For brevity's sake I left out one person that I met over those few days. Ariel, who was a freshman last year at Vandy, was back in China for the summer and just happened to be in Beijing for a couple of days. She's one of two authentic Chinese students at our school—she's lived her whole life in China (mostly in Nanjing, which is her hometown), and she hadn't even attended an international school. And since 2 Vandy students are rarely in the same town on the other side of the world, we had to meet up.
Friday night after dinner we met at Houhai Lake, which is the same lake that I would run around almost every day two years ago when I lived in Beijing. This was basically party central. We walked around, had some coconut milk, checked out some stores, and talked for a long time. In all honesty, I didn't know her very well before that night. The most interesting thing was to hear the perspective of a local Chinese who was in the process of being "Americanized" while still having pretty traditional Asian parents. She explained how it would have been really easy to do exactly what her parents did and follow the same blueprint, and they were actually pushing her to stay in China. But Ariel, as I understood from our conversations, is pretty open-minded and willing to explore new things (maybe even more than me--someone who's been on the other side of the world the past three summers). This is something I haven't seen often in Chinese people. Sure they like Kobe Bryant and they watch Prison Break, but at Vandy Ariel actively tries to associate with non-Chinese people. When I first saw her that night I found out her hair had been completely redone from the traditional straight banged cut to a curly, more Westernized one. She's also taken up salsa dancing and mentioned all kinds of foreign places she still wants to go to meet the people.
This contrasting mindset and these changes aren't coming about unchecked. Her parents, while understanding her ideals, still keep a pretty close watch on her. Like a lot of Asian parents I've found, they still have a very big influence on what she does. She talked constantly about wanting "freedom", something that a lot of Americans might complain about when we're rouge teens in our high school years (not me, I was a good boy), but probably not so much as a college student—especially one that lives halfway around the world. This influence was quite evident when it was getting late that night at Houhai, and her dad was calling pretty often, concerned about her safety. After 10 minutes of conversation, a quick check of her phone showed that her dad had just called 7 times (maybe that's slightly over exaggerating, but it was close...can't remember too clearly).
Anyway, we rode together after waiting for a cab for close to an hour (it was stupid), and dropped her off first. I fell asleep after dropping her off, and I think my cabbie took advantage of the situation and had a joy ride to Shanghai and back. My cab fare was 80 kuai, when it should have been less than 40. Oh well. The next day brought us back to the Houhai area, but we first explored that aforementioned hutong, Nanlou Guxiang. Since two years ago I had both had my eyes on those boats in the water, so having the time today I convinced her it was a good idea. It was called something like "River Romance". Kind of funny considering we were in a lake. All in all it was a good time: I got a picture taken with a fist pump (check out that power pump), we got in a traffic jam under the bridge with 200 other boats (approximately), and we got to see Chinese people swimming in Speedos. I asked our driver whether that water was safe to swim in, and he said, "Oh certainly not." Gotta love Chinese people.
Friday night after dinner we met at Houhai Lake, which is the same lake that I would run around almost every day two years ago when I lived in Beijing. This was basically party central. We walked around, had some coconut milk, checked out some stores, and talked for a long time. In all honesty, I didn't know her very well before that night. The most interesting thing was to hear the perspective of a local Chinese who was in the process of being "Americanized" while still having pretty traditional Asian parents. She explained how it would have been really easy to do exactly what her parents did and follow the same blueprint, and they were actually pushing her to stay in China. But Ariel, as I understood from our conversations, is pretty open-minded and willing to explore new things (maybe even more than me--someone who's been on the other side of the world the past three summers). This is something I haven't seen often in Chinese people. Sure they like Kobe Bryant and they watch Prison Break, but at Vandy Ariel actively tries to associate with non-Chinese people. When I first saw her that night I found out her hair had been completely redone from the traditional straight banged cut to a curly, more Westernized one. She's also taken up salsa dancing and mentioned all kinds of foreign places she still wants to go to meet the people.
This contrasting mindset and these changes aren't coming about unchecked. Her parents, while understanding her ideals, still keep a pretty close watch on her. Like a lot of Asian parents I've found, they still have a very big influence on what she does. She talked constantly about wanting "freedom", something that a lot of Americans might complain about when we're rouge teens in our high school years (not me, I was a good boy), but probably not so much as a college student—especially one that lives halfway around the world. This influence was quite evident when it was getting late that night at Houhai, and her dad was calling pretty often, concerned about her safety. After 10 minutes of conversation, a quick check of her phone showed that her dad had just called 7 times (maybe that's slightly over exaggerating, but it was close...can't remember too clearly).
Anyway, we rode together after waiting for a cab for close to an hour (it was stupid), and dropped her off first. I fell asleep after dropping her off, and I think my cabbie took advantage of the situation and had a joy ride to Shanghai and back. My cab fare was 80 kuai, when it should have been less than 40. Oh well. The next day brought us back to the Houhai area, but we first explored that aforementioned hutong, Nanlou Guxiang. Since two years ago I had both had my eyes on those boats in the water, so having the time today I convinced her it was a good idea. It was called something like "River Romance". Kind of funny considering we were in a lake. All in all it was a good time: I got a picture taken with a fist pump (check out that power pump), we got in a traffic jam under the bridge with 200 other boats (approximately), and we got to see Chinese people swimming in Speedos. I asked our driver whether that water was safe to swim in, and he said, "Oh certainly not." Gotta love Chinese people.
1 comment:
traffic jam on a river-lake. only in china.
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