December 2007

Dear Friends,

Advent is here and Christmas is coming. I have been away from home in the United States now for three birthdays in a row; this is the first time for the holidays. It was odd going into the stores in China during the time of the American Thanksgiving and having no paper turkeys in autumn colors gaily festooning displays of food, doors, aisles, anyplace where tape can get a grip or a hold to support those bright gobblers.

Now it is odd going into stores in China and having bright gaudy Christmas lights blinking at me from the displays of artificial Christmas trees. When I really felt that I was on another planet was in the store that was playing Christmas carols in English and one of them was singing away about Jesus. Now I know how secular Christmas has become.

The students at China Pharmaceutical College, bless their hearts, are going to have a Christmas party, and they have been very sweetly inviting me to come to it. I am sure that they think it will bring some comfort to me as well as great pleasure to everyone else. It is disconcerting to have christmas so disconnected from Christmas. Many of them have no idea what is the sweet kernel of mystery inside of the outer display of glitter and flash. So many of them don’t know about the birth of Jesus or that Christmas means more than exchanging presents. They don’t know that the greatest present was what we humans received, the Christ child, God wrapped in human flesh and come down to earth to dwell among us, on that very first Christmas in Bethlehem.

While so many of my students do not yet know the Christ child, I see the Christ child in their faces every day. I continue to marvel at these precious children of the living God and how much God cares for and loves each one of them.

The girls are always willing to accompany me on shopping trips and have been very helpful in doing so. Three times a week I eat in the school canteen and always have a group of students to carry my bags, order my vegetarian food in a highly meat oriented food establishment, and sit with me while I use my chopsticks to wrap up noodles in a most unChinese like fashion.

This week I went to one of the large supermarkets near my college by myself. I was actually hoping that this time I could take my time going up and down the aisles. It is wonderful having students with me, but it also takes a lot of energy. I like to enjoy my shopping trips, to immerse myself in the fun of looking at all the very pretty and very colorful merchandise that is made in China and is in China! It amazes me still that I am inside the movie!

As I was trying to find instant 3 in 1 coffee that would come without the free cup, I heard a Chinese voice asking me in English, “Can I help you?”  This spelled the end of my carefree shopping trip. Those Chinese, particularly students that are mine or go to any other university in town, really like to practice their English with the foreigners. And they have very willing hearts as well. I have never met so many willing and sacrificial people anywhere else. I have also realized that while I appreciate the help (she helped me find vinegar by calling a friend with her cell phone and having that friend use her electronic dictionary to figure out what I was asking for) it is also important for me to make myself available for conversation with people who are trying to learn and speak my language.

She continued with me for the rest of my shopping trip—my pointing out labels to her, “this is oatmeal,” “oh, I know that one!”—and her helping me get eggs. When we got to the check-out stand she asked how I was going to get all of my packages into a taxi (I am still buying things for my apartment, this time it was beautiful red pillows for the bedroom) I came up with a most brilliant brain storm. She came in my taxi with me and helped me get my packages into my apartment, before going on her way to her own university. She told me that China is her country and I am a foreigner and it is her pleasure and duty to help me.

Speaking of supermarkets, one of the things I am finding disconcerting are the displays of raw meat sitting out in the aisle. They also have these in the streets. One day as I was walking with a student somewhere I realized that I was staring at a row of cow’s heads without faces. In this sense Nanjing reminds me of Jerusalem. The Chinese have forms of meat and seafood that I have never encountered in the United States—but this is also true of most of the food.

Perhaps the times when I feel the culture gap the most keenly are when I am in the “fast food” area of the supermarkets and in the college canteen. There are rows and rows of cooks behind counters in the supermarket, and row upon row of very strange looking food. Unless I have a student with me I have no idea what anything is. The students can talk to the vendors for me and do an excellent job of translation. Otherwise I am learning a very primitive and effective form of body language sign language. Of course there was the day that someone tried to sell me pepper when I knew it was not cinnamon. Fortunately, the package that I was convinced was cinnamon actually turned out to be cinnamon when I got it home. But I digress….

In the canteen, there are a multitude of different kinds of noodles available, and they are made by hand in front of us as we wait. There are vegetables and tofu and fish and beef broth. Sometimes I look around in the canteen and marvel at what the students are eating. It is so different. And I still can’t get over their dexterity in using their chopsticks.

I have not been able to locate a large serrated knife to cut loaves of bread from the Western bakery in town, because when Chinese eat bread (that very rare occasion) they break it open. I did find a small knife with which I am making do. I bought new dishes for my apartment this week and again was struck by the label “Made in China,” in China! They are beautiful dishes with flowers on them. I have noticed as I shop that so many things in China are very colorful and pretty. There is very little modern sterility on the shelves.

Probably the two biggest adjustments for me have been at the college campus where I teach. I have not been able to come up with adequate descriptions of the Chinese squat toilets. Someone told me not long ago that as China continues to develop as a country Western toilets will probably begin to be common. I am torn between wanting that yesterday and wondering if the Chinese will really see another thing Western as advancement.

The other adjustment has been to the fact that there is no heat at the college. I had heard that the classrooms weren’t heated and that teachers and students wear their coats in class all winter. It is freezing in those classrooms. The canteen is a bit better because the cooking generates some warmth. People keep asking me if Seattle is as cold as Nanjing. Well, it might be. But I am used to wearing a coat outside and then taking it off when I walk inside because I am used to heated buildings! I thank heaven everyday that I have two air conditioners in my apartment—they also serve as very effective heaters in the winter. Why don’t the classrooms at the college have air conditioners one might ask? I have no idea. Just as in class yesterday when someone asked me why the Prince of Wales is called the Prince of Wales when he is English and lives in England. I have no idea.

China is in a time of tension between the new and the old. When the Open and Reforming Policy began here many good Western things were able to come into the country: education, modern medicine, expanded economy, etc. I understand, I think, why China closed itself off from the world for so long. She has been invaded so many times and probably felt a need to develop a strong Chinese identity of her own before re-opening the country without inviting imperialism back in. I am glad of the re-opening. The world needs China and her history and culture and her warm-hearted people. And China needs the world as well. It is not good for countries to live in isolation in a global community.

Many non-desirable Western characteristics have also come to China along with the good. McDonalds and KFC are here now, and the rate of heart disease has risen dramatically. Western clothing is here, I have not seen Mao type blue attire except possibly for the workers who sweep the roads and need something very practical to wear. I have yet to see someone dressed in traditional Chinese attire.

The divorce rate is rising. The moral climate of the country has changed; pre- and extra- marital sex are no longer unheard of. I read an article this past week in The China Daily that said many marriages are based on business decisions now, and people do not have compunctions about walking away from their spouses if those marriages are not working.

In ancient China I have read that first marriages were often business arrangements. So this perhaps is not change so much, at least for the very wealthy. I do think there are people who marry today for love and mutual respect, and there are Christians who marry with an entirely different understanding of marriage than the cultural norms. Nonetheless I do find it unsettling that individualism and a lack of concern for commitment have apparently come to China with the re-introduction of Western culture.

While ancient China may have been rigid from a Western perspective in terms of filial piety, nonetheless it is disturbing to me to see perceived disrespect and disregard for ancient culture and customs that maintained morality and stability in Chinese society for so many centuries. Perhaps those were the very structures that God worked through with the Chinese people. Even as river channels change course and thus the maps are changed as well, let us pray for the response of the Chinese people to the creativity of God’s all-encompassing ways as they continue to permeate China no matter how the secular culture changes or evolves. God is always creative and always at work, even as the river channel of China is changing course and the culture is writing a new map.

Sometimes I think that we in the West have made God so much our own that it is easy to forget that Jesus was actually born and raised in the Middle East; Palestine is really a part of Asia. In a sense, culturally Jesus was closer to China than to the United States!

The time draws near for the birth celebration of the greatest gift ever given, in silence and in the womb of eternal love. Let us pray that along with the Christmas trees and glitter that the Chinese have discovered, they will also discover in increasing numbers that Jesus Christ is already here in China, and has been all along, working in and through this ancient culture that is beloved and cared for by her Creator. 

In Christ,

Debbie

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 99