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Coressponding from Beijing, started taking some Chinese classes they are pretty good. I definitly have a suprierority complex compared to the other students. they’ve maybe been in Beijing for cuple monthes, but I’ve been in fucking XinXiang, henan, the “real china”. I know that these are probably jsut rushes to judgement and I don’t actually know shit about these people but it made me think about how much I like my current situation, so I am just going to keep deluding myself into thinking that I have a privilidged acces to china.
I think that it inevitable that laowai in china will get a “fucking westerners, don’t fuck up my china!” attitude. It’s a stupid attitude but, attitudes don’t come about rationally, they jsut kind of pop up in your mind and you have to deal with them. Last week I was just pissed off at everybody and I think the reason is my american attitudes and lack of language ability clashing with chinese culture. I’m an ornery and contray motherfucker sometimes. I hate when people tell me to something. If someone tells me to be somewhere on time, I might show up late just cuase I don’t like being told what to do. These attitudes don’t really work well for a Laowai in China. First of all, most people treat you like an honoured guest which means that they need to do everything for you. For example one of my friends wanted to introduce me to one of her friends son, so he could practice english. I was a little sceptical at first but he was a pretty cool guy so I had a good time hanging out with him. The problem was that his mother tried to do help me every second of the day. Oh you need a train ticket I will get it for you. You need to go somewhere, I will send a car for you. Come out to eat with us tonight, come over to our house for sopring festival. I started to get pissed off about tyhis, but I thought it would be rude to refuse her offers, but then I would get all passive aggressive and start to show up late to dinners or just be all ornery when I was around them.
I think I just have to be more assertive with my independance. Not knowing the language dosn’t make that easy but it’s motivation for me to learn.
Speaking of learning chinse I feel that I’m one of the best in my class, espiecially in pronunciation. The teacher does not correct our use of tones enough, this is essential if we want to make ourselves understood, but otherwise the class is good. I mostly jsut want to get a grounding in grammer because that’s where I am weakest and it seems like we cover than often in class. (Why do chinese people say often like “ofen,” I know a brit and he dosn’t do this, maybe it’s those fucking londener’s…)|