Remembering the Summer Commute

I wrote the following during the summer, but somehow in the haze of heat and work, I never posted it. Now that the weather is chilly and descending into cold, I thought it might be appropriate to pause and remember what was. I mostly write these descriptive posts for myself so that I can remember the little details when I'm back in the States. Not sure if they're as enjoyable for the readers though...oh well! Hope you're all enjoying the scarf weather wherever you are! ~LucyP

The Summer Commute

There is construction noise at all times, without end. First comes the sound of hammers and drills, then a welder and you can see sparks falling from somewhere above you. This morning, they are replacing something outside, dangling from windows and scaffolding that you can’t quite tell without leaning out the window—which is a bad idea. It is 7:30 and the noise will continue in various forms all day. Later, they will replace cabinets next door. Then it will be the building that’s going up down the street. Horns and the wail of the cardboard cart passing far below. You wake to urban life. The bed is hard and the sun is partially obscured by the adjacent high-rise.

And so you brew your favorite tea and play the music that reminds you that God’s grace is sometimes just moments of peaceful breathing in the midst of chaos. Morning is for tea and coffee and toast and fruit and responding to emails and reading news headlines and whatever else comes along.

But then the hour comes and you must step out into the blazing street, radiating heat stored from years of summer and dust that smacks your eyes while your nose can now smell only the putrid puddles tossed from the street vendors along the curb. And you merge into the pedestrian traffic of all mankind and walk the twisted jittery line of fitful bump and dodge and halt and speed-up that is the daily walk to the bus stop. There is the hobbled man collecting plastic bottles out of the trash bins, the grandmother holding a toddler by both hands as he walks in wobbling half-steps, his baby genitals on proud display framed by the traditional split pants found everywhere here. There are the stands jutting out with jiaozi and baozi and zongzi, smoke envelops you briefly passing Xinjiang shaokao, the lamb skewers heating over open coals and somehow it always smells like dirt even when it tastes so good.

Now you pass the hair salon and this gets dangerous as they claim all sidewalk space in front of their shops blasting with Korean pop music and you skirt onto the road with the motos and bicycles and whizzing taxis and buses. Don’t swing arms too wide and look before you venture further away from the curb to avoid the grate that is clogged with strips of cabbage and corn husks and green shoots from nowhere in particular. Now you cross the street and look both ways regardless of the lane you are crossing because there are cars around you on all sides with no solid yellow lines seen in the eyes of these drivers. It is frogger but it is life, so you do it now with everyone else and without blinking and forget that it is a strange thing to see cars use the sidewalk as a lane, or to watch a bus form its own lane between two streams of oncoming traffic.

And then jump onto the bus as inches forward, never actually stopping because a full stop seems to make it stall. It just slows to a crawl at the stops, so you learn to hit the ground running. Wedge and squeeze your way to the back and maybe find a seat while now the heat of the street is replaced by all too many bodies crammed together. The windows will be open in the back and on the 2 kuai buses the a/c will be running weakly, so there might be slight relief enough to wipe your brow of the grit that is everywhere. Lurches, jolts, screeching brakes, the bus gets more and more packed along the route. Flashes of life pass blurred: a family of 6 all on one moto, a bicycle loaded with full 5 gallon water jugs so high that they hover over the rider’s head, a peasant carrying a splintery wooden yoke on his shoulders with sheets of glass wrapped in plastic hanging from both sides, so many women wearing tight cheap heels on the broken jutting tiles of the walkway, stores overflowing with chintzy plastic jewelry, blankets spread out on the sidewalk filled with parasols or rubiks cubes or knives or zip drives or watermelons, all for sale by the peasant squatting beside, idly fanning themselves with a feather fan.

Then it’s your stop and you know without sight because the stinky doufu (a fried toufu that’s known for it’s gag-inducing smell while being cooked) vendors congregate here all day every day. Wedge and ease your way off the bus and it’s the jigsaw dance of the pedestrian sidewalks again. The buildings are taller here and giant outdoor screens loom above you, casting their luminous digital tech or LCD colors onto your face advertising lexus cars and whitening cream and wahaha pure water.

The streets are busier and you use the crosswalk, but you must control yourself because the crosswalks are tiny battlefields over and over again all day long. The ranks stand shoulder to shoulder on each side waiting for the light, and at the signal of the flashing green man, they advance upon each other, banners waving the in wind of passing traffic. A wall of humanity marches straight for another wall, closer and closer and you wonder if you might all pause and begin yelling Red Rover Red Rover. But no, everyone keeps walking, a game of chicken, who will turn aside first. And something of a warrior or just an American rises angrily in you and you ask why you must be the one to make way for them to cross, why they can’t figure out that there are walking lanes just like traffic lanes and everyone should stay to their own right-hand side of the crosswalk instead of fanning out like an old-fashioned infantry. And so depending on the day and the goodness in your heart, you either swoop your shoulders to the side and walk sideways through the onslaught, dancing to the right then left then far right and making way for them to pass you as you pass them…or…you steel your face and square your shoulders and set your jaw and look straight forward with head held high and eyes of fire and you march. March! You march and you dare them to barrel into you or brush your shoulder. They do the same.

And then, after all the fury of the street, you are standing in front of another nondescript skyscraper of 60 floors (maybe) and walking through the revolving doors that are always too slow for you because you’re always so close to being late. There’s no a/c in the lobby but it’s cooler in a dark cave kind of way. The elevators on the left take you to the 10th floor. The office is modern with glass walled classrooms and new computers. You go first to the washroom to wash your hands and tidy your face and try to cool down, grab a water, and finally, it’s time to teach.

A trip to the Factory

This is how discovery happens in China: a storefront catches your eye out of the bus window, you call up a friend, and you go exploring. Sometimes it's nothing, a flop. Sometimes though...it's magic.

This year's Christmas

Most of the dishes are washed now and the mess of torn wrapping paper, while not completely cleaned away, has at least been gathered from the ocean on the floor into plastic bags or piles around the living room. The tree is still up but the lights will stay off now--soon to be packed into an old cardboard box and left in the corner of my spare room. My second Chinese Christmas has come and gone.

All in all--I'm really proud of the holiday that we worked together to share and make special. It was a really lovely day. Katera and I invited some of our good American friends to spend the night with us, so on Christmas Eve, Julie and Katie and David came up (Julie is in her 2nd year here too and Katie and David are married). David made wassail, Katera provided brownies (which are a delicacy over here), Julie brought fudge (a delicacy anywhere) and we all drank warm drinks and watched Fred Claus and Merry Christmas Charlie Brown in our pj's. A little after midnight we paused for a candlelit service to think about Christmas, sing the more meaningful carols and share the Supper. It was all filled with joy and peace.

On Christmas morning, I was up early to make cinnamon rolls and latkes while Julie and Katera scrambled eggs in her kitchen. We drank leftover wassail or coffee and had a hearty breakfast and opened presents together (each person brought one generic wrapped present--all gifts that someone would want) and even had stockings complete with oranges in the toes! After hanging out for a while, everyone dispersed to their own apartments for naps or more Christmas fun.

This being China, there were of course a few potential calamities to be dealt with. Our water was turned off on campus the two days before Christmas--so washing our few pots and pans for reuse was a bit difficult, and it was annoying to ask guests to manually flush the toliets using a bucket of water! I killed the yeast in my cinnamon rolls by using hot water instead of warm water to mix the dough (all of you in America need to pause right now with a prayer of thanks for Pilsbury and canned cinnamon rolls) and my electric eye kept turning off while I was frying my latkes so the oil wouldn't stay hot enough to quickly cook them.

Despite such trials, it was a beautiful day. The dishes were washed with my bottled water jug, the toliet stayed flushed, the cinnamon rolls were just a little heavy and chewy instead of light and fluffy but still just as sweet, and the latkes managed to not get tooo soggy and tasted pretty good. We had fun opening presents and I think we were all able to savour our moments together instead of spending too much time thinking of where we weren't for the day.

*******

As I've been tidying up from a long week of Christmas parties, I keep looking at the nativity scene I painted really quickly. I told the story 8 times during the past week--and my thoughts keep lingering on Matthew's account...the wise men, specifically. Two thousand years ago, scholars from the east began a journey to find....well, something. From the east. Two thousand years ago, these men were searching for wisdom or purpose or some type of key to life and were not able to find fulfillment in any of their own culture's answers. In the east. So they gave up looking among their society and turned upward to the stars. Among those stars, they found a light to lead them to a strange land and to a newborn type of king for a newborn type of kingdom.

So here, in my Christmas in this land in the Far East, I think about that star, and those men--so empty and hungry in their own land that they would risk everything to travel long miles following a star. I think about how the answer the star brought those men to changed the world forever. And now, two thousand years later, our hope is that the wise people in the lands in the east don't have to travel far from home to find the answer of that star. Our hope is that they will find stars right here, at ground level, in the midst of life here. It is a heady thing to claim to be a star, but it is what is required of each of us. As we think about that Christmas star leading people to an answer, we must never forget that we too are called to shine like stars in the universe as we hold out....well, you know the rest....whether to those in lands to the east or lands to the west. Merry Christmas.

Discovery!

One of my favorite aspects of my life:

It happens in two ways. 

1. You come across something, anything, while riding the bus or turning a corner or taking a different aisle through the supermarket. Sometimes it's a store that you've passed a dozen times that suddenly catches your eye and comes into focus. Sometimes it's when you are looking for an item and find something else instead. Sometimes you just get a feeling that you should keep wandering down that street...just a little bit further...and see what's there... And boom!, it happens.

2. You put something together--in the 2+2=everything kind of way. Meanings lodge themselves into the foreground of your thought that you can't quite shake until you realize that they explain so much, all at once, a new color or shade of comprehension of all of China becomes yours. 

It's exulting and triumphant when it happens. We have so few victories of understanding as foreigners in a complex and constantly changing land, we are always so constantly behind the curve, so dependent on our gracious Chinese hosts for their acquiescence to our bumbling attempts at assimilation. So whether it's by luck or by Grace or by the sheer tenacious flexing of our own brain muscles, it all adds up to moments of discovery that we experience here, day by day, over and over again.

We're like children learning to walk, or add, or read, or drive an automatic all at the same time. We figure out the basic bus routes and the skeletal layout of our sprawling city, we memorize the fundamental Mandarin phrases necessary for survival, we learn where to buy Coke, vegetables, condiments, soap, wine, chocolate and junk food...and at first, we just get around. At first, it's all we can do to make it to a friends house and back without 5 cell conversations reconfirming the directions. At first, it is a victory just to choose bus over taxi. But then, the pioneering joy of foreign living begins. 

Last year, I found a store that sells jelly beans and gummy bears. I found which supermarket and which aisle to go to for liquid drain cleaner. There is a store along my bus route that has really great camping and outdoor gear. I discovered how to tell sugar packaging from salt packaging if you can't see inside the bag. 

Within months or weeks of moving here last year, I knew that dadao must mean 'highway' or 'street' or 'avenue,' because on street signs it was one of the common words. So...sure, I learned that. Separately, I learned to order my cokes "da da," or "big big" from McDonald's or KFC or describe things as "tai da da" or "too big." And also separately, I learned that Taoism is known as Daoism in China, with the Dao being "the way." It was only last week, 1.25 years into living in China, that I figured out that dadao means "big way." It makes complete sense--and putting it together, with my own brain doing the work, the figuring, the discovery, made me really excited and really proud and really in love with life. 

In a another scenario, I began the process of shopping for a couch last week. I'm not looking for anything fancy or special, just a two-seater that is more comfortable than the shellacked   wooden chairs that currently occupy the living room. I began the search in the area of town called Furniture City--complete with all sorts of housewares stores. When I realized that all of the stores nearby were out of my price range, I walked towards a bus stop. From a distance, I noticed that a side street had smaller shops with lamps and vases--so I turned down the alley. 

Wandering a little farther, on the right there was a nearly deserted alley lined with art studios and antique shops. Ancient looking Chinese wood carvings and ornate decorative wood planks filled shop after shop, covered in dust and unaffordable but fabulous. The street was as silent as China gets, until out of the back of one stall, the achy mellow strains of an accordion filled the air. Like the antique wooden panels and dusty books and rusted, brassy coins filling the shops, everything felt incredibly abandoned in this tiny pocket of Wuhan. Wrinkled old men with fingers stained black looked up from 7 ft yellow scrolls that they were filling with oversized calligraphy characters as I walked by. Bored looking men in their dingy undershirts and striped pants sat around a mahjong table in one corner. Decayed and tattered red lanterns hung askew from awnings. It smelled like ink and turpentine and mold. 

And here I was. China. A tiny corner street that I happened upon by chance--there sat the antique district of Wuhan. It was so unforeseen and beautiful and completely Chinese that I had to stop and stand still there on the street--inviting even more curiosity and attention than I already had--but I had to stop there, because this was a moment. I had found something new and this was a moment in my life that very few people will ever understand. It was a discovery.

 

I write this post longer than it should be, because I fear that there is absolutely no way to really describe the little, minute, incredible acts of discovery that brighten our days here. If I were in the US reading this, I would probably think, "So what? It's liquid drain cleaner, of course it's at the supermarket. Big Way? Duh. It's a highway--of course the word would mean that." 

But what so many don't understand is that it's not like I can read the items that are at the supermarket. It's all a bunch of bottles with Chinese characters--and the idea of using chemicals to clear a clogged drain still doesn't occur to alot of people here. When my drain clogged last year, I called 5 different people to ask if they could help me find a bottle. Every single one of them said I would just have to call a worker to come and repair my sink. It took a search to come across a bottle with a picture of a clogged pipe and a muscular arm punching through the clog on it. Even then, when I showed the bottle to my school liaison, who was waiting to call the 'plumber,' she said she had never seen it before. Unclogging a sink became a quest!

There are some things that we learn because others teach us, either our Chinese friends or those who were here before. They tell us where we can find most things, and what certain phrases mean, and they teach us so much. But another whole element of life here must be discovered in order to exist for us. Last year, liquid plumber did not exist for me, until it did. Gummy bears were not in my world, until they were. The word dadao had no significance, until it did. And there were no side alleys filled with fascinating antiques and calligraphy shops perfumed with ink and turpentine, until there were. 

These things appear into our lives, and the moment that we discover them...well, it's just a rush, a joy and an experience that I can't imagine living without.

Attaching and detaching all at the same time

There are so many times when I sit and stare out of my eyes—trying to will my eyes to soak in all the scene before me. I sit and look and try to figure out what it is—specifically, numerically, definitively—that makes the panorama before me different than America or all that which I am familiar with. 

I do it most in the countryside or ‘nature zones.’ Before I left I would take hikes at Radnor Lake in Nashville or along the trails in NE Tennessee and SW Virginia—and I’d stare at the flora and fauna, the foliage of deciduous undergrowth and old Appalachian hills and valleys. I’d look at it and try to figure out what made it so American. Because it is. It’s American and there’s nothing to match it anywhere else in the world. I do it as I drive along the interstate too—the hills and farmland along I-40 in Middle Tennessee or the rolling turns of I-81 through Virginia. I can’t figure out exactly what it is—the shade of green or the shape of things—but it’s only there in America. American art has captured it. Mark Twain and Walt Whitman captured it. I can’t seem to be able to with my own words. I’ll have to let the experts do it…

The cities are easier to figure out. Our cities simply aren’t old enough or packed enough yet to feature the hodgepodge madcap tumbling jumble that are Chinese or even European cities. These ancient cities where buildings have been built on top of other buildings and then a new building built around that. Where you walk past a row of storefronts with no clue that the gap in the sidewalk is there because it was once a street—a street that now is a building—and that if you find your way behind that building, which you probably won’t because there are no alleys leading to it and you actually would have to traverse several blocks north to find the entrance—right there a few yards behind the row of stores you walk beside—there is an entire hidden neighborhood of twisted rows of street vendors and shack dwellings and alley upon hairpin turned alley—all that once was accessible but now is hidden because a new row of buildings went up. Hundreds of people live and work behind the walls of the strip shops—and you’d never know except that sometimes you smell the food the vendors are hawking from their stalls or see the smoke rising from their charcoal briquettes. There exists none of our puritanical efficiency with straight lines and city grids moving outward from the city square. The cities are teeming—literally swarming—with life and movement and floor built upon roof built upon roof because there’s no room to grow except up, diagonal, or overhanging.

And everyday my attachments to America both grow and detatch. Every day I let go of a piece of what ties me to home. “As quietly and naturally as a twig falling into the Mississippi I dropped out of the stream of American life.” (henry miller) We must let go of it because home is not there anymore—it’s not what it was when I left it and we can’t actually return to what is in the past. And everyday I realize that what remains….what is left after those pieces that I must release are released…that is the pure love that I have for home. For America. For Kingsport, for Nashville, for Texas, for Roanoke, for the South…all of it. For New York, For Chicago, for Boston. I don’t yearn for driving or sandwiches as much as I once did—I don’t have to follow obsessively the releases of new movies or tv series or pop music. It is ok to not know these things any more. I don’t need to be in the loop anymore on the current pop culture of home. It doesn’t matter to me here. And so I let go of that piece.

I haven’t written much this year on this blog, and I was worried about it for a little while. But now I think it’s ok. It’s ok that things or everyday events aren’t quite so expository in their nature anymore. It’s ok that my ‘new life in China’ that I wrote of last year is now just my life in China…in fact, just life. I am no longer a year-long tourist. I might not be totally a resident yet—but something in between. This is a good step. I am really happy here. 

When it rains, steam rises from solar panels...

You can see them all from the window of my 5^th floor apartment—large, heaving and tin-rusted solar panels connected to water tanks on the roofs of each building. On days when the sun actually shines, they cast a blinding metallic glint into my bedroom. But on most days the sun doesn’t actually shine—it just reflects off of and mushes through the vale of grime and haze that sulks over Wuhan.

Harper Lee has a line in To Kill A Mockingbird—something about it being so hot that summer that the men’s starched collars had wilted by 9 in the morning. Amy Tan has a line in The Bonesetter’s Daughter that Wuhan was a city “so hot that most people would rather bathe in a vat of boiling oil than live there.”

Yeah—it’s a little like that.

Like most hells on earth, it’s not so much the heat, but the humidity. It’s all sticky and muggy and mucky—the moment you leave the apartment your clothes and hair are clinging to your damp skin. We teach in buildings with only the luxury of ceiling fans—so you must yell over their humming drone through the class, pausing only to chug water and wipe your brow. You take a deep breath and even that hot air only makes you feel sluggish or moody or morbidly obese.

In the market the men roll their shirt hems up—like the little girls in America pretending to be Britney or Christina or whoever it is this year—they take the bottoms of their shirts and roll them tightly up and up, exposing their paunchy midriffs. The students are wearing basketball shorts and sleeveless jerseys and it seems that sweatband/headbands are back in style.

For a while it wasn’t actually that bad. Perhaps after the worst winter in 50 years, we also had a nice spring. For the past month or so, I’ve slept with the windows open and cool breezes wafting through the rooms. On some days I turned on the fan—but that was all that I needed. I kept saying (stupidly) that I wanted to avoid using the air conditioner so that I could acclimate to the heat.

And for a while it worked. The same coolness that turned my apartment into a frigid icebox of frozen despair in the winter actually became an asset—the cold cement floors on my bare feet in the mornings reminded me of crossing a river or creek on flat smooth stones barely submerged in the rushing water. The aerodynamics and drafts of the apartment allowed the wind to rush through and through all the rooms—keeping it fresh and pleasant. I woke up each morning with something of a smile (on the mornings when I could sleep in).

But then God flipped the thermostat to “miserably oppressive” and it’s been downhill ever since.

Day after day passes with the humidity dripping from you and everything and everyone—and day after day you look at the sky thinking that surely all this moisture that we’re gathering in our lungs like pneumonia with each breath will gather into clouds and rain—RAIN!!!—Why won’t it rain????

And finally you fall on your bed half-naked and give up and set the air conditioner at the lowest settings and aim the fan directly on you and think about getting up for a cool drink but decide that it would force you to leave the proximity of the fan so you stay there on the bed with your feet dangling off the sides because you don’t even have the willpower to take off your shoes. You lie there and wonder if you will ever feel cool or fresh or content again. You lie there and breathe in and out and wonder how much more you weigh with this oppressive heat forcing all the gravity of the world down on you. You lie there and suddenly realize that the birds have stopped singing and it’s awfully quiet. And the next thing that you hear is the steam.

It’s the hulking, antiquated, industrially ugly solar panels on the roof beside you. We use them to heat our water—only in the worst days of winter do we ever turn on the electric water heaters—the panels do that work instead. You learn what to look for on the digital temperature gauge in the kitchen—50 degrees Celsius is hot enough for a shower—anything below and you’d better go electric. In the summer, the water gets hot enough to scald instantly—the gauge has recorded as high as 110 C before (230 F).

So you hear the hissing before anything else. Opening the curtain—there it is, steam rising softly from the panels, the raindrops hissing and sputtering on the surface. It goes on for only about 45 seconds, I guess—this ethereal scene of steam and mist and sprinkle and hiss--before the downpour unleashes the buckets that have gathered in the troposphere for days and days and months.

The rain today lasted for about 30 minutes. 30 minutes and then it was gone. The buckets of water create a cool breeze—so you sit by the open window and watch all your Chinese neighbors poke their heads out the window—one mother brings her baby and lets him stick is hand out in the rain until he gets tired and falls asleep on her shoulder, one older woman is drinking her tea and staring down through the leaves at a bicycle. You eat fresh fruit that you now must keep in the refrigerator all day because it will go bad otherwise, and you play some music and wash your face and feet and say your prayers and breathe deeply. For 30 minutes. Maybe an hour, if you’re lucky.

Then the Wuhan summer returns—which is not so much a summer as it is a sauna—and you wait out the days till the flight home.

To Drive...

Well now I'm no hero, that's understood
All the redemption I can offer girl is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey, what else can we do now
Except roll down the windows and let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks...
-Bruce Springsteen
Thunder Road

I miss my car. After months without my late night drives and long routes home that take me through the mountains or across the open fields, I'm feeling soo....I don't know...mortal.

When I turned sixteen, I spent about three weeks straight in a state of rapture and elation. I could drive. I Could Drive!!!! It wasn't just the freedom that excited me--it was the mere act of driving. I loved it. Wind rushing through the windows, one hand on the wheel, the radio playing, a smooth merge onto an open highway, a reving acceleration to pass on the left, swinging and dipping around and through traffic like one of Jane Austin's ballroom dances...

And yet at the time, there were those naysayers, those hardened, calloused, middle-aged hens who thought it best to inform me that my joie de vie would not forever be tied to driving, that someday I would spurn the very thought of one more trip to make, one more errand to run, one more slow drive through traffic in the car. Once "real life" hit, they claimed, I would not so adore my ability to drive.

What do you call people who rain on a sixteen-year-old's parade? Losers.

Because real life did hit...to some extent....and my love of driving only intensified. So There! (says 16 yr old Lucy with a stomp of her foot). Despite the stress of trying to get two boys from one side of Nashville to the other in time for soccer practice while also picking up the family's drycleaning and dropping off film to be developed in the midst of rush hour traffic (when I was a nanny), despite being late to work countless times after underestimating the traffic backup on I65, despite tickets for inane infractions, despite fender benders, despite rising gas prices, despite the ever-present fear that comes with driving a car made in the 80s--driving still remained one of my highest loves. So there! indeed.

It's just an indescribable feeling--those moments when the sun, moon, stars and planets all line up perfectly to give you green lights and open lanes. It's like flying. Or kissing. Honestly--if given the choice between wings or wheels--between a great, long kiss or a great long stretch of road--I'd have to think about it.

And it's been over 8 months since I felt that joy. Don't get me wrong--I really adore public transportation and wish that more cities in the States had the system set up for it--but geez, I miss driving. I miss it more than I miss sandwiches and steak. More than I miss movie theaters. More than I miss baked goods.

And it's not just driving that I miss--but it's music too. The car is where I absorb new music. It's where I pick up the lyrics and internalize the meanings of songs. Tim has been so sweet to send me mixed cds while I've been over here--but I'm afraid I haven't played them much--because no one really wants to sit around alone in their bedroom doing nothing but listening to a cd. You want to do it on a drive! I made the mistake of downloading an old Keane album the other day--I was halfway through the first song when I knew that I could only truly enjoy the songs in a car. And not just in a car--but behind the wheel.

And after these 8 months of forced subjugation in the passenger's side of a taxi or the seat of a bus, I'm afraid that I'm becoming one of those women who never lets the man (or anyone) drive--who must always be behind the wheel. While there's probably nothing wrong with that--it conflicts with my Southern sense of femininity. :)

Sigh...I just miss my car. I really do. Only 2 months left though...

Hoping to be caught in the middle.

The greatest two temptations in China:

1. Thinking that it's enough to just BE in China.

2. Thinking that it's NOT enough to just be in China.

The concept of yin and yang are central to the Chinese world view. It's all about balance between light and dark or hot and cold...they don't seem to think of it in terms of good or evil...it's more about fire and water--both are parts of our world, both require balance to create life. Somewhere during the past year, this focus on balance has become central to my own personal development while here. Now that I have been able to see how it's changed so many of my approaches to things, I am now beginning to see how often I lose that balance, get thrown off my equilibrium and flail about with arms waving spastic in the air before the fall and the crash.

Grrr...sometimes there's so little that I can say online from where I am.

The point is: I need Guidance and Energy to live somewhere in that tension between #1 and #2. Please keep me in your Thoughts...and I'll tell you how it all continues to work out when I come home! I continue to state that I am so "LUCKY" to be here learning these lessons. I can't tell you all how deeply I cherish my life here....Love to you all!

6 a.m. in China

It's 6 a.m. and I'm awake. I've been awake allllll night long. Sitting here for hours, waiting for sleep.

This evening--I went to a dinner with some American friends. I took a Tylenol Daytime Cold pill--I've been stuck with The Miserable Cold since Thursday--but Virginia's mom is in town, so I pulled myself together, popped some cold medication, painted on makeup to cover my stuffy red nose and went out.

At 8ish--on the way back to my apt, I must switch buses in front of the new Starbucks. Of course, I couldn't resist--while getting my Vanilla Latte, I ran into 2 friends from the earlier dinner. We sat and chatted over our coffee till it closed at 11.

At 12:17 a.m.--I talk with Tim for a little while on Skype.

At 2:30, lights out.

At 3:17, a car/motorbike alarm began going off. I remember this time b/c I thought it was my cell phone going off and checked it, noticing how late it was getting and wondering when I would fall asleep.

At 3:30, "Did I talk to mom about filing my taxes???" Obsession over how to declare income earned in China begins.

At 4:34, the birds began chirping. All at once--like an alarm went off. I haven't heard the roosters yet--and come to think of it--I haven't heard roosters in awhile. They were hard getting used to when we moved here last summer. Have I just gotten used to them, or are they gone?

At 4:52, I gave in and picked up my laptop--calling mom to ask about my taxes. We chat for 29 minutes and my obsessive worry about my US responsibilities lessens.

At 5:22, I begin calling random friends via Skype to see what they're up to. No one is available to talk.

At 5:30, one of the street sweepers began sweeping the alleyways that run along both sides of my building. They're at it all day, every day--sweeping up leaves and rubbish with brooms made of twigs. I've been fixated on these leaves for months now. The alleys leading to my building are lined with these trees that SEEM to be deciduous. They have your basic, flat, green, footballish-shaped leaves and the branches look like ones in a maple or pear tree or whatever...I mean, really, I know nothing about trees. BUT--I know which ones look like the ones that lose their leaves each fall, and which ones don't. And these trees look like the former. SO--around December or January of this year, I was walking home and suddenly looked up and realized--HEY! THOSE LEAVES ARE STILL GREEN AND ON THE BRANCHES! That's not right! What is the deal?? --I've been watchin these trees for months now, just waiting, wondering--WHEN ARE THEY GONNA FALL?????? It just seemed like these trees were going against the natural order of things. Yeah...it was unnatural.

This fixation becomes more understandable when you read this. They control the weather...do they control this too?

I finally have my answer--and it's been pretty fascinating. The old leaves, still green--but dull, fall as the new buds push them out. It's like when your Big teeth come in and push your baby teeth out. Soooo--the sweepers have more to sweep these days.

At 5:55, I begin thinking about my blog. Does it make sense for me to write all this about my internet obsession without mentioning that this is the ONLY connection to America that I really have? I don't watch tv here--the only news I can buy here is the China Daily-the Party run English-Language newspaper. Soooo--the internet can be a big deal. What are the obvious details of life here that I leave out? Tim didn't know until this week that I don't have a dryer. It's just a mundane detail--but yeah, no one (except the more rich ppl, I guess) has dryers in China. Why? Is it b/c they use too much electricity? Is it b/c the houses/apartments are equipped with the area for that vent/hose/thingy? Anyway--we all hang up our clothes to dry.

Also--since the veggies from the market are fresh and not pumped with as many preservatives (maybe), they go bad much more quickly--so you have to go to the market on a every-other-day -ish basis and use your veggies and fruits quickly if you don't want to waste them.

There are the roosters. They're still around.

Also--there are water buffalo roaming free on my campus. Last week I was walking between the basketball arena and the building that I teach in and there one was--chewing on some grass in an unmown area of land. No fences. No tethers. I walked past him without paying much attention, and then had to stop, look at the fella, and remember that I live in a world where I pass a water buffalo on the way back from class. Haha--I gotta say...I love it!

Also--I'm sick. I feel terrible and just want to sleep--but can't. Maybe it was the DayTime Tylenol from over 12 hours ago, or the coffee from over 8 hours ago. Maybe it's because I can't breathe out of one side of my nose and my throat is swollen. It's sooo easy to get sick here. Breathing the pollution in Beijing is said to be the equivalent of smoking 70 packs of cigarettes a day. My students all tell me that the air in Wuhan is much worse than in Beijing. That's alot for one little immune system to fight! I love China--but sleepless nights and colds make me miss home.

Well--it's 7:18--and I'm gonna take another go at getting some sleep for the "night." I may regret posting such a random, sleep-deprived blog post--but maybe it'll motivate me to write something good and substantial to post over it soon!
Goodnight!

A lunchtime anecdote...

The sun has finally returned to Wuhan, making me willing to venture to the market for fresh veggies to steam in my new-used rice cooker (ahhhh--sing for joy, owners of rice cookers!! Perfect rice every time!!). After class I browsed through the eggplant, the onions, the cabbage, the plethora of unknown veggies that I'm not sure even have an English name...finally settling on some green snap beans and carrots and cauliflower.

Up in the kitchen with the window open and Patty Griffin playing on iTunes, I peeled my carrots and broke apart my cauliflower etc...then commenced mindlessly and rhythmically cleaning the beans, snapping off the ends and peeling the string the runs down the bean off in one smooth motion. Snap....zzzip. Snap....zzzip. Snap...zzzip. Snap...zzzip.

Until I suddenly dropped a bean and had to ask myself....What the heck am I doing???

I've never prepared fresh green beans in my life. My mother didn't when we were growing up (she may have wanted to--but we were true American kids--"We want our canned goods, dammit! Bring on the LaSeure party peas!! Where's my Jolly Green Giant!")

Where, I want to know, did I learn how to snap green beans and peel off the string???? From whence did this knowledge come??? Am I even supposed to do it?

The thing is...it just feels sooo right! I somehow...deep within myself...feel sure that this is what I should to do. It's innate...it's there buried in the stuff of my primordial being...the same force that causes my lips to smile when happy, the same force that knows to put one foot in front of another....that same force somehow knows that before cooking green beans, the stalky end needs to be snapped off and the stringy thing zipped out.

Or maybe this knowledge is stored away in a repressed memory from my Southern childhood. I sometimes see flashes in my dreams of an old woman with green beans held in a kitchen towel laying across her lap. I can't tell if she was a real person in my past or if she's another movie image that carries familiar enough emotions that I accidentally claim it as my own experience. She always appears after the memories of clambering with dad's old t-shirts as cleaning rags and a bottle of windex through the back of the stationwagon on our car-wash days, feeling sticky and grubby and with knees sore from squatting to clean the tires...

Or maybe I'm totally wrong and mom did fix green beans that way for a long time before giving in to our demands for canned-only nutrition. ...

There's also the strong possibility that I'm clueless and the preparation of fresh grean beans has nothing to do with a snap or a zip. It could be that I'm throwing out the most valuable part of the whole thing--making my attempts at a healthy lunch all in vane.

But I have a feeling that I did the right thing.

Laugh at me if you will, you mothers of the South, you health-foodies who have never touched an aluminum can, you Food-Network connoisseurs and you Top Chef wannabees! My spirit cannot be dampened! I feel triumphant, I feel righteous. Today, my subconsious prepared my lunch.

So, yes....Laugh. But then ask yourself: What does your subconsious ever do for you?

And then tell me what I'm really supposed to do with these green beans. Because I have no clue!

Vocal Talent

In the years that have passed since my last French class, I had almost forgotten the dreaded "listening comprehension" portion of foreign language exams. It's a shame too, because there were certainly some fun memories there--all of us laughing in Ms Burns' class to the absurd sound of a man imitating le chien barking or at the man who couldn't speak without making that horrible tslple noise between each word. "Get that man some water!" we'd yell. Donne l'homme un verre d'eau!

Then we'd ask if we could go buy cokes from the vending machine...Mais, j'ai trop soif, Madame Burns, apres ecoute l'homme parle sur la cassette!

Ahhh--but how the tables have now turned. The universities here take advantage of having native speakers and require us to record the listening comp. tapes for the midterm and final exams of all the English classes. There are two tests for each grade--one for the English majors and one for the non-English majors. Plus there are several for the Masters and PhD students.

All this to say....I have been and will be spending several days in the recording studio with Jeremy recording test after test after test for the students. These scripts are pretty hilarious. Often, the grammer isn't totally correct--but we've learned not to correct them anymore--it doesn't change anything. I 'stole' the script for the last recording so that I could share some of it with you--I just try to make sure I have plenty of water before each recording:

Short Dialogue Comprehension: listen to the conversation and answer the question that follows:
M: I'm late for my bike was broken on the way here.
W: It doesn't matter.
M: When does the film begin?
W: It has been on for 5 minutes.
M: I'm very sorry for it.
W: It's OK. Things like that happen sometimes.
M: Now, let's get in.
QUESTION: What are the two speakers going to do?

Long Dialogue Comprehension:
W: I miss my folks. I wish we could see them.
M: Well, if they lived closer, we would see them more often.
W: If we owned a bigger house, they could live with us.
M: You know they would never do that. They would feel that they were intruding.
W: You're right. But I wish I were with them now. Let's go to visit them.
M: All the way to Florida? We could if we didn't have to work and if the kids didn't have school.
W: Maybe they will come to visit us when it gets warmer.
M: I'm sure they will. Maybe we can go there to see them this summer on vacation. Meanwhile, why don't you call them on the phone?
W: I just did. That's why I miss them so much right now.
QUESTIONS:
1. What does the woman miss?
2. Why didn't the woman live closer to the kids?
3. When will the kids come to visit them?

(We tried to correct that one to "folks" instead of "kids"...but they wouldn't let us!)

Passage Comprehension: (These tend to have little 'lessons' in them, but sometimes we're not sure what the lesson actually is...they also often claim to 'teach' something about English/American culture--you can be the judge of how authentic it is)

Test 1
Jack worked in a factory. At the end of last month he got his money in a paper bag. He opened the bag and found it was wrong. He got fifty more dollars. He put the money carefully in his pocket and said nothing to others. A month later, he got his money again. He found it was wrong again this time. There was not enough money in his paper bag. Then he went to see the manager."That's right," said the manager after Jack told his story. "I made a mistake last month. For one mistake, I can close my eyes. But for two, I can't. Thank you, Jack. I've known you already. I have to choose another man. I think you should know what to do in the future."

Test 4
In England, people don't usually talk too much. You can go on a bus, or in a train, and everyone sits looking out of the window. Often they read. They read books and newspapers. But they don't talk much.When you meet English people, they often talk about one thing, the weather.
So when you meet someone in England, you can say, "Nice weather." So when you meet someone in England, you can say, "Nice weather for this time of year!"
"But it was a little colder yesterday," someone might say. "But it will get a little warmer later!" you can say. Talk like this and the English people will think, "How
friendly you are!"

Test 5
Farmers keep animals for meat, milk, eggs and other food. Some farmers keep many different animals, for example, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks and pigs, but some keep just one kind of animal or bird. There are cattle farms, pig farms,sheep farms and chickens farms.Farmers keep chickens for their eggs and their meat.
Some chickens live out side in the day time. The farmer feeds them, but they find things to eat themselves too. At night they sleep in chicken huts.
In some farms chickens never go outside. They live in batteries. Their eggs and meat are cheap because it only takes a few people to look after thousands of chickens in batteries. We call these chickens battery hens.
Have you seen cowboys on television? Cowboys work on cattle farms. Long time ago, cowboys used to wear big hats to keep the sun out of their eyes. They used to ride horses and catch cattle with ropes. They used to carry guns too, because there were a lot of cattle thieves.
Today cowboys still wear big hats, some still ride horses but many of them ride motor cycles or drive trucks. Now they do not usually carry guns but they carry radios to talk to other cowboys.

Test 6
Perhaps more than any other people, Americans love cars. The family car has become more and more important since the early twentieth century, and it has changed Americans' life. Many people have moved outside the large cities. Americans spend two hours a day or more in their going to work and home again. They cannot live without cars in their life. Americans have bought a large number of cars. They have bought cars from several other countries as well.

Questions

There's a quote somewhere from someone that you learn more about a person by the questions that they ask than the questions that they answer. In that vein, I asked my students to write down any questions that they had about me or America in general. I thought I'd share a sampling of what I received:

FROM MY FRESHMEN PRONUNCIATION CLASSES:

"I always feel puzzled about how to be a girl love by many of people. Do you have any advice?"

"Do you like football? I love David Beckham so much that I want to see him in America. Will go to Los Angols to see him when you return home?"

"What do you think of your girlhood? And can you imagine the life in 20 or 50 years later? Do you think the hi-technology will endanger us?"

"What do you usually have for breakfast? Is the life pace faster? What time do you usually have lunch and dinner? What do you have for dinners?"

"If you get married with a chinese what kind of wedding ceremony would you like to take?"

"Whether it is difficult for me to ask a American girl to see a movie with me in the evening? If I fall in love with a American girl What shold I say to her?"

"Dear Lucy, In my mind, all Americans are very rich. Do all Americans live a happy and easy life?"

"What do you think about the traditional Britishes?"

"What kind of people are most despised by American people?"

The most common question: "Have you had Chinese food? What do you think of it?"


FROM MY PhD ENGLISH WRITING STUDENTS:

"What's the main difference between America College Education System and Chinese College Education System?"

"How to write something with all of my words? Because I know many words, but when I write something, I just find a few to use."

"I have received from foreign guests who come from German, Canada, and Russia. The biggest problem is I don't know what are they? How can I go a step further?"

"What kinds of pressures in U.S.A especially the students?"

"Can we takes pictures of you?"

"America is the richest country in the world, is there any poor people there?"

"Do you feel angry that students copy papers from www instead of doing their homeworks?"

"If the American to lose liberalism, what can they do?"

"Did the Americans concern about Chinese people's life?"

"If an person in American is poor, how to he find happness?"

"Are there many pop stars in American? Which one would you like best?"

"You are young and beautiful. We all love you."

"What's the everyday life of an American farmer? Is his living condition the same with the people live in the city?"

"America is the strongest country in the world, but it seems so many American don't know China well, and many policy of American are to restrain China's development. What do you think about this problem?"

"Which college is best in America for studying rapeseeds?"


Pretty interesting stuff...how would you answer some of these?

Descriptive Paragraphs

My English Writing class was assigned two paragraphs a few weeks ago. They were to pick one object and write an objective description with one paragraph--using facts only. Then they were to write a subjective description of that object--sharing how they feel about the object, memories, associations etc...

These didn't really follow the directions, but I thought they were beautiful anyway. I have a few poets in my class--it's a shame that our activities have nothing to do with creative writing. I'm supposed to prepare them to write academic/professional articles for publication in scientific/agricultural journals. But still, the poets work their way into the class, it seems. Here you go (typed in original grammar):

Monkey

As we know, monkey should live in the forests, but I saw it in the street. It was a small ,brown and ferocious monkey. There was a rope tied around its neck. Many people were playing with it . They gave it a bottle of water but the bottle’s cap was shut tightly . The monkey wanted to drink, however couldn’t get. So he shouted and jumped , and the around people were laughing aloud.
Saw it. I think the monkey is lovely but pitiful. It’s only a toy of the people and a tool of making monkey. They had lost their natural personality. That says the monkeys are no longer monkeys.


A landscape painting

There was a landscape painting in my bedroom and it was a beautiful picture. Mountains, sea and sky made up into a fresh scene. The painting was full of blue and green colour. Of course, that’s the colour of life. So many sea gulls circled in the air, and it looked as if they were enjoyed liberty.
If I was the gull, good feeling would come out soon. As opened my eyes slowly and looked around, I had noticed where the light come into my room. After then listened carfully to see if there were any new sounds surroundding me. Suddently, I filled with my body and sensed the freshess in the air. Yes, it’s a bright day ,and also it’s a new beginning for my life.

Façade

As a Waigoren living in China, you quickly learn that there is one necessity needed on all outings into the city that is as important to a year-long tourist as a good pair of walking shoes or travel-sized hand sanitizer--it is a state of mind, perhaps an apathy, a distance or just indifference to the visual chaos surrounding you. Step outside the apartment gate and the entire world, on some days, can seem to attack your eyes. Indecipherable characters, graphics that in no way relate to their advertised product (why is a fat man with a baseball bat on the packaging to my chocolate cookies?), building after overcrowded building spilling out into tiny alleyways that have no directional rhyme or reason, face after strange face staring at you on the bus, on the street, in the market, everywhere....it can be a bit much for two little eyes to take in all at once. Especially if you haven't had your coffee or coca-cola fix in a while.

If you don't keep your wits about you, it can feel as if you're standing on a street corner with the whole world spinning around you in a distorted panorama of funhouse-mirror swirls. There's a panic that can arise deep in your chest, a lump in your throat, a pain against the base of your skull that is caused by nothing other than looking down a street and seeing absolutely nothing familiar to the eyes. Your eyes dart from one image to the next in rapid succession--searching in vain for something they can identify--anything that, when they shoot it to the brain, will return a response of a word, a definition, a memory, an understanding. When they do come across that something--they seize on the image, soaking it in, proud to show off the awesome one-two punch of the visual-cognitive process that we so often ignore.

It's what we call "a sight for sore eyes."

And it was in search of such a sight that I hopped off my bus two miles ahead of my stop several days ago. Weeks before, a wayward taxi brought me home via an obscure route--much to my annoyance at the time. The meter was already 7 kwai more than usual and I was seething at the delay when all of a sudden--my eyes were arrested by an entire row of familiar looking stores outside my window. And these weren't the chinese-attempting-to-seem-western-enough-to-be-trendy stores that fill the shopping areas of Hankou (the downtownish part of Wuhan), these were real Western stores. Sure, I didn't recognize the names--but they looked like anything you'd see in Nashville along West End Blvd--cute little independent shops and restaurants that have a great 'walk in off the street' vibe.

There was a Joe's Bar, Sylvia's Patisserie, a Cleaners, Red Rose Beauty Salon, a Mocha Coffee, Sports Goods, Stationer, and Le Lotus Bleu Bar and Restaurant. They had decorated storefront windows and individual entrances. The store signs used simple, elegant fonts and clean imagery--no Chinese characters. A boardwalk path and iron park benches completed the ambiance. My heart lept while my eyes tried to soak it all in as we sped past.

It seemed I had found an oasis. But I tried to temper the rush of excitement and discoverer's pride with a hard dose of cynicism. After all, there are over 50 Americans in Wuhan through our program, and they instantly shared with us the Western get-aways that exist throughout the city--Mr Mais coffeeshop that serves great tacos and lattes, Giano's American/Italian restaurant, Aloha Hawaiian restaurant, Metro, Wal-Mart, and Carrefour shopping plexes etc... It was unlikely that they would not have already found this place. Plus, there are plenty of places in Wuhan that pose as Western-style restaurants or shopping areas but are as American as Wendy's mandarin salad bowl combos are Chinese.

So when I had some free time on a Friday evening and couldn't stomach going an inch further on my sardine-crammed bus, I squeezed my way off the bus and began walking toward what I was hoping would be my western Mecca. It was a lovely fall night and my path took me down a tree-lined street that ran alongside one of Wuhan's many lakes. I could see my destination on the other side of the lake, the storefronts casting a golden glow on the water. I daydreamed of Joe's Bar being run by a friendly American grandfather type, serving sub sandwiches to ex-pats who just wanted a place "where everybody knows your name." After a brisk 25 minute walk, I was there.

My eyes felt that same relief of gazing at something known, familiar, definable. They rested on the shops and I felt peaceful. My pace slowed to a stroll--I wanted to savor this discovery. I ambled up to the first shop, the Patisserie--the door was locked, it must have closed for the evening. No matter--I'll just look in the window, I thought. But no, it turns out the windows were more like display cases--there was a wall that closed them off to the rest of the store. I moved down the street.

Store after store--locked. Window after window--enclosed. It was only 6:30--but Joe's was dark. Hmmm--I guess I'll have to come back during the daytime. Then I looked closer.

At Christmas time in the States--department stores decorate their shelves with Christmas presents. Do you remember as a child the first time you realized that they weren't real? Underneath the shiny wrapping and curled ribbon was a styrofoam cube. Or in the bakery section of Kroger, did you ever dare that one time to stick your finger into the icing of the displayed wedding cake, only to rub plastic? For the sports fans--you know the way you felt when you heard of Sammy Sosa's corked bat, or McGuire's steroid use (I don't know what I'm talking about here)? For music fans--when you found out that Milli Vanilli was lip-syncing...

I was prepared for the possibility that these stores would use a Western look to market their Chinese product. I was not prepared for blatant fraud.

It took a few seconds for it to all sink in. My oasis, my beautiful, urban shopping street was a sham. The doors led to nothing. There was nothing but a hard concrete wall behind those window displays. Nothing. Taking a step back, both literally and mentally, I looked around and began to piece things together. The background of the street, which I had ignored until this point came into sharp focus. There it was--I was standing in front of a high-class apartment complex called Le Park...the elaborate entrance to which was made to resemble a typical street in the US or Europe.

I felt like I had been slapped in the face. My eyes were suddenly stinging with tears. I was hurt, silly and a little ashamed. Why would they do this to me? I had believed in this place--I had hoped in it. Why had I let myself be fooled? How could they justify this?

And then I got mad. How dare they! The fakes, the liars, the cheats! I wanted to spraypaint SHAM! and CHARLATAN! and other more un-printable words in graffiti across their elegant sans serif store signs. I wanted to start an LA-style riot and throw bricks through the windows. I felt duped, hosed and swindled. And I wanted revenge.

Ohhhhhh....China.

There's a quote from somewhere that I've always remembered: "What happens to the broken-hearted? They move on, baby." And of course, so did I. I turned around and made my walk back along the lake until I could hail a taxi to bring me home. And in reality, I suppose that I'm glad that globalism hasn't spread its tentacles all over my city with Western enclaves at every corner. I suppose that I like going for blocks without seeing anything reminiscent of home. I suppose that this is something that I actually moved to China to experience. I suppose.

Once back on campus, I went to a street-restaurant and ordered chao fan (fried rice) for dinner. The cook is an older, white haired man who likes to hear me try to speak Chinese. He always says enthusiastically "ok! ok! ok!" when I order. And this time--he remembered my name.

In Autumn the air smells like sweet potatoes.

Vendors sit at street corners, they line alleyways, they gather in store entrances with their blackened metal trash cans. Inside you can see the warming glow of coals and hear the slight crackle of potato skins. One roasted sweet potato is 1.5 yuan. They hand the steaming bundle to you in a thin plastic bag and it almost burns your hand. You peel away the skin--free to toss the peels on the ground like peanut shells at Logans. At the market, you must watch your step like a cartoon character looking out for banana peels. You eat the potato like you would an apple--use the bag to protect against stickiness, hold it in both hands to stay warm. If it's late in the evening, you bring one home and mash it with honey and black sugar for dessert.


The communist party must announce the arrival of Autumn. All the world is summer; the days are hot, the girls wear short sleeves, the buses blow air conditioning. Then SWITCH!...FALL. In one day--corn appears for the first time in the market, sweet candied apples are sold on skewers, the wind blows cold, the sky turns misty and you shiver in your bed. Bright dresses are replaced with muted sweaters, wool blankets fill store shelves that once held room fans and ice trays.


With the first glimpse of what 'cold' means in Wuhan, we are all preparing to nest. I bought coffee mugs, oatmeal and hot water bottles...Jeremy bought a couch and area rug...today I might try to find some large comfy chairs. We are watching the shelves every day for electric blankets to appear for sale. If winter descends with the same suddenness as autumn, we want to be ready.


It is with this season change that I'm seeing a new difference between my US life and my China life. A life of transitions from thermostat-controlled apartments to a heated/cooled car to a thermostat-controlled office, back to car, stop at heated grocery store on way home, back to apartment....didn't leave much room for noticing the seasons. Nor did having a produce section that supplied any fruit or vegetable I could want all year round. Here, I eat what is in season while I can and feel the elements walking and biking around campus, in the unheated classroom, at the busstop, walking around the city, shopping at the outdoor market--pretty much everywhere except the two rooms of my apartment that have heating/cooling units.


As much as I love this country, I still find myself creating little tricks to escape when needed. I watch my DVDs of Friends every now and then. Bruce Springsteen plays almost constantly on my iTunes (his new album, Magic, is PERFECT. I can't stop listening to it. Here's a great review of it from NYT). I keep Oreos, coke and peanut butter stocked in the kitchen.


I suppose that snug in my little American haven, I just might make it through the long Chinese winter.

Woa sure low sure. “I am a teacher.”

The first days:

It felt good to pull out my professional attire on Tuesday morning. I haven’t worn these clothes since losing my PR job last February. When that happened, I took all my boring office suites and slacks to the dry cleaners and stuck them in the back of my closet—refusing from then on to wear anything that resembled “adulthood”. I actually had to tear off the dry cleaning tags for the first time while I got ready. As I looked at myself in the mirror with my business clothes and my heels on—I found myself humming the same tune that got me to my first day at the pr firm, “I have confidence in sunshine. I have confidence in rain. I have confidence that spring will come again. Besides all this you see I have confidence in me!” (or something like that, I never get all the words right...The Sound of Music)

I have two classes of PhD students in English Writing. The goal is to enable them to write academic level papers for publication. The first class is comprised of scientists, botanists, and all forms of extremely intelligent people doing work that I cannot even pronounce. Soil genochemistry, rapseed development, microbiology, molecular biology, soil and land conservation etc… The second class is full of management and business types—with the obvious agricultural focus. My first thought as they shared their field of study: “What the heck am I doing here. These are some of China’s most brilliant scholars. I’m 23. With an undergrad degree.”

But I’ve got the title of “foreign expert.” And they’re stuck with me marking their run-on sentences. This is a strange world.

I’m not sure how to live with the mystery of comprehension. I have no clue how many, if any, students can understand the words coming out of my mouth. I ask questions, blank looks; I make a slight joke, blank looks; I try speaking at a slower tempo, blank looks. Tough crowd, tough crowd. Some of them copy the power point slides verbatim, so at least I know they can go home and translate it word-by-word if needed.

My other classes are all freshmen English majors and I. LOVE. THEM. Their English is as good as my PhD students, they are sweet, THEY LAUGH, and well….they like me! Haha—I know it’s shallow—but I can’t help but bask in their acceptance of me! To the PhD’s, I’m someone whose class they just have to get through so that they can get their degree—to my freshmen, I’m (in the words of one student) an ambassador from a country that fascinates them AND a new, interesting class in the midst of a dull schedule.

I am so relieved to hear them speak English. They know the language, they are conquering grammar and the nuances of written English—my job is to refine their pronunciation. There will probably be slow moments (repeat after me: th. th. th. th. the. these. there. think.), but hopefully I can come up with enough activities to keep it lively.

It’s SO funny to me to see how college freshmen are all the same! As freshmen, we’re all awkward and goofy. The girls are silly and giggle and the guys are lanky and gawky. There are queen bees and class clowns and jocks and plain janes. There are overachieving pseudo-intellectuals and bored or sleepy d-students. I can’t express how joyous I feel thinking that I will get to know them!

On another note: all the girls want my brother. As I introduce myself to each class, I put up a powerpoint slide with photos of my mom, Dylan, and Laura and describe each of them to the class. As soon as Dylan’s pic pops up, a gasp goes up from the crowd. Seriously, in EVERY class (of freshmen). THEN, when I say that he is a junior in college, that he’s 20…the giggles begin. They can’t get enough of him. One class asked me to pronounce his name again. Another asked me if he would be coming to visit me in China. ANOTHER class asked if he was from Houston too (when I introduce myself, I play up the fact that I was born in Houston—where Yao Ming now plays for the Rockets. They all love it. I’m not gonna mention to them that I didn’t know Houston’s basketball team was even named the Rockets until I came to China). Anyway, I’m thinking of offering to give him in marriage to the girl who makes the best grade in my class. That’s what I would call motivation. You up for it Dyl?

Anyway, I’m loving this first week. It’s better than I could have hoped for—and I’m wondering if I stumbled into something that I want to do my whole life. We’ll see. I’ll leave you with some responses from my students to the “introduce yourself” question: What is your favorite English word?

“Beautiful—because I am believing you are very beautiful and I get to look at you in class each week now.” (And you wonder why I like teaching so much!)

“Defense—like for the Rockets. Defense. Defense. DEfense. DEFense. DEFENSE. DEFENSE. DEFENSE.” (at this point I had to interrupt so as not to disturb other classes)

“Hope”

“Smile”

“Happiness”

“Challenge”

and for the winner: from one of my freshmen guys: “Girl—there is not a more wonderful word or thing in the world.”

Western Embrace

Last weekend I gave in to my “American urges” as one dear friend likes to say. It began Friday night. I had a terrible time trying to get across town to a girls meeting and ended up arriving an hour late (My thoughts on the bus—“Hmmm…did that say Yangtze River? Something’s not right. Where am I again? Ohhhh…I should have gotten off 3 stops ago. Niiiiccccce.”). Exhausted and hungry and mildly annoyed, Fawn and I walked a while after the meeting thinking about where to eat. Pizza hut was somebody’s suggestion and we both agreed. What a relief!

Pizza Huts in China are near to fine-dining experiences—well, compared to many on-the-street places. There’s mood music, hosts escort you to your seat, there are place settings, full menus, and dimmed lights. Sitting there with Fawn as we continued to get to know each other almost felt like a date—but probably just because, let’s face it, she’s my newest crush.

Later on that night we ended up at VOX, a ‘hangout’ where a lot of foreigners gather on weekends. It was an interesting mix of young teachers and students from China, Africa, Europe, Wisconsin…you name it. They play 5-year-outdated hip-hop and people can relax, meet each other, speak English etc…It was a fun escape for the night.

Then on Sunday, I continued the slide down the slippery slope of Western retreat. I went to a nearby bookstore and spent a few hours browsing their English selection, bought a Chinese copy of The Little Prince (makes me think of my big sister—and now I have it in English, French and Chinese!), searched in vain for the Chronicles of Narnia (they have some CS Lewis over here), and humored some students wanting to use me to practice their English.

While there, I met another man from Africa, who is teaching French at Wuhan University. We chatted for a few minutes, and after I asked him where he was from, he asked about me, “Where are you from?”
Me: “Where do you think?” (I wasn’t being coy—he made me guess earlier)
Him: “Hmm…I am not sure. Not the States, I know.”
Me: “Really? You don’t think so?”
Him: “No. Perhaps you are from Great Britain?”

The same thing happened to me countless times in France and now has followed me here. I promise, I do not try to come across as anything other than American. Respectful and culturally sensitive, yes…but still American. Maybe it is because I speak French to them and they assume that Americans are incapable of learning another language (thank you, Madame Burns!!!). My mom’s side of the family looks very European in their facial features, so maybe that has something to do with it. It’s probably just because my Southern accent is different from what they hear on TV. Anyway, it’s interesting.

It was upon leaving the bookstore that it happened. FULL immersion into all that is wrong from the West. I couldn’t help it—I walked out of the store exit and the Evil was right there, staring me in the face, illuminating my path, dazzling my eyes. Golden Arches.

Reader, I ate there.

After 3 weeks of mostly Chinese food, I didn’t just want those french fries—I desired them. It overpowered me. I hadn’t eaten all day and had a long bus ride to Fawn’s in front of me, so I ordered a chicken snack wrap, fries and a coke.

I don’t even eat McDonald’s in the US! It’s disgusting to me there. But the ease of a place that understands my order, that is more affordable and fast than Pizza Hut, and that tastes familiar and American is very appealing to me here.

What can I say—I guess I’m lovin it?