China From New Heights
I told myself I wasn’t going to go back…
but I ended up visiting 5 cities in China over the course of October: Beijing, Wehai, Jinan, Qingdao, Dezhou, Hefei.
Besides Beijing, all of these cities are in the Shandong province of China, near the east coast. Since my last visit when I was a toddler, Shandong has been on the rise as a hot bed market of China. But this time, I wasn’t a tourist like I was when I was 6, cooing at the pearls being sold by the seaside. I was understanding Shandong as the most populous province in China (91.8 million) and as a province with the 3rd highest GDP. I was a business woman taking notes at meetings with my father. I was the host of an international start-up conference. I was a lecturer who gave speeches at three different colleges. Good on the goals of my gap year, I was pushed far out of my comfort zone. I was wandering in new territory that looked like the alien shores of Qingdao, wastelands in the morning that warmed up to reveal oases by the afternoon.
I usually visit China in the summer as a tourist. This was my first view of China in new light in the fall, taking on new roles.
One of my most vivid memories of this trip were the jitters and chills I had before getting on stage as the female host for the Shandong Overseas Innovation Start-up Competition. I was annoyed at my curled hair that was stiff with hairspray and I nervously wiping my lips to check that lipstick hadn’t smudged on the sides. Even at Ivy Championships, I was never this nervous. I felt so out of my element, I remember thinking to myself, “When I walk onstage, this is when everyone strips away my guise. That’s when they realize I’m just a girl who doesn’t really know what she’s doing.” In those moments, as I imagine how others are looking at me, I take a good look at myself too. What do I see in myself?
Preparing to be a host at the Start-up Competition
At a fancy charity gala. Also out of my element.
My self-reflection in China was a hard and difficult process. I think the best way to sum it up is by describing a typical Chinese banquet dinner.
Stay with me.
My father has many close friends and colleagues in Shandong, so we were eating out almost every meal. At first the banquet routine was tiring, but by the end of November, I knew the game. Business in China is as much a relationship between two people as it is between two companies. This is sometimes the difficulty of piercing the Chinese market because it revolves so heavily around connections. Truly, these banquets are as important as the meeting.
To emphasize this, once on a quiet ride home in the car, my uncle tried to explain to me how Chinese people think – and subsequently why it was so hard for my American mind to truly understand Chinese culture. He said Chinese people base all their interaction on 人情 or human relationships.
Decisions are made with consideration to its context as an interaction (involving both parties), not as a reaction (when one person is responding) to a situation. In ancient Chinese philosophy, there is no idea of an individual soul. Therefore, Chinese people gravitate towards viewing their surrounding community or their family as the most basic social unit, rather than his or herself as an individual.
Here, people live in the context of each other.
So, why are Chinese banquet dinners different than any other dinner?
Because, these banquet dinners are intricate microcosms of Chinese society based on ritual, tradition, and hierarchy. Which means, where you sit at the table is very, very important. Though these lavish meals are usually set on round tables (a lazy Susan), there is always a clear seat of honor– usually the farthest seat from the door. Opposite the seat of honor is the second most powerful seat: they make up the poles of the table (we can call them north and south). The two seats right next to each pole are for the guests of honor (NE, NW, SE, SW).
Specialized Education versus Liberal Arts: a talk at Beijing Sports University
Usually I am a guest of honor, alongside my father. After all, in a culture that’s based on keeping “face”, my accolades uplift my status beyond my age. For example, after I gave a speech at Beijing Sports University, a young girl came up to me, flustered, and gushed, “You are the goddess of my heart!” (你是我心中的女神！). At Heifei Institute of Science and Technology, someone asked me to write book recommendations on the board and the room of 200 dutifully wrote all of the titles down. Student audience members called me teacher (老师), though they were the same age as me or older. In the Chinese education system, a child must choose between academics or extracurricular (athletics, music, art etc) at a young age. So this is the unattainable glow to my story: I am a first generation (华裔) who is the unthinkable combination of student and athlete. The problem is not that there aren’t any Chinese students who could be student-athletes like me in the system. It’s that the system doesn’t allow them to exist.
Organizers told me to expect little in terms of Q&A -usually one or two filler questions are asked at the end and then lectures disband. But I didn’t want a lecture. I wanted a welcoming environment that invited dialogue. And these students responded. Some did not go easy on me and asked me hard hitting questions about American gun violence, racial discrimination, and my life’s philosophy (“What do you think is the purpose of life? And if you think the purpose of life is to help other people, what is the best way to do that?” oof.) Professors and academic advisors were surprised and pleased when we easily filled up the hour of Q&A. 甚至， during my lecture at Jinan University at Qingdao, I literally felt the room heat up with discussion. At the end of it, I touched my cheeks and they were warm and pink. Though I have never felt fully Chinese, somehow, I had hit a well-spring of new thought. Somehow I had resonated for a moment at the same frequency as these students. This connection to this culture was the reason I started my pursuit of Comparative Literature. I felt trust and excitement spark through the sheer act of asking these kinds of questions.
Taking secret shortcuts through Beijing Sports University campus with BSU students who became good friends. They were in the audience of my talk.
School is a one-track road in China, often leading straight from kindergarten to graduate school. Therefore, it was surprising (but should have been unsurprising) to me that students most commonly asked me questions about purpose. To them, taking a gap year was never a known possibility. It was only seen as a stigmatized choice in China, a last resort if a student was ill or desperately needed time to make money.
Because of these misconceptions, when students asked me why I took my gap year, I knew my answer had to be well thought out. After a few minutes of silence, I offered them this metaphor: in school, I felt like I was on a fast-moving train and everything around me was a blur. Where was I moving towards? What kind of person do I want to be? Am I making any progress at all? These questions could barely form as I was being hurtled full speed towards a destination I did not know.
This gap year was stopping the train. Getting off. Walking around. Enjoying the view.
In China, I finally had time
to savor small joys like picking
through the wet market.
Throughout my time as a lecturer, fairly or not, I was given a stage and an influential, resounding microphone. I tried my best to turn that microphone into a mirror because I realized the audience members and I were on the same journey. We were all students trying to figure out what skills we needed to live the life we want after school. I had no answers, only a hope to help them ask more questions of why?
Outside of a hospital in Beijing
龙轩，a close friend stopping at a calligraphy shop
Back at the dinner table, the remaining seats – west and east - are the lowest ranking. I have been in those seats too. Because though I have the Harvard brand, being the youngest person and (often-times only) woman in the room may demote me. On top of that, my Chinese is imperfect. With a sprinkle of wrong tones and some grammatical hitches, my message can be completely skewed and not taken with any serious consideration. Sometimes the nudges that I am a lower standing are subtle: a question posed to me but directed at my father. Sometimes it is not. It can be uncomfortable when you meet someone for the first time and all they perceive is one dimension of you.
All of this goes into consideration at a Chinese banquet. At the beginning of the dinner, where you sit informs where your standing is relative to everyone else in the room. I am the constant foil to the seat of honor: always the eldest, most powerful man in the room. It is a ritual for him to put up a huge fuss to sit at the head of the table. He will pretend to take another seat. He will even try to start a conversation from that seat, as if he belongs there.
But in the end, he knows where he belongs and sits, and the dinner begins.
Since Shandong is by the sea, its speciality is delectable seafood. Simple rods will do to catch fish.
There is a plethora of choices to drink: tea, wine, and a special Chinese alcohol called 白酒 (distilled Chinese liquor, literally white alcohol) that is a strong 30-40%. This “white liquor” tastes absolutely abhorrent when it first touches the palate, but then goes down in a warm fire. Any China study abroad student can recall the first taste. Ideally a good banquet should have all three choices.
Drinks are important, because toasts are the core mainstay of the dinner. A toast can be executed in several fashions. The seat of honor usually leads the first toast, the kind of toast to the whole table acknowledging the special occasion that stops all conversation. A toast by anyone else can be more relaxed, with friends jumping in and adding comments or interrupting to make fun of the speaker. A carousel toast is when a person gets up from their seat and physically walks around around the table, toasting each guest individually, privately. A toast can be directed at anyone or everyone, acknowledging a friendship, an accomplishment, or to bring good fortune to the table.
Yes, it may seem like a complicated science. But the science of toasting does not touch upon the art of it. The intimacy and tone of the toast reveal the occasion and the closeness of its constituents. Oftentimes, Chinese culture can seem contradictory. It can seem coldly logical and systemic, yet somehow value human relationship above all. One moment I am put on a pedestal, and another, pushed down the ladder. These are why I treat China as a gem stone, each cut a different facet of its beauty. I see and feel and understand a little more each time I visit. Its contradiction is its originality which makes the gem stone so interesting.
At this age, this time it finally came my turn to give my first toast. I was surrounded by 20 close family friends and we were on the third course of seafood. I was sweating profusely as I mentally sketched a rough outline in my head. I represented much more than myself by giving this toast and I felt more nervous for this than I did for any of my public speaking arrangements.
My father hushed the floor for me.
“我就想说：谢谢大家。I just want to say, thank you for being family (calling an audience “family” is customary).
虽然您们12年左右没见到我，您们还是这么热情的欢迎我。Even though the last time most of you saw me was 12 years ago, you all welcome me with such warmth.
我叫您们叔叔，拜拜。其实，您就是真真的家人。I call you “younger uncle” and “older uncle” out of custom, but truly you are all like family.
我在美国的时候，我跟我的美国朋友无法能解释中国文化的这方面。他们没法了解。 When I try to explain the close-knit culture of friendship in China to my friends in the US, I am unable to. It is unimaginable to them.
我做一个比喻吧，我来中国的时候，就像我发现了一个蜘蛛网。我在中国，我发现我有这么多叔叔，拜拜，家人支持我，鼓励我。让我很感动。Coming to China was like finding myself in a spider’s web – suddenly closely connected to people who genuinely cared about me, supported me, encouraged me. I am moved.
在中国，很多人给我机会来发展自己，来当其他的学生的老师。可是，我发现我的学生能教老师更多。I have had many opportunities here. Though I play the role of teacher, speaker, host, I only realize more and more that I am a student. I have more to learn from others than to teach.
因为特兰谱，因为贸易战，现在中美关系疏远，没有沟通。我觉得，这让我更有责任来了解中国文化。Because of Trump, because of the trade war, the relationship between China and America has become strained. This has only made me more committed to understanding Chinese culture and in general, to understanding the things I simply do not know.
Coming to China was like finding myself in a spider’s web – suddenly closely connected to people who genuinely cared about me, supported me, encouraged me. I am moved.
那我再说一次：谢谢大家！干杯！Now, one last time, thank you for being family! Cheers!”
