Greetings
from China
I’ve been asked to write an
occasional column as a Global Correspondent from China for
Sketchbook, and it was suggested a brief
introduction might be in order. Already it seems the obstacles
are lining up. First of all, I’m not a Chinese specialist by
any stretch of the imagination, although I have lived a good
bit of my adult life in Asia (South, East and Middle). Second,
I’m not good with the introduction/brief bio business and tend
to slide quickly into flippancy and go on and on about playing
ukuleles and riding old clunker bicycles, all of which is true
but not terribly interesting.
I am currently living in Hangzhou, China, a small city of
seven million just a short train ride south of Shanghai, where
I teach World History and Geography at the Hangzhou
International School (HIS). I’ve been teaching in
international schools for several years, most recently in
Thailand and Bahrain. In what seems like a past life, I taught
in Japan and Seattle, studied Hindi in India, picked up a
couple degrees (and am working on another), and edited and
published a newsletter on Asian food and culture. My wife, an
ethnomusicologist and budding desktop music producer, also
teaches at HIS, where our sixteen-year old son is now a
junior. For the last couple of years I’ve concentrated on
writing short form poetry almost exclusively and, as the brief
bios go, my work has appeared in various international
journals. And, of course, there is the ukulele and bicycle,
which may actually be more interesting than what I just wrote.
As I write this, the Olympic Games are winding down. I’ve
tried unsuccessfully to ignore them. China is rightfully proud
of what it has achieved, not just with the games but
economically and socially over the last two decades. Like any
country, it has problems; like most countries, it doesn’t like
being told how to deal with them. That makes living here
interesting, occasionally frustrating, and not infrequently
confusing. In future dispatches I will explore life in China
from an expatriate’s point of view, focusing on cultural
aspects as best I can.
Meanwhile, I have a reading assignment for you. Sometimes
fiction is truer than fact. An entertaining yet nonetheless
informative insight into the contrast between Chinese and,
broadly speaking, Western perspectives on life can be gleaned
from a reading of Xiaolu Guo’s novel A Concise
Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. It’s the story
of a Chinese country girl who goes to the big city—in
this instance, London—and
learns a lot about herself as well as the ways of the
non-Chinese world. The perceptive reader will learn a thing or
two also.
For the nonce,
Bob Lucky
