Leaving My Mark, Pt. 1

I had a realization today.

I was sitting in a local Korean restaurant waiting for my ka li ji ding (curry chicken) and talking with Brice about how we felt about returning to our normal lives in three weeks, when I was struck by the fact that I might actually miss being here.  

Let me rephrase.  I knew that I would miss the people I met while abroad, and that I would miss the glorious feeling of having nearly no responsibility combined with having nearly unlimited freedom to explore the foreign countryside surrounding me.  These are the hallmarks of a good study abroad, and have made my trip unforgettable.

What took me off guard, though, was the fact that I am actually becoming attached to the idiosyncrasies and oddities that make Chinese cities fundamentally different from any other large city.  Our recent trip to Chengdu provided many examples that helped to solidify these feelings in my mind.

Chengdu, located in the Sichuan Province of southwest China, is home to around 11 million citizens, and dates back almost 4000 years when it was settled by the Jinsha people.  Suffice to say, it has changed considerably since then; Chengdu is now a bustling cosmopolitan city, home to as many Starbucks as most American cities.

Our group seized the opportunity to experience American cuisine as soon as we arrived; lattes flowed like the Yangtze, and the waitresses at Peter's Tex-Mex came to recognize us by sight as we inundated their restaurant endlessly for our four day stay.  Biscuits and gravy, milkshakes, burritos, steak, pancakes; it was a wonderland of Americana.

We stayed in a hostel called "The Mix", whose bland name and exterior belie it's true personality as an eclectic paradise for backpackers and foreigners.  The smell of incense overwhelmed my nostrils as I walked into its cozy courtyard, which extends up four stories to a glass enclosure that lets in the sunlight; the walls were covered in sharpie and pen inscriptions of travelers come and gone.  It is definitely one of my favorite places I've ever stayed.  The environment seemed catered to the mid-twenties traveller looking for meaning on the road; it would have surprised no one if Jack Kerouac had stumbled in after a night of heavy drinking.

While I remain almost completely illiterate in reading or speaking Chinese, I am slowly making progress in basic communication.  Thanks to one month of Chinese lessons, I am able to read and order basic Chinese dishes such as chao huntun (fried wontons), da pan ji (literally "big plate of chicken"), mian bao (bread), and even shao ru ka fei nai cha (small hot coffee-flavored milk tea, my favorite for a cold evening).

Unfortunately, the small victories like successfully reading a menu or ordering food are quickly replaced with the all-too-common dejection of completely failing to communicate in countless other situations.  After ordering a nai cha one day, the waitress turned to my friend Rob and asked, "Is this person you are with part of an overseas group?"

"Yes."  Rob responded.

"When does he start his Chinese lessons?" 

It is in times like this where I have to remind myself that, even with my humble knowledge of Chinese, I know far more than any wai guo ren (foreigner) was allowed to learn only 50 years ago; there was a time when merely teaching a wai guo ren how to speak Mandarin was punishable by death.  Yet here I am, massacring their sacred language as I awkwardly try to scribble little characters into unorganized sentences.  How times change.  

As I sat waiting for my curry chicken tonight, I realized that it is precisely these annoyances and frustrations that I will end up missing the most.  Soon I will be able to communicate to whomever I want, drive to megamalls to get whatever I need, watch movies without indecipherable subtitles, and eat my favorite foods whenever I want.  But gone will be the little victories of being able to read a sign for the first time, or having a local understand my questions.

But it's ok, I decided.  It's an exchange; that is how these things work.  We explore and experience, and although we can't take the city of its people with us when we leave, the knowledge and wisdom of being an outsider in another culture stays with us forever.

Well, that, and a small section of writing above my hostel door:

"Matt McGrath - SPU Study Abroad 08'"

I left my mark.