On Immigration and Double Standards

The Statue of Liberty. Image source.

"6 Years Later": A blog series reflecting on the fact that I, a white American, moved to China and have been living here for the past 6 years

Part 1: I Didn't Know I Had a Culture Until I Lost It
Part 2: On Immigration and Double Standards
Part 3: Because of an Idea
Part 4: Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China

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I always heard Americans say this about immigrants: "If you're in this country, you need to speak the language." And I agreed with it.

And then I prepared for my short-term mission trip to China. I tried to learn as many Chinese words as I could. I was quite worried about "what if someone talks to me and I can't understand them?" Because I believed "If you're in this country, you need to speak the language." I reassured myself that I wouldn't be traveling in China alone; I would always have a Chinese-speaking friend with me to explain to strangers that I didn't speak Chinese.

Because, I thought that would be something strangers needed explained. The idea of meeting someone who's "in the country" but can't "speak the language" just felt so unbelievable to me. Like it would be something astonishing and ridiculous to be walking along in China and meet a white person who can't understand Chinese.

And now that I've lived in China for 6 years, I've met A LOT of white people who live here but can't speak Chinese. A lot of white people who have a "*shrug* why bother?" attitude toward learning Chinese, who don't feel weird at all about telling people "I don't understand Chinese" and attempting to communicate with strangers in English instead.

And there have been so many times that some stranger talks to me in English. I used to get angry about people assuming I don't understand Chinese- I do! I've worked hard on this! But then I met all these clueless white people, and I understood why Chinese strangers often speak English to me. Because most white people in China actually can't speak Chinese. So it doesn't bother me any more if a cashier says "for here or take away?" Whatever, I'll answer in English. But if we're going to have a long complicated conversation then I'll let them know I can speak Chinese.

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When I was in college [which was in the US], sometimes there would be a group of international students talking to each other in their own language, and the American students would say "Why don't they speak English? They CAN speak English, so they should."

And then I moved to China, and I thought because I CAN speak Chinese, I should, with everyone, all the time. I remember very early on, I was meeting some American guy at a Starbucks in China, and when I called him on the phone to ask if he had arrived yet, I asked in Chinese. I didn't even check beforehand to see if he could understand Chinese or not- I just reasoned that he lives in China long-term so he should be able to speak Chinese. And even though we are both white American English speakers, I thought that since we are in China, I should talk to him in Chinese.

At Starbucks, he talked to the cashier in English to order his drink, and that confused me.

I was working as an English teacher, and I felt like of course at my job everyone should speak English, because this is an English school, but in public in China everyone should speak Chinese. I did not at all try to seek out other international people and make friends- I thought, that would be pointless. I would just be speaking English to them, and I didn't come all the way to the other side of the world so I could speak English. For the first couple years I lived in China, I purposely avoided places and events where I could meet a bunch of international people speaking English.

I thought that the "correct" way for me to live in China was to speak Chinese to everyone. Because, as all the Americans always said about immigrants in the US, "you're in this country, you should speak the language."

There was even a period of time when I was going to therapy, and my therapist could speak both English and Chinese, and I felt bad about the fact that I always talked to him in English. Immigrants aren't supposed to do that, I thought. It's only because I'm not good enough at Chinese that I'm stuck here talking to my doctor (privately! confidentially! no Chinese people are even hearing this!) in English. I don't know enough Chinese vocabulary to talk about emotions and abstract thoughts in nuanced detail. And I thought that was a less-than-ideal situation and I should change.

Anyway, all these years later, I do understand why those international students in the US didn't "just speak English" even though "they can." Yes, they could, but it's easier to speak their native language. It's always easier. And I couldn't understand that before- I thought it was binary, you either "know English" or you don't. But now, I'm fluent in Chinese but it's just easier to speak English. For me it'll always be easier to speak English.

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My high school health teacher [in the US], Mr. B, liked to ask "bonus" questions whenever we took a quiz. I now see that they were questions about American culture, but at the time I didn't really understand that I, a white American, had a culture.

I was always astonished by how "easy" the questions were. If there was, say, a question about the game Monopoly, the answer would be "Monopoly"- you just had to know the game Monopoly existed, and you would get it right. It wasn't anything more complicated than that. All the questions were like that- very basic-level trivia about classic American games, movies, etc. Mr. B seemed to just be making up questions on the spot for his own amusement after we finished the health quizzes. Every quiz would have 1 or 2 of these "bonus questions."

There was one student in my health class who was an immigrant from Africa, let's call him Ryan. He never got any of the bonus questions right, and I didn't understand. I didn't realize they were "American culture" questions. I had no awareness of the fact that I had a culture, so the only way I could label them was "easy" and "obvious." They weren't things we learned in school, they were things that everyone just knows, right? So "easy" and "obvious" that we don't need to learn them. And so I was always astonished when some of my classmates didn't know the answers.

It wasn't until I had lived in China for 6 years that I thought about Mr. B's questions again and realized they weren't "easy" and "obvious" questions; they were "American culture" questions. (And they weren't really fair to Ryan, were they?)

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I met a lot of international students when I was in college [in the US], and I was extremely impressed. They left their own country and learned to live in a whole new culture and speak a whole foreign language (English). Wow, what a huge challenge! People who do that are amazing! And I wanted to be like them.

I wanted to move to China, just like I had seen students from China come to the US. I wanted to learn how to live my life in China, adapting to the culture and all the little daily-life things, just like they had to learn how to live in the US. I wanted to get an engineering job in China, just like all the Chinese engineers who come and work in the US.

So... I did.

I did. I learned Mandarin Chinese- speaking, listening, reading, and writing. I initially came to China as an English teacher, but later changed to an engineering job at a Chinese company, just as I planned. I did it.

And after I did it, I realized... people don't really do that. I've met a lot of international people in Shanghai, and only a few are working in, like, "normal" jobs that a Chinese person can do. Most of them are working in something related to teaching- teaching English to Chinese people, teaching normal school subjects (in English) at an international school, offering training programs for business skills (in English with a Chinese translator).

You guys, I went on Chinese job search websites, read job descriptions in Chinese, went to interviews for engineering jobs and talked about robots and algorithms and software in Chinese during those interviews.

Of course I did. It never would have occurred to me that, as a white American, it doesn't make sense for me to search for jobs in this way. I live here, I should use the same system as Chinese people do. Right?

And on a few occasions I got job offers. And that's how I got my job.

At some point I realized that those companies were also interested in my English skills and ability to communicate with international customers. It wasn't just about my engineering ability, the way it would be for Chinese job applicants. I tried to ignore that reality though. I didn't want to be treated differently.

Lots of Chinese engineers come to the US and work there. I wanted to do the same thing, but in the other direction. I've now realized that there are economic, political, and cultural reasons why it's so common to see this happen in one direction but not the other. But back then, I had no idea. It seemed so simple- I met a lot of Chinese international students in the US, I admired them, and I just wanted to do the same thing.

If I had known back then about the reasons this happens in one direction but not the other, that what I've done is so rare that I don't think I know any other international people in China who have done the same thing (I know international people who speak Chinese and use Chinese a lot in their jobs, but still at international companies where mostly they speak English at work) ... if I had known, would I still have done it?

I'm successful, and I'm proud of that. Maybe it's good I didn't know how unusual this was, because it might have made me too discouraged to try. Or maybe the "economic reasons" that this happens in one direction but not the other are important things I should have taken into account, and I should have just gotten an engineering job in the US.

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The first time I got sick in China, I went to a Chinese hospital. (Note: In China the doctors all work at hospitals; you have your normal doctor's appointment at a hospital. It's not like in the US where you only go to a hospital for some VERY SERIOUS problem.) I knew some of the other international teachers at my job talked about going to an international hospital, finding a doctor that speaks English, etc. But I thought... Well I thought that sounded sort of racist. It sounded like "yeah, sure, Chinese people can go to Chinese hospitals but I'm TOO GOOD for that, I'm more special than them so I need to get more special health care."

I thought, I can speak Chinese, so I can go to a Chinese doctor, no problem. I couldn't imagine there would be any problem, since I'm able to speak the language. What other problem could there possibly be? Yeah sure they do some things differently, and maybe in some ways the quality of the health care might not be as good as an international hospital, but if it's good enough for Chinese people then it's good enough for me. To believe otherwise would be racist. Right?

So I went to Chinese hospitals, had bad experiences a bunch of times, went to international hospitals where everything went much better, and then decided I'm not doing Chinese hospitals any more. Nope. I'm done. Only international health care for me.

I couldn't comprehend why things had gone so badly at Chinese hospitals. I thought in terms of just one dimension- in terms of medical expertise being better or worse. Beyond that, I thought the only differences would be some superficial things like language and some organizational or administrative procedures, things that weren't really a big deal.

I thought that when I, a white American who speaks Chinese, walk into a Chinese hospital, it's the same as when a Chinese person walks into a Chinese hospital. And the international people who wanted to find an international hospital were bigoted because they didn't want to be "the same" as Chinese people; they felt they were superior.

I was wrong.

See, it's not the same, because Chinese people have something I don't have: knowledge and experience with how Chinese hospitals work. Back then, I had all these assumptions about how doctors and nurses are supposed to treat patients; basically I expected I just make an appointment and then show up all sick and helpless, and the doctors and nurses would ask questions and listen to me and take care of me. They would help me not just with my medical problem, but would be emotionally sensitive and I would feel their kindness and compassion. I guess that's called "bedside manner."

But I guess Chinese hospitals are more like, you just go in and get your treatment and that's all. Nobody comes to help you along and make sure you're doing okay emotionally. I guess because there are just too many people in China- too many patients. You have to advocate for yourself.

For example, one time when Hendrix took me to the hospital, we checked in and Hendrix said the next thing we do is go see the doctor. So he started walking down the hallway, opening doors to find a doctor. Apparently that was the correct thing to do.

And on another occasion, I was lying on a bed getting an ultrasound, and some random people just opened the door and popped in. Like, not hospital staff- just random patients. And that was normal. Apparently nobody really cares about privacy.

And none of the doctors or nurses at Chinese hospitals asked if I had any allergies. At the international hospital, they ask ALL THE TIME. So I guess in the Chinese system, it's my responsibility to confirm they're not giving me anything I'm allergic to.

All this left me feeling very vulnerable and unsafe, and so after enough experiences like that, I made the decision that all my health care would be at international hospitals from now on. At the time I made that decision, I still didn't understand. I still thought when I walk into a Chinese hospital, it's the same as a Chinese person walking in. I didn't understand why it had gone badly for me but was fine for a billion Chinese people; I just knew that my needs weren't met, so I was unwilling to put myself in that situation again.

It was because of my expectations about how health care is supposed to work. I want to be treated like I matter and like the hospital staff really cares about me.

It was because Chinese people have something I don't have: an understanding of how to navigate the Chinese health care system.

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All those years ago, I decided I wanted to learn Chinese, so I signed up for Chinese 101 class in college [in the US]. After about a week or two, our professor, Mr. Wang, said, "Some of you should drop the class, because you already know Chinese."

I didn't really think that much about it. Just that yeah, obviously, if somebody already knows Chinese then it doesn't make sense for them to be in Chinese 101 class.

Months later, I happened to be talking to my friend Alice, who is an American-born Chinese (ABC). She mentioned Mr. Wang and said "he's racist." She said he didn't treat the ABC students fairly.

Personally, I had a great time in Mr. Wang's class. He LOVED me. He always told me I was the best student. Actually, Chinese 101 class was just one small part of my efforts to learn Chinese; I was also regularly meeting with Chinese international students to practice (which I would say is the most effective way to learn a language). So I was learning much faster than our Chinese 101 curriculum, and so I always got everything right in class and Mr. Wang told me I was the best ever.

Also I'm white.

Alice said "he's racist" and then I thought about when Mr. Wang said "some of you need to drop the class." At the time I didn't get it; I thought you either "know Chinese" or you don't. But the students that Mr. Wang was referring to weren't just there for an easy A because they "already knew Chinese." They were ABCs that could understand and maybe speak a lot of Chinese because their parents spoke it at home, but maybe they couldn't read or write. Or maybe they didn't know much vocabulary besides whatever their parents talked about at home. They were there to fill in the gaps in their Chinese language ability, but Mr. Wang wouldn't let them.

Wow, that was messed-up, and I never noticed or cared because everything went so well for me in that class.

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White people in the US tend to think that the ideal is to "be colorblind", to "not see race." Treat everyone the same. Feminism has taught me that there are actually a lot of problems with this "not seeing race" concept. Basically, race does matter, and you can't correct the problems caused by racism if you pretend race doesn't matter.

But most white Americans see that as the ideal. Treat everyone of all races the same. And in one's normal day-to-day interactions, that is the right thing to do.

In China, that's not the ideal. Chinese people think that, in order to be polite and welcoming, you should NOT treat white people the same as Chinese people. No, when you meet white people, you should talk to them in English, not in Chinese.

(And of course I have met international people of other races in China too, but their experiences with race in China are different from mine, so I can't really speak to that.)

There have been times where I'm walking up to buy something at a restaurant, and I see the cashiers scrambling around, trying to figure out who among them remembers the most stuff from their high school English class and can therefore talk to me. And then they apologize to me because their English "isn't good."

No, I haven't seen any Chinese equivalent to "if you're in this country you need to speak the language." Or "not seeing race."

It was surprising to me, though, how my whiteness affects every single interaction I have with ANYBODY AT ALL in China. From strangers, to Chinese friends, to American friends, to my husband.

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American high school kids travel to all sorts of countries all over the world for mission trips. American colleges proudly advertise their study-abroad programs, where students can go spend a semester in another country. Americans post their international vacation photos all over social media. And unqualified Americans have ESL job opportunities all over the world. (Yep, I was one of them- I totally moved to China on a work visa in an ESL teacher job. Which I was unqualified for.)

I always took it for granted that I could travel wherever I wanted. And when I set my goal of moving to China and living there long-term, I totally 100% believed I was entitled to just go to any country I wanted and live there. Of course there were some practical concerns like finding a job, language barriers, adapting to a different style of food, but those were all things I would deal with on my own, as I encountered them. I never, ever, for a minute, even considered the possibility of "maybe the government won't let you in, and that's that." Americans don't really think about that.

But look at it from the opposite side: A lot of people want to enter the US, but can't. One aspect of this is people who want to live in the US long-term: refugees trying to cross the border, people waiting years and years for a green card, undocumented immigrants overstaying their visas. But in certain circumstances, the US also denies visas to people who just want to make a short-term trip, maybe for a vacation or academic conference.

In order to get a US tourist visa, you have to bring enough evidence to convince them that you're not actually planning to be an immigrant and overstay the visa. If you can show that in your home country, you have a good job, close family, and a good amount of money in your bank account, then the US visa official will believe you're really going to go back home after your little US vacation.

I remember when my husband Hendrix (who is Chinese) was applying for his US tourist visa- he joked about "if a woman says 'I have no job and I am going to visit my boyfriend in the US', no chance they're giving her that visa." A friend actually advised us to make sure Hendrix got his 10-year US tourist visa before we got married- if we were already married, they might look at his visa application and be like "you're married to a US citizen?" and deny the visa.

I always felt like I had the right to just go wherever I want. It never occurred to me to wonder if a government would refuse to allow me to enter. I was in my 20s when I realized "You know all this stuff in the news about illegal immigration? What that actually means, in terms I can relate to, is that some people- depending on what country they're from- can't just take a trip somewhere just because they want to." And that astonished me, because I had always taken it for granted that I'm entitled to go travel or live long-term wherever I want. Everyone should have that right.

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Because I moved to China, I understand culture and privilege in ways I never could have if I had stayed in the US.

I left my own culture to live in a new culture. That means there are so many things which I always felt were completely normal, so normal that I never even thought about them, and now I'm surrounded by people who don't know anything about them at all. Pancake syrup, football teams, going through the drive-thru. I've lost so much that I never realized I could lose.

I knew I would be learning a whole new culture, but I didn't know I would be losing my own.

And let's talk about privilege. I always thought it's just one-dimensional: the US is better than other countries. More money, more resources, etc. I thought by moving to China, I would be moving from an easier life to a harder life. In China we don't have a dryer for our clothes, so we have to hang them up. In China we can't drink the water from the sink, so we have to boil it. In China I get paid less than if I got a job in the US.

I thought I was moving from "living as an American" difficulty level to "living as a Chinese" difficulty level. But no, I was actually doing something harder than that. Because what I actually gave up wasn't money or convenience; what I actually gave up was privilege. The privilege of being a native speaker vs speaking my 2nd language. The privilege of being in the majority culture and majority ethnic group. The privilege of being a citizen rather than an immigrant.

In other words, me living in China is harder than a Chinese person living in China. They have something I don't. They know the culture. They know the language better than I ever will. They don't stand out as different and foreign because of their race. They don't have to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops related to getting visas renewed, and handle all the logistical things that work differently for me because I don't have a Chinese ID card.

And in the same way, if a Chinese person moves to the US, that doesn't mean their life is the same as my life in the US. It's not just "the US is better"; no, if they don't have the knowledge and experience about how to do things, then it's not better for them. This, again, is all about privilege.

I thought of it as "I spent the first 20-some years of my life learning American culture, and now I will learn Chinese culture." But it wasn't like that; I didn't simply "learn Chinese culture." Instead, I learned Chinese culture from an immigrant's perspective. My own identity is the lens through which everything happens to me. It's not possible to experience Chinese culture from an objective, outside perspective.

And I'm thinking about all this, about what I learned about privilege, and I realize that even in this, I'm privileged. I chose to become an immigrant. I'm not a refugee. I'm not fleeing some dangerous situation in my home country. I didn't come here for better economic opportunities. No, nothing like that- there was nothing wrong with my home country that pushed me to leave. I came to China to live as an immigrant just because I wanted to.

And my life in the US is still there, still available, I can go back any time. Sometimes literally- I know I can go stay at my parents' house and not pay for food or housing, any time I want. I'm so privileged... I'm writing this blog series to say "well it's been 6 years and here are the things I learned about the world, culture, and being an immigrant, well that was a fun experience but I'm ready to be done, gonna go back home now" and then I can just go back, simple as that. A lot of immigrants can't do that. A lot of immigrants don't have a choice.

I chose to give up all that privilege- majority culture privilege, native speaker privilege, citizen privilege- and now I've decided I want it all back. And I'm able to do that. That, too, is privilege.

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Next: Because of an Idea

Related:
Feminism 101: Privilege

"Rubbish"

Batman and Alfred. Image source.

When I first started studying Chinese, I was in college in the US. I made friends with lots of international students from China, and practiced Chinese with them. I really admired the international students- they were so awesome and courageous, moving to a whole new country, a whole new culture, having to learn how things work in the US. I wanted to be like them.

Their English was very good, but I noticed they had weird words for things like trash cans and bathrooms. Bizarre, creative terms like "dust bin" or "wash room." I'm sure the first time someone said to me, "Can I take the rubbish?" I had NO IDEA what they were saying- both because of their accent and because who even uses the word "rubbish"?

As it turns out, the answer is British people. British people use the word "rubbish." Apparently, it just means trash. (I moved to China and taught English for 2 years, and I learned more British English in that time than I had in my entire life before. Chinese students all walking around saying cookies are "biscuits"- it's just madness over here.)

All this talk of "rubbish" reminds me of a sermon I heard many years ago, on Philippians 3:7-11.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

(The above excerpt comes from the ESV. The current NIV version uses the term "garbage" rather than "rubbish" in verse 8 there, but the one I read growing up, the 1984 NIV, said "I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ." And I'm pretty sure that was the version used in this sermon.)

The speaker- an American, giving a sermon to an American audience, in the United States- pointed out that word, "rubbish." She said, wow, such a unique word, we rarely use it. When you think of "rubbish" you think of a British butler with his nose turned up, holding a trash bag at arm's length, like he's so high-class and these things are so beneath him.

Her point was, the apostle Paul felt such disdain for his "gains" in his life before Christ, that he needed to choose a special word to properly convey that feeling. The apostle Paul wanted the Philippians to know that his feeling was the same as that of a proper British butler.

And like, when I phrase it that way, the anachronism is pretty obvious- like obviously Paul didn't hold stereotypes about what British butlers are like. Actually, the speaker was just trying to tell us that the word "rubbish" has a different feel than "garbage", like it's a term reserved for especially awful garbage. And that's true, in American English, but only because of American culture's idea of British butlers. It's still an anachronism.

If you're a British person reading "I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ," there's no shockingly unique word that stands out and demands us to question why it was chosen. It's just the same thing as if an American read "I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ."

(And I won't even go into how, if you look at the actual Greek word that Paul used, it should probably be translated more like "shit" or "crap.")

That sermon is a good example of how Christians of the "bible is inerrant" persuasion put so much emphasis on every individual word in the bible, and they find meaning that isn't even there. It's a translation of an ancient book- you can't take the individual English words too seriously. I often have to write English translations of Chinese documents for my job, and, you guys, translation is hard. For some reason, four sentences' worth of stuff somehow becomes all one sentence in Chinese. I have to decide where to break it up. And sometimes there's a word or concept that doesn't translate directly into English, because you'd have to understand some Chinese culture in order to get it. I have to decide whether to preserve individual words or just write a completely new sentence that gets the same point across and sounds much more natural to an American reader. And there's no "right" way to do it.

When you read an English version of the bible, you can be pretty sure the English translation matches the general idea of what the passage said, but oh my, DO NOT get stuck on individual words. (Maybe the best way to avoid this problem is to read several different translations- if a specific word gets translated in a few different ways, maybe don't put too much emphasis on that exact word and how it feels to you, a native speaker of American English [or whatever your language background is]). Really, it's kind of deceptive how the bibles we read are full of English words we understand and sentences that make sense to us. It hides how completely foreign the bible truly is.

Here's another way that Christians get stuck on individual words in the bible: I've often heard people say things like "This bible verse has the word 'trust' in it, so I looked up 'trust' in the dictionary, and one definition was [definition that isn't the one being used in this verse], and wow, isn't it amazing to think [whatever the conclusion would be if that was the definition that the writer meant, rather than the definition that's more likely based on the context]."

So bizarre. The translator just chose the word "trust" because it was the English word with the closest meaning to what the writer was saying. That doesn't mean every possible definition of "trust" in Webster's dictionary applies to that verse.

Or there's this: "The word that's translated as [whatever English word] comes from the same Greek word they used for [some interesting imagery about farm animals or whatever]. So really, the writer meant that we [do whatever thing] in the same way that [a donkey pulls a cart or whatever]."

Uh, not really. (This is really the same mistake as the "I looked it up in an English dictionary" thing, except you used a dictionary from the original language instead.) Just because the same word is used in multiple circumstances doesn't mean that, when we use it in one context, we're always thinking about how this situation is similar to another context where that word would also be used. It would be like if someone read "we were kicked out" and started teaching that "this word 'kick' is the same word they used in their sports games, so the original audience would have imagined big, strong athletes when reading this." Yes, in some cases it's true that a word has a certain special "feel" because of the other ways it can be used, and that affects its meaning- but sometimes it totally doesn't. (This is especially true in Chinese, where more complicated words are often made of smaller, simpler words, but nobody is thinking of the meaning of those smaller words when they say them. Like "小心 [xiǎo xīn]" means "be careful"- but "小 [xiǎo]" means "little" and "心 [xīn]" means "heart." Why on earth do they mean "be careful" when you put them together? Who knows? But when you tell someone to be careful in Chinese, you don't involuntarily think of little hearts.) You really have to have a deep understanding of the language and culture to know when those other situations would affect the meaning or "feel" of a word, and when they wouldn't.

Don't take individual words in the bible so seriously. It's just a translation, and maybe they picked the best English word but that doesn't mean it has the exact same meaning as the original Hebrew or Greek. Translation is hard.

Adventures in ESL

Image source.

I teach English to adults in China, and I have stories.

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One of the lessons contained the term "cheated on" so I had to explain what it meant. "It means you have sex with someone who's not your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend."

But ... that's not a good enough explanation. The students have to know how to USE this term. So I wrote on the board:

"A cheated on B with C."

"So, A and B are married. [draws arrow between A and B, writes 'married.'] But then A has sex with C so B is angry."

All the students are writing this down, and I'm thinking, "how is this my job?"

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In a lesson about polite language, there were some examples about using "would like" instead of "want." I let the students practice negotiating using the language, and I hear one of them say to their partner, "Would you like to give me a car?"

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me: "So you can look at these ads, and then talk about which ones you like or don't like."

student: [looks at ads] "... I don't like any of them..."

me: "Why is that?"

student: "Well... I think they're boring... to be honest, I think they would be a lot better if they put Matthew McConaughey in."

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There was one lesson I taught about emergency situations. It had some vocabulary like "calm down" and "don't panic".

So I had all the students write down an emergency situation, so then we could role-play them. One student wrote, "I went to the movies with my wife, and saw my ex-girlfriend there."

Yep, that's an emergency situation...

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I taught them how to play charades. One student pretends to be snorting something off the table, and all the others yell out, "DRUGS!"

Facepalm.

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"I think this movie is a chicken flick."

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In one class, we were practicing what to say when you disagree with someone. Phrases like "As much as I'd like to agree with you" etc. So, I had the students tell their partner some opinion about anything, and the partner had to disagree.

I let them practice a bit, and then asked one student to do an example with me. Any opinion, and I have to disagree with it. He says, "I hate America!!!"

... Yeah. He was totally joking around- he's one of the goofy ones. (And in the past he's told me how he wants to travel to Los Angeles because it's the best place ever.)

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So I put everyone in groups and had them prepare skits. During one of the skits, while one particular student was acting, another student leaned over to me and said, "He looks like Jason Mraz."

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So there's an American teacher playing blackjack with a group of students- playing for US $1 bills printed out of the photocopier. I came over to see what they were doing, picked up a few of the fake bills, and said "Oh cool! ... Yeah, that's illegal."

The other teacher shrugged, laughed, and said, "It's China."

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A student told me a joke:

There was a family of mice, and they came out of their hole to look for food. However, they saw a cat, and they ran back into their hole terrified.

The grandfather mouse stood up and said, "Don't worry, my children, I can fix this problem." Then he went outside the hole and said "ARF ARF ARF ARF!!!!!" The cat thought it was a dog, and ran away.

The grandfather mouse came back inside and said, "See, my children, this is why it's important to study foreign languages."

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me: “Now we’re going to play a game... Okay, so there are 8 students, hmm should we have 2 teams or 3 teams?”

students: “TWO TEAMS!!!!!”

me: “You don’t even know what the game is yet.”

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In a class about negotiation language, I put the students in pairs and had them try to sell their pen to their partner.

After a few minutes, I hear them saying to each other, "Eff your pen..."

OHHHH MYYYYYYYYYY.

Turns out it was supposed to be "if".

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Students were discussing the question, "If you were alone on a desert island and you could only bring one thing with you, what would you bring?"

"My phone."

"But there is no signal, and the battery will only last for a few hours."

"I know, but I want to spend my final moments like this [looks down and twiddles thumbs as if using a phone]."

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So one of my colleagues was teaching some of the students Christmas songs. They listened to two songs and read the lyrics, and were about to do a third song.

Teacher: "You guys have really never heard these songs before? ... They are really popular songs. ... Okay, the next song, you MUST have heard it before. If you haven't, I'm going back to America!!!" [finds song on his iPhone and starts playing it. "Santa Claus is coming to town."]

Students: [blank stares all around]

one student: "Take us with you."

This is what happens when you become an English teacher instead of an engineer

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Sitting in the teachers' office one day...

my colleague: "Hey guys, one of the students sent me a text message- do you know what this means? She asked what the difference is between 'VI' and 'VT' and how do we know when to use them."

me: "'VI' and 'VT' ... oh! Initial velocity, and velocity at a point in time t. Is this a physics problem?"

colleague: "no."

another colleague: "Maybe the 'V' is verbs?"

me: "Oh yeah, isn't there something like... transitive verbs? And... 'VI'..."

colleague: "Oh, transitive and intransitive. Got it."

Learning English While Teaching English

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Turns out, to teach English in China you don't really need actual English-training-qualifications. I had to take an online TEFL course but, yeah, right. When I started, I was basically teaching English and correcting the students' mistakes based on "that doesn't sound right."

I had a lot to learn about language...

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Sometimes, the "ed" ending on a past-tense verb is pronounced like a T. Talked, worked, crashed. Sometimes it's pronounced with a D sound. Changed, opened, learned. Sometimes it's pronounced like "id". Started, waited, prodded.

Me: "Can you think of any more verbs were the 'ed' is pronounced like T?" (note: I am expecting answers like "any verb that ends in K.")

Student: "When the sound is... I don't  know how to say in English... [says a few Chinese words, whose meaning I am able to guess]"

Me: "Oh! You mean voiced and unvoiced sounds?" And I had no idea if she was right or not, but it seemed like it was probably true.

Dude I just speak English. I don't know all these complicated pronunciation rules. I never even heard of voiced and unvoiced sounds until I started studying Chinese.

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Have you ever tried to explain the difference between "I never go to KFC" and "I've never gone to KFC"?

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I was trying to explain the differences between "made of," "made from," and "made by," because some students were saying "this is made by wood" which is either a mistake, or Grandmother Willow has some awesome carpentry skills I was previously unaware of.

You use "made of" and "made from" to say the material it's made of, and "made by" to say the person who made it. Simple.

But then the students asked me, "What's the difference between 'made of' and 'made from'?"

Uhh... like, I feel like there's a difference, but I don't know what it is...

So you know, there I am trying to think of an example AND an explanation in simple enough English so they can understand. "They're a little different, but... I don't know... for the words in this lesson you can use either one..."

A student comes up with "Cake is made from eggs." Right. But you can't say "Cake is made of eggs" because then it sounds like eggs are the only ingredient. If you say "Cake is made of eggs, sugar, and flour," that's better.

But still it's very hard to explain.

Then a few of the students come up with this crazy idea like "made of" describes a physical change and "made from" describes a chemical change, and I'm like, no that's not it, I've never heard anything like that before.

But then one of my students says, "The table is made of wood. Plastic is made from oil."

And I'm like, "OH! You're right!"

But I still don't know the difference between "made of" and "made from."

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Also, dude, I'm learning more British English in China than I ever have before. Because the lesson plans we teach include a mix of British English and American English. (Any time there's some weird/wrong-sounding sentence in one of the lessons, I just tell the students it's British English and shrug.)

My favorite part was one lesson which had a game where a student describes something to their partner, and their partner guesses it. I'm preparing my lesson, ya know, reading over the words they have to guess, and one of them is "spanner." What the heck is a "spanner"?

So I went over to dictionary.com and turns out it's British for "wrench."

And in class I tried to apologize for that weird word, "spanner," but the students (who are, of course, Chinese) actually knew what it was. What.

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You know the pronunciation-guide thing, like you see in dictionaries with an upside-down e and all that? Well the students know it and find it very useful to learn English pronunciation, and most of the foreign teachers don't know how to read it at all.

I keep telling myself I should put in the time to learn it. Dude, I already learned Chinese. This IPA pronunciation stuff is way easier.

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And one more thing: If you're using your phone to text someone under your desk during class, teachers totally DO notice.

Bread, Rice, and Bible Translation

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So I'm reading Psalm 102, and verse 4 says, "My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread."

But my bible has both English (ESV with British spellings) and Chinese (Chinese Union Version, simplified characters) side by side. The Chinese version ends verse 4 with "我忘记吃饭", which, hold up, means I forgot to eat rice.

Or, not exactly. See in Chinese, "吃饭 [chī fàn]" means eat a meal. But the "饭 [fàn]" part comes from the word for rice, because, you know, if you're eating a meal but there's no rice... what are you doing?

You're confusing this baby, that's what you're doing. Image source.

(That's not entirely true. Noodles are a common substitute for rice. And I can think of a few other common Chinese meals that normally wouldn't include rice.)

But my point is, in modern Chinese, "吃饭 [chī fàn]" means eat a meal, which may or may not include rice, though the origin of this term assumes that you're eating rice.

So why does the ESV say "I forget to eat my bread"?

Well let's have a look at some other English translations. Here, I found a whole list. Some say "bread," some say "food," and there's even one that says "I have lost my appetite."

So I'm thinking, the original text in Hebrew probably said "bread" (yep, confirmed), but some translations changed it to "food" because they want to get across the idea that this is a staple food that is not being eaten, and in modern Western culture maybe bread is not as staple-y as it was for the psalmist.

And in Chinese culture, nope bread is not a staple at all. Rice is your staple. Bread is kind of like a dessert.

But my stomach needs bread every day or I don't feel full, so I'm always making sandwiches for myself (it is HARD to find decent sliced bread here!) or going to bakeries to get little bread-type pastry things (though if you're coming from an American/western perspective, whatever you just imagined when you read "bread-type pastry things" is definitely NOT what they have in the Chinese bakeries).

And I get Chinese colleagues asking me all the time, "How can you eat so much bread???!!!" and "You need to eat other things too!" No, seriously guys, Americans eat bread every day. Chinese people eat rice every day. It's the same idea.

But anyway. If the Chinese translation of the bible said bread here, that would totally miss the point of the verse. (It would be like if the English one said "I forget to eat my rice." Us Americans would read that and go "so? I mean we eat rice sometimes but no big deal, you don't like need to eat it.") In that case, "吃饭 [chī fàn]" is a good translation.

But hey, let's check out some other Chinese translations!

Chinese New Version: "我連飯也忘了吃。" "I even forgot to eat." This one again uses that word "饭 [fàn]" which means meals in general but people will assume you're talking about rice with a side of something.

Chinese Contemporary Bible: "我茶饭不思。" Hey this is a fun one! Apparently "茶饭不思" is a 成语 [chéng yǔ], a four-character Chinese idiom! "茶 [chá]" means tea, "饭 [fàn]" means, well, we talked about that, and "不思 [bù sī]" means not thinking about something. So together, it's an idiom that means you totally lost your appetite. Kind of a fun modern translation there, I guess.

In summary, translation is hard. But also really interesting. Maybe the more literal the translation is, the more culture you need to know to actually get the meaning.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 102. To read other people's posts, click here: Do people of faith struggle with pain?

To say paper in Chinese, you have to understand paper in China

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One day, I was walking around a mall with a friend, and I told him I had to use the bathroom. So we found a bathroom, and then he said to me, "Do you have paper?" and I said yes, don't worry, I'm fine.

Back up. You may be thinking, "umm what?" Let me explain.

So I was in China, and my friend is Chinese- but he talks to me in English. And here's what you have to know about China: There's probably no toilet paper in the public restrooms. (Probably no soap either, which scares me to death...) You have to bring your own toilet paper. Except, not really. People bring little packs of kleenex to use as toilet paper.

The confusing part is that, in Chinese, all of the following are referred to as 纸 (zhǐ): paper, toilet paper, napkins, kleenex, paper towels. So native Chinese speakers, when they speak English, refer to all of them as "paper." (Yes there are more specific names to differentiate between the types of 纸 (zhǐ), but Chinese people don't use them in regular everyday conversation.)

Oh, another thing: We don't really buy napkins and paper towels in China. Napkins, you can get one at a restaurant when you buy food. Yeah. One. Maybe they'll give you two, maybe. And there's no napkin dispenser where they're giving out free ones. And paper towels, well it's been months since I've seen a paper towel.

So instead, people just use kleenexes as napkins and paper towels. As an American, at first I thought that was REALLY WEIRD. Because napkins are VERY DIFFERENT from kleenexes, right? But now I've gotten used to it, so, whatever.

(Culture shock is a helluva drug, I guess.)

Recently I went to a restaurant with one of my students. We ordered the food up at the counter, then sat down. I was asking him a question about Chinese, and he was telling me how to say a word, and then he suddenly says, "Do you need paper?"

My brain is like, no I got it, I don't need to write it down. Or you know, I could just use my phone, type it in to see exactly how the characters look.

But I stopped myself and realized what he actually meant was, "Do you want a napkin?"

Or, from an American point of view, "Do you want a kleenex that you can use as a napkin?"

And he went up to the little kleenex box at the front counter and got us two kleenexes, which we later used as napkins.

Yeah.

Image source.

Basically, little things like this mean that in China, a whole separate dialect of English has been created. Where people refer to toilet paper as "paper" and everyone's fine with it- even the foreign teachers- because it's such a common mistake that it hardly even counts as a mistake anymore. Everyone who's spent a bit of time in China can understand what they mean.

As a teacher, I don't know if I should even try to correct it or not. The point of language is to communicate with other people, and if you're speaking English with someone who already knows the situation regarding toilet paper and napkins and kleenexes in China, then they'll understand if a Chinese person just refers to something as "paper." If you want to travel to America, where the average person has strong opinions about the difference between napkins and kleenexes, well you better learn the American way to say it.

And my job is to teach English- not necessarily to teach American English.

So I guess I'll let that one go, maybe because it's too hard to correct that error anyway, in a culture where toilet paper, napkins, and kleenex are all used interchangeably.

(But man, when someone comes up to me after class and says, "You left your clothes in the classroom"- an error whose cause is very similar to this one, and makes it sound like I'm walking around the school in my bra- I feel like I gotta correct that one. What they actually meant was, "You left your jacket in the classroom." But that's a whole other post.)

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I taught about Easter, in China

“哈利路亚 基督复活。” Hallelujah, Christ has risen. Image source.

Easter is coming soon, and the school where I work has been encouraging us teachers to do some lessons about it. (English school for adults in China.) Because you know, we teach English but we also want to teach about culture in western countries. Students are really interested in that.

So you know, some teachers are doing egg decorating and Easter egg hunts and making cute little rabbits, which should be really fun. I'm interested to see what kind of creative things the students do with those. But ... you haven't really taught about Easter if you haven't talked about the religious part.

How, though? I've heard stories about persecution in China, and foreigners being kicked out for talking about Jesus. On the other hand, Christianity is among the government-approved religions in China (they are Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism). I've been to several churches here, and almost all have been packed. (And also full of security cameras.)

So the rules about religion are inconsistent. Perhaps the best explanation is the Chinese government doesn't want Chinese culture to be taken over by western culture- so foreign Christians trying to convert Chinese are highly suspicious, while a church with Chinese leaders is not. (And actually, there are some churches where ONLY foreigners are allowed- the government doesn't want them influencing Chinese people.)

Or maybe it's more complicated than that.

Anyway, back to my story. I did a class about Easter a few days ago. I showed the students some pictures of Easter-related traditions- some were religious (like Ash Wednesday) and some were not religious (like Easter baskets). They started asking me about why do we celebrate Easter, and what is Good Friday, etc, and I'm not going to just tell them the answers- I think students learn better when they find the answers themselves.

So I told them to pick one of the traditions and use their phones or the school computers to go online and find some information about it. And then come back in 15 minutes and explain it to the class. In English.

That was pretty fun. The only downside was that they were mostly finding information on Chinese sites, so that wasn't helping them practice their English. If I do a class like that again- where they have to research on the computers- maybe I should make some changes to deal with that problem. (And then when they used English sites, they would just copy down phrases like "commemorate the resurrection of Christ" and I doubt that they even know what those words mean. So yeah. Definitely gotta make some changes to the lesson plan so they use more English- English that they can actually understand.)

But overall, I liked the class. The students learned about Easter, and I didn't teach them anything religious.

I really don't know how paranoid I should be about talking about religion with my students. During the class, I was thinking, "Oh geez, everyone is baidu-ing [Chinese equivalent to googling] Easter... that's gonna look suspicious, we're gonna get our internet connection shut off." Probably a little too paranoid.

In an American school, there would certainly be no problem with what I did. It was clearly education and clearly not forcing religious ideas on students. But what if the Chinese government doesn't see it that way?

(Though I will point out, the only people I've heard say we're not supposed to talk about religion in China are Christians.)

But man, we're supposed to do classes on Easter this month. Easter is a Christian holiday. You can't just not say that. That's not good education.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Small Talk

When I was little, I never talked to anyone.

Yeah sure, if someone asked me a question, I would answer. And I talked to my family. But other than that, nope.

At school, I did everything the teachers said. And they were always telling the students to quit talking and pay attention. They never told us we were supposed to talk sometimes.

And you know how little kids are taught, "don't talk to strangers"? Well my mom made sure to never tell me "don't talk to strangers" because, you know, I already didn't talk to anyone. She knew I would "take it too literally" and then never make friends. (Which, seriously, please explain to me how I was supposed to understand "don't talk to strangers" as anything other than "don't talk to strangers"? That's not "taking it too literally," you guys.)

So anyway, the point of this little story is, I totally never got the point of "small talk." You know, when you just talk to people about little unimportant things, but not because you need information, just because... well I never understood why.

(Probably because I have Asperger's.)

But in college it was different. Every new freshman, including me, was trying to make friends. People were friendly. And I understood the purpose of small talk: to welcome a new person into the group, so they don't feel alone and awkward. Ask them questions about themself (yeah I'm an English teacher) to show you care about them.

And then once you've become friends, small talk is fun. I'm interested in my friends' lives.

So I had a lot of friends in college. That was cool.

But, you know, still a little clueless about the small talk.

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But now my whole life is small talk.

Because my whole life is language learning.

My job is teaching English to Chinese people. And at the same time, I am trying to improve my Chinese. How do you learn a language? Lots and lots of practice.

Lots and lots of small talk. Talk to everybody about anything and everything.

My school has a rule: English only. (A rule that is constantly broken, but at least the idea is there.) The students hang out between classes and chat with each other and with the teachers, sometimes in English, sometimes in Chinese. The classes are all taught in English (you know, with an occasional word translated). The "English environment" is super-important.

And perhaps my biggest goal, in every lesson, is this: Get the students to talk.

Put them in pairs, with a question to discuss. What do you like to watch on tv? What do you think the world will be like in the future? Which animal makes the best pet? How would you go about asking your boss for a raise?

It's all small talk. The information contained in their answers doesn't really matter. (It doesn't even have to be true!) What matters is that they're practicing English.

(Don't worry- I do also teach them things about grammar, pronunciation, etc. But they could learn that from a textbook. What really matters is the opportunity to practice. To make small talk.)

Same thing for me learning Chinese. I know I have improved a lot in the few months I've been here. But how? I don't really feel like I've done much studying... It's the small talk. (Plus the fact that I need to speak Chinese in order to like, buy food and stuff.)

My job is small talk. My life is small talk.

To speak a language well, you must do a lot of small talk.

And perhaps, back in school during my childhood, perhaps the purpose of that small talk was also to practice something. Practice getting along with people. Practice being a friend. Something like that.

Discussion question: What is the purpose of small talk?