Badly in Need of Catching Up

Hey, everybody!


When I arrived in China, I began recording stories in a Word document on my computer, intending to start a blog as soon as possible.  But apparently, my sense of time is not all that good, and I am also pretty easily distracted.  So here, with my first (belated) entry, I am posting several stories that I've already written.  I hope that you enjoy them, and I promise to actually stay up-to-date with this blog from now on.  Really.

The bridge between modern-day Qufu and the "old town"

From San Francisco to Beijing with Dan the Biker (August 29th, 2011)

            My voyage to China commenced with the making of a new acquaintance.  Dan looked just like the stereotypical American biker: mid-fifties, a graying mullet, a burly build that only barely squeezed into his airplane seat, and a vibrantly colored Harley Davidson t-shirt.  I was surprised to see such an icon on a plane to Beijing, and even more surprised when I discovered that he was headed to China for the same purpose as myself.  Dan was a senior English teacher at a medical school in Hunan, and he had been living and teaching in China for six years.

            I was torn between the opportunity to gather some information and advice and my desire to make up for the sleep I had lost during my days of preparation.  However, before I had time to weigh the options, Dan made the decision for me.  Before we were even off the ground, he commenced a long lecture rich with various tips, all delivered in a brusque and unabashed language that was at once amusing and a bit unsettling.

            “Don’t let them disrespect you ‘cause you’re young,” he told me, fixing me with a narrow stare.  “Make them call you ‘Miss,’ don’t let them use your first name.  And they’re not going to want to do homework.  You know what you do?”

            I was agog to know.

            “You fail ‘em.  I’m nasty, but my kids love me.  See, I love them, and once they figure out you love them they’re gonna love you, too.  But you gotta be hard on ‘em or you won’t get anywhere.”

            This seemed sensible enough.  I tried to picture Dan at the head of a classroom carrying out his strict teacher role, but I had trouble picturing him outside of his biker get-up.

            “I dress like this in class,” he told me.  “They love it when I wear my boots and wrap-arounds!  On Christmas I put on my leathers and a Santa hat and go downtown.  Last year I had 48 people ask me for pictures.”

            I took a moment to mull this image over in my mind.  The residents of Hunan received a great deal of credit, in my opinion, for wanting a picture rather than running away or summoning the local police.  I wondered if anyone expected Dan to actually play the part of Santa.  Perhaps I would make a pilgrimage to Hunan at Christmas.  I could ask for a Harley Davidson t-shirt.

            Our conversation continued, and I was given some more tips on daily life in China.  Dan taught me how to correctly haggle in the market, warned me to boil all of my water before drinking it, and gave me some culinary advice.  “When you go in the market and you see all those pretty leafy greens?  Don’t buy those and make one of your girly salads, ‘less you want a case of the blazing Chinese runs.”

            Although my initial reaction to Dan was one of serious caution, over the course of our flight he began to soften considerably.  By the third hour of our flight, in fact, Dan had transformed in my estimation from an intimidating biker to something more akin to a bad-mouthed yet winsome teddy bear.  He gushed about his favorite students, whom he’d come to think of as his own children.  His oldest “baby” had just finished her nursing degree in China and hoped to travel to the U.S. to pursue a more advanced degree.  His youngest was in the midst of college, at the head of the class.  He dug into his carry-on and produced the engagement ring he had purchased for his girlfriend, Ping, for my inspection.  “It’s a full half karat,” he said.  “I got a guy to look at it, and he couldn’t believe the good shape it was in.  The guy I bought it from didn’t know it was worth anything, so I got it for five bucks.  Don’t tell Ping!” he put a cautionary finger to his lips.  I was shown photos of Ping and her daughter, and all three of the soon-to-be family squashed into a photo booth grinning broadly.

            As much as I was enjoying our chat, I was relieved when Dan announced it was time for a nap.  My eyelids were becoming increasingly heavy, and the desire for sleep was strong enough that I thought I might just pass out right there, awkwardly draped over one arm of my seat.  Dan fixed this without a problem.  Rolling up a sweater, he propped it on his shoulder and patted it invitingly.  “There, that’s easy, isn’t it?”

            Growing ever more thankful for my new friend, I leaned over and drifted into a deep sleep.  I awoke when the flight attendant made the announcement that we were about to land.  Dan was already awake, scowling at the seats in front of us.  They were occupied by a brother and sister, who had leaned their seats back almost into our laps and were blatantly ignoring requests to sit back up for landing.

            Again, Dan provided the solution.  Grabbing the top of one seat in each of his giant paws, he shook them vigorously and growled, “That means you!  Sit up!  Just ‘cause you’re home now it doesn’t mean you get to ignore the rules.”

            Eyes wide with terror, the two siblings jerked their seats up and slumped out of sight.  Dan looked at my surprised (and probably slightly scolding) expression and shrugged.  “Hey, I’m a teacher,” he said.  “I’m a mean asshole.”

My living room (top) and my bedroom (right)










Small Adventures with Large Appliances (August 30th, 2011)

            I am slowly becoming comfortable with Qufu and day-to-day life, and also discovering that loads of free time is at once a blessing and a curse.  No matter what I do that feels “productive,” I usually end up in my apartment for hours and feel very useless.  I am hoping to eventually get comfortable enough with the area to be able to go on long walks and bike rides, but at the moment the heat, as well as a lack of company and a bike, is holding me back.  For now, wandering around campus and the grocery store will have to suffice.

            This morning I did my first load of laundry, which was a small adventure.  The machines are cute little uprights, produced by Samsung (who knew) and, of course, with all of their labels and instructions written in characters.  Yesterday evening before dinner Rob, Dani, and I pondered over the smallest of the three in hopes of deciphering some of the characters.  We decided that “piào liàng” was delicates since it means “pretty,” but that’s about as far as we got.  This morning, up at 5am as usual, I decided to try my first load.  Rather than succeeding, I managed only to attain a flooded washing machine that read “4E” in angry flashes when I went to the basement to pick up my clothes.  I puzzled over this for a moment, wondering if I was going to be lynched for breaking a washing machine.  Had I opened the washer too early?  The machines didn’t seem to lock, and there was still soap all over my clothes.  Would the water drain on its own?  Should I find a bucket somewhere and scoop it out?  Should I start over in hopes of success the second time around?  If I did nothing, would anyone know it was me?

            For the moment, I opted for the latter choice, as everyone else in the building was probably still asleep and our mystery housekeeper was nowhere to be seen.  Considering our language barrier, I’m not sure how much use asking her assistance would be anyway.  I hauled my sopping clothes from the original washer and plopped them into a new one.  This time, I avoided pressing any buttons.  Perhaps selecting “pretty” on the first go had been what got me into trouble.  Pressing the big, red “go” button, I crossed my fingers and said a little prayer to myself.  Casting a strained look at the now empty, water logged washer I retreated upstairs to my apartment.

            Upon returning, everything seemed normal.  My clothes were rinsed and spun, the machine sang a delightful tune when it was ready to be opened (silenced only by a vigorous jab at the power button), and the flooded washer (or so I told myself) appeared to slowly be draining.  Smiling happily, and surprisingly giddy considering what a small feat using a washing machine is, I trundled back up the stairs and hung my clothes on my patio.  Now my only concern was that they would grow mold before they had the chance to dry.  Perhaps I will purchase a large fan.

The Egg Incident (August 31st, 2011)

            Since I’ve been here, I’ve been continuously surprised at how little knowledge of Chinese is needed to actually get around day to day.  If you can pronounce your intended destination (a risk, granted), ask how much, and mime with your fingers, taking a taxi is fairly simple.  So is buying anything at the market, as long as you can point.  The grocery store is incredibly simple, as the price of your goods gleams from the cash register in familiar numbers.  Everything else requires very little interaction.  Just try not to get lost, or you might be stuck.  According to my fellow teacher Rob, it is common in China to point when giving directions—but not necessarily in the right direction.

            However, despite the relative ease of getting around, you do occasionally run into trouble.  I learned just how big a problem a language barrier can be the first time I went to the grocery store to buy eggs.

            I had been to the grocery store a few times before.  The store on Qufu’s campus is something that I hold close to my heart.  It’s about a two minute walk from my apartment, the attendants in the produce section are friendly and appreciative of my stuttering phrases, and it houses an endless amount of fascinating goodies.  I had made my way to the bright, Pepto Bismol colored building almost every day since my arrival to explore and to purchase various groceries or snacks.  Today, my mission was to buy eggs.  I love eggs, but the way they are sold in China can be a little unnerving to the newcomer.  I was accustomed to safe cardboard cartons, easy to carry and useful if you want to prevent a mess in your shopping bag.  In China, however, eggs seem to be sold in one of two ways: either you hand pick them yourself and drop them into a bag, or they come in a ready-made mesh bag 20 or so at a time.

            When I made my way to the back of the produce section, I opted for the mesh bag.  I like eggs, and I planned to eat a lot.  Plus, I was buying other groceries and thought it would be safer to carry my eggs separately rather than risk them bobbing around among my vegetables and sunflower oil.  So, after carefully watching a man perform the necessary procedure across the room, I collected my bag of eggs and presented them to the attendant.  She weighed them, stuck them with a price tag, and handed them to me with an encouraging grin.  I was very proud of myself; this seemed simple enough.

            Everything was going according to plan until I hit the cash register.  For reasons still completely unknown to myself, the arrival of my eggs at the checkout caused a storm of confusion.  After swiping all of my items, the girl at the checkout grasped the bag, fixed me with a scolding stare, and said something far beyond my tiny grasp of Mandarin.  I gave her a bewildered look.  She pointed at the bag and repeated her statement, perhaps thinking that I was a bit thick headed but deserved another go.  She set the eggs aside and asked me to pay for the rest of my items.  Not knowing what else to do, I did.  Then I stood there, wondering what to do next.

            “Wǒ yào mǎi, kěyi ma?” I stumbled out, pointing at the eggs.  I want to buy, may I?  She shook her head.

            “Bù kěyi?” I asked, knowing I probably made no sense whatsoever, and attempting a swiping “no” gesture from left to right with my hand.

            It seemed I had gotten the gist, or something like it.  She nodded at me, then looked around her as if for assistance.  But it didn’t make sense.  Why couldn’t I buy the eggs?  Why were they there if I couldn’t buy them?  I scanned the store helplessly to see if anyone else was buying a similar bag of eggs, someone I could point at to prove I wasn’t crazy.

            In the meantime, the checkout girl began to shriek dialogue across the store.  This is another phenomenon that took some getting used to.  In China, apparently, if you want something or someone, you yell.  No matter how far away you are.  If your friend lives on the seventh floor of the building and you’re in the parking lot, you yell at their window until they appear.  If you’re working at the checkout counter and a clueless American makes a mistake with her eggs, you yell until someone comes to assist you.

            A flurry of workers came to see what was going on.  Most of them paused to ask what was happening and upon hearing the explanation giggled and turned away.  This was even more baffling.  What on earth had I done wrong?  And why was it so funny?  I cast an ever-more flummoxed glance at my friend and fellow teacher Eliza who was in line behind me.  She looked equally confused, and gave a terrified glance downward at her own bag of eggs that she had been intending to purchase.

            Finally, a senior-looking staff woman showed up and began conversing with the original checkout girl.  She spun my bag of eggs around and inspected it closely, then pointed to the price tag.  Was that it?  Was all of this insanity over a missed price tag?

            But it wasn’t over yet.  The price seemed suspicious, and the two women puzzled over it for a moment with small frowns darkening their usually cheery faces.  The manager-looking woman inspected Eliza’s bag, and upon seeing that it was priced the same seemed to decide everything was fine.  I attempted to offer the checkout girl money at this juncture, hoping it was finally over.  She gave me a withering look, but accepted it.  There seemed to still be some sort of issue.  The manager woman helped her to count out change, handed it to me, and gestured at the eggs.  I took them reluctantly, thinking perhaps it was a trick.  But I got them off the counter without a hitch, and all seemed back to normal.  Eliza, upon being greeted by the checkout girl, decided upon a different method.  After handing over the rest of her groceries, she placed the eggs deliberately into the checkout girl’s hands and vigorously shook her head no.  “I don’t want eggs that badly,” she told me.


Food Poisoning 101 (September 2nd, 2011)

            When preparing to live and work in China for about 10 months, I was fully aware that at some point during the year I would experience a moment of regret.  I would ask myself what the hell I had gotten myself into, scold myself for being stupid enough to come sign up for this in the first place, and beg the universe for some sort of legitimate excuse to turn around and go straight back home.  I knew I would probably have moments like this several times throughout the school year, but I had spent my first week wondering when exactly that first moment would arrive.

            This was it.  I had gone out to dinner with my fellow English teachers in a little restaurant in downtown Qufu, and now, as 5:00 am approached, I found myself begging the ceiling to grant me relief.  Let me go home, I prayed.  Kill me; I don’t care.  Just make it stop!

            I had been warned that I would get sick at least once in the first few weeks of my trip, but I had had no idea it would be so severe.  I had pictured a few moments of running to the bathroom, a bit of queasiness, maybe a few days of not being able to handle food.  But this—this felt like a sign from all the Gods of every religion that I should just give up.  I had spent the entire night running back and forth between my bed and the toilet, with a fever that forced me to grapple onto various articles of furniture in order to not simply fall over or pass out.  I was sick in every possible direction, my belly was experiencing a type of pain that I had always associated with descriptions of medieval torture, and I was beginning to wonder if by the end of this thing I would have any shred of my stomach left at all.  I cursed all the food I had ever consumed in China, and vowed never to eat it again.  Invitations to dine out would be scoffed at; at banquets and obligatory outings I would stuff my food into my purse.  I would live off of oatmeal and the tiny envelopes of peanut and almond butter I had brought over in my suitcase.  Who cared if I only had enough to last me a few days?  Eating was overrated.  By the end of my ten months I would be undernourished and underweight, but I would never have to experience this pain again!

            This outburst of rage against the local cuisine soon spiraled into a full out meltdown of film worthy proportions.  As the day went on, I became increasingly homesick and panicked.  What the hell was I doing here?  I couldn’t teach!  I had no idea what I was doing!  I wanted to go home.  I wanted to eat bread and pie and cereal, and go out to dinner without fear of illness.  I missed my cat.  I missed speaking to people in the grocery store instead of miming to them.  I missed my friends, I missed my family, I missed being a college student and having nothing to worry about except essays.  I wanted to go home NOW.  Blasting the most depressing music I could find, I sobbed my way through the afternoon like an overgrown infant.

            I’ve had several people remark to me how rapidly my moods change, and it’s true that I do tend to swing between the extremes.  In as short a time frame as an hour I’ve been known to leap from happy, sad, excited, frustrated, and back to happy without much explanation, a quality that is alarming even to myself at times.  But occasionally, such as during the day of my first China meltdown, it proves a useful personality trait—even if it does sometimes make me feel like an overdramatic idiot.  By the end of the day, I was feeling much better.  My stomach and everything in my southern regions were making a speedy recovery, and suddenly I was ecstatic about the concept of teaching in a few days.  I began blasting cheerful music and bounced around my apartment, cleaning up the remains of the previous night with very little memory of what had actually occurred.  This bright mood was improved even more by the arrival of Andy, one of our sort-of bosses, who presented me with my first paycheck.  I felt karma kicking in.  Okay, all that sickness was rewarding me with money?  Cool!  The world was once again a happy place.

            This would not be my last unpleasant reaction to local food, nor would it be my only downward spiral into panic and homesickness.  But making it through the first episode instilled me with a sense of confidence.  “This too shall pass,” I am able to proverbially encourage myself whenever things get a bit too much.  And, luckily, I have somehow over the course of my life developed the ability to laugh at myself—a talent that is absolutely requisite when living abroad.  I promise you, all of you who plan to travel, that you will make an idiot of yourself countless times.  But it’s all part of the experience, and it serves for great writing material!

Downtown Qufu

Rickshaws and Roller Coasters (September 3rd, 2011)

            One of the most enjoyable things about living abroad is witnessing all of the cultural differences that exist between countries.  Some of them can be a little unsettling, like the difference between the American and the Chinese definition of a sanitary bathroom.  Some are simply curious, like the groups of people who spontaneously begin a dance in the street in downtown Qufu every night, then break up and walk away at the end of the song as if nothing has happened.  Some you experience more directly, like haggling for a taxi price or learning to stop obsessively thanking attendants at the grocery store.

            One of my first more notable experiences in China came when I, along with three of my fellow teachers, took a rickshaw across town to the university’s second campus to meet friends for dinner.  Most of the rickshaws in Qufu are of the modern variety—a small moped with some variation of an attached wagon.  Our rickshaw had a tall, narrow box attached with a front and back wall, open sides, and seats with just enough room for four people, two on each side.  Rob, the most fluent of all of us, negotiated the price while Dani, Eliza, and I squeezed into the box.  I had to hunch over to fit under the low roof, but otherwise it was quite comfortable.  Rob hopped into the last space, and off we went.

            Sort of.  Our first obstacle came pretty quickly: a speed bump.  Our driver revved his tiny engine, we went up—up—and came sliding back down.  He tried again.  Back down we came again.  He tried a third time, with no success.  Someone cracked a joke about fat Americans, and we all contributed some verbal support as we approached the speed bump a fourth time.  A little more distance and speed, and this time we just made it over.  We cheered happily.  A glance at the driver made me wonder if he found us endearing or simply obnoxious.  But we were on our way.

            Things went fairly smoothly until we hit town.  While we were still in the outskirts, the rickshaw was a fun and cute way to travel, bumping along at a quiet and peaceful pace.  But once we hit the main roads of downtown, we suddenly realized how vulnerable and tiny our little vehicle was in comparison to all of the real cars on the road.

            When I first witnessed driving in downtown Qufu, I was surprised by how little rules seem to be a part of it.  Bicycles, rickshaws, cars, carts, and even pedestrians mill in every direction all over the place.  There are two sides of the road, one for each direction, but other than that the general rule seems to be “do whatever you can get away with.”  People veer and swerve around each other willy-nilly, shoot across the street in front of cars, blare their horns as they narrowly miss collisions and battle for who gets to go first—and all without blinking an eye.

            But despite the hectic and rather dangerous situation we found ourselves in, crammed into a tiny and easily destructible vehicle in all this chaos, Dani and I were having a good time.  We leaned out the side to peer at passers-by, emitted several “wheee!” sounds like children as we veered around turns, and in general maintained the attitude of people riding the theme park’s main attraction.  Rob and Eliza, on the other hand, were experiencing a problem.  Apparently, their side of the rickshaw had begun to tilt quite noticeably to the side, and they found themselves sliding against their will out the open side of our little box.

            Eliza, ever the calm traveler, began a quiet mantra: “We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die!” while Rob attempted to brace his feet against the frame of the rickshaw in order to avoid spilling out onto the busy street.  Dani and I attempted to reassure Eliza, promising her that we were completely safe.  Nothing bad was going to happen.

            Our reassurances were interrupted by the sudden near-collision of our rickshaw with a delivery truck.  This time we all shrieked as the massive face of the truck screeched to a halt about three inches from our open box, its headlights plunging us all swiftly into temporary blindness.  Horns blared angrily at the two vehicles blocking the road, and our driver—much to our surprise—revved his engine and darted out in front of the truck, determined to gain first place in what was apparently some sort of competition.  As we proceeded down the road, the truck’s lights leered at us threateningly, barely six inches behind, waiting to mow us down at the nearest opportunity.  Luckily, we were almost at our destination.  A few more wobbling twists and turns, and we came sliding to a halt.

            Eliza tumbled out of the rickshaw with a firm “Never again!” while Dani happily praised the thrills of the ride.  “I like roller coasters,” she joked.  I had also enjoyed myself, though I was still a little shaken by our run-in with the truck.  Rob decided to refrain from an opinion, but gratefully stretched out his legs.

            We took a real cab home after dinner.