I Met Someone New Again Today

I mentioned in the last edition of “I Met Someone New Today” that there was the occasional person about whom it was controversial to talk. One day I met an Iranian painter, and he is one of the many random people I have met who looked like he was from an Arab country. His wife, who wore a burka that did not cover her face, stood next to him when I said hello one night. That night, he told me that he is one of the artists to decorate the Iranian pavilion (which is beautiful!). Over the past few weeks we have seen each other several times, which is strange because there are so many people here and I leave my apartment at such random times of the day. I offered to help him skip the line at my pavilion, and he reciprocated by inviting me to his and giving me a folder full of his beautiful prints! I have seen him a few times since then, and one day he broke it to me that his wife was going to leave soon and not long after, he would too.

The reason that blogging about this is controversial is that the US government does not have diplomatic ties to that of Iran (which this painter does not like, by the way), so either I am forbidden to become his friend or at the very least blog about it. I would hereby like to encourage all of my peers to make friends with people from these types of countries! One of the points of this whole thing is to develop relations with other countries, and working solely with countries we already get along with seems rather pointless. This is the time when we can rise above disagreements and say to the people who don’t like the bickering that separates our governments, “This is the time! This is the place! This is the opportunity to join hands and set aside our quarrels for 6 months.” When I meet people who agree, it lightens my heart.

Update: I saw this man on the way back home today and he told me that his government does not want us to be friends either! I asked him “Why do our governments believe we cannot be friends when we obviously can? If we can tell that someone is worth our time, make use of our judgment.

As a side note, this is the 5^th time I have randomly seen this man around our village, which is extremely odd because we live with so many different people! It is statistically impossible for us to see each other at such a high frequency, and yet it is so. It takes a greater intellect than I possess to explain why we have met so many times. I don’t see my own roommates that often!

I Met Someone New Today

I Met Someone New Today

This is a new column that I think is very important for international relations between countries. Some say it’s controversial and that I shouldn’t talk about it because officially we might not be the best of friends with every single country here at the Shanghai World Expo 2010. I think that’s bureaucratic bs, and this whole event should be looked at as an opportunity to make friends and strengthen relations while we have the chance. Thus my column entitled “I Met Someone New Today” will not be censored on this blog, whereas it may be censored on others.

My first night in Shanghai, I met a man named Bubba who had opened his own BBQ restaurant/sports bar. He opened it inside our secluded “Expo Village” apartment community, expecting the thousands of international volunteers and employees to support him. After my telling him where I was from, he said “Memphis sure does have some famous BBQ!” Then he asked me to create an account on some Shanghai restaurant voting site, and in return gave me a free draft beer. Incidentally, one of his servers is a blond woman from Sweden.

My second day in Shanghai, I was on the way back from our village cafeteria when I met 2 Israeli men who had just opened a café nearby. I could tell that they were Israeli by listening to their accents, and when I spoke a little Hebrew to them, they asked me if I were Jewish, I replied “Ken, ani Yehudi!” They invited me to their café, and it was nice.

The most significant Jewish event I've been a part of

Here goes, and it's long.

Yesterday, I went to the grand opening ceremony of the Ohel Rachel synagogue on Shaanxi Bei Lu. After numerous years of being a museum dedicated to the memory of the kind Shanghai mayor who, all those years ago, issued 30,000+ passports and visas to Eastern European Jews who would have otherwise died at the hands of the Nazis. I read about it on the Chabad Jewish web site, and asked Rabbi Alevsky about it when he returned my email. I invited some people, most of them work in the admin office with me; although I told Trevor a few days beforehand, I waited until the day of to send out a mass email to everyone in my program, which said “Anyone who is Jewish, you should go with me to this opening.” I also told Max Parasol, a Jew who works in the Australia pavilion, and in the end he was the only one to accompany me to the ceremony.

The ceremony was lovely: attended by Jews of all shapes, sizes, levels of religiosity, and nationalities, it was truly an amazing time and place to be a Jew in Shanghai. There Chinese women holding their babies, and though I assumed they had converted to Judaism, I did not ask; there were many French Jews of both genders and multiple age groups, and in fact the copies of the Chumash in the foyer were translated into French: Le Pentateuch. There were many Israelis, all speaking Hebrew, some with large families and others were mid-twenties, and some of them work in the Israel pavilion at the Expo. There were also Australian Jews, some of whom Max already knew, some he hadn’t ever met but because Australia has a small population and a small number of large cities they had visited several of the same places. Out of the American guests, there were New Yorkers, a guy from Atlanta, two from Mississippi, one from Boston and one from Los Angeles. Some of them had been to Memphis and some had been to other parts of Tennessee, in fact even some of the foreigners (we were all foreigners last night! That is, except for the Chinese staff, Chinese wives and children, Chinese reporters, and Chinese photographers. There might even have been some Chinese politicians in attendance) had visited Memphis. One of the New Yorkers sang parts of Johnny Rivers’ “Long distance information, give me Memphis, TN,” and wanted me to sing along with him.

During the opening ceremony, several rabbis and prominent Jews in Shanghai talked about the fact that we were all there at an amazing period in time. Indeed, when one thinks about how the last time the synagogue was used for prayer it was for refugees from the Holocaust, and this time it is for people who had the right to leave wherever they were to come here, it is quite significant. Three groups of prominent men, including rabbis and the president of Ohel Rachel, were invited to cut ribbons and say prayers before posting the mezuzot to the door frames. Next, we located prayer books and entered the large chapel to say Shabbat prayers Orthodox/Chabad style. We prayed, sang songs like Lecha Dodi, danced around the room, clapped our hands and so forth. When it came time for the Mourner’s Kaddish, it was especially significant for me: I said the Mourner’s Kaddish for my mother, for the first time since her funeral last year. A tear came to my eye and I kept thinking about her the rest of the night. I stood next to an old man who said it too, and he looked at me as if to say, “Why are you saying this?” I explained to him and asked him how long I should say it during prayers, and he said “For 11 months following her death, according to the Hebrew (lunar) calendar.” Following prayers and announcements, there was Shabbat dinner!

It was my first Shabbat dinner, Orthodox-style, in a long time, so I was happy. Bottles of wine and challot were placed on the tables and, sorry to say, we grouped together by native language spoken. I met some interesting Jews there, including a teacher from NYU who has been teaching Chinese students about the business world in China. He wants me to lecture his class about what it’s like to work in business in China, especially about delivering progress reports, which I will actually have to do for the first time before I speak to them. I met a man who owns and rents out apartments in China, a student from Atlanta who studies Chinese and business like I do, an Israeli who works at their pavilion, a French woman, a French family (so not totally by first language), and a couple other Americans whom I didn’t talk to that much. The menu for the evening included vegetable salads, noodle salads, salmon, meat, potatoes, soup, couscous, cookies, brownies, and more, so it was traditional and wonderful. Towards the end of the meal, we were treated to a couple of sermons.

The second and more memorable one, was about a couple of Chabad rabbis who traveled around to various synagogues and Jewish communities to investigate. One man they visited, who lived in Chicago, tried to offer money as a donation to the rabbis, which they turned down. He was surprised, and asked “Why then did you come? Who am I that you should come see me?” The rabbis responded “Every Jew is significant and as important as a letter in the Torah,” referencing the fact that if a Torah scroll is missing even a single letter, it is invalid. This implies that all Jews are a part of Judaism and, in turn, significant and holy. They relayed this story to the rabbi who told them to go and he turned ashen white before saying “We are more important even than that: a letter on a Torah scroll can be erased or cut out, while a Jew is as indestructible and important as an engraving of a letter in the original tablets of the Ten Commandments; once the Jew has been created, there is no way to totally erase him/her.” Sermons (Dvar Torah) that talk about the importance of Jews and how we should all feel significant and valuable, like the world was created for me, to be a light unto the nations, etc., always make me feel good and worthwhile. This is the perfect lecture to hear when one is depressed or just having a bad day, if one takes it to heart and actually listens to the rabbi during his speech.

After the meal, we said the Birchat Hamazon (after meal prayer), and some of us hailed taxis, others walked to their hotels, and still others remained behind to sing/pray/talk about Torah lessons. Considering my religious interest, desire to be part of something great, and senior project which I intend to turn into a longer paper, it was the perfect place for me to be last night. Baruch Hashem for helping me find out about the opportunity and actually attend it. The world is a beautiful place, “and worth fighting for.”

Language

The next point I want to make is about strangers and foreigners. Imagine first that you are someone from any other country in which you were taught very little English, if any. Your first day in the USA, you enter several convenience stores to buy some food and you are not presented with any food you are accustomed to eating. You flag down a taxi, but since you cannot speak English you are unable to get where you need to go. In fact, you are expected to speak English, and discriminated against if you cannot. Let’s say you do know how to say “Hello, nice to meet you, thank you,” or any other common phrases heard in every language. Are you complimented on your pronunciation? Are you told in any way that you have done a good job in learning English, or asked where you studied it? I’m sure you realize

Now take a look at China. Do you know a single Chinese phrase? If you are not afraid to say “Ni Hao” (hello) to a Chinese person, he or she will love you for it! They say it back, ask you “Where did you study,” and compliment your speaking ability. They are pleased, to say the least, which is more than I have said to anyone learning English, I’m sorry to say. Why do you think that is?

Character

A 22 year old Chinese friend of mine told me that Confucian values aren’t prevalent in China anymore, that it’s a myth. The implications of this are that the importance of the masses and community are no longer as important as those of the individual, and with the rise of capitalism it is easy to believe that. For instance, how can every shop that sells identical goods possibly survive if they are willing to pass a sale along to his neighbor? Why would someone buy the same good from multiple vendors if that person only needs one of them? The answer might surprise you: not only do they find a way to survive, but they lead customers to others shops “Miracle on 34^th Street” style. Here’s an example: I needed an adapter to insert my old camera’s memory card into my computer, and I went around several booths in one of many gigantic electronics malls. One of the shopkeepers finally understood and led me to the person who sold them. He expected no payment from the second shopkeeper or me, and returned to his shop to await his next customer. The first point is that they look out for each other. They may not be following all of the rituals that Kong zi (Confucius) taught, but the community’s good is ingrained in them. The same value is reflected when one has forgotten or dropped something: they rush to return it. I have heard people running up to me to return a few Chinese RMB that I dropped, and there is a story about when one of my coworkers left a bag in a restaurant he frequented, and one of the owners delivered it to his apartment. Do you think “Finders keepers, losers weepers” translates into their language or philosophy?

The way things work around here

你好！

As some of you may know, most Expo pavilions were supported mostly by the governments of their respective countries. For instance, oil-rich governments like those of Angola and Saudi Arabia had plenty to spend; in fact one Saudi Arabian official was quoted as saying "Money is no object," thus their large "Moon Boat" pavilion, complete with the largest movie theater in the world, trees supposedly from native Saudi Arabia (some sources say they repeatedly died, so look-alikes were brought in from somewhere in southeast China). Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the U.S. government was restricted by law from contributing federal funds to pay for pavilions, so all of the money had to be raised privately. That was incredibly tough, especially given the state of the economy, until Secretary Clinton got involved. She made it her job to find the money, and with less than a year before the Expo was to begin, they found the money and built the pavilion. ("they found the money and built the pavilion" summarizes the hard work of very many politicians, businessmen, architects, coordinators, etc., but to tell the whole story would take more than just one blog post!)

Through the generous contributions of many U.S.-based corporations, the U.S. has an "eagle-shaped" pavilion (hardware), made up of our exhibits, informative movies, and a gigantic Astro-Vision screen outside (not Jumbo-Tron, get it right). Its wings consist of the gift shop below the VIP area, and the quick serve restaurant (not fast food, get it right) below the Administration offices. Also on the top floor is the garden meant to resemble First Lady Michelle Obama's garden.

We also have a very diverse staff (software) including: accountants, marketers, PR, operations, chefs, waiters, security, shopkeepers, sound technicians, so many more, and of course the Student Ambassadors, the "best part, the part that people will remember long after they've forgotten all our exhibits" who have been integrated into almost every department from VIP services to Accounting (ahem!) to Operations and Queue Management, etc. We all hail from different parts of the world: some students were born in China but lived significant parts of their lives in the U.S., almost all of our maintenance and security staff is Chinese, the manager of the uniform room is from Australia, and one of the supervisors of the Hospitality department is Italian!

Incidentally, several of our patrons have shared comments such as "she was so impressed by the student ambassadors and how they are greeting the audience and shepherded them through the experience safely, efficiently, and warmly, and all with only a couple days rehearsal!" and "A number of guests commented that the USA Pavilion was one of the most welcoming pavilions visited because of the friendly demeanor of you, our staff. They were extremely impressed by your Chinese and indicated we were one of the best trained staffs they had encountered on the Expo Grounds." Let's hear it for training classes!

Check out my youtube channel or facebook profile (Search for Mark Wlodawski) for supplementary photos and videos of my experiences here.