After Chinese class, I pulled out my hacky sack and started playing with Nick in the lobby of the Fudan twin towers. Just like in high school, people started joining in and soon enough the whole UC group started playing. Things started getting interesting when a passing Fudan student suddenly joined our game. Not only did he join, but he was actually fairly good, probably the best one out of the whole UC group except me. I suspected that he played jianzi, a Chinese hacky sack like game that I had played when I was young.
Surprisingly, the Fudan student stuck around till we got kicked out of the building by a security guard. We invited him out to dinner and learned that his name was Qi Li. In a stroke of luck, Qi Li turned out to be Cantonese which meant that I had a way to communicate with him because his English was functional at best.
That night Qi Li and I exchanged numbers and to be honest I did not think I was going to see him again. However, two days later I get a text in Chinese from him while in Chinese class asking how I have been. I get the teacher to translate the text for me and I do my best to respond. Next thing I know I am getting another text and having to find my mandarin speaking friends to translate and text back. I learned that he has been practicing dancing and that there was an upcoming performance, which I was invited to.
Over the next couple of weeks, Qi Li just kept meeting us after class to play hacky sack and talk with me and the other UC people. He even brought his friend, Winter, who invited me to join him and his friends for lunch during the moon festival. On an interesting night, Qi Li and Winter were invited to a party where I watched them play their first beer pong game. It was obvious from the way that they drank the 2.4% beer that they were in no way drinkers. I smile at the thought of what I imagine to be these two Fudan students’ first experience with American culture.
The most important thing from this whole experience, however, is the realization that Mrs. Brasher was wrong in threatening to cut me because I was ditching class speech class to play hacky sack! Clearly this experience has taught me that hacky sack is much more beneficial in life than speaking skill (Not a true statement).
Qi Li is second from the left in the back row
-muffinman
