This semester has changed my life

This semester has changed my life.

From a young age I have read books as a way to gather knowledge about the world. Both of my parents share an ardent love of books; my dad a passionate devotee to non-fiction, my mother with her perennial stack of bedside fiction that never seems to shrink despite constant reading.

Growing up, my mother filled the house with movies and TV shows, and some of my fondest memories are going to the movie theater with her and watching the latest flick. I grew up with overflowing bookshelves of books, VHS tapes and eventually DVDs and now Blu-Rays. Everyone who visits our house comments on the size of our collection, which is somewhere between impressive and intimidating.

Sometime between the age of 6 and 7 I decided that I was going to become a novelist. I started a number of stories during elementary school, usually borrowing heavily from the plot of another book I had read and liked, except with the addition of some rather snarky and very peculiar dialogue. (Like most people, I will never understand the mind of my elementary school self.)

I also started a number of diaries that only made it to about two or three entries before I lost interest. I eventually came up with a better diary system—only record my thoughts when I felt the need to. Rather than make a systemic record of everything I had experienced—“Today I ate Wheat Thins for breakfast, held a staring contest with my cat for 15 minutes…”–I decided to only write when something was pressing on my mind to the point that I absolutely HAD to write about it. Because of that my diary now looks something like a 15 year old’s angsty stream of consciousness about petty social conflicts that resolve themselves within a few days after writing the entry.

I discovered that my best writing comes as a result of deadlines and pressure and access to quality constructive criticism. I used to be afraid of criticism, but now I see it as much more than a necessary evil—it is essential to good writing. If this semester has taught me anything, it’s that even the writing experts make wrong, biased conclusions. Even if everything looks correct from your perspective, all it takes is for one differing but equally legitimate one to knock your conclusion to pieces.

That’s why I’ve been hesitant to come to conclusions on China. The business of making judgments is a very dangerous road to start travelling, especially when it comes to China where it’s very easy to come to the wrong conclusion about why something is the way it is.

This begs an example, I know, so I’ll give you a brief one: I’ve read in several guide books that Chinese people will ask you how much you earn, and that you should not be offended when that happens because it is part of the culture. However, a freshman girl at UIBE  told me that recently people will not ask each other how much they earn, or what their (the student’s) parents do for work, because it will immediately establish a sort of “social rank.” The growing gap between the rich and the poor is creating the sort of wealth consciousness that exists in Western countries.

This example brings up many more questions though. Some Chinese people may still ask you what you earn while others may not—what makes the difference between these two types of people? Are some Chinese people more willing to ask foreigners what they earn (rather than other Chinese), seeing the bluntness as a way for cultural knowledge exchange? These and other questions remained unanswered…

Because China is in a constant state of change, so are its conclusions. Right there is exactly the reason why I recently decided to stay for an entire year in China, instead of just one semester. Besides wanting a stronger grasp on the language, I’ve realized that of all the countries to study, China is the most interesting one by far. China is one of those countries that you have to study for a long time in order to understand, and it’s also one that can easily fool you if you don’t maintain an open perspective.

Coming full circle now, I’ve realized that in order to write the novel I want to write I need more life experience. I need to live in a completely foreign country and marvel at the differences in perspectives, and more importantly, find the similarities. The essentially human experience–whatever you want to call it. Before I came to China, the place was all “C’s” to me: Chinese, Communism, Chopsticks, Censorship.

And from what I read in TIME Magazine while I’ve been here, China seems that way to most Americans. I’ve read (and sensed myself) that Americans are weary of China. It’s the whole fear and fascination deal. We misunderstand China, and after living here, I feel this sort of moral responsibility to help people understand what it’s actually like.

This semester I’ve been gathering a lot of knowledge for myself, reading several books a week, writing articles for class and The Hoya, and making short films for my film class. It is my intention to start posting these over winter break, and next semester to continue delving into the culture and writing blog posts for you, my dear readers.

Perhaps this is the beginning of my writing career, but to me, it is only a step in the evolution of me. Stay tuned…