Journal: How We Became the SDA Bunch

Sometimes I feel that here at SDA I haven't just found a new job, but a new family. I'm living in Mr Zhu's new apartment in Xining. Yang Ying is staying with a friend, but she comes here early and stays late. Zhuoya lives close by, and often comes here straight from work (her husband is studying in Hawaii, so I guess she has nothing better to do). Last week Mr Zhu's parents, brother, and two sisters were all staying here. This is perhaps as close as I could get to everyday chinese life without actually marrying into a chinese family, and since I'm very interested in contemporary chinese culture in all its forms I ought to be delighted. In reality, I just feel very tired, but the fact that I ought to be delighted is some consolation at least.

The truth is that I've always needed a lot of space and time to myself. If I, like a lot of chinese university graduates, had spent the final three years of highschool and four years of university living in a cramped dormitory with anything from 3 to 9 other students then I would probably have gone crazy. Luckily this apartment is fairly large. But at least university students have their classes and meals outside, whereas I don't have much reason to go anywhere because I still don't know many people in Xining. In fact, the best friend that I have in Qinghai is Yang Ying, despite the fact that we constantly bicker!

One of the things that tires me is that it's difficult to sit down and work solidly without being interrupted by various matters that are not related to work at all, but related to running a household, meeting people, looking after sick fathers, and so on. Another thing that tires me is housework and cooking—not the labour itself, but dividing it fairly. Mr Zhu is "enlightened" enough to do some cleaning (he's quite house proud in fact), but he more or less avoids the kitchen, whereas it makes me quiver with guilt if I abandon Yang Ying to do the cooking and washing up all by herself. And yet more often than not Yang Ying doesn't want me in the kitchen at all, and that's usually the reason we argue. When it was just the two of us in Guanting, she let me cook some of the meals, but now I have to debate with her just to cut vegetables. I suppose she finds it stressful to cook for 5 or 6, and thinks that I will just get in the way. At least she doesn't forcibly push me out of the kitchen when I try to wash the dishes, the way she used to.

It may be because I'm male, or because she doesn't like my cooking (I admit I've produced some failures!), but at least it's not because—or at least I don't feel that it's because—I'm a "foreign guest". Foreigners in China do sometimes receive special treatment, but now that I've been here a few months I don't think that Mr Zhu or Yang Ying treat me much differently to how they would a chinese volunteer. And if I ever cause astonishment by pouring tea for a guest, they have even been known to say "Oh, he's one of our family," to jokingly explain that I'm a member of SDA and not a visitor.

But although it pleases me to hear that, I do hanker for a little more independence and a life outside SDA. An Australian friend once said, "My family gets along better when they live in separate cities". And despite the chinese tradition of several generations living under one roof, more and more modern families are discovering that, if you can afford it, buying a nearby apartment for your parents to live in also has its advantages. What I'm saying is, I need a holiday!

Fuzzy Kinship

Language tends to reflect culture, but chinese seems to have more kinship terms than it needs! My dictionary lists 94, from bomu (wife of father's elder brother) to jiubiaomei (daughter of mother's brother who is younger than oneself). But in reality, most cousins, cousins-in-law, brothers-in-law, and sisters-in-law, more than 40 different types of relation, can all be called by one of five terms: older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister, or saozi (meaning older brother's wife). Kinship terms like this are also frequently used to address people who are not relatives at all, especially people older than oneself. I'm still not used to children calling me "uncle" (well, actually the term is shushu, meaning father's younger brother).

One could try to solve this paradox by distinguishing relationships on one hand from forms of address on the other hand. But things are not that clear cut. People will quite often mention an "older brother" in conversation, or introduce you to their "older brother", and unless you explicitly ask you will never know whether he is a real brother, a cousin, or perhaps even just a close friend. English kinship terms are not much more specific than this, but they slice up kin along different lines: a cousin can never be called a brother, but whether a cousin is older or younger than oneself is seldom stated explicitly.

Newsflash: Yang Ying has just informed me that she will be going back to Guanting tomorrow, and leaving dominion of the kitchen to me. That's terrible news! I want to do some cooking, not all of it!