Interview Meme

This one has been going around, and it is my favorite meme so far, hands down. A big thank-you to Repressed Librarian for taking the time to think up these interesting and thought-provoking questions! I'm sure I wouldn't be as good at coming up with questions as she is, but if you want me to try to do so for you, let me know and I will.

Is there any aspect of American popular culture that you miss? If so, what?
I have spent a long time pondering this one, as it's actually the hardest of the five. Even in the States, I am a person very much out of step with popular culture, so being here doesn't change much on this front. And on the other hand, there is a lot of American popular culture enthusiastically imported to big Chinese cities like Beijing, so that recently one my Chinese friends told me she has been watching the American TV shows "Prison Break, Mr. Monk, Lost, and Desperate Women", and what did I think of them? I had to admit that I hadn't seen a single episode of any of them.

So after thinking about this question for several days, I guess I have to say that the only aspect of American popular culture I really have missed badly is the holidays. Even things you might consider the cheesiest, most irritating, stupid, boring and cliche ways of celebrating holidays--I still miss them. There are holidays here of course, but they are different holidays and I feel very out of step with them. I didn't carve a pumpkin on Halloween, or have turkey with my family on Thanksgiving. I didn't have Christmas lights or eat heart-shaped candy on Valentine's day. I think I've said this before on my blog, but, it's easy to be cynical about holidays when everyone around you is celebrating them. When no one is, by some contrarian principle, you start to long for all the stuff you made fun of before.

If you could acquire a skill or ability that you do not currently have, what would it be?
Just one? How do I choose!? I'd love to be able to fly (without the aid of mechanical devices or hallucinogens). Beaming myself instantly from one place to another would be less fun but also okay. Being able to read people's minds would be good too, but only if I could choose when I wanted to and when I didn't.

Or did you mean a skill or ability that is actually possible for humanity as we know it?

On the most pragmatic level right now, I would love to be able to read boring/difficult stuff fast and well. I realize that I read everything as if it were a primary text, very painstakingly. But when the thing is too boring, I just go to sleep. Some books are made to be speed-read, but it's just not a skill I have. When I skim things, I don't get anything out of them. Relatedly, I really wish I had the ability to keep myself from procrastinating, or from having stress-related bouts of semi-narcolepsy.

What inspires you?
The promise of orderliness: charts, routines, flash-cards, quantitative measures of qualitative things, brand new office supplies. Actual orderliness would probably be stultifying, but the idea of orderliness brings out the best and most diligent in me.

Also, on a different level, historical fiction. I especially like medieval and early modern Europe as a setting. My childhood fascination with historical fiction is probably reflected in my dissertation topic, which involves the way people rethink and retell the early history of their culture.


What do you think is the most valuable lesson you have learned from your time in China so far?
Learning to rely on people I don't know very well, and to ask favors. In my ordinary life back in the States, I always tried either to rely only on myself, or on one or two people who I know very well and trust very much (really just Pocket of Bolts and people in my immediate family). That's simply not an option here. One needs all kinds of help from all kinds of people. I generally hate to ask favors--to the point of it being an obsession to avoid doing it. But here, I have gradually been forced to get comfortable with it, and even not to mind.

People here, I think, tend to see giving and receiving favors as part of a larger system of interpersonal connections. You give them and receive them almost gratuitously, just in order to strengthen the connections in any way you can. I had heard about this before I came and felt a horrible dread about having to operate in a system like this. But now that I am doing so, it's really not nearly as bad as I had feared. And I think that when I get back I will be less paralyzingly reluctant to ask for favors there too.

Have you ever played any sports for fun (not just because you were required to in gym class)?
The interesting part of this question, the part that makes it difficult to answer, is the "for fun." In middle school and my first year of high school I did track and cross-country, but in retrospect I'm not sure I did it for fun. I think I did it out of stubbornness, or desire to prove something, or wanting to be good at it, or wanting to be thinner, or some tangle of all those things together. I stopped after getting mono one spring and being too wiped out to do any running. Later in high school I did Taekwondo, which was fun but not really a sport. In college I tried one season on the sailing team, but I was too heavy and clumsy. That was fun, though, even if I was not AT ALL comfortable with the social set and never got to go to any regattas. Sailing at an Ivy League school is like a rich person popularity contest, and I didn't fit at all. It would have been forgiven if I had been fantastically skilled, but I wasn't. So I didn't try to keep on with it. In graduate school, I did various martial arts (judo, aikido) and ballroom dancing, also not exactly sports, but at least physical.

Oh, and at summer language school I played on the soccer team, two different summers. Soccer is really really fun! I love playing defense especially. However, it also makes me feel very disappointed with my body, which is slowing down and getting creaky, especially compared to all the healthy, fit college boys I had to compete with. And since I never played soccer as a youngster, my skill level is pretty low. Still, soccer has been by far my favorite sport of all the ones I've tried for fun.