Learning about Life in China—Spring Festival
It felt to me that my China adventure had begun with my leaving Colorado Springs, the flights to get to China, adjusting to the major change in time zones and settling in my apartment. Now I know that those were just “preludes” to the real adventure and challenge of living in a very different culture. There was so much to learn about China, basic life skills, the customs and right now, most importantly, how to make it through the winter without freezing to death. The predominant feeling I had my first month in China was being cold, VERY COLD. The only place that I could thaw out was in my bed. I had the most wonderful blanket. I don’t know what it was made from, but it reminded me of an old horsehair blanket that my grandmother had without the great weight. The ladies who took care of my apartment were in disbelief when I asked to have an additional blanket like that. They told someone to translate to me that “one is enough, there was only one for each bed.” I later told Yang that I wanted, rather NEEDED an additional blanket, and soon they brought the extra blanket with a smile for the “spoiled” “weak” American. I thought I could tell their thoughts by the looks on their faces, without needing a translator. Some expressions, I think, are human nature anywhere in the world.
“We maybe lost having to give you an extra blanket, but, you’re the sissy.”
I was very lucky that Yang had experienced living in a foreign culture. She had, as a young adult, studied for one year in Australia. She also had traveled to the United States, one time, for about two weeks with a delegation from Hohai University.
She acted as their own interpreter who they could trust, in addition to the ones provided by the Universities they had visited. She had a good understanding of living as a “foreigner” in a strange land and she had some ideas about what life was like in America. She knew that I was willingly sacrificing many comforts of my home to live in China and she in turn wanted to do whatever was possible to keep me satisfied and positive about my experiences. I felt very fortunate to have some one, not only experienced, but also understanding and caring like the wonderful Yang. I called that name as if it were her first name, but I never quite figured out her actual Chinese name.
Yang and I had a rather long conversation about my being so cold. She, first, sternly said that she had very explicitly e-mailed me about bringing the warmest clothes that I had. I told her that I had done as she had said. She had not been in the US in winter, so I tried to explain that in the US, every place is heated: homes, apartments, classrooms, cafeterias, restaurants, stores and especially our cars. The only time we are without heat is when we walk from our house to our car, until the engine gets hot or when we walk from our car to a classroom or store.
We might go for a walk in the cold, play outdoors briefly, some people even ski, but when a person gets cold, we can very easily go to numerous places that are kept at about 70 degrees. My apartment in China, at its warmest, was below 50 degrees. I explained that under normal conditions, people in the US do not live in such cold temperatures for a prolonged period of time.
There was no where for me to get warm except in my bed and in my “new invention” that I called a “Joan-warmer.” The university had been very proud to have a small automatic washing machine for me in my bathroom. And in my living room was an electric clothes dryer on tall legs so that, theoretically, it could stand above the washer. I asked why it was in the living room and not in the bathroom and I got two answers. First they said that they thought it might not be good to put it in my bathroom. It is hard to explain what my bathroom was like and it was too small to get a picture. I’m not sure that words can express how unusual it was. I had a bathtub with a shower, but there was no shower curtain and it took me months to figure out how to use the shower. After I became friends with a few Chinese students I asked them to help figure it out. They immediately asked me, totally puzzled, don’t you have a shower in America? I said that I did, but it was nothing like this Chinese shower. I left it up to them to think about this and decide what the differences could be. Until I went to China, I too would have assumed that a shower is a shower all over the world.
When I finally learned how to use the shower my whole bathroom got wet, which didn’t matter because there was a drain in the floor and that is where both the bathtub and washer drained. I looked at it as a way of killing two birds with one stone, so that every time I showered or did laundry my bathroom floor got washed. But, that is not a good place to have an electric clothes dryer. With the way things were, I was careful whenever I used the bathroom. When doing laundry I moved the washer close to the door so that I didn’t actually stand in the bathroom when loading or unloading clothes. Where I stood was dry and where the washer was plugged in was dry. Believe me that I also was very careful about touching the electric heater or water heater that also were in the bathroom, if the floor was wet. All of this was not only inconvenient, but I also thought, dangerous. I felt that I had to be very alert when taking a shower or doing laundry. I tried to explain the danger to the apartment manager and he could not understand what the problem was. For some reason it was bad to have the electric clothes dryer in the bathroom, but the electric washing machine, heater and water heater were OK. I didn’t think that they wanted to kill their first American teacher, so it must be safe. There were many things about China that I did not understand and I would put these issues on the list. After asking everyone I could for safety tips, I decided to always be alert to possible dangers relating to electricity in China.
The other answer I was given to having the dryer in the living room is that it was a real status item. Hardly anyone had seen one and whenever I had guests to my apartment that was the first thing they looked at. One day when showing it to someone it dawned on me that I could briefly run the dryer and put my upper body inside to warm up. The metal actually got so hot that I had to lean on a big bath towel. It certainly got warmer than either of the “air-conditioners” in my living room or bedroom. I think that this shows how desperate I was to get warm.
I was worried that I could not stay healthy when constantly cold. I was also concerned that I might get irritable and crabby. Bone chilling cold does not foster feelings of well being, health or kindness. I wondered what could be done to help me make my life more tolerable.
Yang and I seemed to communicate quite well from the beginning. I didn’t whine and complain, but rather simply told her what the problem was and asked her for possible solutions. I felt like when I had a problem I was always in a problem-solving mode. If necessary I was willing to do whatever needed to be done to solve the problem, but being in such a different environment I often did not know the best solution and had to ask my experienced Chinese person, Yang.
Yang said that we would go shopping in a few days when the stores were open and get some warm Chinese clothing. But, for now, she invited me to her apartment for a very special dinner the night of the Spring Festival Holiday. I wasn’t interested in the food or the holiday, but was happily thinking that I would have an evening of being warm at her house.
Yang came to my apartment to get me in the late afternoon and first we went to a food store where I could pick out things that I wanted, since the food she had waiting for me on my arrival was running out. The first time being in a Chinese “super market” was amazing. I could have looked around for hours. I’m not sure what I was most excited about, the American foods that I recognized or the strange items that I had no idea what they were. There were many American products such as M & M’s, Oreo Cookies which said on the package, “America’s favorite cookie,” instant coffee, pistachio nuts from California and frozen American sweet corn with an American flag on the plastic bag. What was totally missing and something I went without for the entire year was butter. When I got homesick, I often ate American sweet corn and mashed potatoes, with the yellow from the corn always tricking me into believing I had butter.
The climb to Yang’s apartment or condo gave me sufficient exercise for the day. We had to climb to the 7th floor since there wasn’t an elevator and she said that few buildings in China, under eight floors, had elevators. She laughed at how when she was in America, people took the elevator from the first to the second floor. I asked her about the concept in America that apartments on the top floors are more expensive because of the view. She said that it was opposite in China, that the higher the floor, the less expensive the apartment because of the greater climb. Then she got a big smile on her face when she told me that soon I would see what she had bought with the money she saved by living so high up.
When I got inside the apartment and it was just as cold as the outside air, I knew there certainly wasn’t a heater or furnace in her house. She explained that what is used in China is called an air-conditioner and it is a combination heater in the winter and air conditioner for the summer. She said though, that it cost about one year’s salary. She explained that if you’ve always lived in the same temperature as the outdoors, you get used to it. I wondered how long that might take, but it turns out that she was correct. After my year in China my house in America is much cooler than the temperature most Americans keep. I’m not saying that I prefer the 50 degrees like I had in my apartment, but 70 degrees or more is now too warm for the “Chinese girl” that I have become.
Then finally she got to show me what she was so proud of—the piano that she had bought for her son. She told me that pianos in China are very expensive. Her seven-year-old son, Kevin, played several songs for me while Yang and her husband excused themselves to go into the kitchen to prepare dinner.
Then Kevin “entertained” me more with fireworks. I think he had been told he had to play so many songs before we could do the fireworks. We did spend time shooting off more fireworks from their seventh floor apartment window than I have in my entire life in the US. I could not believe how cheap and common fireworks are and when I spoke of dangers, they looked at me like they had no idea what I was talking about. I explained that there are laws in America that relate to personal safety and the fire hazards involved in the use of fireworks. I tried to tell how usually a city would buy a large supply of really fabulous fireworks for everyone to enjoy together in the park. Yang’s husband said that he thought we were free to do anything we wanted to in America. He did not understand laws restricting fireworks use. I could tell that he thought that what I was saying was so strange and totally different from what he had ever imagined about life in America.
Later, I found out how news coverage in China is government-controlled and very different from what I was used to. People aren’t told about unpleasant things in China. People do not read about the number of kids who blow their fingers off or start their clothes on fire. They may hear about one child in their own neighborhood, but statistics aren’t made known like in the rest of the world. The same thing goes for driving safety in China. After seeing the insane driving habits, I asked my students about accident and death statistics. No one in my classes could find any information. They almost didn’t understand what I meant. One student said that the government probably thinks that it would only make people unhappy. I had not remembered that “ignorance is bliss” is an old Chinese proverb. But, it was something I would think about a lot later.
I mostly wanted to be in the kitchen to see how the food was being prepared. They finally gave in to my curiosity and I got my first of many Chinese cooking lessons. Let me just say that NOTHING they made looked like the food we get at Chinese restaurants in the US. I never ceased to be surprised how different the food was and most of it was very flavorful and delicious.
When people commented how quickly I learned to use chop-sticks to eat, my reply was that it was an example of “SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST!”
When we sat down at the table, there were more than twenty bowls and plates with various kinds of Chinese “dishes.” There were several types of meat, fish and the “shrimpiest” shrimp I had ever seen. Using my fingers, I tore off the head, tail and shell and felt there was hardly enough left to chew. Then Yang gave me a lesson in the Chinese way to eat shrimp. You put the whole little shrimp in your mouth and turn it around to bite off the head and spit it out. Then you turn it around again in your mouth and bite off the tail and spit it out. Then with your tongue and teeth you remove the shell and spit it out. Then you swallow the little morsel that is left. Eating shrimp like that reminded me of eating celery in that you burn more calories in the process of eating than you get from the food. I finally said that I am not so patient, but actually I could not really taste the little morsel that was left for me to eat. They said that they had gotten the shrimp especially for me, but since I didn’t like them, they would gladly eat them.
Yang and her husband were so kind and sensitive during the meal in that when they noticed a food that I liked and went back to more frequently, they moved the bowl in front of me and they ate the foods that I liked the least. I explained that I finally understood that night, the set of Chinese dishes that my mother had bought for me. Her neighbor in Florida had lived in China for over 20 years, working for the American Embassy in Beijing. Since she was getting old and was moving into a retirement home, she sold many of her possessions. I was so pleased to get her set of Chinese dishes that she had brought back from Beijing. Tonight the lack of dinner plates and the abundance of little bowls and plates finally made sense to me. What I thought were dinner plates actually were serving plates along with the many serving bowls. What there were the most of were little bowls and little plates that each person has in front of them to put shrimp heads, tails and shells and what ever else you did not eat. When the little bowl or plate was full, it was taken away and replaced with a clean one. Most of the time the food went directly from the serving bowls using chopsticks into your mouth. I was told that it was not proper to have a knife at the dinner table because it is considered a weapon. Chinese food is all cut up in bite-sized pieces to just grab with chopsticks. It is amazing how the customs of other people make perfect sense when you find out what they have in mind.
One thing that I never could get used to was that I never knew how much I ate. I was accustomed in America to filling a dinner plate, sometimes to over flowing and maybe two times for a special dinner. I always “cleaned my plate due to the starving children in China” that I had heard of, as a child, in the 1950’s. When everyone eats out of the same serving bowls and plates, you have no idea how much you are eating. The concept is to eat until you are satisfied and leave the rest for the others. I think that I actually ate more with the Chinese system because I too often went beyond satisfied to being stuffed.
I also did not know that the typical Chinese white or stir-fried rice would be served at the end of the meal. I was then too full to want any. That was the idea, at a banquet you only ate rice if the other food did not fill you. I really liked having rice as I was eating other dishes because it seemed to calm the various strong spices that were in some dishes. I often asked if I could have rice during the meal and I’m not really sure what the Chinese thought of that. I felt that some people looked at me with disapproval. It didn’t really bother me because I certainly had no thought of trying to please 1.3 billion Chinese people. No one ever joined me in eating rice throughout the meal and sometimes I think they thought that I was very strange and certainly not properly brought-up.