What’s happening to me, when I walk down Shanghai for a few minutes and meet three people? When the first two are two halves of a well-dressed and good looking recently graduated couple, looking for jobs, and the third one talks with me for three hours about patterns of living and 社会 in Shanghai (and, for my part, in the US)? Am I breaking through some key barrier, or am I just finding new ones?
I’d met that third one in a Starbucks. My friend back at school told me that it was a place for good conversation. 我没想到。 I can’t explain it all here, because it wouldn’t be fair to her. I still don’t understand what happened, except that within one day I’d found someone who spoke of things that exactly fit what I’d been looking for in China. Someone who sees how Chinese society and institutions affect people every day and how people react to them.
I guess the bottom line is that my Chinese still isn’t good enough. I couldn’t access so much of what she explained to me. Reduced even to just following gestures, I plucked out sentences here and phrases there.
We walked outside together, among the status-driven and the towering centers of loyalty and lies. It felt good, being in Shanghai. Not because I hate it and knew we were better; because I saw its energy and had begun to understand it. My guess is she does hate her city, but maybe she won’t forever.
3 comments:
yeah my chinese isn't good enough either. it's damn frustrating isn't it?
anyway, i'd like to hear more about your conversation. and also how you start talking to random people. because i'm bad at that and need to get better if i want to...understand.
alex. i love this blog and what you're doing, and your writing style ('cos i'm into that kind of thing) is just captivating.
here's a suggestion. when you have the time and money, do the same thing for singapore. and i say this not just because i want to see you. i try hard to find these things beyond my circle and often come up empty.
One thing about having learned French is that if I go, I won't be immediately identified as an outsider (and in conversation I've managed to fool a few people into thinking I'm native). It must be really frustrating for you to have studied Mandarin for ~10 years and still have to break through that barrier with everyone you meet (plus the fact that 10 years in Chinese is way different than 10 years in French)
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