Trogan-to-Chinese

The customer service manager of Grand Hyatt Hotel we stayed in Hanzou, about an hour & a half highspeed rail’s distance from Shanghai, hailed from USC too.

A bespectacled, thirtyish, slender built man in suit, he did resemble so many foreign engineering grad students we routinely encountered on any American college campus, let alone at South Central Tech. We chatted each other up after the hotel receptionist inadvertently merged our room on the hotel computer with another large group of North American tourists from Canada. After fumbling around, the young Chinese woman summoned help. Out came this guy and he saw my UCLA polo shirt.

Flashing that big, wide business smile of his, the first thing that came out of his mouth was " we eh beet jue en futbaw ". I know what he said and I really, really did not take umbrage at it because to me, the guy merely meant to tell me he was proud to have his business degree from an American university and ’ we beat you in football " was his way to chat up Americans, especially with one wearing his college archrival’s attire.

My wife knows my sentiments well. After the guy straightened out the situation, we got a junior suite rather than the double room we booked even. She complimented me for staying friendly and polite when she thought I would instantly snap back at him.

No way ma’am. Bruins always knew better.

The situation changes little since my teaching assistant days at the University of Wisconsin.

Engineering, applied science departments traditionally have disproportionate numbers of foreign students serving as either research or teaching assistants under professors supervising these assistants’ very own doctoral programs. During the time I was at Madison, my close friend was a research assistant with a chemical engineering professor there and I was a teaching assistant with an American history professor.

Ironically, he was one of a very, very few Anglo- American doctoral candidates at his department and I was the one and only Asian American one in my department. So in a way, my very own situation was, by happenstance, an aberration from my own observation of the situation.

Around the mid eighties, as I recall, University of Illinois’ undergrad students did stage a series of campus protest rallies regarding the situation. You said exactly what those young students felt with their education.

Now, more so around the big midwestern campuses in those days than here in California or New York areas, many young kids grew up never ever met another individual in person not looking the same, speaking the same as they did. I know the socio-economic circumstances changed since then. Many traveled abroad routinely even during their high school years, gaining first hand perception of other cultures in real places. Their tolerance towards individuals of different ethnicity more or less mellowed. But this is not to say that their acceptance level of a foreigner’s language problems, especially when the latter served as their classsroom instructor, would likewise diminish.

The chancellor of the Illinois campus tried to have it both ways then when he addressed the undergraduates’ concern. Because research oriented institutions thrived on federal, corporate research grants to attract big name professors in their respective fields to boost the overall academic image of the institution itself, sometimes only overseas foreign students have the dedication, perseverance to devote their time in the labs for these professors. earning nominal salaries or stipends in exchange for their own doctorate degree before they returned home to benefit their own country with the advanced education and expertise they acquired here.

Unfortunately, these foreign students did not go through our K-12 , state mandated language arts programs in reading and writing the way you and I, and many others did. But they do have the expertise, paradoxically, to teach the subject that verbally they found it awkward to articulate and explain. I remember the chancellor told the students repeatedly to overlook, as much as they could, the language portion and focus instead on the technical skills they could learn from the assistants.

Now, tasser, tell me how that would work if I said to you, forget those sickly, dying cows. Just concentrate on their milk productions.

I had a fit the other day talking with the LATimes customer service rep about restarting the subscription I suspended before I went to China. His filipino English totally befuddled me too. Well, what can I say.