Sandra Lee 《China Daily》开辟专栏（中）

时间：2009-03-15 00:00:00  来源：杭州平和  作者：Sandra Lee

 

简述：这是中国发行量第一的英文报纸，这是广大英文爱好者的阅读指南，这是在平和校园里人人传阅的一份报纸。近日来，《China Daily》特邀我校杭州校区外教Sandra Lee在该报上开辟”Hot Pot”专栏，将其旅居中国所感所悟与大家分享。

 

 

 

“HOT POT”专栏（四）

 

From so-called enemies to good friends

 

By Sandra Lee (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-18 07:53

 

Air travel has become, at its best, something to be endured. Some airports address this by providing certain creature comforts. In conversations with other travelers we talk about the delights to be found in Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul. We bemoan the cold and uninviting airports of Chinese mainland. They are clean and efficient but hardly places where it is desirable to have to wait between flights.

 

I now fly most often out of Shanghai's Pudong Airport. Quite by accident I discovered a coffee shop which has comfortable chairs and where they don't rush you along if you must kill some time. A far cry from those airports which don't provide a variety of comfortable places to choose from while you wait for your flight.

 

Yet one of my warmest memories will always be of a day in Pudong Airport when I had to wait 11 hours for my flight. It was during the great snowstorm of 2008. I left Hangzhou in the morning, though my flight was not until early evening. For days the news had shown hundreds of thousands of New Year's travelers stuck all over China. It had snowed for several days in Hangzhou and I figured I'd better give myself lots and lots of time to account for delays.

 

Through a series of fortunate events I found myself at the airport only four hours after leaving home. Hence, the long wait for my flight. I hadn't yet discovered the cozy coffee shop and was dismayed to see what was on offer for the waiting traveler. I was walking by a coffee shop where the plastic chairs offered small comfort when a friendly voice said: "M'am, will you join us for a cup of coffee?"

 

A handsome young man and his older companion were smiling up at me. "Yes, I'd love to," I said, happy for the distraction. Over cups of coffee I learned that my companions were two businessmen from Iran. I was the first American they had a chance to converse with at length. The younger man, Nozhan, asked if he could take my picture and record our conversation. I am used to having my foreign face constantly photographed, but why on earth did he want to record my remarks? "Because my mother is also a teacher and she will want to know what you said."

 

Who could resist? As Nozhan enthusiastically clicked and recorded, the three of us had a free-wheeling chat. They were the first Iranians I'd had a chance to get acquainted with so there was much mutual curiosity. After a while two other men sat at the table next to ours and we invited them to join us. After they ordered I asked where they were from. "Israel," they replied.

 

 This created a small moment of awkwardness which we covered with continuous chatting. We all nibbled on snacks and sipped cups of coffee and kept up a very lively conversation. There we were - Iranians, Israelis and an American schoolteacher, filling the time between flights in harmony and in

peace.

 

Just goes to show you that while a setting may be a bit cold and not comfortable, as always, it is the people who are there who make the difference. I won't ever forget the warmth and the camaraderie I experienced that day with that triangle of supposed "enemies", in an airport in snowbound China.

 

 

 

 

“HOT POT”专栏（三）

 

A language the Chinese understand well

 

By Sandra Lee (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-12 07:51

 

I don't speak Chinese, but I have traveled all over China, sometimes alone, and I have had marvelous experiences because I do speak the universal language - a smile. A smile is not only "your umbrella", but a passport to as many wonderful exchanges as you have smiles to give.

 

Many people stare at my foreign face, it's true. That I get tired and annoyed with it is also true. However, most of the time and in most of my interactions, I confess to being a smiler.

 

Usually a smile acts like a boomerang and comes right back at you but sometimes it can be a challenge. For several years I walked by a man who made keys. I'd smile and he'd scowl. I nicknamed him Grumpy. Returning to the area after a year, I walked by, caught him off-guard and by golly, before he could stop himself, he smiled. I gave myself the Gold Medal for Perseverance on that one.

 

Babies are fun. It is astounding how even tiny little infants will stop and stare at this laowai. It must be a very primitive survival mechanism to stop and take a good look at whoever looks different. I confess, some cry, but most, after a period of contemplation, gift me with the most adorable smiles and giggles and laughter.

 

Truly, smiles and laughter are gifts we can give each other. Smiles contract any distance we may feel for each other. A good laugh together makes us nearly kin.

 

Mother Teresa said, "Peace begins with a smile," and she was right. It is impossible to hate those who have a twinkle in their eye and are sharing a smile or a laugh with you. A smile means instant warmth on the coldest of days or during the most trying of times. Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was a favorite in international circles because he had a great sense of humor. Current Premier Wen Jinbao is rarely photographed without a smile, a smile of genuine enjoyment. These are the diplomatic "tactics" that win the hearts and minds of people. Isabella Bird traveling to China in the 1800s wrote, "A Chinese man loves a joke and, as I have often experienced, if he can only be made to laugh his hostility vanishes." True then, true now.

 

When I can laugh at myself, I never have to suffer any loss of face. My laugh says: "Hey, I'm human," and if you are laughing with me, you are not laughing at me, and that makes all the difference in the world.

 

In this country that reveres youth, I can recommend smiling over the most expensive face creams. If you smile a lot, as you inevitably wrinkle, the wrinkles will be in all the right places! They will reflect a life of living, laughing and loving. Better yet, you will have developed a lifestyle where smiling and laughing are second nature. Who doesn't like to be around people like that - at any age?

 

I don't always agree with the controversial American comedian, Carlos Mencia, but I'm with him 100% when he says: "If you ain't laughing, you ain't living, baby.”

 

 

 

 

 

“HOT POT”专栏（二）

           

              Thanks China Daily, for restoring my morning ritual

 

 By Sandra Lee (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-04 08:05

 

I think I am pretty adaptable. I lived in Japan many years ago and felt that, when I moved to China to work as a teacher, I was prepared to find a vastly different world than the Hawaiian island home I'd left behind. But I seriously missed one ritual I had maintained all my life; reading the newspaper with my morning cup of coffee. Real coffee, not those horrible instant packets. A newspaper in English, not in Chinese. Neither was available and I felt both losses keenly.

 

After a few years of having access to only an occasional paper from Hong Kong, the local China Post kiosk began to carry the China Daily. I immediately made an arrangement to have one saved for me every day. I now had a local source for real coffee and was delighted to reinstate my beloved morning cuppa and paper.

 

I began to clip items that would inform my students and began to be on the lookout for those which would instigate discussion. Most articles I clip are used for classroom reading. We cover new vocabulary and then we discuss the topic.

 

Students in China, in general, do not like to have opposing opinions and so it often was slow going, but I've pressed on because I believe that China needs people who can think "out of the box" and bring fresh ideas to the table.

 

I'm backed up by none other than President Hu Jintao. Several years ago I began reading in the China Daily of his calls for China to be an "innovation nation". On a speech about rebuilding the Party he stated, "Emancipating the mind is a magic instrument" I couldn't agree more. Dialogue and discourse and the ability to see many sides of a question are crucial to arrive at good, and more creative, decisions. It also is a requisite if China is to stop copying and embark more fully on innovative projects and businesses.

 

On almost any topic covered in our textbooks, I have pertinent articles and pictures and cartoons with which I cover the board. Students learn that they don't have to labor over every word. They can get the gist and move on. I encourage them to read a bit in each section. To be well informed is the best way to encourage conversation with English-speaking foreigners and leave a good impression of China's citizens. If they don't give a fig for sports and are not in business, knowing the current top stories will allow them to enter into conversations and if they can't actually contribute much information, they can at least ask informed questions.

 

I try to instill a desire in my students to be well informed on current events and to love to read the newspaper. I am gradually accepting that, most of them will not have the inky fingers of the true newspaper aficionado of my generation. They will more likely get online. But it all leads to creating minds that are curious about the world we live in.

 

have watched the China Daily make significant changes to create a newspaper that is well worth reading. I was thrilled the day I saw a colored picture on the cover! I follow trends both here and abroad from my daily reading. I am interested in politics and have greatly appreciated the increasingly transparent reporting and the presentation of conflicting ideas. The coverage of the first space flight and the Sichuan earthquake was gripping as well as informative.

 

Have I made any converts? Hard to say. As a teacher we are only able to plant seeds. We don't often have the luxury of knowing how many blooms there are later, though some have been kind enough to tell me they now read the China Daily as a way to keep up their English and to be informed. I hope it's true because I'd like to spread the simple joy of reading the paper whilst sipping a cup of one's favorite brew. Nourishment for mind and body, all in one delightful daily ritual.

                                                                             

 

 

 

 

“HOT POT”专栏（一）

 

Keep warm this winter, my dear friend!

 

By Sandra Lee (China Daily)

Updated: 2009-02-24 07:31

 

It is said "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Sometimes, this seems to be all too true. While teaching English in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, for several years, I noticed an old couple whose workplace was my gate.

 

They worked so hard, all days and all hours. They collected rubbish and brought it to the spot near my gate where they sorted, stacked and bundled their finds. Every time I passed by, they would smile big toothless smiles as we began to exchange greetings.

 

What really caught my eye was that during the blistering summer days, the old fellow would be crouched in the shade of the gate, reading. Reading is my own passion, so I felt even more kinship.

 

After a year or so, a younger, and equally hard-working couple joined them and, to my delight, they brought along their little toddler boy. I'd say "baby" and he'd laugh and say "nai nai" then jump in my arms. As I dearly missed my own grandsons, he filled a spot in my heart.

 

When winter came, I loved finding some warm clothes for the little family. The young couple seemed adequately nourished and the boy was robust but the old couple were thin as twigs and I worried about them staying well. They were working people, not beggars, so I didn't give them money, only books and clothes as I would my own family.

 

Once when they went back to their hometown, they brought me back some of the best corned beef I've ever enjoyed.

 

Finally, I hit upon the idea of giving the "baby", who was now a happy boy, a red envelope for the New Year. When I left Zhuhai to live in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, I made sure the amount would be enough to cushion them in the year ahead should the old couple get ill or they need something for the boy's first year of school.

 

Returning to Zhuhai to celebrate the Year of the Ox, I was thrilled to see the young couple still at their spot. We hugged and without speaking each other's language displayed our joy in seeing each other again With body language I learned that the elders were in the hometown with the boy.

 

On my last day there, I had a red envelope tucked in my pocket for the boy. The wife gestured that I should wait a minute. She rushed off and returned, to my horror, with a gigantic basket filled with brandy and wine and expensive cookies. I jumped back as if bitten, crying, "No, no!"

 

I had hoped to privately hand the envelope to her, but nothing stays private in China for long. Within minutes we had drawn a circle of interested and vocal bystanders.

 

I tried, to no avail, to explain that I couldn't take such things with me. A woman in the crowd who followed my body language, told my friend, in Cantonese, about the plane and my limitations. Of course, I was stricken that she had spent so much hard-earned money on the gift.

I was able to tuck the envelope in a pocket as I walked away. We both had tears in our eyes. My one and only consolation is that I put enough in the envelope to pay for the outrageously expensive gift and, since she probably can't return it, they can warm themselves through the rest of the winter with tots of good brandy which they otherwise would never have tasted. I hope some of it finds its way to the old couple in their hometown.

 

 

 

 

Editor:Rebecca