June 21, 2007

I think yesterday might have been the most glaring example of culture shock I’ve encountered so far. On Wednesdays we have “interactions with Chinese students” – so we went over to the main university building, and everyone mingled in the front entrance hall. It was a bit weird, because there were no activities, but you had all these people standing around – so in the US, we would have at least had drinks and snacks around to hold, but everyone was standing up and talking. A bit awkward, from our point of view. Americans always need a distraction I suppose.

I tried to say some things in Chinese, but my tones are so all over the damn place that it’s hard for them to understand me, because I’m not pronouncing it right in the first place. I still like Chinese a lot, but it’s such a hard language. I keep wanting to say it’s harder than English, but then I’ve never had to learn the mechanics of it without already speaking it.

Anyway.

I saw Lisa again from the other night. She is not as shy as some of the other Chinese girls, and it helps that her English is excellent – so we talked about the World Cup. The other girls are nice, but they are so different than American girls. Most of them always approach in pairs or groups – I think the girls who are confident enough to introduce themselves without an entourage are so cool, it’s nice to see bold girls. I realize I’m being very American about this, but I can’t help it! One of the girls asked me after the boys came over and started talking about beer if I had ever gotten drunk. But she said it the way you ask if some knows what “s-e-x” is in third grade. I mean, how do you answer that? I would have been the perfect opportunity for some dry wit (“only everyday after my teachers make me cry”) but I had already tried to explain the concept of sarcasm to them, which was beyond comprehension. I’ve come to the conclusion that, at least for English, you cannot fully appreciate it as a language until you understand the concept of sarcasm. I’m not sure about other languages, but without sarcasm, you could barely have American humor and British humor would cease to exist. But I suppose sarcasm flies in the face of “saving face”, so I guess I can understand why sarcasm is hard to grasp, let along to recognize sarcasm in the first place.

Anyway, I tried to say something very delicate about getting drunk.

Oh, and the boys. Whoa. What was quite shocking was how utterly shy the boys were, in general. They would hang back, kind of giggle, and group up the way the girls would. They would approach, and then get shy and run away. What?! Kellie and I were trying to figure out how 21 year old guys this shy came from such a patriarchal society. I remarked to someone one of the less shy Chinese guys how shy the others seemed, and he said they thought it was because I was pretty. That’s another thing about the Chinese people we’ve met so far – they’re very quick to say, “He is so handsome, you are so beautiful”. In the States, we’re used to saying that stuff after we’ve known each other for a while, not soon after making acquaintance.