Inna's view

Inna sat two seats away from me, at the end of some tables crowded together in Olga's apartment last night, where Russian voices fell and rose around us. It had been forty days since Olga lost her grandma, and we were gathered to remember her--"we" being about a dozen Russians who are teaching or studying in Beibei; a Chinese teacher who speaks fluent Russian; Keri Ann, another Peace Corps volunteer, and me. Inna told me in English to first take a tablespoon of the special rice dish, then a little pancake and dribble some honey on it, and then we could have the bowl of special noodles or any of other dishes. Potato salad, stuffed peppers, fruit salads. All sorts of things. Olga, ordinarily a fireball of energy, was brought to tears when she helped herself to the rice dish. There were no speeches--rather, there seemed to be pauses, moments of silence, while the various personalities let the weight of the moment sink in.

Amazing to me, though, squished together in the little apartment, were how handsome and how varied all of the faces were. I think "Russian" and I tend to forget how big Russia is and how many different countries it borders. At the other end of the table, a fellow with a light beard and heavy dark brows kept swishing his girlfriend's long hair back over her shoulder. Siberians, both of them. Another was from near Kyrgyzstan. One individual looked somewhat Chinese to me, and two others looked Persian. I've long thought that Garrison Keillor, the American humorist, is on to something with Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." Every face before me was interesting, a face I would enjoy drawing.

Sitting next to Inna was another Olga, the Olga who sits in Chinese class with me every morning for three hours. At the beginning of the semester, I was helping her--for her, the Chinese language was brand new. Now she patiently helps me, the "laoren" in the class.

Three of them, including Inna, occasionally visit my English classes--where I'm the teacher, not the student--because they plan to teach English later on and are interested in observing different approaches.

And today Inna will visit my "News Class," an English class for double-majors, most of whom are also majoring in one of the sciences. Lately we've been looking at news stories about Crimea--from the New York Times, from the Chinese Daily, and from the Moscow Times. Even though these papers are from different regions, they're all in English and are pitched somewhat to an ex-pat audience. My Chinese students were impressed by the relative neutrality of the Chinese Daily, even though the main source it quoted was Yanukovich, with his blistering comments about the West. We look at who is quoted, what assumptions they seem to be making, whose views are not represented and so on. What might be between the lines as well as in the lines. We distinguish between our observations and inferences and hold our inferences open to re-interpretation with more information. My role is not to make political judgments on any of the issues we examine, but, of course, I am posing some of the questions. We are also evaluating standards of journalism.

The article we looked at most closely today is a now-dated NYT article with the opening line "In the first barometer of global condemnation of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Ukraine and its Western backers persuaded a large majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday to dismiss the annexation as illegal, even as Russia sought to rally world support for the idea of self-determination." We look at the language. We look at what comes first, and what is tucked away late in the article, for example "The United States routinely ignores the General Assembly's condemnations of its positions on the Palestinian issue . . . ."

I have Ukrainian friends at home in the US, but none here in China, and Inna will be speaking alone today, giving a Russian view (not that there is only one) of the NYT article. I have some other Russian friends here who are no fans of Putin but who nonetheless celebrate the annexation as a very fitting thing, as the way it should be. My Chinese students and I are very curious about what Inna will say.

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