Foreign Devil in China #11
Dated 21 Nov, 2006.
Going eight miles a minute for months at a time,
Breaking all the rules I could bend,
I began to find myself searching,
Searching for shelter again and again...
...against the wind.
Ni hao,
Back and forth like a bang-bang pinball, bang bang bang! Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, never the same town twice. One Thursday outta Chengdu , one Thursday outta Beijing , one Thursday outta Guilin . If I make it in Xi’an to next Friday, I’ll be doing a lot better now than I have for a month of Thursdays.
Scratch, reboot, all that other post-ironic computer clap jazz.
I was looking out the window, the inside of my head quietly humming without distinction, the way you do when you’re looking out the window in the passenger’s seat of the car. Sudden mountains shot from the ground, calcified limestone lightning, the trees scrabbling to the sheer face as best they could. And I could not think at all.
I dragged my disintegrating luggage through the Floridian afternoon to the bus to Yangshuo, backpack mecca, where I’d run out of hundreds and other useless change and had to go to the bank. When I opened my wallet and saw the change, and the ID, and the bills still there…I didn’t see any bank card. I got bailed by a traveling Swede who took me out for a Bailey’s afterward. My phone had run low on money and batteries, so I decamped at Lisa’s Café (half price in the penthouse) and prepared for the next day.
I woke up around six thirty, and stumbled to the bathroom. I sat on the throne, and looked out the window. The sky was a delicate blushing pink like a girl you just told a naughty joke to, over the limestone skyscrapers and graceful curves of the buildings, the fresh, harsh dew drying on the cobblestones and the corner stalls just putting up their muslin awnings.
I reckoned I’d made it to the right place, to that China that’s vanished in the smoggy Shanghai mist and sent down to the fields back in the late 60s. I showered and shaved and almost caught malaria, refilled my phone with money and called Owen Buckland of Buckland International Group.
He taught himself English by catching lao wai in the Guilin train station and giving them supper and sympathy while they waited for their connection. He’d been studying from books he could filch and foreigners he could find for six years before he could afford English classes. Now he and his four brothers run each of the four biggest schools in Guangxi province, his the largest of all, with sixty-four schools spread across China and a hundred more he’s cut deals with. From pariah to business of the year in seven years, like they say.
They set me up in the garret above the offices. The next five days were a haze of training videos on my laptop and cutting loose in Yangshuo, that backpack mecca, on West Street, Xijie, where the young and beautiful come to meet the rich foreigner and where Chinese and lao wai match tongues. Nobody lives in Yangshuo, they’re all here for a year or two to pick up some English, then go home to kin and castle to use their newfound language skills to get themselves a better job. I feel an eerie kinship with these frightened and inspired sons and daughters of the gongren, clawed their way through college and trying to grab an edge even if it cuts them. I came to a lot of the same reasons.
Along the way I met Finns and fairies, Frenchmen and Fangshanese, found the Moulin Rouge and more schools than you can shake a stick at. Xijie is an educational exchange disguised as a tourist trap, and that gives it a bite and a life someplace like home can’t really cut. Lao wai come to learn kung fu, Mandarin, calligraphy, culture and costume, the Chinese come to learn about the lao wai. It’s a small town, a tourist town, a live town, a beat town.
One morning as the fogs stroked the karsts sensually, Owen called me into his office. Cut and trim in my best and only pair of pressed khakis and starched shirt, I sat back in his chair.
“So, I hear you want to travel.” He said, measured like a zhongwen noun. “You like Xi’an ?”
“Yeah, tomb of Qin, the city walls, the Muslim Quarter, the Terra Co…er, the Clay Soldiers.” I said, switching to International ESL English.
“Then I have good news! We send you free to Xi’an , three weeks!”
“Cool, when?”
“Tomorrow.”
With some quick juggling, we bought a plane ticket even though my money is still in hock to the last state-owned industry in China . I packed what was essential and left the other suitcase back in Guilin, and flew to the home of thirteen dynasties, where Cao Cao betrayed his Emperor and where Qin Shi Huang pulled together the four corners of China like Doc Brown holding the wires together. The city that was old and windswept, world-class, two centuries before Homer and five centuries before the enlightenment of Siddhartha.
Xi’an .
The city has spread over the plains, forming, on my ring, American style suburbs devoid of character or unseemly lower class. There are no gongren here. There are no hole-in-the-wall restaurants here. There are ambassadors’ children, Korean businessmen, and highflown apartments belligerent to the constant cold and wind. But to drive for the heart… Xi’an is one of the few cities in China whose city walls still stand. Tomorrow, I go to walk the city ‘round across them. Within the walls is the heart of the old city, the city once called Chang’an, where Bell Tower damn near thrums with the power and blaze of city life. It is a playground for the rich and powerful of zhong zhong, of the inner China , the seven stories of capitalist cathedral never quite equaling Bell Tower ’s height.
I’m now teaching first, second, and third grades under the benign auspices of a female Muslim vice principal. My exile in Beijing and my sworn vow to act professional have paid some dividends…I have my lesson plans in on time, and I’ve grown the skill to control the pace and rhythm of the classroom. Now if they’d stop throwing books at my head, I could really get to work.
The lock between me and my rightful and hard-won money remains, and here I am in China without my picks. The bank sends me back to my old company, the company sends me to the bank, the bank says go to Chengdu, cost 2500RMB, to cancel my card and wait a week to maybe get my 2400RMB out of the bank. I’m sure there’s a way through the dark wood, but I haven’t found it yet, I’m still lost like Hansel.
Just have to keep picking the lock.
Zai jian,
Roscoe
All material © 2006 R. Jean Mathieu.
Going eight miles a minute for months at a time,
Breaking all the rules I could bend,
I began to find myself searching,
Searching for shelter again and again...
...against the wind.
Ni hao,
Back and forth like a bang-bang pinball, bang bang bang! Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, never the same town twice. One Thursday outta Chengdu , one Thursday outta Beijing , one Thursday outta Guilin . If I make it in Xi’an to next Friday, I’ll be doing a lot better now than I have for a month of Thursdays.
Scratch, reboot, all that other post-ironic computer clap jazz.
I was looking out the window, the inside of my head quietly humming without distinction, the way you do when you’re looking out the window in the passenger’s seat of the car. Sudden mountains shot from the ground, calcified limestone lightning, the trees scrabbling to the sheer face as best they could. And I could not think at all.
I dragged my disintegrating luggage through the Floridian afternoon to the bus to Yangshuo, backpack mecca, where I’d run out of hundreds and other useless change and had to go to the bank. When I opened my wallet and saw the change, and the ID, and the bills still there…I didn’t see any bank card. I got bailed by a traveling Swede who took me out for a Bailey’s afterward. My phone had run low on money and batteries, so I decamped at Lisa’s Café (half price in the penthouse) and prepared for the next day.
I woke up around six thirty, and stumbled to the bathroom. I sat on the throne, and looked out the window. The sky was a delicate blushing pink like a girl you just told a naughty joke to, over the limestone skyscrapers and graceful curves of the buildings, the fresh, harsh dew drying on the cobblestones and the corner stalls just putting up their muslin awnings.
I reckoned I’d made it to the right place, to that China that’s vanished in the smoggy Shanghai mist and sent down to the fields back in the late 60s. I showered and shaved and almost caught malaria, refilled my phone with money and called Owen Buckland of Buckland International Group.
He taught himself English by catching lao wai in the Guilin train station and giving them supper and sympathy while they waited for their connection. He’d been studying from books he could filch and foreigners he could find for six years before he could afford English classes. Now he and his four brothers run each of the four biggest schools in Guangxi province, his the largest of all, with sixty-four schools spread across China and a hundred more he’s cut deals with. From pariah to business of the year in seven years, like they say.
They set me up in the garret above the offices. The next five days were a haze of training videos on my laptop and cutting loose in Yangshuo, that backpack mecca, on West Street, Xijie, where the young and beautiful come to meet the rich foreigner and where Chinese and lao wai match tongues. Nobody lives in Yangshuo, they’re all here for a year or two to pick up some English, then go home to kin and castle to use their newfound language skills to get themselves a better job. I feel an eerie kinship with these frightened and inspired sons and daughters of the gongren, clawed their way through college and trying to grab an edge even if it cuts them. I came to a lot of the same reasons.
Along the way I met Finns and fairies, Frenchmen and Fangshanese, found the Moulin Rouge and more schools than you can shake a stick at. Xijie is an educational exchange disguised as a tourist trap, and that gives it a bite and a life someplace like home can’t really cut. Lao wai come to learn kung fu, Mandarin, calligraphy, culture and costume, the Chinese come to learn about the lao wai. It’s a small town, a tourist town, a live town, a beat town.
One morning as the fogs stroked the karsts sensually, Owen called me into his office. Cut and trim in my best and only pair of pressed khakis and starched shirt, I sat back in his chair.
“So, I hear you want to travel.” He said, measured like a zhongwen noun. “You like Xi’an ?”
“Yeah, tomb of Qin, the city walls, the Muslim Quarter, the Terra Co…er, the Clay Soldiers.” I said, switching to International ESL English.
“Then I have good news! We send you free to Xi’an , three weeks!”
“Cool, when?”
“Tomorrow.”
With some quick juggling, we bought a plane ticket even though my money is still in hock to the last state-owned industry in China . I packed what was essential and left the other suitcase back in Guilin, and flew to the home of thirteen dynasties, where Cao Cao betrayed his Emperor and where Qin Shi Huang pulled together the four corners of China like Doc Brown holding the wires together. The city that was old and windswept, world-class, two centuries before Homer and five centuries before the enlightenment of Siddhartha.
Xi’an .
The city has spread over the plains, forming, on my ring, American style suburbs devoid of character or unseemly lower class. There are no gongren here. There are no hole-in-the-wall restaurants here. There are ambassadors’ children, Korean businessmen, and highflown apartments belligerent to the constant cold and wind. But to drive for the heart… Xi’an is one of the few cities in China whose city walls still stand. Tomorrow, I go to walk the city ‘round across them. Within the walls is the heart of the old city, the city once called Chang’an, where Bell Tower damn near thrums with the power and blaze of city life. It is a playground for the rich and powerful of zhong zhong, of the inner China , the seven stories of capitalist cathedral never quite equaling Bell Tower ’s height.
I’m now teaching first, second, and third grades under the benign auspices of a female Muslim vice principal. My exile in Beijing and my sworn vow to act professional have paid some dividends…I have my lesson plans in on time, and I’ve grown the skill to control the pace and rhythm of the classroom. Now if they’d stop throwing books at my head, I could really get to work.
The lock between me and my rightful and hard-won money remains, and here I am in China without my picks. The bank sends me back to my old company, the company sends me to the bank, the bank says go to Chengdu, cost 2500RMB, to cancel my card and wait a week to maybe get my 2400RMB out of the bank. I’m sure there’s a way through the dark wood, but I haven’t found it yet, I’m still lost like Hansel.
Just have to keep picking the lock.
Zai jian,
Roscoe
All material © 2006 R. Jean Mathieu.