Journal - Fighting, Library, Presentations

11-6 – Lee Moore – Journal

Entry 1
While I was down in the southern part of Nanjing, I decided to go to a temple, and there was a tourist market next to this temple. When I walked into the market, there was one woman in the center of the market yelling at another woman on the side of the market. The other woman was silent at first, but she soon started yelling back. Then the man standing by this other woman also started yelling. At some point in this donnybrook, the first woman called her husband and told him what had happened (I don’t actually know what happened, I got there a little too late).
Finally both the man and the woman walked over to the first woman and the yelling match got intense. The man got into the first woman’s face, and then the man’s wife came at her with a small wooden stool, swinging it at the first woman’s head. The first woman grabbed a larger chair and swung it at the second woman’s hair, with the man in between. At this point, the man quit arguing and tried to separate the women. He finally pulled his wife back to the place they had been standing when I first entered.
There was so more yelling, but no more fighting. The man had to keep his wife from charging the first woman. Finally, the first woman’s husband arrived, and he went to talk to the other man to try and resolve the problem.
I think that the problem was between the two women and the man only got involved for the sake of his wife. When the first woman’s husband arrived, he and the other man resolved the problem calmly, keeping the women separate. Like all problems in China, it had to be resolved through an intermediary.
The security guard was totally worthless. He stood behind me, afraid to get too close. The only people who stopped the fight were the second woman’s husband and other observers.

Entry 2
I had more library problems. Now, when I enter one of the reference rooms in the library, they make you scan your card. This is strange, because they make you scan your card just to get in the library. Why would they make you scan your card again, just to enter a room? What is strange is that none of the other rooms in the library do this. More strange is that they just started this in the middle of the semester. Two weeks they did not make you do this, but now they suddenly started doing it.
I asked the librarian about this. She said it was for statistics, for figuring out how many people come into that reference room and how many people from each department enter.
It is possible that her explanation is the real reason that they added this little rule, but I do not think that is really necessary. At first, I suspected it was just something invented to control people going into this room or a rule for the sake of having more rules.
But I guess I just have to take their explanation at face value. This is one library problem that I will just have to write off. It is not as problematic as some of the other things that I discussed.

Entry 3
One night, I left the library just as it was closing. There was a flood of other students leaving at the same time. I noticed that the library had posted something on a bulletin board, and almost every person stopped and carefully read it before they left.
Another night that same week, I was riding my bike to class. On one of the main arteries through campus, a notice had been posted on a bulletin board announcing the death of a professor. Almost all the passers-by stopped to read over the notice.
One thing I have noticed this year about Chinese people is that they find the posts on bulletins and other forms of writing in the public sphere. In America, important things are rarely posted on bulletin boards. Bulletin boards are for selling skateboards and finding a summer lease on an apartment. But here, important things are put on bulletin boards, and they are important.
When I asked, one of my teachers suggested that was because everything important in America is sent out as an email. I do not think this is a good explanation. I do not remember bulletin boards being that important when I was in elementary school. I think it has to do with the importance of writing in the public sphere for Chinese people, in the same way that Chinese often paint slogans on walls or hang red slogan banners across the road. I am still trying to figure it out though.

Entry 4
This weekend we went hiking at Huangshan. It was me, Gloria, Carl, Ryan, his wife, Cherise, and his two children, Mosiah and Nabahi. Mosiah is two and a half, and Nabahi is only nine months old. Nabahi has to be carried in a backpack specially made for babies. This draws a lot of attention, so whenever we were walking people would stare, and pull on their cheeks (without Cherise’s permission, of course). There was this guy who would not stop talking to us, and he commented on how everyone was very curious and enjoyed looking at the kids.
I commented, “Yea almost like they are animals at a zoo.” He got this, he got a little angry. “No, no, they are just curious, your comment was rude.” At this point, someone sat down on my other side and asked what was rude. In order to save face, the guy who before would not stop talking now said, “Oh he was just joking, just a joke, that is all.” Not much was said before he left.
I do feel the curiosity that many mainlander Chinese have towards foreigners is similar to the kind of curiosity that Southerners in movies have towards carnival sideshows (as a Southerner, I have not experienced this personally). It is not a polite curiosity, as the man above asserted. It is a gawking-curiosity. This is probably a topic for another article, but I also feel that it is the same kind of curiosity that they regard minorities with.

Entry 5
It has been hard penetrating the social sphere of my Chinese classmates. They have all known each other for at least a year, and all of their classes are the same. I think most of them also live in the same dorms, so they spend the whole day together.
That said, I’ve made some progress. In one of my classes, I got the phone number of several classmates, asking them if they meet outside of class to study. Of course, they do not study because there are no tests. That said, I did not want to study, I just wanted to get to know them better. A few weeks later, I heard them joking around about paying someone back. I jumped in and asked one of them to pay me back as well (it was funny in context).
At that point, I made a step into the social structure of the class. They invited me to go on a trip with them to Hangzhou. I had the HSK, so I could not accept the invitation, but it was nice to be invited. Since then the report between myself and my classmates has been less of an outsider and more of a classmate.

Entry 6
In one of my classes, the main requirement is to read a book and then give a thirty minute presentation on it. Two students read the same book, and each of them gets up for thirty minutes to speak about it. In the second hour of class, the teacher gives his thoughts on the class and asks the students who did not read the book to ask questions. I have already discussed how the students have problems with these presentations and handle these presentations quite differently than American students would.
But last week, I saw something that was quite funny. Apparently, the teacher really does not know how to deal with these presentations either. Last week, when one of the students was giving his presentation and monotonely reading off his slides, I looked over and notice the professor was nodding off. He slipped in and out of sleep, and then was asleep pretty much completely for about five minutes. I was not the only one to think this was funny; another student noticed it, and we both looked at each other, giggling under our breath.
In the US, I do not think that this would be acceptable. If this had happened to me, I think I would have either paniced, gotten angry or both. However, my Chinese classmate did not appear to notice.
Another aspect of this that I do not understand is why the teacher assigns these presentations if he does not value them enough to stay awake.