The Chatting Cafe

Yesterday, when I woke up, the weather was yellow. The sky was grayish-yellowish-white, it was spitting rain, and the air smelled like rust and dirty coal. It was an inside day, and so I did inside things: grading, reading, playing solitaire, cooking. It was nasty, lazy weather.

But it finally cleared up late in the afternoon. As the day progressed, the clouds went more whiteish than yellowish, then more bluegrey than white. Maybe around six I looked out the window: the sky above was thick with dull clouds, but there was sunlight reflecting off the buildings and shining off the windows at me. I went over to the window; over to the west, the clouds were finally breaking up, and the sun came through white and gold.

I had an appointment at 6.30: a "Chatting Cafe", as the organizer called it. Full-time foreign teachers are requested/required to take part in at least one (two?) extracurricular activities, and so I was contacted by this guy a couple days ago. He's a PhD student here, and told me about the Chatting Cafe, inviting me to attend/help/host. I wasn't entirely clear on which - when you're a Foreign Teacher, it's an even chance whether you'll be asked to be the Star Attraction Of Our Show or just a guest - but I figured okay, sure I'll go.

So I went.

Peter - my contact - was about my weight but a few inches taller than I. He kept his jacket on even though he was sweating, and I think he wasn't sure if I'd show up. He showed me to the room, talking about his major and about the English club. It was being held in the main classroom building, one of the smaller classrooms. I recognized the setup from my usual teaching room: long benches, long desks, a roll-up-and-down blackboard covered with a screen. There were maybe fifteen people in attendance; when I walked in, they applauded.

Peter went to the podium and I went and put my stuff down at a desk. This was apparently not kosher; people stared at me, and Peter asked me to come to the front. He'd prepared a powerpoint, but asked if I could host; this pinged my "do they want me to lecture? D:" radar, and I asked what hosting entailed. Well, talking, apparently. I hastily made clear that I could work with them, but I didn't have a lecture ready, and since Peter and the other hosts looked a bit crestfallen, I asked them to show me the powerpoint, so I knew what they'd prepared, and I could help with some things.

Well, it was kind of like an informal class. Five minutes self-introduction, watch a video clip, try to write down what you remembered from the clip, discuss a topic (from the email: "On Learning English: How do YOU `see` an English movie?"), free talk. We discussed briefly, and I pointed out places I could contribute. They still looked dubious, so I turned on my Teacher manner, all confidence and "it'll work out"-ness, and they were reassured. Then I went back into the crowd and sat back down.

Well, self-introductions, and I was politely mobbed. "Would you like to sit with us?" and a gift of coffee-from-a-packet and then six people in the benches around me, all curious to hear where I'd come from, what I was doing in Harbin, how old I was, why I'd come to China, what I thought about China. I answered most of these, then turned the questions back on them - their names? majors? how long they'd been here? (people come to HIT from all different cities.) Two people had time to answer before Peter called the room to order and had people introduce themselves up front. The prize for doing so: a half-sized, Chinese-wrapped Snickers bar, 士力架 on the back.

After that we watched a clip from Inception. For those of you who've seen it, the part where Cobb is telling Ariadne about him-and-Mal's life in Limbo. The clip was only a minute long, and subtitled both in English and in 普通话. Peter switched to a google screencap after, trying to explain Limbo. "It's a game," he said, and then pointed the mouse to the second link, "it's a Christian idea." I could see people didn't quite get it, so mentioned, "I can help explain this."

And did. Brought in Dante and got some nods - some people knew Dante, some didn't. I explained first where limbo fit in Christianity, then where it fit linguistically. One person raised his hand and asked me, "how can you prove limbo exists?" (He assumed I was Christian, and trying to prosthletyze.) I quickly explained agnosticism and how I just figured people could decide for themselves what to believe. This got a congratulatory round of applause.

I went over to the side of the room and stood/leaned. People seemed more comfortable with this than with me sitting among them, and so I stayed there as the meeting continued. I got consulted on several things, and weighed in on several other things: reduced forms (gonna, wanna, coulda, shoulda, dunno), watching movies to practice language (when alone, rewatch, when with friends, watch uninterrupted), accents and dialects of English (and how no one in the room could understand Indian English or African English), history and literature ("speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you").

I was halfway in Teacher Role and halfway in Guest Role, and I prefer that a great deal to the wholly Lecturer Role or to the Star Attraction Role. The presumption that I could come in and take over was not appealing to me: I didn't want to act like this was a class, and I didn't want to be seen as some Authority On Western Things, even though, as a Westerner and thus a representative not only of your own country but of all Western countries, that is the role that you are often put into. I made sure they knew that there's regional differences not only in speech but in culture and thought and history, and that I could ony talk for someone from the DC area.

And I think it worked: by the time Free Talk rolled around, people were comfortable with me. I told them, "I'll go around to different groups and try to talk a little with all of you," and this got applause too. So that I did - go from group to group and talk. Same questions, each time: how long have you been in Harbin? where are you from? are you a student? a teacher? what do you teach? how old are you? why did you come to China? what do you think about China? I spent a good ten minutes with that group, telling places I'd been and what I taught and all, and then told them I've move to the next group, and then did. And then got asked again: how long have you been in Harbin? what do you teach? how old are you? What do you think about China?

I'd originally intended to leave at eight - indeed, I think the meeting was intended to end around eight - but at fifteen after we were all still talking. I got a call from a friend to meet her for noodles at 8.30, and when 8.30 rolled around I told people, "I've gotta meet a friend, but it was great talking to you, and I hope to see you again." Applause everywhere, exchange of phone numbers, congratulations on having come. Peter followed me out, discussing the logistics of future meetings, and I saw that behind us, people were grabbing their bags and leaving the room. The main attraction was gone.

Just as Peter and I were about to leave the hall, a girl caught up with us. Woman, actually - she was older than I, and a teacher at another college, and in the meeting she'd talked a lot, gotten my phone number, discussed history and poetry with me, testing the waters to see if I knew this poet, that poet, this general, that book. I apparently passed with flying colors, because people around me grinned and nodded that I knew Li Qingzhao and Xu Zhimo, and that I had read Three Kingdoms.

Peter and I stopped. People from the classroom passed by us, looking back curiously. "I want to give you something," the girl told me, and I turned around. She handed me a Snickers bar.

Original sent on May 8th.