

I continue to be questioned by people. Many have asked if I am from XinJiang (the large Northwestern Province of China where Turks and Kazakhs are common) because of my deep-set and lighter-colored eyes. The other day at the subway stop in Beijing I started chatting with some vendors by the parking lot while I waited for my cousin dad's cousin to pick me up. Within the first few sentences of the conversation, one of the young men leaned forward and peered at me through the dark: "你是什么民族？“　"What ethnicity are you?" As soon as I explained that I wasn't a Chinese ethnicity, I was an American, it took them (as it takes many people) a minute to register:
"But you speak standard Mandarin..."
"You are very pretty..."
"You have pretty Mandarin."

And then as it sunk in that I was a real American who could speak Chinese I was bombarded with the usual questions we get every day here:
"How did you learn Chinese?"
"How long have you been living here?"
"Which place is better?"
"What is America like?"
"How many Yuan to a Dollar?"
At which point, my cousin arrived, observed what was happening, motioned to me (with the same emphasis that grabbing my arm and pulling me would have had), and we left quickly with me shouting out a polite goodbye! ...

But really, I think knowing and having family and close friends in China makes me far more Chinese than any sort of thing I've inherited from my blood. When a Chinese friend, Bobby, told me, you now know enough about Chinese people to kill a Chinese, I was horrified.
"What does that mean?!" Lynn, another Chinese friend, and I exclaimed at the same time.
He explained that it meant that I knew the subtleties of face, of culture enough so I could hurt a Chinese person very deeply if I wanted to.
"But she would never want to!" Lynn exclaimed.
"But I wouldn't want to!" I echoed.
"True," he accepted, "but what I mean is that Anne has become very Chinese herself."
I couldn't completely disagree with that. Taigu had changed the way I interacted with people a lot, and I found myself acting "Chinese" in ways that surprised strangers I met and made my foreign co-workers laugh.
"If you stay here for a few more years," he told me, "you will know everything about Chinese culture and people."
I wasn't sure what that meant, or how I could possibly know everything in a few more years, and since I had become at least that Chinese, I certainly wasn't going to accept the complement and instead I proceeded to insist it certainly wasn't true. But I was secretly complemented that he thought I could understand something about Chinese people.

I myself have often doubted that I'm actually understanding Chinese people and culture better considering how much I still ask myself "did I just do something wrong?" after seeing things play out not exactly as I had planned...but it is reassuring to hear that at least my friends thought I understood something.

I've had other friends follow the comment, "You are more Chinese than the other foreigners" with, "you should marry a Chinese man."
"...Or" they add as though giving me a little more leeway, "a half-Chinese man."

I smile and laugh politely at this. It's kind of a funny statement when, when by definition, I'm not even half-Chinese myself.

Why I haven't been posting on this blog for 6 months

dearest all,

I apologize for how long I have not posted on this blog. blogspot has been censored in China now for the past 6 months or so, and thus I have not been able to add to it. I am now using a friend's computer who has managed to make a tunnel to an American network to post this message.

However, I just recently started a blog on a very popular China-based website in the hopes that there is no way that qq in China could possibly be censored. (People put their qq numbers on their business cards, that's how big it is in China.)

the address is:
http://794411470.qzone.qq.com/

the main site is in Chinese, but the posts are (mostly) in English. If you can't read Chinese, I'm sorry. See if you can navigate by guessing. :)

In the meanwhile I will try to use other people's computers to post on this site and see if I can figure out this tunnel business.

thanks for your patience,
Anne

The sky is always blue in China

I was asked by a Chinese friend the other day if I ever noticed that every essay I was given by my Chinese students was about the same. I hadn’t really thought much of it. I guess I assumed it was because of their limited English vocabulary and grammar. But suddenly I realized why discussions were also so difficult—because almost every Chinese student had the same opinion. Or rather, every one of them would say, “Chinese people think...” And when I replied with, “but what do you think?” they would look confused and fumble for words.

My friend explained this to me: When the students of our generation were children, she told me, we were always taught to repeat whatever the teacher said. If the teacher said "the sky is blue," then the sky was blue. It didn’t matter if the sky was grey when it rained, the teacher’s word was truth. If a student spoke up and said, "But teacher, the sky is grey when it rains," the teacher would be mad, the student would be chided. So everyone just says the sky is blue (no matter what color it might actually be when it rains.)

So I am mostly stuck with a discussion limited to the difference between what “Chinese people” think and what “Americans” think. Unfortunately I’m not very good at speaking for all Americans. Though now I understand why they always ask me what “Americans” think about this or that. It is an absurd question to ask an American, but they seem to believe it is a reasonable question to ask a Chinese person.

NOTE: And this is not meant to say Chinese people are without creativity. I have met many open-minded and creative Chinese youth. And in class, my students will often surprise me. Like one time, when I assigned my Graduate Students to do a skit about marriage counseling. And most of them came up with the standard Chinese marriage problem story: the husband has a lover, or the wife thinks the husband has a lover, or the husband or wife work too much so they don't have enough time for the other or housework or children. Then, the last skit completely surprised me: it was of a lesbian couple who were fighting because one of them wanted to adopt a child and the other thought a child would prevent them from traveling and enjoying their youth. The solution the "counselor" came up with was that the couple should try adopting a pet, or if they were ready for a bigger step, adopting an older child who only needed a couple years in a home. None of them used a script. It was all improvised. I was stunned. I thought I was back in Oberlin for a moment.
So yeah, you really never know who or what ideas you will meet here.

The Taigu Whole Day Triathalon

Just finished the Taigu Whole Day Triathlon. It does not take much training, but it is a blast. Here's what you do:

Hear knocking at your door at 8:30am in the morning on Saturday and pretend you are still sleepin because you know the only people knocking this early are your students or your housemates students. (You hope they are your housemate's.) Hear knocking at your door at 9:30am and pull on some pants over your boxers because you recognize the voices outside your door and they are definitely your students. Find out that they want to you to come with them on a trip to a nearby hill--they are going to leave in 10 minutes. You agree and throw on some real clothes. Bike, using a purple, rusty, single speed bike a little too small for you, through dry farm fields, dusty roads, country towns and past the occasional coal factory to get to a large hill. Climb the hill, with 14 grad students all carrying some barbecue ingredients including fresh meat, potatoes, green beans, steamed buns, a large Chinese knife, a cutting board, a nine pack of large bottles of beer (if you've seen Chinese beer bottles you know how big I mean), and of course, a mini grill and a lighter and some coal. And make sure to take the steepest path possible, preferably not very well worn, something that looks like what would be a deer path in the U.S, and once you get to the temples, take a picture of yourself and others about every 7 steps or so, or every time you think the view has changed. Once you finally make it to the top of the hill, eat a lot of barbecue and crackers and drink a bottle of beer. And make sure to take more pictures of this whole process. Spend a good amount of time at the top, spend some time playing cards on the cutting board afterward too. And on the way down, make sure to take a slightly wider path (because we do learn) but make sure it is still the kind of path that if you sat on your but you would slide all the way down. Then, ride your bike back to the campus with the large chaotic group, while forgetting turns along the way, and make sure to drop off your bottles at a grocery store to get the refund (yes, you did just bring them back down the mountain). Then, as soon as you go back, off to the school swimming pool, which should be a milky green color, because you have just been told that although it just opened there seem to be a lot of algae that they say are too hard to remove. Spend maybe one fourth of the time swimming laps and the other 2/3 of the time talking to people at either end. Then, take a massive shower with over 30 naked Chinese women (or men, if that's where you would go), get your body stared at and commented about as usual, and then put your clothes back on (which will also get stared at and commented about as usual because as usual, you wear a full layer less than everyone else, because, yes, it's warm outside and westerners don't wear long underwear in the spring, even if it is "spring" long underwear.) Then, wait an hour for friends, who you just saw at the swimming pool, to come to your house to go out to eat. And in the meantime prepare for a dance party. Go out to a nearby restaurant, eat a ton of delicious Chinese food, buy paper cups, run back to the house to meet people for the party. And then, put up the disco ball, set up the stereo, get together the music (probably get help from the other foreigners to do this, and most likely some of this is being done after the guests have arrived). Feel awkward for your students who have never been to your foreign parties before. Try despirately to make people feel comfortable by dancing like a fool. Then, try despirately to get your friends who you know can dance like fools too to dance. Then relax as you realize they are enjoying it, and dance crazily for the next two or three hours.

whew. I didn't plan for any of that to happen before hand except the party. But it was all really fun.
And now it's really time for bed.

Remembering February: A final encounter

I met a young man on the bus back to Guilin from Yangshuo. I found myself looking in his direction and smiling. He smiled back and I worried that he had taken my accidental smile the wrong way and perhaps thought I was another loose foreign woman. But I was wrong. The baby in the seat behind me started crying and he smiled at him too. In fact, he used this excuse as a nice way to move into the open aisle seat next to me and in front of the crying child. We started talking after it seemed that nothing could satisfy the little one.

He was from Yangshuo, grew up there, and graduated from elementary school--no more no less. His parents were poor farmers. He was just about my age. He was going into Guilin to have fun for a night and then look for a job the next day. He asked my plans--I told him I was leaving for Beijing in the morning, but tonight, I had no plans. He told me he could take me around to see things in Guilin. I figured, why not? As long as we walked and were near many people (which it was almost impossible not to do in China) I could always find my way back to the hostel.

He wondered at my independence and fearlessness in a strange place. He asked me, what would I do if I lost the way? I told him I would ask someone. He asked, aren't you afraid? I said no. He told me there were many bad people in these places, in the city. I told him I knew. (Meanwhile the baby behind us had quieted.)

So it was decided. He walked me to the hostel (although he seemed afraid to actually go inside--he waited for me at the bottom of the stairs) and I dropped of my stuff. And we started out up the street I had walked along by myself a number of days earlier.

Guilin is a much bigger city than I expected when hearing about the place. Foreigners hear all about the mountains surrounding the city, but when you get there, to the center of the city all you can see is the tips of the surrounding hills and the buildings and shopping centers and street vendors. It's a big city. At night, the touristy spots are lit up with bright almost christmas like lights (This is a common phenomenon in China at toursit sites...apparently it is in Korea too, cause I saw it there also.) The lights will outline the river edge, the trees, the fence, the bridges, the famous pagodas. There will be spotlights meanwhile lighting up the trees and various parts of the scenery. I suppose it is meant to be romantic, but it seems a little overdone to jadded American eyes. It's just a little too Disney.

We stopped at one spot and he asked if I wanted to take a picture of the lit-up pagodas, which represented the sun and moon in the middle of a small pond. I told him I had lost my camera. He exclaimed how horrible that was, being in all these beautiful sites. (Although I had been having my friends take pictures for me for all those days I was visiting with a Chinese friend in Nanning and with Beth in Yangshuo.) So I said, sort of joking, but I can draw them. I have my notebook. So he encouraged me. Sit and draw. Don't forget. So I sat there and tried to draw the pagodas with pen. Meanwhile a bunch of young Chinese tourists came up to me and started talking about me in Chinese. I replied to them when they asked each other what I was doing. They were surprised at my Mandarin and started asking me more questions. Soon I was nervous and couldn't get any drawing done with them continually watching me draw. So I asked my new friend if he was ready to go. They all exclaimed, "Can you speak the Guilin dialect too?" I said "no." He was from Yangshuo anyway, which probably had a different accent. And I had just spoken Mandarin to him.
So my new friend brought me to a quieter place but made me finish drawing the temples. He told me it would be a pity if I started and didn't finish. So I did. But I just finished one of the temples, before I got impatient and swore I would bring a camera in the future so I wouldn't have to prove I could use other, more tedious methods of recording places next time.

I asked the young man where he would stay the night. He said he would stay at an internet bar. It was cheaper that way, he explained. Plus he could play on the computer if he wanted or sleep if he wanted. (He said he couldn't write, but he could type with pinyin.)

We walked around a park I had been walking around for a while. I told him I had come to this park by myself on Valentines day. He asked if I had someone (I believe that was literally what he asked if there was a ren--a person). I told him no, a boyfriend of a long time and I had just recently broken up. I explained that the problem was distance. He said that he too had just recently broken up with a girl he had been with for a long time. I asked him why and he said, because his family was poor, he had no job and no money, and he was fat, so she and her family disapproved. I told him the fat part was not true (because it sure didn't seem to be--he was slender...although he still insisted on not eating dinner that night because he said he was on a diet), but I couldn't say anything about the other things. My reasons for ending a relationship were thousands of miles away from his reasons--in culture, in logic and in freedom. There was nothing I knew how to say to comfort. Sometimes things just are in China. 没办法。(there's no way) and as an ordinary Chinese, you just have to accept them. 将就，将就。

He left me at the hostel with his QQ number and his e-mail address and told me if I came back to Yangshuo and let him know. He would give me a real tour of the countryside. I wondered why I hadn't met him at the beginning of my time in Guilin and Yangshuo. But he left the hostel so quickly after leaving the numbers, I couldn't even think to wish him good luck. He seemed really out of place in that hostel of hip Chinese and foreigners.

Remembering February: starting to head back from Yangshuo

Leaving Yangshuo was a bit sad. Grey skies. And I knew I was leaving traveling for a while. So many people had been in and out of my life in the past couple days. Some I would never see again.
I would love to describe, to draw, to inscribe in stone each person I passed, but I could not replicate them. Like the way, waking up that morning and wondering if the young man in the bunk next to me from Australia (we saw from his suitcase tag) would resemble someone I knew, and when the slender figure woke, his narrow nose and face led me to think of a friend of mine who had died a year and a half ago. Like the cheerful, eager young man from Guandong who exchanged some reading lessons with me--we opened up the hostel's little book of notes from travelers, and I read Chinese to him, he the English to me, late into the night at the hostel. And his darker, deep-sweet-eyed, serious companion who he met as he met me--by chance of staying at the same hostel. And like the way the darker, older of the two seemed to speak excitedly and then sadly of his age, 28, and how he must enjoy this traveling while he is young, before he gets old and must think too much, must be overcome by thoughts. He told me he already cannot sleep without first drinking alcohol, because of his thoughts. Like a young man from Poland whose boyish face and mannerisms seemed familiar, and who, in the 20 minutes before had to go catch his train asked me what the Chinese think about their situation, because he cannot speak Chinese and he is awfully curious. And after 20 minutes of facinating conversation, he is gone to catch the train to Shanghai. And like Roary, the 6 foot tall, curly-red-haired, nice Irishman who I kept running into, on the tops of a mountain in a park, and then on the streets in Yangshuo with Beth. And the sweet couple from England and Wales traveling the world for a year who share with me a bit about their travels and made me late picking up Beth from the airport because I was so fascinated by them. Yes, most of the other travelers are young men or couples. I seemed to be one of the few single women traveling on my own. Even among the traveling community. But it didn't matter, people were kind to me, no body asked me why it was just me. Just too many faces going by...

And the countryside bike ride that morning that I left, amongst the strange green and rocky hills thrusting up from flat green and yellow farm fields with a clear river twisting downt he middle, was incredible. I can't even begin to do the place justice. It was too real and surreal to register how beautiful it really was. And while we were biking through majesty, we were also biking through poverty--isolated farming villages. But in such a beautiful place. Bikes pumping, skin hiving (for who knows what reason), toes numbing by the end--but lovely adventure, really interesting, beautiful place, fare enough away from people to feel it, with just enough to help find the way...
It was definitely sad to leave Yangshuo. And I wasn't at all ready or excited quite yet to get back to teaching.