Summer Travels

After a week here and frustrated with my inability to make much progress with the language, I put new energy into finding a local Chinese person with which to do a language exchange. Soon I stumbled across a website (www.expats.com) that allowed free classified postings. There were several language exchange requests posted from all over the world (many in Dubai). I gave it a shot and by Sunday night I had been emailed by a young Chinese mechanical engineer, who uses the English name Ryan, on summer holiday and looking to improve his English.

Ryan is 21 and in his last year of university. He lives with his mom and grandmother on the Puxi side of town, just north of the East China University of Politics and Law (ECUPL) where Stacy has classes. Though he is an only child he has a few cousins close by who he refers to as sisters. Dad hasn’t been in the picture for a while. Fortunately for me Ryan has been studying English for nearly 10-years and was more than able to negotiate a time and place to meet in English. Through a series of cell phone text messages we were able to connect on the ECUPL campus early Monday morning.

We met up three times last week for a few hours each time in the afternoon. While I got some much needed language practice, my interest in learning more about the culture and politics of China and Shanghai tended to trump my language practice. When my brain tired of trying to hear and repeat the different tones, I fell back to English and explored the details of Chinese life through his eyes.

joe
Often we were joined by Stacy or one of her classmates on break (or skipping class to avoid an uninteresting lecture). We hit on topics like food, health care, news coverage, standard of living, minimum wage, pollution of waterways, using roundabouts instead of signalized intersections, credit cards, saving money, houses vs. apartments, pirated software, earthquakes, the apparent rudeness of Chinese people, and frequently his dissatisfaction with life in Shanghai / China.

Like many people in their early 20’s in both China and the US, Ryan is disillusioned with government and media. Coming of age in a world filled with hypocrisies and injustice is enough to make anyone wish for the greener grass that must exist outside.

Surely more equitable places to live than Shanghai exist, but the discouragement I sense in Ryan could be found anywhere in the world. As a future mechanical engineer, he will be better off than most. Still, the idea of joining the rat race and being stuck in a position in which he has little control over the political and economic systems in which he must subsist is understandably disheartening.

I am curious to see how our relationship develops over my remaining two weeks here in Shanghai. As time allows, I will explore some of the conversations mentioned above in future posts.