I was born in the US, but when I was four my family and I moved to Cambridge, England. I loved my school in England and there was always something to look forward to when I went to school. I went to school one day and I was very pleasantly surprised with a red envelope that my friend had put on my desk that morning. I remember being so confused, I thought, “It isn’t a letter, is it, no it’s too small, or maybe? My birthday was ages ago though, maybe it was for Christmas? It is red after all,”. I carefully opened the envelope and to my surprise there were two large chocolate coins at the bottom. Wow! This is so nice, even though I didn’t like chocolate, it was still a nice gesture.
At break I went to thank her, and I also told her how sorry I was for not giving her anything for Christmas. She laughed. She explained to me that this had nothing to do with Christmas and that it was actually because her family celebrates Chinese New Year because they lived there for four years. “Ohhhhh!” I said. My guess was so far away from the answer and I realized then that my future was definitely not as an undercover detective like James Bond.
However, a much more important thing that I realized was that I was so focused on my own life and culture that I have never tried to immerse myself in or learn about other cultures. Of course every now and then we would do a project about food in different countries or watch videos that showed us different cultures, but it wasn’t the same. The only thing I knew about Chinese culture was that fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, and fortune cookies were all delicious Chinese foods. From then on I tried to learn more about that culture. I used my research projects to find out more about their celebrations and history. But I still did not know that much. When I got to my last year of school in England, I took the “language carousel”, which was a course that for a period of time you would learn a little bit of many different languages, among them, Chinese! I knew learning the language was both incredibly useful but also it would open a lot of doors for me to know more about the culture. I had two lessons only and I only learnt how to say, hello, and, thank you, and goodbye. For the next two weeks I said these words so many times, I was so proud to be making so much progress!
When I moved back to the US, I already knew I was going to join WIS (Washington International School). I remember my mum called me downstairs and told me that I had to pick my elective, we both really wanted me to take Chinese. It was so perfect! Even on the description it said: “no experience needed”, so maybe I was even going to be a little advanced!
I walked into my Chinese classroom and I said, “你好,” so proudly. I sat down and the Chinese teacher started talking. I did not understand anything of what she was saying. All of a sudden everyone stood up, so I just started copying, they all bowed in unison and sat back down. I was lagging two minutes behind everyone. This was so embarrassing. What happened to the “no experience needed”? For the rest of the class I tried to be as invisible as possible so the teacher wouldn’t pick me.
When I went home I told my mum about what happened. She told me I could either work hard to catch up or switch electives. I did not want to change, but it was so hard, how much did they learn in one year? I realized that if I changed electives I would be giving up on my pursuit of immersing myself in other cultures. I decided to not give up just because it was hard, I have always pushed myself and challenged myself, and I knew I could do it this time too.
I worked hard and stayed after school to get help from my teacher. A month or so later, I was fully caught up. All of my hard work paid off! What a relief! I was so proud of my effort and I was so much more immersed in Chinese culture.
As the year went on I started to realize that what I signed up for was not only a language course but also a Chinese culture immersion course. With my class we went to make dumplings, eat Chinese food and karaoke. We also learnt a dragon dance for Chinese New Year and presented it to the school in an assembly. And of course, we received beautiful red envelopes with money inside. Best of all, at the end of this year we are going to China with my class for a few weeks. We did so many things from learning to speak Chinese to playing Chinese games and doing dances from Chinese Instagram.
I am so grateful that I was given this opportunity to take this class because I am learning so much from it. I have made so much progress with learning the Chinese language and immersing myself in this wonderful culture. All of these decisions that I am so pleased I made are all thanks to my amazing friend and the beautiful red envelope she gave to me. Red really is a lucky colour!
