Touba

I've noticed that all the praises I'm receiving all of the time is starting to get to me... I tend to not initiate conversations much, so others do, and when they initiate conversations, they ask about me, which tends to bring up impressive things about my life, which leads to (sometimes excessive) complements. Furthermore, since I'm always looking for opportunities to practice my Chinese, I get several compliments about that every single day.

Obviously, I need to learn to flip it around and focus the conversation on my interlocutor. As a matter of fact, anytime I've been able to talk with my friends about themselves, I've been very moved myself!

Tonight is one such example, when I took the opportunity by the horns, and started asking Touba about her life. It's fitting that I should succeed with her, since she lays the most compliments on me. Touba is the director of NewBeat (my school). She was telling me how she left Shanghai when she was 16, moved during the cultural revolution to a very poor town where she worked in a rice field with inadequate irrigation and no fertilizer. She ate very poorly, and lived a most simple life, quickly becoming a teacher for many children in her neighborhood, whose only payment was a little bit of food (vegetables or the like), sent by the parents. She lived in the town for eight years - until she was my age, at which point she moved to a larger town where she worked in construction - this time for 10 years. I only got some of the details of these elements of her life during the course of our car ride, but I have been most moved all night, on the verge of tears for being brought so close to such a powerful life experience. I have so much to learn.