Friends

Everyone wants to be my friend. I like making friends, and lots of friends is sure better than none, but it can get overwhelming. With people here, especially the younger ones, making friends follows a bit of a different track than I'm used to. When I make a new friend back home, it's generally done without the word 'friend' being mentioned at all. We talk about things we have in common, maybe joke around...you know, get to know each other. It's a casual affair. Here, people are serious about being MY friend, and they need to do it quick before I disappear around the corner.

It's not their fault. I'm probably the first foreigner they've spoken with, and they need to move fast to capitalize on the opportunity. I truly respect their initiative. It takes a lot of guts to approach a stranger, much less a foreign stranger, strike up a conversation and seal the deal by asking for a phone number. Now that I think of it, these high schoolers would be really good at getting numbers in bars if they chose to apply themselves in that way. The problem is, I am only one person and as such it is physically impossible for me be good friends with everyone I bump into on the street. I stopped giving my cell number to people who I talk with for less than five minutes quite a while ago. However, I'm not a mean person and I will give one of my email addresses to pretty much anyone who asks.

Last blog, I wrote about tree planting day. That was last Sunday. On the bus back, a few high schoolers were sitting nearby and started talking with me. Below are two of the emails I got within a day of the planting.


hello!~ Andy
My name is wind .Maybe you have already forgotten me but I remember you.
Today we went to Taiyang island to planting trees . You and Nancy were talking all the time.
When you look me I said : Excuse me may I know your E-mail adress ?
haha do you remember me ?
I want to make friends with you Because you are from America . Haha,my English is very poor so I
think you may help me and have a friend from another country is my dream
Let's make a friend with each other .
OK?

Best Wishes
Your Wind


Andy,
How are you doing? How about your visit? Where have you been? I think the photo i sent to you runs into some problems. This time, I think you can open it.
I really want to make friends with you. what's your Chinese name? Wei * rong. I forget the middle, so sorry. My Chinese is very stardard! I think we can study together and make progress.
My English name is Barry, and Chinese name is ZhangChao. My cellphone number is [5555555], call me or massage me when you are free. Wish your reply.
Take care and have a nice week!
Barry.

Here's the picture Barry sent along.

They're so danged sincere, it really breaks my heart that I can't fulfill their 'dream' of having a foreign friend, but 1) I don't have time and 2) I'm not supposed to be speaking English which is a big part of what they want. Usually I'll send back something like:

I had a great time talking with you, Wind. It was fun planting trees together. I wish you well in school!

Hopefully they won't be too heartbroken.

Actually, I'm complaining here but I don't want to give everyone the wrong idea. Having millions of people dying to meet you is very beneficial and gratifying. If I find someone interesting, I can approach them to talk, confident that they will be happy to do so. It also makes for some interesting conversations with cab drivers and such. I'm always up for a chat, it's just that prolonged friendship with the entire city's population is not sustainable. Allow me the pleasure of a little grumbling here, so I don't have to tell it to Wind or Barry.

Tree Planting and Changchun

Lunch yesterday was interrupted by a confusing phone call. Someone started speaking English at me, and I couldn't figure out who it was. Normally when I pick up my phone and hear English, that means family, but I couldn't quite make out the voice with the chatter filling the restaraunt. It was male at least, and when I asked who it was I could swear they said 'Sam' (my brother) so I went for a big 'heyyy, how's it going, great to hear from you'. Turns out it was a Chinese guy named Stan and he was calling from the Harbin TV station.

Long story short, I found myself in a taxi this morning at 7:30, heading out to plant some trees on TV. I was accompanied by David, a CET classmate who like me decided to hang around Harbin for spring break instead of heading off to some remote travel destination. When we got to the Dragon Tower (the TV broadcasting tower), we were a little surprised by the scene confronting us. All we knew was some guy named Stan, who had gotten our numbers from yet another friend, wanted us to go out and plant some trees with the tv station for 'Tree Planting Day', the equivalent of Earth Day over here. We didn't know that half of Harbin would be going with us.

Stan was waiting in the parking lot with some other foreigners who I didn't recognize, and behind them a sea of Chinese faces in red baseball caps. It turns out Stan is the host of an evening radio show teaching English, and hangs out with the foreign crowd quite a bit. There was a tall white guy standing in the parking lot with Stan, and next to him a girl who looked Chinese but wearing fairly western style clothes. I introduced myself and got their names as John the Canadian and Becky. They obviously knew each other, so I assumed the girl was also Canadian. I was even more convinced when she started speaking great English and cracking jokes definitely outside the range of Chinese humor; for instance, several cars straight out of 'Fast and the Furious' whipped past us into the parking lot, slammed on the breaks and performed those screeching, 180 degree stops which I've never seen outside of a movie. Becky laughed along with us, commenting "oh my god, they think they're sooo cool". For those of you who haven't been to China, that's an unusual phrase coming from a Chinese person.

Nonetheless, I soon found that Becky is Chinese, born and bred. Her westernization came through intense study, a gift for languages, and a three-year relationship with John the gregarious Canadian. Becky's English is the best I've ever heard from a Chinese person who's never been out of the country. Fooled twice in two days. She and John are getting married and going to Canada this summer, but that's another story. Our small group was rounded out by the Auzzies Boyd and Adam. Boyd is a big guy, very talkative, plays rugby and the guitar. He wanted to know if the crazy stories he's heard about American frats are true. Adam was a nice guy as well, although smaller and more hung over. Stan had thoughtfully provided us with gleaming white baseball caps, a nice contrast with red-capped hordes. It was nice of him to give us the same color as the leaders, but then again we didn't the help sticking out.

We piled on to the waiting busses - 5 or 10 of them - and headed for Sun Island Park to get planting. It was my second trip there, so I already knew that it's a huge fake nature complex where the tickets are expensive and people get wedding pictures taken. I wrote about it in one of my earliest blogs. Just before we arrived, Stan told us that his friend had a radio program going right then, and could we be good sports and sing a song into the phone so it could be on his friend's show live? We obliged with a patchy but heartfelt rendition of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight', thanks to David's quick work coming up with a good one we all knew.

The tree planting was at best questionable, at worst a tv stunt which wasted a lot of willing labor. The area chosen was on the bank of a river which is low at this time of the year, but will rise much higher at other times. There were already piles of good dirt laid out for us to use filling the holes. I soon found out why. The bank of the river, like the rest of Sun Island Park, was manmade not long ago and was actually landscaped using sand with a very thin layer of dirt on top. I'm no botanist, so perhaps my instincts were off, but....can willow trees grow in sand, and survive being submersed in water for significant parts of the year? That's not even all of it. The process we were to follow planting the trees ended with giving them a good watering. But, that water was not allowed to come from the river due to pollution. I'm not clear on how the trees will be able to survive in a few months submersed in this water, but can't stand a bucketfull right now.

Call me a coward - I prefer diplomat - but I neglected to raise any of these issues as I was interviewed several times throughout the morning. I stuck with the vanilla propagandistic stuff that I thought they were hoping for: Yes, I think planting trees is a wonderful activity and should be practiced no matter what country you're from or in. Yes, I've planted trees before in the US. I think that the American attitude towards helping the environment is very much like the Chinese attitude I see today; everyone wants to do what they can. It's something we all have in common. Yes, I'm very impressed by the number of people who showed up today, and I've never been to a tree planting on such a large scale. All this was followed by a reprise of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' for the TV cameras, after I coaxed David and Adam up onto the stage for backup.

Us foreigners were given the royal treatment. We didn't really work that hard, just talked to people and dug a few holes while we were at it. I had the feeling this was a really relaxed thing for everyone until Stan came up when I was talking with couple of student reporters. He really cracked the whip, telling them to get back to work and not be so lazy talking to me. Apparently interviewing me was fine, but they should get on with it and get back to the shovels. I was shocked by the hard line Stan took with them. He apologized for interrupting my conversation, but he obviously wasn't sorry for interrupting their conversation. The Chinese seem to treat people very differently depending on the relationship. Bosses, friends, and those you can boss around of all get shown vastly different personalities. As a foreigner, I got the red carpet treatment. The student reporters were lower than Stan on the totem pole, so he was free to lay down the law with them.

I'm getting tired and I need to go to bed, so I have to summarize the rest of the day quickly. I'm only at noon so far. The tree planting ended, and this afternoon I hopped on the train with Jin Chao and we made the three hour ride down to Changchun for a little change of scenery. The train ride was made awkward by a shouting match between Jin Chao and a stubborn guy on the train who didn't want to give us our seats. We won, but the guy's ticket was right next to us so we had to sit together the whole time. After a couple hours, he actually fell asleep and snuggled onto my shoulder for a few minutes before coming around.

That brings me to now. It's 12:30am and I'm in an internet bar next to the shower house we're staying at due to a lack of better sleeping options in the neighborhood. We had some excellent Korean food tonight with Jin Chao's cousin who goes to school here, and her Mom who's visiting for a while. If today is any indicator, the next couple of days in Changchun should be pretty interesting.

break plans and ping pong progress

I got my one-on-one teacher's phone number today. Unfortunately, my one-on-one teacher is no longer the cute 25 year old of last summer, but rather a guy about my dad's age who today explained to me the reason his face is crooked: in the heat of the summer a few years ago, he left a fan on too long blowing from his left. The next day when he looked in the mirror, his left eyebrow was cockeyed and his mouth shifted slightly right. That sounds to me like something one of my uncles told me once, after he pretended to pull of his nose, all to my wide-eyed astonishment. At the time, I was 5 years old, and since then I've been pretty good at picking out those rascally uncle types trying to pull one over on me. As far as I could tell, my teacher was completely serious.

I actually really like this teacher. We have good learning vibes. In my one-on-one classes, I tend to ask incessant questions and get obsessive with language details. This guy digs that, even though it throws off his lecture and we end up only getting through half of what he's planned. We also chat about other things. He's pretty fit for fifty-something, and once told me about his morning routine of jogging and pull-ups. 'I can do thirteen pull-ups' he said, and stuck out his muscular forearm for me to sqeeze. Feeling inadequate in the pull-up department, I told him I'm more of a jogger; my legs are ripped, but the upper body could use a little work. Staying positive, he jumped up and came around the table to give my calf a squeeze, nodding respect. I know feeling another guy's leg in the states is a little fruity, but I think it's ok here. I've had my abs poked as well. When I told him I'd be staying around Harbin for spring break next week, he wrote his cell number on my midterm paper and said, "Give me a call if you've got time, we can go out and have a drink. I'm busy Wednesday and Thursday nights, any other time is good." I might just do it.

Next week is going to be my last mid-semester break in China. This time, instead of running around China like a chicken with my head cut off, I'm going to take it easy around Harbin. My roommate Jin Chao has a reasonably light class load right now, so the two of us will probably take off and check out one of the nearby Northeastern cities I haven't seen yet, maybe Shenyang or Changchun. I figure, why spend money on a plane ticket to the far corners of China, accompanied by Americans, then come back to to school feeling like the moldy towel that would be riding in my pack all week? The alternative: spend time with a native chinese speaker and friend, explore Harbin and surrounding areas, come back to school refreshed. I do feel a little guilty wasting a travel opportunity because I know how many people would kill for a week traveling in China, but I've got to face facts: I'm traveled out after last summer, fall, and winter breaks. Maybe in a few months I'd be ready to go again, but right now I'm looking forward to wandering Harbin and squeezing in a few extra ping pong lessons. And possibly drinks with my Confucianism prof.

Major breakthrough last time with the ping pong teacher: he backs up from the table and sends me some long ones to smash back. It's been weeks now practicing the most basic motions possible, half-hour forhand, half-hour backhand. Actually, this last time he only broke form for about five minutes, but I can hardly describe how good it felt. I don't even remember what it's like to play a real game anymore, I've been hitting against my ball-machine style teacher for so long. It's good exercise anyway. The sweat dripping off my chin leaves a puddle on the floor; it's a puddle because my chin doesn't move for an hour, held in place by the absolute regularity of my teacher's returns.