Ticket Troubles, An Army Gal's English

Wednesday: don't engage in important matters. Nothing furthers. The Duke of Zhou says, if you dream that the sun and the moon are shining on you, it is auspicious and fortunate and you will get what you desire. Too bad I didn't dream about that. I'll have to work on it.

Quite as my calendar suggested, sort of a rough day. I got up on Wednesday morning, called the travel agency and asked them when they would be bringing my ticket. The guy dithered a bit, and finally said, afternoon. Would he mind telling me what time? Four, three or four, he said. I went to the library. Of course I had rather a late start, so I arrived around eleven. Students were pouring out. Is it closing? I asked the security guard. I don't think so, he said. Oh, I said, it's just that everyone is coming out. They're going to eat lunch! he said. Ha ha. (I had had breakfast only an hour before.) More space for me.

I got a couple hours of downloading in. I am still working to collect all the texts I need from the online Four Treasuries Complete Books (Siku quanshu) database, which only works in the library.

By 1:30 I was pretty hungry so I went and had fried noodles. Then came home and waited for someone to deliver the tickets. No one came. I was working on my blog--the time slipped by--before I knew it, it was after 5. Where were the tickets?!

At some point, WW also called me. She wanted to meet the following day. Meet and do what, I wasn't sure. It caused me stress. But I had said I would meet with her, so I gritted my teeth and agreed to it. I got a strong sense that what she really wanted was to come to my house, but since she didn't come right out and say it, I kept saying that I was sure to be at school and it would be more convenient to meet there. Yeah, I'm sure she would love to see the inside of my exorbitantly expensive little apartment, but she's not getting the chance. My home is my castle, even if it is a very small castle, and no one I don't like gets to come in!

Thursday: not a good day for mending wall or filling up holes, but auspicious for praying and sacrificing. The Duke of Zhou says that if you dream of big waves or flowing water it means that wealth is on its way! As an added bonus, this is one of the rare pictures I am able to identify: it's the Han Emperor Gaozu (otherwise known as Liu Bang), dynasty founder, and one of the major players in the Shiji (which in case you tuned in recently is an early history of China and is the subject of my dissertation). Emperor Gaozu lived in the third to second centuries BC. If he looks worried, well it only makes sense because he had a fight a long war in order to gain control of the empire and found his dynasty. At times he was hanging on by the skin of his teeth. Once, he was fleeing from his enemy in a carriage, trying to evade capture, but it looked like the carriage was going too slow to make it. So, he threw his wife and child out to reduce the weight and make better time. His rationale--well, he could always get another wife and child, but there was only one Liu Bang. Nice guy. Don't worry, his wife had a momentous revenge later on...

I got up early and left the house early so as to avoid being at home when WW called and risking having her invite herself in! I went to Café Paradiso, the American-style café across from the library. Colin and I spent delightful hours there during his visit, quietly working together, so now I have very good feelings about the place. WW was delayed in traffic. Poor lady, she has to drive all the way over from Chaoyang, and traffic in this city is nightmare. In a way it was good, though, because it allowed me to get a good morning's work in. I hadn't brought my computer, but was working on reading some of stuff! Slow progress, but reasonably interesting and productive. I'm starting to have some ideas…

WW arrived just before lunchtime. We had lunch in the cafeteria. One time when I do like being around someone bossy and decisive is when a decision has to be made about what to eat. WW like black rice porridge, so we had two bowls of that (it has lots of nuts and dates in it also), two portions of white rice, and one portion of eggplant. Not particularly proteinaceous, but tasty and filling. We talked politics. I tried to explain American anti-intellectualism, the conservative stand on Iraq, and changing political situation and possible outcomes…

Then we went to the library and I showed WW the databases. It is slowly dawning on me that she is less advanced than she pretends to be. I mean, of course she is a native speaker of Chinese, which is an advantage. But she doesn't really have a sense of scholarship, or what she really wants to do in that direction. She liked the databases, though--who wouldn't?

I found out something new about WW. She is in the army! I think that explains a lot. The army here seems to have a much higher status than it does in the US. WW is used to people being impressed and intimidated by her, and many of her annoying mannerisms make better sense in light of the fact that she must be uncomfortable and insecure as a "non-traditional student"--in a place where that isn't really all that common.

At this point, I asked her what she wanted to do or talk about. After all, she'd wanted to come talk. She got shy, so I obligingly pursued the matter until it became clear that what she really wanted was help with her English. Except that she was too terrified to speak English with me. She said she thinks and thinks about it, but never manages to say anything. Another good explanation for her weird manner at times--ah the hell of unfulfilled desires. As I know perfectly well, it's hard to speak to your classmates in their native language, no matter how passionately you want to practice it.

It's easy to be kind and compassionate to people you like. It's much harder, and also more meaningful really, to be kind to people who irritate you.

So I took pity on WW, led her back to Café Paradiso, looked at her little English reading comprehension textbook, queried her on her teachers' pedagogical method, and gently encouraged her until she managed to say one or two things. Pedagogical method: listen to the teacher "discourse upon" the text (in Chinese), memorize what it means, read the text out loud in English and answer questions (in Chinese) about the meaning of specific sections. Frankly, not very useful at all. I tried asking about some of the easier words--nope. They only learn the meanings of the hard words, and these by rote. I explained some of the easier words. I tried chatting with her bilingually, or talking in English while she translated what I said into Chinese (with difficulty). I tried getting her to say first what she wanted to say in Chinese, then slowly translate that into English. Generally, I just tried to get her used to the idea of using English.

I confess, I am not an especially good English teacher, but she seemed happy that at least she was finally trying to speak.

She has some very unattractive opinions. She complained how foreigners (except me) don't seem to have any interest in Chinese history, and so she doesn't have any interest in them. Also foreigners (except me) seem so lazy and don't work hard. I said that actually I could sympathize with this--I can--I work less here than I do at home. It's hard for foreigners living in China, I said. It's hard for you to understand. No, it doesn't have to do with the living conditions which are reasonably comparable to other cities (bathrooms aside…). I wanted to explain how wearing it is to be so totally conspicuous and so frequently stereotyped… but in the rudimentary English and broken Chinese we were using, it was pretty hard to get this across. I am not good at switching languages back and forth. Even my English goes to pot.

In the midst of all this, I was also dealing with the travel agency thing. I had called on the way to Café Paradiso using (this is key) the list of recent calls on my cell-phone to get their number. To my surprise, a different person answered the phone. Instead of the sullen guy, it was a very friendly and helpful sounding woman. She knew exactly what I was talking about though. The only thing that had surprised her was that I had already paid for the ticket. She said she would check into it and call me back.

Sometime in the middle of my conversation with WW, my teacher AL called me. I was a little surprised, but apparently the travel agency had explained to her what was going on. She explained that the travel agency had suddenly found a specially priced ticket that would be about a hundred dollars cheaper and they were looking into it; it would take a little extra time. Would that be all right? Sure, I said. As long as my teacher--who can communicate freely with them--is helping me, I don't see any need to be anxious.

After I hung up, though, I pondered. Then I checked the numbers. Then I was bemused and mildly mortified to find that instead of dialing the travel agency the first time, I had called my teacher instead. No wonder the woman had sounded so friendly (and in retrospect, so familiar!). When I thought I was talking to the travel agency, I was actually talking to my teacher! I spent a few hours being mortified, and then I started to see the really funny side of the whole business.

From now on, I am so going to store numbers properly according to name, though! That's definitely the lesson to be learned. That, and also that my teacher is more helpful and friendly than travel agencies, and I should call her first on purpose rather than by accident.

I talked to WW until after 5. You can say I was being saintly, but probably the more honest interpretation is that I--while putting on a saintly face--was enjoying being in a position of correcting and encouraging and reassuring the bossy lady who has been lording it over me for months. She has played the cultural superiority card pretty often, and perhaps for understandable reasons. But it's a two-way street sometimes. When she wants to learn about my culture, she has to admit that I'm the expert. Surely reluctance to do that has been part of her shyness!

I should add that she is a long way from having any hope of translating the Shiji into English just yet. She's still working on, "Which do you like better, coffee of tea?"

After all this stress, I had a fairly relaxing evening. I watched some TV--a recent Chinese drug bust, televised in full detail, of some people smuggling drugs from Pakistan--and then, on the English language channel, a discussion of Bush's recent speech about policy in Iraq. The striking thing was that they had got a couple of American professors, here in Beijing on fellowships, to discuss the political situation. Gosh, those guys were smart. They said what you always wish the US media would say but somehow never does. They were straightforward in their criticisms without being overtly partisan. They talked, they analyzed, the looked at both sides of the question, the discussed potential political fallout. But without any bullshit, because their time was limited and they clearly wanted to have their say. Not sure much of anyone here understood what they were saying (the host didn't really seem to?) but I certainly enjoyed it!