A New Day

After my last post, people really stepped up to offer comfort. So thank you for the comments, for the emails (of which I still have half a dozen lacking replies), for the e-hugs. It’s amazing to remember just how much I’m loved.

Just over three months ago—July 15^th—I stepped off of a plane in Beijing. Since then there have been a good number of moments where I wanted nothing more than to step back on. That’s to be expected, but, frankly, I think I need to be done with that stage. I need to choose between feeling sorry for myself and feeling committed to Pengtun, between resentment towards the relative ease of my family and friends’ lives in the States and acceptance of the simple knowledge that for the next two years life is going to be harder than what I’m used to.

Every day, I need to remember that I’m here. I’m here for reasons that I chose and for the possibility of reasons that would reveal themselves to me only after arrival.

I’m here to teach, not only expanding my students’ knowledge of English but opening their eyes to a part of the world they might otherwise never encounter. I’m only one American, it’s true, but that’s one more than most if not all of my kids have met before, and it’s one more than they might ever have met depending on where their lives take them. The same is true for some of the teachers, and for many of the farmers and other workers in Pengtun. Barely a day goes by when I don’t encounter curiosity or confusion from locals. Elderly women in traditional Bai clothing smile and shoot me thumbs up as I jog by the lake. Construction workers call out “Hello!” on my way to (and back from) the shower. Small children standing on the back of their parents’ and grandparents’ motorcycles stare and whisper. I educate by my mere presence. As the only non-Chinese woman in a very Chinese place, locals’ opinions and views of the Western world, and the women who call it home, are affected by their interactions with me.

I’m here to teach the teachers, too. I can’t change the system of Chinese testing that’s meant to lure top kids to the surface and leave the rest drudging along lake bottom. I can’t fix the local English teachers’ pronunciation if they aren’t interested in practicing, and I can’t improve their classroom technique unless they want to make changes. However, I can show them that there’s more than one way to run a classroom—that, even while preparing students for their tests, you have the option to prize independent thinking and understanding over rote memorization. I can show that I don’t tolerate cheating and that I won’t accept the notion of my lowest ten or twenty kids just not being able to learn. I can express my discomfort with the use of corporal punishment and affirm that I will neither hit my kids nor send them to be disciplined by another teacher who will.

I’m also here to learn. I’m here to acquire Mandarin proficiency and to figure out how to interact in a place where I can’t communicate fluently or even consistently conversationally. I’m learning about how to be an effective teacher, and every day I’m learning more about just how crazy my native tongue is. I’m seeing how most of the world lives. I will never be Chinese, and despite the adjustments I’ve had to make in my life I will never experience the same kind of existence as most people in this place, but I do get a taste of it. I’m learning to make due, not necessarily with less, but with different. One really can get almost anything in the States, and in rural Yunnan there are many products that aren’t available—hence care packages containing cocoa powder and dried basil, and baking adventures replaced with rice cooker adventures. Ultimately, most of what I’m learning I’m probably still not aware of myself. I imagine it’ll take some time after I return home to process, sorta like I processed Mac last year.

I’m here to explore my own limits—to see how far I can and want to push my comfort zone. Never in my life have I been so consistently surrounded with situations that make me uncomfortable. I’m shy with people I don’t know well under the best of circumstances, so the fact that here I not only spend much of my social time with people I don’t know well but with people I don’t know well and with whom I have trouble communicating is terrifying indeed. Whenever I want anything, be it directions, advice, or a price; I have to ask with a language that doesn’t come naturally to me. At this point, I don’t have the vocab to order my usual small skim lite-whip mocha at a coffee shop. That’s fine, as there are obviously no coffee shops around here, but it’s just an example of how a simple interaction—something I never, ever have to think about in the States—transforms into a task that I would have to plan for in advance or use an obscene amount of gesturing and explaining to accomplish. I’ve lost my Stateside anonymity: the ability to be out and about without the eyes of others focused upon me. I am, in a very real way, a Pengtun celebrity. While from a young age I sought the spotlight (acting, anyone?), as a young adult I’ve loved situations where I can just be. I can do that here, but knowing that while I’m being me I’m being watched takes some adjusting to.

I’m here for awhile but not forever. That’s a big one. I’m here for two years—a long time, perhaps, considering that I’m all of 23, but not a lifetime. I’m not an immigrant, seeking better than the place I left, knowing that a return to familiar surroundings is almost certainly out of the cards. Ultimately, I’ll be going home, back to the States, back to comfort and ease and all of the things I’m missing now.

Of course, it won’t all be comfort and ease; in fact, if things go as planned I’ll be hitting the books once again, in one field or another. Life there will have its challenges and its shortcomings too, and I expect there will be moments, many of them, when I want nothing more than to step back on the plane again. But I’ll deal with that when I get to it.

Saturday Night on my Couch

It’s 9:01 PM, and I’m scrounging around for something—anything, really—to do. Today was our “Friday,” and thus my day began with a test for my kids and a bunch of grading for me. They did much, much better on this one than the last one; I wish I could believe it was all because of my teaching and their studying, but I suspect there’s cheating involved. I only caught one today, after all, and I normally get three or four. Anyway, that, and a meeting I marginally understood concerning teaching English at the elementary school, comprised my morning. For lunch, I had four more of my students to my room. This was the second group I tried, and, man, they were worse than the first. Getting them to talk was painfully awkward in every imaginable way. Longest forty-five minutes ever. I’m still glad I’m doing this, just so my kids can see me out of the classroom and look at random pictures of my family and stuff, but I need to get them to respond to my questions with more than the bare minimum.

The afternoon was also mostly class prep. Grading tests for me means doing a fair amount of data analysis. I always want to know how my kids are doing, as individuals and as a class, compared to their last test. Plus I’m trying to get their overall grades to date figured out, which means accounting for missing assignments and whatnot. Excel and I are becoming pals.

Anyway, since my four students left after lunch, the most exciting thing I’ve done is make chocolate chunk zucchini bread for dinner. Now, don’t get me wrong—chocolate chunk zucchini bread is exciting, especially when it comes out of the rice cooker in one relatively-attractive-looking round instead of in delicious but messy chunks—but it just feels like something’s missing here. I spend a whole lotta time alone, and I am getting lonelier day by day.

I really am an introvert/extrovert cusp. It’s easy for me to be overwhelmed by social situations, but I also notice their absence in a major way. During the STP, I sometimes found myself wanting nothing more than to have a few hours to myself, but now I’ve been pushed to the opposite extreme. I spend most of my time here alone. I teach with my kids, of course, and I attend faculty meetings on Mondays. I usually speak with my CEI coworkers at least once a day, and we go out for dinner a couple times a week. Mark and I have nice post-night class conversations on a regular basis. My coworkers really are very good coworkers. They’re all three of them responsible, smart people. However, we’re still working on the “friend” side of things. And that’s the problem.

I need friends. Going from Minneapolis, where I lived with two of my best friends from college (one being my boyfriend) and had a number of others within close reach, to rural China is, well, a bit of a shock to my social system. I assumed, naively I suppose, that a magical bond would form between me and my three fellow CEI folks and that we would find ourselves hanging out and tackling this world together. However, my coworkers keep to themselves quite a bit. I don’t blame them—to each his own—but it means that I don’t feel entirely comfortable going and knocking on their doors every time I’m bored. We have had a lot of fun times together, and I am trying to entice them into group activities that don’t just involve food, but it’s definitely a process.

So what about getting closer to the local teachers? Well, two issues there. One, of course, is language. When it comes to my Chinese, I get awfully frustrated awfully easily, and spending extended periods of time attempting to communicate with somebody I can’t understand at all is just not my idea of fun. In fact, it usually makes me want to cry. I’m quite friendly with the teachers, but our relationships at this point largely consist of such heartfelt conversations as “Are you going to teach?” “Yes, I am. Did you just teach?” “Yes, I did.” Add a shower of smiles and nodding and you get the idea. I expect that as the year continues, and I start to break through the cipher that is the Heqing accent, I will have better conversations, but for now it’s slow-going. Even when communication is no longer as grave an issue, however, I anticipate trouble connecting. The fact is, I’m an American. I’m the first American girl most of them have probably spent any amount of significant time with, and, as such, I am the stereotype and the oddball at once. I’m on the lookout for ways in which we can relate and connect, and talking about our students and about teaching strategies is a nice opener, but that won’t cut it in the long term.

So I’m alone a lot, and I’m lonely a lot. I knew to expect some loneliness when I came out here, but expecting and experiencing are two entirely different things. I have more time than I can comfortably fill with my hobbies of journaling, blogging, and cooking (and my not hobbies but still time-sinks of “The West Wing” and Chinese-dubbed Disney movies). I’m trying to make myself study Chinese more, but a lot of the time I’m so sick of language struggles out there that I don’t want to make them the center of my attention in here. Yes, I realize I need to get over that if I’m ever going to improve, but what can I say? My will power isn’t the best these days. I’m looking for a new hobby—something unconnected to Chinese, and preferably the computer—that I can turn to when I need to combat unhappy, alone feelings. I do a lot of nonfiction writing, but fiction writing has been mostly eluding me since my arrival, so that’s one thing I’m working to pick back up. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions. Also, mail! Packages would, naturally, be amazing, but from what I understand they’re also relatively expensive. Letters, however, are not! Here is my address:

欧阳旭／Emily Cohen,

中国云南省大理州鹤庆县

彭屯中学／草海中学 （671500)

P.R. China

I promise replies to any and all communication received, however long it might take to get here and back again.

Hopefully, these lonely feelings are just part of my overall “slump” that I will, again, hopefully, be coming out of before long. I’m just shy of three months in China now—about a month and half of which have been here—so a “leveling out” period can’t be too much farther away. Right? Encouragement/advice, anyone?

On Culture

‘Evening, everyone. Or morning. Or whatever time it is wherever you are. I have, as promised, a post discussing things that I knew to expect when I came back to China. I have two categories: “things I’m already used to from last time,” and “things I was exposed to last time but never actually had to get used to.” These lists may expand as I remember more tidbits. But, without further adieu….

Things I’m used to already from last time:

Hocking loogies everywhere and often- this is a fact of life in China, wherever you are. Spit happens. Men are more likely to do it in public than women are, but the girls’ bathroom in Beijing still held a loogie chorus most mornings and evenings.

Belly shirts for men-Belly shirts for women aren’t big here, but men with the Chinese equivalent of beer bellies (and maybe they are beer bellies—I dunno) enjoy rolling up their shirts and letting them rest on the “shelf” of their bellies whenever it’s warm.

Many people wearing the same clothes for 2+ days in a row- I remember being so utterly confused by this when I first came to Beijing. My roommate would wear an outfit for 3-4 days, changing her underwear daily, and then she’d change into a new outfit. So weird, right? Actually, though, as somebody who often wears a shirt twice without washing it, I can appreciate this manner of dressing. After all, why stick a worn shirt back in a drawer with all the clean ones? (That’s still what I do though—even in China, old habits die hard)

People washing their underwear (if not their whole outfits) nightly- This was another confusing part of my first weeks in Beijing, I didn’t understand why my roommate didn’t just wait and do a lot of laundry at once, but if you’re hand-washing your clothes anyway, you may as well get a head start, right?

People who shower with a basin instead of under the faucet- My Chinese roommate here in Lincang takes what we would call “showers” regularly, but many others don’t. They sponge bathe instead, and wash their hair in the sink, showering only occasionally.

Chinese cabbies (and traffic in general) are insane- Like American cabbies, Chinese cabbies have thick accents, crazy stories, and absolutely unbelievable driving practices. They actually make American cab drivers look quite tame, but I actually hear that Chinese cabs are nothing compared to the horror of those in other Asian countries.

Public transit is freakin’ crowded-- Be ready to spoon standing up with whomever you happen to be next to. – Beijing subways are insane, and buses are super crowded. I’ve not experienced public transit in Lincang, but if the buses here aren’t also crowded I will be quite surprised.

Chinese bread is strange and sweet and fluffy and often filled with stuff- American bread is hard to come by in these parts. There is bread, but if it is not steamed it is usually very sweet and usually flavored in some way. And yes. Fluff. Oh so much fluff.

Jiaozi, baozi, mantou, and sesame balls are awesome— Actually, a lot of Chinese foods are awesome, and since I’ve lived in China before I know what some of them are. There’s still a lot yet to be discovered, especially as regards Yunnanese cuisine, but at least I’m not starting more or less from scratch this time.

Chinese bars are weird but can still be fun-- They’re just not typical. Not that I am an expert on bars, but most of the ones here are strange and dark and just…odd.

Soy milk is served warm- I think you can get cold soy milk, maybe, but for the most part soy milk is served at breakfast and warm. It’s also (usually) unflavored and thus less sweet than its American counterpart. I’m learning to like it a bit more, but I’m still not a huge fan.

A lot of milk isn’t refrigerated—From what I understand, the packages of milk sitting on room temperature shelves are perfectly safe—sorta like parmalait in the states—but I still don’t feel comfortable drinking them. Maybe that’ll change.

Food is slurped or eaten with chopsticks—When I came to study abroad, I simply could not use chopsticks. I’d tried to teach myself in the states but with no success. Needless to say, eating was hard for the first few weeks until I figured it out. But now I know exactly how to use chopsticks, I’m accustomed to the practice of using chopsticks to take food from communal dishes, and I know that it’s not at all rude to slurp in most situations.

Pants for unpotty-trained babies don’t have crotches, which allows for their parents to easily hold them up and let them pee/poop outside—This is a big one. While I’m sure diapers are available in China, many parents don’t bother. Instead, they dress their children in “buttless pants,” as many expats have christened them. It is not at all uncommon to see a mother holding a small child over a gutter.

China smells—good and bad—but it smells- In the states, a lot of scents are covered up somehow or another. Even in NYC, there’re a lot of places that just smell like air. In China, almost everywhere smells like something distinct. And maybe I smell it more because I’m not Chinese—I don’t know.

As a foreigner, you will be stared at, and people will try to rip you off when you shop—I feel like I’ve covered this one already, and I’m sure it’ll come up many times in this blog over the course of the year.

Being followed around in stores—It is not at all unusual, in Chinese shops, for the shopkeeper to follow customers around, sort of like how teenagers get followed around in the mall. It’s annoying, but what can you do?

Chinese women use “sunbrellas”—basically, the parasol is back in style. Chinese women feel about pale skin the way many American women do about tans, and thus they work as hard as possible to keep themselves from being exposed to sunlight.

Almost everything is cheaper here than in the states, but at the same time there are quite a few things sold at American-like prices, which many locals can’t possibly afford—I think of China as really having two economies: the one for the wealthy, and the one for everyone else. My breakfast each morning costs from 1-3 kuai, and lunch and dinner are both 4-6. That’s less than a dollar. I can also go to restaurants with “western” food that cost 40 kuai a person for an entrée. That’s about 7 bucks, so still cheap compared to American food, but for people who make not so much to begin with it’s an impossible expense. That’s just one example, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an extended post on this topic pops up sometime.

Being illiterate—This is a big one, and one that I’m having to get re-used to. I hate not being able to read. I can understand some words but not nearly as many as I’d like. The last time I felt this way with English, I was about seven and didn’t actually need to read outside of school. Being, as I am, 23, I kinda need to know how to get around in the community I’m a part of, and that’s made much more difficult when I am pretty much illiterate.



Things I had some exposure to last time but didn’t actually get accustomed to:

Washing clothes by hand- CET (my study abroad program) had washers and driers in the dorms that we could pay to use. I might have hand washed small things once or twice, but generally I used the machines.

Squat Toilets- While I was exposed to many a squat pot while abroad, and while I used many a squat pot, they were not my normal bathrooms because CET had Western toilets in their dorms.

Whitening Lotions I knew that Chinese women liked their skin to be as pale as possible, but I brought my own lotion from the states last time and thus avoided the issue of having to find lotion, somewhere in China, without bleach in it. So far, no luck, but that goes back to the illiteracy thing.