What is it that is hardest to forget about my
semester in Beijing, China? How can I just choose one thing among all the stuff
I experienced? Every little experience changes a person, either for better or
worse. But if I am to look at the Yuedu text “one little thing” written by Lu
Xun (鲁迅) it should be something one regrets
or that has influenced you the most! As a westerner you have your own ideals
and thoughts about how the world works and how you can best interact with
others, you have been taught how to address a stranger, you have been taught to
help people in need, it is your duty to stop and help people who has suffered
an accident, all this is obvious.
You also after 5 years studying at the
university might think you know the best way to study and learn new things,
just let me say one thing, forget all that you think you knew, as soon as you
leave that plane and your feet touch Chinese ground, you will need to adjust
and prepare yourself for the experience of you life, you will have to question
all the things that you up till now have taken for granted and you will have to
open yourself up to things that you will find shocking, disturbing, gross,
fabulous, wonderful and extraordinary.
When a classmate and I first arrived at our
hostel we were offered a glass of hot water, the sweat was pouring down our
bodies, it was very warm and all we wanted was a bottle of cold water, but what
we got was a hot cup of water. I looked at Kine and she understanding my
bewildered look asked the question I was asking in my mind: “are we supposed to
get a tea bag or….” “…Are
we just supposed to drink the hot water?” I retorted laughing. We didn’t get a
teabag so we just drank the hot tasteless water. Later on after having started
class our teacher reprimanded us: “you will have to stop drinking cold water,
it is bad for you!” We answered that we were so warm, so what else was there?
He told us that we were off course to drink
tea, the tea would make your body used to the warm weather and we would get
healthier, as he told us this he also told the whole class about sad little ol’
me who was so sunburned and if we hadn’t heard of it there was something called
sun screen that we should use, you could buy it at the local drug store and it
was cheap. I tried to tell him that unfortunately me skin was just naturally
red, and it got even redder when I was warm, but he did not believe me.
We learned more and more during classes as well
as on our free time (which there was very little of) about how to go about
addressing strangers; I thought my our janitor was a little rude, because every
time I went out he asked me where I was going, and when I got home he asked me
where I had been, what business was it of his where I had been? However, I
learned soon enough that this was just a polite way of addressing people who
you saw everyday but didn’t really have a relationship with, in response you
were just supposed to say “I am going out” or “I’ve been out”, the person
questioned you didn’t really want to know where I was going or where I had
been. But, I being brought up to be polite, had always tried to answer my
janitor the best way I could and told him about my day using my crappy Chinese,
I didn’t know that actually he didn’t care to know. I felt so silly…
The janitor asking me what I thought were
private questions was not the rudest thing a friend of mine and I experienced.
A friend of mine went to a masseuse parlor, and while she was lying there naked
and the masseuse was massaging her body, he told her bluntly that she was too
fat and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to lose some weight.I laughed so hard when
she told me this, even though she herself was in tears. I too am a big girl,
and when I was at the gym, training, our trainer came over to us, looking long
and hard, finally he said: “Are all you Norwegian girls this fat?” I answered with humor “No, it’s just the two
of us!” In China speaking bluntly about a persons figure is normal and not
considered rude, and I learned that I should not get offended when for example
the girl at the convenient store comments that I always buy noodles and that it
is bad for my health…
All this is small and insignificant by
comparison, there are things that even made me question my morals and believes.
Like the time when nobody stopped to help a girl that had been hit off her
moped, this you can read about in Kine’s essay, because I have written too much
already. There were several occasions when I encountered similar happenings,
and every time I was shocked to see that you had to fend for yourself. I think
this made me want to understand Chinese culture the most. I want to understand
why? I tried asking my teacher why, and he gave me some answers, but I am still
not satisfied. So I have decided to make this my main goal for this semester,
trying to understand how the Chinese people can be such a collective minded
people but still be such individualist.
These are things I have a hard time forgetting
among several others, and my stay in China, though short, has changed me and
made me question the things I take for granted, these are the kind of trips I
value the most.
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