Dinner with Sam in Nanjing

     Last Saturday night in Nanjing we had dinner with Sam, a young American who's in his third year teaching English at the university there.  Sam's uncle had met Terry at a conference and urged him to contact his nephew.  Terry did, email exchanges followed, and finally we had a chance to meet and have dinner together.  Sam suggested walking to a restaurant near our hotel that has a reputation for serving great Nanjing food.  This was a place we most likely would not have chosen on our own--it was huge, kind of kitschy, riotously loud, and there was a wait for a table--but we ended up having a great time hanging out with noisy noshing Nanjingers and talking with Sam.
     Actually, if Terry and I had gone there on our own, we'd probably still be waiting for a table.  Apparently you didn't just take a number and wait to be called.  Way too passively Western.  Every few minutes Sam was shouting at the host from our perch in the waiting area, just like others who wanted a table, and Mr. Host would shout back.  Occasionally he'd go over and stand right next to Mr. H, gesture at the numbers on the list and shout some more.  All of this was in Mandarin, of course, and all in good fun.
     The restaurant was a great big open hall, where hundreds of eaters sat on short benches around heavy wooden tables.  Sam consulted with us and then ordered some tasty dishes.  New ones for us were a delicious vegetable that looked like a plate of parsley stems, a pork and vegetable dish in a savory brown sauce with black beans and "tofu" made from rice, and sliced lotus root in pomegranate molasses sprinkled with sesame seeds, sweet enough to qualify for dessert (that's what's in the rectangular dish on the table above).
     Our dinner conversation was really enjoyable, surprisingly so, considering that everything had to be yelled over the din, in addition to overpowering the painfully loud entertainers, which was two women singing and playing traditional instruments.    Sam is from the Boston area.  He graduated with a psychology degree, plus came away with a clutch of philosophy and Asian studies classes and 3 years of Mandarin.  One of his Chinese professors had connections at Nanjing University and that's what led Sam to his job. He was originally going to stay only a year, but liked his job and the city so much he's been there nearly 3 years and plans to stay another.
     When he arrived in Nanjing Sam said his 3 years of Mandarin in college just barely were enough to actually communicate, but he's obviously worked at developing his language skills.  One regret, he said, is that his spoken Mandarin is now nonstandard--he speaks with a Nanjing accent.  Provincial accents often make communication difficult or even impossible between ordinary Chinese from different parts of the country.  Sam said it was really disheartening to visit Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong over his Chinese New Year break and find that his hard-won Mandarin was useless in most places here.
     When asked what surprised him most about living in Nanjing, he said that people are friendlier and more helpful than he expected.  Most Chinese people he's met regard Americans favorably, he said, perhaps because they're perceived as having an enviable standard of living.  Are his students bothered by  the environmental degradation in China that's resulted from rapid industrialization these last 30 years?  They are to some degree, Sam said, but mostly they're concerned about getting a good job and making enough money to live comfortably.  I would say that's probably what the majority of U.S. college students are mostly thinking about, too.
     Sam's a good teacher:  before we parted, he wrote out the information we needed to find our train back to Shanghai the next day and then insisted that we practice saying "gao tie", bullet train, exaggerating the vowels and tones and having us repeat it a few times.  He gave us some good tips for doing some sightseeing in Nanjing the next day, too.
     We enjoyed hearing about another expat's experiences and observations.  It will be interesting to see how Sam's experience in China plays into his next moves once he goes back to the U.S.