"Americans are like peaches, but Chinese are coconuts." Such was the message from Professor Donny Huang, specialist in intercultural communication, in a lecture to new foreign students at Beijing University.
Americans are amicable and quick to make friends - like the soft, sweet outside of a peach - but just as the core of a peach is a hard, rough pit, it is difficult to become very close with an American. By contrast, the Chinese can be tough as coconuts on the outside, but once one penetrates this coarse exterior, they are willing to "share their milky sweetness," to quote Professor Huang.
One recent evening, I went to dinner at a campus cafeteria, hoping to more convincingly play the part of a Beijing University student. I collected an unappetizing brown-and-beige meal of pan-fried noodles and a sort of cold vegetable salad based inauspiciously around diced cucumber. After a gruesome two-hour exam that morning and a growing stream of evidence supporting the notion that my Chinese is hopelessly pathetic, I was more in the mood for another round of airplane food than what sat on my tray.
I sat alone but was joined almost instantly by another student sitting oddly close considering the presence of empty tables nearby. Despite what at first seemed to be an act of uncommon friendliness, he buried his face (literally) in the whole fish and bowl of rice before him. As I made my way through the tray of food before me, I watched, somewhere between disgusted and mesmerized as he ripped apart the fish and shoveled the rice into his mouth, pausing only to regurgitate the fish bones onto his tray.
After 10 minutes of this noisy, slurping silence, I forced out a question, asking him if the fish was any good.
"Hen hao chi" he replied: very delicious.
He pushed the dish towards me and urged me to take a bite. "Very tasty," I agreed.
His name, as I discovered, is Liu Chao, but his American friends call him Super. He has made one trip to the United States to compete in a computer science competition in Seattle that was sponsored by Microsoft.
He, like many of his peers at Beijing University, is a great appreciator of American television and could tally the shows by name: "Sex and the City," "Desperate Housewives," "Lost," "24." His favorite is "Friends."
I confess, by the time we had reached this advanced stage of conversation, much of our dialogue was in English. Every Chinese student must pass an English exam to gain entrance to Beijing University, and Super's skills are, well, super. All the same, it was delightful and refreshing to make this connection and undoubtedly good practice for each of us in our respective second languages. Even my dinner began to taste better as we chatted in an absurd mix of two tongues. Before saying goodbye, we exchanged phone numbers, so perhaps I will see him again soon.
"In China," Super told me, "we like to download the whole season of a TV show and watch it in just a few days." I told him we often do the same in America.
"You download?" I nodded.
"Even though there is a copyright?" Nod.
"Good, you make me feel much better." We laughed.
I had cracked his coconut shell and was one friend the better for it. It's remarkable what a little milky sweetness can do for a sullen mood.
