East is Relative

Guest author: Liu Fei

My friend and fellow teacher Laura wrote an email to her friends and family with the following commentary in it, and I asked her if I could repost it to my blog. I think it’s an extremely well-thought-out account of our time here in China, and it expressed a lot of things in ways I hadn’t thought of. Here’s Laura’s commentary:

Here’s the bad news first. You will always be on display. You can’t walk down the street or across your own campus without people pointing, staring, giggling, shouting hello at you, following you around the store when you walk in, etc. You will feel like you are performing in the classroom instead of teaching. You will not be taken very seriously by the students or other teachers. If you want to teach, you won’t have the skills to communicate what you need to get across unless you are fluent in Chinese. The students will talk through your class and worse. Many times, even the Chinese teacher in the classroom will not make them stop. You may find yourself trying to shout over them just to teach a simple lesson. In my case, when I had to start shouting, I just stopped teaching. The Chinese teacher in your classroom may not know enough English to get your ideas across or directions for a game or assignment. So you not only dumb down the lessons, you have to get super creative with ways of presenting that they will understand easily. Even if they are capable of more, you can’t get it to them. And in your off time, the students will want your time or be in your personal space. If you are living on campus, this is especially true. I have had them open my windows and pull the curtain back and start saying “Hello” into my apartment. I have been pimped out to Chinese teacher’s friends to teach their kids English. I have been left to fend for myself for a week at a time with no knowledge of the town, the language or a phone.

The good news is I lived through it just fine. For all of the frustrating, irritating, lonely, disgusted, confused moments, there are just as many that are interesting, new, intriguing, fun, different, fulfilling, and challenging to compete with them. You can go down the same street everyday, and then all of the sudden, one day, out of nowhere there is a vendor selling suckers that he is making right before your eyes into animal shapes. You can decide to take a shortcut home through an alley you’ve never seen before, and there is a whole world going on back there you never even imagined. Vendors, shops, neighborhoods and people all the same as the ones you have been seeing and yet, somehow a little different. That alley has the fish swimming in a wading pool out front and the shop owners cutting them up for you to take with you. It has a row of old men outside on stools bent over little tables playing what looks like checkers but with large wooden discs. You can wander one block away from the main street one day where they have erected a monument to the West called KFC and find a bustling old world style market place. And if you venture even further past the city limits, you can experience the mountains, wildlife, history, and beauty, some of it reminding you of home and some of it only what you have ever seen in coffee table books.

You don’t rely on the same instincts or talents that you did back home. You discover you have new ones. Much of your old self just won’t apply here. You develop, learn about yourself, and hopefully, grow. You don’t follow your same old routines, but you start to develop new ones with what you have around you. You don’t think about the same old stuff, because there is so much new stuff to understand every time you walk out your door. You don’t get bent out of shape about the little things that bothered you before. There are new bigger things to get worked up about…or to try and understand and not get too worked up about. You will not be in control of most of what is happening simply because you have to rely on others to speak for you. They may not say what you want or need to be said. They may have other ideas, and in that case, those ideas will be articulated because it is their language to use freely.

It’s ridiculous to think you will be completely prepared for this experience unless you have already done it before. There may even be fundamental philosophies you hold about your life that may need to change to adapt to this new existence. An example of that in my own case is that I have had to stop bringing 110% of myself to the job like I always tried to do back home. It’s enough to do a little and to see almost no result. This is not about productivity and efficiency. This is not to say, I don’t try to give my best in the classroom, because I do. But, when the result is sadly off the mark, it does not mean more hours at the drawing board to make sure it works next time. It involves trust that the three ring circus I call a classroom full of kids are fine whether I get them to understand the words in my language or not.

It’s difficult to explain how you may feel or what you may encounter. You may need to look at it like a marriage, that for better or worse, you will stay with it. With this commitment, you are free to have bad days, so you can get through to the next day which may just be the most fascinating day of your life so far.

The only concrete concepts I can leave you with are these:

1} be more flexible than Gumby

2} be more open-minded than Buddha

3} be more prepared than a Boy Scout whenever possible

4} be more improvising than MacGyver

5} be more ready to be “on” than a film star

6} be more independent than a sparrow

7} be friendlier than Miss Congeniality

With all that said, you can also get ready to experience the world, other people, and yourself in a new way. Be prepared to feel more alive than you have in years. This is no pleasure trip for the meek and uncommitted. This is a real opportunity to be immersed in a culture you won’t understand and take for granted. It’s a chance to uncover hidden truths about you. It’s a time to explore and feel adventurous. The challenge of the job alone would be enough to reshape you. But there is more than the job to challenge your mind, body and senses everyday. It’s overwhelming and exhilarating at the same time. Take in what you can and then step away and process. Then jump right back out there tomorrow and do the same thing, because if you were at home, none of this would be a reality for you. So join this reality while you have the moment in time and then take it all back with you later. The good and the bad, the beauty and the filth, the frustration and elation will all be yours to keep forever.
Signing off with no regrets,
Laura, (Liu Fei)

October 27, 2009