Kunming, Week 2

Dang, it's a real drag not to have my computer again. This week, my computer, finally in the same country as me at least, chilled its heels at customs while I attempted to puzzle out what a FedEx Customs rep needed me to do. The rep called me on the cell phone, and according to the rules of my program, I answered in Chinese. The rep let out a flurry of Chinese, and I meekly said, in Chinese, "come again?". He then started in an English which was only marginally clearer than his Chinese. With the help of my professors, I figured things out, and my computer is scheduled to be here some time this week - lawd willing - at which time I'll post pictures, as promised. Meanwhile, I'll give you a state-of-the-me update, and share some fun antecdotes.

First, the antecdotes. Last Sunday, I headed out to try one of Kunming's specialty dishes, Guoqiao mixian (crossing-the-bridge rice noodles). Like a lot of Chinese cooking, it's a very showy dish. The waitress brings a bowl of steaming hot chicken broth, and various fixings, including rice noodles, several different types of vegetables and slivers of raw pork, and throws them in the broth to cook. The result is a delicious, interesting mix of the broth and the oil of the vegetables and pork. However, first, I had to figure out the procedure. I wandered into the restaurant, looking like the confused westerner I often am in this country, and saw a bunch of people taking food from a window, while other people seemed to be waited on. So, assuming it was the traditional restaurant scheme of waited and waited on, I sat down. After about fifteen minutes, another table called the waitress over to explain to me the situation. After having her repeat herself once or twice, I caught on the key phrase - "mai piao", buy a ticket. So I wandered out to find the ticket office, bought a ticket and triumphantly presented it to the waitress, to the laughter of the table who had helped me out. The waitress brought the noodles and mixed the ingredients for me, and figuring that the pork needed to cook, I waited a little bit. A Chinese guy approached the table after five minutes, patted me on the back and said, to my embarassment, "It's ok. You can eat it."

This actually, is exactly the kind of scenario that demonstrates what I mean when I say I can't get angry in China. None of the embarassment and irritation here is anyone's fault but my own. In fact, I'm the one to blame for being a general pain in the butt for everybody who has to deal with me. It's my fault I can't understand the language or the culture, and yet I've come here and put myself in situations where these things are necessary to understand. So I have no right to get angry; I just thank everybody, and hope they can be patient with me, and feel embarassed that I can't help but be a pain in the butt.

Another fun story. The Chinese are the least race conscious people on earth, which makes for fun times with my black classmate here, Nick. When we went to register with the university, the registar said, excitedly, to Nick, "You look like a basketball player!" Nick, without a beat, responded, "Yeah, I play for The Lakers". Good times.

Overall, my mood here varies depending on the day and the situation. Some days I just don't feel like speaking Chinese and am tired and generally agitated. Especially since the language pledge took effect (it's not too strict, but strict enough), I've been feeling the stress of being isolated from my language. It's often no fun to have to use Chinese all the time, and can take a lot of energy. Often, I'll get the jist of things, when I have to deal with administrative details in Chinese, I can get very lost very fast. Also, as part of my program, I have to do what's essentially an ethnography, with cultural informant interviews and various other elements I neither have the skill set for, nor the desire to do. The prospect of that project is majorly stressing me out. Wednesday was a really bad day. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and was just generally in a bad mood the whole day. Finally, I ate three awful Chinese donuts and slept for two hours.

China brings some of my bad personality traits into particularly sharp relief. Here, I realize that my occasional bouts of depression and especially my sometimes extreme social anxiety are not normal and do me no favors. It strikes me here, in such a different place, that I might be able to, and what's more, might need to, switch to another way of being.

The most rewarding part of this program, by far, are the opportunities we get to interact with the Chinese. Not only do I have a language partner, but another student and I are matched with a Chinese family, whose home we visit every other weekend. I really like asking my language partner about things, and explaining to her various facets of American life. This week, I asked her about her views on the problems facing Chinese children. She said that since many Chinese kids are only children, they often are selfish and don't know how to interact with other people. She also said they watch too many violent/sexual videos on the internet. I also discussed the Chinese education system, and gave her an Obama pin and a map of NYC.

The most curious part of interacting with her is her conviction that the Chinese are one way, and the Americans are another, and that is that. For example, she is convinced that Americans always insist on their children's independence, while the Chinese are overprotective and controlling. When I said that in some cases, American parents also are overprotective, she shook her head and said, no, for example, Chinese parents are always holding their kids hands when they cross the street, Americans don't do that. When I said, uh, yes, actually they do, she just shook her head, and I stopped arguing with her. I also enjoyed when she looked at the map of NYC and asked where my college was, and looked shocked when I said it wasn't on the map, in fact, it was three hours away by plane. Talking to her about the education system carries its own particular baggage. This college is not a top Chinese university, and so the students here are often kids who have lost out in the great contest that is the Chinese education system. I, on the other hand, am somebody who has been fairly lucky with America's education system. Watching my language partner explain the unfairness of the Chinese education system therefore made me a little bit uneasy.

A final fun language partner story. We were scheduled to meet on Thursday, and although she usually texts me, she had to tell one of my classmates that she misplaced her cell phone and would meet me at the usual spot at 5:30. When she met me, she explained that she had left it at a friend's house. Afterwards, she borrowed my cell phone to call her friend. A male voice answered, and I could tell by the nature of the banter that it wasn't just a friend. I teased her about it afterwards and laughed all the way back to my room, and was pretty much in good spirits the rest of the day. There's something extremely reassuring about knowing that the young Chinese are also doing it.

I also visited my chinese family this weekend. They asked me and my classmate Michelle when would be a good time to meet, and we, very politely said, oh, any time that's convenient. So they replied, ok, how about 9 AM. D'oh. Our family is a sophomore at Yunnan Normal University and her father and mother, who look about in their late fifties, early sixties. The father is a sports facilities manager at the university, and the mother is retired. They are very charming, and I especially liked it when the student cheerfully showed us her music collection (complete with Enya, Dido and the Backstreet Boys). They made us a delicious lunch, and we discussed various matters (I found out that Kunming folks are more easy going than most Chinese, in their opinion, that Mah Zhongg is a waste of time, although their neighbors play, and that their ancestors came here from Nanjing 200 years ago - I think). We also watched a cartoon version of the Tang Dynasty classic "Butterfly Lovers", which I half-understood and was half awake for. Oh, and in a classic Chinese mother moment: Michelle asked the mom what the daughter was like when she was young. The response: "She used to play piano". When Michelle said later that she could play a little piano, the mother dutifully dragged out a keyboard and insisted that she play, to Michelle's embarassment.

Friday night, I headed out to a Karaoke club. This club happened to have an incredibly bizarre floor show, complete with an MC who asked the entire club to welcome "our international friends". I don't even know whether I would call what I saw a show. It was a pounding techno hallucination, with a mock beauty contest, women in short skirts clog dancing to "Cottoneye Joe" and weird, reject cirque du soleil type guys posturing in odd costumes. Whenever China attempts modernity, the result just seems to prove that China is a real confused country. As for me, I drunkenly sang "Like A Virgin". And, to my joy, the bathroom had a cartoon explaining that blowjobs in the bathroom were forbidden.

Today, I went with my professor and a small group of us to a Taoist temple on the outskirts of town. It wasn't the most magnificent temple I've ever seen, but it's nestled in the mountains among flowers and lovely trees, with buildings and natural elements mingling to a lovely extent. It's nice to visit temples and parks here, because it's basically springtime and the flowers are in bloom. Walking around the temple, I mostly thought about Wash U politics. I'm amazed the extent to which this trip really has served, as I hoped it would, as a time and place for me to reflect on where I want to go and what I want to do overall. I've been thinking a lot about the big question of, if the position were to open up, would I run to be KWUR's GM again. KWUR and the issue of SU reform have, in recent years, been intertwined, often for the benefit of neither. For example, it'd probably be better for SU reform if this proposed constitutional change was sunk in referendum, but it'd do KWUR no favors to campaign against it. Additionally, the reality is that what KWUR wants is generally not incredibly significant; there are bigger issues with SU then just the fact that they cut the funding for KWUR Week. So I've been asking myself a lot, am I more interested in SU and university reform, and would I want to channel my energies in that direction? Or do I really ultimately not give a damn what the university as a whole does, as long as KWUR does alright? Or, beyond that, would it be better for me just to, as Voltaire puts it, tend to my own garden, and leave all this stuff behind? I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, though the results of KWUR's block funding initiative will certainly impact my decision.

I fear that this blog has become the kind of confessional thing I wanted to avoid. But I did say that I would talk about what I saw, and how it affected me, and is, it's affecting me a great deal. So, no mission creep, IMHO, not yet. I will soon post pictures, God willing. See you later.