本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛I came from Beijing last summer to study journalism at UBC. My Canadian experience takes a new shape every single day, newer than I can handle, so I’d like to storytell it for the old folks to critique.

Politeness

My first culture shock came from Canadian politeness. I played soccer in UBC’s league and couldn’t stand the fact that people were so nice to me. If I kept the ball to myself without passing, say, back in China, guys would call me a “ballhog” and names; when I do it here they say, “Do you need any support?”
Sweet, the result is, as you can imagine, I always refuse to be supported.

Friendliness

I like the fact that strangers sometimes greet you with the warmth of a friend. It’s even nicer in Vancouver Island where people new to each other can engage themselves in a talk for no reason.
Since I came I’ve made more friends than I expected. My Caucasian roommates are beautiful people and we had a good time playing “mafia”, sharing food and shouting “Go Canucks go!”
Do we have any problem with each other? Yes we do. A roommate of mine makes a lot of noise when he makes love, and the wall between us is too thin to contain the moaning. But I am not too upset about that, as he does it only twice a day.

My pushers, my best friends

“Welcome to BC,” said my classmate Mike on my birthday party as he took out a pipe from his pocket.
My jaw hit the ground when he laid some tea-like stuff in the pipe and said it was a birthday gift he bought me from Hasting.
“I don’t even smoke cigarette, man, and you give me pot?” I turned him down.
He was so upset that it’s not exaggerating to say that he was hurt.
But he didn’t give up. He started to invite other guys to take inhales rotationally. I was surprised to find that half a dozen of my classmates, male or female, are so marijuana-friendly that they smoke it like a chimney.
“Come on, man, this is BC,” they can’t wait to stone me.
And I took my first inhale. It didn’t work on me though, probably because I never smoked cigarette and was unable to force the air into my lung.
Mike was so happy about becoming my pusher.
I have another pusher Geoff, my roommate who tries to make me a Christian. He bought me a bible, took me to church and all kinds of Christian parties.
I like his earnestness in trying to “save” me, though I don’t like the idea of being saved by somebody whose existence is in question. I enjoy singing songs with lots of people in church – not when SARS is spreading – and listening to their discussion on life and death. It’s a big part of Canadian culture worth experiencing.
Though neither of them has changed me successfully, my pushers have become my best Canadian friends. I spent thanksgiving and Christmas with their families on the Island. My first taste of turkey, first self-made Christmas tree and first talk with sexy country girls – everyday has been a new experience, thanks to my friends.

Nasty times

Did I have blue times in Canada? Yes. The first time I felt being discriminated was when I interviewed an immigration official on the government’s plan to disperse immigrant settlement.
“Your questions are nonsense,” she tried to intimidate me, “They don’t make any sense.”
“You are just a student,” she went on, “You are not professional enough.”
What hurt me most was that she said “Do you understand the English that I am speaking?” as she knew that I was from China.
It hurt me so much that I was even afraid of hearing her voice when I went over my tape, something I usually do before writing a news article.
It has been my worst Canadian experience, but I take it as an individual behavior rather than society as a whole. I should say ninety nine times out of a hundred people I interview are nice to me; the percentage is much higher than what I experienced in China.
In fact, some bizarre experience helps me learn more about Canadian culture.
I was wanted by a cop last October. Assigned by a mad professor to find out the body condition of Wei Amanda Zhao, I phoned Vancouver’s coroner and made some guesswork which I asked her to confirm.
This tight-lip lady turned out to be a nervous nanny. Not only did she refuse to tell me anything, but she told the Burnaby police that I had “hold-back” information which they withheld from the public. God knows, maybe my guesswork happened to be right.
So an RCMP guy called “Tyson” started looking for me. He called the heads of my school for information on me and I was scared because I didn’t know if he wanted to arrest me.
When he finally got me on the phone, he was condescending, if not threatening. In a humble way I answered all his questions and explained to him that I didn’t have any “hold-back” info. At last he was bored I guess and gave up questioning.
But I regret being nice to him. I regret not exercising my rights guaranteed by the Constitution and I am probably not gonna have any more opportunity to exercise it! I should have teased him and got more information on the case as an exchange.
Conclusion: You don’t have to be nice to a Canadian cop unless you’ve broken the law.

Go out and talk to people

Canadian culture is not carried by the Rocky Mountains, I believe, but the people they nurture.
Informed and intelligent, hospitable and artless, this is largely what I find Canadians.
Many of them have traveled around the world and I’ve learned a lot more about Europe and Africa by talking to them. Even about China, they sometimes know better than I do. For example, I didn’t know Google was banned in my country last September until they told me so.
It’s always been an excitement for me to scoop up interesting people in this brand new culture.
I’ve done a video documentary with two of my classmates on a girl who’s survived on the street without her family. An ex drug dealer and addict, she broke my stereotype of desperate people needling themselves on Hasting. I never knew they had human faces until I got to know her.
She’s a good rapper who writes rhyme and performs with a passion for life. Her energy spins with her as she dances.
“I got the skeletons in the closet
But that don’t bother me
I be the soldier from the jungle approximately
My corrupt past didn’t take me
Never beat me, never been locked up in society’s cage.”
She writes and raps. She has a faith that keeps her strong, that has pulled her out of the quagmire and leads her towards a better tomorrow. She now starts fresh in a job training program and paints murals over the city’s graffiti.
“I’m goin’ up in flames
Never hold me down”
I decide that the part of Canadian life she’s shown me is never to be learned at school.

Education

Now back to school, it took me quite a while to figure out why I had studied so hard here, like never before.
It could be that my classmates are workaholics. Some of them work like masochists, and take inhuman pleasure out of it. I guess I am more or less pressured by the fact that they work like crazy, if they are not.
But why do they do so? My answer is that they love what they’ve chosen – and they drop out if they don’t – which is a big thing about Canadian education, free choice and motivation.
Few of my schoolmates have entered the program without being committed to journalism. Two students did come to “see how it goes” and they’ve dropped out because they don’t love it.
Fortunately I love what I am taking. This I believe has been more important than pressure in keeping me going.
In fact, I have made some contribution to Canada’s education, though by mistake. Looking for a TAship when I first came, I ran into a program called “humanities 101” sponsored by UBC. It offers free education to people aged from 20 to 70 who have not had opportunity to go to college.
It was not because I had a good heart that I undertake this unpaid TAship; I said it was an accident. I didn’t know what “volunteer” meant when I saw the job posting, which could be deadly for a job hunter in Canada.
When I found it out it was too late to withdraw, so I assumed that I had a good heart and moved on with it.
It turned out to be a rewarding experience. I got to know underrepresented and disadvantaged people from different parts of society: an old fisherman hurt by fish farming, a jobless immigrant crippled by language problem and a girl who found “six bucks sucks…”
The only pity in my one year study is that I dropped out from a minor course of Canadian history. I took it only because I wanted to know more about the country, but unfortunately it was too hard for me. The only thing I learned from that course: It’s nothing like Chinese history.

Employment

A job doesn’t come easily, especially for an international journalism student. I spent tons of time applying for a summer internship, which is a requisite for my degree, but failed to find one in Canada.
While my schoolmates go to work for the Toronto Star, the CBC and the Vancouver Sun for $ 500--$1,000 Canadian a week, I can only struggle to get a job in SARS-hit Hong Kong, for as little as 6,000 HKD a month.
But I know I shouldn’t complain. If there’s anything to blame, it’s my English. The one year education has helped me a lot; without it I wouldn’t even get a job in Hong Kong.
Hopefully the internship will add to my resume and help me get into mainstream media next year when I graduate. To my encouragement, a second Chinese student who went to Hong Kong last summer has made it to the Toronto Star.
If I couldn’t find a job here upon graduation, I wouldn’t blame Canada. Going back home is not a bad choice. The whole point of being in Canada to me is not to get a visa, but to learn as much as I can.

End

I enjoyed reading the article by the Waterloo student from Peking University. I’ve written this only to provide a different perspective of a Chinese arts student in Canada.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net