China Smiles

This is a letter about smiling. Some of it is about China (we went for a visa run and had a wonderful time!) but lots of it is about living overseas and sharing smiles with people.

 




Dear Mom,

I smile when I'm walking around, or even when I'm on my motorbike and out in the town.  I know that I'm weirdly tall and fair-haired and I have a giant nose--I'm something of a spectacle regardless of my facial expression.  But over time I've trained my face that when I'm out and about, my facial "zero" expression should be uplifted eyebrows and a smile to my mouth.  

Sometimes I'm just doing that and I get a smile in return, and I remember that I'm smiling by default but then I Really smile back to the person who's smiling at me, and then they know that they've been smiled at and then they Really smile back, and then sometimes we both even laugh.  It's nice.

We did a visa run to China last week, and I had the darndest time getting people to smile at me.  There wasn't any hostility (zero) toward my whiteness, even though we're not China's favorite nation right now.  I was in a state of heightened awareness about all the shenanigans the USA has been doing internationally, and what that could mean for me as an expat citizen abroad, so each time I went out walking or interacting with people in China I very intentionally set my face in a cheerful countenance.

They didn't smile back!  Actually they mostly never even made eye contact.  The people I passed seemed ... I've tried to find the right word and it keeps eluding me.  Solemn?  Sullen?  Definitely not all the way to Sad, but let me try Joyless?  I'm not someone who thinks I can judge a person's heart or motives by what they do, but I think it might not be too far wrong to say that you'd have seen Joylessness, too, if you'd been with me in the big city.  

It was a city of 8.5 million where I found it difficult, but not impossible, to meet people's eyes and share joy.  It's a small city in the southwest--If you've lived in China you'd probably know it, but otherwise you've never heard of it.  One time I went into a little hardware shop and the proprietor and his wife wanted to help me get supplies so I could repair a sink for our hosts (my pleasure), and they smiled at me.  Well, she smiled at me while her husband used loud Chinese to compensate for my lack of understanding.  (You've noticed, no doubt, that people all over the world talk louder at a foreigner who doesn't speak the local language?)  But he smiled a couple of times before our interaction was done, and it was such a Relief to get a smile.

When we left that city and went to a neighboring small town, though, people behaved much more "normally" --in a way that I'd expect throughout Vietnam and like it was in previous times when I've been in China.  People held their gaze upwards from the pavement directly in front of them, made eye contact, and smiled at me. 

It's the old cleaning ladies who are always MOST likely to reflect my smile.   I think maybe most people don't make eye contact with them.  Eye contact that stays, lingers long enough for the smile to transmit and reflect and reflect again.  I definitely can't communicate with them verbally (nor do I have the time to, as this happens all the time), but I am always on the lookout for someone to reflect my smile.  I want to thank them for their service, tell them that I see them, acknowledge their humanity and loveliness.

Here are (almost all) our pics from China.  Enjoy!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vSrnbpR2ihjxv8hj8

  

Love,

Tim/Janet

PS from Janet:

I have to tack on this little story: When we were on the street in the unsmiling city, and Tim was talking to our host about what he was noticing and asking her about it, I kid you not, a woman was walking toward him wearing a white sweatshirt with these words on it: Who's the funny looking kid with the big nose? (It's the title of a Peanuts cartoon book and is a reference to Snoopy, but man, was it funny as a backdrop to Tim's curiosity about why no one was smiling at him!)

The Shotts in China

Dear Mom,

We're going to spend this next week with the Shotts in China.  They are STILL THERE after all these years, loving kids and changing lives, and we count it a privilege to name them among our friends.

When we arrived in China in 1997, fresh out of college and called to three years of English teaching in a backwater city deep in the south-central hinterlands, it was these American neighbors who welcomed us with a box of necessaries.  I remember peanut butter, Ritz crackers, and two rolls of toilet paper, but there were other things.  The university had sent someone to pick us up in Beijing and they were providing on-campus housing, but I don't know how we'd have gotten on without Stan and Ruby.  They saved our lives!

They were English teachers at the time and living on the college campus, but the focus of their work was with the unwanted orphans.  This was 20 years into China's One Child Policy, so if a family gave birth to a girl or a disabled boy... that was it, the end of their chances for a good family, and the temptation to get rid of the baby and try again was high.  The local orphanage received many anonymous babies but had no capacity to care for them.  True-horror stories emerged of babies dying from cold/neglect and toddlers found strapped to potty chairs, and the Shotts realized they could maybe do something about it.

By the time we entered the picture, they had already been in China 10 years.  Weekly they would trek across the city to the orphanage and ask if any new babies had been dropped off.  Sick or well, the babies wouldn't survive long at the orphanage, and the orphanage would lose face (shame culture) if they were to ask the foreign couple for help, so it had to be the Shotts to go and ask.  "This one is too sick" they'd protest, but Ruby would take in the child and either nurse her back to health or hold her close while she passed into eternity.

I don't know how many people's lives they touched, but they touched ours.  Over the three years we were there, as young adults with no kids of our own, we observed them selflessly choosing the route of serving those who could never pay them back.  They set a high bar for what it can look like to take Jesus' words literally, and we've never forgotten.

Once the babies were well enough, the Shotts needed to be able to give them to other families for continuing care, so they connected with local families and created an ad hoc Foster Care system.  There are so many layers to that sentence.  It's easy to write "they created foster care" but ... we'd get way into the weeds if I tried to describe how many ways that was an uphill hike for them.  

Creating the network of foster caregivers was huge; life-changing for the carers and life-saving for the kids.  Nursing the dying babies through the nights... huge.  Lately they have been turning their focus to HIV-sick babies and kids, because again the orphanage doesn't have capacity to care for them, and still Stan and Ruby are there.

We have to leave Vietnam on a visa run every three months, and this time we get to go bless and be blessed by this wonderful family.  If you don't already have someone like the Shotts in your portfolio of overseas partners, please hit me up and I'll share how to get on their newsletter list.  They never ask for money, but as with all such projects they could do more if they had more.

All our best,

Tim/Janet

PS. China blocks most communications so it is likely that we'll be radio-silent until 12/12.  

PPS.  Here's a little glimpse of what we've been up to the past three nights:  https://www.facebook.com/reel/1845097312792360

Birthday Party

Dear Mom,

You'd have loved it (and simultaneously not loved it)--I wish you were here for my birthday party.

Some of the guests spontaneously offered to sing a benediction blessing:

Since I share a birthday month with Jesus, I opted to have us sing Christmas Carols instead of Happy Birthday (and a new tradition was born?).

I try to live life regret-free, but I regret that I didn't capture Thanh singing Mary Did You Know.  It was phenomenal.

We fed all the people.  That "we" is not a "Tim and Janet" but the work of many--my other friend Thanh helped me buy HEAPS of food and it was delivered (by motorbike) at 6pm and some other friends came early to decorate and set up food.

The nice thing about sharing a birthday month with the Big Guy is that your decorating theme is a given.  I never have to wonder if we should decorate "Under the Sea" or anything ... it's simply the day we put up Christmas decor, and that's one less decision and it's beautiful.

Guests came at 7pm and although some of them went home early, many of them stayed late into the night.  This morning we're providing work (cleaning the house) to one friend in need of work and to one lady who is a professional house cleaner.  The house cleaner, Nhung, was the one who was originally hired to clean this house when we were moving into it--the landlords had her here working when we visited and we discretely snagged her number.  She's glad of the work, and the cost to us is $6/hr, so we consider it a win/win!

I don't have any pictures that can communicate the press of bodies when we were all downstairs getting food before spreading out to the patio, the upstairs, etc.  In the picture above, there are even empty chairs!  But when we passed out candles to sing Silent Night at 8:30, we had exactly 50 candles and exactly 50 people to hold them.

The guest list was as eclectic as I could think to make it.  That's the part that created anxiety for people and would have for you, too.  So many unknown people!!

1. former students from the University of Foreign Languages
2. fiancés of these, who were 20 when we were here 10 years ago and are now inviting us to their weddings
3. international friends from Danang International Fellowship
4. two English clubs that we give our hearts to (We choose give them our time and energy, and we find that our hearts cleave to them like a kid's tongue to a frozen flagpole--there's nothing we can do to take back the mutual affection we feel for these English learners.)
5. the owners of the hotel we stay at when we first come, our landlords, and other friends we've made along the way. 

People came with gifts, but gifts are hard for me.  I get anxious when a gift is expected from me and it's very difficult for me to graciously receive gifts when the given item is something I don't want.  I very, very much wish that gift-giving would just disappear entirely--I've never learned how to swim in that current.

So I told people in my guest list "for gifts this year, I would like it if you help me stock up my snack bar."  The Vietnamese word I use for my snack cupboard is something like "corner kiosk where you can buy paper goods, snacks, shampoo packets, or a cold water."  It's in a wine rack that was built under the stairs that we've repurposed:

And the gift of those snacks... I authentically appreciate the gifts!  I'm sure some people would accuse me of Control issues on this, and I am not going to try to argue my way out of it.  I know people want to come not-empty-handed and so I channeled their desire to bring gifts into something that I could also appreciate.  It's a win-win?  Maybe?

Pics and Videos from my phone:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/6uqyWbcYk9R9HLqR7

Love,

Tim/Janet

PS.  My actual birthday party already happened in August.  I decided when I turned 50 that December is too cold for birthday parties, and I moved my birthday party to open-invitation birthday camping in August.  You're all invited.
So in December, when my day of birth rolls around, I've already done the shindig.  Except that in Vietnam it's NOT too cold for birthday parties!  We extended the party out onto the patio and had pretty great weather (light rain as opposed to pounding rain, and a couple days of mostly no rain at all in the preceding couple of days) and got to kick of the first of the season's Christmas parties in some ways, too.