Sunflower’s trip to Latin America was already planned several years ago. She knew that Latin America was a dangerous place and therefore she learnt some Kung Fu, so that she would be able to protect herself in case of any attack. But when she was actually there, she realized how silly she was. Everyone said to her, “if you are robbed, just give them everything you have, don’t try to fight with them!”

When she first arrived she lived in a very remote area with dark streets, every night when she got off the train station she always had to ask the way home because she had no orientation at all. The gentleman at the newspaper stand said to her one evening, “little Chinese girl, you want to go to this place on your own at this time of the night?” She nodded. He went on, “I think you better take a taxi.” She didn’t really take his word at the beginning because she walked home two nights already. As soon as she was rushing through the crowd, she could feel that someone was trying to open her backpack. She turned around immediately. All she saw was a well-dressed young guy smoking and looking up to the sky. She stared at him aggressively and he did as if he hadn’t done anything at all. She then jumped into the next taxi. The next day an Argentinean lady told her in an interview about the social security problem in this country and that her daughter was just robbed recently with a gun near where she lives.

She was glad to leave this dangerous place after the first week. Both her body and mind were tired to this self-protection game.

One month later she went back to Buenos Aires
A young Chinese immigrant girl told Sunflower before recording their interview: “I was robbed yesterday in front of my Japanese school, 10am in the morning!” Instead of being sad, she reported happily, “One grabbed my school bag and ran away on a scooter the other at the highest speed.” She sounded more impressed by their efficiency than the loss of her property. She said, “I was robbed finally!” Her boyfriend next to her also said, “I hardly know anyone who has not been robbed in this city. When I was young, we were four kids and got robbed by one guy who claimed to have a gun. We surrounded him on the main street at the wall and gave him everything we had. The street was full of people and no one knew what was happening.” He told me this in a very casual way.

During Sunflower’s interpreting job in a Jewish-Argentine company, her young boss came in one day and said, “I only parked my car one street away from the factory yesterday and was robbed with a knife!” He didn’t sound sad or angry.  Sunflower asked him, “why don’t you sound annoyed at all?” He smiled charmingly, “It doesn’t help, does it? I’m 40 now and I’ve only been robbed twice, it’s not so bad, is it?”

If you like, there are still endless exciting robbing stories: the car window gets smashed at the traffic light and the handbags of the ladies get ripped off, robbing with knife, with gun, without anything, with or without violence……etc—any taste you like. The interesting thing is that, people seem to be so used to it that it’s nothing as tremendous as you would feel in Europe or Hong Kong.

Sunflower’s martial art didn’t serve anything but another type of Kung Fu helped more: Sunflower’s Argentinean mother taught her  “Be-careful-Kung Fu” was more useful. As soon as she got into the car, button locked down, handbag on the floor. She always carried a little amount of cash with her.  She always put a few little notes in her jeans pocket to be ready for the thieves. She even thought of the dialogue with the thieves, she would say to him, “HA! You’ve come finally! I’ve been waiting for you!” Then hand him the money and say, “I hope this can help you”. Fortunately or unfortunately they never came.

2 months later
Weeks after, these dangerous scenes of rumours have become part of the daily life. Sunflower walked almost everywhere, at almost any time on her own. Sometimes she even had a nice picnic on her own in a nice park, after eating she had a nice siesta under a tree in order to become one with this city. She often thought: Buenos Aires, you are such a lovely city (apart from the rubbish and the thieves)!

After living in this dangerous city almost half year, she was not scared anymore. She was even nostalgic when she left. As she was leaving this city, she listened to a Buddhist master’s talk on the “universal Kung Fu”. He said, “the real Kung Fu we have to learn is “Qi Kong” but the [Qi] is not氣[Qi] (energy) but棄[Qi] (to let go).”

Indeed, if there were nothing you could not give away, what else could they steal from you?

Siebenundvierzig Preisen in der Tombola
Machten alle spannend schreien WALALA
Der Gesang aus Chile
Beeindruckt waren VIELE

Techno-Tango war so seelenvoll
Dabei finden alle ganz toll
Zum Schluss noch ein Salsa
Nächstes Jahr vielleicht ein Chachacha?

Eine Veranstaltung in einer katholischen Schule, um Waisenkinder in Kambodscha durch Bildung und Yoga zu helfen und zwei buddhistischen Zentren in Argentinien und Freiburg zu unterstützen, das ist doch etwas Neues, nicht wahr? So trat ein Gast an jenem zugleich stürmischen und sonnigen Samstagnachmittag in die Schule ein und fragte am Empfang, „ist hier das Argentinien Fest?“ „Ja!“ Gab man ihm zur Antwort. Erstaunt fragte er dann „Woher kommt ihr?“ Höflich antwortete Zhuo „aus China!“ „Und du?“ Fragte er die nebenstehende Studentin „aus Japan!“ sagte Hana freundlich. Zhuo ergänzte lächelnd, “schau nochmal auf die Einladung, es ist ein interkulturelles Fest und Argentinien ist zufällig das Thema dieses Jahres.“

Ganz genau!  Das Fest war weder von Argentiniern noch Deutschen initiiert. Sondern? Eine chinesische Studentin aus Hong Kong! Das gibt’s doch nicht! Doch, mit Hilfe von neun Freunden aus fünf verschiedenen Ländern war möglich, eine vierstündige Veranstaltung mit über 80 Personen am 25. Juli 2009 in Sprachenkolleg zu planen. Sehr unterschiedliche Programmpunkte waren dargeboten – von Vorträgen, einem internationalen Buffet, einer Tombola, einem Konzert mit südamerikanischer Musik, sowie Techno-Tango Tanz und bis zu einem Salsa Crashkurs.

Dennoch war dieser Spaß nicht nur zum Spaß. Es steckte noch mehr dahinter. Die Einnahmen – insgesamt 952.75 Euros – erhalten drei verschiedene Wohltätigkeitsorganisationen – ein buddhistischer Tempel in Argentinien (Fo Guan Shang) sowie das Tibethaus in Freiburg, und ein Waisenhaus in Kambodscha (Azahar).

Warum Yoga und Buddhismus?
Seitdem ich mich in den letzten Jahren mit diesen beiden Philosophien beschäftige, wird mir immer bewusster, dass man viel sorgloser und glücklicher leben kann, wenn man die Kausalität in jeder Situation beobachten kann. Zu viele Theorien mag ich nicht, darum versuchte ich, diese Theorie bei dieser Veranstaltung umzusetzen. Eine der sichtbarsten Türen dieser zwei Philosophien ist gar nicht so anders als die anderen weltbekannten Weltvorstellungen – den anderen zu helfen und sie glücklich zu machen. Den anderen zu helfen und glücklich zu machen ist viel einfacher, als viele Menschen denken. Auf diesem Grund verlangten wir z.B. die Preise am Buffet zwischen 0.25 Cent und 0.50 Cent, damit jeder diese Erfahrung machen kann – für einen guten Zweck etwas ausgeben. Alle zeigten sich ihrer großzügigen Seite. Aber warum nur bei einer Wohltätigketsveranstaltung großzügig sein und sonst nicht?

0.25 Cent mögen unbedeutend zu klingen, dennoch war jeder Cent für uns. Genauso wie ein Lächeln, eine Geste – dein Lächeln, deine Geste.

Wir haben die Veranstaltung in eine Power Point Präsentation gemacht und sie kann auf diese Seite http://sunflower.nioo.de heruntergeladen werden. So könnt ihr diese einmalige Veranstaltung in 10 Minuten genießen.

Text: Louise Sunflower
Fotos: Hana Yamada, Stefan Ruch, Suki Lavender, Bianca Fritz
Veröffentlicht auf der Seite von Sprachenkolleg

The organisation was much better than last year and the amount of donation was 100% more than last year as well!

For those who would like to come and could not come, I’ve made a power point for you to join our wonderful event in 10 min.

For photos only please go to: http://picasaweb.google.de/louisesunflower

The L.Sunflower Productions proudly presents the 2nd charity event in the Black Forest, here you find the invitation and programme of it.

We have honrable guests from all around the world and a delicious international buffet made by our cooking team!

Hope to see you there and to transmit our positive energy to the world!

P.S. Registration until 23 July 2009 & do not forget the dresscode : in white + blue!

Sunny greetings from your Sunflower & Sunflower Team

I’ve always wanted to go to Mexico and Central America in order to look for the footprints of the great Taiwanese writer San Mao 三毛; however it has been several months since I have been here, in Argentina. My stay in Latin America is a new page of life because it is indeed a very special place, totally different from Europe and Asia altogether!

What is Sunflower doing in Argentina?
The principals of the German universities are: “first suffering, then a little bit sweet, then suffering again.” And, I’m now, luckily in the middle phrase. Talking about writing a thesis: My faculty offers quite a lot of freedom, as long as I write something that is related to Spanish it would be fine. Therefore, I was thinking of using this rare opportunity to spread the impressive and ancient Chinese culture wide and far. I decided to write a Chinese-Spanish literary comparison! I went to my professor full of confidence and I told him, “the theme of my master thesis is `the comparison of the Zhuang Zi and Latin American fables` and I’m going to Mexico and Chile to investigate.”

In case you don’t know who Zhuang Zi (4^th century BC) is, he is one of the most influential Chinese philosophers and a fabulist, as famous as Confucian.
But then I got tub of cold water as answer when my professor said, ”if you want to write this, you better go to the archaeologists because there aren’t comparable pieces in the Latin American literature.”
I murmured in my mind – then all the secondary pupils in China are archaeologists!
He asked me, “Aren’t you going to Argentina?”
Sunflower, “Yes.”
Professor, “How boring is that!? If you want to look for Chinese in Latin America you have to go to Peru! Thousands of them all over the country!”
I was stuck and went on feeling helpless: “But I bought the flight already…”
And I was flying in a few days after seeing him.

Then he spoke to me directly, as most Germans do: “Well, Argentina is also okay! I’ve heard that there are lots of Chinese, why don’t you go and see what they are doing? I don’t know what they are doing but I am sure they aren’t all cooking! Come back and tell me about it. What about `The Chinese culture in Latin America since the 19<sup>th</sup> Century`?”
I was happy to hear that he was interested in my culture, but this topic can let someone dig in for at least 10 years!! My forehead was covered with marbles of cold sweat drops and I said to him politely: “Professor, this topic seems a bit too broad…”

After a long chat he told me that he would be interested in the pedagogic field and my topic changed from the animals into human beings – “Chinese education in Argentina”.

That the professors don’t like our suggestions is not unusual, but the usual is that I have a German friend who has been writing his PHD about the Chinese in Argentina and he has been trying to convince me to write this similar topic since two years ago already. His idea was that we could therefore cry together! But I rejected him again and again because I thought: `who wants to go to the end of the world`. Later on, I got to know an Argentinean friend in Germany unexpectedly who said I could go see his family and that a teaching internship could be arranged.

In the end, I hadn’t worked in the school we planned and I only stayed 3 weeks with my friend’s family. In fact, I only planned to stay in Buenos Aires (Capital of Argentina) for 2 weeks in order to gather the needed information for my thesis, now I’ve been living here for several months already. Many incredible things have happened in these few months. I did not only work as an English teacher, but also Spanish and Chinese, plus I worked as an interpreter and many other different types of jobs. So many miraculous incidents have happened to me that even my first friend in Argentina `Aunty banana’ said: “Your life here is like a movie! Even if you tell people, they are not likely to believe!”

I realized that there are many things you don’t need to plan because there is always a power that is guiding us. I don’t know what you want to call this, but the Chinese like to call it Yuan 『緣』or Yuan Fen 『緣份』。From now on, my German friend, who is going to share my suffering, calls me as his `Yuan Fen Sister`.

Yuan 『緣』– this thing is indeed metaphysical and that you and I meet here through my words is certainly our Yuan which I truly appreciate.