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The Great
Toss-up
I've
been asked to write a bit about how I became interested in studying
China and where that decision has taken me. I'm always a bit
confused when people ask me this question, because I've never
fully sorted out the past myself, and I have a hard time comprehending
or even believing the past four or five years. If what follows
seems a bit off the wall, then I can assure you, it was both
more bizarre and more exciting than I can begin to express.
Everyone has their own story: here is a bit of mine.
It's been said that the flight of a butterfly in Argentina can
affect the weather in New York City. The concept is easily dismissed,
but perhaps not given the consideration it is due. Too infrequently
do we muse over the intricate connections that create the realities
of every moment. Perhaps we are frightened by the sheer volume
of the prospect; by our utter and complete inability to ever
finish the task, as doing so would require starting at the beginning,
and ending at the end, and to branch off in all directions until
we have considered every one thing that has led to another thing.
In the spirit of reasonableness and human limitations, then,
I will try here to retrace a single event and everything which
led up to it. But even then I am not giving the whole truth.
For I must admit that I cannot retrace every detail; cannot
branch in endless directions, for even were I to fill one hundred
volumes of ten thousand pages each, I would still come up far
short. So I start with a disclaimer: this story is full of holes,
unpolished information, unopened doors, and outright biased
perceptions of reality. I have pursued some factors and left
out others according to my discretion, the limitations of my
knowledge about what happened in the first place, and the simple
fact that some memories stand out more than others. So follow
me, if you will, as I tell the strange and unusual story of
how I ended up in China; though it may seem a bit insignificant
to you, I think that in its reflection of the randomness of
life we all share, and especially to those surprised to find
themselves fascinated or at least a bit curious about China,
it is perhaps worth a look.
Of course to get to the root of the matter you have to start
when I was born. But this is absurd and perhaps we ought to
start with a doctors office. There I sat, bored and annoyed,
waiting for my yearly track physical, staring at a shoddy pile
of old magazines. A copy of U.S. News and World Report caught
my eye, and I began leafing through it. "Valparaiso?"
I thought as I thumbed through the article. I'd never heard
of the place but I liked the sound of the name. I didn't think
much of it one way or the other at the time, but the name stuck
in my head. Then came Spring, Summer, and Autumn. It was in
Autumn that I began applying to colleges. By this point I had
all but forgotten about Valparaiso, having already chosen nine
or ten schools to apply to. I considered myself done with the
applications, and sent the last one off with a sigh of relief
and a vow to never fill out so many applications again. But
there was a certain detail which ended up throwing all those
efforts out the window. I had decided to drop my Spanish IV
class in the middle of the semester and take Astronomy II, mostly
because I was tired of Spanish and wanted a break in my senior
year. It was at that time that my interest in Astronomy began
to multiply rapidly. But now I'd sent out all my applications.
What was I to do? In my confusion I pulled out the old Baron's
college guidebook again and looked in the index under "Astronomy."
At a first glance I was a bit intimidated. The names "Harvard,"
"Columbia," and "Yale," beamed at me, daring
me to even try to humiliate myself by applying. Thinking the
subject was reserved for ivy-league schools at the undergraduate
level, I was about to close the book when the strange name "Valparaiso"
caught my eye once again, as it had nearly a year earlier in
that doctor's office. Supposing those people, whoever they were,
who first decided to name this town "Valparaiso" had
chosen a more commonplace name like "Cornville" or
"Farmington," I think I can rightly assume I wouldn't
be sitting here today in England writing this essay. But, just
as the name of that seaport in Chile must have caught the eye
of the people who first named this town, so Valparaiso caught
my eye, and the fact that I had seen it before only reinforced
this peculiarity. But do recall that I was positively sick of
filling out applications. With no plans and no homework that
evening, however, I hand-wrote a short note requesting an application
and dropped it in the mail. I didn't know if I would ever fill
out the application, I was too lazy to type the request like
I had done for all the other schools, and I all but doubted
my sanity as I considered the idea of filling out another application.
Had the letter been lost in the mail, I wouldn't have bothered
to write another. Afterthoughts, it seems, are not always sources
of intense motivation. But the application did come, and I managed
to weasel my way out of writing another essay by typing in "Valparaiso"
where I had previously written another school's name. Then the
letters started coming back. How Valparaiso kept making the
cut I'll never know. But it did, and I sort of thumped my head
when I finally realized that was where I was going. Now that
I was going to VU I of course filled out the necessary paperwork.
One of these items was the housing form. On the form I indicated
that I would like to have a foreign roommate, mostly because
I had once had a Korean stay at our house for 6 weeks and thought
the experience very interesting, and thought it might be interesting
to have it again. I didn't specifically request to have a Korean
as a roommate, so it was pure luck that Lim Chul-min ended up
as my roommate. He almost didn't, I should mention, because
I noticed that I was in a smoking room (Chul-min, it turned
out, was a smoker). I had, by mistake, indicated on my housing
form that I wouldn't mind a roommate who smoked. After rethinking
this I decided it wasn't in my best interest and told Valparaiso
to please switch me to a non-smoking room. They did so and quite
surprisingly moved Chul-min as well - though I'd never met him
and it would have been no problem to leave him in the smoking
room. I am confident had I indicated on my form that I did not
want a smoking roommate, I never would have been roomed with
Chul-min in the first place. But, as it turned out, we were
roomed together, in a non-smoking room. I never told him why
he had, to his continued bewilderment, ended up in a non smoking
dorm. Thus, as you will see later, all of this can be linked
to my saying I didn't mind a smoking roommate when really I
did. And it can go further back, as you've seen. Chul-min and
I got along quite well. So well, in fact, that there can be
little doubt we influenced each other quite a bit. I gained
a new respect for Asian cultures and as a result, and sometimes
went with him occasionally to little get-togethers that he and
the other Koreans had. One event that I went to was some kind
of function of the East Asian Society, which one specifically
I don't remember. Several years later, as president of that
same organization, I received a folder which happened to contain
the "interest" form I had filled out at this very
dinner. To my amusement, I found that I had marked none of the
boxes. At this dinner I was first introduced to the Hangzhou
program, though I thought nothing of it at the time. Still,
my interest in Asia was growing, and I decided to take the Traditional
East Asian Civilization course in the spring, which I can say
was a combination of both my interest in Asia sparked by my
roommate, and the fact that I was considering a History major
at the time (I had since dropped my Physics and Astronomy majors,
pretty much sick and tired of the whole subject, which was the
main reason I had come to Valparaiso in the first place). So
I took the class. It was in that class that the professor mentioned
to us that the meetings for the study abroad programs were approaching,
and he handed us all flyers about the various programs. At the
time I was only seriously considering the program to England,
but at my roommate's urging I also attended the meeting for
the Hangzhou program. I was unsure as to which one I wanted
to go on, and even if I wanted to go that year. At this point
though, I was past the application deadline for the Hangzhou
program by about two weeks. The application for the program
to England wasn't due until August. So I called the office of
International Studies and asked if I could still turn in the
application to study in Hangzhou. They told me that 11 of the
12 slots were already filled, but I could still apply if I wanted.
So I rushed the application down that same day and mentioned
to them during my interview (which they held that day as well)
that I wasn't even sure which program to do. The director of
international studies said if I knew what was good for me I'd
go to China, because England just wouldn't be the kind of experience
he thought I was looking for. He didn't make it easy for me
though, by promising me a spot on the England program. So I
told him to assume for now that I was going to China but not
to hold me to it. I had never had any special interest in China;
I had always been interested in it but had not taken a special
interest in it and was really a bit confused at this point,
when I thought about it, how I had managed to apply for the
China program at all, given the many other programs that VU
offered. I thought it through, and after the first meeting (which
I almost missed because I fell asleep and was 30 minutes late)
for those (except me) definitely going to China I decided to
take a huge gamble and just go. At the time I didn't really
think of it as profound. I knew it meant 5 months of my life,
but it didn't seem like that at the time. At the time it was
more like, "hey, why don't I go to China?"
It is a bit overwhelming to consider the details that go into
life changing events. Sitting here now in Oxford, taking a break
to write this little essay and surrounded by mugs of tea and
piles of Chinese character flash-cards, I can only laugh at
myself. But the truth is I am quite satisfied with the decisions
I've made. I came to Valparaiso without the slightest idea that
I would, in the four and half years since I started my undergraduate
work in 1997, go to China three times (for nearly a year and
a half altogether), and end up in Oxford doing a masters degree
in Modern Chinese Studies. What I can say, though, is that without
the people and institutions set up at Valparaiso to spark an
interest in Asia among otherwise uninterested students, and
most importantly, the tireless efforts of people like Professor
Zhimin Lin to maintain and cultivate that interest, there is
little doubt in my mind that I would be nowhere near where I
am today. I am especially excited to learn of the large grant
that has recently been provided by the Freeman Foundation to
bring even more VU students in contact with China, both as a
focus of study and as a compliment to another subject they may
already be engaged in. I encourage students to not hesitate
to take advantage of this exceptional opportunity. I almost
didn't take advantage of the opportunities I had, and though
I sometimes wonder where I'd be if I hadn't, I have no regrets
- China is the most fascinating place on earth, and it is both
a privilege and a joy to spend my time studying it. At least,
that's what I say to keep myself reading in the wee hours of
the morning. But the funny part is that I believe it.
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