Rumors Dispelled

My oldest students on our last day of class. Simmy and Nick are the 2 in black, Sarah is the girl standing front-center with stripes, and Tom is the tall boy in the far back.

My students have become so much more than students. They are some of my best friends in China, and I have only had the opportunity to teach them for 3 weeks. As touched upon in previous blogs, many of my students and I have very unique, special relationships—they tell me personal things that they would only share with a best friend, they are curious about me, about where I come from, about what I do now, and simply about my daily routines. Before and after class they eagerly and genuinely want to know about how my day is going, how my night was, and when can I make time to hang out with them? :)

As mentioned, last Friday I lost my phone. This week, my students asked if they could have my phone number/email address in order to hang out after class (they persistently ask to hang out, which I’ve always wanted to do, but have yet—with an exception to tomorrow!!!—to find the time). When I informed them that my phone was MIA their reaction was how I would have expected them to react if I informed them a relative passed away. They couldn’t imagine a worse thing happening to their foreign teacher, and have made it their mission, as a result, to take me shopping and haggle so that I can get a “better, more cheaper” phone. And that is exactly how I am spending my Saturday. :) At 2:00 tomorrow, Nick and Simmy, two students who I’ve become very close with, are meeting me and taking me to a part of Chengdu where they insist is the best shopping and then do a little bit of Chengdu-site-seeing. Afterwards, a bunch of my other students are going to meet up with us and go out for hotpot, a Sichuan dish that is extremely popular and renowned, but which I’ve yet to try.

Unfortunately, model school was wrapped up today. As a result, when I came to class yesterday and today I was adorned with amazing, authentic Chinese gifts! I am now the extremely proud possessor of an abundant amount of handmade and handwritten cards (in glorious English!), lots of Chinese snack foods, 2 beautiful Chinese jewelry boxes, an antique Chinese tea pot (gorgeous!), and (I still can’t believe this) two prints—one a replica of a famous Sichuan poet’s poem in calligraphy (it’s almost as tall as me), and the other an original painting by my student, Tom’s, grandfather, who is a famous Sichuan painter (when my Chinese language instructor saw these he gasped and flaunted, so I think they’re even more special than I am imagining them to be). These gifts, adorned by the tender words spoken by my students, definitely made me cry and made me feel so completely confident that China is where I’m needed to be at the moment. Before class yesterday, before anyone else came, Sarah, my 20 year old English major, came and presented her gift to me. She proceeded to tell me that she has never had a teacher like me, and that she couldn’t believe how confident all of her classmates are now. According to Sarah, in any English class she’s ever taken, when the teacher asks a question all the students look down because they’re too embarrassed to make a mistake in front of their peers and their teacher. In my class, however, students are eager to talk, they laugh when they make mistakes, and they approach me and even ask me questions. Sarah pointed out that, when school first started, none of them wanted to talk (so true!), but because I built their confidence they have all learned so much and their speaking has improved immensely. She then told me that, because of me, she now wants to be an English teacher, and that she will not teach in the traditional lecture/podium/teacher-centered style, she wants to teach like me and “make her students feel confident.” It was perhaps the most touching thing I could ever imagine to hear, especially because I have constantly been told “don’t expect to be appreciated in China, the students won’t thank you, they won’t think you’re actually teaching them, and they’ll see your foreign class as a joke.”

Before coming to China, I was told that the biggest challenge I would meet serving here was that “it is impossible to integrate” and that “the Chinese will be very friendly, but they don’t want to be your friend.” I would like to right now, without having even been here two months, dispel this rumor. Every Chinese person that I have met is more than friendly, they are actually eager to know and befriend me. They take the time to sincerely and eagerly ask questions about me, my culture, my family, my hometown, my feelings, my thoughts on China…They WANT to know. They beg me to see them outside of structured activities, and they even spend their entire Saturday spending money and time on me so that they can better befriend me and insure that I learn as much about their culture as possible. If that isn’t integrating, I don’t know what is. While it is true that, as a foreigner, I have earned the name “Hello” and cannot go anywhere without being hollered at by old, young, men, women alike (“waigoren!” “hello!”), I took the time to ask about this action which many foreigners find rude. When I said to my students “I’m so confused, are Chinese people making fun of me?” (this is what I was told by other foreigners), they gasped and couldn’t believe we thought it was rude behavior. All at once they shouted over one another in order to express that their textbooks say that is the proper way to greet a foreigner, and they are simply trying to be welcoming. “We thought we were supposed to say ‘hello’ and wave!” “Do you mean that in America people don’t wave and say ‘hello’? How do you greet each other?” It was definitely humbling and a good reminder to seek answers for yourself and not take the word of others.

Next rumor I’d like to dispel: “Chinese students only work out of textbooks so they aren’t creative at all.” While it is true that the Chinese education system works out of a textbook and is lecture based, to call Chinese students non-creative is sooooo ignorant! Man, they are the complete opposite! We do new creative activities every day and when I’m planning my lessons I try to think up with any possible angle the students could take their projects, and yet they never cease to surprise me by throwing out something completely brilliant and profound. Chinese students have creative ideas overflowing in their brains, they just need the chance to express them.

While I’m sure when I get a full-time classroom full of students who did not volunteer to be there I will have more insight to add/subtract to these rumors, this is where they stand for me at present time. I am so overwhelmingly proud of the Chinese youth right now that I needed to gush. They are so driven (after school Chinese students don’t have ANY free time or play time…from middle school onward they not only have school homework, their parents also assign them work, and they always have to study for some exam or another. Many students express their jealousy that American students get to play, travel, watch TV, play video games, etc. because here, in a country so overpopulated that job competition is amplified to a degree we cannot understand, their exam scores mean everything and their lives revolve around it), yet in spite of their drive they still are immeasurably goodhearted, kind people.