Shortly upon arrival, we discovered that life in China is like sticking your finger into an electric outlet--thrilling, yet painful. Even on days when cheap Chinese hair dryers weren't shocking us, we still felt the surge of an ancient country on the move. Hangzhou's beauty intoxicated us, with its West Lake scenery and college town prestige.
Hangzhou is very beautiful. It reminds me of a Chinese version of Seville. The streets are all tree-lined, and there are lovely canals everywhere. We walked to the botanical gardens near the campus this morning, which were also lovely—a peaceful bamboo garden, lily pads, etc. Now we are at a nice coffee shop right outside the back gate of campus. The coffee is excellent, and ambiance nice. This is definitely a college town. I like the bookstores, cheap eats, and useful stores around campus. There seems to be a viable expat community here, and the campus is lovely—very tree lined, and it has a positive, upbeat vibe (Tuesday, September 6, 2011).
Hangzhou is very beautiful. It reminds me of a Chinese version of Seville. The streets are all tree-lined, and there are lovely canals everywhere. We walked to the botanical gardens near the campus this morning, which were also lovely—a peaceful bamboo garden, lily pads, etc. Now we are at a nice coffee shop right outside the back gate of campus. The coffee is excellent, and ambiance nice. This is definitely a college town. I like the bookstores, cheap eats, and useful stores around campus. There seems to be a viable expat community here, and the campus is lovely—very tree lined, and it has a positive, upbeat vibe (Tuesday, September 6, 2011).
Within the beauty, however, there was also conflict. The conflict burst forth in a primitive litany of "whys?" Why do people sleep on seeming slabs of rock, yet mill about coffee shops on plush couches? Why do they stroll the streets with lacy parasols, while lacing the air with cigarette and factory fumes? Why do they leisurely ramble around West Lake on tandem bikes, then pummel chainsaw-laden, screeching mopeds down narrow sidewalks? As I entered an enigma wrapped in mystery, this Westerner discerned that the clash of cultures meant something would have to give.
I was also learning patience in a country that moves on its own pacing. Here are some excerpts from my first days and weeks in Hangzhou:
Yesterday we had a very frustrating yet ultimately successful venture to one of the only Bank of China branches in the city that will convert traveler’s checks. What I anticipated taking only 30 minutes ended up taking 2 hours...I think we’ll like being here overall, but we could not have anticipated how difficult it is to move to a country as vastly different as China. People have been friendly overall, but the language barrier is much wider/more vast than any European language. Even taking a taxi is difficult because of the lack of an alphabet—we have to have our address in Chinese script written ahead of time since we know so little language at this point. Our first few days here have made us grateful for a new adventure, but also very aware of how vulnerable and helpless we really are right now. We need help to do such basic things as opening up a checking account, setting up a drinking water supply for our room, laundry, getting a cell phone, etc. I suppose I’m learning patience in all this (September 6, 2011).
Every stupid little detail takes so much effort to try to explain or translate, and every step to settle into this school takes 10 billion pieces of paper that we have to gather from 10 billion different people in 10 billion different places....It would just be nice to get a break. Perhaps this is a growing experience, but I think Brian and I are about to our saturation point (September 14, 2011).
More "why" questions: why must I obtain so many pieces of paper for every task? Why isn't there space in the language classroom to discuss "Why?"
Our classes are helpful for learning characters and pronunciation, but there is almost no discussion allowed for comparing cultures. For example, my teachers don’t talk at all about the history of national holiday [a major weeklong holiday in October]. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be. When I taught ESOL or Spanish, I made time to teach culture, holidays, etc. It’s what makes the language interesting. It makes me care. It makes the language relevant. Apparently, though, the Chinese learning style is what I feared it is—rote memorization. In fact, a supervisor has sat in on some of Brian’s and my classes lately. The teachers actually seem to become WORSE in their teaching when the supervisor is there. I suspect the supervisor tells them simply to cram packaged dialogues and vocab down our throats—gross. I can learn this way if I have to, but it is incredibly enervating. I’d love to discuss how today, when we learned how to say, “how old are you?,” I felt really uncomfortable—I realized how taboo it is to discuss this in the US after age 21 or so. Do Chinese not also have this taboo? Do any of my classmates have this taboo? How do they feel about discussing age with others? I’d really love to know this and learn from these questions, but there was no space in class to discuss them. Too bad (September 29, 2011).
One of the first phrases we learned in our canned dialogues was "没有," which means "don't have, lack." It can be used to ask a shopkeeper for a bottle of water ( 有没有一瓶水?, literally "have don't have one bottle of water?"), or to ask a waiter for chopsticks (有没有筷子?, literally "have don't have chopsticks?"). The appropriate answer is either "有 (have)," or "没有 (don't have)."
Among our many "why" questions, we wondered why the Chinese eat lunch at the early hour of 11am, and dinner promptly at 5pm. The answer became clear sometime between the sixth and sixteenth time that the waitress (always a waitress) returned to our table after submitting our order, opened the picture menu, pointed to one or more of the dishes we wanted, and declared, "没有." The kitchen had run out of our first pick.
We also came to 没有 less tangible comforts: status, independence, comfortable housing, familiar routines and customs, any illusion of control. Everything around us was 没有.
Yet God was faithful.
I won’t deny that these first few days here have been extremely overwhelming and trying. I have been humbled by how much I do not know here. Yet in this humbling and stripping away of the comforts and familiarity of the US, God has responded. The prayer to “give us this day our daily bread” now has new significance—we literally have to go out every day to find our daily bread, and I know it’s purely by God’s grace that we even have our basic needs met here. I’ve been completely at a loss for what to do, and yet God whispers the next step into my ear. We receive the next step, and no more. Daily bread, not weekly or monthly bread. Yet it is enough.
I’ve also been struck by Philippians 2: 5-8, where Christ humbles himself and makes himself nothing. He is obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross! The past four years, I’ve lived and breathed the status and power obsessed culture of DC...I realize only now that I depended on the... status and network of friends I had in DC more than I thought. Any prestige or [professional connections] I had in DC mean nothing here...I do feel like my status, achievements, respect, and useful knowledge of how to live have all been stripped away here. To everyone I pass, I’m just another lao wai [outsider].
God is already providing for me in the emptiness, however. I am much more aware of my body and its needs now that I have to be so conscious of how I am taking care of it. I cannot just eat blindly, but am thinking about every bit of food and drink I put into it. Brian and I also have the time (and felt need!) now to study Scripture and pray together every day. This devotional time has been sweet, and by itself makes the move here from DC worth it. In DC, we often did not have the time (or honestly, the desire or felt need) to be intentional about devotional time. Here, we know we are depending on God for our every step. And God has responded (September 12, 2011).
God had to teach us "没有" so we could empty ourselves for greater gifts. Even in the lack, we saw the faintest glimmers of abundance.
I was also learning patience in a country that moves on its own pacing. Here are some excerpts from my first days and weeks in Hangzhou:
Yesterday we had a very frustrating yet ultimately successful venture to one of the only Bank of China branches in the city that will convert traveler’s checks. What I anticipated taking only 30 minutes ended up taking 2 hours...I think we’ll like being here overall, but we could not have anticipated how difficult it is to move to a country as vastly different as China. People have been friendly overall, but the language barrier is much wider/more vast than any European language. Even taking a taxi is difficult because of the lack of an alphabet—we have to have our address in Chinese script written ahead of time since we know so little language at this point. Our first few days here have made us grateful for a new adventure, but also very aware of how vulnerable and helpless we really are right now. We need help to do such basic things as opening up a checking account, setting up a drinking water supply for our room, laundry, getting a cell phone, etc. I suppose I’m learning patience in all this (September 6, 2011).
Every stupid little detail takes so much effort to try to explain or translate, and every step to settle into this school takes 10 billion pieces of paper that we have to gather from 10 billion different people in 10 billion different places....It would just be nice to get a break. Perhaps this is a growing experience, but I think Brian and I are about to our saturation point (September 14, 2011).
More "why" questions: why must I obtain so many pieces of paper for every task? Why isn't there space in the language classroom to discuss "Why?"
Our classes are helpful for learning characters and pronunciation, but there is almost no discussion allowed for comparing cultures. For example, my teachers don’t talk at all about the history of national holiday [a major weeklong holiday in October]. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be. When I taught ESOL or Spanish, I made time to teach culture, holidays, etc. It’s what makes the language interesting. It makes me care. It makes the language relevant. Apparently, though, the Chinese learning style is what I feared it is—rote memorization. In fact, a supervisor has sat in on some of Brian’s and my classes lately. The teachers actually seem to become WORSE in their teaching when the supervisor is there. I suspect the supervisor tells them simply to cram packaged dialogues and vocab down our throats—gross. I can learn this way if I have to, but it is incredibly enervating. I’d love to discuss how today, when we learned how to say, “how old are you?,” I felt really uncomfortable—I realized how taboo it is to discuss this in the US after age 21 or so. Do Chinese not also have this taboo? Do any of my classmates have this taboo? How do they feel about discussing age with others? I’d really love to know this and learn from these questions, but there was no space in class to discuss them. Too bad (September 29, 2011).
One of the first phrases we learned in our canned dialogues was "没有," which means "don't have, lack." It can be used to ask a shopkeeper for a bottle of water ( 有没有一瓶水?, literally "have don't have one bottle of water?"), or to ask a waiter for chopsticks (有没有筷子?, literally "have don't have chopsticks?"). The appropriate answer is either "有 (have)," or "没有 (don't have)."
Among our many "why" questions, we wondered why the Chinese eat lunch at the early hour of 11am, and dinner promptly at 5pm. The answer became clear sometime between the sixth and sixteenth time that the waitress (always a waitress) returned to our table after submitting our order, opened the picture menu, pointed to one or more of the dishes we wanted, and declared, "没有." The kitchen had run out of our first pick.
We also came to 没有 less tangible comforts: status, independence, comfortable housing, familiar routines and customs, any illusion of control. Everything around us was 没有.
Yet God was faithful.
I won’t deny that these first few days here have been extremely overwhelming and trying. I have been humbled by how much I do not know here. Yet in this humbling and stripping away of the comforts and familiarity of the US, God has responded. The prayer to “give us this day our daily bread” now has new significance—we literally have to go out every day to find our daily bread, and I know it’s purely by God’s grace that we even have our basic needs met here. I’ve been completely at a loss for what to do, and yet God whispers the next step into my ear. We receive the next step, and no more. Daily bread, not weekly or monthly bread. Yet it is enough.
I’ve also been struck by Philippians 2: 5-8, where Christ humbles himself and makes himself nothing. He is obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross! The past four years, I’ve lived and breathed the status and power obsessed culture of DC...I realize only now that I depended on the... status and network of friends I had in DC more than I thought. Any prestige or [professional connections] I had in DC mean nothing here...I do feel like my status, achievements, respect, and useful knowledge of how to live have all been stripped away here. To everyone I pass, I’m just another lao wai [outsider].
God is already providing for me in the emptiness, however. I am much more aware of my body and its needs now that I have to be so conscious of how I am taking care of it. I cannot just eat blindly, but am thinking about every bit of food and drink I put into it. Brian and I also have the time (and felt need!) now to study Scripture and pray together every day. This devotional time has been sweet, and by itself makes the move here from DC worth it. In DC, we often did not have the time (or honestly, the desire or felt need) to be intentional about devotional time. Here, we know we are depending on God for our every step. And God has responded (September 12, 2011).
God had to teach us "没有" so we could empty ourselves for greater gifts. Even in the lack, we saw the faintest glimmers of abundance.