Monday, March 25, 2002

From: Meg Thomsen meginchina@yahoo.com
Subject: Chuntian daole

Hello Friends and Family,

On of the finest parts of being in Dengguan has been getting to know the students. There are a whole pack of them that hang out in my apartment quite frequently. They ask me questions about jobs, the Backstreet Boys, their boyfriends and girlfriends. It's strictly forbidden for Chinese college students to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Their parents think that they should devote their time to studying. Also, university life at the Huayuan (my school) is not conducive to romance. Students sleep eight in a dorm room, on four sets of bunk beds. No students of the opposite sex are allowed in the dormitory. Students rise at 6:20 to a blaring loudspeaker that plays patriotic marches and rouses them for their "morning exercises." They are in class all day. Their free time is in the afternoon, which is the only time that the students' water comes on, so they wait in a big line to wash their clothes and take showers. Of course, romance happens anyway. The boys sneak to the back of the girls' dormitory to shout messages through the bars in the window. They walk around the track in the dark, furtively holding hands. It's very sweet. And since Cosmo hasn't yet hit the newsstands of China, I'm the one to give them romantic advice, flawed as my own perspective may be.

Many students in China have English names. Some are bizarre (I have a female student who named herself "Flash Ghost", a boy named "Beyond", a girl named "Orange", a boy named "Evil"). I've given out over 700 English names thus far, and haven't duplicated a name yet! In a school where I have five students named Wang Wei, I think that it's important to give them unique English names, representing the diversity of America. I always try to make the name sound like their Chinese name. Unfortunately, a large number of Chinese names start with an "Sh" sound, so I've come up with a huge number of those names: Shavonne, Shania, Shannon, Sherry, Cheryl, Shawna, Shaniqua, Sheila, Sheena, Charlotte, you get the idea. And it makes for an interesting classroom. Only in my classroom are Malik and Egbert best friends. Only in my classroom do students stand up and say, "Teacher Tang, I would like a romantic name! Perhaps Jack, like in "Titanic". And only in a classroom in Sichuan does a male college student proudly stand up and say, "Teacher Tang, I have learned an English song, and I want to sing it to you," and then belt out a rendition of "Right Here Waiting for You" by Richard Marx. (This has actually happened in two separate instances, believe it or not!)

Becky Bjork came to China to visit me last week. She got here just in time for the arrival of spring. Somehow, in the last two weeks, Sichuan has turned from depressingly grey to being full of life. Pineapples are in season, the peach trees are in bloom and the youcai is flowering yellow over the entire countryside. The students issue invitations to fly kites, giant dancing phoenixes that fly over the rice paddies, over Sichuan. A kite is a magical thing. You stand at the end of one string, and see just how far away that kite can get before it flies into the clouds and disappears. Perhaps it's a little bit like joining the Peace Corps. It was great to see Becky, and the students really enjoyed her. It was China life meets Boston life, and it really made some things make sense. It can be hard to keep context here. Just like the kites.

After Becky left, I decided that it was time to add some color to my apartment. After all, if you must like in a cement apartment, it may as well be beautiful! I invited a whole bunch of other volunteers and some students over. Volunteers came, bearing precious gifts like granola and coffee. Julie even brought real live Guinness from Shanghai! Fortified with a large stick-stick hotpot meal and several bottles of Snow beer, we got to work. The students had questions. "Tang Mali, what would you like us to paint?" "Anything you want! It doesn't matter so much what it looks like as long as it's from you?" "We can paint anywhere? Do you want us to draw it first and show it to you?" "No, just go with your feeling!" They looked at each other, and then at me, incredulously. I don't think they've ever had a command like this one. Then Andy put on the Jimi Hendrix CD, and the walls started blooming. The students created bamboo forests. The volunteers painted yellow lychees. Flames, words, poems, quotes from both Robert Louis Stevenson and Homer Simpson appeared on the wall. I don't know who created what, but my apartment is all the more beautiful for the creativity.

Spring has arrived. It's a time for birth, for change. Enjoy it.

Meg