Yellow Skin

If someone had mentioned the words "yellow skin" to me a couple of years ago, the first association I would have made would probably have been Jaundice. After all, when one has Jaundice, then one's skin turns yellow, correct? I never would have associated yellow skin with Asian people. Now, however, that is the first association I would make. Why? Not because when I look at my students, my co-workers, and my friends I see that they have yellow skin. Quite the opposite. But because they all talk about and complain about having yellow skin.

Most of the people that I talk to who are Asian (and women) bring up their skin color and compare their yellow, dark, and ugly (according to them) skin color to my white, light, and beautiful skin color (again - this is all what they say - this is not my opinion). I often hear how much prettier my skin color is because it is white and how horrible their skin is because it is yellow. Because of this, or perhaps to make money off of this dislike for their skin color, there are many skin creams, face washes, and other products whose chief purpose is to whiten/lighten the skin. It is difficult for me, when I go to the store, to find a face wash that does not have a whitening agent.

I look around at my friends and students, though, and I feel that this is ridiculous. When I actually try to notice their skin color (which is only when it is brought up) it does not seem yellow at all to me, just as my skin is not really white - it is more of a pink. Their skin is not the color of the sun, or the color of a daffodil, or even the light yellow color of butter. Instead, it varies just like the skin tones of people in America - some of my students, for example, have very light skin - just like my friends who have to slather themselves with sunscreen before they go outside in the sun. Some of my students have the skin color of many children who are from Mexico or South America - very dark. As a matter of fact, many times when I walk around outside, if I am not thinking clearly I may think I see people from South America or Mexico because I see people with dark hair and dark skin. Only after I look closer (or start to think clearer) do I realize that they are actually Chinese. And, of course, there are skin colors that are in between. But yellow I do not see.

Calling attention to their skin color like that, in such a derogatory way, makes me wonder why they do not like the color of their skin. What is wrong with it? According to them, it is too dark, but is it really so terrible to have dark skin? I suppose that in this world, in this time period, many people to not see it as a wonderful thing to have dark skin. It is too bad, though, that so many women here cannot be happy with the color of their skin.

Coming back to school

Coming back to work after you have been on vacation is usually not something that one looks forward to; waking up early, making lesson plans, not as much free time, and actually having to work are not as fun as being on break and being able to do nothing all day. I can't say that I was really excited about going back to work, but I definitely wasn't dreading it. When I actually went back, however, and saw my children, I fell right in love with them again. I am ecstatic to be back now.

When my children first saw me come into the classroom, they were thrilled to see me. They ran up to me, hugged me, blew me kisses, kissed me on the cheeks, and chattered to me excitedly in Chinese. Many of them also repeated all of the English words they had learned last term, such as "Christmas tree". Now every time that I leave the classrooms, my students ask me, "你明天再来吗？" Are you coming again tomorrow? When I ask if they want me to come again tomorrow, they always say yes. It is very cute.

About every other day I go outside with some of my classes and I do the daily exercises with them (which I did not do last term). Going outside with them is one of my favorite parts of the day - I walk with the students outside and they all try to hold my hand. Because I only have two hands, though, one might hold my fingers, one gets my thumb, and then (because I have no more hand left), another might take my elbow. Then there are more children who take hold of my coat in the back. There are so many five-year old children hanging on to me that I can barely walk to the playground without tripping on somebody! When we finally get onto the playground, I feel like I am disturbing all of the other kindergarten/preschool classes who are also doing exercises there because all of the children stop whatever they are doing and start yelling to me. They yell, "Miss Abbie! Miss Abbie! Abbie 老师 ! Hello Miss Abbie！" When I leave, the same thing happens and I can hear them yelling my name the whole walk back to the school. It is wonderful - not because I love hearing my name so much - but because I am delighted that they like me so much. I must have done something right with them.

So although I was not thrilled to be finished with break, I am now completely over that hesitation. I am completely content to be with my students every day. I leave every class with them (7 classes each day) more cheerful than I started it just because of the time I was able to spend with my students.

Where am I again?

As I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, it is often easy to forget that I am really in China. Now even more so than last term. As I sit in the restaurant (during the welcome dinner) and listen in on the various conversations going on around me, there might be as many as three languages not including Chinese. The French Canadians talk in French with the man from France. The two girls who are Mexican-American, the Mexican woman, and me and Sable talk in Spanish. The other foreign teachers speak English. Personally, hearing the French around me and speaking in a mix of Spanish and English reminds me of being abroad in Barcelona, where people spoke in a mix of Spanish and Catalan (which sounds like French). It is very international here now, to say the least.

I love the opportunity that I now have to practice all of the languages that I am learning. For example, yesterday morning my first two conversations were not in my native language (English). My first conversation was in Spanish, when a teacher from Mexico called me to ask about bringing her son (who is now my student) to the preschool. My second conversation was in Chinese. Walking to the classroom, I ran into Xiao Shuang, who is the woman who takes care of the apartment complex. She is really a wonderful person, but unfortunately most of the foreign teachers seem to look down on her because she is kind of like a cleaning lady, therefore, according to them, she is not as good as us. Of course, I do not agree with that and I always try to talk with her, learn more about her, and speak in Chinese with her. Because of this, she really likes me and always compliments me on my Chinese. So, my second conversation of the day was with her. I asked how she has been recently and she immediately complimented my Chinese. She even went so far as to say that I am no longer a "外国人"，　or a foreigner. Now, I am the same as her - a Chinese person. Although it was very sweet of her to say this, and it certainly brightened my day, Ｉ am sure it is not true. But it was nice nonetheless.

So it was not until I went to class that I started speaking in English - and even then I am lucky enough to be able to practice my Chinese with the teachers in the kindergarten. I think it is so great that I can be in China, learn Chinese, but at the same time practice my Spanish and help people with English. I may even have the opportunity to learn a little French! What a fascinating way of life - to always have so many languages and cultures around me. It is magnificent, especially because besides psychology, my interests lie in languages and cultures.

Numbers versus Names

"Number 23, come get your food." Number 23 would then rise and get his food. Where are we? Are we in the army? Are we in prison? No, we are in my kindergarten classroom. All of my children have numbers, which are used just as often, if not more often, than their names. Many times, in my younger classes, where my students are two or three years old, my students still do not know their English names. When I ask them for their English names and they look at me as if I am crazy, I have to ask the Chinese teacher, "what is her English name?" The teacher will answer, "Ta shi san hao," (She is number three) so that I can read off my list of which student is which number - aah, number three, Rain.

The children answer just as readily to their numbers as they do to their names - more so if we are talking about the numbers versus their English names. It makes me wince; I think of giving children numbers as making them more like objects, or at least taking away their individuality. However, that is very much my culture versus this culture. In China, is it a bad thing to be the same? I don't think so. And I suppose it would be a great deal more difficult to keep track of eight kindergartens of 30 children if you didn't give them numbers.

Schools are not the only place where people are given numbers instead of names. When I first went to a restaurant in China, I looked at the name tags of the waiters to see the exotic characters that the names were made up of and I found that the name tags did not live up to their names. There were no exotic characters. Instead of providing names, they gave numbers. For example, my waitress tonight is named 107899 according to her name tag. From becoming her friend, though, I have learned that her name is Hu Man. Anywhere I go, I see numbers instead of names. I wonder if it has to do with the sheer number of people in the country. Or is it the same in other Asian countries? It is the same in Japan or Korea? I also wonder if the number you are given in school has any effect on your self concept. Would being number one throughout elementary school make you feel like you really are number one, and you are superior to everyone else? Would being number 30 make you feel low, and underneath everyone else - the last to do and to get everything? The last in the class? I wonder if there has ever been a study on that...

A Family for Spring Festival

Spring Festival in China is like Christmas in the west. Families all gather together to celebrate; for some, this is the only time of the year to see their brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers. Although my family was far away, I was very lucky this year - I celebrated Spring Festival with a Chinese family. My friend's family invited me to come to Chengdu to celebrate with them. My friend was in America, so we can say that I took her place in the family during the festival. We're all the same, right? My friend tells me that her family says they were lucky to have me there. he truth is that I was lucky to have them. Not only did I get to see how the Spring Festival (a.k.a. The Chinese New Year) is traditionally celebrated, but I was welcomed with opened arms to a place that felt like home. I was welcomed as if I were family.

The first traditional Spring Festival activity that we did was to go to the grandmother's house. We all piled into the family's car (me, the mom, the dad, and the Leiya, the 20 year old family friend who was there solely for the purpose of keeping me company) and we drove the hour to QiongLai, where WaiPo (the grandmother) lives. I met many relatives, learning their names and just as quickly forgetting them (Chinese names are extremely difficult for me to remember). After sitting around and talking for a while, we ate lunch in a traditional Chengdu Hot Pot restaurant. Delicious, and spicy. Later, we went to a traditional ancient Chinese town, PingLe, so that we oculd walk around, relax, and have fun. We strolled around the small streets, with vendors on either side, selling everything from chicken on a stick to jade necklaces to winter coats. It was decorated for the Spring Festival and on the river was what looked to be a large blow up Dragon. I walked arm in arm with WaiPo, the mom, and Leiya, changing people every so often.

The next day, New Year's Eve, we stayed at home in Chengdu and relatives came for dinner and games (really only one game - Mahjong). I met even more family members and I "learned" how to play Mahjong. of course, the only reason I was able to stay in the game was because the mom was feeding me every move. I picked up a tile, glanced at her for assistance or assurance, and made my move. When she abandonded me to finish dinner I was completely lost - I could not figure out the necessary patterns until someone pointed them out to me. Once they were shown to me, I compeletly understood. That wasn't too helpful when I was trying to play the game, though. Dinner was a very nice affair. Cups were clinking every five minutes with wishes for health, long life, wealth, happiness, and a good new year. Many people also wished me welcome to Chengdu and to China. It was very sweet. I felt very welcome. Around 12:00 (the start of the actual New Year according to the Chinese calendar) the fireworks started in earnest. Until then, there had been fireworks, but only about as many as you might see in America on the fourth of July - for China, not too many. Around the stroke of midnight, though, I felt like I was in the middle of a battlefield. All around me - 360 degrees - was the sound of fireworks going off. Looking out of the kitchen window I could see that indeed there were fireworks almost everywhere in the sky. Surrounding the apartment. And this was just one small part of Chengdu, one city in China. It was absolutely amazing.

The next day, the first day of the new year, we went to a miaohui, whis is a temple fair. Me, the mom, the dad, and the uncle. They warned me beforehand that it would be crowded, which is why in other years they typically didn't go. The only reason they were goign this year was for me. When they said it would be crowded, I didn't fully comprehend the meaning of the word until we arrived. Now, crowded has a completely different meaning for me. Try to picture this: first, the parking - it is a normal street with a wide sidewalk. The cars are parked in lines of three in a row, where normally there is only one car parked. The sidewalk is flooded with parked cars and to actually get to the temple, you have to make your way through a maze of cars. When you finally get to the fair, all you can see att imes is a sea of black hair - in front of you, in back of you (if you have space to turn around), and on either side. This was the worst parts of the fair, though. Usually we had some space to walk. It was crowded, yes, but it was also very fun. We walked around, took pictures, and I got to see how the Wenshu temple was changed fromt the tranquil Buddhist temple I had seen during the summer to a swarming tourist park, resembling the temple so little that I would never have recognized it if I hadn't been told it was the same place. After walking around and eating the local snacks, we had to wait until it was dark to finish the day's activities, so we went to a tea house and they taught me a Chinese card game. This was wonderful because not only could I actually play the card game by myself, with no help from others, but I even won a lot of the time! Needless to say, I really enjoyed this game. Why my friend never taught me this particular card game, I don't know... I felt very full of culture, sitting in teh tea house, drinking tea out of special tea cups, and playing a Chinese card game with (of course) three Chinese people. I thought, as I had been thinking the whole week, "Wow, I really am in China!" (Sometimes, at the school, where most people speak English, it is easy to forget).

Then, when it got dark, we went to the lantern festival. Do you know, in Disney World, the ride with the song, "It's a Small World"? If you aren't familiar with it, you go in a boat and you are surrounded by large, moving figures. Each display of the figures portrays different cultures and they are all lit up, bright, and moving. At the lantern festival, I felt as if I were in the middle of a giant Chinese display of "It's a Small World." All around me were large, bright, moving displays: dolls dressed up in different costumes, a building sized tea pot and tea cup, and hundreds of gold oxen (it is now the year of the ox). And everything was lit up, most of it neon. Being a big believer in Disney World, I completely adored it there. I even told the family, "It's like Disney world!" I think they were amused by me, but that' s ok. Looking into the sky, it looked like there were more stars than usual, but on closer inspection you could see that they were actually lanterns that people write wishes on and then set free into the sky (they fly like hot air balloons, with fire and gas). It was a once in a lifetime experience.

There is more, but I can't explain everything. This is already way too long. Below are pictures of some of these experiences. In sum, I had a fantastic time with my Chinese family, learning about the Spring Festival.

Me playing Mahjong. Notice my "helper" to the right.

Me with the lighted, Disney World-esque figures

Me and Leiya in PingLe with the Dragon on the river

Wenshu Temple decorated for Spring Festival (note the lanterns above us )

Culture Shock...6 Months Late

Yes, I know that you are supposed to suffer from culture shock when you first start to live in a new country. And I suppose I did have some culture shock in the beginning (6 months ago). After all, the Chinese culture is very different from the U.S. culture. I had to get used to the way of eating - communal dishes in the middle of the table that everyone eats from, toilets that are not Western, people staring at me because I am Western, etc. However, it was not a difficult thing for me to assimilate to the new culture. I adjusted easily.

This is why, when I was trying to analyze my feelings last week (I graduated as a psychology major, that is what I do), it took me quite a while to understand exactly what I was feeling. Was I homesick? No, not really. Sad? No. Frustrated? A bit... Then it hit me: Oh, so this is what culture shock really feels like. For one week, I stayed in a very small town with a family that I would not say is poor, but I would also not call them rich. I would definitely say that they were very careful with their money. Living in this small town, with this family, I finally, truly understood the term culture shock.

In America, as in my apartment in Suzhou, we have heating in the winter. It is winter, it is cold, I put the heat on, I am happy. No. Not in some places in China. Not there. The apartment was just as cold as it was outside. I knew, though, that they had a miniature heater. They used it the first day when they had relatives over. Then, to my dismay, they wrapped it back up in the plastic it came in and put it back in the box. I never saw it again. "Ni leng ma?" Are you cold? They asked me. I wanted the heater back. "A little", I answered in Chinese. Maybe it was rude, maybe I should have said I was fine, that I was not cold at all. But I don't like to lie, and I was freezing to death. OK, maybe not to death, but I was shivering - I was really cold. Put on your coat, they suggested. If my coat was on, they suggested I put on even more layers.

They told me that they reason I was cold is because I don't eat meat. If I ate meat, I would not be cold. Usually, people respect my vegetarianism. No, almost every day they tried to get me to eat meat. It's good, it's healthy, I heard over and over again. "Just try it". I tried to get them to understand that I was not cold because of my moral decision - being a vegetarian did not make me cold. I explained that my father is also often cold, and he loves meat. Finally they stopped bugging me about meat.

Their hygiene was just a bit different from what my parents taught me growing up. Besides never washing hands with soap after using the washroom (that I saw - and since they never closed the door all the way, I unintentionally saw a lot), they never covered their mouths when they coughed. This was absolutely wonderful when we were all sitting together eating and somebody had a coughing fit - right into our communal food - or when we were sitting next to each other talking.

I often lost my appetite. Everyday we went to the market where they bought food. Vendors spread out their food all around - some was on the ground on plastic garbage bags and some was on tables. Everywhere we walked, people selling and people buying spit on the ground as they strolled around or coughed into the air. I watched as the spit and the cough neared the food we were about the buy. Yum, yum. And some of this food wasn't cooked, some of it was barely washed (or not at all washed). The family I was staying with also liked to hand feed me. Besides making me feel like I was three years old again, this made me wince, knowing where and what their hands had touched (and how often they had been washed). Yes, my parents brought me up with a strict sense of hygeine - often wash hands, always use soap. It makes me wince when people don't. I winced a lot.

Lastly was the way people stared at me in the town. I have lived in China for six months; I am used to being stared at. If you are a westerner, a laowai, it is a way of life. But here it was different. I am pretty sure that many of the people here had never seen someone like me before except on the t.v. Instead of just staring and pointing, their eyes would follow me as I walked by. Some children would shyly stammer, "hello". Some would run away and hide behind their parents. The adults, on the other hand, all saw me as a curious object. They looked at me, then there were double takes, even triple-takes. Everyone came up to the lady I was with (who had her arm wrapped around mine, gripping my coat as if she were scared I would run away) and asked in their dialect, "Does she understand what we say?" "She understands putonghua" (mandarin), responded my host. And, of course, they then always started rapid converstations in their squiggly dialect so that the only thing I could understand was that they were talking about me. Once in a while, someone would not believe my host that I can speak mandarin and tried to test my knowledge, asking me ridiculous questions that I knew they already knew the answer to. "Where are you from?", "How do you know her?" (pointing to my host). I smiled and tried to be patient.

As if being stared at on the street was not enough, the family I was staying with did not use their bathroom for showers. Oh no. Little did I know when I first arrived, I was to use the Public Baths to take a shower. When my host announced "Time to take a shower", and told me to pack my stuff, I hoped in vain: maybe we are going to a hotel for me to take a shower in a hotel room, maybe we are going to her friend's house, but with each step closer to the public baths, my heart dropped a little more. I am by nature a very modest person - I do not like to be without clothes in the gyms in America, where people are used to bodies of every kind. To shower completely naked with Chinese women, many of whom had never seen a foreigner before and, as I explained in the above paragraph, more than stared at me, was terrifying. The only comfort was that I took off my glasses before I entered the shower room so I could not see the women staring at me. Of course, after a while it was not as bad as I had thought. It was warm there, which was a large plus. The second time at the baths, I did not even dread it.

So, now I have gotten used to even more of the Chinese culture - a completely different part of the Chinese culture. I can live without heat, without warm water, with no English spoken at all, and I can take public baths. And now, when people talk about culture shock, I can empathize. I understand thoroughly and completely what they mean.

An Unexpected Kindness

I had just gotten off the bus, returning to Suzhou after a week long trip in a small town. I was outside the bus station, tired, carrying a heavy backpack, getting a migraine, and a bit frustrated with my last week. I just wanted to go home - to get back to my apartment, unpack, and relax. The only problem was that finding a taxi seemed to prove to be an impossible task. I tried to flag down the "real" taxis - the metered ones - but they just waved at me and continued driving down the road. Well, that really helped me get home. It reminded me of having a lemonade stand when I was younger. My friends and I would call out to people walking or driving by and they would wave to us - their waves did not help us raise the money we wanted; all they did was give us a few seconds of false hope.

The "fake" taxis, as I thought of them, the ones who were un-metered, in normal looking cars, and who tried to give you ridiculously high prices (such as 80 kuai when it should be 13 kuai) were parked along the street everywhere. The "fake" taxi drivers followed me and asked me in broken English, "Where you want to go?" I could not get away from them. I started to lose hope of ever finding a taxi. I walked a bit, looking for a real taxi that would take me home, but all I found were fake taxi drivers who bothered me, yelling out, "You go where?" I hurried on, ignoring them as much as I could.

A young man started to walk beside me then and the other people stopped bothering me. He had the look of a fake taxi driver, so I ignored him as I did with the others. "Can I help you?" He asked me. Still believing that he was trying to get me into his fake taxi and cheat me out of money (obviously I learned to be very distrustful), I answered shortly, bluntly, "No." Although I am not usually a rude person, this time I meant to be rude so that he would get the idea and leave me alone to look for a taxi. "Where do you want to go?" He tried again. He was still walking beside me. He just wouldn't leave me alone. I gave him the street name and he said, "Oh, you take bus 83 to go there". Surprised, I looked at him. Obviously, he wasn't trying to get me into a taxi if he was suggesting a bus. I explained in Chinese that I wanted to take a taxi (I was in no mood to lug my backpack on an overcrowded bus). In Chinese he answered, "You can't find a good taxi here. You have to walk up the road". Yeah, I figured that much, but now I knew for sure. He walked with me for a while, but I was still distrustful. I kept my purse close to me, watching his hands and my purse carefully. After all, I had just come back from travelling; I had money, my passport, my MP3 player, many things that he might want to steal and that I would not want stolen. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but then again, Little Red Riding Hood didn't know that her grandmother was really the wolf - you can't always tell when people have bad intentions.

He led me up the road away from the bus station, and as we walked it became more and more deserted. Of course, we were in China, there were still people - there are always people. But fewer, which made me nervous. I stopped and started looking for a taxi. He understood my intentions and tried to hail a taxi for me. Then he crossed the street (where there were no people), saying that it would be easier to find a taxi on that side. I followed him nervously (maybe I was being paranoid, I don't know). While we looked for a taxi, we engaged in some small talk, he asked me questions, I answered. As I said, he seemed genuinely kind. But is it smart to trust everybody? When a taxi drove up, he hailed it, opened the door for me, and told the taxi driver where I wanted to go. And that was that. I gave him a warm thank-you. After all of my concerns, there had been no reason to be so suspicious.

All he had wanted to do was help me. A complete stranger had spent 20 minutes walking with me, talking with me, and helping me to find a taxi (and making the fake taxi drivers leave me alone). I felt very grateful to him for being so kind to me. He wanted nothing in return. He was just doing a good deed, just being kind to a stranger. So, everybody who reads this should remember this and do the same - be kind to strangers - do good deeds - and the people will be grateful. Maybe someone is frustrated, sad, or not in a good mood. Maybe your assistance and kindness will brighten their day. Be a good person! Go up to a stranger and commit an unexpected act of kindness.