Tom Fink
Staff Reporter
CLAREMORE —
With his shock of long, curly red hair, Claremore native Jesse Emanuel has no problem when it comes to standing out in a crowd.
For the past year however, Emanuel has found himself attracting even more attention that usual, as a conspicuously American student studying language at the Beijing Language and Culture University in China.
“Because of how I look — my hairstyle and general American appearance — whenever I would be in any kind of public place, Tiananmen Square, for example, people would approach me, very politely, very curious about my hair,” Emanuel said. “At first, they’d think it was fake because no one in China has hair anything like mine — it’s so different from the short, black hair that so many of them have — they’d ask to touch it or oftentimes, ask if they could have their picture taken with me, which was flattering — a good ego booster, but there were some times when there would be a line of Chinese people waiting to take their picture with me — no kidding.”
Emanuel’s trip to China began a little over a year ago when he was studying international relations at Oklahoma University.
“As part of the requisites for the major, we’re required to spend a year studying abroad in our country of interest,” Emanuel said. “I’d been interested in China, since it’s one of the prominent world powers, plus I was just interested in them culturally and socially, so I thought it would make sense to learn more firsthand about China and its policies.”
So, by August 2009, Emanuel had secured a scholarship from the Chinese government to study the Mandarin Chinese language in Beijing.
“I spent about a year studying (Mandarin) Chinese before I left, but language study in the United States compared to actually using it in the country where it’s spoken is very different,” he said. “When I first got to China last August, I found I was pretty limited in my ability to speak Chinese, but I picked up on it relatively quickly. I wouldn’t really consider myself fluent in Chinese, but I have no problem carrying on a conversation in Mandarin now.”
The biggest challenge in learning to speak Chinese, Emanuel said, was learning the tonal influences applied to each word.
“The Chinese language is similar to English in that it’s subject, verb, and object — the grammatical patterns are the same — but every Chinese word has four specific tones in which it must be spoken for its meaning to be understood,” he said. “Words (in Chinese) may be pronounced or spelled the same, but based on the tone it’s spoke in, it may carry a completely different meaning.”
One “tone” which didn’t translate into Chinese, Emanuel said, was sarcasm.
“Being American, I’m a little more prone to being sarcastic which, when I would be, would confuse the Chinese — they couldn’t understand me,” he laughed, “so I had to learn not to speak with as much sarcasm.”
Overall, Emanuel said he found the Chinese people to be friendly, very diligent in their work ethic and largely with an appreciation of the American way of life.
“In general, the Chinese have a positive opinion of Americans and our culture,” he said. “They enjoy our movies — I saw ‘Avatar’ in the theaters when I was in China — and television. Right now, ‘Friends’ is huge in China — they just seem to love it, for some reason.”
When not studying, Emanuel managed to see the sights of the country, including the annual ice and snow sculpture festival in Harbin, the Great Wall of China, the Terracotta Warriors, and ‘Expo 2010 Shanghai’.”
“The (Chinese) world exposition was really cool,” he said. “All countries of the world are there, set up with their own buildings or pavilions, showing off their country’s newest technologies, foods, and merchandise —it’s really impressive.”
Also while studying in China, Emanuel competed in a choir competition (singing in the “Foreign and Chinese Choir”), and even made small appearances in Chinese commercials as a distinctly American-looking extra.
Although Emanuel described his year in China as “the experience of a lifetime,” he said he was very glad to come back to America and reacquaint himself with his native Claremore.
“It was a great year, but it’s good to be home,” he said. “Home is always where you’re the most comfortable. In a foreign land, you kind of have to be more purposeful about what you say and how you say it because you might be misunderstood, but when you’re in familiar territory, you’re among people just like you, and that’s a good feeling.”
Jesse Emanuel lives in Claremore. His parents are Jerry and Lynn Emanuel. He has three siblings, Charity, employed at Java Dave’s in Claremore, Justin, 19, and Wesley, 14.
