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.