文科生在加拿大

文科生在加拿大

http://www.gter.net 2003-5-16 20:43:15 BBS 大话西游站作者:rios

I came from Beijing last summer to study journalism at UBC. My Canadian
experience takes a new shape every single day, newer than I can handle, so
I’d like to story tell it for the old folks to critique.

Politeness

My first culture shock came from Canadian politeness. I played soccer in
UBC’s league and couldn’t stand the fact that people were so nice to me.
If I kept the ball to myself without passing, say, back in China, guys
would call me a“ballhog” and names; when I do it here they say, “Do you
need any support?”Sweet, the result is, as you can imagine, I always
refuse to be supported.

Friendliness

I like the fact that strangers sometimes greet you with the warmth of a
friend. It’s even nicer in Vancouver Island where people new to each other
can engage themselves in a talk for no reason.Since I came I’ve made more
friends than I expected. My Caucasian roommates are beautiful people and we
had a good time playing “mafia”, sharing food and shouting “Go Canucks
go!” Do we have any problem with each other? Yes we do. A roommate of mine
makes a lot of noise when he makes love, and the wall between us is too
thin to contain the moaning. But I am not too upset about that, as he does
it only twice a day.

My pushers, my best friends

“Welcome to BC,” said my classmate Mike on my birthday party as he took
out a pipe from his pocket.
My jaw hit the ground when he laid some tea-like stuff in the pipe and said
it was a birthday gift he bought me from Hasting. “I don’t even smoke
cigarette, man, and you give me pot?” I turned him down
.
He was so upset that it’s not exaggerating to say that he was hurt. But he
didn’t give up. He started to invite other guys to take inhales
rotationally. I was surprised to find that half a dozen of my classmates,
male or female, are so marijuana-friendly that they smoke it like a
chimney. “Come on, man, this is BC,” they can’t wait to stone me. And I
took my first inhale. It didn’t work on me though, probably because I
never smoked cigarette and was unable to force the air into my lung. Mike
was so happy about becoming my pusher. I have another pusher Geoff, my
roommate who tries to make me a Christian. He bought me a bible, took me to
church and all kinds of Christian parties. I like his earnestness in trying
to “save” me, though I don’t like the idea of being saved by somebody
whose existence is in question. I enjoy singing songs with lots of people
in church ? not when SARS is spreading ? and listening to their
discussion on life and death. It’s a big part of Canadian culture
worth experiencing.

Though neither of them has changed me successfully, my pushers have become
my best Canadian friends. I spent thanksgiving and Christmas with their
families on the Island. My first taste of turkey, first self-made Christmas
tree and first talk with sexy country girls ? everyday has been a new
experience, thanks to my friends.

Nasty times

Did I have blue times in Canada? Yes. The first time I felt being
discriminated was when I interviewed an immigration official on the
government’s plan to disperse immigrant settlement. “Your questions are
nonsense,” she tried to intimidate me, “They don’t make any sense.”
“You are just a student,” she went on, “You are not professional
enough.”

What hurt me most was that she said “Do you understand the English that I
am speaking?” as she knew that I was from China. It hurt me so much that I
was even afraid of hearing her voice when I went ove r my tape, something I
usually do before writing a news article. It has been my worst Canadian
experience, but I take it as an individual behavior rather than society as
a whole. I should say ninety nine times out of a hundred people I interview
are nice to me; the percentage is much higher than what I experienced in
China. In fact, some bizarre experience helps me learn more about Canadian
culture.

I was wanted by a cop last October. Assigned by a mad professor to find out
the body condition of Wei Amanda Zhao, I phoned Vancouver’s coroner and
made some guesswork which I asked her to confirm. This tight-lip lady
turned out to be a nervous nanny. Not only did she refuse to tell me
anything, but she told the Burnaby police that I had “hold-back”
information which they withheld from the public. God knows, maybe my
guesswork happened to be right. So an RCMP guy called “Tyson” started
looking for me. He called the heads of my school for information on me and
I was scared because I didn’t know if he wanted to arrest me.

When he finally got me on the phone, he was condescending, if not
threatening. In a humble way I answered all his questions and explained to
him that I didn’t have any “hold-back” info. At last he was bored I
guess and gave up questioning.
But I regret being nice to him. I regret not exercising my rights
guaranteed b y the Constitution and I am probably not gonna have any more
opportunity to ex ercise it! I should have teased him and got more
information on the case as an exchange. Conclusion: You don’t have to be
nice to a Canadian cop unless you’ve broken the law.

Go out and talk to people

Canadian culture is not carried by the Rocky Mountains, I believe, but the
peo ple they nurture. Informed and intelligent, hospitable and artless,
this is largely what I find Canadians. Many of them have traveled around
the world and I’ve learned a lot more about Europe and Africa by talking
to them. Even about China, they sometimes know b etter than I do. For
example, I didn’t know Google was banned in my country l ast September
until they told me so. It’s always been an excitement for me to scoop up
interesting people in this brand new culture.

I’ve done a video documentary with two of my classmates on a girl who’s
surv ived on the street without her family. An ex drug dealer and addict,
she broke my stereotype of desperate people needling themselves on Hasting.
I never knew they had human faces until I got to know her. She’s a good
rapper who writes rhyme and performs with a passion for life. He r energy
spins with her as she dances. “I got the skeletons in the closet But that
don’t bother me I be the soldier from the jungle approximately My corrupt
past didn’t take me Never beat me, never been locked up in society’s
cage.”
She writes and raps. She has a faith that keeps her strong, that has pulled
he r out of the quagmire and leads her towards a better tomorrow. She now
starts fresh in a job training program and paints murals over the city’s
graffiti. “I’m goin’ up in flames Never hold me down” I decide that the
part of Canadian life she’s shown me is never to be learned at school.

Education

Now back to school, it took me quite a while to figure out why I had
studied s o hard here, like never before. It could be that my classmates
are workaholics. Some of them work like masochists, and take inhuman
pleasure out of it. I guess I am more or less pressured by the fact that
they work like crazy, if they are not. But why do they do so? My answer is
that they love what they’ve chosen ? and they drop out if they don’t ?
which is a big thing about Canadian education , free choice and motivation.

Few of my schoolmates have entered the program without being committed to
jour nalism. Two students did come to “see how it goes” and they’ve
dropped out because they don’t love it. Fortunately I love what I am
taking. This I believe has been more important than pressure in keeping me
going. In fact, I have made some contribution to Canada’s education,
though by mistake. Looking for a TAship when I first came, I ran into a
program called “humanities 101” sponsored by UBC. It offers free
education to people aged from 20 to 70 who have not had opportunity to go
to college. It was not because I had a good heart that I undertake this
unpaid TAship; I s aid it was an accident. I didn’t know what
“volunteer” meant when I saw the job posting, which could be deadly for a
job hunter in Canada. When I found it out it was too late to withdraw, so I
assumed that I had a good heart and moved on with it. It turned out to be a
rewarding experience. I got to know underrepresented and disadvantaged
people from different parts of society: an old fisherman hurt by fish
farming, a jobless immigrant crippled by language problem and a girl who
found “six bucks sucks…” The only pity in my one year study is that I
dropped out from a minor course o
f Canadian history. I took it only because I wanted to know more about the
country, but unfortunately it was too hard for me. The only thing I learned
from that course: It’s nothing like Chinese history.

Employment

A job doesn’t come easily, especially for an international journalism
student . I spent tons of time applying for a summer internship, which is a
requisite for my degree, but failed to find one in Canada. While my
schoolmates go to work for the Toronto Star, the CBC and the Vancouve r Sun
for $ 500--$1,000 Canadian a week, I can only struggle to get a job in S
ARS-hit Hong Kong, for as little as 6,000 HKD a month. But I know I
shouldn’t complain. If there’s anything to blame, it’s my English. The
one year education has helped me a lot; without it I wouldn’t even get a
job in Hong Kong.

Hopefully the internship will add to my resume and help me get into
mainstream media next year when I graduate. To my encouragement, a second
Chinese student who went to Hong Kong last summer has made it to the
Toronto Star. If I couldn’t find a job here upon graduation, I wouldn’t
blame Canada. Going back home is not a bad choice. The whole point of being
in Canada to me is not to get a visa, but to learn as much as I can.

End

I enjoyed reading the article by the Waterloo student from Peking
University. I’ve written this only to provide a different perspective of a
Chinese arts student in Canada
　

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