I am back in LA, and I am organizing my journal and everything for HBA/Light Fellowship, here are my last journal entries from China dated back to last week:
August 6, 2007
The Innocent Generation
So my friend and I had another late night/early morning conversation yesterday night/this morning about the people we have met in China and how do they differ from our American friends. One of the conclusions we have come up with is that most of the Chinese friends we have made in Beijing and for me personally, in Nanjing, are much more innocent than our friends from the states. I got a feeling of this when I hung out with my friends in Nanjing prior to coming to HBA. I felt that most of their friendships are very tranquil and close, unlike a lot of the turbulent and hectic friendships I have witnessed in the States. Maybe this is generalizing quite a bit, but really, relationships between, at least teenagers, are just a lot simpler in China. There are rarely issues with best friends/honesty/trust/gossip/etc between friends, at least between those people I have hung out with in Nanjing. A lot of the people I have met have never had a boy/girlfriend even though they are 19/20/21 years old. Most of them don’t have conversations with their parents about anything besides academic and current news. I feel this could be a cultural phenomenon, in that China has started off to be a small village type of community where everyone knows everyone and families live in the same place for generations without moving. Also, the environment where teens grow up to be in China does not allow them to have time to think about friendships/relationships/interaction skills since they are so caught up in the academic course load and testing pressure. Most of my Chinese friends’ live comprise of school, homework, test prep classes, English enhancement classes, and maybe KTV with friends once in a while. A couple of people have had relationships in high schools, but they were the kind where they will probably end up in a marriage, meaning they are still going on right now. A lot of them don’t deal with issues such as religion (as a result of communism, who does not believe in the power of religion) and personal identity (who you are as a person in the states could be identified by many things, such as culture, ethnicity, gender, interest, etc).
I now sort of wish, instead of HBA, I have picked a study abroad program where I can take regular Chinese classes with Chinese students. I really wish I could have communicated with them about their interest, views on different matters, priorities and anything else that’s going on in their minds. I think they are such an interesting generation as they have grown in such a rapidly changing country (the generation gap in China now is 5 years, just because in these 5 years, the country will change dramatically). The Chinese teens’ their traditional values are being countered by some newly introduced Western philosophy everyday, and that’s a difficult situation to be in. I am sure my brief interaction with them for the three months I am in China has not exposed me to everything they are.
August 9, 2007
I went to 圆明园(Yuan Ming Yuan), or the Garden of Perfect Splendor, today with my cousin and my friend Amy, it was absolutely beautiful. I wish I had visited this place a lot sooner. It has a lot of ruins from the attacks by the Anglo-French force in 1860. The ironic thing is that a lot of the buildings/temples/constructions they have bombed were of Western style.
There are lots of pretty bridges like this one in the garden.
I am looking very contemplative in front of bunch of ruins...
The ruins are melancholy-ish beautiful..
I also went to see a movie for the first time in China tonight. My cousin memorized the date wrong for the Harry Potter release in China (it was midnight Aug. 10th instead of Aug. 9th – bummer!) so we watched Mr. Bean’s Holiday. I have been made aware of the fact that a lot, a lot of Chinese people like Mr. Bean movies/comedies. I am not sure exactly why (maybe it’s just because I do not get British humor or Mr. Bean and I don’t click) they would like it so much because I found the movie absolutely boring except for he had a pretty interesting face.
I also discovered that a lot of Chinese young couples like to date in McDs or KFCs, quite a sight in these fast food places (that are still considered pretty nice restaurants in China) around 8-10pm. If you go to a 24hour McDs around 2AM in the morning, you can still see couples there, and a sprinkle of people sleeping too….pretty interesting sight…
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