Hello Everyone!
How are things going in the USA? I have been hearing stories that make me want to consider staying in China for a lot longer! But then I think about grilled cheese sandwiches and tacos and I decide that even if the USA is crumbling, at least they have a delicious variety of food.
This weekend is the Labor Day Holiday. Isn't the rib cook off this weekend in Reno? My body aches for some Kinder's BBQ sauce. Regardless, I have 4 days off this weekend and we are going to have some fun. We were going to go to Guilin but with all the crazy traveling traffic, we are waiting for a couple weeks. I feel much better about that. We will be here in Xiangtan for a relaxing weekend. I am going to buy some painting supplies and paint some pictures.
I have made good friends with some students here. They are not my students but they have been teaching me how to play ping pong and they are so funny. There are 11 of them and 10 of them live together in one room that is much smaller than a single car garage. They are small though so they pack them in like sardines. All of the girls are about a foot shorter than me. I have dubbed them my "eleven dwarfs" and I am Snow White. I will miss them a lot.
Not a whole lot has changed since my last e-mail. Things in China are still going well. There have been some interesting developments with the Tibet problems and the Olympics that have made things a little shaky here. The day after the guy on CNN made the comments about China was very interesting. My students were very offended and were expecting me to have the same opinion as the CNN reporter. I felt like I was trying to regain a toddlers trust when I was explaining to them that not all American's think alike. This concept is very hard for them to grasp because in America, we all think for ourselves. We do what we want to do when we want to do it. But in China, they are VERY group oriented. They seek to be a part of a group and also to be just like everyone else in the group.
The students brought up censorship and this launched into a week long discussion of whether or not it was a good thing or a bad thing. It is very strange to talk about it with them, but also very interesting. They are almost 100% for the censorship of the media. I asked them the question of why or why not and one of my students said that if the news wasn't censored, there would be riots and the country would become very unstable. I didn't argue of course but it is just very interesting to hear their opinions. Another funny example was from another one of my students and he said, "Censorship is good because if a political person did something really bad, the media would keep us from knowing so that man's image wouldn't be tarnished." I laughed out loud and then I told him how one of American media's favorite things is to expose these such cases to every listening ear. haha... kinda funny.
One of the coolest things about being in China has been seeing another side of the story. It is nice to be able to see something from someone else's point of view but it also makes me very frustrated because now I don't know who to believe. The Tibet problem for example is quite comical for some young Chinese...They feel like how we would feel if say Texas, decided that it wanted to secede from the nation...again....They also hate the Dali Lama with a fiery passion and regard him as a terrorist. They say that he is using his religious influence to gain political power in Tibet so he can return to rule over it. Also, they feel that the rest of the world refuses to understand their history and culture. My students told me that in 1951, Tibet was peacefully liberated by China, acquiring it as one of the largest Chinese Provinces. China then built up Tibet and gave the people there a better life. When I tried to read some sort of history about Tibet online for anything that would help clear things up, ALL the websites were blocked. I don't know if this is because the internet is slow or because....... Either way. There are two sides to this story for sure.
The thing that I keep thinking is how much I wish I understood what is going on all over the world. Not just in China but everywhere where there is conflict. I think that sometimes we make to quick of assumptions about things and are too quick to judge situations and people. This last few months has certainly taught me the importance of seeking to understand something before seeking to be understood.
Well, before I make this e-mail any more political, I better go. My e-mails are surely being censored. I ate mashed potatoes tonight. It was incredible. I love American food.
Elizabeth Jenkins
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