Today was one of the Important Days in my life.
It started out ok, the morning came to early as always, and I was reminded that for some reason our college has decided that a great way to start the Sunday morning is to blast music out from the campus speakers at 7am in the morning. Just in case you weren’t quite motivated yet to get out of bed.
Class was… well it was actually one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve had in a long time. So I decided that since I had essentially dominated the discussion, if not the entire class, up until this point that today might be a good time to just simply sit back and not say a word. It didn’t take me long to remember simply how ingrained into my psyche it is to discuss things in class.
I also discovered that I actually have a really hard time processing information without actually drawing it out into a discussion. I can only guess that this is because I actually use discussion to slow the class down, and by repeating my understanding or questioning the material I actually give myself time to really process the information and internalize it.
Not only that but I soon became physically uncomfortable, letting topics slip by that I was interested in, or hearing someone’s opinion that I fundamentally disagreed without issuing a rebuttal literally had me gnawing at my knuckles. Even the teacher during the break brought up how uncomfortable I looked, and explained to me that in the past her classes have been a lot more active but this one was oddly passive. But luckily the other kids in the class picked up the slack and provided a lot of discussion to listen too, right? *cricket chirps* …no.
There was a little discussion from Valentine, Clement, and one Chinese student, but that was rare and they weren’t discussing anything merely sharing a view point. This is great if that’s the launching point into meaningful discussion, but sadly this was not a rocket meant to launch. I honestly don’t have any choice but to go back to my normal classroom habits or I think I would go ape shit crazy by the end of the course. Luckily after class the day greatly improved.
At 1330 I met up with Yiyi (Ye’s Shanghainese name, Shanghainese is the local dialect) for lunch at Nanjing Lu, which is right off of People’s Square and is one of the most famous places in Shanghai. Luckily the awesome thing about having a language partner who actually grew up in Shanghai is that she knows the real places to go and eat. Instead of eating at one of the real touristy places we soon found ourselves going down one of the back streets into the “real” Shanghai. There we ended up at this little dumpling place that is actually really famous with the local Shanghai. Of course that mean that the food was cheap, tasty, and lacking the tourist vibe a lot of other places around People’s Square have. She also gave me pictures of place we visited on Thursday, the Chinese characters, as well as the pinyin. I was actually quite touched my the gesture because I’m still not really use to receiving gifts, and I’m not sure even how to reciprocate.
We then went out to Cloud Nine shopping mall in Zhongshan Park to pick me up a swimming suite. Once we left we hopped over a couple of train stops to Jing’an Temple where we hung out at a coffee shop until we eventually parted ways.
That’s what we did, but what made this entire post worth typing up was what we actually talked about. … Ok kids let me stop right here at this point to issue a breaking story.
Yesterday while shopping around I mistakenly ended up at a grocery store, and I didn’t really want to leave empty handed. So I decided “hey why not pick up a bottle of the local liquor encase people come over” well this is fine in practice until you realize you can’t really tell what anything is without being able to actually read Chinese (larger stores will have name brands but this one pretty much only carried locally made products). So I stood in this aisle for about 5 min, until this really old guy came up beside me and had a look as well. Soon he just grunted and made his selection, a 5RMB, clear looking 450ml liquid that I could only guess was sake. 5RMB… that’s $0.73. Well… what other choice did I have to make at this point? I grabbed the same bottle and was on my way.
I just drank a couple of mouthfuls. It has this really interesting taste of melon and vomit. I might have just decreased my expected life span by a few months in 30 secs. Now every time I breathe out I feel like I’m about to hurl at any moment, my only saving grace is this warm tea and honey that I’m taking down like nobody’s business. End of story.
BACK to Yiyi and I’s convo. Anyways while we were out and about we had an ongoing discussion about life. You’ll kind of have to excuse me I’m not even really sure how to begin, you need to realize that a conversation of any nature when there is such a large language barrier is tough but having a deep meaningful discussion is harder then teaching a walrus the River Dance. Add into the fact that I haven’t even really had enough time to truly ponder what we talked about and this could quickly become a convoluted summarization of our conversation.
It might be helpful to first begin my giving a little bit of background information on Yiyi, she’s 24, working in HR at an electronics manufacturing company, has her masters, has had only one boyfriend who she has dated for the past seven years, and they’re soon getting married at the end of April (this month).
I think the whole conversation really kicked off while we were in the mall and we began talking how her boyfriend is not very ambitious. She then made this comment along the lines of “I’m not sure if he’s really right for me, but he loves me so I love him.” Now those of you that actually know me I’m sure you can image how much this shocked me. This launched me into talking about Love and how even if you “love” someone, if you don’t love them for the right reasons it’s close to being meaningless etc.
But here’s her argument, she’s a female in a male dominated society, she’s 24 which means she’s quickly reaching the age where she will be considered “old” and it will become harder and harder for her to marry a decent man, ambition (which we kind of held up as an ideal trait to find in a man) is not easily found in Shanghai from her experience, her boyfriend treats her well and loves her a lot, she knows she can be honest and faithful with this man, he has a decent job and can support them, she can’t stay with her parents forever because they are quickly becoming too old, she’s happy and they get along well. And it should be noted that she says her husband is fully aware of all of this. Of course there was this big “BUT!” from me and I countered and yadda yadda, that’s not really important.
Here’s what I basically got from this, Life happens. When she was around my age she had the same ideals as I did, but as time marched on life began to sink in, societal pressure began to shape her standards, she began to actually be comfortable with settling for less than ideal.
“O so she just folded and gave up.”
Ya maybe, I don’t really know, that’s what I certainly thought at the time, and hell maybe that’s actually the case but looking back on it there’s more too it then that. Though I’m really not sure how to express this. There was this over whelming since of “finality” in her eyes, yet that really doesn’t encompass all of it. I guess I felt like instead of giving up she was merely looking at the overall picture and had came to terms with the “facts of life,” but instead of bitching about it she had came to terms with these facts and simply made up her mind that she was going to make the best of it.
In many ways this shakes me quite deeply. Not because of her circumstances but because of her similarity in mind set and how logically she made her choices. In fact she even told me “wait and see maybe in three years you too will have to make the same decision.” And the scary fact of the matter is that I could. Even being an only child, living without a partner by my side scares the ever loving crap out of me and yet even still I want to hold on to this image that I’ll find this great girl. Maybe not perfect, but perfect for me. To have that crushed by my own dependence on Reason (not sure if this is the best word, but I couldn’t think of anything else) is downright horrifying to me.
We also talked about some other things like some of my previous girlfriends, life in Shanghai, future plans etc. And those things were important but I’m kind of feeling a little overwhelmed trying to simply coming to terms with her situation that I really don’t even feel like talking about the rest of it.
Here’s something else to note though. I met Yiyi on Thursday and on Sunday I’ve had one of the deepest and most open conversations I’ve ever had. Hell I haven’t had a conversation even come close to this with 98% of my friends or even family, and the conversations I have had I could probably count on one hand. Her openness and willingness to talk with me is something I’ve never really found before, and even though the language barrier can be really frustrating I’m truly looking forward to getting spend the next four months talking with this woman.
O I’ve also been invited to her wedding…. ^_^
I’m sorry to say this blog post doesn’t really do this topic even a remote ounce of justice because so much I gleamed from her facial expression and tone that I could never even begin to explain.
I did manage to take a picture of Yiyi, though I had to be super sneaky about it cause she always hid her face when I tried to get her to pose. :)
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