Chewing up our Last Days in Hohhot

This is probably going to be my last post in Hohhot. Things are coming down to the wire here and our calendar is filled with lunch and dinner dates along with last-minute errands and packing.

This last week has been spent mainly going out to eat with friends, colleagues, and students and our remaining days hold out more of the same. Eating is the primary lubricant of Chinese social life and it seems like before we go everyone wants to take us out to eat. Today we'll be eating lunch with the deans and teachers of the International Exchange College. Yesterday we had lunch with Sharon's relatives (Sharon is the wife of my colleague, Yongsheng), last night it was dinner with Carol and Leon, and two nights ago Delai and Emi took us out to meng mian (a noodle dish which might be my favorite food in Hohhot). In the next days, we'll be eating with more students and colleagues, including the English Department, which is taking us to dinner on Thursday night. Suffice it say, we haven't had to cook much lately. We're not generally the kind of people who eat out much, but we are enjoying a last binge of local cuisine before we return to our former monastic ways of eating in nearly every night.

Last week Samuel and I went to hot-pot with Catherine, one of my students at IMNU. Catherine hopes to be an English translator. She is a great student, of the type that you might rarely find in America: she's a front row sitter; attentive to the point of being rapt. Very smart and funny. Any teacher cannot help but like her. But of course, she is also modest to a fault: she thinks she is probably not smart enough to be a translator; she deflects any compliments that come her way. She handed me a gift: a five-page-long essay on Confucius that she had meticulously copied in beautiful handwriting from one of her textbooks. "Because I remembered that you are interested in Confucius and Confucianism."

In her note at the end of her transcription, she wrote:

"I'm very happy to be your student. You are an excellent teacher. You are not only my English teacher, but also my good friend!"

Catherine (Xiao Min), myself, Grace, and Sam after lunch.

What will I miss about China? Certainly the food; the friends; the bikes; the hospitality....but I think I'll miss my students here more than anything. Not just for the syrupy notes (which are thankfully few and far between for me in the US), but just for the fact that they really seem to appreciate my efforts. Somehow here I always feel like I'm "making a difference" in some student's life, a phenomenon that is not always so apparent in the US.

We were talking about what I would do during my last week in Hohhot. I mentioned that I still had not eaten Hui food (Hui people are one of the 57 minority nationality groups in China--they are Muslim and live primarily in the north and west of China).

It happens that Catherine, although herself Han Chinese, grew up in the Muslim quarter of Hohhot and went to "Hui Middle School." "I can take you to a Hui Restaurant this week!" she said.

Two days later Grace and I met Catherine in front of the Muslim Market. Catherine had brought her best friend from Hui Middle School, Nanny (Chan Wen), who aspires to be an English teacher. Nanny is Hui and she was determined to show me as much as she could of Hui culture during the afternoon.

We walked from the Muslim Market across a canal and into the heart of the Muslim section of Hohhot. At lunch we ate some hallmark Hui foods: mutton and noodles; steamed dumplings with mutton; a sweet dish with dates, rice, and sugar.

At lunch with Catherine, left, and Nanny, right.

During lunch I talked with Nanny about Hui culture. I assumed that the Hui--like other ethnic groups in China--had their own language.

"It is Arabic," she said, "But not everyone speaks it." She told me that she knew only a few words and her parents didn't know any. "They do not teach it in the schools here, but you can learn it at the Mosque."

She told me that she wants to learn Arabic someday and travel to the Middle East.

I asked her about the relationship between the Hui and the Uighur people who are also Muslim and live further west.

"We come from the same place and we have the same religion," she said, "but we are not the same."

She was surprised to hear that there were some Uighur communities in the United States. "But I'm not sure about Hui communities," I said.

I tried diplomatically to raise the subject of Uighur nationalism, telling her that most of the Uighurs in America had gotten there by gaining political asylum: "They are allowed to stay because they tell the US government that they are being persecuted by the Chinese government. Are there any Hui people who feel the same way?"

Nanny had never heard anything about Uighur nationalism or government persecution in Xinjiang Province and was certain that "there is nothing like that here."

I learned very early on here that political conversations usually fall flat. I've become very good at suppressing my natural inclinations to discuss politics and history (which is really hard because that's what I do!), but sometimes I forget. But I always remember again during the awkward silence that normally follows a politically sensitive question.

After lunch we visited Catherine's Grandmother and “sister” nearby. The one-child policy does not allow most children to have brothers and sisters, so my students generally refer to their cousins as “brothers” and “sisters.” What is going to happen in the next generation when no one has cousins?

Then it was off for a tour of some Hui cultural sites. We first visited Hui Middle School where both Catherine and Nanny went to school. A beautiful school with a John Denver song that serves as the "bell" for classes.

At Hui Middle School: Catherine, Grace, and Nanny in front of Tolstoy. Catherine and Nanny showered Grace with affection the entire afternoon, each of them holding one of Grace’s hands as they stewarded her through the Muslim Quarter.

Afterwards we visited Xiao Si (the Small Mosque), where Nanny worships every week. She took us to a store within the Mosque complex that sells beautiful Hui clothing--especially dresses and head coverings. Then we visited the Mosque itself where I felt sacrilegious snapping pictures, but it didn't seem to bother Nanny at all.

Walking towards Xiao Si (with green domes).

From there we walked to Da Si (the Great Mosque), where we saw Muslim families eating specially prepared foods in the canteen and older women studying Arabic in classrooms on the upper floor. Nanny felt no compunctions at all about banging on the classroom door, asking if we could watch the class, and then encouraging me to take pictures.

Teaching Arabic class at Da Si

Learning Arabic at Da Si

Afterwards to the Muslim Market and then finally home. It was a fascinating glimpse into the Hui world here in Hohhot--and into the complexity of ethnic minority groups within this predominantly Han Chinese culture.

Da Si (The Great Mosque)

We had gained another kind of glimpse into the world of ethnicity--from a different perspective--a few nights earlier at dinner with Nancy and her friends.

Jong Shu Hui (Nancy), who is Han Chinese, invited us to eat a "traditional Mongolian dinner." She took us to a place with horses, yurts, and Mongolian employees who sing, dance, and wear traditional regalia. Each dinner party sits in its own yurt drinking Mongolian milk tea and eating mutton. It would be the equivalent of dining in a "traditional Native American village," where non-Indians sit cross-legged in teepees chewing on venison while being waited on by pretty Native women in bright robes. There are no rides, but it kind of has that Disneyland feel, where you go to the bathroom and you pass some costumed employees smoking cigarettes on their break. There is always that cutting edge between cultural celebration and cultural exploitation--and, further, the question of who is being exploited, the customer or the employee?

As our van pulled into the parking lot, Nancy pointed to a Mongolian employee in traditional clothing and said, "Look, there is a typical Mongolian!" Nancy teaches an entire class full of Mongolians at IMNU so, although she is Han, she is somewhat of an expert on this topic. In one of our faculty seminars last fall, we got into a compelling discussion of minority issues in China and Nancy took the lead, informing me that "It is national policy to take care of the weak, so Mongolians have even more opportunities and privileges than everyone else." She also told me that "Mongolians have very good character. They have good hearts, they are kind, friendly, brave, and straightforward. They also show a lot of respect for their families. But they are not very ambitious and do not study hard."

If Americans have learned anything in their four hundred years of racial strife, slavery, legal discrimination, social segregation, and racial stereotyping, it is how to talk about race in ways that are mostly "politically correct." PC is a term I should not touch. It is used derisively by conservatives in their critiques of academic thought-police. PC can be taken to an extreme by doctrinaire multiculturalists at universities who implement speech codes and the like, and yet it also reflects, at a very basic level, a degree of racial sensitivity among Americans that does not always exist in more homogenous cultures. You don't have to be a radical multiculturalist on a college-campus to recognize that there are certain words and topics that are off-bounds. In other words, most Americans have learned over time how to keep their blatantly racist thoughts private and talk publicly about race in ways that are not always insulting.

This is not always the case in China, where 93% of the population is Han Chinese, where the other 7% are Asian peoples who look very similar to Han Chinese, and where there is an entirely different discourse on issues of race and ethnicity than in the self-identified "multicultural" USA. I still remember when Diana, a teacher in the Foreign Language Institute, asked me if I could "tell Chinese people apart?" "I can't tell foreigners apart," she said. "They all look exactly the same to me."

I couldn't help laughing. This is not something that an American university professor would say even if she thought it. In fact, it's so cliché it is used as a sarcastic punch line among "enlightened" folk when mocking American racists: "They all look the same to me!"

We had actually been taken to this same restaurant--a tourist rite of passage--in the fall. The food is excellent, if somewhat expensive. This night we dined on one of my favorite Mongolian dishes: yogurt with millet and sugar. The yogurt was cold and fresh. The millet was slightly toasted and crunchy. The sugar was, well, sweet. We also ate various kinds of mutton: on kebabs with spices; on a carcass with dipping sauce.

I sat next to three middle-school aged boys (sons of Nancy and her friends) who were eager to practice their English. The topics were familiar after seven months in China: American movies; Yao Ming; the Olympics; "Do all Americans own guns?"

At dinner with Nancy and her son (far left), his two friends, myself and Arienne. Photo Credit: Mr. Jong

The conversation got even more interesting part way through the meal when Mr. Jong (no relation to Nancy), who lives in Qingdao and was visiting Hohhot on a business trip (his company manufactures coal-mining machinery), stood up and declared that he "likes Karl Marx" and is still a devoted Marxist. "I am a Marxist!" he proclaimed.

Nancy was kind of surprised. "Are you a member of the Communist Party?" she asked.

It turns out Mr. Jong is indeed a Communist Party member and he asked me if I thought China was a Communist society. I've been here long enough to know that the Chinese, even Party members, relish in pointing out to Americans that China's economy is mostly capitalist now. So that's what I said: "It seems to me that China's government is Communist but its economy is even more capitalist than America's. Everyone is buying and selling." Everyone laughed and we toasted Karl Marx.

I told them that actually many Americans lean towards socialism in terms of education, health care, and social services.

Nancy said, "But isn't your government totally opposed to socialism?"

"A lot of the way we think about socialism is rhetorical," I said. "Americans are taught from a young age to hate socialism just as the Chinese are taught to hate capitalism. But talk to most American students and they want to help the poor, they want workers to make good wages, they want free education and health care."

"It seems to me that the same is true with the Chinese," I said. "They say they are socialist but they want a capitalist economy."

We all agreed that the best political system would combine the good parts of both socialism and capitalism.

I said, "Marx understood that capitalism by itself generates a lot of wealth, but also inequality. On the other hand, socialism by itself has the capacity to enforce equality but not generate wealth. If you combine both systems, maybe you can have both wealth and equality."

I've made this speech before and it always seems to get good reviews. It worked one more time and I'll probably be using it again this week if needed.

So I guess it is farewell to Hohhot and all our friends here. Just a few more twenty-course banquets and we'll be headed home. It is bittersweet to leave a place that is only now beginning to feel like “home.” But we’re also looking forward to returning to our real home, in the good ole’ USA.

Cheers,

Dave