Tuesday, 07 April 2009

• Argentina – the commence of Yuan 阿根廷一の緣起

  I’ve always wanted to go to Mexico and Central America in order to look for the footprints of the great Taiwanese writer San Mao 三毛; however it has been several months since I have been here, in Argentina. My stay in Latin America is a new page of life because it is indeed a very special place, totally different from Europe and Asia altogether!

  What is Sunflower doing in Argentina?
  The principals of the German universities are: “first suffering, then a little bit sweet, then suffering again.” And, I’m now, luckily in the middle phrase. Talking about writing a thesis: My faculty offers quite a lot of freedom, as long as I write something that is related to Spanish it would be fine. Therefore, I was thinking of using this rare opportunity to spread the impressive and ancient Chinese culture wide and far. I decided to write a Chinese-Spanish literary comparison! I went to my professor full of confidence and I told him, “the theme of my master thesis is `the comparison of the Zhuang Zi and Latin American fables` and I’m going to Mexico and Chile to investigate.”

  In case you don’t know who Zhuang Zi (4^th century BC) is, he is one of the most influential Chinese philosophers and a fabulist, as famous as Confucian.
  But then I got tub of cold water as answer when my professor said, ”if you want to write this, you better go to the archaeologists because there aren’t comparable pieces in the Latin American literature.”
  I murmured in my mind – then all the secondary pupils in China are archaeologists!
  He asked me, “Aren’t you going to Argentina?”
  Sunflower, “Yes.”
  Professor, “How boring is that!? If you want to look for Chinese in Latin America you have to go to Peru! Thousands of them all over the country!”
  I was stuck and went on feeling helpless: “But I bought the flight already…”
  And I was flying in a few days after seeing him.

  Then he spoke to me directly, as most Germans do: “Well, Argentina is also okay! I’ve heard that there are lots of Chinese, why don’t you go and see what they are doing? I don’t know what they are doing but I am sure they aren’t all cooking! Come back and tell me about it. What about `The Chinese culture in Latin America since the 19<sup>th</sup> Century`?”
  I was happy to hear that he was interested in my culture, but this topic can let someone dig in for at least 10 years!! My forehead was covered with marbles of cold sweat drops and I said to him politely: “Professor, this topic seems a bit too broad…”

  After a long chat he told me that he would be interested in the pedagogic field and my topic changed from the animals into human beings – “Chinese education in Argentina”.

  That the professors don’t like our suggestions is not unusual, but the usual is that I have a German friend who has been writing his PHD about the Chinese in Argentina and he has been trying to convince me to write this similar topic since two years ago already. His idea was that we could therefore cry together! But I rejected him again and again because I thought: `who wants to go to the end of the world`. Later on, I got to know an Argentinean friend in Germany unexpectedly who said I could go see his family and that a teaching internship could be arranged.

  In the end, I hadn’t worked in the school we planned and I only stayed 3 weeks with my friend’s family. In fact, I only planned to stay in Buenos Aires (Capital of Argentina) for 2 weeks in order to gather the needed information for my thesis, now I’ve been living here for several months already. Many incredible things have happened in these few months. I did not only work as an English teacher, but also Spanish and Chinese, plus I worked as an interpreter and many other different types of jobs. So many miraculous incidents have happened to me that even my first friend in Argentina `Aunty banana’ said: “Your life here is like a movie! Even if you tell people, they are not likely to believe!”

  I realized that there are many things you don’t need to plan because there is always a power that is guiding us. I don’t know what you want to call this, but the Chinese like to call it Yuan 『緣』or Yuan Fen 『緣份』。From now on, my German friend, who is going to share my suffering, calls me as his `Yuan Fen Sister`.

  Yuan 『緣』– this thing is indeed metaphysical and that you and I meet here through my words is certainly our Yuan which I truly appreciate.

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