September Updates

Hi Everyone,

Sorry it’s been a while since last I wrote, but things have been busy with me getting settled, and I did say this adventure likely won’t be as exciting as my time in Kunming/Beijing. So, to get caught up, I’ve been fully settled into my classes now. I’m teaching freshman students and sophomores, working particularly on their spoken English. They’re a lot of fun; they can be a little shy, but with a little prodding they open up. My main goal in these classes is to get them to talk as much as possible. If you want to learn a language it’s SUPER important to talk talk talk. You’ve got to practice expressing what you want to say if you ever want to learn to be comfortable with it. Sometimes it takes some time to break down the walls that make you less confident in the foreign language, it took me a couple trips to China to do it, but if you keep forcing yourself to speak, it will happen eventually. I remember those days when I was in Shanghai, and it was just so uncomfortable and stressful to try and communicate in Chinese, and now it’s so easy to think speaking Chinese was never that hard. For the most part, it comes so fluently to me now that China right now feels like just going to another city in America. I’m so at ease here it’s crazy.

Also, it might be interesting to note that I’m getting recognized around Xiangyang from being on the CCTV Chinese Bridge Competition I competed in last year. Some of my Chinese co-teachers, as well as some people I meet in passing, said they thought I looked familiar and that they saw me on the show. It’s so weird that I’m like a moderately famous person here in China. The channel that produced my show, CCTV-4, is a nationally broadcast channel, so people all over China have seen the show. And the nice thing is, unlike some of my fellow foreign teachers here who are getting offered opportunities to model and be in TV ads simply because they’re foreign, I have gotten my fame from my skills and my name…rather than just how I look. I’m sure some people would find being on TV really awesome, no matter how it’s done, but I guess you can say I’m a little proud and a little stubborn. I’d like to be known for my talents and accomplishments…rather than just be a random face.

So here’s an interesting story that happened a couple weeks ago. A few of the teachers and I had gone to a bar to hang out. Of course, when you’re foreign and traveling in a pack like we were (there were maybe 8 or 9 of us there), you’re going to get noticed by the nearby Chinese people. And almost as soon as we entered the bar, different groups of Chinese people that had been sitting there snatched us up to join their respective groups. We were split up and they then proceeded to ask us about our lives…it felt like an interrogation. I had managed to not get pulled in for a moment, and then one of my fellow teachers says, “Hey Krissy, I told them your Chinese is much better than the rest of us, they want you to translate for them.” Sooo…I got pulled in too.

So as soon as I got there, they started interrogating me too. And we had a pleasant conversation about what we were doing in China and whether we liked China, and whether Chinese food was the best. Then they began to ask about where I was from, and I told them to guess. Of course, they guessed Africa first (I’ve gotten a lot of interesting ones during my time here: mostly Africa or South Africa, I got a couple of Brazils, and then also a couple people thinking I was Indian too). I told them that I was American, and they couldn’t stop remarking on how they thought it was so awesome that America was filled with so many ethnicities. They also proceeded to say how awesome they thought it was to have “white skin, black skin, and yellow skin” all sitting together at the same table. In between their remarks they made sure to make me translate what they were saying so that the other teachers would understand. They also then asked me a question in which I’m they were trying to test me with. They asked, “Don’t you think the American government just loves to say, ‘This [territory] is mine, this [resource] is mine, this is mine, it’s all mine’?” I imagine they thought I would become furious and then get into a heated argument with them to defend America. One thing you DON’T do when living in China: argue politics with a Chinese citizen, especially a guy. It could be potentially dangerous for you, because they have government informers everywhere, and they keep their eye on foreigners. So I simply said, “Well, I don’t know about all that. I do know that the views of the American people are not always reflected in the government, and vice versa.” They replied, “In America, people and government views are different. In China, people and government views are the SAME.” I knew what kind of guy I was talking to, and the best thing to do in those situations is to nod and smile, which I did. In the end, I believe he respected me and my fellow teachers, and they took pictures with us and then left after a while.

When you’re in a foreign country, it’s important to realize one thing…and I learned this very quickly in the first days I was in Kunming. You are an ambassador for whatever group you represent: be it country, race, religion, gender, or anything. You represent whoever the citizens see you as, and for me the Chinese mainly see me as American and black, then maybe Jamaican if I get far enough to actually tell them I’m from there. So…you’re an ambassador for these groups whether you like it or not, and you have to decide how you’ll represent your communities. You may hate the idea that you’re an ambassador, you may hate the fact that people see you as the groups you represent and not for you. You might say, “I’m an individual, I’m not my country or my race or my gender or whatever,” and as a result you can rebel and get angry at the citizens of the country you’re in for judging you. But I’ll tell you one thing, it will only make things worse. Say someone has been taught to think Americans are selfish and snobbish people, and you decide when they talk to you you’re going to turn up your nose at them or are rude to them in anger at their judging. Their suspicions will be confirmed and you will have created a lie in their mind that Americans are snobbish and selfish. In my case, they see me mainly as black and they don’t have a ton of experience with black people…in my experience, from the small cities I’ve been in, they really don’t have any stereotypes in their minds of black people…they are simply not used to seeing them, ever. So if I chose to get mad every time they stare at me or point and laugh or say HALLOO very loudly two inches from my face, it could create an understanding of black people in their minds that they’re not very friendly people.

Here, I have a chance to enlighten people with truths they perhaps were never aware of, and I’ve done that in Kunming already. My Chinese friend said I was the first black person he’d ever met and he was so happy to have met me. Victory! I intend to continue to do that here. Something I’ve realized is really important to me is to share truths with people that they’d find hard to discover somewhere else. Today in class, I shared with my students the original story of the Little Mermaid, where she does in fact die and she turns to seafoam as her beloved prince marries someone else. Most of the students have only seen the Disney version, and I found it important to make them see how much Disney has affected our understanding of the world. If I could share such simple but important lessons on a large scale, that would be a dream come true. Anyway, every time I walk down the street or have a conversation with a random Chinese person (like a cab driver or a customer at the coffee shop down the street), I make sure to always be pleasant and to always make it clear that I respect Chinese culture as well as my own.

I had this conversation with my fellow teachers and they all really understood the situation as well. It doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you’re a foreigner in China, you’ll be an ambassador and it would be in your best interest to be non-confrontational. As teachers in particular, it’s not our job to be fighting about politics with Chinese citizens…it’s also not our job to try and tell them that their government is wrong, which is what I think one of my fellow teachers is doing. We can teach our students good principles like self-confidence and self-understanding, we can teach them that the world is not black and white and that there is so much out there to discover and understand, and we can teach them more about our own culture that they couldn’t get from a book or from Google. So that’s what I try to do.

I think that’s about it for now. If anything particularly interesting comes up or if there’s a story I missed, I’ll write again. I’ll probably add a couple up maybe really soon just describing more of life here. I’d like to continue the once a week thing, but that might not be possible. It may be once every two weeks, or once a month from now on. Check the blog at the end of each month (and the middle just in case something's there), and there should be a new post or a couple new posts up.

This coming week, some other teachers and I will be traveling to 3 Gorges Dam for our two-week holiday, it’s called National Holiday. I’ll take pictures and post them up.

P.S.- My bat Flower has flown away, so sad. I haven't seen it chilling in my window for a few days now, and so I think maybe its gone away before the weather gets too cold. It's already getting a little crisper out, but it keeps hopping back and forth from really hot to early fall weather. An interesting story though: my fellow teacher woke up yesterday to a horrible sight- a bat was flying around IN HIS BEDROOM. He was smart and managed to chase through his other rooms and out his window. I don't think it was my Flower though because he said the bat was pretty teeny and Flower was about average size, maybe 3 or 4 inches in body and maybe a 14 inches wingspan. But I don't have a pet anymore, except the lizards that eat the moths in my window.