Time's Paces*

It has been a long week.

The first two weeks of class went by rather quickly.  Having come back from a much-needed break, I felt rejuvenated and ready to take on the new semester.  New classes, rich in content and more tailored to my interests, naturally encouraged more engaged study and class participation.  Too, the looming conclusion of my stay here has created a healthy sense of urgency in all respects.  My time here is running short.

I've always found the perception of time a wildly interesting concept.  People often say that time seems to pass more quickly as they age.  It at has always made perfect sense to me why this would be the case.  One day for an eight year-old boy would be only about 1/3000 of the time he's lived, whereas the same day for his 80 year-old grandmother would be only 1/30000 of hers.  The day is relatively more significant to the young boy than to his grandmother and thus feels longer.  This is only one of many explanations, many of which are far more scientific, but regardless of which you choose, the fact remains that the phenomenon is real and experimentally replicable.


Based on this logic, the third week of the semester should not have seemed longer than either of the first two but rather shorter than both.  This was not the case, as the astute reader has already picked up on.  Don't worry if you are not the astute reader: I appreciate all (two) readers.  In any event, the reasons for the anomaly are manifold.  If you care/dare to continue (astute reader, that means you), please see below the three principal reasons.

First, as of an unfortunate announcement by administration earlier this week, the political climate has been heating up.  The teaching staff is disgruntled, as are the students on their behalf.  Nothing has been worked out conclusively, and so I'll end my treatment of the issue here (at least temporarily).  Suffice it to say that it's warmer inside than out these days, the classroom stuffy and uncomfortable.

Second, the initially negligible idiosyncrasies of classmates have become increasingly irritating.  What at first were the endearing quirks of new and interesting personalities are now simply the annoying realities of their actual personalities. And given the heatwave, they've become particularly insufferable.

Third, next week promises to be the most exciting week of the year.  Please take no offense if you've been a part of other exciting weeks this year: there have been many, and you know who you are.  But attending a three-day, 200-person, shotgun-wedding extravaganza in a rural Chinese village easily takes the cake.  I've been too excited even to sleep.  As a result, I've been tired and distracted.  But now the week is over, and I can start planning for my trip. 

I had noticed Ayi was in a strange mood one night about a month-and-a-half ago.  She was somewhere between depression and shock, performing her duties ably but mechanically, without her normal vim and vigor and beaming smile.  I finally got her to tell me what was bothering her, after which I told her that her uneasiness would soon be coming from the excitement of an approaching wedding rather than from the shock of an unexpected pregnancy.  As it turns out, I was right.

I bumped into her in the park yesterday on an afternoon walk I was taking to clear my head.  She was watching a 5 year-old boy while his parents were at work.  His name is Le Le, and he was playing in the dirt under the footbridge with some friends.  She yelled to him, "Le Le, come here!  Say hello to Dong Jie.  Speak English with him!  He speaks the best English."  It's unclear how Ayi knows how good my English is, but I just ran with it.  He spoke to me for a minute or two but was summoned back to his group of friends to participate in their display of public urination.  A female classmate of his looked up at me and said, "Is that civilized where you come from?"  I laughed and said, "It's not so bad."  I've yet to determine exactly when it goes from being innocent to disgusting; all I know is that it's unfortunately not one of those habits that fades with age.

I asked if Ayi's sons were like that when they were little. Sure, she told me, it was long ago but seemed like yesterday.  "Time flies and things change quickly," she said, "They're all learning English in school now.  Did you have Chinese when you were in elementary school?"  I smiled and told her that we did not.  I had some trouble explaining the critical period hypothesis for language acquisition, but she basically understood what I meant: I started studying Chinese too late in life to ever speak it like a native; these Chinese kids (at least in this respect) have a significant advantage.  Regardless, she informed me, we all speak Chinese extremely well, better Mandarin than her own, and certainly than that of the Henanese villagers we would be meeting at the wedding.  "They are so excited to see you.  They have never seen white people before."  The excitement was mutual, I told her.

So five white boys from Yale are heading down to the village, 10 hours on a train each way, to where we've been warned of the conditions.  "You laugh," Ayi says, "but I know how you guys live."

I think it might be another long week, and just like that it will be over.




--

*Twells, Henry. "Time's Paces." Hymns and Other Stray Verses. 1901.

Foolishness

          The Beijing air has been clear these past few days.  For me, it has been a pleasure.  The warmth too has invited late afternoon walks through the park, even an evening bike ride though the campus I once called my (temporary) home.  I know I complain, but I’m also the first to admit that this would be a really nice city if they could just clean it up a little.

          My positive attitude has lent itself to more “optimistic” thinking.  In fact, just today, I looked out the classroom window onto the cityscape.  I thought to myself, “Gee, the fog is awfully bad today…”

          Someone I greatly admire once said, “In the absence of information, optimism does not equate itself to foolishness.”  He never told me what optimism equates itself to in the presence of information, and logically I can't deduce it, but I’m beginning to see clearly that it is ignorance; bliss in the face of hopelessness; indeed it is pure and utter foolishness.