Morning Commute

The winter mornings in Wuhan are misty, when the bamboo forest and the arched bridge over the pond look less like cultural landscape marketing and more like authentic and ethereal scenes taken straight from an ancient brush painting. The first turn from my building runs along the gate of the preschool and kindergarten. In the minutes before 8 o'clock, the path is a maze of motos, bikes, occasional sedans and bundled tots following parents laden with bed rolls and backpacks. The kids are bleary eyed and flushed underneath their layers and layers of stuffing as they're hurried through the pink castle painted entrance. In the afternoons they will point or stare at my passing, the bold ones practicing their "hallo"s, but it's too early to look up or notice others in a world full of not-my-mom/dad's when all they want is to keep clinging to mom or dad. In just a few hours they will be dancing in unison to the duckie song, laughing and singing--and if I don't have a morning class I will wake to the sounds of their play--but it is 7:40 and now I am just another pair of pants and shoes to shuffle past as they give their sleepy farewells.

The next turn is to the main stretch that serves as the entrance artery within the school gates. The tiled sidewalk is lined with palm trees on one side and white-barked maple trees on the other, their brassy leaves still clinging to the naked white branches or cruntching under our feet. I dodge the bound-twig brooms of the street workers who seem to make a game of raking at my heels as I pass. The nauseous odors of breakfast foods drift through windows and I realize that even after 3 semesters of life here--there are some smells I will never quite acclimate to.

I'll learn how late I am as I approach the pond. If I am early or right on time, the old ladies will still be in the midst of tai-chi exercises with lengths of gold ribbon or red fans to accent the fluidity of their movements. If I'm late, they'll be squatting on their haunches to rest or will already have moved on with the day.

The main square is next--large open concrete resembling Tiananmen for a distance that I can't estimate--but it takes a good 10 minutes to walk from top to bottom, running almost the length of the whole campus. Here is where I noice how utterly silent the walk has been. It wasn't this way until winter hit--the cold has closed us all off into our own thoughts. But on the square, each morning without fail, students find spots to themselves and read aloud from lesson books, broken and halting English, often monotone, always with focused intensity, being spoken every 3 to 4 yards. The Ministry of Education recommended morning readings for all college students, so they receive a passage book in their classes and take to the streets/squares in the hour after the mandated morning exercises. And so for three paces you'll hear a history of an ancient Viking landing, and then it will be the proper etiquette for tea or brunch, and then a few yards away an intent young man with glasses is repeating "mechanic" as "ma-chan-ac, maCHANac, mmmmACHANac, mACANac, mAYCHANac," until he switches to "en-jeen, anjeen, jjjjj, jeen, enjeen," and in a few yards further it's vaguely recognizable Shakespeare.

One more turn to the teaching building and 150 steps to the 6th floor language labs. The clock in the lobby is 5 minutes slow, which is encouraging when I'm running behind. I live on the 5th floor and teach on the 6th and climb up an average of 380 steps a day (on good days with few errands/outings) but I still huff and puff by the final ascent. The stairwell is filled with former and current students, and though I usually recognize their faces, I am never quite sure if it was yesterday or a year ago that I saw them in my class. I'm always terrified of crossing paths with a current student and completely blanking on recognition. In a classroom setting I can remember most of their English names, but it's hopeless outside in the wide world. My labs are at the end of the hall, cold and white and uniform.

At 8, class begins.