Chinese Acrobatics

When a student told Jean that her hometown was the birthplace of Chinese acrobatics, we began talking about making a trip there. It took a year to arrange the trip but April 18 we joined the student to board the train for the 6 hour trip to Wuqiao in Hebei province, the province to the north of where we live.  We had a great trip, including a visit to Acrobatics World park, visits with the student's family, a nice hotel, a walk in the park where we became the attraction at a Dating Day activity, and various weird events like the passerby who unexplainedly opened the taxi door and threw 2 yuan (about 30 cents) onto Jean's lap, or the woman in the Ladies Room who offered her a cigarette. And of course there was the train ride with standing only tickets!  Best of all was an informal Easter service in our hotel room with our student friend.

The theme that runs through most of these stories is that Wuqiao is a small city (maybe 200,000-- small by Chinese standards) that rarely has foreign guests.  Therefore foreigners attract attention.  In two of the acrobatic shows, the performer stopped his act when he spotted us to ask where we were from, and did we like the show.  Many passersby wanted us to take a photo with them or with their children.   Undoubtedly our foreign faces motivated the bizarre gift of 2 yuan or a cigarette.

On Sunday morning we went for a walk in the city park.  We were embarrassed when the organizer of the Dating Day event (a local event to match young men and women) spotted two foreigners in the crowd and ran out to grab us.  We assumed she just wanted her photo with us, but she brought us to the stage where the group of women doing a traditional dance forced us to dance with them and then posed for photos with us, Then we were interviewed by the MC (our student friend served as interpreter for the interview). And they gave us each a gift, a boxed set of matching Dating Day mugs as a momento of our 15 minutes of fame.

See the attached photos for a glimpse of the acrobatics shows.  They were also magic, horse, and animal shows.

The family of our student friend were wonderful hosts.  Typical of Chinese hospitality they overfed us with delicious meals.  The first night they took us out to eat.  We were stuffed from eating the 9 dishes of foods, when the main dishes arrived: two kinds of dumplings and noodles prepared in a way we had not had before.  We wish we had gone a little slower on the first part.  We learned our lesson when for Sunday lunch we ate in their home-- a total of 13 homecooked dishes. The mother, grandmother, and next door neighbor had been cooking all morning to prepare the meal!  (We were the first foreigners the 80 year olf grandmother had ever met.  She was nervous and shy and wouldn't eat anything until Jean insisted she had to eat.)

After lunch the three of us went for a walk in her neighborhood.  We saw a large Catholic church, but it was closed so we couldn't see inside.

Our 6 hour trip there was by train.  What made it unique was we had no seats.  We had purchased our tickets five days earlier-- too late to get seats.  It is common in China that many people have to stand for long train rides.  We had always thought these seatless tickets would be discounted, but they are not!  It cost us the same 81 yuan (about $13) as the tickets with seats cost.  Our Chinese friends agreed with us that this is very unfair.  We brought one stool on the train, and we were almost always able to find a vacant seat or a kind traveler would offer their seat to these elderly foreigners, so we actually got to sit for most of the journey.  For our return journey we had seats.

It was a great experience.  One extra blessing was that our hotel room had a working bathtub-- a rarity in China!  It was great to end a day for which we had been on our feet a lot to settle into a tub of soothing hot water-- sigh!

A Visit to a Chinese Hospital

After 8 weeks with a deep dry cough that made me and everyone around me miserable I decided to go to the Xinzheng city hospital. I thought it would be wise to get a chest x-ray to see if something was really wrong.  Since my spoken Mandarin is only a few words I took a student friend as a translator along with me,  He was great!

We arrived at the hospital and checked in at the front desk.  Since I had no previous visits at the hospital, my translator just told them my unofficial Chinese name: Gao Fei.  Now I am Gao Fei at the Xinzheng hospital!  They didn't ask for any other info so that was all they knew about me.  But they don't seem to keep records on patients.  I was given all my paperwork and x-rays when I left, so it is up to me to keep my medical records. The cost of registration and my doctor consultations was 6 yuan (about 90 cents). 

The staff member sent us on down the hall to a consultation room labeled "Breathing".  We knocked.  There was another patient inside talking to the doctor so we went in and waited our turn.  My translator explained my complaints and the doctor asked a couple of questions then wrote the order for the chest x-ray. 

In Chinese hospitals you pay in cash in advance.  So we stopped at the cashier window and paid 70 yuan (about $11).  Then we walked back to the x-ray department.  We gave the doctor's order to a technician who told us that I was to have two x-rays, so we walked back to the cashiers window and paid another 70 yuan. Then we returned to the X-ray department and sat down to wait for them to call "Gao Fei".  In less than 5 minutes I was standing in the x-ray room in front of the machine.  My translator stood beside me the whole time  (at least they shut the door to the hall!).  They took a front view and a side view.  Then they told us to return in 45 minutes.

This whole process has taken about 40 minutes. My translator and I left the hospital and took a walk in "two head" park (nicknamed by the foreigners for the two giant busts of the ancient emperor and his brother who were born in Xinzheng-- or so the legend goes.)  Then we stopped and bought ice cream sundaes at a Chinese fast food place.  My translator warned me that according to his mother eating something cold was bad for a cough (it seems all Chinese believe that the secret to good health is the temperature of your food or drink, and that cold is almost always bad.  This relates to the belief in yin-yang.  Cold is yin.)

After our wait time was up we returned and claimed my two x-rays from the x-ray department and walked back to the doctor's office.  We again waited our turn and then she examined the x-rays and declared them clear.  There was a little phlegm at the bottom of one lung but nothing serious. 

Next the doctor wrote an order for a blood test to see if I had an infection.  So back to the cashier's window to pay 20 yuan (about $3) and then up a flight of stairs to the laboratory.  We went into a hall-like room adjacent to the laboratory.  There was a wall of windows that looked into the actual laboratory.  I sat in front of one of three openings in this wall and set my arm on the window sill.  Another patient sat at another opening also having blood drawn.  A technician looked at the doctor's order then proceeded to poke my elbow and withdraw a vial full of blood.  We were told to wait 5 minutes.  They put my blood into some kind of machine and a few minutes later handed us a print out of the results.  Then we walked back to the "breathing" room and waited our turn to talk to the doctor for the third time.  She looked at the results and declared them normal-- no infection (hooray-- I was dreading the prescription for antibiotics which is the cure-all for most sicknesses in China.)  So the good news was, I was basically healthy.  I just had (still have) a persistent cough.

The doctor wrote a prescription for some cough medicine.  Then she thought to ask if I had diabetes.  When I said that I did she changed the prescription to a low sugar form of the cough medicine.  My translator and I went to the pharmacy, got a bill for the medicine, went back to the cashier to pay for it (10 yuan-- about $1.50) and then returned and got the pills. 

We were done.  It had taken about 2 1/2 hours and only cost about $26!  I walked out with a bag containing 2 x-rays, a print out of my labwork, a bunch of receipts, and a packet of 9 pills.  (The pills helped me cough up some phlegm but were no cure for my cough.  So far,  nothing has been a cure.)

In the States such a series of procedures might have taken several days and cost hundreds of dollars.  How can the Chinese system be so efficient and so cheap?  My translator and I talked a lot about the differences in our two medical systems.  In China you keep your own records and you pay as you go.  The hospital needs no expensive record keeping or billing departments.  In China you do not have a personal physician.  You take the one that is on duty.  The doctor and the technicians and other staff are paid well by local standards, but do not get rich from their practice.  The whole system is subsidized by the Chinese government to keep costs down.  

I do not know how thoroughly the Chinese doctors are trained in western medicine.  They know more about traditional Chinese medicine which uses herb based pharmaceuticals, folk medicine and friendly advice about healthy living.  Some clinics practice acupuncture or massage therapy.  Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes low tech, low impact treatments.  Probably it is effective for many common ailments, but may not be able to handle serious diseases (western medicine can't handle many of them as well). 

If someone gets seriously ill they can go to a big city clinic where a western trained specialist will charge higher prices (still less than in the USA!) for
treatments based on harsh chemicals and expensive technology.  As for me, my one experience in the Xinzheng hospital was positive and gave me the information I needed to deal with my minor ailment.  If I had spent ten to twenty times as much at an American hospital, I suspect the results would have been the same.

There's no place/ many places like "home."

Have you ever been unsure where your home is…not because you are lost but because you are found?  As Christians we all have more than one home.  In the words of the old hymn: this world is not my home, I’m just a traveling through… 

Jean and I know the feeling.  We are travelers.  At the moment we are once again “home”: the United States, Minnesota, Bemidji.  But in the past ten months our travels have taken us to a new “home”: China, Henan Province, Xinzheng, Sias University.  When we arrived there ten months ago—this was not home.  We were foreigners in a strange land.  When we left China a few days ago, we left places that have become more familiar than foreign, and we left people who have become more friends and family than strangers.  We are glad to be back at our Stateside home—we have friends and family here as well—but we look forward to our return to China in August.

We have experienced this sense of displacement before: previously we have called “home” both Africa, Liberia, Monrovia; and South Asia, Bangladesh, Savar.  Fellow travelers know the feeling.  We are both homeless, and yet have many homes.  In the words of an early Christian writer (from The Letter to Diognetus, author unknown, date about 200AD)

They [Christians] live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners.  Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land.

For Christians every foreign land is a home land and every home land is a foreign land.  Christians can be at home anywhere, but they are never really at home anywhere. 

Where is home? For Christians, it is with our Father and with our heavenly family.  Someday our travels will take us there, and for the first time we will realize the real meaning of the word: home.

Its Not Important-- Part 2

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about the Chinese tendency to keep their personal sorrows private, avoiding the sympathy of friends.  Since then I have added two new examples and learned more about the reasons for this custom.

Here are the new examples:  I made a significant error in calculating the grades of one of my classes.  Fortunately it was just a projected grade I was giving to the students, not an actual grade going on their school records.   I accidently copied the midterm grades from a different class into the spreadsheet for their grades.  Since the other class had done much poorer on their midterms, the result was dropping most of the projected grades of this class by about 5%.  I only discovered the error when a student came to ask me why her grade was so low.  I checked and discovered that every grade was wrong and then I found my mistake.  I gave the students a corrected grade projection and then apologized for the error.  The student response: “It doesn’t matter.” 

The second example is hearsay.  I am told that students in their senior year, including best friends, do not ask each other about how the search is going for a job after graduation.  The reason: in case the search is not going well they do not want to cause each other sorrow.  So best friends don’t talk about important personal matters.

What I learned regarding the reasons for this custom came in a discussion in one of my classes.

During the break between classes Jean had texted me some sad news: our son-in-law’s best friend was killed in a tragic accident over the weekend.  This news really saddened me.  I wanted to share the news with my class, but I knew that the cultural norm was for me to cover my sadness with a smile and not share with anyone.  But as I sat in the back of the classroom listening to a student presentation my feeling of sadness continued to distract me.  Finally I decided to not follow the custom: to briefly share about the sad news I had just gotten, and to ask if they would help me to understand why it is not normal to share such sad news.

The students immediately began chattering with their seatmates—the sound of discussion that is typical in our classes.  After a couple of minutes I signaled for the discussion to end and asked for volunteers to explain this custom to me.  Several students rose in turn to speak.  This is just a summary of their explanations.

One girl said the custom had to do with saving face.  I asked her to explain, and she said that sorrow is a kind of weakness that people don’t like to show in public.  Another student added that it is each person’s responsibility to bear their own sorrows and not to trouble others.  One boy shared that everyone should share happy things with others and keep the sad things to themselves so that everyone will be happier.  This can lead to a harmonious society.  (All Chinese frequently say that everyone’s goal is a harmonious society).  Another student shared that troubles are usually kept within the family and not shared with friends.  But then another student said that when he called his parents he would only tell then the good things and not the unhappy parts of his life, so that they would not worry about him (Maybe college students in the States do that as well!). Perhaps one student summed it all up by saying that Chinese believe that the best way to deal with sorrow is not to talk about it.  They believe that if you talk about sorrow, it gets worse.

After hearing these explanations, I told the class that American culture was different, that we often share our emotions with others, both happy and sad ones, so that our friends can share our joys and sorrows with us.  We like to sympathize and to be sympathized with.  The girl who had translated my question to the class responded to this by asking what an American would do if a friend shared sad news with them.  I replied that the friend would probably give them a hug (hugging is not common in China), say they are sorry to hear the news, and ask if the person wanted to talk about it.  Then the friend would sit and listen while the person told them about their feelings.  I said that Americans believe that the best way to deal with sadness is to talk about it.

After I shared this, one student bravely shared her story.  She said that her parents are divorcing, and she is hurting inside.  But when she tries to share her sadness with her dormmates they just say, “It’s not important”—that phrase again—“don’t worry about it.”  I thanked her for telling us, but I knew that she left the class still having no one to listen to her.  To me, that compounds her sadness.  Jean and I made a point to talk to her later, letting her share about this major crisis in her life.

Jean and I have talked about whether this is just a cultural difference: not right, not wrong, just different.   Maybe I am an ethnocentric American, but I feel the Chinese custom is not good.  Jean and I cannot change their culture, but maybe we can find ways to help the students we know be willing to “rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

"It's not important"

After almost a year in China the phrase, “It’s not important,” has become the biggest mystery for me as I try to understand the Chinese culture! 

I have used this blogsite to record a few of the Chinese customs and beliefs that we have learned.  It is fair to say that after a year we know less about the Chinese culture than we knew before—or rather, we realize we know less than we thought we did.  Often Chinese culture seems easy to understand and similar to our western cultures, and then something totally inexplicable happens and we are plunged into the mysteries of the dragon kingdom.  “It’s not important” is such a mystery.

I have heard university students use this phrase half a dozen times.  It always seems extremely inappropriate.  

For example, a month ago, Mary was in our apartment with a dozen other students from my classes.  It was Tuesday evening, my regular “office hours” for students to visit and ask questions about class or just to chat.  Most come to chat.  I asked Mary (I have changed the names of all the students in this blog)  about her three week absence from class in March.  Suppressing her tears, she told me that her father had been killed in an auto accident, and she had been with her family.  I expressed my sorrow at hearing this news and she said, “It’s not important.”

Or, last semester Bill had missed classes for six weeks.  His girl friend had told me he was sick.  When he finally returned to class, I asked about the reason and he explained that he had gone through a series of brain surgeries to deal with a pituitary problem.  I expressed my sympathy for his difficulties, and he said, “It’s not important.”

Bonnie was one of seventeen students who came to our apartment for Jean’s office hours one Thursday evening.  With such a large group we decided to teach them the game of Rhythm.  While we were playing, suddenly Bonnie exclaimed something in Chinese.  Her friends turned to help her.  It seems that a tooth had suddenly popped out of her mouth.  She was bleeding so Jean took her back to the bathroom to clean up.  Then she returned to the group and resumed her seat.  I asked how she was doing, and she said, “It’s not important.”

Victoria is a student in one of my classes.  While I was grading that class’s midterm exams I discovered that Victoria’s exam was missing.  I went to her in class and asked if she could tell me what happened to her exam paper.  She was clearly upset by this news and assured me she had turned in her answer sheet the same as all of the other students.  I promised her that I would do a full-scale search to try to find the missing paper.  Since she looked so nervous, I added that there was no need to worry, that I believed her story, and that everything would be all right.  She replied, “It’s not important.”  (The exam turned up, buried inside a different stack of papers.)

Clearly the phrase “It’s not important”—or the Mandarin equivalent—is commonly used in the culture.  It seems to mean something like, “I’m okay” or “You don’t need to bother about this.”  I think it somehow relates to the Chinese custom of “saving face”—avoiding embarrassment for oneself and others.  Perhaps it is related to the strong sense of humility in the Chinese personality.  There seems to be a sense of not wanting others to know about my sorrows so that they will not be saddened on my account.

The most extreme example of this was told me by another foreign teacher.  One of his students’ mother became seriously ill during her time at the university.  She was quite concerned and was calling her mother frequently.  When her mother died she did not want any of her dormmates to know so she continued making pretend calls to her mother!  I suspect she would have said, “It’s not important.”

Of all the mysteries of the dragon culture, this saying has been the biggest for me.  It strikes me as wrong.  I want to show students that I care for them and their problems, but their culture excludes me (and each other) from their personal sorrows.  In China “personal” means “private”—very private.

In three of the stories above, my response to the phrase “It’s not important” was to say, “It is important because you are important.”  I explained that Americans share their sorrows so that we can comfort each other.  I told them that I care about them and I want them to know that.  They silently listen.  I think they are grateful for my concern—at least I hope so.

Next year, one of my goals in returning to China is to better understand the mystery of “It’s not important.”

The Day I became a True Man

If you could read the Chinese inscription on the monument above (I can’t read it either), you would read: He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man—Chairman Mao Zedong.  On April 15 I became a true man. 

Sias Unversity had two Sports Days on Thursday and Friday making an ideal four day weekend for Jean and me and a student friend (the guy seated beside me in the first picture) to hop the fast train to Beijing.  We had three wonderful days seeing the major historical sites from this ancient capital of the Chinese empire.  We were able to walk through the Forbidden City, the emperor’s gigantic palace.  If we had dared to enter while there was still a reigning emperor we would have been put to death instantly.  Now we wandered and took photos with thousands of other tourists from all over the world.  We toured the Forbidden City with Rob Olson, an Oak Hills alum who lives in Beijing.

Inside the Forbidden City

More impressive than the Forbidden City was the Summer Palace, the smaller palace surrounded by trees and a lake where the royal family went to cool off during the hot summer months.  We were impressed by the story of the empress dowager (the emperor’s mother-in-law) who had him locked inside the summer palace so she could control the government.  Such was politics during the Chinese empire.

The 17 arch bridge at the summer palace

We ate Peking duck in a Beijing restaurant-- very good.  But we avoided some of the foods for sale in a street market.  The photo does not show that the scorpions are still alive and wiggling.  Our friend Rob says he has eaten them before--tastes like chicken. 

The only negative side to our journey was our first night in our hostel.  The hostel was wonderful, an old building typical of the style of houses a century ago.  It was located just a half mile walk from Tianenmen Square.  But the first night was HORRIBLE!  Our room was on the ground floor the furthest from the lobby with a window that looked out on a side alley.  Across the alley was a building under construction.  All night long trucks of bricks pulled up to be unloaded into metal wheelbarrows, less than ten feet from our pillows.  We hardly slept all night.  Our thoughts were not very Christian that night!  Fortunately, the hostel was able to move us to a different room the next day where we slept in peace and quiet the remaining nights of our stay.

A view of the courtyard in the hostel

The Lord God Made Them All!

Look at the billboard in the photo above.  The poem ends with a comma not a period, indicating that there is another line which was not included. Without the next line the poem is not only incomplete but meaningless!  Why, we must ask, are there bright & beautiful things, wise & wonderful things, Creatures great & small?  The poem by Alexander has an answer, but this billboard only has a comma.  Maybe the final line was omitted due to China's official policy of atheism.

The billboard is near the entrance to the Giant Panda Research Center near Chengdu, China.  This was the last stop on our five week travels during the long break between semesters at Sias University.  Our travels took us to Hong Kong, Australia, and Chengdu. 

The highlight was seeing our family: Cheri, Jared and grandkids: Alice, Bethany and Cameron who live in northern Australia.  We had 3 1/2  wonderful weeks with them: hiking, swimming, birthday partying, and joining with their aboriginal friends for church and for Bible study.

The second best part was enjoying all the creatures great and small along the way.  We saw giant pandas, red pandas, wallabies (small kangaroos), crocodiles, pelicans, cockatoos, peacocks, bats, snakes, termite mounds, and various fish, birds and bugs too numerous to name. We didn't see but we got to eat kangaroo and yak. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of the creatures great and small as we saw them on our trip.  We appreciate all things and creatures because we know the completion of the poem.  Because of their Maker, they are bright, beautiful, wise and wonderful!

How sad that for many people in many countries-- not just China-- the poem is still incomplete.  The final line brings completeness to the whole picture. We hope your life-poem ends with more than a comma.  In case you've forgotten how the poem really ends:

All things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All things Wise and Wonderful,
The Lord God Made Them All!