Laughing and Smiling

I think I get through China based on my ability to laugh and smile. I've been doing a lot of both lately, and having an absolute blast doing so. Here are some examples:

Four days of the week I have a 50 minute class called a one on two class. The idea (the way it was explained to me) is that there is one teacher and two students and we are supposed to go through basic material and the teacher helps the students identify basic problems. After two days I realized that those basic problems are pronunciation and tones. Chinese has 4 tones; I learn the tones when I learn the word but as I use it more I forget what tone its supposed to be. After years of being able to communicate just fine in China, I came to the lazy conclusion that tones do not matter. After the first day of this one on two class, I thought that the class was going to lead to my downfall. I didn't really care about tones, nor did I care for the strict relentless way the teacher was teaching the class. Well, after the first two classes I think they were able to judge what levels students are at and they switched us around. I still have the same teacher but a new classmate. Si Mabing is my new classmate and there is something about the way he can take the teacher less seriously while still respecting her that just completely lightens the tone (no pun intended) of the class. When one of us says a word incorrectly, the teacher corrects (its not like this, its like this) us and I just can't look at Si Mabing because I know I will laugh. The tones sound the same to both of us. Sometimes I just slip and end up laughing while I am supposed to be pronunciating a word. In any case, the class is much more bearable now and I am enjoying working on my tone pronunciation.

After the language pledge began on Sunday, we cannot speak any English, not even a word to get a point across. All of us have good Chinese to get around, but there are certain words some people know and others don't. In the dorms we communicate fairly well, but are on less strict behavior guidelines than in the classroom (in theory). So sometimes I walk out of my room and find people in the hall playing a form of charades in Chinese. And I just have to laugh. The thing that's great about being here with a group of people who are all committed to improving our Chinese is our ability to have fun while doing so.

Every place I go in China, I manage to make friends with local restaurant owners. I still have fond memories of my noodle lady back in Luzhou (Sichuan) who would began making me special fat noodles as soon as she saw me on the street heading to her stall. So one of the first days I got to Harbin I went to a jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant with a group for lunch. The owner was nice to us and the food was good and cheap so we went back. I still didn't say much to her but I smiled at her and was polite. I went by myself one night and she sat down and talked with me and offered to take me to her hometown in the countryside where they grow rice. I didn't have to do much, just smile and come back to her place and I've made a friend who can take me to her hometown.

Today all of the students and our roomates in this program went to play (direct translation) at a local tourist spot in Harbin, Sushine Island (appropriate I suppose for the summer solstice). It was a nice park to walk around in for a few hours and get to know our roomates better. Toward the end of the afternoon, we entered an area of the park where there are squirrels that come up to people. Having seen the massive squirrels in Colorado that are not too afraid of people, I wasn't that impressed by the idea but my roomate was excited so we went. Well, there was a sign outside with instructions on how to behave. I know its a pretty general thing that people who go to China take pictures of signs with poorly translated English. I've never really been one to do that, but I had to do it for this one because as I read of it, I kept laughing. Perhaps part of the fun of it was that I was with two other Americans and our three Chinese roomates and we had been speaking in Chinese all day. There was something about seeing this sign and reading it with other Americans that allowed us to laugh and share a moment of understanding. After a week of communicating in another language there was something that reading this sign together could do that made me laugh and smile for the rest of the day. I hope you can read it in that context and laugh with me.


[I hope its readable-I tried to make it as big as I could and had to cut the Chinese out].