(Haven’t read “Conversations with Chinese Part One?” Start at the beginning.)
“All done,” he said. It was over. We talked about what I was doing in China and Andrea’s relation to me. “She is quite an amazing person,” he said. I agreed. He asked me if I could speak Chinese and I said yes. We then had a conversation in Chinese without me making a mistake (quite a feat).
I was sent home with Ibuprofen and Andrea walked me to my apartment. She explained the situation to my very worried host mother and her very worried sister-in-law. They fussed over me (as per usual) and immediately started to care for me.
“Have you taken medicine?” my host mom kept asking me. No matter how many times I told her I had, she never seemed to believe me. I had missed dinner, so the sister-in-law heated up some homemade jiaozi (dumplings) for me. We sat and watched the Chinese news, and I impressed my host mom with a few idioms I could remember. My host mom told me for the 10000000000th time that I should drink “warm things” and that Americans always drink “cold things,” even though “warm things” will go down to your belly and “make you feel very comfortable.” (Body temperature is extremely important in traditional Chinese medicine.)
Sitting on the couch, I couldn’t believe the evening I had experienced. I had experienced so much pain, so many tears, but I had been meet with so much unexpected kindness—the cab driver, the young girl, the doctor, Andrea, Andrea’s boyfriend (who gave up an evening to escort us), my host mom and her sister-in-law.
Over the course of the semester, it’s hard to describe, but I’ve felt removed from Chinese people. There’s always that divide between Chinese people and foreigners. Last semester I was so distracted by how fascinating everything was. But this semester was different. I learned so much about Chinese history and culture last semester, so much so that my Chinese friends often comment to me, “You know more about China than Chinese people do.” Without realizing it, this knowledge has made me felt further removed from my Chinese counterparts.
In some ways, studying China has taught me to be cynical. Vendors see my white skin, and they want to cheat me. Everyone is always out to make a quick buck, and most often at the expense of others. People spit in China. Little kids have slits in their pants and pee in the streets. The pavement is uneven; the bathrooms are smelly. Walk along a street next to a poor neighborhood, turn the corner and become surrounded by shiny high rises. Drive past a playground for the rich in the middle of the Beijing dust. These sights used to invigorate my senses, but now they dull them. “Of course there’s a fancy gated community surrounded by poverty,” I tell the new students. “Oh look, a bunch of black Audis parked outside a luxury hotel,” I say without fanfare.
I find it hard to contribute to the discussion in some of my classes. Everything I think of sounds obvious to me. I’ve read too much, I’ve thought too much. “Western media is biased when reporting on China,” “Social media gets opinions out there in a way traditional media never could,” “The government always has the final say: Don’t fool yourself.” Sometimes I wonder if I’m really gaining as much as I hoped I would this semester.
One of the older TBC students, a very wise man, told me that he sees a difference between the yearlong students vs. the semester only students. “You approach China differently than the others,” he told me. “It’s a more mature outlook.” I told him I had no idea what outlook that was. “I can’t explain it,” he told me. “It’s just something that I can tell very easily.”
I’ve carried this strange feeling along with me all semester. I know there is still an absolutely incredible amount about China that I as of yet do not know, but I also feel jaded from certain knowledge I’ve gained. I wish I could go back to the “everything is new and exciting” stage. That stage was fun and easy. This stage just leaves me uncomfortable—in place but out of place at the same time.
I understand Chinese people but feel removed from them. I think about a scene from John Pomfret’s book, Chinese Lessons. If a U.S. plane accidentally bombed part of a Chinese embassy and killed a few Chinese people, like it did back in Belgrade in 1999, would my Chinese friends still talk to me? Or would they shun me for being from the country that killed Chinese people? Is there a divide between us, or have I just imagined it? I’m not sure if I will ever find out. I hope I never find out.
But just then I’m reminded of how fantastic Chinese people are. There are many things to make me cynical, but there are just as many things to make me optimistic. I miss Georgetown, but after last night, I realized that I have less than two months before I leave this magical place, this fantastic culture, and I have no idea when next I will return.
Before I left the hospital, the doctor told me to stay in China. I laughed, “I have to go back and graduate first.” He told me, “Okay do that. But where else can you use your Chinese? Yes, you must come back.”
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Did I mention that I went to the U.S. Embassy yesterday and met Gary Locke, U.S. ambassador to China? He said–and this is no surprise to me but it’s relevant to the post–that the U.S.-China relationship is the most important in the world. If China and the U.S. could just work together, he said (much like a diplomat would) then they could solve the world’s biggest problems.
There’s so much distrust between the two countries, and that’s not helped by either countries’ medias. How do you start to remove this distrust?
One conversation at a time.
Coming in on the end of this reflection?
Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three
