Rou

I had dinner tonight with Xia, the girl who was assigned by the university to show me around when I first arrived in Beijing. The last time I saw her was about 10 days ago, when we went exploring in the Yuanmingyuan relics park across the street from the university. I met her in front of her dormitory a bit after the 6pm rush on the dining halls.

We talked about how we each were doing on the walk across campus, and we also chatted about what we were doing to prepare for class. She insisted that I not be nervous because “teaching in China is easy,” meaning to assuage my nervousness, I take it, and not to knock my profession. I laughed and asked her where in China she had taught before, and she caught the joke, laughing.

I told her that I was going to ask her to identify exclusively jirou (chicken) for me to eat, after the last time I was here and accidentally ordered eel. (It really wasn’t that bad until the third or fourth bite or so, after which the texture was just too much to bear. What’s even crazier was that I could see it sitting there on the buffet line—no ambiguous menus involved—and it was the most appetizing-looking thing in eyeshot.) I got a massive bowl of rice with my sweet-and-sour chicken, along with a broccoli and pork dish that was very salty, but not as salty as most of the dishes served over here. Food in the Tsinghua dining halls have two primary flavors—extremely salty, and extremely spicy. I really like the spicy stuff, but—and this is amazing, being the salt hound that I am—I am really developing an appreciation for bland food in reaction to the blood pressure nightmare represented by the amount of sodium in Chinese food.

The sodium and the eel aside, the dining halls here are probably the best deal in town for a meal, as of right now. I'm sure that there's other things out around Wudaokou that are just as cheap, but I can't imagine a place where the variety is as far-reaching and where you can point to pre-made bins of food instead of having to deal with hundreds of Chinese characters. At somewhere between 3 and 5 kuai for breakfast, and 5 and 7 kuai for dinner (exchange rate: 6.7 kuai = $1), 100 kuai on my meal card can last for quite some time. As it is that I'm trying to budget in order to save for traveling and random extravagances that might cost me a bunch, the dining halls and on-campus restaurants are what I'll be sticking with for a while, I think.

We sat down, and I'm not quite sure what it was, but the conversation got off to a quick start:

“Do you believe in God?” Xia asked.

The last few times we had eaten together, I had taken a moment or three before eating to examine my food before diving in—usually because I had no idea what it was that was in front of me. After seeing me bow my head and cast my eyes downward for what must have seemed like a moment of silence before eating for the second or third time, Xia asked, “are you praying?” I smiled and replied that I wasn't, but that I could see how it looked like I was. I also said that showing such thankfulness in the face of a heaping plate of food seemed like an extremely sensible thing to do.

But this enquiry caught me a bit off guard—Xia wasn't mincing words, and I didn't quite know how to respond.

“Yes, I think so. I believe in something larger than humanity or the universe that logically must have predated and that perhaps still oversees all things. I like the idea of God or a Creator, to the extent that it makes you humble, but I don't like the conflicts that different interpretations of such a force often create.”

She had just visited a multi-denominational church on the Tsinghua campus with a friend of hers that was Korean. They had knocked down a couple of walls on the 15th floor of a dormitory and made space for a congregation. It was the first time she had ever been in an organized place of worship in her entire life. She remarked about how strange organized religion was and I agreed. I then described to her what I meant by the term, “cult,” and the distinction (or lack thereof) between that term and another one, “religion.”

What's endlessly interesting to me is how I often feel like I'm the one getting an education in English while I'm speaking with different peopleover here. Words and concepts that once seemed familiar or graspable become alienated from my understanding, or defamiliarized, and I then realize how true it is that different languages and cultures don't simply have different ways of saying the same things, but instead they have very different ways of saying and thinking very different things. It would seem, then, that cultural differences might stem from language differences--or is it the other way around? I think of how the Chinese can get very blunt sometimes--it is not impoilite to say to a waiter or waitress "give/get me that one" when ordering food, and how saying "please" is in some contexts considered somewhat effeminate--and how Western cultural practices can be a bit more gentle, and how the languages of each have adjusted--or have the languages adjusted the cultures? I don't know...

We started talking about the concept of infinity, and Xia insisted that there is nothing that is infinite. “Things change all the time,” she said, “no thing ever stays the same forever.” I thought that was in many ways awfully wise, thinking a bit about thermodynamics and such, but there were of course problems with the statement. I didn't want to get too far into semantics, however, considering Xia's limited-but-increasingly-impressive English and my nonexistent Mandarin.

Xia mentioned that there were three big religious groups in China, but she either couldn't come up with the English terms for them despite my intervention, or she didn't know what they were. I didn't want to stumble into a political discussion here, even though Xia had demonstrated in the past either an incredible degree of naivete or a very original brand of logic when it came to blindly defending the party line (without indignance or a sense of skepticism) when it came to abnormal norms in China. Despite the strangeness or “cultishness,” Xia finally mentioned, she could see why people like me and her friends liked religion.

On the subject of infinity, we came of course to the mutually terrifying idea of death. What scares Xia the most about it, she said to me almost trembling, is not her own death, but the death of one or both of her parents before she was ready for them to pass away. The one “religion” I've heard Chinese subscribe to in large numbers is a kind of ancestor worship, and in this regard Xia was no exception. Beyond losing her parents, what most scared her was the idea of losing her parents before they've seen her surpass them in terms of material success and/or social prestige. I assured her that, like my parents and most parents, all they typically ever want is for their children to be happy. Different cultures have different techniques of either suggesting or trying to assure or demand “happiness” for their young ones, but I saw that as the common denominator, and Xia agreed.

We then moved onto less weighty subject: whether or not it is morally reprehensible that human beings raise thousands and millions of animals only to kill them before their time for food. “Life is life,” Xia stated in her typical tone of tremendous understatement. “There are no levels.” She had a plate of chicken there in front of her, and acknowledged the hypocrisy. “Whenever I cannot finish my food, especially rou [“flesh,” “meat”], I get very, very sad and angry at myself.” I told her about a couple of people I know who hunt, and how once, when I was coming down on him for his insensitivity to animal rights, one of them asked how I could eat meat without being willing to kill the animal I'm eating myself. Xia was horrified, but understood.

Let it be noted that, at several points in our conversation, Xia said that she thought I was missing what her point was. I insisted that I didn't think that I was, and we she remembered that I had majored in philosophy she felt embarrassed that she had repeatedly said such a thing. I assured her that, despite my background, it is entirely possible that, given the language barrier and our different backgrounds and general approaches to life, I had in fact misunderstood her at some point.

As I was about to pedal off on my bike (which is, despite a easily-fixable loosening pair of handlebars, holding up admirably), Xia brought up something that we had talked about the last time we met—her thought that Americans, when compared to Chinese, are very “extroverted.” I again agreed, and began to see that she seemed to find these conversations in some way very cathartic. I thanked her for what I took to be a compliment and rode off towards the other side of campus.

--

My office on the first floor of the Department of Foreign Languages is a broom closet. Literally. It was exclusively a broom/wash closet in the past, but a week or so ago the staff converted it into an office for three or four foreign staff members. I'm making it sound worse than it seems, however--there are several computers with internet access, and great natural light during the day. The office is northward-facing, so it stays cool essentially all day. I have a small courtyard outside the window that my desk faces, and you can occassionally see older Chinese yardworkers practicing taichi right outside, if you get here early enough.

I've been working here a lot recently. Typically I find it difficult to get much work done in rooms where there is a bed three feet to my right, so I've been retreating to my office as crunch time has approached (t-miuns 40 hours or so until the first class). I came in yesterday and the place was abuzz with staff doing the same as myself--photocopying, getting everything ready for Monday. One of the persistent distractions, however, beginning at around 2pm or so yesterday--around when many Chinese take something of a mid-afternoon siesta--was the repeat playing of an awful Chinese pop song, over and over and over again, by one of the inhabitants of the office down the hall. I stopped for a moment at one point and listened a bit harder, then realized that here were two voices--the artist's, and someone singing along. For at least an hour or so, I was subjected to repeating karaoke booming down the office hallway. Given the high ceilings and tile floors in our buildings, the song sounded like it was being played thruogh a megaphone. Luckily, the repetition eventually made the sound less distracting, and I was able to get a bit more work done before dinner.

As I write from my office now, he's stopped for the moment, but had been going for the past half an hour or so up until maybe a minute ago. I'm heading out in a little bit to see the US play Japan in a Paralympic wheelchair rugby match--very excited to see that, and to see my friend Nick after the game. Looks like I'll be doing most of my work for the day later on tonight, in my karaokeless apartment.