My students have a weekly “English Journal” assignment. They talk in English for an hour, then
write a few sentences down about their conversation. The lower level students tend to talk about the same things
every week: what they ate, what sports they played, and how much they love
their friends. The higher level
student might talk about goals and aspirations, politics, philosophy, or
describe their perspective on life values. (Reading these journals also makes me realize what a poor
language student I was in high
school. My journals must have been
torturous to read.) This first
unit has been all about descriptions of nouns (person place or thing, for those
of you who haven’t taken English in a while). I really enjoyed the ‘Describing People’ week. I spent the first half of class
teaching vocab: tall, short, fat, skinny, blonde, brunette, curly, wavy... We played games for the second half of
class, describing various pictures and guessing who was who. I figured that if I was going to look
at the same people all week, I might as well look at people I liked…so I
printed out pictures of a variety of people, and put up a few of my favorites! It was so funny to hear my Chinese
students’ perception of different people in my world, and it was even funnier
to hear their gasps of astonishment when I told them, ‘This is my dad, this is
my best friend, this is my boss…’ and they realized they had been talking
freely about people I cared about!
I started noticing trends in the descriptions throughout the
week as I listened in class, and read about the ideal man/woman in their
English Journals. My take-away
Chinglish phrases of the week were “I am a happiness girl,” and “He is my
sunshine boy.” Happiness girls and
sunshine boys – what a darling image.
Couples watching in China is fascinating. The most striking (and initially
disconcerting) feature of Chinese couples: they match. Not their faces – their clothes. Then I started noticing that female
friends also wore matching outfits.
At first I thought they were work uniforms, but oh no. From the panda sweatshirt down to the
buckled shoes, they match to a T.
(Ok, boys and girls wear different shoes, but the rest of the outfit
will match.) In fact, many items
are sold as sets. When I was
shopping for a watch (a necessary purchase when you have a stinky phone) there
were several that were sold as his/hers matching sets. I asked a Chinese student if it was a
sign of a deeply committed relationship.
She said, “No, we just buy it.
He will buy it for you.” Then
there’s the purse holding. In
China, a boyfriend will carry his girlfriend’s purse for her. There’s nothing un-masculine about it;
he’s taking care of his lady. I
HAVE heard of cases where a boyfriend will carry his own matching purse. ….yeah, I think that crosses a
line.
At first, my American vision saw this as bizarre and vaguely
creepy. However, the more I see
it, the more it strikes me as incredibly sweet. I can’t begin to describe how stressful the dating process
is in America. Does he/she like
me? If I tell her, will it be too strong/nonchalant/needy/cold/vague/demanding/blah blah blah blah… There’s a
void where dating protocol should be (unless you court, which creates immediate
and intense expectations), leading to a whole lot of vagueness,
misunderstandings, and a lack of willingness for either person to simply stand
up and say, “Hey. I like you. Do
you want to go out?” When I look
at Chinese couples, I see people who are clearly telling the world,
“I like THIS
ONE. I want to be with them. I like being associated with them. I want us to be similar. I want us to belong to each other. I will invest my hard-earned kuai into
building a connection with this person so that everyone can see without a
shadow of a doubt that I love them.”
There is something to be said for that.
There are many things about my dearest friends that I would
love to emulate, but we strive to be different and unique. We consider it a confidence to tell a
person, ‘I want to be like you.’
Why is that? The process of
Chinese wooing is pretty amazing; flowers, presents, fireworks just to make a
girl to smile…of course girls see their men as ‘sunshine boys!’
I was talking about this with a friend the other day, and
she asked me if I was going to match with a boyfriend someday. HECK NO! But I do have my eye on an awesome watch set… I’m an American girl. I don’t expect a man to carry my purse,
and I kinda really don’t want him to
wear the same outfit as me. Something
about it just doesn’t scream “MASCULINE.”
But I would gladly trade in the vague haze of interest for a
straightforward statement. Coming
from the right person, that alone would make me a happiness girl.
**It is also interesting to note that yang (as in yin-yang)
is a masculine feng-shui element associated with the color white, metal, the
sun, and warmth. I believe that a
‘sunshine boy’ is a way of describing a truly masculine, warm, man.
