Lasting Impressions: Hong Kong
August 8, 2010 § 3 Comments
I’m finally home after spending the best seven months of my life in various parts of Asia. The country city that had the greatest impact on me was definitely Hong Kong; it’s like my home away from home away from home if I count Mizzou, and I will never forget my time there. It’s hard not to fall in love with a vibrant, thriving city after living there for six months. Every city I visit hereafter will be colored by its comparison to HK. I understand now why certain people love and are always pining after it.
People have asked me if I’d consider finding a job in HK, but as much as I love the city, it’s not the same without all the friends I made here [most of whom were also exchange students]. In fact, if I went back in a few year, it would probably feel totally empty. Also, not being able to speak Cantonese was a handicap even while I worked at an English publication. So, I don’t foresee any long-term relationship happening between me and Hong Kong.
I could probably write a lot more, but jet lag has been putting me to sleep before midnight for the past few days and this is all I could come up with off the top of my head.
Pros:
+HK has everything that I could want [except lint rollers and Chipotle and central heating], all packed into three-ish condensed islands. I love the double-decker buses, the colorful MTR stations, the mountains and stairs and collision of east and west. All of it has become so familiar and I love it. The busy-ness of the city, the non-sleeping-ness of the city, the tall buildings and public transportation of the city, I’ll miss every one of these.
+Everything is in English! Well, most important things anyhow. Menus definitely vary by location, but the city itself is pretty easy to figure out thanks to the 99 years of British rule. Another awesome influence [I presume] is the prevalence of Mini Coopers. I’ve never been to the UK, but HK was seriously like Mini Cooper heaven for me. I LOVE IT.
+Ladies’ nights are three times a week every week [in various locations], which means free cover and [usually] free drinks. I didn’t take advantage of this THAT much, but nothing in America can compare. Paying for my own drinks? Tch, I’m too spoiled for that.
A blinged-out pink & white Hello Kitty Mini Cooper FABULOUS
Cons:
-When I arrived in HK, my skin was basically blemish-free. Now, as I leave, the humidity and rich food has erupted like a volcano on my face, and my skin is suffering more than it did when I was going through puberty. I have accepted this fact but it bothers me a LOT.
-Many families in HK have maids that live in their apartments to help do the mundane chores like cleaning and errands and babies. I’d venture to say that 99% of these maids are Filipina women, who work six days a week and get Sundays off, during which they congregate weekly in various areas around HK. This might be a bit of an overshare, but I’ll just say that even though I don’t want to see them any differently, it’s difficult to adjust back to normalcy after seeing them valued as more or less second-class citizens in most of HK. Which brings me to my next country…which will be the next blog entry! Good night :)
Among The Luddites
July 21, 2010 § Leave a comment
I had a nasty cold for four days. The day I got sick, people treated me very well, bringing me medicine and fruit and asking after my health. After telling them I was still feeling unwell even after a day of lying around generating snot [the internet wouldn’t work until 6PM], a handful of individuals identified the origin of my illness with complete certainty: the air conditioning.
Ah, yes. Evil technology!
“It’s bad to have it blowing all the time,” one said. [I don’t.]
“I saw with my own eyes a previously healthy girl confined to a wheelchair because of constant air conditioning,” another told me. [Um WHAT. Okay…]
“It’s really better not to use it,” the last one advised.
Seriously, that guy. After seeing that I still had a seriously drippy nose a few days later, he glanced up in the corner of my room where my air conditioner was languishing and said, “You really should leave it off.” WELL OF COURSE, I HAVE A COLD, WHAT KIND OF RETARD WOULD I BE TO INDULGE IN AIR CONDITIONING UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES??? Sadly, he was not the only person to insinuate this about me.
While I don’t doubt their good intentions, there’s nothing I hate more than being talked to patronizingly — I shut down immediately, smiling and nodding and wondering how to tell them that the cold is actually a virus that I probably caught because I’m cooped up inside with people 24 hours a day instead of, you know, outside or something. No, it can’t possibly be germs! Definitely the a/c.
Whatever. Let them keep their drinking-hot-water-cures-everything remedies to themselves. I was probably just grumpy from being sick.
Day Of Rest
July 12, 2010 § 1 Comment
My first Sunday (night) service began with me sitting on the wrong side because I didn’t know the genders were segregated. Sometimes it’s a de facto habit in youth group, but I’ve never seen it willfully implemented before.
Preparing for service
Are Asian people always late? I thought it was just a stereotype cooked up by Asian Americans as an excuse for laziness, but it’s also about disrespecting other people’s time. The service started at 8PM with 13 people in the room: Half an hour later, all 100 chairs had been filled. I wondered how much these people have suffered for their faith in this country.
This weekly service is open to all of this factory’s workers as well as those of neighboring compounds. I wonder if the CCP ever care to check around here? Not a seemingly suspicious place.
Rows of chairs w/ hymnals
The power went out for a few minutes. Spiritual warfare? I wondered. In nearby buildings, lights still shone brightly. The initial time of worship was led by a couple of my students. Sometimes I forget that half of them are studying to be missionaries; it’s not something to take lightly.
Next, a woman who could’ve been Cat C’s sister went up to the podium for more worship and prayer, and then she began to give the sermon. This is the second time I’ve been in a completely Chinese church, and also the second time I’ve seen the congregation led by a female pastor. What would complementarians have to say about this? [Insert smirk.]
The power went out again briefly; she persevered and began her message in darkness. The passage of the day was the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. I was filled with wonder at hearing such a familiar story read aloud in Chinese.
The power went out again, and the ushers started lighting candles. Apparently this frequency of blackouts was not a common occurrence. I didn’t mind listening to her preach in the dark, actually. Without the whirring of air conditioning, the podium, lit only by a battery-operated desk lamp, had a more captivating quality. I wonder if she was a factory worker herself or a full-time pastor. Maybe she was from the Yiwu seminary?
I listened to facts that I’ve learned [and even taught] time and time again: Jews hated Samaritans, why the woman went to the well at noon, etc., and I felt filled with my daily bread. Finally, something comforting in this uncomfortable land.
She explained things carefully. The power went out once again. A man sitting in the back answered his phone. I wanted to smack him upside the head for lack of manners, but this kind of thing happened during class at HKU too. Chinese people…
“If Jesus lost one out of 99 sheep, he would leave the rest to search for that lost one. That might not make sense to us because if you already have 99 sheep, losing one isn’t a big deal is it? But if you had three children and lost one, wouldn’t you leave the two in someone else’s care to look for the missing one? This is the way Jesus looks after you.”
Teaching: Day Two 7.2.10
July 9, 2010 § Leave a comment
Fake it til you make it
That night, I dreamed that a bird somehow got inside my room. Frightened, it kept trying to escape, but the windows were closed, and it would fly into the window, fall down in a daze, and repeat. I finally caught it in my hands and tried to calm it, but I could feel its terrified body shaking in my palms. Resigned, I released it through the opening in the corner of the window, and it flew away as swiftly as it could.
I was awakened at 6AM by voices coming from the classroom outside my room. Panicking, I checked my phone and saw that there was still an hour before I was supposed to wake up. Eventually, the students began singing praise songs [loudly]. I love that they love Jesus, but I wondered if they had anything better to do with their time…like sleep… Amazingly, they appear to wake up for morning prayer every day at that time.
The sunshine uplifted me a bit after the previous night’s indulgent wallowing, and I tried to put negative thoughts out of my mind as I prepared for the day’s lessons. In addition to the prayer/worship time at 6AM, the students also sing a few songs at the beginning of class, sung acapella [because that’s how they do] and led by one of the students.
I’ve decided to start every day with a writing exercise that they all read aloud to the class and turn in to me. I come up with a list of personal-ish questions that use some of the previous day’s vocabulary so that they can get thinking and speaking in English. It’s a bit reminiscent of the DOLs we did at the beginning of English class in elementary/middle school, which were exercises in which we had to identify the grammatical and spelling mistakes in the given sentences: editing, essentially, which I had no idea would end up being my choice of occupation..!!
The game of the day was a simplified version of Taboo, which I also miss playing with my Mizzou buddies. The male team won by one point. I’ve noticed that even in a classroom setting such as this, the girls women behave more shyly than the boys men, with the latter coming up to choose a word willingly while the former hesitate and look around at teammates. They’re not like this in every situation, but I would like to find a way to nurture greater confidence.
On the second day of every month, the factory workers get a day off, so there was no lunch to be had in the cafeteria [a relief?]. Instead, one of the students [Ruth] took me outside of the factory compound [finally], and we ate at one of the many little open-air restaurants lining a nearby block. So far I’ve been eating rather meagerly here, partly because I’m still not comfortable enough to eat openly [and for someone with a history of vaguely disordered eating, the act of it still carries the occasional tinge of shame] and partly because I’ve been so used to the rich and plentiful fare of Hong Kong.
Afternoon lessons ended on a happy note [no pun intended] after we did a musical dictation of Hillsong’s “Came To My Rescue.” I told myself that I would try to combat my loneliness by interacting more with the students outside of class time, which is…the obvious solution. Good job, self! I brought my laptop out and sat at the back of the room.
Most of the students were still hanging out there because really what else is there to do, and some started conversing with me. I mostly talked to the 19-year-old who looks eerily like one of my exes, since he was sitting the closest and took an interest in my Macbook.
This kid, who apparently took the phrase “Living Stone” as his English name [a direct translation of his Chinese name], is quite a character. During one of the class breaks [like passing period, except we all stay in the same room] when I sat at the front of the room writing in my notebook, he played the chorus of Westlife’s “My Love” loudly from his laptop and then yelled across the room for me to translate it. I’m very familiar with the song, having loved it for almost a decade, but how was I supposed to translate a love song?
“Please, teacher,” he called out. “I really don’t understand what it means.”
I could hear in his voice that he was baiting me, but I didn’t acknowledge it. Finally, I responded, “It means I miss you and want to see you, something like that.”
“Oh, well, I feel the same way,” he yelled back.
Insolent little…LOL.
When I was sitting behind him after class, LS asked me if I knew about the yoga epidemic in America. “Uh…it’s a very popular form of exercise,” I replied. “Even I’ve done it before.” Shock briefly registered across his face as well as the faces of nearby students. They tried to tell me some information on its pagan/evil origins, but I couldn’t understand all of it. Besides…really? I knew Chinese people were superstitious, but…it’s yoga! It’s that thing for upper-middle class people with time and space and money! Not some way to achieve nirvana, which was apparently its original purpose…
They also asked me about Halloween, which I thought most Chinese people translated as 鬼节 [“monster/ghost holiday”], but the students referred to as “All Saint’s Day” [I forgot the Chinese phrase]. Actually, LS specifically asked if people in Chicago celebrate it.
“It’s a rather foul day, isn’t it?” he inquired. “I’ve seen it in movies.”
I tried to explain that this holiday is basically a free-for-all for children to dress up like their favorite cartoon characters and gorge on candy.
“But I’ve seen reports on the news,” he persisted. “People dress up as fiendish monsters with blood on their faces.”
When I asked, he couldn’t spell out what exactly he thought these people did on Halloween, but they all seemed to have a rather odious view on the matter — a rather interesting cultural gap.
After dinner, I watched half of Daybreakers with LS and another student on his laptop. There are some rather morbid scenes of dead and/or bloody people, during which I made appropriately disgusted noises. This caused LS to hold up his hand in front of my eyes to shield my vision — funny the first time, not so much the third or fourth. And it reminds me even more of that ex. It was a surprising gesture from someone who insists on calling me “teacher” instead of my real name because he says our age gap [of 2 years] would cause it to be disrespectful T____T a joke, probably, but he persists.
I’d like to elaborate on this tangent and note that I really despise it when guys [of any friends/boyfriends/whatever] feel like they have to protect me. I mean, unless there’s an imminent ninja attack and he’s some kind of martial arts master, I can probably handle myself. More importantly, he doesn’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve seen — it might be nowhere and nothing, but he DOESN’T KNOW. For him to assume weakness is inexcusable. And if he DOES know me well enough, there should be no question of my capabilities.
Anyway, this post has gone on too long … time to end it!
auradis 