I said my first goodbye yesterday.
I met Liu Xinyi through
my friend Sun Xiao in the fall of 2009 when I was studying at Nanjing
University. Sun Xiao and I were language partners, and one day she brought
Xinyi along because she and I were both international relations majors. Xinyi
is possibly the most adorable girl I’ve ever met. First of all, her name is 欣怡, which means “Happy Harmony.” How awesome is that?
We hung out frequently during
my study abroad year and she helped me with my Chinese a lot. She showed me
around the Nanjing University undergraduate campus, located in the suburbs. One
Friday night we decided to do homework together in the library. It was packed.
I’ve never seen a library so crowded in my life (and that’s saying something
coming from GW—the king of crowded libraries). She said it was nothing compared
to finals time.
When I said goodbye
to her in July of 2010, I wasn’t sure whether or not we’d ever see each other
again.
 |
| Xinyi and I for our goodbye picture two summers ago, in July 2010. |
When we were both
accepted into the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Center for graduate school last fall,
we were so excited and wanted to be roommates. I ended up getting the Fulbright
grant instead, but either way, we both ended up in Nanjing. This year has been
really fun hanging out with her on the weekends, usually getting dinner or coffee
together. The Johns Hopkins Nanjing Center (known as HNC in English and 中美中心 in Chinese) is kind of like a portal to the
U.S., and the culture of the community of students is very similar to that of
an American university.
It’s been really fun for me to watch Xinyi enter into
this world of creativity and freedom of expression and opinion. She asked me
for help with one of her essays once. She didn’t know how to write an
argumentative or opinionated thesis statement. She told me, “I’ve never had to
think for myself before. We don’t write essays like this in Chinese. We usually
just compile opinions from other scholars, but we don’t write our own opinion
or argument.”
She is quite involved in campus life, teaching English at a
migrant school and participating in a couple business and economic
career-focused student groups. She approaches learning about American
socialization practices like one would approach studying for a test. To her,
the most confusing things about English are the How are you? What’s up? How’s
it going? questions. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer!” she’d tell me.
She told me she tries to socialize with Americans as much as possible because
her parents told her that learning how to do this was one of the most important
aspects of her education.
One of the things
that confounded her the most about American culture at first was our supreme
time management skills. She couldn’t wrap her head around the concept that one
could be involved in multiple activities at once, say school, internship, and
extra-curriculars. She told me that in China, students will only do one of those
things at a time. And if a big test or application deadline is approaching
within the next few months, everything else takes second priority. Even school. Juggling multiple activities is uncommon. A while back, we were sitting in a coffee shop and this is what she said to me:
“I took a seminar
on elevator speeches [1-3 minute
self-introductions] and the facilitator asked me, ‘Why did you want to engage on this
inter-cultural experience at HNC?’ I told her, ‘When I was a junior in college, I met an American friend named
Sarah and she taught me that life can be full of variety. Life doesn’t
just have to be all about one thing, like studying for example. You can do a lot of different things at once, such as studying, working, exercising, and participating
in extra-curriculars. She taught me that exercise can help bring energy into
your life and that doing other things besides studying can actually increase your efficiency and you can therefore get more done. [this
is one of my life philosophies that I hold very dear to my heart and I was
impressed and surprised that I had made such a deep impression on her]. I try to exercise everyday now.
Sarah made a
big impression on my life and I decided I wanted to learn more about the
American lifestyle, where you can do anything you want without people judging
you. Not like in China, where everyone tells you, “Well everyone is doing xyz, so you
should follow them.” In America, you
can do what you want. Sarah showed me that learning about other cultures and
lifestyles, particularly American culture, can enhance your life. She inspired
me. The prospect of being able to learn more about different cultures and
lifestyles made me want to apply to HNC.’
You know Chinese people just want to focus on one thing in
their life at a time and they want to put all their time and resources into
getting good at that one thing. Since
I started at HNC, a lot of Americans like to try new things and
challenge themselves in new ways, and do lots of different things at once. I
think this is a better way of living, a better way of life. It’s more time-efficient as well. I
think life as a Chinese person is very boring. So I want to go to America someday to live this kind of colorful
life.”
This, my friends,
is why I love China so much. It’s the Chinese people, like Xinyi. It’s the moments like
these that make everything about leaving my friends and family in the U.S.
behind totally and completely worth it.
Xinyi’s semester is
over and she’s going back to Fuzhou for summer vacation. I asked her what her
plans were for summer vacation and she told me she will prepare for the GMAT
and TOEFL tests because she will be applying for grad school in the States in
the fall. She said she will study for the tests for 8 hours a day. When the
deadline approaches in August, once it is a month away, she will study for 12
hours a day. I asked her if she would take breaks during those 12 hours. She
said she will take breaks to do eye exercises.
Here is the goodbye picture we took together last night:
Chinese word of the day:
猫头鹰- mao1 tao2 ying1- "cat-faced eagle," aka owl
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