My nanny from Shenyang turned out to be a nightmare, after my mom went back to Beijing and therefore there was no one there to watch over her while I was at work. She was loud; she was lazy; she lied; she argued; and finally I realized that it was my mistake to have hired someone who could not get anyone to serve as a reference except for one woman who employed her for 2 months. Considering that she had been working as a nanny for a few years, it means that no one except for that person is willing to do it. Even that woman hardly praised her, and simply said that without trying out I would never know.
When I mentioned that I finally fired her and hired another nanny from Chengdu,, a rather irreverent friend said to me, “are you actually from China? Anyone Chinese would know not to hire anyone from the northern region of China. They simply cannot make good nannies.” By the way, both he and I are from Beijing. Another friend said, “well, at least the food from the southern region is much better.”
I brought up this topic with a friend from the southern region of China, and she observed that there was really some key difference between northerners and southerners. Having spent a lot of time with northerners herself, she said that her family’s observation was that she was now too direct or abrasive and not sweet enough. I was actually surprised to hear about it from her, since my impression is that she still IS very sweet and mild-tempered. I mentioned that while stereotypes are politically incorrect (in China, the stereotypical northerners are lazier, messier and have more of an attitude problem than the stereotypical southerners), if they are correct more than 50% of the time, we will save ourselves a ton of trouble by going by stereotypes. After all, I am not running an affirmative action shop at home! Sure, I might miss a good nanny from the north, but my chance of finding a good nanny from the south is still higher than from the north! And I only need one good nanny after all.
My friend answered by email, “Let me echo one thing on the attitude. In recent years, people around me keep telling me that my way of expression sometimes offends them. This includes my parents, my sister, my parents-in-law and sometimes my husband as well, all "southerners". Recently it dawned on me that some cultural gap does exist within the family. I've always been attracted to the culture and language of Beijing and Northern China. And I have grown closer to more friends from the north. Inevitably I pick up certain things.
For the past couple months, people invariably comment on how sweet and gentle my sister sounds. I've been amazed at first, because to me she's clearly a more assertive and self-assued person than I am. It took me several rounds of that to realize that there is indeed a way of "southern" talking and southern lady-likeness, which I lost along the way, with no regrets, of course. :) But now I try to keep this in mind when I talk to southerners so as not to cause trouble.”
Another friend from Beijing disagreed that it’s the regional difference. She said, “it’s all about how many challenges one has had to face in her life. I was all gentle and sweet before when I had no worries and no responsibilities. Now I am a lot tougher because life has trained me to be tough and direct. I think those who have maintained a sweet and gentle persona essentially have never encountered any hardships, excessive stress or challenges.”
No comments:
Post a Comment