Post-mortem
Thoughts have not wandered far from Monday night's showdown with the noveau-riche, so here are a few of them:
First, I agree with my chief literary critic/mother, who said:
I fear you are losing your English:
"Her female friend and her told me I was handsome, asked if I thought they
were beautiful, I responded that yes, I think they're beautiful, they
complimented me for 'being so honest." Within minutes, the entire office -- six
or seven
other corporate types -- surrounded me. Word spread quickly. Over and over, I
told them I'm from America, I'm a teacher, blah freakin blah blah. The woman
to whom I was supposed to give a lesson fiddled with a computer. I figured,
naively, that she must be loading some sort of English tutorial, and that she
wanted my help with it once loaded."
Second, I realize that I wasn't completely honest. If I was completely honest, I would have said: "I won't drink myself sick with you because I'm not your friend and I don't want to be your friend." In previous situations, I have drank myself beyond my limits, because it's custom and, rightly or wrongly, this behavior symbolizes camaradarie in some circles of Chinese culture. When in the company of people, such as colleagues in the English department, whom I feel are legitimately my friends, I participate, sometimes even enthusiastically.
Monday night, everything was different: these people had no respect for my time, they had the audacity to ask me the most personal of questions without a hint of shame, they showed zero interest in getting to know me beyond the condescending stereotypes they tried to paint me into. So, when Ivan said, over and over, that we're drinking to friendship, I knew that it was a frienship I never felt and never desired to feel. Thus, I won't drink to it, because it would be a lie, to them and to me. I feel better, day by day, about my taking a stand, alone, against a custom I don't agree with that symbolizes a frienship that felt utterly false.
Third, the experience seems almost heaven-sent. My students are in the midst of preparing for a speech contest, with the topic, "What independence means to me." I've struggled mightily with trying to find the right approach for them to deal with this topic. After Monday night, it was clear: tell the story, explain how it was an example of my declaring independence from a social custom I didn't agree with, and from people I found to be a bunch of chumps. Then, I asked the students to think about and write about a time in their life where they declared independence.
My students loved the story to pieces. They generally laughed throughout, and finally applauded when it ended. In one of my sophomore classes, a student asked me, before class began, "what is a yuppy?" She pronounced it like "UP," as in someone who comes from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. "Let me tell you about some yuppies," I said.
In each of my classes, the students fell completely silent for ten minutes after the story, pens marching across pages, eyes downward, trained on the penstrokes. I've never felt more satisfied as a teacher -- I had told a story that had resonated with my students, and, even better, had inspired them to connect the lesson to their own lives. I can't wait to see what they wrote, and to hear their speeches, and I'll give a lot of credit for them to Ivan and his band of yuppy chumps.
