Chinese music lessons

Trip Start Aug 24, 2007

Trip End Jul 04, 2008

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Flag of China Kaifeng, China
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Here's a general rule of thumb to survival in China - always expect surprises. You never know how your day is going to turn out or what adventures or emotions you may experience in a given week. Nothing is sacred and everything is game. Luckily, the majority of my experience here has yielded nothing but positive surprises and I know that makes me incredibly fortunate in this crazy country. My lucky streak continued this week as I snagged myself a free Chinese tutor and most surprisingly, I snagged myself free guzheng lessons with the instrument to boot!

A week ago as I was walking back to my apartment after eating dinner near the West Gate of campus, I met Lacey, one of Erin's students. She was waiting outside of the International Affairs Office and looking a little confused. I found out that for the first time ever, she had a free Thursday night and was coming to English Corner

21 strings

. Unfortunately for her, her first free Thursday night happened after English Corner stopped occurring due to a lack of suitable meeting space on campus. So while I started to talk to her I braced myself to enter into an awkward ESL conversation with an English-crazed student - a type of conversation I'm quickly learning to find more annoying than enjoyable. She started to ask me a question and I thought, "Oh God. Here it comes. She wants to 'make friends' with me even though she doesn't know me at all. She just knows that I'm a teacher," but the question never came. The awkward conversation never happened. Instead she asked me what I thought about traditional Chinese music.

If you're a native English speaker living in China, you find your existence caught in a delicate balancing act with Chinese people. You either view them as being very warm, friendly and open people, or as being obsessed with English and talking to you only because they have a hidden agenda of wanting to make you their English teacher. It's a very strange life to lead to continually be shifting between feeling genuinely appreciated to feeling utterly used and manipulated. To prevent the latter from happening, I've started to develop certain strategies that will stop me from getting into awkward ESL conversations with people I don't know. Most of the strategies involve pretending to be asleep, listening to my mp3 player, or pretending that I'm French. Saying "Bonjour" in China really confuses people. So I was genuinely surprised when Lacey's question didn't move into a conversation about how much she loves English. It moved into a conversation about how she doesn't like English.

Lacey has been playing the guzheng since she was about seven years old

"playing"

. The guzheng is a 21-stringed instrument and is sometimes called a Chinese Zither. Generally when you think of traditional Chinese music, the sound you're thinking of is made by the guzheng. It's a really beautiful instrument and, according to Lacey, is the Chinese equivalent to a piano.

The guzheng is Lacey's passion. If she could be "free" as she puts it, she would be in the music school studying the guzheng. But, her parents want her to be successful so she is studying English to make them happy. So even though she is appeasing them by diligently studying the language, she is still an ardent guzheng player. She loves it so much she has several guzhengs with her. Her passion for the instrument is obvious by how her whole face lights up when talking about its history, its sound and its ability to expression emotion. Before I knew what was happening, she told me that she would teach me how to play the instrument for free.
    "I love the instrument and this way, I can still practice my English," she said.
I didn't really know what to say, I was so surprised at how the conversation turned out. I accepted her offer.

So now, I have a guzheng in my apartment and a notebook with scribbled Chinese music notes in it and honestly, I couldn't be happier. The instrument really is beautiful, but I'm not going to lie - I'm a little nervous that this big, beautiful and probably very expensive instrument is in my care.
    "I'm so excited to teach you!" Lacey said last night during my first lesson. "You learn so quick! (this is a lie.) I will arrange for you to give a recital at the end of the year."
    "Oh God, I just learned how to play a song. Let's not talk about recitals just yet," I said.
    "Oh no, you will have a recital and wear traditional Chinese clothes. It will be very lovely," she said.

It looks like this kid is going to have to do a lot of practicing.