Yia

     This is Yia.  I learned her name only a couple nights ago, although we've ni hao-ed anonymously many times in the last few weeks.  She's one of the friendly young workers at the desk in the building where I go to the gym.  Tuesday I turned in a cell phone that I'd found in the gym.  Yia was at the desk that day and thanked me, maybe somewhat excessively, when I gave it to her.   Wednesday when I walked in the door, Yia came out from behind the desk, took hold of my arm, and excitedly told me how happy the cell phone owner was when she got it back.  She thanked me again several times.  Thursday Yia greeted me with a big smile.  Now that I was a tad less anonymous, she took special pains to try to tell me about a special program that would be held the next night on the plaza here in our apartment complex.  She said, I thought, that there would be music and dance and that I might like to go.  I wondered if the women I see practicing their dance pieces every morning in front of the glass building would be performing.  So Friday night I went down to the plaza with my camera, curious.  There were lots of shouted announcements into microphones, a comedy skit (I think), a sort of quiz show with kids, and a puzzling display of a firefighter's hat, boots, overalls and fire extinguisher.  No dance, no music.  I really had no idea what the theme or purpose of the gathering was, except that it may have been related to the upcoming Moon Festival next week.  But no matter, it turned out to be interesting anyway.
     After I'd been standing at the back for a few minutes, peering at the action in the middle of the plaza and studying the crowd gathered around, I heard a gleeful squeal behind me:  "You came!"  Running towards me was the familiar smiling face from behind the desk in the gym building.  She grasped both my forearms and said she was very happy that I had remembered to come to the event.  I quizzed her about what was happening in the middle of the plaza, but she had a hard time explaining and I had a hard time understanding.  So that's when I began asking her about herself, starting with her name.  I asked her if she was a student, because I sometimes see the young people studying while they're staffing a desk--the concierge in our apartment building, for example.  Yia said she would like to study abroad.  She has American friends from Indiana who lived here awhile and are now trying to help her go to the U.S. to study.  I couldn't help interjecting that the only two people from Indiana I know, longtime friends Kuo-Long and Carol, are Chinese!   Yia said that it's hard to stay in touch with her Indiana friends, since she can't use Facebook or email abroad.  These are unavailable options for most people in China, due to government restrictions on Internet use. We foreigners get around it because we're not Chinese citizens and because we can afford a $70 solution.  More about that some other time.
     Yia went back to the incident from earlier in the week.  She looked at me very seriously.  "I have to tell you about the cell phone.  You found it and brought it to me.  That was very nice.  Most people would not do that  here.  A Chinese person would not do that."  I told her that I didn't think this was true from our experiences.  The Chinese we've met here have been extraordinarily helpful to us, generous in  every way.  Terry has spent months working with many Chinese, and he has no end of positive things to say about them.  Upon reflection later, though, I think Yia may have been referring to the traditional loyalty that Chinese have to family and friends, but the lack of obligation or connection to the wider community or to people they don't know.  Some say this is changing.  Yia said she comes from a province far away from here.  She maybe has run into some people who have made her life difficult,  as she's made her way in this fast-growing city far away from family and friends.
     I told Yia that in the U.S. I have been a teacher and have worked a lot with kids.  I said that many of us try to teach kids the golden rule-- to treat other people, even people we don't know,  as we ourselves would like to be treated, because it makes everybody's life better.  "Are you a Christian?" she asked me.  She said that she herself was.  Maybe I'll hear the story behind that later.  At the time I was surprised to meet someone who professed affiliation with a religion, in this country of 1.3 billion people that's been characterized as mostly unreligious, especially here in the south.  And I was reminded again that the things I do and say while I'm out and about here will likely cause some people to generalize about Americans, just as our family has generalized somewhat about the Chinese from the warm and kind people we've met, people like Yia.