Monday, August 9, 2010

Profile #3: Jin Yuxi

I still vividly remember the first time I really got to know Jin Yuxi (金羽西) (jean you-shee). I had gotten to know her via English corner or meals at the cafeteria with Dave-as she was one of his students and one of his Chinese tutors during our first semester in China-now almost two years ago. I needed to go to the train station to buy train tickets for a trip (this was before I discovered I could buy them by phone). Although I barely knew the sophomore English student, she readily agreed to accompany me to the train station and help get the tickets. I remember this occasion because there was at least a half hour line at the train station (normal), which was hot, stuffy and filled with some pretty shady characters (very normal). I was surprised at how cheery and worry-free that Yuxi was that day. She didn't continuously verify that I knew which tickets I needed-most Chinese people, in attempting to be hospitable, worry and double check things like crazy. She didn't complain about the muggy ticket buying room or the long line. Although Chinese people are in general uber-resilient, Chinese college girls have a tendency to complain at the first bead of sweat.


Yuxi would become my tutor during my first year and continued to help me learn Chinese during the past year. She was a great tutor, because she would be straight with me about how poorly I was both pronouncing the tones and constructing grammatically correct sentences. Yuxi, being an open-minded English major, was very excited to spend time with foreigners, and enjoyed talking about subjects often taboo to most Chinese students. A further sign on her atypical personality for a Chinese girl was her frankness with me about my (significant) falters in Chinese. Most students would be very deferential to me because I was both a teacher and foreigner. Yuxi was a joy to be with precisely because she didn't quite adhere to these cultural norms.


Like me, Yuxi had an appetite for life and an inability to take too many things seriously. She was maybe my only close friend that wasn't a great student. She had achieved admittance into the university with help from an uncle who is a professor in Nanjing; so on paper she wasn't considered smart. In China, your score on paper is all that matters. Contrarily, I think she was one of the more intelligent and most insightful students I met. It was her carefree attitude that let her see past many of the rigid barriers that (I think) the Chinese educational system edifies in its students. When hanging out with Yuxi it was refreshing for me to be able to make a sarcastic comment and receive something other than confusion or offense. I don't really know why Yuxi had such a dissimilar personality to so many other students, she the only child from a fairly well off family-but from the poorer half of the province. Normally, these students were quite hard working and more steeped in rigid, conservative ideals. She was selfless and incredibly hospitable, as displayed by her trip with a fairly unknown foreigner to the train station-yet she was so much more affable than most Chinese people.


Most notable to me though, was when I went to visit Yuxi during the H1N1 outbreak at our university in September of last year. While us foreigners were allowed to come and go (and did so to take a trip to the beach) most students were given time to either go home or be locked on campus for the week. The most unfortunate, Yuxi included, were quarantined because a classmate or dorm neighbor had contracted the virus. I talked to her in the entryway of the dirty, previously abandoned dormitory on the edge of campus-where she and three other girls were stuffed on cots in a room smaller than my bedroom-with limited access to running water a floor below. Yuxi was surprisingly mellow considering her circumstances, and was happy to chat with me. Despite the seemingly arbitrary quarantine procedure, and anything but considerate warning and treatment-Yuxi didn't complain much-if at all. Her ability to deal with tough situations was normal among my students-but her lack of stress was exceptional. Subpar meals in the spartan cafeteria made enjoyable by the company of Jin Yuxi won't soon be forgotten.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Profile #2: Wu Meng

I met Wu Meng pretty early on in my time in China, at English Corner. English Corner was held every Thursday night, and is a super common trend across universities and towns in China. China's enthusiasm for learning English is giant, as they look to further expand their economy, development, and power in world affairs. So, I did my best over the two years to be at English corner, to give students (and anyone else making the trip to campus) an opportunity to practice English with a native speaker. Wu Meng (English name Jefferson) was one of David's students last spring, and took David's advice to come to English corner. I have to say that I am very glad that he did. Much to other students' chagrin, by about the third or fourth English corner that Jefferson had attended, I stopped talking to almost anyone else. That was because Jefferson, along with his roommate and friend Lu Wenbin (Edison), wanted to talk about things that most Chinese avoid: politics, government, religion, social change, human rights, and other things that are right up my ally. Of course, almost every other English corner attendee wasn't at all interested in these concepts, which made our conversations nice and small. Throughout the year Jefferson would sometimes come by David's or my apartment and drink some tea or beer and chat. (Only downside was Jefferson didn't need an invitation-he was much more likely to just pop in). I'm sure I have written more than a few times that one of the most wonderful things about China was the opportunity to talk with people that had highly divergent values and opinions than mine. What made Jefferson so great was that he was willing to risk losing face and express those opinions to a foreigner. For Americans, who are raised to accept dissent, critical thinking, and differences, saying what one thinks is commonplace. For Chinese, it takes a great bunch ofcourage.
When my college friend and fraternity brother Clay came to visit last spring, it was our great pleasure to spend a night at Jefferson's house. His family, just like him, was kind, generous, and good humored. Jefferson is from rural Baoying, Jiangsu Province. Baoying is in the northern half of Jiangsu, meaning it is significantly poorer and less developed than Southern Jiangsu (where Changzhou is). His parents run a private pre-school and kindergarten, which certainly is the reason that he is so interested in learning and thinking. Furthermore, he is lucky enough to have-by Chinese standards-open minded and supportive parents. Now, all Chinese parents are extremely supportive of their children (often just child) if they follow the parents' wishes to a t. Yet, as Jefferson often would tell me, he was so happy his parents let him choose his major, his summer job, his free time activities. Jefferson is very ambitious (he spends much free time working part time jobs) and his energy for learning English is substantial. He spends many of his breaks from school attending private English classes. There were some students like Jefferson, but most were a bit indolent when it came to career goals. I would like to think that his parents' more relaxed approach might be one of the causes, allowing him to choose a path he enjoyed.

In a discussion one night at English corner, Jefferson commented on why he thought that no matter how much he talked with me or any of the other English teachers, no matter how many episodes of Friends he watched, and no matter how many Western books he read (in English) he wouldn't ever see things the same as I. As he explained, Chinese people first think about the "mainstream"-as he put it. Their deference to family and society dictates their thinking and decision making. But, Americans think about the individual when making decisions. I totally concur with his analysis. While we Americans might not want to consider ourselves selfish, when compared to the average Chinese, we certainly are. It's Jefferson's ability to notice these things, and being courageous enough to talk about them as well as his personal ambition that makes him one of the more memorable people from my time in China.