Attentive Chinese students change their visages.

In the gen ed curriculum where I teach writing, the current book we're reading is a classic of Chinese literature.

The prof says it's okay for me to contribute a few times per class period once students get their thoughts out, so the other day at 2 points during the discussion I added in a point about virtue and then another about Buddhism, and both times the 2 (female) (Chinese) students in the room seemed engaged and their eyes lit up and one even expanded on the 2nd point with another observation of hers.

Previously, the other (female) (Chinese) student had made a statement about the role of virtue in Chinese society and its relation to bureaucratic corruption, and upon her saying that, it seemed to me like she didn't seem like she was taking the class discussion seriously at all... Most people who had been speaking were unaware of that cultural context and the book that we're reading can be pretty elliptical and opaque and even more so without a major context like that, which led to a lot of bullshit, which I was sensing too, especially right around the time she decided to speak up.

After my comments later in that same discussion, however, both their appearances visibly changed towards me, both gained some kind of immediacy and lost a kind of guardedness, and though I had been taken seriously before as an authority figure, they both seemed now to look at me sympathetically and like someone they could relate to (since they assume I know something of Chinese culture?).

Really, both their faces were oddly engaged after I spoke and suddenly just became somehow unguarded and more open towards me, and the difference from how they'd looked at me previously was very striking.