Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Bodily Functions Are For Everyone, Even The Vaginal Ones

Most of you know Chinese culture views privacy differently than American culture, most easily explained as 'there isn't any expectation of privacy in Chinese culture.' I knew this affected personal space, family and friendly secrets, neighbors knowing what you're up to all the time, everyone always in your bidness, etc.  but I didn't realize it also extended to the body.

It does.

In my experience, bodily functions aren't considered private in China. Sneezing, burping, coughing, passing gas, peeing: all these things are viewed as natural functions of the body, so you don't have to say excuse me, you don't God Bless anyone, and you definitely don't feel embarrassed when they happen...if you're Chinese, that is! Many North Americans...it might take a while to get to that point. (I think this is also why babies and little kids pee everywhere and no one freaks out. Babies pee and poop...why NOT on the sidewalk?)

When you first get to China, you're probably going to get sick. I can't think of anyone in my group who didn't get sick, but we have doctors available 24/7 and they will ask you all kinds of questions about the quality and quantity of your poop and whether or not you see anything weird in the toilet bowl. After a while, you kind of get used to talking about these things. (Some more than others!)

I knew I had become pretty comfortable when I was handed a bag of medicine at our January training conference, just prior to my trip to Hainan Island. (Sidenote: before we went on vacation we had to submit an itinerary; the medical staff checked it to give us any special medications we might need before going to that area, like malarial drugs.) I was sitting with a bunch of my guy friends when I opened my bag, which included a box of Chinese brand vaginal yeast infection suppositories. I pulled it out to inspect more closely. "Um, why do I have this? Why did the medical office give me vaginal suppositories??" Now, usually the last thing a group of 20-something guys wants to discuss is vaginal suppositories, but they started firing questions at me:

"Let me see it...yup, that's what it is."
"Hmmm...DO you have a yeast infection?"
"Is there anything weird going on down there?"
"It includes a finger glove? Open it up, let's see it!"
"So THAT'S how you say 'vagina' in Mandarin!" (He was joking, he already knew!)

I wasn't embarrassed at all to be discussing what the medical office thought was possibly wrong with my vagina with a table full of guys I see on a regular basis. Thanks China, for giving me the gift of no shame.

(Endnote: my friend C., who is super awesome but lives in another province so I hardly ever got to see him, piped up with the correct answer: "Wait-- did they also give you malaria meds? You need the suppositories  in case the malaria medicine gives you a yeast infection." C. was the hero that day!)

It also made me laugh when a good friend went home and literally the first thing she said to me when she got back was, "I have diarrhea." Only in Peace Corps...

Monday, September 27, 2010

Adventures in Mind Control

I wrote about this briefly before, but I want to expound on it today.

As a university teacher in China, I was coming to the cultural game about 20 years late; my students all shared the same cultural background, and because culture just 'is' in China, not very often do they explain or expound upon cultural reasoning or traditions.

So sometimes things like this would happen: I devised a lesson plan for my English major students to help them feel more comfortable using the subjunctive tense, i.e. 'If I were...., I would....' and so on. I made the theme 'Superheroes', something I thought they would enjoy talking about, and asked them to choose what superpowers they would have and how they would use them for the benefit of humankind.

After giving them time to prepare, I asked a few students to share their answers with the class. "If I were a superhero, I would have the power to read minds so I knew if anyone was going to do something bad, and then I change their thought so they wouldn't do it." The second student I called on stood up: "If I were a superhero, I would read minds so I could stop people from doing bad things before they did them." Third student: "If I were a superhero, I would read minds so I could change their thoughts and stop all the bad things." And so on.

After about the 5th student, I asked them, "Did all of you choose the power to read minds and stop bad things before they happen?" 35 head nods. "No one wants to fly, or change into an animal, or become super strong?" 35 confused faces look back at me; how would these things help humanity, exactly?

The uniform answer my students gave surprised me, because I was thinking like an American: I was giving them a choice. And their answer was to take away choice. My students were not accustomed to choices, and for them, this was probably the hardest part of my teaching style to adapt to. It's possible that mind control was the only logical answer for them to give, but it's more likely one student had this idea and the others decided to co-opt it as a safe choice. There was no need for them to have different answers; it's American teachers who want diversity, not our Chinese students.

My students have not been raised to make choices. Asking them to form groups of their own choosing met with blank stares, until I taught them how to do it. Asking them to sign up for a time to take their oral final exam prompted the question "Why don't you just tell us in what order to take it, like our other teachers?" (My answer: "Because I'm an American teacher and we like to give choices.")

I often felt that this issue of choice was the biggest dividing line between me and my students: I asked them to do it, knowing they'd dislike it, and they liked me as a teacher despite my insistence on occasionally asking them to make choices. But my second year, I changed the theme from Superheroes to something else.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Awkward Questions

When we agreed to be Peace Corps volunteers in China, we also agreed to never ever, ever, never, ever discuss the ‘3 T’s’ with any Chinese Nationals: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square. Those topics were pretty easy to avoid; I think the entire time I was in China, people only asked me about them 3 or 4 times. And it is fairly easy to deflect conversations in China; if you change the subject, they accept that means you don’t want to talk about it. But there were other questions asked that weren’t necessarily verboten, but for me, awkward to answer. Such as:

1. “What do you do in America to spot the counterfeit money?” There is a problem with counterfeit money floating about in China. It’s quite common to be passed fake money, to the extent that if you get fake money from an ATM, the bank is not responsible for reimbursing you. (The safest way to get money is from a teller, because they check it before they hand it to you.) So you learn to inspect the paper on everything higher than a five, and if you do get fake money, you can make a scene or decline it or whatever. Or try to pass it to someone else. So when the business teachers asked me how we spot fake U.S. money, it felt awkward to have to admit we don’t really have the same size problem. One of them said,"But how? Your money is easier to counterfeit than ours!” Um, I don’t know. We just don’t really have to worry about it. I mean, I know there is counterfeit money, but not in daily rotation like there is in China. I still don’t really have a good answer for that.

2. “Why do Americans just say ‘Korea’ when they really mean ‘South Korea?” My answer: it’s tradition to just say ‘Korea.’ Follow up question, “What if you want to talk about North Korea?” Answer in my head I didn’t say out loud, "’Most Americans don’t talk about North Korea.” In China, there is South Korean and North Korean. In America, there is usually Korean and North Korean. My students picked up on this. They are smart kids.

3. “Do you have to have a visa to go to Hong Kong?” No, American citizens don’t need a visa to go to Hong Kong. “Oh, in China we have to have a visa to go to Hong Kong.” I never really said anything after that, just something lame like, “Oh.” But inside I was cringing.

All of these questions were asked out of sincere curiosity; it’s just that the answers made me feel a bit awkward. Luckily, they were usually short conversations.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Autumn Can Change Your Life

Caution: this is kind of a girly post.

For those who don't know me personally, I am half Chilean, half American. I inherited my mom's darker Chilean coloring and my dad's American features. I'm a mutt! And all my life people (salespersons, friends, etc.) have been telling me my coloring is Winter, because I have dark hair and dark eyes. Winters have pink undertones in their skin and look great in lots of white, black, navy blue, cherry reds, purples, etc... And gray. I LOVE gray. My mom would always tell me I looked like I was constantly dressing for a funeral because I wore so much black, gray, and white. But I noticed in lots of pictures, I looked kinda terrible. I thought I just really didn't take good pictures.

So one day I'm in China innocently looking something up on the internet and I read that many Latina and Asian women are not Winter, they are Autumn: dark hair and eyes but with gold undertones to their skin, not pink, and that a quick way to check if you are Winter or Autumn is too look at the veins in your arms and legs: are they blue or greenish in hue? I checked: totally green! I've been an Autumn all along! So really, I should be wearing browns, golds, brickish reds, and warm colors, not cool. Changed my life, y'all. I started replacing all my blacks with browns, whites with creams, and cherry reds for warmer hues. It really did change the tone and reflection of my skin. I looked much healthier and less pallid. The gray is really hard to stop wearing, though. I still love it.

Two related stories:

1. I emailed my mom and said, "Guess what? I'm an Autumn, blah blah blah" and explained to her the whole theory. My mom is very fashionable from her days as a singer, so she likes this topic. I got back an email in all caps that simply said, "I TOLD YOU NOT TO WEAR SO MUCH BLACK." Touché mom, touché.

2. T. and I were sitting talking when a Chinese girl told him out of the blue, "You look like a Brazilian soccer player, but that shirt is wrong for you." He looked at me and I said, "Yeah... she's right. Let me see your arm." Blue veins! He was wearing green, an Autumn color, and he is definitely a Winter. I had a chance to color code a few of my American friends in China; I know they are all SO grateful for my help. (I'm pretty sure things like this are the things they tolerate about me.) I also share this example because I love how in Chinese culture, this was totally normal for her to say. I don't know if I'd ever tell someone I didn't know well and wasn't being paid to help that their shirt color was all wrong for them. But in China, it's totally fine to do that. Your business is my business, mi amour.

In China most people are Autumns, and I noticed that the clothing for sale reflected that: lots of yellow and green and brown and warmer colors. And I've noticed here in America, it's all white, black, blue and red. It's harder for me to find those warmer colors here. Just an observation.

Check your veins! It might change your life. (Spring is the fairer version of Autumn, Summer is the fairer version of Winter.)

Monday, September 13, 2010

It's Probably A Good Thing I Don't Have Telepathy

I caught the flu, so I've had lots of time to sleep/rest/read. What I hate most about being sick is how boring it is! And how I lack the motivation to do anything about that! (I'm actually a little relieved it's the flu, because initially I thought it was food poisoning, and I was sad that my Chinese-germ immunization to food illness was over. But yay, it's just the flu!)

Another weird consequence of reverse culture shock I didn't anticipate: being in a crowd of people where everyone speaks a language I recognize freaks me out. In China, because I lived in a city where most people spoke the local dialect instead of Mandarin, I still didn't understand most of what was going on around me. (This is not true of all volunteers; many of them are much, much smarter than I am.) I got very used to tuning out what I could not understand. So even though I was surrounded at close range by literally millions of people, I existed in this little mind bubble where I didn't really have to pay attention to what was going on around me.

But my first week back in America, when I went to my family reunion, I felt like I had been placed in a big amplifier-- I understood EVERYTHING! And I couldn't get my brain to shut off these random snatches of conversation I was hearing from all directions. It was very confusing, and overwhelming. For my first few weeks, I have had to retreat away from this kind of situation, because it is just too much for my senses to take.

Remember the part in X-Men where Jean Grey puts on Dr. X's headset and hears everything like he does and it's too much for her? Yeah, it was like that. It's slowly getting better, but I dread going places where there are more than a handful of people I can hear at any one time. It has made me much more sympathetic to people with autism, because I imagine this is a little taste of what their life is like everyday. And it's really difficult.

I know a few of my readers speak multiple languages, and I am curious if any of you ever experienced the phenomenon of understanding way too much. No one tells you these things before you come home.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Chengdu Airport Adventures: This Is How You Make Friends!

My last day in China, I was flying out of the Chengdu International Airport, the first flight of the day to Shanghai. It was delayed (I'm pretty sure the pilot was still eating breakfast or something), so I was caught in a big cattle call of a waiting area. Every so often an employee would get up and yell into a megaphone about one of the 10 or so departing (late!) flights from that gate.

Chaos in China? I know, shocker!

So I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, and after about five minutes went by, I realized I was resting tmy arm and hand holding my boarding pass on the back of the guy standing in front of me. Like, my forearm and hand were full-on laying all over him. And it took me five minutes to notice I was doing this. And he never even turned around. And today this guy at the gas station was standing a full 8 feet behind the person in front of him in line, and it just annoyed me to no end. WHO NEEDS 8 FEET? It took all of my restraint not to cut in front of him in line and pretend I didn't realize what I was doing.

The other memorable thing that happened at the airport that last morning in Chengdu was when a French couple came up next to me in the crowd, but had missed what the megaphone guy said. I didn't want to be presumptuous that they spoke English, so I started repeating the announcement to them in Mandarin. The guy looked at me for a second and then said, "Excuse me, but do you speak English?" Haha, it was one of those cultural moments I miss.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

That One Thing, And You Just Knew

I was going to write about coming back to an English speaking country and how sensory overwhelming it is to be in a group or crowd of people and understand everything that is being said, but it will have to wait for another day. Instead:

Did you ever date someone, casually or otherwise, and they did that one thing that just made you know for certain: this isn’t going to work out? And even if you ignored your gut for a while and tried, you could still always pinpoint that moment you knew? Yeah, here are a few of mine:

- The time we went through the drive-through at a custard shop and you didn’t ask me if I wanted anything. Who does that?? We got back to my house and while you ate the custard, I told you I was sort of done with you. You looked surprised. And never offered me any custard.

-The time you told me you had always dreamt of going to a Phil Collins concert. Really? Phil Collins is your dream concert? So never going to work out. (Apologies to PC fans, but that just ain’t my style.)

-The time you told me “How can someone so smart be so flighty?” And refused to go swimming with me in the middle of the night because the pool was closed. I broke in with another guy while you stayed home and studied. And those times you made me do math equations you wrote out during the college freshman world history class we had together. It sucked when you found out I scored higher than you on college entrance exams, didn’t it?

-The time you just flat out ignored the email and/or text I sent you. No one ignores someone they adore. NO ONE.

It used to be I kept trying, even after I knew, sometimes for years. The beauty of the wisdom of age is: even though it might hurt, it’s good to know I can move on and not waste my precious time on you one second longer than necessary. Those blinders fall off so much faster now. Thank goodness.

So, what were your moments??

Friday, September 3, 2010

Boy Children, Advertisements, and a Funny Song Story

1. My Mandarin teacher is from Taiwan, which means I am learning some of the cultural differences of how Mandarin is spoken on the Mainland vs. Taiwan. For example, where I lived, every baby was called ‘erzi’ (boy child) regardless of gender. In fact, when I tried to use the gender neutral ‘haizi’, I was corrected to just use erzi. So yesterday in class I had to use the word ‘child’ and I said ‘erzi’ as I had been taught. My teacher said, “No, that means boy, use ‘haizi.’” I said, “That’s interesting. I was corrected to say erzi where I lived.” My teacher, knowing I lived on the Mainland: “Yeah…I don’t like that.” It was a private, friendly exchange between me and my teacher, but it was one example of the way in which language can reflect culture. (I don’t need to go into details, do I?)

2. I’ve been watching a lot of rerun tv (Seinfeld: still funny!), and hence watching a lot of advertisements, something new again to me. And I’ve realized over the past two years that if I really need something, I’ll find it. Advertisements aren’t really necessary. Somehow, every product I actually NEED occurs to me all on my own. Amazing!

3. Since a few of you said you liked the song tradition, here is another little example of it, as well as an example of the cultural conflict that sometimes happened to us.

When T., V. and others did their summer teaching project in a little city a couple of hours away, I went to visit. When I was leaving to come back home, I decided to walk to the tiny long distance bus station instead of taking a taxi because it was only a mile or two away. The teachers they were training were treating them to dinner that night, but T. skipped the beginning of dinner to walk me to the bus station, and a couple of the teachers came with us to make sure we found it okay. We got there and my bus was leaving in ten minutes, so we started saying goodbye and the teachers were APPALLED that he was going to leave before my bus left the station. They kept saying, “Stay with her! Stay with her!” And of course I’m saying,”No, go to the dinner! We’re leaving in ten minutes, it’s no big deal!” We tried to explain it was no big deal for him to leave, but oh, these ladies were not having it. We finally convinced them, but when he got to the door, he turned back around and mouthed to me,”Are we okay?? I don’t know what to do here!”” I mouthed back, “Yes! Yes! GO! It’s fine!” It was sometimes really easy for us to get caught between what was culturally expected vs. what was comfortable for us.

The funny thing was, when they came back from the teaching project, some teachers sent a little Buddhist necklace as a gift for me, which was incredibly thoughtful and generous and kind and so indicative of how the Chinese are. But I also wondered if they did it as a sort of consolation, because in their eyes I didn’t get songed properly and was instead ‘deserted’ at the bus station. So now when I wear the necklace, it’s a cute reminder of that cultural moment in the bus station.