Hello! I’m heading out in a few minutes to go to Xiamen, a small but apparently very beautiful city a couple hundred miles south of Shanghai on the coast (it’s actually an island). You may have heard of Xiamen by its old name, Amoy. It was a treaty port, and still has a lot of European architecture and stuff. I’m excited. I’ll be there until Monday night (going with my CIEE teacher Huang Laoshi and the other gappers). I will definitely let you know how the trip goes!
Because of my imminent departure, I have to keep this update brief and to the point. This past week has been especially busy, with lots of fun happenings. Saturday evening we had our first gathering of all the host families and Americans…we wrapped dumplings and ate a lot of yummy food. It was fun to get to see everyone else’s host parents and siblings, and see how people interacted. I think I mentioned before that we eat dinner every night at this community center type place, where there are mah jiang rooms, a badminton court (aka squash court), and a couple function rooms. It turns out that we eat there because my family either owns the center, has a major stake in it, or is in charge of managing it, or all three (still not sure of the details). The fact that it took me more than a month to figure this out is pretty sad…gap year state of mind, I guess? But that community center was where the host family party was, and my host parents sort of played host, making sure everything was running smoothly. Judy is definitely the most adorable of the host siblings (it’s true…seriously), and this impression was reinforced when she walked into the room (she came late because she had English lessons) and every single host mother clustered around her, literally stroking her and asking her questions and stuff. It was hilarious (for me). The Chinese are sooo good at doting on children. They love children. I am so jealous of little Chinese kids (although life gets pretty stressful pretty quickly…these kids’ lives are absolutely DOMINATED by the exams they have to take to get into middle and high school. Even a 10 year old like Judy has a HUGE amount of pressure to do well).
Sunday I cooked dinner for my host family! I made mashed potatoes and marinated/sautéed chicken and spinach and served a baguette (they thought that was pretty weird. In Judy’s words: “It’s too long!”). They seemed to like the food, although they added hot peppers to the mashed potatoes (haha). It was fun, and a nice way for me to feel useful and like I could give them/do something for them that would show my appreciation for how well they’ve treated me.
Yesterday was a very eventful day. Last week, I ate in the cafeteria (the day after I wrote my last update saying I would do that! Yay sticking to goals?) and made the acquaintance of a very nice Chinese university student, Jenny (her English name). She told me about a party for foreign and Chinese students, where the Chinese students speak English and the foreign students speak Chinese. So that party was on Wednesday (yesterday) and it was super fun! There were Chinese snacks and games…it was a little crazy because there were so many people, but also fun because of that. We were sitting at tables and I was called on by the party MCs to introduce my table in Chinese. I think I acquitted myself well (Jenny afterwards said my Chinese was “fluent”…HAHAHA big joke. But it made me feel good anyway). So now I have Jenny as a Chinese friend (we’ve been chatting on Skype, me in Chinese, her in English…she’s very interesting). And I exchanged contact information with the girls at my table (the Chinese students at the party were almost all girls), so next week I’ll hopefully hang out with some of them! Very excited!
After the bilingual party, I headed into the city to go to a roundtable discussion led by/with Charlie McElwee, a major (if not the major) environmental lawyer in China. He is an expert on Chinese environmental law, and is also incredibly well-informed on the Copenhagen meeting this December. Elizabeth got me in; I was SO out of my league…this was a gathering of thinkers and do-ers in Shanghai, there to exchange ideas and thoughts about how China and the rest of the world, particularly the US, can collaborate on finding solutions to climate change. I could write pages and pages on this meeting, but suffice it to say that it was fascinating. The group was a mix of entrepreneurs, environmental consultants, and representatives of NGOs/activist groups (the discussion was convened by JUCCCE, the organization Elizabeth works for). If I had to pick a main idea for this meeting, it would be that Charlie doesn’t really think that Copenhagen will lead to much progress on the “numbers” side of things (ie finding specific targets/goals and a way to “force” countries to meet them), but he does think there’s still hope for the development of ideas and more abstract commitments. I’m going to write a whole post on Copenhagen/China and the US and the environment sometime in the next couple weeks because I have SO much to say.
Last night at about 10 pm, I had the most bizarre experience/moment of my time in China. My host dad came into my room and handed me a letter hand-written in Chinese and a slip of paper. The paper said “Uncle:…” followed by a telephone number. He then explained that when I got to Xiamen I should call the number and arrange to meet with “Uncle” and give him the letter. But make sure not to tell Uncle anything about myself, and just tell him I’m a friend of my host dad’s, a tourist passing through Xiamen, not that I’m living with them. Uncle apparently owes my host dad a lot of money (according to the letter, 170,000 yuan…so like $25,000!). And I was supposed to shake him down….? I was SO freaked out/confused/ tickled by this request. Is my host dad a secret Chinese gangster/master of the underworld? Was I about to embark on a life of crime? Would I meet my end in a dark alleyway in Xiamen? There were a couple hours of uncertainty there, as I tried to figure out how to tell my host dad that I couldn’t/wouldn’t be his debt collector, and as I pondered what the heck was going on. Luckily, when I woke up this morning my host dad took the letter and slip of paper back and said that he’d just send Uncle an email.
Let’s just absorb that last paragraph for a minute.
Yeah. That actually happened.
I have a lot to say about that little episode as well, and what I think it says about the difference between Chinese and American attitudes toward money/money matters, and what it says about lending in China. My teacher Huang Laoshi says it’s very common for family members/close friends to lend each other money because getting money from banks is really hard, and Uncle is probably either a distant family member or a close friend. Which is reassuring, but doesn’t explain why I couldn’t tell him who I was…and doesn’t explain why my host dad would send an 18 year old who doesn’t speak Chinese very well after someone who owes him so much money.
OK I’ve run out the clock. Feel free to comment/send me an email (Abigail.bok@gmail.com) if you have any specific questions/comments/thoughts. Love/peace.
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