I have several little stories or anecdotes to share, but as much as I've tried I cannot come up with a single theme that unites them. Except China, of course. But China is the theme of this entire blog, so I cannot legitimize making it the theme of this single post. So instead of trying to present these various anecdotes with some sort of profound insight on how they're interconnected, I'm just simply going to share them. Something stream-of-consciousness-esque.
Last week Friday we didn't have class. To this day, I don't know precisely why, except that there was supposedly some sort of sports activity. Given all the context clues (which is one of the most important tools for communication, I believe), I think it was more or less a "field day" for all LiaoDa students. But the activities were on the new campus, and I certainly did not make it up in time to take the bus there at 7:30 a.m. So I didn't see it. Instead, I took one of my African friends from the dorm here, grabbed a taxi, and went down to "gu-gong," the old Imperial Palace here in Shenyang. [Little historic aside for those of you who are interested: Shenyang was established as the Manchurian capital in 1625. In 1644, the Manchus took over Beijing to establish the Qing dynasty. At that time, they moved their capital to the Forbidden City in Beijing, but continued to use the palace here as a summer resort. There's a lot more of interest in Shenyang's history, but this is the simplified version of what relates to Gu-gong.] We didn't actually go into the palace that day, since you have to pay for it. However, we headed down that way because two years ago when I was in Shenyang I frequently wandered around that part of town. I even frequented specific stores and made friends with some owners.
Certainly my favorite shop from two years ago was a little scroll shop. In our wanderings about on Friday, my friend and I found that scroll shop and went in. To my surprise and honor, the owner remembered me! It was so exciting to be back there and talk with the owner and some others in the shop. I certainly think it will be a place I visit frequently this year. I even think I will have a nice uplifting scroll made soon that I can hang in my room here.
The other exciting experience this week that relates back to my time here two years ago was meeting up with one of my former students. Even though we have been out of touch for more than a year and a half, she was very excited to hear that I am back and very eager to meet up with me. So she took me out to dinner last night. [Guess where... yup, KFC. Seriously, if a Chinese person were to visit me in the U.S., I would definitely NOT take him/her to a Chinese restaurant. Why do the Chinese always want to take me out for American food?] It was fun to see someone I know and to catch up with her. She lives on the other side of the city and obviously works full time teaching, so I don't know that I'll get to see her too much, but whenever the opportunity arises I will certainly be pleased.
Speaking of meeting up with Chinese people, I had a really interesting experience the other night. Saturday I came home from some English classes to find people playing volleyball outside the dorm. There was no way I could turn that down, so of course I joined them. Let me tell you, though, it's interesting to learn to play a sport in a different language! Chinese was the only common language among us, so instead of calling "mine!' to take a ball, I am training myself to call "wo de!" And instead of saying "good job" or "nice play" or things like that, I have to come up with Chinese versions. What a strange thing!
But that wasn't the interesting experience I was going to tell you about. (It was an interesting experience, though.) After playing, I was heading back up to my room, dripping sweat. (Nice, eh?) Somebody came out of the staircase and stopped me, so of course I stopped to see what the guy wanted. Turns out he's a Chinese guy from a city 1.5 hours from here, studying at LiaoDa for an MBA just on the weekends. But he's an English teacher in his city, and he speaks English very very well. Long story short, we met up that evening for about two hours and talked - in a combination of English and Chinese - about all sorts of things. In many ways, he is a male Chinese version of myself, if that makes any sense. Or maybe he's the opposite of myself. Something like that. While he's never been abroad, he studied English and Western culture extensively in school. Through the course of his studies, though, he has developed a sort of Western perspective and understanding on many issues. I am quite the opposite: through my studies, I have developed a sort of Chinese perspective and understanding on some issues. So in our conversation, which ranged from China's development and economic growth to the Olympics and just about everything else possible, we often found ourselves taking on the perspective that stereotypically should have been the way the other person thought. What a strange experience!
In terms of my daily life in China, I am enjoying myself tremendously. Any day I don't have class (which, if you read the last post, is far more often than one would expect), I try to get up and run in the morning. It's one of my favorite things to do here, because I can see a lot more in a given amount of time than if I'm just walking around. And the people you see and/or meet as a white girl running along the streets or through the parks in a city like Shenyang are just fascinating. But Sunday morning was definitely the most entertaining run I've had yet: I got completely lost. Oops! I left LiaoDa's campus having turned left, and ran up the road a ways until I found a river. The river had a thin park with sidewalks running along both sides of it, so I decided to follow the river for a while. Unfortunately, when I ran out of park along the river, I had no idea where I was. (Of course, I was never actually in any danger. I easily could have retraced my steps to get back, or I could have grabbed a taxi. I never go out without enough money for a taxi ride in case of such situations. Because if you have money, you can never really be lost in Shenyang... you just tell the taxi driver to take you to LiaoDa. It's incredibly convenient.) But instead of turning around and seeing the same things again, I just wandered along the roads and picked corners to take at random. Impressively enough, I managed to find my way back and I even know what I did!
One of the other entertaining parts of my daily life here is what I have dubbed Chinese MTV. Having never really watched MTV in the US, I don't really know if it's a fair name. But that's what I call it. Whenever I'm in my room, I turn on my TV to the station that plays music videos. It's hilarious, though, because about a third of the music is American! Obviously a good bit of it is Chinese, but not nearly as much as I would have expected. I enjoy it, though, because I'm getting to know the Chinese music that's popular right now, which means recognizing it when I'm out and hear it. And since Chinese MTV often (not always) puts the lyrics as captions on the screen, I can even start learning the words!
As an aside, let me just say that my TV only actually has 5 channels, which has limited my choices for improving my Chinese through watching TV. Because of those 5 channels, one is in French, one is in Arabic, one is in Korean, one is Chinese MTV, and then there is one lonely channel that is actually in Chinese. So sometimes I watch that one, too. But the music is more entertaining, since I don't really understand what the Chinese one is about most of the time.
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