Well, it is finished.

I gave my two-hour "American Customs" speech today at the Qinghai Public Library. After spending most of the week preparing my Powerpoint presentation and actually writing out my speech I am very thankful that the event is now over. It went very well. Before I forget all the juicy details I thought I should probably post a brief summary.

Since American customs / traditions are pretty hard to define I tried to explain a little bit about the diversity in our country and about how we are really a "melting pot" of many cultures and traditions. I shared that American customs and traditions are changing and are really defined by each individual/family. I did focus on certain areas of American culture that are shared by most of the population. Here are the areas I focused on:

   
• Education

   

• Family Life / Marriage Customs

   

• Recreation / Leisure / Sports

   

• Food

   

• Holidays

   

• Social Customs (shaking hands, saying bless you when someone sneezes, etc.)

   

• Superstitions, Myths, and Legends

Sounds pretty glamourous, eh?  Well, let me assure you it wasn’t!

The highlights for me were sharing about the American camping custom of making S’Mores, sharing about what The Blob is (at summer camps) and how it is used, and giving them all the opportunity to take part in a 7th inning stretch. We (Christa and I at least) even sang to Jimmy Buffet’s rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." They were a bit floored by that, I think. They just stared at the words and tried to match it to the voices singing. Hey, I thought they would like it. This is karaoke country.

The other highlight for me was sharing about the origins of Easter and Christmas. To spell it out: I told them why Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter. But I also shared how other people celebrate these holidays so as not to get myself in hot water.

Oh yeah, I told them about bigfoot and Paul Bunyan as well. The really important things had to be highlighted. Hey, don’t worry. The rest of the speech was really boring and standard.

The highlights for the audience (I think) were the Chinese phrase I told them at the beginning of my speech. My friend Tomas helped me with this one. Translation: The old ladies foot cloth is stinky and long. I guess in China this saying is commonly associated with speeches which they find long and boring. I told the audience that I hoped my speech would be neither long nor stinky (boring.) They laughed when I said this in my wavering Mandarin.

The other highlight for them (I think) was the picture I put in my slideshow of Yao Ming (of NBA fame) giving a high five to one of his Houston Rocket teammates. I knew that one would be money over here.

They also enjoyed grilling me with all kinds of crazy questions at the end of the speech. They were very polite and appreciative in their questioning (unlike western journalist types) but I really had no idea what category of question they would ask. Anything was fair game. Here are a few of the questions that I remember:

   
• What did you think of China before you came and why did you come here? (OK, fair enough)

   

• What do other Americans think of China?  I’ve read that they are afraid of China.

   

• I have done research on body language in different cultures. Can you give me some concrete examples of body language from your culture?

   

• What do you like about Xining?  What has made the deepest impression on you?

   

• Can you tell me about communications? (This question was not about talking. He was asking what I thought about the field of "communications" in general…maybe because I’m a journalism guy or something.)

   

• What is the American dream?

   

• Would you like to live in other countries besides China?

   

• China is becoming very powerful and the U.S. is very powerful, but both countries think very differently. What do you think about this?

   

• I have read that high school students in America like to go to parties, but you said that many high school students want to go to college and that it is difficult to get into universities. How can high school students still work hard and party?

   

• Can you tell us a little more about (garbled) s’more? (I thought for a minute she was really going to ask me questions about S’mores!) She finally explained she wanted to hear more about Mount Rushmore (which was a slide I showed).

   

• I would like to go to America to teach Chinese.  What do you think of this?

   

• Can you speak Qinghai dialect?

On that last question the crowd roared when I spoke the one sentence of Qinghai dialect that I know. I’m not sure if they were laughing because they were impressed or if they were laughing because I butchered it! But laughter is a good thing.

The speech ended up being only about one hour and 15 minutes long…but the questions stretched for most of the next 45 minutes. I pretty much read the speech word-for-word in very slow English. I still think my language level was a bit higher than the audience was probably used to. There were kids from elementary school all the way up to adults who attended the event. It was really interesting to see how intrigued people seemed with the speech and (more so) the topic of America. Many people stayed after to talk with us, ask us questions, and also see if we would give other speeches (ugh…)

I’m really glad my language teacher came, too. I hope that it was honoring to her to see her pupil up there on stage. I’ll find out next week in class I guess. I asked the librarian (teacher) who hosted us (in Chinese mind you!) if she thought the presentation was good or not good. She said, "Feichang hao!" (Excellent!) I know she was probably being a bit complimentary, but I do think the audience enjoyed the time. (Those who could follow it…)

Anyway, I’m not sure if I made the local news or not. We really got a kick out of the sign they made that was posted in the doorway of the library.

Mr. Todd

I haven’t been called Mr. Todd since I worked with elementary school kids in high school.

To be honest, I’m mostly just glad that it’s over. On to the next activity for me. Thanks so much for all your prayers. They really sustained me this last week and today. Who knows whether or not some of these connections will lead to friendships in the future, too, which is pretty cool to think about.

(And, oh yeah, I got my 200 RMB, too.  I’m a real high roller now.  KFC, here we come!)

p.s. And a special thanks to Christa, too! She was the Powerpoint afficionado. I couldn’t have pulled that off without her there keeping the pictures rolling. And thanks to our friend Birgitte who took these pics. She’s the next speaker on the Qinghai Public Library lecture circuit.

And please, feel free to ask questions.  It was quite an event to describe.