August 29, 2009

What follows is the response to a request that was made to me to share about my time in China.

China is a vast land, according to the National Geographic Magazine; it is geographically nearly the size of the continental United States. Just as the US has different cultures and ethnic groups, so too does China. There is the majority ethnic group called the Han, and then many minority groups many of whom are followers of the Buddhist or Muslim faiths.

As China moves rapidly into modernity some of her traditions and customs have been kept – and at the same time, much of the underpinnings of what made China China have been lost or swept away. I had students tell me that someday traditions would be found again because a country and a people cannot survive without their roots.

Many of my students were kind and intelligent. Many of them had the desire to help their foreign teachers adapt to their country and many of them had a deep longing to learn. In contrast, I had students who did not want to learn and who did not want to be in the English Program at the university where I taught.

I taught at a Pharmaceutical University. Most of the English Majors had desired to be in the Pharmaceutical Program but when their grades were not high enough they were put into the English Major Program. This affected the motivational levels of many of the students. Some students realized how lucky they were to be in college because in a country of 1.3 billion people, China does not have the ability to provide a university education for each person that desires one. Students told me that if they were not in college their choice for work would have been hard labor such as farming.

My favorite way to spend time in China, besides reading, was to have students over to my apartment. I lived an hour away from their campus by school bus and two hours by public bus so it took some sacrifice for them to get to me. I did not live where I taught. Some students wanted to spend time talking. Some wanted to go shopping with me. I would often take the student(s) out to lunch. When I had meals with my students I reflected on how different Chinese and American meals are. In China there are common dishes and in America we typically have our own individual plates and do not share with one another.

I took three Chinese friends with me to Shanghai the weekend that I flew home this June. We had dinner together at a Japanese restaurant (I thought that was quite an irony!). The three of them had a meal that they were able to share and I ordered myself a self-contained dish that sat alone on my plate.

I realized that this is how China is to me. I was able to get close but not to merge. I was able to observe but not necessarily to understand. I valued but did not adopt. For me the cultural differences remained unbridgeable, and yet there was room for love and respect. Perhaps in the end the greatest bridge of all IS love.