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| Taigu, in Shanxi Province |
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: Several times the author is asked “yi ge ren,” or, “Are you one person”?
What are they really asking her here, and how does it relate to the Chinese
concept of guanxi? What makes being
alone so vitally different in China than in America?
Q2: According to the essay, why does Chinese society
place less value on personal privacy, especially in intimate situations (using
the bathroom, showers, etc.)? In America, we might assume bathroom privacy is a
universal concern…why isn’t it in China?
Q3: On page 219, the shopkeeper calls her a “poor
foreigner,” but Rogers adds that “[it] was the last time she’d refer to me as a
foreigner. I’d always be one, but the
next time I came in to buy something, she called me Luo Yi Lin, the name I’d
been given by a Mandarin tutor just after I’d arrived to China.” What makes her
suddenly belong in this society? What is she able to do that makes her more
than a “lost tourist” or a “foreigner” here?
Q4: One of the reasons Rogers worries about being
too intimate with her students and colleagues is because she’s a lesbian in a
society that may or may not be accepting of it. Do you feel she has the right
to preserve some of the privacy/intimacy she would keep hidden in America? Does
entering a new culture with new rules force you to “out” yourself? Why or why
not?
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