Hainan Daydreams & Idoltry

My roommate, Joanne, thinks it's wonderful that where we live in Hainan, they're still 50 years behind. I'm not sure that I can marvel at that claim. The loud motorbikes that exhaust smelly diesel fumes and the open sewer drains that give off even more sinister stenches do not reveal a charming and quaint backwardness.

This is also a woman who can't seem to get a grip on the idea that I am Chinese and American. While I got over the fact that I am living with a Canadian during our first week, she is still going on about how I really am different from other Chinese girls and that I don't know everything that is Chinese. Sometimes when she is talking to me, I think that Joanne looks like George Bush Jr. with a sort of blank look in her eyes as she professes things that I don't care about like her belief in Jesus as her lord and savior.

The Born Agains outnumber me here in Wenchang, so I'm not about to disagree with their beliefs or get into a discussion about how I am Buddhist through and through. I have graciously accepted their invitations to Sunday lunch and I even watched "The Passion" with Joanne. It only convinced me never to watch another movie by Mel Gibson.

Today at lunch which we have every Friday at the Dicks' home, Joanne asked me if I understood what Born Again means. Quite frankly, I know little, I said and to be honest I said to myself, I've had little interest in their mission. Any religion that needs to increase its numbers in order to measure its success is not truly spiritual. Anne's hubby John from Melbourne tried to explain it as there being a ravine between myself and God. I need Jesus to cross the ravine. According to Joanne, I am not a living soul until I have accepted Jesus into my life as the one true savior. Only then will I be given a new soul that will connect me to God. A little scary? Yes, I know. And I have to live with this around me for nine more months. On the upside, Deanna, James, John, Anne and Joanne are lively, like to dance, play music and joke around. They are for the most part, "normal" people except when it comes to talking about being "Born Again." Some talk about it as if its like AA as though before being reborn, they were complete addicts to the ills of life and heading to hell. Now, all is blessed. Whenever something good happens, God is blessing us and when something bad happens, its the devil's fault.

Today, my students are dressed in army fatigues. Watching them go to the canteen as usual to pick up sugar cane, water or icecream with innocent pony tails tucked in caps, their green camouflage pants are slipping as they figure out how to put on a thick, ungainly pleather belt. They are almost comically disguised to me, as I watch them saunter nonchalantly as they usually do except now in army costume, no less dignified than they were in their civilian wear. What do they do in military training, I don't really know, just as I know little about what they do in Born Again activities. Joanne keeps trying to explain to me that it's not religion, that Jesus isn't religion, Jesus is just love. I am all for love. But I draw the line at the bible, at the ideas of a tangible heaven and hell. Let's focus on peace and harmony in this world, please. Like how we have to prepare children for war.