Tag Archives: confessional moment

What’s love got to do with it? Speculations about what it means to say 我爱你 (in Shenzhen)

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I am an American woman married to a Chinese man. I have lived in Shenzhen for many, many years. Consequently, I have heard many, many stories about cross-cultural romance – some successful, some not, others vaguely disturbing.

The other day, a good friend – Euro-American man because these labels mark the site of negotiation – told me that Chinese women say, “I love you,” way too soon. Creepy soon. So, I asked another good friend, Chinese woman, why it might be that my friend would go out on one or two dates with a woman and she was already willing to confess her love. My Chinese woman friend countered with her own question, “I thought that foreigners [meaning Westerners] were open about their feelings. Isn’t that true?” I then asked a Canadian born Hong Kong women what she thought it meant to say 爱 and she replied that she usually meant something leaning towards appreciation and gratitude.

Given that I like, respect, and trust these three people, I started thinking that the romantic cultural gap was even further than I had once thought (and yes, pangs of what was I actually doing when I fell in love ringing in my ears). I knew my Chinese friends often had different understandings of their place in a family because they have different understandings of what a family is. I knew that my Chinese women friends were more likely to start dating with an eye to marriage than my Western women friends.

And yet. I hadn’t stopped to think about what it might mean to say, “I love you,” in Shenzhen because that feeling has been so fundamental to how I have defined myself. Nor am I alone because one of the define features of modernity in the West has been the way that individual passion for god or a person or an ideal defines a fully human life. Consequently, I have assumed that love was not only a universal feeling, but universally important without stopping to consider that (1) it may not be universal even in the West or that (2) even if it is universal, forms of expression are certainly not.

After these conversations, I began listening to the use of 爱 in conversations and media broadcasts. I now think that 爱 means something closer to “appreciate” or “enjoy” or “desire” or “am grateful for”. More interestingly, I think 爱 allows Shenzhen Mandarin speakers to establish a site of individuality or personality. Who and what they love allows them to have something that is personal. Importantly, I also think 爱 is a much less socially important emotion (possibly because of its individualizing function) than are other sentiments, such as loyalty and trust and long-term commitment.

All this to say, I think that Shenzhen Mandarin speakers say I love you in order to create an individualized self. This self is recognized as being distinct from and often in opposition to the more important social and/or collective self. Anecdotal evidence follows.

(1) Accomplished children generally thank (in order) – their parents, teachers, classmates, and audience for supporting them to succeed, after which they add the line, “I love you all.” （我想感谢爸爸妈妈，感谢我的老师，感谢我的同学，感谢观众朋友；我都爱你们!) Given that that gratitude is hierarchically ranked and explicitly differentiated while爱 is general, this use of 爱 seems to signal that all the support excites or makes the speaker happy.

(2) One of the main ice-breaker conversations that Shenzheners enjoy is about hobbies or 爱好 – literally love-like (好 is a fourth tone noun in this phrase).

(3) 爱 is used to describe foods and activities that people enjoy – he loves to eat sweets (他很爱吃甜品); she loves to play tennis (她很爱打网球). Interestingly, this use of爱 seems in contrast to fear or 怕 as in the expression – he’s afraid to eat spicy food (他很怕吃辣的); she’s afraid to get sun tanned (她很怕晒太阳). In this context, it’s easy to see that this is not fear of boogeymen fear, but rather fear as dislike or something that challenges a sense of self.

(4) Once when my husband and I were having difficulties, I complained to a friend and told her how I intended to handle the situation. My friend responded, “It’s great that you dare to love and dare to hate (你敢爱敢恨多好).” In retrospect this use of 敢 seems to indicate the personal and marginalized aspect of爱.

(5) Likewise, I have been repeatedly told that Chinese women do not “become obsessed with passion (痴情),” but are loyal (忠) and faithful (贤).

(6) Indeed, a true friend is someone who is revealed over a long time (日久见人心), the person who is still by your side when those who love to eat and carouse with you (酒肉朋友) have gone their merry way.

To return to the question of what’s love got to do with it, clearly not as much as one such as I – western, feminist, using love to establish a life – would like to think. Hence, the “creepiness” of Chinese women who declare their “love” after several dates, when in fact all they might be saying is “I like you” and “Given the fact that I’m dating, it means I’m looking for husband material and I think you’ll due.” That said, once married, “I will be faithful and due my duty to you, my parents, your parents, my friends and yours – in short, I’ll live a socially responsible, respectable, and meaningful life.”

Now it may be that part of reform and opening China will be the increasing importance of 爱 in defining, constituting, and giving meaning to individual lives. But maybe not. And I don’t think matters because there are so many, many ways to be fully human and I’m learning to love – rather than fear – the diversity.

what does it mean to be a foreigner in shenzhen?

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Yesterday I was a judge in the semifinals of the First Shenzhen Expats Chinese Talent Competition. An interesting experience both because the event itself expresses the Municipality’s determination to globalize and because it reflects the increasing presence of foreigners in Shenzhen. Indeed, the fact of the event points to the new symbolic visibility of foreigners in Shenzhen and the importance of the foreign to Shenzhen’s official representation of itself both at home and abroad. Specifically, the City organized the Competition as part of a search for a foreigner who can both represent Shenzhen’s foreign community (within China) and be a bridge between China and the World. Thus, who wins and how that winner is marketed will tell us all sorts of interesting things about the changing (or possibly solidifying?) symbolic valence of foreigners in Shenzhen.

According to Paul Shen, Executive Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Shenzhen Daily, which along with the Office to Promote English organized the event, there are now 480,000 foreigners in Shenzhen, excluding Taiwanese and, of course, Hong Kong residents. Half a million foreigners in Shenzhen, at least another half a million Taiwanese and Hong Kongese compatriots, in addition to the previously estimated 14 million Mainlanders in Shenzhen. Parenthetically, we can but hope that the ongoing census will give us some sense of the diversity that actually constitutes Shenzhen.

The eleven competition participants came from Norway, Korea, Russia, Indonesia, Columbia, Ghana, Toga, France, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the United States. Ages ranged from 6 and a half to married with children. Technical skills also varied enormously as the Malaysian and Indonesian participants were overseas Chinese, while the Korean, Norwegian, and American competitors were students in Chinese schools, and the rest were adults who had come to Shenzhen for business purposes and were learning Chinese accordingly.

Now, judging other foreigners’ various levels of Chinese disconcerts me because there are so many standards, most obvious of which might be glossed as technical skills – fluency and accent and control over advanced linguistic patterns come immediately to mind. However, there are also more pragmatic standards to consider. Significantly, pragmatic criteria for determining what constitutes linguistic competence are less measurable than the merely technical; interpersonal skills, cultural competence, and knowledge of appropriate historic contexts are abilities that are differently linked to technical prowess. Most foreign language programs (both in China and the United States) evaluate and test technical skills, while I tend to stress the importance of pragmatic skills, in part because my technical skills aren’t so great (yes, when flustered or angry or excited my tones are even less stable than they are when I’m concentrating), but also in part because the ability to appreciate technical skills itself falls into the cluster of pragmatic talents that differentiate speakers.

I have been fortunate to participate in Shenzhen’s performing arts circle and thus have heard technically excellent Mandarin and Cantonese; with an interest in and translator of Chinese literature, I have also read fabulous poetry and stories. I continue to watch movies and theatre and go to poetry readings in my native English and have preferences and standards for evaluating the quality of someone’s English. All this to make a rather banal point, most Chinese, like most Americans are fluent in their native language, but they are not bards. Consequently, I rarely decide to interact with someone simply because they are competent speakers of English or Chinese. Instead, I make friends based on how and what someone has to say – personality and insight, poetry and conviction appeal to me more than do accent and grammar, even when grammar itself is the precondition for performing personality or expressing opinions.

At the competition, one of the Shenzhen Daily student reporters asked me if I was looking forward to the Universidade next year? Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have answered that I’m looking forward to December’s Fringe Festival and next year’s Architecture Biennial. However, I wasn’t thinking, so I said, “No, because I don’t care about sports.” And that’s my point, however obliquely stated. Nationals from many countries constitute the Shenzhen foreign community. Each of us has different reasons for living here – economic, familial, educational, and personal. That we have emerged as a topic of municipal concern reminds us (again) the extent to which we (all humans, not just holders of foreign passports) do not live merely for ourselves, but rather in and through and for the webs and minds and expectations of those around us. A Batesonian moment this competition: human beings co-evolve and thus how we engage each other is the city – politics in the broad sense of social ecology.

人人网–everybody´s(?!) net

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this weekend, a student asked me to join her renrenwang network. i have not been particularly proactive in joining online networks primarily because i spend too much time online as it is. point du jour is that while i was signing up, i discovered that the network included links to the major u.s. colleges and universities, as well as to universities throughout the world. stunning the extent and creativity of these networks. shocking as well the (comparative) extent to which u.s. online networks are not integrating global links.

i know, my reaction makes me sound like an ¨american peasant,¨ but for the past few years i have been increasingly aware how provincial my upbringing and education was. at the time (1983) studying chinese seemed so far outside the norm that my father asked me if studying mandarin would help me succeed negotiating the hong kong stock exchange! and yet somewhen along the line, not only did the world catch up to the internationalism of china, but also surpassed my preparation to live in that new world.

wow. 30 years of reform and opening and it is a whole new world. wow again.

why shenzhen?

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yesterday i gave a presentation on the shenzhen book of changes project. one of the questions that i was asked afterwards was, if shenzhen is so environmentally compromised, why do you love it?

i answered that i had experienced hospitality and generosity in shenzhen. indeed, that my husband and friends have all taught me how to be a better human being. and then, as i was walking away, i realized something else. i don’t think of myself as loving shenzhen. i think of myself as walking the city to understand what is happening here. i think of myself as an offering a highly subjective, partial english-language glimpse of the city for those whose only access to the city would otherwise be through journalism. i certainly hope that people who read noted come to shenzhen to learn and to understand and to participate in the life of the city; in other words, i hope that my blog might direct people to interesting and meaningful encounters with the city, rather than function as a substitute for personal experience.

all this to say, i bring a quality of attention and conscious intention to my inhabitation of shenzhen. this orientation has enabled me to see the beauty of shenzhen, land reclamation, fake foods, dank slums and squatter encampments, notwithstanding. so perhaps, yes, i have loved shenzhen more than any other place. but  it may be more accurate to say that learning to be attentive to shenzhen is teaching me to love where i am, today.

hearing meaning in chinese and english

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yesterday, enjoyed a wonderful bbq with friends of friend. the conversation vered here, as it so often does in shenzhen to: how did i learn chinese?  the assumption behind the disbelief that i speak chinese is that it is difficult to learn chinese. i hear the same distancing shock when chinese people are surprised by the facts that i eat with chopsticks, navigate the public transportation system, and successfully bargain for goods.

it is more difficult to go from english to chinese than it is to go from chinese to french or spanish because english shares so much with the romance languages and very little with chinese. when i learned french, for example, it really was just a question of learning how to translate, once i knew the rules, i just needed to practice execution. were there details i din’t get? yes. do i still struggle with proper use of the subjunctive? yes. do i have difficulty navigating all those gendered nouns. yes.

and yet. did i already understand the use of the past tense and the importance of conjugation to making meaning? yes. did i have vague familiarity with french history and culture? yes. did my u.s. humanities education prepare me for themes i would find in french literature and philosophy? again, yes.

at first glance, then it does seem more difficult for an english speaker to learn chinese than it may be to learn french. the structures of english and chinese share little in common. and, given the tendencies of u.s. american education in the 70s and 80s, i was also unfamiliar with chinese history and culture, as well as great themes in literature and philosophy. all this to say, i understand the difficulty that native speakers of either english or chinese encounter when we attempt to crossover that divide.

nevertheless, learning chinese became easier when i realized that we share many linguistic features but not only use them, but also listen for them differently.  Continue reading →