Kunming Part 12: Chinese Friends

This’ll be a short one. So after the Ju Yuan Lang anniversary party, Min Dan and I continued hanging out a lot. When I didn’t have san-da (martial arts), Min Dan invited me over to her house for dinner a few times. We’d go to the store and pick up some stuff and then we’d go to her house and I’d help her make the food. She’s a really good cook, and she taught herself how to cook. That’s pretty awesome. I’m really good at making breakfast foods. Bacon, eggs, that kind of stuff. But dinner is not something I can just improvise. I can’t just throw some random meat, vegetables, and spices together and it taste awesome. Min Dan can. And according to Chinese style dinners, she makes quite a few different dishes to eat altogether. Like four or five. Her dinners are ALWAYS ridiculously spicy, but they are so ridiculously good. Man, I’m going to miss those dinners.

Sometimes our other friends (friends she introduced me too who became my own friends) would come to the house and eat dinner and we’d chat (in Chinese) about stuff and they’d help me with my Chinese and they’d tell me about the culture. And then we’d sit in front of her TV and watch some of the many Chinese TV shows that are on TV. I’m definitely getting better at understanding them. I’ve come to the point where I can understand the general story of Chinese movies and TV shows, some better than others, but at times the small details still escape me. So I’ve come pretty darn far. Yay me!

So rather than a long post, here's a compilation of pictures of me and my friends from China (not just Chinese friends, but mostly)...from the beginning of my time in Kunming to the end.

This is my roommate Youya, she's Korean.

That's my Daddy, for those who don't know.

The girl in the middle is Shujuan, my pen-pal. A friend from CMU introduced us and we'd been emailing each other from before I got to Kunming. She was so great while I was there, and if I ever needed any help, she'd always help me out. In fact, she lent me her guitar for my school performances.

This is Tanya, my Canadian friend. We go to class together.

This is Nadja, from Switzerland. (And Dorian, who isn't looking.)

Dorian is looking now, hehe. He's also Swiss. Helen, from Holland, is in the corner on the left. Zhaoxuan, Korean, is in the yellow shirt.

This is me and my head teacher, Zeng Laoshi. She was really sweet and always looking out for her students. Hehe, we always used to tease her about how short she was! Aww, I'm going to miss her. Also, there was a lot of wind in this photo...my hair's not that crazy all by itself, haha.

Me and Youya again

Okay so here's a bunch of photos from KTV with the martial arts gang!

Here's Xiao Xi-xi, Dan-dan, and Dan-Dan's boyfriend. Dan-dan's boyfriend is a taekwondo coach, and the other two are also taekwondo students.

These three are from my San-da class. Lao Zhao, Lao Li, and Tangmi. Tangmi is my girl from Germany. We became pretty much inseparable by the time the end came.

The girl on the left is Qianying, she studies Tai-chi and sometimes she practices with a sword. It's fake, of course, but still cool. We also became good friends.

Now this here was the best shot I could get of my coach and another one of our friends. Our coach, Hou Zhenfang is the guy in the white shirt closest to the camera (second to the left). The one on the far left is Li Wenhao, who sometimes practices taekwondo, sometimes practices san-da. I don't think he's decided which one he wants to learn, hehe. He's a jokester and is always making everyone laugh, but when it comes to pictures, I guess he'll have none of it. Same with coach, but I think he's more just shy. Awww. Yep, DEFINITELY going to miss those two.

These next two pictures are of girls that came in maybe a couple weeks before me and Tangmi left. Jiaolian (coach) pretty much made us their mentors during that time. They were really sweet, and I don't think they always believed they were capable of being strong and powerful...so I definitely think me and Tangmi helped them out in that way by showing them that they could. Definitely gonna miss this crew as well.

There are a few other people from martial arts that I didn't get pictures of, and it's really too bad. But maybe I can steal some from Tangmi. If I do, I'll put them up.

Here's another picture of me and Tangmi, wearing dresses (gasp!). But we thought we'd look nice towards the end of our time at martial arts.

This group of people I met through a friend of a friend who ultimately became my friend, haha. They were on a program that took them around the world to different places. Pretty cool. But all the Asians in this picture are Chinese that live in Kunming. They also became good friends that I had met through other friends. I have just been so lucky to meet so many people from so many different backgrounds and with different stories.

And finally, can't believe I almost forgot, here's Min Dan! This lady to the left is Min Dan's mother, and she looks like ridiculously young for her age. I thought she was our age the first time I saw her.

This is Min Dan's little brother, Wuyi.

Well that's all the pictures I have of my various friends...hopefully later on I can get some more from other friends that show you some of the other friends I met.

Kunming Part 11: New Experiences

The Ju Yuan Lang experience was wonderful, and at the time it got me thinking that maybe I should be opening my mind to actually talking to the strangers that come my way. So I started to actually talk to some of them. But MY GOODNESS, there are so many sketchy people out there in the world who don’t care about you but rather about themselves. And I found myself asking myself, “Why exactly am I talking to these people?” To make friends? I like friends, but I’m not THAT interested in making friends. These people, mainly guys…well actually ONLY guys…would always be trying to ask me out on a date or to go to a club or something. If people ask you that, unless you’re the club type of person, don’t go with them. These people are creepers. I’ve heard many stories of people giving the creepers their number, and then the creepers keep on calling them constantly or sending them strange texts. It’s really not cool.

So why else? To gain a Chinese experience? I realized that as much as I want to obtain as many experiences as possible here in Kunming, I’m not THAT desperate to gain an experience. And I certainly don’t want an experience of THAT sort. So…ultimately I decided I would no longer talk to anymore strangers after Min Dan. Min Dan was a lucky break, but that type of stuff just doesn’t happen. If you want something, there is always a way of getting it without making you uncomfortable or making you do something you don’t want to do…or else it’s just not worth getting. So that’s what I did.

Funny thing was I got lucky again. I got a call from one of the teachers at my school. She was the same teacher who organized the Hanyu Qiao competition. She told me that I sang really well at the Hanyu Qiao competition, and so she wanted me to perform again at one of the school’s graduation events, along with a few other people (Chinese and foreigner alike) who would also be performing. I thought immediately, “This is exactly what I want. If I want an experience, I can get in a way that wasn’t risky.” And this certainly wasn’t risky, it being a school performance. So of course I agreed to do it.

After about a month, we had the performance. It was actually pretty straightforward, nothing extremely special happened. And it wasn’t as fantastic as the other events I’ve participated in, but I’m glad I did it. I did mess up a bit with my song (I forgot a few lines at the end of it…I just repeated the first lines of the chorus again…hopefully it wasn’t too bad). But ultimately, it just gave me a bit more experience of working with Chinese people and how Chinese events are carried out. And I did notice something rather interesting. A lot of the girls, mostly Chinese and one foreign girl, were wearing my hairstyle. I tend to pretty much every day have my hair up in cornrow braids going across my head, and a lot of girls were now doing the same thing. Whether it had anything to do with me or whether they just decided to do it themselves, hehehehe…we’ll let the reader decide, but I’m sure you all know what I like to believe. J

Here's a picture of some of the kids from my class. From left to right, here are their nationalities: Thai, Swiss, German, Swiss, and Canadian. (I'm the only American in my class)

Kunming Part 10: Ju Yuan Lang Wedding Company (part III)

Finally, the day came for the anniversary party. I left immediately after classes were over and headed over to the hotel room where the event was being held. My goodness, you should have seen the room! It was gorgeous; I had never seen that many flowers altogether in my life! That’s no exaggeration. There were these huge bouquets of flowers that were about the size of a small oven, and there were maybe ten of them on each long table, and there were like maybe 10 or more tables that were lined next to each other across the room. And then there were flowers that hung across the back of the seats, and there was purple lighting that illuminated the different shades of purple flowers that were in the bouquets and the pinks of the roses. There were white candles in silver stands, and blue lights on the table that looked like ice.

And ultimately the fact that they wanted to dress me up as this pretty angel made sense. As I said before, I was with four or five other people (the rest Chinese, haha) dressed as angels and we were to greet the guests coming in. It really gave the environment an angelic heavenly-ish feel, haha. Ultimately, it was just this really lovely sight and I am so glad I had the opportunity to be a part of it.

The performance went on, and I did what I was supposed to do, leading the speakers up to the podium and then finally performing the dance with Min Dan. And when it was over, we got to all sit down and eat the yummy Chinese catering they had at the event. It was really good.

Ultimately, as we were all sitting together, Min Dan had everyone give me a round of applause fr helping them out, which was cute, and by the end of the program I had just made a bunch of new friends. And here’s one moment that I will just never forget. As I was sitting and talking with one of the friends I had made, he turned and said to me (in Chinese of course), “Thank you for appreciating and respecting China. Thank you for appreciating Chinese people.” And when that happened, it made me think: There it is. That’s what my coming here to China, to Kunming, was all about. I mean, ever since I stepped on to Kunming ground, I realized that I represent all the communities that I am part of. For example, women, black people, or Americans. There’s many more, but those are just three. I’d say my main community though, the one that Chinese people are going to remember the most, is black people. And so everything I’ve done is so that people would be left with a good impression of my communities. If I so much as did something rude or disrespectful, it could change their opinion of my communities for the worse, and they would tell their friends and family about how they met a (insert community here) girl, and this is what she did. (Insert community here) people aren’t nice at all! Stay away from them. OR if I did something really great, it could change their opinion for the better, and they would tell the people they meet that they met a (insert community here) girl and this is what she did. She was a great person! I came here not only to learn from Chinese people, but also through my actions and just being who I am and being respectful, have them learn from me. And I believe in all my time in Kunming, from end of February to mid-July, I have accomplished that.

At the end, when I was getting ready to leave with Min Dan, we had become good friends at this point, Min Dan gives me a huge, long hug, saying, “Thank you, Kexin, you helped me out a lot!”

So…though the way I stumbled on the Ju Yuan Lang wedding company may have been strange and RARE (I won’t be doing it again), but I obtained a rare and wonderful experience of meeting Chinese people…not just Chinese students, but rather Chinese people who were living in the city with different stories and different backgrounds and different incomes. It was an experience I was extremely lucky to have, a once in a lifetime experience.

Here are some pictures of the flowers...I took a bouquet home and took pictures of it...sorry I have none of the actual place...maybe I'll get some later from my friends. If I do, I'll put them up.

These next two pictures were from some extra orchids they gave me.

I actually really like this one picture below, it's kind of deep, hehe.

Of course, the bouquet got smaller after some of the flowers died. And it got smaller and smaller until it was gone. :( But hey, you can't take it with you.

Kunming Part 9: Ju Yuan Lang Wedding Company (part II)

The next time I meet Min Dan is on that weekend. At the KTV place, she had told me that she would like to meet me on the weekend in order to try on dresses. I really had no idea what that meant, except that it had something to do with what I was going to be doing at the anniversary party. But I just went with it and met her at the company’s small store on the weekend. As soon as I step in, she happily greets me and leads me upstairs to their dressing area. I still have no idea what’s going on as they try dress after dress on me, not big old wedding dresses mind you, but short above-the-knee dresses that could very well have been bridesmaid dresses…but I don’t know for sure because I admit I’m not as acquainted with Chinese wedding ceremonies as I feel I should be. What I do know is that they are not the same as American weddings. They still maintain a sense of Chinese tradition to them, but year after year they become more and more modern. For example, before the traditional wedding dress color was red…but now people wear both red and white as well.

Ultimately, the found a dress which they liked on me, a white dress that had these crimped edges but swayed when I spun around. Now, it was a very beautiful dress and I didn’t look bad in it, but I really didn’t like it. I like looking good, but I don’t like looking frumpy and HYPER-feminine. Ugh! Haha, I’m sorry…I’m an athlete and a bit of a tomboy (just a bit), and things like lace and ruffles and flowers usually don’t sit too well with me in general. I’d never wear them of my own accord because I personally wanted to. But I accepted this, even though I was reminded of the chant I and my soccer teammates used to chant when we were young girls (we were about my two little sisters’ ages, actually): “We don’t play with Barbie dolls, we go kicking soccer balls, Sound off! One two!”

So ultimately they decided that this was the best dress to wear…I am just so sorry I don’t have pictures…my camera was out of commission (broken). I will have to ask my friend to send me some pictures, because the pictures from this entire event were amazing. Anyway, they chose this dress, and THEN they proceeded to put WINGS on me…and a TIARA! Whoa-ho-ho…this is far more than I bargained for, but still I went with it just to see how the entire thing would play out. I did feel at times like none of this made sense and I really shouldn’t be agreeing to this, but I just couldn’t let it go. Something just continued to keep me from dropping this thing altogether.

So costume was all figured out, and then my purpose was explained to me. I was to be a kind of “usher/greeter” person. I, with actually four other angels as I found out (darn, I really wish I had pictures of this all), was to stand at the doorway of the event and say “Welcome to Ju Yuan Lang’s (that’s the name of the company) 10^th Year Anniversary Party! Please come in.” In Chinese, of course. Let’s not forget that all these stories have all occurred in Chinese…and I’m proud to say it. All my life I’ve wished to be bilingual…it’s been a secret wish of mine, and now if I’m not completely bilingual, I’m pretty darn close to getting there. But being able to have all these adventures in a completely different language is overwhelming and humbling. I’m really happy.

Anyway, afterwards, during the actual event, a few special persons were to be commended and were going to make speeches. I was to lead some of them up to the stage and then back to their seats. Pretty simple. But that was the end of that next day. But before I left, Min Dan decided she would ask me if I was willing to participate in a dance performance.

Okay, now I’ve seen amateur dance performances in my lifetime, and I don’t like being a part of them…I’m not talking about amateur dance performances choreographed by dancers, I’m talking amateur performances choreographed by people who can’t dance. And though I’m not the best dancer, I’m still alright. Though Carnegie Mellon’s dance performances aren’t at the professional level, they are still quite good (I have danced in a few of them) and so that’s where I set my boundary for good dancing. And I just wasn’t sure if Min Dan was actually a dancer or not. All in all, I did NOT want to do this dance. I told her I was busy and didn’t have the time to rehearse it, which was true…because we had like a week until the performance and I’m thinking she’s going to want to practice like five times this week and so I’m thinking, “No, that’s not what’s going to happen.” But she sighed and said, “Okay, I guess I’ll just perform the dance all by myself.” Now I’m just like my mom in the sense that at times I can be persuaded into things out of pity, and that got me. Darn you, empathy!

So I agreed to meet a little later that week to practice the dance with her. We didn’t meet five times a week like I thought was going to happen; we actually only met twice, on a Thursday and the Saturday. The dance was a simple/easy-to-learn dance, in fact it was the dance to Shakira’s “Waka-waka” from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. And it was quite cute, and I had a fun time learning it. And ultimately, why I had accepted was because Min Dan had done nothing but treat me like a friend the entire time. She took responsibility for me and made sure that I was perfectly comfortable with everything going on. So I took a risk and trusted her, something that I don’t do for strangers at all. This was most certainly an unlikely circumstance that I believe I won’t attempt again…I was simply lucky this time, extremely lucky because it ultimately turned out to be more wonderful than I could have imagined it would be.

We rehearsed the Saturday before the performance (it was on a Tuesday), and then she rented our costumes (two hula grass skirts with leis and a bikini top sort of thing), and then she treated me to dinner. The food was absolutely amazing, but spicy…I would come to find out later that pretty much all Min Dan eats is spicy food, haha. She loves that stuff, hehehehe. And then the big day quickly approached. More next post.

Kunming Part 8: Ju Yuan Lang Wedding Company (part I)

So I apologize again for the delay, there was a bit of confusion over posting the many pictures that were in the last post. However, a change in situation has occurred and I am now happily able to post my own posts. The reason is because I am now in Beijing and the Internet is either a lot better such that I can now get on this website now problem, or the Guesthouse place is using a sort of VPN. But I don't think it's a VPN, because I still can't get on to Facebook. But anyways, yay for being able to post my own posts now! HOWEVER, even though I am in Beijing right now, you won't be hearing about this experience until I'm done posting my Kunming stories. That doesn't mean I'm not writing my Beijing posts...because I am. I'm just keeping them pending until I tell you all my Kunming stories. I believe the posts I post now won't make sense without knowing the back story. So here are my continued Kunming posts:

This story is rather a curious one, because the source of how these events came to unfold is rather peculiar and not something I do often.

Now not long after the Hanyu Qiao Competition reached its end, this event happened. I think what was really cool about it was that it happened before I could even stop and think, “Okay, the competition’s over, now what? I guess life’s going to be back to the normal slow-paced life again.” It may have only been just a few days after the competition was over, and I had just gotten a few moments to breathe. To be perfectly honest, that week (maybe even those couple weeks) were not very nice for me. I had been dealing with a few not-so-nice Chinese people and that very day when I had gone to lunch, the entire time these two Chinese boys decided to “practice their English” and say provoking remarks to me, some of which I won’t actually mention in this blog. Yes indeed, because this type of situation had happened quite often that week, I was not having a very good opinion of Chinese people. And that lunch encounter may very well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back had not something happened when I went to dinner that same day.

I went to Salvador’s, the local Mexican restaurant, for dinner that day. I went by myself because I wanted to eat alone. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, and I was upset. But as I’m sitting there waiting for my food, I see this one Chinese girl walk up the stairs and look around, and the quickly walk back down. But I didn’t think much of it and ultimately went back to minding my own business, whatever I was doing. Next thing I know, not long after my food arrives, the girl is back with another boy and they come up to me and ask if they could sit down. So I’m just there thinking they just want to share the table because there were no other spots (I don’t know why I thought that, people don’t do that…it was an individual table, not one of those long tables where you could possibly fit more than one party at). So I say, “Yeah, okay.” So with big smiles on their faces, they start making small talk with me and I’m like answering their questions and thinking in my mind, “I just want to eat dinner alone.”

Then the girl tells me that the boy is her co-worker and that they work for a company which arranges weddings, sets up the itineraries, buys the flowers, decorates the rooms, arranges catering, sells wedding dresses, etc. The girl’s name was Min Dan and the boy’s name was Xiao Zhi, she was 23 years old and he was 21. And she tells me that their company is having their 10^th anniversary party in a couple of weeks and she asks if I would show up. So I’m like confused, and so I ask her what I have to do. She says I just have to greet people and say welcome to the party. This didn’t seem difficult to me, and even though they were strangers, it really is a regular thing (at least in Kunming) for Chinese to be asking foreigners to help them out with something or teach English, or appear at something. So…I said, okay. She then to thank me she invited me that night to go to KTV with the rest of her co-workers to meet them all. I was a little hesitant about this, but I kind of just held my breath and went, hoping for the best.

Going over to the KTV place, I got to meet all of her co-workers. I was really surprised because they were all really nice, not like the sketchy people I’d meet on the street sometimes, and certainly not like the people I had been encountering those past couple weeks. They acknowledged that I was a foreigner, but they didn’t use stereotypes of foreigners and stuff, which was really nice. They treated me like a friend, not like a stranger, which was exactly what I needed right then. And ultimately, through talking back and forth with the people there, they gained my respect and I gained theirs. It was the first time I had been the only foreigner in a group of Chinese people who didn’t speak English (except for a few sentences and phrases). That made me slightly nervous, but soon enough I gained more confidence. But I really see that night as a triumph on my part, because it was the first time I was able to break through the invisible wall (the wall that divides Chinese and foreigners) into the Chinese community.

Considering those first two months, I thought breaking that wall was impossible. Both sides of the wall are very busy and so if you want to break through you have to REALLY want it. In addition, if you’re going to cross over, whether you’re on one side or the other, your foreign language skills has to be adequate, in my opinion. If you’re not able to communicate the general idea of what you want to say in the other language, you won’t be able to cross over because most people on the other side will not be able to meet you half-way. Some can, most can’t. So I was lucky to have finally reached that level of speaking Chinese. When I went to Shanghai, I hadn’t reached that level, and it was a problem…because even there I was lucky to meet foreign students and even some Chinese students, but wasn’t able to become good friends with those who didn’t speak a good amount of English because I couldn’t meet them half-way and vice-versa. It’s too bad, because they really were some great people.

But now I can. Now I have good friends here, some who don’t speak a word of English and others who speak very little (not enough to communicate) on, and we have still become good friends because FINALLY I can communicate much of what I want to say, and if I can’t communicate it in the right words or grammar, I can use other words that I know to explain what I mean. In fact, I learned this in school last term at CMU, it is actually a very good and beneficial language skill (actually I’d say it was a necessary language skill) to be able to find a way to communicate your message through other means if you don’t know how to actually SAY it correctly. For example, I don’t know how to say “President” (I need to look that up now, actually)...but I do know how to say “the person who leads a country, who has the most power.” So when I say that to my friends, they can understand.

But anyway, I eventually left the KTV place and as I was leaving I even got a hug from one of Min Dan’s co-workers. Min Dan then asked me to come over to their wedding company on the weekend so I could get prepared for the anniversary party. But I will explain all of that in the next entry.

Kunming Part 7: Hanyu Qiao Bisai (cont'd)

Hanyu Qiao Bisai (Part II):

The Hanyu Qiao Competition consists of 4 parts: group presentation, introduction, talent, and then questions and answers. The group presentation is performed at a separate time from the other 3 parts, which are all performed during the individual contestant’s presentation slot. So there would be a group presentation, then like five people doing their individual portion, and then another group presentation, and then another five, and so on. I wasn’t actually worried about the group presentation, the introduction, or the talent sections. I knew that as long as I memorized my skit lines for the group presentation and my script for my introduction (talking about myself for 1 minute), I would be able to speak the Chinese pretty well. And I’m a decent singer and guitar player (my talent was to sing a Chinese song and play the guitar), so if I just practiced that a bit there would be no problem. It was the QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS that I was worried about. I didn’t want much…I just wanted to be able to understand what was asked so that I could come up with some sort of answer and not embarrass myself.

Up until the night before the presentation, I was nervous like crazy. I felt like my hair was going to turn white from being so scared, haha. But the night of the competition, I felt strangely at peace. It was really weird; I just felt like it was all going to be okay. So, I was waiting outside the doors to enter the room and get on the stage, and though everyone was flying around frantically trying to make sure everything was set up properly, I shut all that out and just took a few deep breaths. Then I went on the stage, smiled at the audience, and did my thing. It was nice, my voice didn’t shake, I was at ease, and it just kind of felt like an out of body experience (but then again, it always feels like that when I’m on the stage, because being outgoing and having everyone stare at me is not something I particularly like in my normal nature…I’m kind of shy-ish when not doing some sort of performance). I said my 1-minute introduction, performed my song, and then…THE QUESTIONS. Each person received 2 questions. Everybody, native Chinese and foreigners alike, said the questions were hard and they were right. They were about Chinese culture, geography, tradition, society, and sayings. Most people did not get any of their answers correct, very few got only 1 right, and only one person got both answers right. I got one of the answers right, though I didn’t know it while on the stage. From what they were saying, I thought I got both of them wrong, but then when I got off the stage my teacher came over to me congratulating me because I got one of them right. I was like, wow, I got one right! Yay!

Anyway, the competition continued on, but I didn’t see most of it because I was backstage. Most of the people afterwards just went home, but I was like, “Well, I want to stay to see who wins!” So I stayed until the end of the competition, which was a few hours later, and then the results were announced. In all honesty, most of the results I didn’t understand at all. I understood who got best group performance and such, but then a bunch of individual awards were announced which I didn’t understand at all. I did, however, understand who got first place. I didn’t even need to speak Chinese to understand it, because the reaction of the people around me and the winner was crystal clear. It was this guy from Pakistan who was definitely a shoo-in to win. He was the best out there and it was he who got both questions right.

But I continued to watch the results from “backstage” and…what do you think? The next thing I know is I’m hearing my Chinese name being called up alongside this other guy from Thailand who also was VERY good. His talent was one of the best and his Chinese was amazing...and I knew my talent performance wasn’t bad as well…so I thought maybe I was getting called up for best talent performance. I looked around at everyone and they were like, “Get on up there!” I was there thinking, “well, at least I won something…that’s nice.” And then some people standing up there gave us our prizes, and then some teacher came up and stood in the middle of us and we posed for a few pictures. I was nervous and a little confused as to why I was up there, so I’m pretty sure I gave a half-smile for the pictures. But you know, I was happy to at least have one something. Okay…not going to lie, I was a little disappointed about getting “best talent” because I could have done that with my eyes closed. I have a lot of singing experience already and I felt like it wasn’t something I had to work hard towards and earn. So I was kind of like, “Ugh, don’t take pictures of me…I’m not a winner, I didn’t work hard to get this. This hardly has anything to do with speaking Chinese…” (even though the song was in Chinese).

I got off the stage and people kept saying “congratulations!!” and I’m there giving them a polite smile saying, “Thank you! Thank you!” but deep down inside feeling like, “Ugh, don’t say congratulations, I didn’t DO anything to deserve this. This competition is about my skill in speaking Chinese not in singing songs.” So even though it was nice to get my name called up and to get a nice prize, to me it felt a little embarrassing as well…and all in all I really wasn’t quite certain what it was that I won…the talent thing was only a guess.

So I walked back from the performance building with Linda, my Jamaican Chinese friend, and she said to me “Congratulations!” And then I confessed to her, “Thank you, but I don’t even know what I’ve won!” She said, “You took second place.” I didn’t understand and I said, “Second place what?” I thought maybe she was talking about second place in terms of talent, which made sense to me. She said, “Second place overall.” I was like, “Um, no I didn’t….seriously?” She was like, “Yeah! You tied with the Thai guy. He’s actually the student leader of my class! Congratulations!” I didn’t believe it. I seriously didn’t believe it. No I mean LITERALLY didn’t believe it. I thought maybe there was a mistake, that she heard wrong. But how could she have heard wrong? This girl has lived in China for two years, she was a graduate student at the college, writing 30 page essays in Chinese and other tough stuff. She wouldn’t have just heard wrong. But still I didn’t believe her. Why? Because most of the people in the competition were students at her level of Chinese: graduate students or students of the highest level of undergraduate Chinese. These people had been in China for a few years. I couldn’t understand half of what they were saying. And Linda was trying to tell me that I beat all of these students, including her, except for two of them, one of which I tied with? Not possible. Of course I didn’t believe her. In fact, I didn’t believe it until I looked for the teacher running the competition when she was available two days later. She showed me the results and bam, there was my name at the second slot of the list in line with the kid from Thailand. I was like, whoa. I freaking won.

The competition had a second round to it, which was broadcasted by CCTV (China Central Television). I don’t know who it broadcasted to, but I just hope it didn’t broadcast to all of China. I’m thinking it was a local CCTV version, so only Kunming could see it. But nonetheless, I was on TV. In China. I’d never even been on TV in America. This competition was slightly different, kind of like those America’s Got Talent/Britain’s Got Talent shows were there were three judges, and if they liked us, they each gave us stars. If you got three stars you won for sure. If you got two stars, you moved on to a final round. If you got one star or less, you were done. I do believe that this show was more like a TV show, because it did seem a bit biased. Even the guy from Pakistan who won last time did not win again, and I think many agreed that he deserved to win. But hey, that’s TV for you, no matter what country you’re in…it’s all for ratings. I didn’t win this competition, of course, but I was one of the few to make to the final round though, and I can say that I’m satisfied with that. I wouldn’t have wanted to go to Beijing…these competitions had been going on (meetings, rehearsals, etc.) for over a month, maybe two, and it was draining the energy from me. And I remember one day being called over for a brief rehearsal, but arriving only to find a big CCTV camera there ready to record us performing songs and giving us interviews. It was frightening and embarrassing, but though I’m glad it’s over, to be perfectly honest I’m so glad it happened.

These are things I’d never dreamed I’d be saying I’d accomplished. And I have something to bring back to America to show for it, something more than a souvenir. I’ve got a certificate for my second place, a reminder and a representation of hard work and determination, not just a certificate representing a talent. Every time I look at it, I still think “Wow. I can’t believe that just happened.” It’s amazing, the idea that I didn’t just study in China, I accomplished something in China, I’ve left a sort of impact, putting my name in the records of people who won this competition, at least one of them. Wow. SMH.

But that was only the beginning.

Pics (sorry for the blurriness, a friend was talking the pictures and was not used to the camera):

These are the two hosts of the competition, the girl is Chinese, the guy is British. I believe they are announcing me on to the stage in this picture.

Ooo, yeah, this is tough to see I know. I’m saying my introduction here.

A wider view, with the audience in sight.

 

Getting set up for my talent performance. That pink thing in my hair is the flower my little sister Beverley gave me for Christmas…Beverley, I hope you’re reading this!

It took a moment to get set up. But that gave me some time to calm my nerves and get my head ready for my talent performance.

 

There I be singing. The song was called “随梦而飞” (sui meng er fei), which means “Flying along with the Dream”. It was the theme song from the Chinese movie “江山美人”or in English “An Empress and the Warriors”.

 

Questions and Answers…that’s my “I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m gonna say something anyway” face.

 

Questions and Answers…that’s my “hahaha, can I please get off the stage now and quietly slip away?” face.

 

Just got off the stage. Can you guess what face this is?

 

Here with my fellow contestant, Zhaoxuan, from Korea. We spent a lot of time being scared together.