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Monday, April 18, 2011

The Golden Chicken Roundabout

Anybody who has ever studied before, will know that only when the student puts in some effort, will the lesson be worthwhile. And this student, by the name of Niamh…hadn’t been putting in any time or effort whatsoever when it came to the Chinese she was meant to be studying! It was probably due to lack of time… Lame excuse I guess… Not very original and maybe not even holding so much truth either…

The fact that I wasn’t studying meant that when I chose to take my 2nd lesson, 2 weeks ago, my mind not in gear at all… It was elsewhere other than in the Chinese textbooks! Oops…

Jessie, my teacher, knew straight away that I was forcing myself to take a class. And she was right. For some reason I felt I HAD to do this, but didn’t really want to. Maybe I was forcing just because learning Chinese is what’s expected of every person who newly arrives in China. This could have been why I’d created something of a mental block between myself and learning Chinese (even though I’ve been picking up little bits here and there along the way, just to get by).

It was still that same Monday afternoon. We strolled through the streets, the alleyways and along the busy roads. We chatted and I couldn’t pinpoint what was going on with me. But I knew there was something stopping me from learning and opening myself up to totally absorbing this language and giving my all, in order to become somewhat fluent. We wandered, and slowly came to standstill…

There we stood, smack-bang in the middle of Jinzhou, on the busiest of roundabouts; the only roundabout with a massive big pillar-like statue in the middle and a golden chicken sitting on top. We stood there, as the crazy traffic with their beeping horns was racing by and the overloaded busses were speeding around the bends. None of this commotion and none of the stares we were getting stopped us from having the most in-depth conversation… and it seemed to last forever (in reality it was probably only 30 minutes, but long enough to make a lasting impression on the both of us…).

The traffic around us was noisy, but it gave me permission to rid myself of my frustrations…

This is what was happening: I’m standing there and suddenly seeing China for the first time ever… All I’m seeing is crazy traffic, Chinese symbols and bright colourful lights everywhere. It’s as if I only just came tumbling out of the familiar world that’s back in Ireland and landed myself smack-bang in the middle of this north-eastern Chinese city. I’ve landed ONLY with one purpose in mind: to break through the Chinese system of words and symbols… The world felt to come to a sudden standstill and I was so desperate for the Chinese secrecy that feels to lie behind their symbols, characters and language, to break itself down. But I knew only with my own discipline and determination would the Chinese language start opening itself up to me…

What a strange scene this was… As I was revealing my frustrations, Jessie too got swept away in the moment, and the heart-to-heart we ended up having, on the middle of the busiest roundabouts in the Jinzhou, was one to change the way I’ll look at that particular location, for the rest of my time here. For Jessie too, the “Golden Chicken roundabout” is no longer just a roundabout…

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