Representing William And Mary Halfway Around The World

I am not thrilled about public speaking. Standing in front of people who are taking time out of their day to listen and hopefully learn something from you, to me at least, is a lot of pressure. I don’t want to bore people.

With that said, this week my study abroad program hosted a Chinese speaking competition for ‘best story’. The criteria was very open-ended, just tell a story in Mandarin for 5-10 minutes.

What better way to lessen my fear of public speaking than by competing in a foreign language? Even though the competition was voluntary I felt compelled to enter; we all have to start somewhere.

For my story (故事)I decided to enlighten my peers about my life as a vegetarian in China. People from home told me I would either come back to America 30 pounds heavier because the only food I could eat would be rice, or I would starve because nonmeat dishes would be impossible to find.

I am happy to say that food in China is just fine; I love how I can literally walk anywhere in Beijing and buy dinner or a snack right off the street. Jianbing’s (pancakes with cilantro and scallions), sweet potatoes, baozi, fruit, nuts, noodles, vegetables, you name it, someone is selling it.

However, my experiences in Beijing restaurants have been interesting. Every time my friends and I go out to eat, I have to have an extensive conversation with the waitress about what I can order from the menu. It always starts out the same, I tell our waitress (服务员) that I don’t eat meat, fish or eggs. This usually catches the waitress off guard and leads to some funny Chinese dialogue.

I mostly eat eggplant (茄子) in Chinese restaurants. Chinese people love their eggplant. I eat fried eggplant, steamed eggplant, boiled eggplant, tofu with eggplant, rice with eggplant and noodles with eggplant, just to name a few. Eggplant is a great vegetable, but because I have it so often, I am on eggplant overload. That was basically my competition topic, what funny things happen to you if you are a vegetarian in Beijing.

I was really worried about my performance being judged because as a 410 Chinese immersion student I was competing in the advanced level and my competitors were either from the 500 level or independent study.  But after my speech, and a good amount of laughs, it was over. I was surprised that I wasn’t that nervous, I was more excited and touched that my friends who weren’t even competing came back to campus to watch me.

I won the award for best story!

Halfway around the world, I think that I am representing the Tribe well.

Here are some pictures of Peking University campus: