Just back from a
presentation at my daughter’s school. I’ve
a Red Garland set from 1957 on, featuring
John Coltrane on tenor and the title song “Soul Junction” is slowing the
morning down nicely for me, as I’m a bit wound up. Trying to find the date for that set, I saw a
picture of JC when he enlisted in the navy in 1945. He must have been about 19. It caught me off guard. So young, and yet already so remarkably pensive, weary.
My kids have attended a Chinese program for the last few
years here in Beijing. I got the
notification last night to be there at 8:00 AM and showed up a few minutes
after the hour, hoping I hadn’t missed anything important. The parents were all lined up in the back of
the classroom, listening to the kids recite poems as I took my seat.
The fourth graders all seemed so serious reciting their lines
about their love of school, their love of learning, their love of teachers. Every parent, myself included were sitting or standing
with their arms extended filming their children with their iPhones, or their
Galaxies or their Xiaomi’s. The same
image captured over and over and over by twelve or more outstretched arms like some
Bentham-ite panopticon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon This is why more “data” was created last
year than in all the previous centuries combined, or whatever that crazy
statistic is. The teacher, Mr. Wang, is
an earnest young man with a big smile and the kids all seem to like him. I can see why.
Next we headed over to the math teacher’s class. I don’t know him as well. He seems a bit more high-strung, but what do
I know. He asked the kids to stand and
they did, on a dime, wished him “good morning” and he replied in kind. Then he gave
the kids a geometry problem and asked them to finish it and put their work on
the board. My daughter raced up early
and I was proud. The kids had a few more
problems that they all worked diligently on and offered answers to. Then we were told we could all head down
stairs and over to an adjacent building to hear a presentation from the administration.
On the way out I saw another parent I knew and said “good
morning.” She looked at me and
asked. “What are you doing here?” I
considered this for a moment. I was one
of only three fathers that I noticed there.
Nearly everyone was a mom. Was
this a challenge to me as man? Shouldn’t
you be out ordering people around in some office? Then, she continued: “It’s all in Chinese.” Well, yes, of course it’s all in Chinese, and
we are in China and we’re speaking in Chinese.
I could have said any number of a dozen different witty things, but
instead smiled, and said “chabuduo”
which means “more or less.”
I had been the only foreign parent in the room. And this, not my gender, was why the woman was
flummoxed. Why would you want to watch your daughter recite
poetry and race up to front of the room to do math problems? No. I did
not understand the finer points of the recitations. No. I
could not have run up to the board with an answer to the fourth-grade geometry
problem, had I been tasked to do so, though one would hope I’d have had a
chance were the problem given in English.
No. I am not a Chinese
parent. Though I was having a perfectly
nice time until I spoke with you.
Mixing out in the hall outside, I told my daughter how proud
I was of her. But the spell had been
broken, in a way. I was conscious, now
of our English conversation. It seemed
loud and dissonant. I was aware now of her classmate’s stares at me and then at
her. I cared all of a sudden what they
thought of this big, foreign man talking to their classmate who a moment ago
was no different from themselves. My
daughter remained completely, remarkably oblivious. Or perhaps she was just proud, herself.
I heard a teacher’s assistant speak to Mr. Wang and gesturing
my way, say in Chinese: “this foreigner had a question as to where the
administrator’s presentation was going to be.”
Nothing wrong with such a phrase.
Completely polite and reasonably stated in Chinese. Nothing wrong, whatsoever. But at that moment, just for a moment, I
didn’t want to be “this foreigner” but rather, this parent, this father, this
gentleman, this asshole of neither geographic nor cultural specificity.
I skipped the administrator’s presentation and tried to
cheer myself up as I walked across the courtyard back out to the car. It was a brisk sunny day. No surprises there. Nothing transpired that isn’t part of every
day life, every single day in China. We
come, in part, for the otherness, and otherness we certainly find. And so it will always be, as long as I
remain, no matter what new vistas I reach linguistically, culturally. And it’s no big deal. It’s cool.
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