English?

I am enthralled by society and its workings. Really.

For the past few days, I've been living at Renmin University, but finally on this Friday night had a chance to go around campus. Walking with two of my seminar friends, they guided me through campus.

"That's the building of truth seeking," they mentioned, explaining that Renmin was one of the only 'true' CCP schools that was built after the CCP was in total power.

There are couples strolling leisurely down the asphalt paved road, dim with the golden light of streetlamps. A ring of friends gathers on the grass, their chatter barely audible and their faces masked by the twilight. Under a blinding white stadium lamp, a group of thirty or so women, some middle aged and graying gracefully, others young and dressed in T-shirts, dance to a completely inappropriate *yodel* in a small courtyard nearby. On the field are joggers. One of them is huffing in an exaggerated heave and passes a line on the track with a burst of extra speed as he loops around for yet another round. At the side of the field are ten or so (mainly women) practicing their kicks, one of them releases a rather humorous growl every time he mock-kicks a tree. Most of campus tonight is lively--the vivid dash of a bicycle beside me as I stroll along the street, a girl in a turquoise skirt sitting horizontally behind the bicycle of a college aged student, her feet crossed and just barely off the ground... the eerie green neon lights that illuminate a small sculpture and the miniature lake on campus... a flash of rollerblades and skateboards from a group of ten or so guys performing street tricks... the tapping of feet coming out of the library. Two parents, yet to leave campus after helping their freshman child settle in (this is the first week of school), sit on a wooden bench in the central gate courtyard, their furrowed faces lit by an ornate incandescent lamp. Several red posters exhort students to work hard and love their alma mater, or in other cases welcome new students.

I also had a chance to participate in English corner tonight, which is basically a gathering of plenty of people who want to learn English. My guides first introduced me to this group, meeting in the twilight of a small plaza on east campus. The darkness is bewildering and I keep questioning why they don't light up the place, now that the twlight has offically entered into evening. I decide to drop by and say hello to two other people on the outskirts of a dark mass of people speaking an unintelligible mess of English and Chinese.

"What's going on here?" I ask I hope in a friendly tone.

The two look at me in bewilderment, not sure if I'm a foreigner or a student. I notice the other one peering intently trying to figure out my skin color in the twilight, edging forward ever so slightly to try to get a better look. Too effortlessly do I commadeer the conversation, while I am only a newcomer. Suddenly I'm asking a slew of questions in English, and I forget to stop and ask myself why they are letting this upstart ask questions about 'why they are interested in learning English,' 'where their old hometown is...' I'm not a teacher here, and in hindsight, I implicitly felt that having an American accent to my English translated to superiority. A lady joins our conversation, now working in tourism management and having graduated from Hebei province last year. The student from Tsinghua who does communications management shifts to my right; another recent graduate, who now works 10 hours a day (overtime) at a company, shifts to my left. After some banter, the lady offers her ticket to the Paraolympics, explaining that her mother could not make it to the city. I politely decline but wonder why she never offered it to the other two standing next to me.

As I write this in a cafe, I'm realizing how many foreigners in this cafe. It's a strange understanding... that foreigners here are given so many more creature comforts. I couldn't figure out how to say ginger ale in Chinese, so I said "ginger ale" instead when they asked for my order. The waitress--trainee, rather--was quite embarrassed at her inability to comprehend the first time. If I asked in Chinese for 铁观音 tea in a cafe that sells "Iron Goddess Tea," would the waitress/waiter feel embarrassed at not understanding? Why, according to my friend from Renmin, are people building fortunes doing English education--whether providing study abroad programs, or resigning as the assistant dean of Tsinghua's English department to start a billion-dollar enterprise teaching English?

Walking out of the 五道口地铁站，I notice that a group of two white skinned and one black skinned men plow through the crowd with a subtle swagger. In the mass of people moving across the street, these three men seem to float through the crosswalk. I smell a tinge of colonge and notice the curls on one of the guy's head and his sweat stained dress shirt. Chinese tourists at Stanford or San Francisico surely do not walk down the street like this (they probably move in flocks... but that's another story xP).

Is English the language of elites? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that English speakers end up having higher wages or foreigners who visit are well-to-do. How do we explain the fact that in the morning, while we visited a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, a man slightly off his rocker bellowed: "老外怎么这么傻?" "Why are foreigners so stupid?" How do we explain the pride that befits a country rife with nationalism... the arrogance in our/their (what a tough question for me) culture, the ancient, the language, the food?

Surely, the vision of college life in China suggests that international norms are glocalized. Chinese college students aren't receiving 'Western' ideals like passive porecelain receptacles, but rather as people with agency and spirit, blending 'West' and 'East' in ways that may engender shocking incongruities from the outsider's perspective.