China Reflection

Honey approaches my desk and hands me the Bible.  It’s a book of “Beijing’s best” written in Chinese for anyone wanting to find the cream of the crop in China’s capital, entitled ”1039 Lifestyle Guidebook.”  Inside of its pages the book separates into different sections:  the best restaurants in the Houhai area, the best restaurants in the Dongzhimen area, the best Old Beijing eateries, the best Guangxi food, the best hotels in Wangfujing, etc.  The list goes on.  My eyes widen at its contents.

“Where did you get this book?” I ask Honey.

“A friend of mine gave it to me as a gift.  You can have it if you want.”  She walks away nonchalantly.  How do her pencil thin legs even bend? I think to myself.

I pour over the contents inside of the Bible and decide that I am going to try one of these restaurants at random.  Putting my work aside for a few minutes I decide to check the Hou Hai^W section of restaurants since I live in that area.  Best to start in a familiar area and then work my way out.  I decide to go to a restaurant specializing in Beijing delicacies (not duck).  It’s called Hu Guo Si Xiao Chi (Hu Guo Temple Snack).

I know that the Hu Guo Temple area is not that far from where I work.  If I walk it should take me a little more than an hour to get there.  This is a relatively close distance in Beijing.  The weather is not to hot, not too cold, and the wind carries with it a gust of Spring time.  I walk from my office near Yong He Gong Llama temple, making my way through hutongs and alleyways, familiar and unfamiliar.  The walls of the hutongs are grey and silent.  Every few hundred meters I come upon some sign of construction, destruction, or Springtime sprucing up.  Some of these hutongs are hundreds of years old dating as far back as the Yuan Dynasty^W (1206-1341).  In an effort to preserve what little of the hutongs remain, the city’s government rebuilds and updates them little by little each year (the most sweeping update taking place just before the Olympics).  One can find migrant workers scaling houses, carpenters finishing wooden beams used for roofing, bricklayers mixing fresh sement, piles of hot pavement steaming beside a wall, and mountains of dirt being sifted in preparation to be used as mortar.

Passing through Beijing’s ever-evolving cityscape, I arrive at Hu Guo Temple Snack just in time for dinner.  The restaurant is jam packed with people lined up at the counter waiting for service.  It’s not the kind of place where you go in and waiters come to your table.  Every customer has to stand in the swarming line and wait their turn.  I look behind the servers and ticket takers at all of the little Beijing snacks, almost none of which I can name.  Some look swet and doughy, others are brown and sticky, braided together by their own runny syrup that they are cooked in.  Someone cuts in front of me in line as they notice that I am still contemplating the enormity of my choices.  The menu is all in Chinese, and most of the snacks’ names are new to me, as they are ”Beijing only” specialties.  The person in front of me orders a bowl of something called “mian cha” meaning “noodle tea.”  The server takes out a bowl filled with some yellow goop that looks like a sneeze and holds a ladle with some brown syrup and pours it over the sneeze.  Another customer orders a steaming bowl of lamb guts soup along with some powdered balls filled with sweets.  There are buscuits filled with lamb meat and others filled with red bean paste.  I want to eat everything.  My stomach growls at me.

“What’ll it be?” the waitress asks me.  The line behind me puts pressure on me, and I don’t have much time to look over the menu on the wall.

“Uh, I’ll get a bowl of “dou zhi” 豆汁, along with “jiao quan er” 胶圈儿.  And some “xian cai” 咸菜。”Dou zhi is a kind of Beijing snack drink that is made of the fluid remnants of fermented mung bean.  It’s greyish in color, extremely sour in taste, and has a slight odor of death hovering about it.  It’s extremely healthy and is usually eaten with jiao quan er, which are basically fried circular crullers.  A side of xian cai, or salty pickle shreds also goes well with it.

The dou zhi is only a snack, so I also order a couple of buscuits filled with lamb meat, as well as two of the puffy balls that are coated with powder.  They remind me of the glutonous rice cakes I know from my time spent in Japan, except they are filled with sugared candies.

I take my tray of Beijing snacks and search for a seat amongst the crowd.  People leave trays at vacant tables, and I’m not sure if they have been saved or what.  As I’m searching for a table, I notice that there has been a man following me.  I noticed him when I first walked into the restaurant, sort of just walking around aimlessly as if in a daydream.  He’s dressed in a construction worker’s clothes and has still not ordered any food.  When I sit down at a table, he sits down next to me as well and continues to stare.  Uh-oh.

“You’re from England?” he asks.  His eyes have a nice color.  His skin is worn, but the eyes are clear.

“No, I’m from the States.  What about you?”

He says he is from Anyang^W in Henan Province.  I have heard of this city and know it for its oracle bones, some of the earliest known records of writing done by Man.  We shake hands.  As I grasp his hand I notice that the third finger has been chopped off below the joint and ends in a kind of point where a new fingernail seems to have started forming.  I wonder what kind of accident caused this to happen, but I know I shouldn’t ask.  We talk for a couple minutes about Anyang, and then he interrupts the conversation.

“Do you have any American money?” he asks.

“No, no bills.  I get paid in RMB, so it doesn’t make sense to have any bills.”

“Nothing?” he asks.  He seems a bit disappointed.

“I might have some coins.  Let me check.”  I reach in my pocket and pull everything out–small notes, big notes, business cards, coins, etc.  I notice that I do have one penny and show it to him.  I shove everything else back in my pocket.  He asks how much it’s worth, and I tell him.

“Hey, I saw another coin in your pocket that wasn’t Chinese…what was that?”

I reach back in and pull out the pile once more.  Sure enough there is a 2 pence piece in my pocket with a picture of the queen on it.  My friend, James, gave it to me a couple months earlier and I’ve just left it in my pocket ever since.

“This one is from England.  I’m not sure how much it is worth.”  I hand it do me so he can rub the coins in his hands and between his 3rd finger stub.

We talk for some more minutes about Anyang and what there is to see there.  He tells me about his work and says that he’ll probably be returning to Anyang within three weeks.  I ask him how many hours he works.  About 10 each day.  He eats almost the same thing everyday, never going to restaurants.  He only came into this restaurant to wander around and see what all the commotion was about.  As we talk, he puts the two coins into one of his shirt pockets as if it was as natural as scratching his head.

I’ll never see this man again, and I’ll never see those coins again, either.  It’s just a penny and a 2 pence piece.  I have no sentimental attachment to them.  I was going to give them to him, anyway.  Really, I was.  But something about the way he casually puts them into his pocket without even asking me makes want to leave immediately.  I’m tired of this conversation and decide that it’s time to go home.  My plate is clean, my stomach is full, and the man from Anyang is still staring at me.  I reach out and shake his hand one more time, wishing him luck.  He remains in the restaurant, sitting at the same table, in front of my empty bowl.

I have more than 800 students.   It’s hard to keep up with so many. Everyday I wonder to myself what they are doing and try to imagine their lives through their eyes. A student studies his English in some far off corner of the university library, cramming for another upcoming English exam. A young girl with an innocent face and wide glass mirror eyes stands in front of 50 eight year old students in China’s coastal city of Xiamen, wondering how she can inspire her students to listen to her. Another girl sits in front of her computer in an office in Guangzhou, writing performance invoices for the bags that her company sells abroad. One searches online for work. One responds to e-mails from a perspective French client interested in purchasing her company’s shower heads. Another plays games on the computer, although he should be searching online for clients interested in automotive parts. A couple meets on the weekend, one traveling East, the other traveling West—they meet at a city in the middle. Most of them wait. They wait for their internships to turn into substantial work. They wait for someone to ask them to marry. They wait for opportunities to come their way. They wait for a new day to begin. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

I taught these appoximately 800 students for two years while living in Yichun, a mid-sized city (pop. roughly 500,000) in China’s southern Jiangxi Province. Most of them are natives of Jiangxi Province. They come from small towns and hamlets all over the countryside. Their families are mostly farmers or factory workers. I don’t think a single one of my students has a father or mother who owns a car. Many of them didn’t come to Yichun University out of choice. In China, the results of one’s college entrance examination hold the final verdict as to which school a student can attend. Yichun University is fairly low in the rankings. Most of the students are perplexed as to why I purposely chose to live here. I just wanted to go somewhere in China that wasn’t Beijing or Shanghai. Yichun University offered me a job, and I took it.

For two years, I devoted my life to my students, spending most of my time working with them and coaching them as to how to speak and write “proper” English. For two years, these 800 students were the most important part of my life. I spent hours planning for their classes, wondering how I could get them to have an interest in English, and an interest in the world outside of their own. I racked my brain, and I loved it. I truly learned to love Jiangxi as I spent more time there. I love the food, the music, the people, the rustic town, etc. It’s the first place I think of when I think of China. I think of the meals I’ve had the honor of sharing with my students’ families. I think of the countless English speech participants I’ve had to listen to on stage. I watched them with awe, as nervous as I ever was during one of my own childhood piano recitals, hoping they wouldn’t run off the stage crying in shame. I think of the time I went out in the heat of a summer night with five boys from class 13 and my Swiss friend, Simon, to illegally hunt for frogs in the rice paddies. Armed only with bags, flashlights and nets, we caught most of the frogs with our bare hands. After the hunt was finished we took our booty back to my apartment where we decapitated the victims with scissors, gutted their organs, and pan-fried their bodies with spicy Jiangxi peppers. My senses overwhelm me when I think of the memories associated with Jiangxi: the shots of Chinese grain alcohol piercing my chest like a thousand razor blades, the smell of firecrackers’ smoke, the smooth surface of a bamboo tree’s joint, the sound of my friend, Irene, telling me a story of China from long, long ago, the sight of my students gathering at the railroad station to wish me farewell before I leave to go to Nanjing and then to Beijing. Everything mixes together; it all holds a distinct place in my life that will affect me for years to come.

Today I am back in Yichun to fulfill two promises: one to my students, and the other to myself. Many of my students will graduate at the end of this month. I informed them that, should I have time, I would take the train from Beijing to Yichun at the end of May to see them before they graduate. Many of them have been out “in the society”  looking for work. During their senior year of study they take the final half year to write their thesis and search for work opportunities wherever they may find them. At the end of May/beginning of June they should return to Yichun in order to receive their diplomas. Many of them come back to Yichun early so that they can have one last hurrah with their classmates before it’s time to grow up and become adults. I send a mass e-mail to the almost 300 students e-mail addresses I still have and inform them that I will be coming to Yichun to see them. I know that I will not see all of them, but I’ll see who I see, and that’s fine with me. It might be the last time we’re together as a group.

The students from class 11 are the first ones to respond to me, so that’s who I decide to meet. I can only take a couple of days off from work in Beijing, so time is of the essence. We meet at the gate of the “student street,” a small street near the student’s dormitories that is filled with cheap, but tasty restaurants. A group of about 15 to 20 students are there to greet me. During dinner I ask them about “the life in the society,” and they tell me how difficult it is to find work. Most of them will end up teaching middle school or high school English. They majored in English, and don’t really have the necessary tools to find any other kinds of work. There are the occasional students who get lucky breaks and might find jobs as translators in trade companies. Actually, these “lucky” breaks are more due to their “never say die” attitude than to blind luck. Out of all of these students that I meet, only two of them have found work at this point (I should mention that all of my students take on English names in order to create more of an English environment in class). One student, Ellen, has found a teaching job teaching in her hometown in Henan province in the north of China. I have been to her hometown. I remember eating corn with every meal and smelling a strange odor of a nearby factory burning something in the area. The houses were old and worn down. The people believed that a spirit lived in a nearby ancient tree, refusing to cut the tree down and instead building houses around it. Ellen was badly injured in an automobile accident as a child and has two long scars from the stitches on both of her arms. When she delivers a speech in English, it’s sure to bring tears to her classmates’ eyes as she always puts her whole heart into her words. Another student, whose name is Michael tells me that he is working in a bar at a five star hotel in Ningbo. Michael’s English is fast and unintelligible at times, like a machine gun — regardless of whether he hits the mark, he keeps on firing. His English name is interesting in that it’s the fourth time he’s altered it. When I first met him he was Jack, then Chili, then Chocolate, and now Michael. I learn that he and another classmate of his are now romantically involved. He tells me that it’s now his dream to become a sommelier and spends much of his spare time studying different wines. I’m just glad he has a dream.

After dinner we go outside and sit on the grass in front of the dormitories. They are square buildings, 7 or 8 stories tall, all with the lights on and clothes hanging outside of the windows. It’s easy to spy on what goes on inside these dorm rooms. Every room holds about 6 college students,.  As we sit in the grass we look up and admire the bright Moon. It seems unusually luminous, round, and clear to me tonight. Perhaps it’s the fact that I have just come from Beijing where there’s a constant haze of pollution hanging in the sky like a veil over the Moon’s light. The air here is much cleaner than in the North. As we look up at the Moon, it’s easy to reminisce about times past. We decide to take photos in groups, standing under the moonlight. That’s how I will remember my students, until I see them again.

The second promise is one I made to myself, and it involves a well. During the end of my tenure at Yichun University, one of my colleagues from America named Dayton asked me if I would like to donate money to help build a well for an elementary school in a neighboring village about an hour away from Yichun city. One of his students was teaching at that school, and the well had recently been bulldozed by contractors. Without enough money to build another well, the students there had no drinking water or water to wash their clothes with. The village’s name was Fei Jian Tan. I immediately agreed to help out and donated 1000 RMB to help rebuild the well. However, I left Yichun before the completion of the project. When I left, I vowed that I would return to see the structure that I helped fund with my donation. One of my students, whose English name is Beautiful, offered to accompany me to Fei Jian Tan to see the school

Beautiful arrives at the bus stop on time, and it’s just the two of us that will make the visit. She is one of my younger students, this year only a sophomore at Yichun University. I also consider her one of my braver students because she has the will and desire to travel on her own. When I lived in Nanjing, she came there by herself to visit me, which is not something most Chinese girls her age would do. The bus journey through Jiangxi countryside takes about an hour. We are flanked by farms the entire way. I swear I’ve seen this scenery in a dream somewhere before. Arriving at Fei Jian Tan, it’s immediately apparent that I am the only foreigner in this town at the moment. I can tell this from the stares that I get as I walk through the main (and only) street. We walk past a shop where a shirtless man is cutting thick iron wires with his bare hands. I stop to take a picture and he smiles for me - the happy iron worker. Just up ahead is the school. The two of us enter the front gates without signing any sort of registration; we just walk right in. Like most elementary schools in China, the building is more than 3 stories tall. Many of the windows are broken and need to be repaired. The classrooms are filled. Students peer over stacks of books that are as tall as they are. A pregnant woman comes out to greet us. She is one of the English teachers in the school. As we are talking, Beautiful tells the teacher who I am. Dayton has been here before, as has Allen, another colleague and donor. She smiles and introduces me to the PE teacher, a handsome man who owns the motorbike that is propped inside the gateway. Another English teacher comes out to meet us. He is from Yichun city and lives in this school during the week, traveling back home to his wife and children on the weekend. After introductions they lead us to the well.

Although not impressive in scale, the well is functional. It’s square in shape, separated into two sections of mud-orange water. I ask why the water is this color, but they cannot give me a clear answer. Maybe it was built too fast, maybe the sediment has seeped into the water. No matter, the students can use the water to wash their clothes, if not to drink. On the wall behind the well is a plaque with three names written on it: Dayton, Allen, and Jeffrey… me. I stare at the plaque in a daze. I was told that they had erected a plaque there, but I didn’t really expect to see one. And there it was. Here I was. Here I am, a part of Jiangxi history. It may not be a big thing, it may not affect many lives, it may not even last that long. Still, this well in Fei Jian Tan has been erected partially in my name. With the money we donated, workers stuck their shovels into the ground and dug a hole. They mixed cement, probably by hand, and filled the hole. Slowly, the well came into being. Something came from nothing. The students at this school use the water. The teachers use it. When it rains, the well catches the water and collects it. I walk behind the well and stand on the concrete divider that divides its two pools. I sit on the wall and Beautiful takes a picture of me, my legs dangling over the plaque that bears my name.

After lunch the PE teacher gives us a lift to the reservoir above the town. When we arrive, besides the two of us there are two lonely fishermen sitting in front of the vast expanse of water. Sweating under the Sun, I know immediately that I want to take a dip in the water. I take off my clothes and jump in. As soon as I splash in, I finally feel I can wash off Beijing’s air in the reservoir’s purity. Beautiful cannot swim, so she stands on the banks of the reservoir watching me and taking pictures. Afterwards, we rent a motorboat and take a tour around the reservoir. I ask the driver to stop in the deepest section so that I can listen to the surrounding silence and jump into the dark water once more.

When we arrive back at Fei Jian Tan elementary school, it’s already late afternoon, and it is Friday. This means that the students will go home for the weekend. Many of them have an hour or two’s walk until they reach home. They take their loads of books, even the tops of their desks, and load them onto their bicycles in order to complete the weekend’s assignments. Beautiful and I decide to walk with one of the students for a while. We pick a short student who is carrying two buckets full of books home for the weekend, and we decide to walk and chat with him. At first he seems a bit shy and quiet, not sure what to make of the two of us. I tell him where I’m from and ask him if he’s ever met any other Americans before. “Of course not,” he answers.

I look at this kid and begin to wonder what’s going to happen to him in the future. How will Feij Jian Tan be affected by the changes that are happening all over the country, all over the world? In his mind, what does he think of America? What do his parents expect of him? Will he ever leave Jiangxi? How far will he go from Fei Jian Tan? Does he make any connection to me and the water in his well? Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. It’s just nice to walk with him and Beautiful on this warm day.

We pass a honey farm. The smell is intoxicating. I ask the boy what he wants to be when he grows up. What’s his dream? He tells me that he wants to become a government official so he can “make money” and help his family. I hope he reaches his dream. I hope he has other dreams as well. We walk with him and his friends for about 45 minutes, slowly making our way past farms and rustic houses, the inhabitants peering at us with question marks and smiles on their faces. Some of the students head off in other directions, walking towards their respective homes. Others keep walking. I look at my watch. I have more students from Yichun to meet in the evening before heading back to Beijing the next day. We say goodbye to China’s future official and wish him all the best. As we turn around, I wonder to myself if I will ever see him again. The Sun is makes his way down… down… down behind a small hill in the West. It’s sure to be another clear Moon tonight.

As I wait for my friend from Tianjin to arrive at Gulou metro station, I decide to take a seat outside on the wall. When I exit the station, bicycle-powered taxis and motorcycle taxis stop to ask me if I would like a ride to any particular destination. The bicycle-powered taxis aren’t really convenient for getting from one destination to another. Instead, they are more useful for touring the back alleys and hutongs near the Drum Tower in Beijing. This area of Beijing is different from the developed areas with their skyscrapers, wide roads, and upscale hotels. During and after the Cultural Revolution when China underwent a massive period of self destruction and reconstruction (that’s still going on today), it seemed popular to raze any structure that seemed old-fashioned. Countless buildings with hundreds of years of history were torn to the ground to be replaced by impersonal office buildings and apartments. Anything new was good, and it had to be covered with bathroom tiles that took on a rusted, aged appearance within a year after the construction. More recently, however, the Beijing government has begun to realize the historic value of such places. In an effort to revive its tourism and keep Beijing as a cultural center, many of the old houses in the hutongs are being restored and protected. Only one third of Beijing’s original hutongs still exist. Many hutong alleys around the Drum Tower area have been converted to tourist shops and restaurants. While the area thrives on tourism, it’s still a spot where real people live and work. The countless bicycle taxis that approach you wherever you go are all armed with a powerful set of calves and the same map showing you the route of historic sites to be visited. I’ve never actually taken one myself, preferring to take my time and walk through the hutongs.

I notice a metro security guard to the right of where I am sitting. Well, at least it is a boy dressed in security guard’s clothing. The clothes and hat are too big for him, and by the way he is standing, it looks like he’s on his first day of the job. It’s as if he’s just standing there waiting to catch a bus, and he only just happens to be wearing security guard’s clothes. I look carefully at this boy and decide there’s no way he can be older then 14 or 15. This is not unusual in China. For a country that really does feel safe to me, there are an incredible amount of security guards and most of them seem to be way too young to be guarding anything besides their schoolbooks. Every college has security guards at the gates. Most residential areas have a gate at the front with some security guards. When I taught English in China’s Jiangxi Province, I had a student whose summer job was to be a “milk guard” for the dairy section of a supermarket (no joke!). The guards usually have two different kinds of looks. There is guard A and guard B. Guard A is the type of guard who takes his job seriously. He thinks to himself that he is in a position of power and the residents in the complex are depending on him to keep out all forms of danger including thieves, wild animals, and Osama bin Laden. He stands erect at the gate, saluting whoever enters, or questioning those passersby who seem a bit too suspicious. When no one enters, he scans the area in front of him, moving his head in a 180 degree sweep, as an owl would do searching for its pray. Guard B is the other type of guard. He knows that he’s not needed. He’s just working here because maybe his uncle happened to get him the job for some extra cash. No one will ever rob this apartment complex. There are no bad guys to get. He puts on no pretense and might sit down in a chair and prop his feet up on a table while picking his nose with one finger. Sometimes he’ll be sleeping, sometimes he’ll be studying a book, sometimes he’ll be playing cards with the other guards. Today Little Guard is just standing there pulling his pants up, wondering what the hell he’s going to do today.

I walk up to Little Guard and decide to strike up a conversation to pass the time. I ask Little Guard how old he is, and he quickly replies, “18.” Nicely rehearsed, I think to myself. The next thing to talk about is where he is from. Whenever I meet someone new, I always find this lightens up the conversation. People always enjoy talking about their hometowns because it shows them that you are interested in them. Plus, these little conversations with people like Little Guard are the best way to stick my finger up in the air and really sense in which direction the wind is blowing in China. He tells me that he is from a town called Nanyang in Henan Province. Nanyang is famed for a temple devoted to one of the most famous military strategists in Chinese history, Zhuge Liang. He both worked and tilled here during his lifetime. Henan Province is located in Central China, and with a population of almost 100 milllion it’s the most populous province in the country. In foreigners’ eyes Henan is probably most famous for its Shaolin Temple, a spot noted for its long history of training monks in kung fu fighting styles. In China it has also become famous for its tragic AIDS tainted blood scandal of the 1990s. Recently, I met a girl on a train who informed me that she did not wish to ever go to Henan because she was afraid of getting AIDS. To me, a response such as the one the girl on the train said to me reflects a great deal about the misinformation as to how AIDS is spread. It seems silly to me to be afraid to go to a place for fear of “catching” AIDS. I have been to Henan only once, and I came back unscathed.

I talk with Little Guard for some time and take a picture with him. Always good to learn about a new place and meet a new face. I plan to print this picture out and give it to him the next time I should happen by his post of duty. Perhaps one day I’ll even make a visit to Nanyang. I am curious to see how many guards there are surrounding Zhuge Liang’s cottage. I’m just about to ask Little Guard more questions about Nanyang and Henan when I see my friend pop up on the escalator. Another time, Little Guard, another day Zhuge Liang. Until Nanyang, when we meet again. We’ll share a glass of milk, I’m sure…