Thursday, April 21, 2011

The Girl Who Wanted Her Voice Heard

You might have heard that China doesn't allow people to express their opinions about the government publicly and doesn't allow freedom of speech.

This is all true.

One of my great disappointments in learning Mandarin was realizing no one was saying anything really worth overhearing. People won't express a contrary opinion publicly, so they don't say anything opinionated at all. Casual conversations flow about food, fashion and money and not much else.

Which is why it was so shocking when I was judging a Shanghai Education Press-sponsored, city-wide high school English speech competition, and one of the girls opened her speech in the crowded auditorium by saying, "Our hands built the buildings that fell during the earthquake; our hands made the milk that killed the babies." (Referring to the tens of thousands killed by shoddy building construction and the tainted milk scandal hushed up because of the Olympics.)

I was floored, and shocked, and nervous for her, all at the same time. People in China do not say such things. At least, not publicly. I glanced down the row of judges (I was the only foreign judge) and saw a line of non-responsive, impassive faces. Which meant they were shocked, too.

This was a girl who had to have known she would not win the competition saying such things. It couldn't be done. And she said them anyway. What will happen to this girl, and others like her, who despite being told repeatedly to silence their voices, want their voices heard? I don't know.

But I will never forget that girl.

I have often hoped that if I had any success as a Peace Corps teacher in China, it was in creating a space for my students where they knew they could say anything, any contrary or adverse opinion, with no fear.

_____

Not everyone wants their voice heard. For a long time, I did. I had a chance that girl doesn't have. Maybe for that reason alone, because I could, writing here has been of value.

Here's what I'll be doing in my future: I will love, and be loved, even more than I do and am today. I will reunite with treasured close friends and make new ones and see where life takes us. I will find the place I can settle down and feel at home. I will struggle, as we all inevitably do, and I will find joy. As Robert Frost said: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Chinese Beer Garden Aficionados (Video)

A big part of Chinese culture is sitting at night at a beer garden; this activity starts after dinner and often goes until the early morning hours. The beer gardens are located outside restaurants or sprung up on sidewalks next to food tables and carts. It is common for the sidewalks in my city to be lined with beer gardens.

Beer gardens aren't a weekend thing, they're an everyday activity. As I have mentioned here before, it takes so long to do anything in my part of China, there isn't an expectation to do more than 1 or 2 things per day. For the Chinese in my city, sitting at night at a beer garden with family or friends is a really important part of daily life. Chinese culture is structured around relationships; this is part of building them.

Most volunteers took to this custom quickly and easily. The video below is not only a good example of the atmosphere of these places (notice the blue stools we're sitting on), but also of the amount of free time we had on our hands every day; I mean, do you have this kind of conversation unless you have A LOT of free time?? Or as R. succinctly put it: "We did nothing but sit around and talk nonsense for two years! No wonder readjustment [to America] has been so difficult!"

This beer garden had a mug of swizzle sticks on the table; every time you ordered a round, they removed a swizzle stick for each drink. At the end of the night, they counted up the swizzle sticks for your bill. It was a great, low-tech way to keep track of drinks in a place where tabs don't exist.

(The movie they're talking about is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.)