In which I am made fun of, and have an epiphany
Wow, I have been so absurdly, uncontrollably busy… I’ve hardly had time to sleep or call home, let alone take pictures or update this website. Things are still really, really wonderful here – even as I start to really adjust to life in China, every day brings a whole bevy of new, foreign, strange, fascinating new experiences and observations. As many of you probably already know, each day of classes at HBA involves two hours of lecture (da ban ke) and two hours of drill session (xiao ban ke) in the morning, followed by about 45 minutes of individual one-on-one drilling with an instructor (dan ban ke) and two hours of office hours in the afternoon. I have loved pretty much all of my instructors so far (they rotate from day to day so we get maximal exposure to various dialects and teaching styles). This is one of the benefits of Harvard, I really have to say – you never ever have to wonder if you’re getting anything less than the best, because you’re not. The instructors are all amazing. Graduates of Beijing Yuyan Daxue, the best university in China for those who want to teach Chinese as a foreign language, they all fit the mold of the perfect language instructor: friendly, energetic, good at joking with and relating to students, good at expressing themselves and enunciating clearly, with an incredible capacity for remembering students’ names and an even more incredible capacity to care deeply and genuinely about every single one of their students. There’s something about teaching language that lets teachers relate to students in a far more intimate and sincere way more than any other subject.
They’re hilarious, too. There was a slight mix-up the other day with times and schedules for drill session and I wound up missing my assigned class because I went to another one by accident. The funny thing is that before I even got back to my room after class (and hitting the grocery store), my drill instructor had informed the second-year teacher that I hadn’t been in class and was probably sick. Thinking I might not be okay, this teacher (Wang Laoshi) went to my room and knocked, and when no one answered, got a maid to unlock the door in case I was passed out on the floor dying of food poisoning or something (this actually happened to a student years ago – Feng Laoshi, the head of the program, was doing just this kind of check on a sick student and found him lying on the floor foaming at the mouth – ick! I think this incident might have been the inspiration for the “Perhaps the raw cucumber was not washed clean” chapter in our first-year textbook). She saw I wasn’t there (I was probably at the store buying mangos and an extension cord at the time), but while there she noticed that my AC was on “too high,” and chastised me (in a loving way, especially after we had cleared up the misunderstanding and she no longer believed that I was sick because my room was too cold) for making my room unhealthy to live in. “I turned it up,” she told me sternly. “You should have it at 25, 26 degrees. Never lower.”
The really funny thing is that I usually try to keep it between 23 and 24 degrees Celsius, which I think is reasonable, but the maids always turn it down to like 10 or something when they clean the room. This temperature is refreshing for like 2 seconds after coming in from Beijing’s omnipresent heat and humidity, but soon becomes uncomfortably cold. At any rate, I was really touched by the concern, even if it was misplaced (about 4 other teachers, most of whom I haven’t met, have also come up to me, saying “He Kaili [my Chinese name], I heard you were sick?” and I have to set them right each time – in fact, now all I say is “I’m much better now” because explaining the mix-up in Chinese makes my head hurt, but “Xian zai hao de duo le” is pretty easy). So don’t worry, Mom – they’re taking good care of me, I promise!
Anyway, I’ve had such a good time with the teachers – the one I had for drill session today was named Qian Laoshi, with a first name of Duo. In Chinese, this means something like “lots of money” or “make your money grow,” so it’s a pretty funny name. Qian Duo was a short, uber-perky teacher with a round, friendly face and a very particular way of speaking. She even sang for us! Today we discussed a grammatical construction which describes a person or object’s distinguishing characteristic – Qian Duo told my classmate Rei An his distinguishing characteristic was definitely his hair (which is spiky, highlighted, and comes to a kind of point in the front), and even though all white people look the same to her (!!) she would definitely remember him. Xiao Kan and Gong An Ju both decided that their distinguishing characteristic was that they were so tall (and it’s true, they are both tall), which left only me. It’s times like these when I realize how profoundly little I am able to say in Chinese… I wound up saying that in the States I’m sort of smallish and look young for my age, but that neither of these do me much good in China, as everyone is much smaller here and no one has any clue what age foreigners are anyway because they can’t judge non-Asian people’s ages!
Qian Laoshi told me that my distinguishing characteristic was that I was very pretty, but she tempered this nice compliment a few minutes later when we were discussing a different grammar pattern, which one uses when one wants to say “I had better…” or “It would be best if you…” or “She really ought to…” etc. She was talking about who she best ought to ask to help her move something heavy. “I ought to ask Gong An Ju, because he is so tall,” she said, bouncing around the front of the classroom. “I had better not ask He Kaili. She’s even less able to lift this heavy thing than I am. She is too weak; she has no strength.” She flexed one small arm in demonstration. “Yup, I sure had better not ask Kaili to help me.” And she went on for quite some time in this fashion, which I found rather unnecessary but altogether hysterical. When she heard me giggling at this, she paused, confused. “Why are you laughing so loud?” she asked innocently. Since I have no idea how to say “I’m not used to my teachers shamelessly making fun of me as part of the day’s lesson” in Mandarin, I just smiled and laughed some more. This is why Chinese people are awesome. They have zero shame. Language classes are the coolest.
Outside of class, though, things are more serious and, in a way, cooler still. Today it really hit me for the first time where I am and what I am doing, and how it is all on a certain level still incomprehensible to me. I think it really came home to me today because I was doing something completely alone: I ate a solitary dinner (sniff, sniff, I know, so sad) in a restaurant on campus, my first time ordering food without being part of a giant mass of foreign students all stumbling over words and pointing hopefully at menus without any real idea of what we’re ordering. I’ve certainly had plenty of all-Chinese, mostly successful interactions with staff and teachers and even other students, of course, but for some reason I suddenly was taken aback by the sheer wonder of it all. Here I am, seven thousand miles from the only place I’ve ever known, on the other side of the world in a strange land where everything from the coins in my pocket to the sounds in my ears to the food in my stomach to the very trees and air overhead is completely and utterly foreign. And yet – there I was, making contact with another person, exchanging ideas, understanding one another for a brief moment. Sure, the conversation was simple and mundane, our questions (“could you please bring me a paper napkin?” “would you like me to bring the bill?”) and our answers (“no, that one doesn’t have meat.” “thank you for your help!”) certainly unimpressive – but there, in that moment, I realized what it is that I’m doing here.
Mandarin for me is no longer a bunch of funny sounds to make in class or a line of pretty pictures to decipher or write – it is no longer an academic exercise for me, as it was in the States. Here, Chinese is the flow of meaning between people living their lives. Mandarin is what keeps the biggest nation in the world running, but more importantly, it is what allows the people of this country to establish contact with other humans – to share not just space and air but thoughts, ideas, plans, opinions, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. And now, here I am, a stranger from a strange land, taking part, moving through the endless sea of Chinese washing over me with a bit of comprehension, able to share ideas, even make jokes, using this thing called Mandarin which is in America a fun academic exercise but here is a living thing, which changes and grows each day, just as all languages in the world evolve, as it issues forth from the people speaking them. There’s something kind of beautiful about that.
Building out of this realization was an even stronger one – not just that I am here, but that I am here. There have been many things in my life that I just could hardly even believe I was lucky enough to have or do, but they have all been, in a way part of a pretty set life plan. Graduating high school, for example, was a really great experience, but I always knew I would graduate, from the second I learned what graduation was. Going to Harvard is a dream come true for me, a dream I never really believed would come to fruition, but it, too, makes a certain kind of sense – it matches who I am (a person who just really loves learning) as well as where I want to go (into the field of academia, and teach philosophy to university students) – it’s part of the general plan I’ve always had inside of me, even if I couldn’t see to the end of the path. But where does being in China fit in? It's not part of who I've ever been, thought I would be, or could have known to hope I'd become: but here I am. How am I so lucky to be here, learning this amazing language and experiencing at least a small part of the wonder and importance of language and communication and culture? How did I ever find my way here, having no idea what I would discover about this strange, strange place – and about myself? You know what I mean?
But I guess, in the end, that’s really the point. Life isn’t about following a set path from point A to point B to point C, knowing exactly what is expected of you at each stop along the way, building towards each predetermined destination as quickly and efficiently as possible. Maybe life should be more like deciding to try for point W, without knowing quite where it is or what exactly it involves, to see how the path changes as you walk it. See, now I’m getting all soppy and metaphorical and probably making everyone gag. But really, it’s all kind of unbelievable. And I love it.
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