Tunnel Vision

Tunnel Vision

3-19-2013

There are times when immersion wears on you a bit.  Everyone speaks Chinese, and everyone has their own way of doing things.  You’re hanging out with Chinese people all day, you’re attempting (and failing) to communicate constantly, and while you do see a marked improvement, it’s still a long ways from being able to have a real conversation.  You also get a bunch of wing-nuts speaking English at you (most of the time, the wrong English), and you wonder if it’s worth it to correct them, or just develop tunnel vision and ignore it all.

That reminds me…tunnel vision…. It’s a skill, develop it, you need it in this country.  The ability to look straight in front of you and ignore the moron screaming in your ear is extremely important.  Beggars, random salespeople, and really weird people will gravitate towards you.  If you look at any of these people, you will encourage them.  In some cases it’s somewhat amusing, in other cases it’s extremely frustrating.  I was walking down a never-ending mall the other day to meet a friend, and I had some kid walk up next to me, and just walk next to me, about 3 inches off my hip.  I don’t like that, I usually think “pick-pocket”.  Every time I stopped, he stopped, I’d turn to him and he wouldn’t meet my eyes… I wish I could say that that’s the first time or last time I’ll have my own little personal shadow, but it won’t be, and I’m not sure I’ll ever figure it out until I can turn and say, “What’s your deal?  Are you trying to rob me?”  I don’t think he was a pickpocket, I also don’t have the first clue as to what he was doing.  The same thing happens to my friends every now and then.  They’ve had it happen so often, they don’t react other than to put their hand on their wallet.

I took Mei to see a movie tonight.  She told me to go get the tickets, it was an international theater, so there’s some English movies and some Chinese movies.  I picked the one that started 10 minutes from when I got there.  Turned out to be the new die hard movie, and it wasn’t bad, although I think the previous ones were better.  It was in English and Russian, with Chinese subtitles.  I missed a good half of the movie because the Russian was translated into Chinese, which wasn’t overly helpful.

3-20-2013

I was talking to my teacher today, and asked her about the weird guy 3 inches off my hip.  She said that most people here would assume pickpocket, but most of those work in groups of 3 and 4.  She suggested that there was an alternate explanation, one that never occurred to me but makes a lot of sense.  In china, the definition of personal space is a lot different.  I was on the train last night at rush hour, we were packed in, I had one hand on a rail, and the other on my wallet, and a hundred Chinese people pressing in on me, thank goodness I don’t get claustrophobic.  Because of this, when walking, people don’t consider, “hey, I’m walking too close to this person, I should move away.  He may have just been walking, and curious about random foreigner in his area.  That makes sense to me.

I have to say, I love the one on one lessons and am glad that I changed.  It’s nice to be able to ask questions every day, both about the language that I hear and don’t quite get, as well as the cultural things that I don’t quite understand.  I was at a park, or at least a park-ish place, the other day.  There was a mural that told a story of ancient warriors in this area becoming victors by putting everyone else down.  Based on the armour, weapons, and other things, it looked to be about 1,000 years ago.  The Chinese parts of it were identical to how I read the story, then, I found the English story, and It made no sense whatsoever.  The English portion was about Deng Xiaopeng, the founder of Shenzhen, and it was supposedly his story.  The problem is that Deng Xiaopeng consolidated all the villages here in 1980, and created Shenzhen megacity, he wasn’t alive a thousand or two thousand years ago.  The English translation had nothing to do with anything in the park, nor the surrounding area.  There was also a tree supposedly planted by him, that had been there for 150 years, another impossibility.  I wonder how many other “historical” monuments are completely wrong in English, and only make sense in Chinese.

It was interesting today discussing culture in China, however.  I’ve noticed how proud the Chinese are of their 5,000 years of history.  It’s actually 8,000 if you include Zhao, which is the country that was around for 3,000 years before China, and is why Zhao is the most popular last name in China.  Shenzhen, however, only has 30 years of history, if you don’t include the villages that were here for a thousand or two years before consolidation.  All that’s left of those villages, by the way are gates, and monuments to remind them of their history.  This is why Beijing and the other large megacities look down on Shenzhen, call them country bumpkins (or whatever it translates to, it’s not complimentary), and why those who are from or live here feel shame when it’s mentioned.  To the Chinese, their culture and their history are all important.  Many current jokes, or phrases are based on a historical known fact, and until you learn all of what they are taught in school and by their families, a foreigner will never truly understand all that goes on.  I think that you can get a good idea by reading the teaching of Confucius and other Chinese philosophers, but you’ll never get the whole.