Yangyi: The Final Meeting

            This time, he brought a friend. Her name is Coco. It was fun to see how he changed when she was around. When I first arrived, they handed me yogurt they had got me and a spoon. They had gotten all 3 of us some yogurt to celebrate our last meeting, or something like that. This was a bit of my own personal nightmare because I could not eat the particular yogurt they had gotten due to a food allergy. I started to just eat it anyway, but I decided that the torment afterwards was simply not worth it. So, I said thank you and started talking to hopefully distract from the fact that I wasn’t eating. Normally, I would just tell them I couldn’t have it, but it was such a sweet gesture I just couldn’t bring myself to ruin it and hurt their feelings.

            I asked how class was, and Coco started laughing. Apparently Yangyi had stopped going for three weeks. He looked embarrassed that she told me. When I asked him why, he made up some nonsense about his body not letting him because he was sick and needed rest. I countered with reminding him we met during that time and he laughed and didn’t seem sick at all, and that he had been going out with friends almost every night when he could have been resting. I told him that if he was well enough to hang out with friends, he was well enough to go to class. He changed his tactics at this point to say that our friendship was so important to him that it surpasses his class responsibilities. He said that he still came to our meetings because he feels that you make sacrifices for friends because they need you. After I called his bluff, I thanked him for such high compliments.

            Then, I think due to our guest, he began trying to tell me about my future boyfriend. He described his looks, his social demographic, and how we would meet. According to Yangyi we will meet in a coffee shop and I will spill coffee on him as I walk by. Then, we’ll look at each other and “he’ll say this is the best second degree burn I’ve ever received,” I finished. They both laughed.

We joked around about this for a little bit, then we started discussing dream vacations. Yangyi’s were grand world travels involving multiple continents and multiple countries. Mine is a trip down Route 66. I want to start in Chicago and travel the 2,451 miles down America’s Main Street getting to experience every quirky mile. I think they both thought I was a little crazy for wanting to do it, but that’s ok. I think they’re a little crazy for wanting to fly around so much.

We told her my new Chinese name and Coco laughed. I asked her why she thought he gave it to me, and she said because I was so white. I laughed and told him that that’s what I had thought too, as well as other people who knew it. He said, “No, I chose it because I think it is very beautiful.”  The jury is still out on whether Coco and I believe him.

All in all, it was a great final meeting and a great semester of friendship. Apparently he has only written about three of our meetings, but he said he has enjoyed them anyway. I asked him if he plans to pass his listening tests this week, and he said he doesn’t think he will. I asked why, and Coco jumped in and said, “Because he doesn’t go to class!” Hopefully he’ll learn his lesson for next semester. I had told him if he needed any help, he could ask. Maybe he will next semester.

The Stores Were Closed

When Yangyi and I met last Tuesday, the funniest moment was when he informed me about his trip over Thanksgiving. He seemed very excited before going and he said he had a good time, but let’s face it – Thanksgiving Break is not a good tourist time. The beaches were cold and museums and stores were closed with little activity. The part of this conversation that made me giggle was when he asked if I knew a lot of places are closed on Thursday. I said, “As in, Thanksgiving Thursday?” He nodded. I suppressed laughter and said, “Yes, Thanksgiving is one of two days a year that most places are closed.” He said they had trouble finding a restaurant or any place with food open on Thursday for him and his friends to eat breakfast or lunch or dinner. Before I got too filled with pity, he said they ate at their hotel – The Hilton. Trust me, sounds like they were well taken care of.

They stayed at three different hotels during their stay in Houston, Galveston, and San Antonio, and apparently each was very nice accommodations. He showed me pictures of the view from his hotel and I thought it was beautiful. He, I think, was less impressed, but that’s ok. I think he’s used to nicer places, so it was good that he found them. He said that the Hilton had good food. I asked him if he ate Thanksgiving type food, and he said that maybe a little turkey, but no. But they were content and enjoyed themselves.

I don’t think the beach must have been much to look at because he called it “ugly” (I know, it must have been difficult for me to figure that one out). We talked about the fact that it was almost December and the beach is usually more made for the summer time. I don’t feel like our gulf beaches are made for staring at so much as being in and having fun with.

This week he came with a Chinese name prepared for me. While I have great difficulty pronouncing the first name (or for Americans, the last name), I do like it. He put thought into it, clearly. My Chinese last name (the American first name) means “cute little girl,” and my Chinese first name is “snow.” He said when people hear this name they think of a cute little girl playing in the snow. He told me that people don’t name their children this name because it is too beautiful. I think he was just trying to flatter me, but it was still very sweet. When I later told a friend of mine what the two names meant he asked if it was because I was as pale as Snow White. I became uneasy for a moment and then realized that Yangyi had said that to be pale in the Chinese culture was to be beautiful, so either interpretation of my new Chinese name I am just fine with!

While it embarrasses me a little to have such a name to live up with, I think it has in a way helped me better understand the Chinese culture. With names that mean something, like almost all Chinese names do, parents name their children with a certain ideal in mind. Now as I have been named, I feel I must live up to it. I can now understand the pressure Yangyi had said he feels to not disappoint his parents, well a small portion of it anyway. I have always felt that way with my parents, but it is a permanent reminder of their expectations every time someone addresses you. It is like a motivational gift given from parent to child. I never thought of name like that, but it makes sense now that I've experienced a small dose.

Hanging out with Yangyi

            Every time I’ve met with Yangyi this semester it has been in a more artificial, manufactured way than I would prefer. Recently, I’ve had some issues with him not coming to our meetings. After some thought, I decided to make it less of an intrusive meeting than something he could do while going about his normal routine. Thus, we ate at Market Square together. It was an experience…maybe we won’t do it again. But I did learn a few things.

            First, some Chinese students apparently have trouble digesting American food. Yangyi doesn’t have any problems and actually likes some American food (“not as much as Chinese food, but its good. Whatever,” he says), but he tells me that some of his friends just can’t take American food. I think that’s pretty interesting. Through my discussions with my friend who is an international student from China, they don’t really have many restaurants in China from other cultures, not really anyway. Perhaps that adds to their inability to digest American food. But he seems to like it. We both got burgers and fries.

            The main discussion topic on the menu was Thanksgiving Break. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was going home. I explained to him the 3 F’s of Thanksgiving: Food, Football, and Family. He looked at me and then took another bite. I laughed awkwardly, and then we moved on.

            I asked him what his plans were and he said a lot of his friends were headed up to New York because they had never went, but he and a group of his friends are headed down to Houston for Thanksgiving. He said it was for the beach, but I warned him he wouldn’t find much beach there. I suggested Galveston. He was a little distraught at the fact that all of the friends going with him at that time were girls. I told him not to worry about it too much, but he questioned whether he could get one of the guys going to New York to cancel their trip to go with him.

            It was strange to me for them not to experience the American holiday while they are here. All of his friends are Chinese International students. Last year, I took the friend referred to earlier home with me for the week of Thanksgiving. She said that it was really important to her to experience our culture just as I would want to experience hers if (and, according to her, when) I travel to China. However, because Yangyi hasn’t made any American friends and doesn’t really know any Americans besides me, he was unable to experience the holiday. I felt bad, but he didn’t really seem to care. This woke me up to the idea that of course he wouldn’t necessarily care. It only matters so greatly to me because it has been engrained into my culture and into my life. But he has other holidays I don’t necessarily recognize that he is probably grief-stricken when he misses them.

            So this conversation resulted in 2 basic understandings: (1) I was sorry he didn’t get to experience Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, and (2) it served as a culture-check for me to lead towards a better understanding of how it is like to be in another country when holidays occur that are not among your customs.

Juha Haha

            One-liners. That’s all I really need to say to describe the basic idea of “Tales of Juha.” None of the jokes are actually one line, but each comes down to a single punch line. So, while standing in line for punch, whatever set up is told and it may raddle on for a page and then finally you are served the sweet libation of humor. A second basic idea of this type of humor is donkeys. In this type of humor there are references to donkeys in both their animal form, their euphemistic form, and their double entendre form. A third idea is the basic chauvinism expressed by Juha on multiple occasions.

            On page 25 there is a particular one liner about where someone should walk around the coffin in a funeral procession. Juha replies, “As long as you’re not in the coffin, you can walk wherever you like.” For better or for worse, I laughed. Not all of the jokes with Juha are on the level, PC, or even un-offensive to certain people, but this one just seemed like good fun. Friends often comment on the fact that I enjoy dark humor, depressing things, and death. Guess so, because this made me giggle. It really is true though. It cuts to the bone of the issue and sees that in a funeral procession who really cares as much about where everyone else is standing or walking when they should be remembering their friend. In Juha’s case, I don’t think this thought was precisely what he was thinking. I think Juha was thinking around the lines of the fact that the guy asking was not dead so he should be thankful he could still walk wherever he liked. Juha’s humor often seems very dark in ways that I’m not even comfortable with. In the words of Jack Nicholson, he talks about things that “people don’t talk about at parties” because it isn’t cheerful or the view of humanity we try to present.

            The final joke in the “Wit and Wisdom” chapter/section dealt with donkeys. In the core of the joke, Juha says he consulted his donkey on whether he should let this man borrow the donkey, and the men questions when donkeys started being consulted and when donkeys started having opinions. Juha responds with “You see it and hear it all the time. Aren’t there any number of [two-legged] donkeys who talk? Aren’t they consulted, then give their opinions?” In the culture I’m used to we don’t have just a whole lot of “Donkey Humor.” Occasionally someone will intend to call someone stubborn, annoying, or foolish and use donkey terminology and then there were a series of Shrek films, but other than that there really isn’t any “Donkey Humor.” I can’t actually even think of an animal equivalent we might incorporate into our humor. But because donkeys are so apparently integrated into their culture, lifestyle, and living, it makes sense that the donkeys would have a place in their humor as well.

            On the bottom of page 21 starts the story of Juha giving a necklace to both of his two wives in secret from one another and everyone else. When one day they ask who he loves most, he needs only to say “the one I gave the necklace to as a present” to make them both happy. Juha is scheming and deceitful at least a little bit…and I would venture to say a little more than just a little bit. His one-liners, like this one, always seem a bit jarring or as if they might be in an effort to get himself out of trouble. I read Juha as a bit of trouble-maker, a silver-tongue trickster with an air of wisdom and sometimes truth in what he says.

Arrg...I Voted

            After forgetting the previous 2 times and leaving me feeling sad, Yangyi came prepared for meeting. First, he wanted to discuss the election. He wanted me to explain how it worked. It all started with him asking if Obama was re-elected, and I said yes. He said ok. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be the end of the conversation or not, so I asked if he had watched the election the previous night. He said no. When I said that I did and that it was my first time voting, he became interested. I think he was surprised I was able to vote. His first question was who I voted for. I explained to him that that is kind of the point of voting with secret ballots; it’s your own private business. He didn’t really drop it then, so I told him. He wanted me to describe the process. I tried my hardest to give an accurate representation, but found it really challenging to explain to him. I guess I’ve never really been put in that position before where I need to explain the complex voting system in simple English. The description went well until I used the terminology “Electoral College.” Naturally, hearing the word “College” he thought of an educational institution. I had tried to say something to the effect that it wasn’t a university for students but that it was the deciding factor in presidential votes to explain the Electoral College, but after hearing the word “College” I was hard pressed to get his thoughts away from the word.

            After my failed – clearly - attempt of explaining voting the American way, I asked him about the Chinese President and how they are voted into office. Of course, I use “voted” loosely. Basically he says that if Male A is a war hero then the country will love and take care of Male B (Male A’s son) and eventually condition him to become the President. There really isn’t a second candidate. When the ballots come out there is Male B who the whole country has gotten to know over the years and maybe random Male Z, but everyone chooses Male B because they know him.

            And then our conversation switched dramatically to pirating. Not the “Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum” kind of pirating, but the illegal copying of music, movies, software, etc. kind. Apparently there is a lot of pirating in China and it is socially accepted, tolerated, and even endorsed. Technically the government doesn’t like it, but apparently because there are so many people, and consequently so many computers, for them to watch, most pirating is available online with no consequence. He laughed – laughed! – when I said that you could be put in jail or fined for it here. He says most everyone in China has pirated everything. He says no one uses Microsoft Word, because the “off-brand,” pirated material is so heavily available that it would be foolish to pay for it when you could get it for free so easily. I countered with the fact that here it is called stealing. He basically insinuated that it is there too, but no one cares. It’s free, so why care.

This is where we started getting into the money/credit discussion. One reason I think we are so serious about pirating is that thing that is being pirated someone invested their time into it and came up with the idea out of their own head and from their own work. Because America tries to connect success with merit, it is very important here to note what success came out of your hard work. Here we like to say, this person invented this and that person invented that. In China, it is more about blending and creating a better society as a whole. Because it does nothing for your status to have created this thing or that or to have achieved this goal or that, there is less of a seriousness at watching the thievery of pirated objects.

The Name of the Game is Irony

            In the past I have ridiculed Hokum. I have found it to be unfunny and even upsetting/offensive. Even with my inherit appreciation of dark humor, I have found it difficult to find the humor throughout this book. In the case of “Dirty Deceivers” though, I did chuckle at the end. To summarize, the story is about a couple who both hide the fact that they are part black from each other and the world. After a long time, they found out each other’s secret, and were for a moment happy. Shortly after, they became so upset at each other’s deceit that they both were suing for divorce on grounds of false pretenses.

            When I started reading the story I first noted how matter-of-fact it is written. There is no real use of imagery or even an attempt to show, not tell. “Dirty Deceivers” is simply a relaying of events, no icing or French fries necessary. Despite all the great advise of writers, I somehow preferred this particular story to written in this blunt way. It made the series of events the most prominent thing which created an emphasis on the irony of their hiding their secret lives from one another and eventually suing each other for divorce because of a decision they both made. Psychoanalyzing the characters themselves, it is interesting that for them the thing that apparently keeps their love alive is having a huge secret from one another. This secret seems to both weigh them down and create unnecessary hassle for them as well as excite them because it is something that only they know, and they take great pains to protect it.

Humor? Yeah, sure. I guess so.

            When you pick up a book entitled “an anthology of African-American humor” with a giant watermelon rind on the cover, there are expectations that you set. Expectations that center around this book debunking African-American stereotypes in a way that gets its point across, but in a humorous way. Incorrect. Plain and simple, I do not find this book funny. Not in the guttural “ha-ha” sense, not in the “that’s so truthful that it elicits as sad chuckle” sense, not in the “I feel like that was the punch line, but I don’t get it” sense. It is only funny in the “It said humor on the cover, so perhaps I should give it a chuckle whether it deserves it or not, and because I’m feeling incredibly awkward with the material” sense. Admittedly, I found the W.E.B. Dubois story from the previous reading humorous because of the frankness and simple-ness of the narrator’s responses. But in general the material deals with such a dark time in country’s history that it doesn’t have much chance of being funny. Most of these stories were wrote during the late 1800s or the early 1900s during a time when African Americans were very much having to claw their way to equality in our society.

            This brings me to my next thought. Our readings have all been centered on that time period. In the readings, the most recent is “Let me at the enemy – and George Brown” from 1944. This is not a complaint that that time period of stories shouldn’t be read, it is simply a commentary on the reason why my expectations for Hokum weren’t met as I expected them to be. I think when I read the title and saw the demi-modern cover, I assumed modern African American humor, which this book also happens to contain. Because in my head I was picturing modern, I was picturing relatable topics and at least a handful of laughs.

            The humor of Hokum is separated from my humor in a number of ways which I think combine to make it “not funny” to me. Culturally I am separated from this piece. I am a white female so I don’t have the prerequisite “race” to understand. I didn’t think I would be so far blocked by this cultural filter because of the number of African-American friends I have. Enter the second filter: time period. So now I have my genetics fighting against me to understand the material as well as a generation gap. Sure, I’ve learned about how bad racial issues were at that time in school every year, but to live it is so different. To live it brings an understanding that surpasses book knowledge within moments.

            I like the dialect choices of the authors. I don’t find it to be a huge barrier to my understanding of the passages. I do find it a sign of the genius of the authors because they preserve a manner of speech that I fear will one day become less and less well known. Already our accents aren’t seen as the ones to use as news reporters are advised, “Use a Midwestern accent, because then they won’t be able to tell where you are from.” No, be proud of your culture and where you are from. As our society becomes more amalgamous every day, remember where you are from and what your individual values are that you bring to the table.