Personal Goals

Setting goals for myself is a habit that I’ve only recently discovered in the last year or so. Usually they are small daily goals to keep me on track that have to do with homework or other things I should get done, and I’m sure you all relish the small delight in crossing an item off on your to-do list just as much as I do. I also have a more nebulous inventory in my head of things I want to see change in myself. These don’t fit on post-it notes that litter my desk like my daily laundry lists. These ideas only tend to become concrete and realistic in hindsight. I’d like to change that, at least in part, for my upcoming year.

An artist's conceptual rendering of my goals.

I leave tomorrow (Sunday) to fly to Beijing a couple of days before my language program in Harbin starts. My goals for these two months are pretty straight forward: learn Chinese and be able to be conversant at a pretty high level. More than vocabulary (which will undoubtedly grow), I want to gain confidence in my Chinese, both written and spoken. I want to be able to talk about a variety of topics, not just the everyday or my well-rehearsed spiel about how I learned Chinese. Agriculture, sustainability, philosophy, and history are top on my list.
I know I will be able to accomplish much of this in my classes, with my teachers and during my one-on-one tutorial. A lot of it, though will come in random conversations with my Chinese roommate, who I hope will become a close friend, and other young people in Harbin.
Last summer I had a chance to learn about Chinese youth culture working at a market research company called Jigsaw International. It was a great experience and a really interesting way to learn about how China is changing at so many levels. We explored these questions through research. We got to read newspaper articles, blogs, forums, and other new media. We got to look at research the company had done before, and even do some research of our own. I got to talk to a lot of young people in malls, on the street, in parks, in their homes, and all over Shanghai.
It was fascinating stuff, but it ended at that conversation. It will be wonderful to get to form lasting bonds with those very same people, but in a different city, and not as a researcher, but as a peer. Karaoke won’t just be a trend, it will be my Saturday night. Sina won’t just be a cultural roadmap of the minds of China’s youth, it will be my information portal. I really look forward to becoming a student in China not only of Chinese language, but of Chinese pop culture by living the life of a student in China. That being said, I also can’t wait to continue to learn about traditional Chinese culture and history. I will try and be as vigilant an observer as I can.

My goals for my time in-between the programs are simple: I want to reconnect with friends, old and new, and visit Kashgar in Xinjiang. A surprising number of my fellow SYAers will be in Beijing this summer, and it’s always a joy to see anyone from that year. Also, my host family is always on my mind, especially my brother.
My brother is finishing his freshman year of college right now, and will be home when I am in Beijing in August. While I was living in Beijing in 11th grade, his world was his studies. He was a great brother, and an amazing friend, but the reality was that he had to study. Almost all the time. We didn’t have many opportunities to just hang out, or have random adventures, because there was always a test on the horizon: the gaokao (more on this later…maybe). I’d like to spend more time with him as well during his time off, going out together and just having some fun, because those times, although few and far between, were some of the greatest of my year in Beijing.

My brother, during our hunting and gathering days in Hebei.

As for Kashgar, my interest was spurred by this article in the New York Times. I’m looking for someone to travel with, so let me know if you’re interested :)

My plans for Taiwan are even more hazy still. What it boils down to, however, is that I want to become a resident of Taipei. I’m not quite sure what that means, but I’m anxious to find out. Hopefully by this time I will be relatively confident in my Chinese, and the language program I will be attending there will continue to help me improve, but will not be my main focus while there. I want to be truly living in Taipei—not in the strange limbo of college life—cooking for myself, meeting the neighbors, going to neighborhood events, making local friends, talking about local politics, hosting shindigs, you know the deal. But I also realize that I will need to try and maintain a degree of separation at times in order to think about what’s going on around me.

Iron chef will be knocking on my door by the end of the year.
Probably asking me to stop defiling the art of cooking. Let's hope not.

This post is already becoming hopelessly long, but I’d like to touch on one more thing: the title for my blog. Many of my friends on the Light fellowship are heritage speakers, meaning that they come from families that speak Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, whatever language they are studying. Almost all of them see this as an opportunity to reconnect with that side of themselves—realization of their heritage-ness—and rightfully so.
But this heritage is not a part of my life. I’ve had to create my own heritage from scratch, and with it, I’ve developed a second personality. I’m no schizophrenic, but I’m a very different person when I speak in Chinese. I’m more reserved, deferent, and boring. I know I’m not exactly the most outgoing, outspoken, and exciting person in English, but it’s even worse in Chinese. My Chinese teacher at Yale, Su Laoshi, has said that it’s a good thing and being introverted is a positive quality in Chinese culture. That may be, but one thing I’d like to see over the course of my year is a conglomeration of these two peronalities—not one taking over the other, but a melding and continued growth. I want Jeff to meet 赵文博. Just like Atman met Allah for Pi (see previous post), but not quite so divine haha.
I remember seeing my godfather one night in Beijing in 11th grade. He studied Chinese and worked in China, but the night I saw him was the first time he’d been back in China in many years. His Chinese was still amazing, but what I was more impressed by was how his wonderfully vibrant personality shone through unhindered. To me that is fluency. That is what I am striving for. I can’t say how much I admire my godfather in so many ways, and I can only hope I can achieve that level by the end of this year. More than being able to talk about philosophical texts, the pharmaceutical industry, or cats, fluency to me is about conveying something less tangible. Granted, I would like to be able to sit down and, with the occasional help of a legal dictionary, read through Chinese law. But more importantly, I don’t want to be a different person when I’m speaking Chinese. Two different languages, two different contexts, two different sets of rules, but one person.