Twenty: Shanghai Nights, Beijing Daze -- So Named

Standing in front of a class of university students going round the room asking for each one for his or her name and a little bit of biographical information – what they are studying and what their hobbies might be.  The range of the hobbies and interests is really quite diverse – music (from Beijing Opera to Cold Play), soccer (supporting A.C. Milan and Inter to a rising Shanghai team), mountain climbing, travel (only around China, so far), and so forth. 

One young woman stands up – the others have remained seated.  She says she is doing this because she wants to be remembered – apparently she has been successful.  She gives me her Chinese name, and she wants me to remember this – I will do, in a sea of unfamiliar Chinese given names hers is the one that remains embedded in my memory. But she tells me she is the founder of Girls Up! Is that why she is standing? is my rather predictable quip. And she laughs, as any American student would have done. No. It is a quasi-political and social group on campus trying to teach female students to empower themselves – to stand up for their rights and gain self-confidence (the kind of self-confidence that enables her to stand up in the class and demand to be remembered). Women are second-class citizens, she says, and this has to change. It is a good speech, and given that it’s made in English, her second language, she does an excellent job making her case.

Her name is remembered, but others in the class have been remembered also – in large part because they have named themselves, with European names that they have chosen themselves.  These names are intriguing.  There’s a Joseph, a Summer, and a Cindy. One begins to wonder how these names are chosen, when, and what leads to a particular name being decided upon?

Of course, many of them result from English language classes, just as in Spanish classes in the United States, the teacher will give each student a Spanish name, or will have the students pick their own. So is Summer influenced by O.C.? Quite possibly. Another student (not in this class) has called himself Caesar, as he was reading about the Roman Empire at the time he chose his name, and he liked Julius Caesar – he wants to go places – and apparently it’s Italy as he is an Inter fanatic. Another student names herself after a crime novelist, as she had wanted to grow up to be a writer. And yet another female student chose her name during the last World Cup and has a fascination for a German soccer player, whose name she has feminized.

These names are subject to change – as they grow up; when they go to America and they find their name is too popular, or not at all popular, or whatever; when they find out the name doesn’t mean or signify what they thought it did; when they decide they want to be seen differently.

But each name becomes a statement, a political act of sorts.