My new friend is leaving . . .

So my friend Yongjia, a colleague serving as a fellow from China this year, is planning a big Chinese New Year celebration. We're all getting into planning the party for the year of the Ox. I'm taking him to Party City tomorrow to gather decorations. He's going to cook dumplings and download some music. We're going to play poker, treat the children with good luck money bags, and wear red underwear!

I live in a very small southern town, and we teach together at a community college. I gotta give props to Yongjia for deciding to spend his fellowship in absolute middle America, rather than a big shiny city. He's seeing laid-off Americans struggle through remedial college courses, struggle to pay for gasoline, and elect the first ever president of color. He's a cultural anthropologist, soaking up everything around him every single day that he's here. He came over to our house for Christmas Eve dinner and even went to church with us. My friends and colleagues and I took him to the Renaissance Fair and his first drive thru. We managed to get Yongjia to quit smoking, fed him turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes for the first time, and had him over to to micro-brew some beer. We have explained our expressions, our beliefs and our customs, and he's done his best to explain his. All in all, it's been one of the best examples of multicultural interpersonal communication I've ever seen.

And, the interesting thing about it is that he doesn't want to leave now.

He's excited to be going home to see his wife, but that's about all. China makes him unhappy. He feels oppressed there. I asked him if it was meaningful to him to go back to China and try to change it for the better, and he said that it wasn't possible for one man to do so. He views the government leaders there as corrupt. He came to our Halloween party and got to vote on best costume - joking that this was the first time he was ever able to vote. Interestingly enough, he won for best costume as well - dressing up as Zhong Kui, the Chinese Ghost Warrior.

He told me today that his mother thinks he's getting too fat, eating our American food. I laughed and told him that this was the opposite of the traditional American mother, who tends to want to feed you until you pop. (Or at least my mom does.) Of course, I reminded him that the quitting smoking probably had more to do with him eating more than his being in America, and surely a few extra pounds are better than carcinogens, right?

But I worry for Yongjia. I don't want his inquisitiveness and sense of humor swallowed up by censorship. I don't want his personal and professional choices to be limited by his government. I don't want his opportunities to decline or disappear entirely. In short, I want him to have the opportunities he would surely have here.

I plan to continue communicating with Yongjia after he returns to China next month - my new e-pal. Maybe the shrinking of the world through electronic communication will help ease his transition back into Manchurian culture. He tells us that his university will be sending another fellow, this time a woman, to take his place here, teaching his Chinese and cultural studies courses. I hope she can hold a candle to his friendliness and charm.

In the end, I'm sure she will be great. She'll be an individual, not like any other Chinese citizen. She'll be herself, with plenty of things for us to teach her and plenty of things for us to learn from her.

But I'll really miss hanging out with Yongjia.

好运气！

Good luck, Yongjia