Think: when you last met a foreign exchange student or a recent immigrant, what did you ask him or her? “Where are you from?” “What city are you from?” “Do you like America?” Then, after the obvious, was there anything left to say? Sometimes, yes, in my experience there has been a spark of interest and it is fascinating to talk to someone with a foreign perspective. But, perhaps more commonly, the conversation dies there. Any chemistry is dampened by the discomforting cultural gap, the language gap, and having nothing in common to comment on other than, “So, how many people live in your country? …Oh, you don’t know?”
Keep this in mind.
My first semester in China, I was one of three foreign English teachers. The other two were Grant and Sue, a long-married Australian couple with adult children, a few grandchildren, and two and a half years of Chinese life experience under their belts. Grant and Sue were just about the liveliest and friendliest people I could have asked to meet in China. It was my good luck to have them there at the university so I could learn from them, meet local friends of theirs, and take in all their stories of world travel and adventure in Australia.
Sue was usually forthcoming with her opinion (she wasn’t rude- a lovely lady, with a bounty of energy and experience, and a lot of fun), and one thing she sounded off on was a weekly obligation of us foreign teachers: English Corner. Contractually, we were expected to spend a couple hours on Friday afternoon at “English Corner,” a meeting at a park on campus, where any student at the university could come meet us and practice their conversation skills. I was curious about what kind of characters we might see down there, and a little flattered that we would be the center of attention. According to Sue, I had my hopes set too high.
At my first English Corner, I won the “Who’s Tallest?” contest. Also, curious students came to get their picture taken with me.
“Oh, it’s awful!” she began, “You finish your last class for the week, and you just want to be done, but then you have to go out there and talk to these students, and there’s only so many time you can answer, ‘Do you like Chinese food?’” Her speech was filled with big gestures and a swelling Australian voice (trust me, it was very amusing in person; I’d give you my comedic impression of it if I could, or better yet, book yourself a flight to Brisbane and ask Sue about English Corner in person). For a moment I wondered if she were just being a spoilsport about it, but she went on, “I’m sorry, but I’ve answered, ‘Yes, I can use chopsticks’ too many times.”
I maintained a cheery attitude nevertheless, and having Grant and Sue around to entertain the Chinese students and coax them out of their shells certainly helped matters, but before long my attitude soured from answering the same questions that Sue had lamented.
Young Chinese students are not only hamstrung by very limited English speaking skills, they are also crippled by weak social skills. Day to day, as far as I could tell, they spent much of their free time in quiet or solitary activities. When not in class or studying, which was not all that often, most students spent their time on the computer, surfing the net, or playing computer games- although I did see packed ping-pong tables and volleyball, basketball, and badminton courts daily. Most were unwilling to speak to someone outside their circle, and for those who were daring enough to try, they lacked the know-how to make small talk.
And while American students generally like to go out on weekends and like heavy doses of partying or drinking, I never heard of Chinese students going to bars Friday after class or getting a group together to go bar-hopping. There was no such thing as Chinese house parties or fraternities. I heard of students going out to KTV (karaoke) and going out to eat sometimes, sure, but their orbit strongly gravitated around the campus. And within that sphere, their orbit was confined to their classmates, since Chinese university classes are a consistent group of students that attends every subject and lecture together instead of mixing up the students for each subject/class like in the U.S. Outgoing individuals could make friends beyond their roommates or classmates through attending extracurricular clubs. For the most part, their social interactions, like people the world over, centered on the same groups who went to the same activities, only more so; a highly insular pattern.
So, as a teacher, the social behavior I observed in class was the carefree in-joking of friendly pairs who had spent so much time together they had created their own world of excited chatter mixed with horseplay. Boys would play-wrestle and hit each other. The girls loved giggling. The immovably introverted would twirl their pens in silence, practice calligraphy, study their history books, or do their math homework. The quiet ones seemed very studious, but the net effect was surprisingly childish. Remember that the average Chinese student is a couple inches shorter than the average American, much skinnier, and most likely wearing clothes that Americans would associate with pre-teens or children. Girls with uniform bangs and pig-tails wore outfits decorated with cartoon characters or bright designs of stars and alleged “English” writing. In maturity, outlook, and attitude, there is a world of difference between an American college student and a Chinese.
The ingrained inward nature of my young students, their unfailing passivity and inevitable “I’m shy” or “I have nussing to say” responses, and the inherent difficulty of our disparate languages and customs made it so that, in conversation, I could not get the ball rolling no matter how friendly I was, no matter how adroit I was at wording new questions.
An exception to the rule was “Emily,” a delightful high school student who enjoyed telling me about her English studies and her family, and even enjoyed singing songs for me.
As I came to know, along with Sue, meeting young people in China followed variations on the same pattern of a skinny, pipe-armed boy asking, “Do you like… Chinese food?” and smiling with glee that he had asked me, this foreign curiosity, a real question in English. I became so worn down by these same, simple social interactions that I became too fatigued to care anymore. I could not bring myself to smile after awhile, and I responded to all the predictable questions with muted, rote answers. I went into China adventurous and eager, and my intent was to be a good sport in every situation, so it did take a large number of dreary experiences to drip down and erode my resolve, but those trying times added up quickly. A man can only answer the same question so many times before his heart takes a bow and his mumbling mouth takes over.
I, like many foreigners in China before and after me I’m sure, thought it would have been easier to hand strangers a bi-lingual card of frequently asked questions and save us each the hassle of going through the pointless routine. Then, the truly interested would have to come up with their own questions and we could both move into more interesting territory.
So here is a write-up of my hypothetical FAQ card. The questions below reflect the actual wording of my Chinese interviewers.
Q: “Are you America/ Are you American/ Where are you come from?”
A: Yes, I’m from America. I live in Iowa; it’s close to Chicago and the Mississippi River. (“Oh, Mi-shu-shee-pee.” Hearing students say, “Where are you come from?” drove me up a wall. And China provided plenty both of ungrammatical questions and walls with which I could climb up. I could tolerate other grammar slip-ups, but this one had me giving my answer through gritted teeth. It was one of the few cases where I would blurt out grammar correction.)
Q: “Do you like Chinese food?”
A: Some of it is fine. (This is my polite answer. It is a true answer, but I spare them any criticism for their country’s unsanitary food preparation and rudimentary recipes that basically went: “Step 1: Chop it up. Step 2: Stir-fry it in an inch-deep pool of oils or boil it in soup. Apply Step 1 and Step 2 to whatever it is you are planning on eating.”)
“DOYOULIKE… CHI-NESE FOOD?”
Q: “How long are you in China/ How long will you come to China?”
A: The length of my stay is two semesters: September to July.
Q: “Can you use chopsticks?”
A: Yes. (What a non-starter this question was. What kind of a follow-up question can you transition into? The answer is either yes or no, and it felt a little insulting to think that I had been in China for months and still hadn’t figured it out. This question was probably the most egregious example of “Hey everybody, it’s a foreigner! Let’s all come gawk! I wonder if it has met Obama or Kobe.” To test myself, and out of spite for this question, I started to practice eating with my left hand. I thought that it would allow me to taunt, “I can use chopsticks with either hand, so that makes me better than you at chopsticks.” But the only person I actually teased with this was my gracious Aunt Fong.)
“You want to know if I can use chopsticks? I’ve got the photographic proof right here.”
Q: “Do you/ Are you like China?”
A: Sure. (Spoken dryly.)
Q: “Can you speak Chinese?”
A: A little. (I would almost always refuse to demonstrate this for a few good reasons:
1. Language is a conversation, not a demonstration, and it is very off-putting to be prompted, “Say something Chinese.” It is a natural question for people to ask, but it is usually a rude request. In my high school in Iowa, a classmate with immigrant parents from Taiwan was occasionally pestered to either “Say something in Chinese” or asked, “How do you say this in Chinese?” He would always flatly reply, “No” and shake his head. At first, I was taken aback by his standard reaction, but once I thought about it, and especially after I experienced it myself, I understood why he did this. I basically did the same. Imagine, reader, if someone prompted you in a cloying voice to “Say something in English!” Maybe you’d have a quote at the ready, but my guess is that, like me, you would be stuck for words, save the thought, “I wish you hadn’t put me on the spot.”
2. Chinese, as a language, sounds terrible, and the sounds it does make are nearly indistinguishable (more on that later). I wasn’t about to doubly humiliate myself by speaking their language impromptu, only to have them say, “What!” or have them assume the teacherly role and correct me that I was using the wrong tone (if you aren’t familiar with Chinese, every word has a tone- there are four standard tones- and if you say something with a high tone instead of a low tone, for example, then your listeners will be confused and probably won’t understand what you are trying to say).
3. I was bored with this question and I no longer wanted to endure their fulsome surprise when I spoke a sample sentence correctly.)
Q: “Do you have a girlfriend?”
A: No. (I became tired of this one, too- it never led anywhere. Only giggles from onlookers who were too shy to ask a second question. So, I followed my Aunt Fong’s advice and I started telling people, “It’s a secret.” They would usually persist, even if I told them “it is a secret” in Chinese. Okay, so I would use Chinese with strangers when I had to.)
Q: “Do you want a Chinese girlfriend?”
A: As long as I don’t have to live in China. (I was tempted, but I never actually said that. I usually just blushed.)
Q: “How old are you?”
(Reluctantly, I would give this answer out. I tried avoiding a direct answer by telling them I was in my 20’s, or “it’s a secret.” Of course, a fool and his question are not soon parted, so they would just repeat themselves more forwardly until I gave them what they wanted. Because of my young face, most people were eager to know. One taxi driver guessed that I was 16.)
Q: “What is your QQ number?”
A: I don’t know. I have one, but I don’t know it. (Gasps of shock. “You don’t know your QQ number?!”
What is QQ? The Chinese government has an office that electronically patrols their Great Firewall, blocking controversial search terms and social websites like Facebook and Twitter. The most popular social software in China, among children and adults, is QQ, a chat program with add-ons like personal profile pages. Chinese students exchange phone numbers to text each other, but equally important is one’s QQ number. Me telling them, “I don’t know it” sounded as absurd to their ears as saying, “Yeah, I’ve got a phone, but I’m not sure what the number is.” More shocking to them was when I told them that no one in America uses QQ and no one has ever heard of it. “But how do you chat?” they would cry. My reply: “People just use Facebook and Twitter.” Or Snapchat, Instagram, whatever.)
The things I was asked were the obvious, immediate things a Chinese person would ask a foreigner, and of course that is why I heard them so frequently. This was wearying, but the real problem was that these questions were usually the entire conversation. They didn’t lead anywhere. Conversations didn’t build depth of meaning or relationship. After a student asked one question, they were usually done. Confidence and English language reserves spent. I would have to put in the work and follow up “Do you like Chinese food?” and other questions by asking them in return, “How about you? Do you like foreign food? Pizza? Pasta?” Usually, they would tell me no, they only liked Chinese food. And that was it. End of conversation tree. My time in China was a lonely experience not because no one tried to speak English to me- just the opposite, I had strangers enough who would try that- but because the questions and conversations had nothing to say.
One of many strangers who asked to take his picture with me. In this case, while I was touring the Great Wall.
Leave a Reply