Stepping into the conference hall for the Cornell in China forum was really surreal. I actually became immediately struck by emotion. What's funny is that I remember being really happy to see Cornell's shade of trademarked red. It was refreshing after being surrounded by a slighty different shade of red this semester all around. I felt like I had found home again. I think I've spent a lot of time this semester wishing that I could experience all that I am but on my beloved Ithaca campus, instead of fully accepting that this is my campus and this is my current country of residence. I have adapted and assimilated well to being here, but there will never be anything quite like suddenly being around people who are deeply connected with the campus you came from. So I might have actually taken away more non-academic reflections from the conference than grand academic ones.
It made me profoundly grateful that I chose Cornell to be my undergraduate school, and that I found the CAPS in Beijing program way back in 2019, which led me to Cornell in the first place. I still can't quite believe that I'm already here and that I now only have a month left. I've gotten to be a part of some very cool events in my 4.5 years. In fact, one of my prouder recollections is from when I was invited to be a student speaker at the 2023 Cornell Trustees Conference in San Diego. The conference and venue was actually very reminiscent of this Guangzhou conference, so of course I spent a few minutes realizing all that I accomplished in the last year and a half since that event. I know that I found more specific interests within the CAPS major, and that I pursued my general intrigue towards the world by completing a DoS internship and taking myself solo to 13 countries I've become somewhat of a world traveler fueled by my summer job and the youthful fear of losing what's left of my months before starting a solid job.
I digress. Fun fact: the woman next to me on the train back to Beijing as I write this is applying acupuncture to her hand with miniature needles. Wow, it looks intense but also I can't tear my eyes away. I'll store it in my memory in the "experiencing local culture" files, haha. But back to the conference, I can recall some points from the speakers' talks which will stick with me. One spoke about horticultural diplomacy as a way to show appreciation and respect for other people, so that when international visitors come to the gardens at Cornell, they can feel more welcome. This was a nice segment for me to listen to because it was given by the boss of my former boss at the Cornell Botanic Gardens, the very first club I ever became part of at Cornell. And there I was, a month from graduating and on the other side of the world, hearing him speak. Only something Cornell can make happen! I also remember a great segment of talks about China's future cities and modernizing architecture. It all aligned with what I have been learning and seeing of China this semester; it is trying its best to build modernized cities with eye-catching designs to show off to the world as both a status- symbol and piece of pride for citizens. Update on the woman's acupuncture: she had 3 needles in when I first mentioned it. She's working on placing the 9th now. (This was only the beginning of the needles… and later on, she offered me a sesame candy snack!)
Anyway, one of the panelists talked about urbanization rates and exchanging land for urban hukou, which was another surreal moment because we literally learned about that in Professor Wallace's economy class. Another really lovely moment of the conference was every time I made the choice to listen to the panelists in Chinese rather than English. Since we were provided with translation earpieces, I was able to switch the language to Chinese when an english-speaking panelist spoke. It was pretty profound to sit there and check my own instant translations of what were being said against the professional translators' words, both because I was happy with where my Chinese listening ability and vocabulary recollection has come and because I was remembering how my career of choice when I first set foot in Ithaca was to be a translator. Even though I have changed a lot, and time has passed, I don't need to mourn what once was and instead am becoming more content with enjoying what actually did take place because there really are infinite possibilities if I want there to be. Who knows, maybe one day far in the future it would be my voice in that earpiece. Or, I could be a spectator again, just as intellectually hungry.
Actually, I will switch gears now into a short discussion of my day with a local Chinese friend of mine. Being next to this upclose- and-personal cultural experience has made me want to talk about my other cultural experience from Friday.
It all started when I said yes to a request from a woman in Hong Kong (over national week) for me to take a picture of her. Instead of responding in English like she expected me to, I used Chinese. She was immediately shocked, as everyone is, and we kept talking. She was impressed by me and very exctited to have met a foreigner since she is from a smaller town north of Beijing (Qinhuangdao), and in classic very polite fashion I got invited to come spend time with her in her hometown. A month passed, and instead of shying away from the opportunity to spend a day with a local, I actually decided to take her up on the very genuine offer she had extended. So this friday, I got up at 4:45am to catch a train to Qinhuangdao. I met my friend Liping at the Qinhuangdao station, and we shared a lot of huge smiles and laughs throughout the day. She has almost no memory of her school-years English classes, so I was really challenged the whole 10 hours to use everything I've gathered about Chinese to communicate with her. This includes what I've commited to memory from textbooks and classtime Q&A, as well as more casual language techniques like how to make the non-verbal sound meaning "I didn't hear you" and making assenting noises and laughs when I either understand what was said and don't have a response or when I wasn't quite sure what had been said but hope that I understood the tone right. Turns out, I did fairly well! Multuple times through the day I found myself not having to think about how to communicate my thoughts and just jumping right into it, followed by complements from her saying that there really weren't any real communication barriers (zhangai) between us.
Liping warmed my heart this Friday. It wasn't just the joy and gratefulness I was feeling about having found one of China's most enthusiatic and genuinely kind-hearted women. It was also partly about how proud I was of myself for coming so far in the last 4 years with my language abilities, social awareness and conversation skills, individual confidence and my self-nourished sense of adventure and curiosity. Those things all had led me to this massive day where I was taken around by Liping to her most coveted and prideful spots around the place she had spent all her life. She was so eager to take photos of me wherever we went, and wanted me to experience the joy that she had found in her life. We fed koy fish outside a massive temple, had meaningful conversations in the car while she made unlawful U- turns that garnered dozens of angry honks (haha), saw the sea- touching end of the great wall (laolongtou), drove past her apartment where she lives with her unmarried son, and ate a unique style of hot pot where she unendingly put food on my plate until I literally could not take another bite.
Liping and I found out that we had much in common. We both love living by the sea, we love to take photos, we have(had) many different interests in life, and we want to travel and see the world and different cultures, even possibly being diplomats in our own way. She said that she hopes our countries never actually fight, but even if political relations are tense, it can't stop relationships between people from flourishing. We both find it hard to understand how someone can actually become vegan for the rest of their lives. We even bonded over how we agree that students who spend car rides in a foreign country by just scrolling on their phones or falling straight asleep are wasting a valuable part of the journey! Liping was impressed that I knew the phrase "budaochangchengfeihaohan", and was curious about Trump winning the election. When we parted ways, she gave me a bunch of small cakes and a purse from the boot of her car.
The thing that probably will keep sticking with me in my non- academic life is how much Liping told me I was beautiful that Friday. She even spent about 10 minutes while we were watching seagulls flying on the beach just taking differently- angled photos of me in order to "show me how beautiful you are". Thank you, Liping! If I ever make it to being a diplomat, I will come back to find you.