Eric's Beijing Diary

Hmmm... this is getting to be a pattern. I guess it is the "late night" nature of my schedule now. It is late Friday night, but actually early Saturday morning. I really got late tonight, because I just couldn't manage to break away from the English corner at Renmin University. This is a chronic problem. Somehow this evening (Friday) we got into a discussion on the tremendous growth of Christianity in China. One guy said that he thought it was because of loneliness. In modern society, people in the cities are very lonely, so they turn to Christianity. He also mentioned things like the increasing divorce rate. He said that in Jesus Christ, people have found a friend who would never leave them. Another guy who was standing by said that God could not be a friend, because then He would not be God. They asked me what I thought about this. I said that although we, as Christians approach God with reverence, there are references in Scripture to men like Abraham who seemed to have a very personal friendship with God. But this friendship must always be based on God's mercy. One young lady there was a Christian, so I asked her to share her thoughts on why a "Western" religion like Christianity would be attractive to Chinese people. She said, "Before I received Jesus, I was not lonely, and I was not unhappy." This was an obvious response to the comments by the guy with all the theories. She continued to say that a friend of hers had been preaching the gospel to her, but she didn't really want to listen. Finally, she started reading the Bible. "The Bible told me that I was a sinner, and I knew that what the Bible was saying about me was true."

In Langfang this week, I gave the final examination to the freshmen. I spent a couple hours briefing them on this process the week before. I stressed to them the importance of choosing a good issue. I asked them if they could tell me what an issue was. Most of them said that it was a topic. I told them that an issue is, by definition, a conflict of values. An issue, therefore, is much more dynamic and engaging than a topic. Issues are interesting; topics are boring. I told them it was very important to focus on an issue that was important to them--take a position and defend it. Some of them got the point. And some of them didn't.

"My topic is about life. Life is...neiga..."

This is a very common mistake. Young people think they should pick a broad topic so that they will have plenty to talk about. But the reality is that by choosing such a large topic, they have given up any chance of narrowing their focus. And taking a position is out of the question, because there is no issue, just lots and lots of trivia jumbled together. One of the best discussions of this problem I have read is in a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, former professor of rhetoric at Montana State University. He talks about a young lady in one of his classes who froze when she was given a writing assignment. She just could not think of anything to say. So Pirsig told her to go down in the street and write about what she saw. She was still stuck. Finally, he told her to go down in the street, find a single brick on the wall, and describe it. She could not stop writing. It was pages later before she came up for air. Lack of focus is perhaps the primary obstacle to effective rhetorical communication.

Not surprisingly, the most effective and least nervous were those who chose to simply communicate their own thoughts. Some of them sounded like they had been reading a book of essays or something:

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. But today is a gift. That's why they call it the present."

And there is always one guy who thinks the way to an A is to flatter the professor.

"I have a lovely and handsome teacher named, Mr. Eric. He has a little fat, but I think he is a successful man."