Foreign Devil in China #01
As many of my friends know, I went to China to work as an English language instructor for one year. I landed August 15, 2006. I emailed this on August 20, 2006.
Ni hao,
My first day in China, I was locked in the apartment and began a daredevil escape eleven stories in the air before the cook returned and opened the door. My first impressions of China are mostly how amazingly hot and humid it is in Beijing. I am ill-prepared for the weather...I have NO SWIM TRUNKS. All the flags are tattered, both here and scattered across northern China. The yellow's washed a little to grim mustard, and there are holes, rents and tears in the far edges to make it look a little like an old Mongol banner with streamers.
Outside the window of the room where I stayed with the cook, you could see new hu tong, maybe fifteen years old...there was rubble where more used to stand. They're tearing down the old-style construction, the hu tong, the tiny alleyways and two-storeys to make room for expensive apartment developments on time for 08/08/2008 (the Incredibly Auspicious first day of the Olympics). All the apartment developments have the little upturned roofs and the tiles and they're really Chinese, right?
...I finally figured out what bothers me about it. I've been reading "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," so that one day I can draw as well as T. E. Lawrence, and the author discusses the "tyranny of childhood [symbolism]"...essentially, instead of drawing what you see, you draw the stock picture for "eye" or "nose" and it leads to these very stereotyped, childish drawings. What I'm seeing is that Beijing is erasing hundred-year-old good drawings (the original hu tong) to make room for one of these "childhood tyranny" pictures writ large.
But there I am, the American come to solve everyone's problems.
My second day in China, I made ethnographic notes in the light of a techno-thumping neotraditional Chinese bonfire dance, wherein our earstwhile shy young guide proceeded to let loose in a wild drunken whoop with about four hundred other Chinese. (Crowned heads of Europe were amazed.)
We picked grapes in a Chinese vineyard, where the terraces are laid overhead, and you stumble down into the gulleys to pluck whole bunches straight from the vine. It was like a brief visit to the Garden of Eden, except somehow alien...perhaps Adam never saw those kinds of broken, misty mountains. I have a new name, "sour grapes," because I kept picking the purple grapes, preferring their taste to the long green grapes the others took.
We drove onwards into the afternoon, and I composed a brief list of things I wish I'd brought (pocket knife. pocket watch. Katie's locket. change of clothes. toilet paper.) as we made past the terraced hills and sudden swatches of poverty into the great grasslands of Eurasia. We made it to a small town next to a large theme park a few minutes before dusk. For dinner, we'd been promised Mongolian lamb, the kind they bury in clay to cook. One of the other lao wei was worried we'd be eating the same lamb we could hear bleating from the courtyard. In addition to the bleats of wildlife, we could hear explosions as we ate. Around darkfall, the power shorted out in the tiny greenhouse-cum-restaurant we were eating in. And then twice. One girl wanted to go to the bathroom, so we went out into the vegetable garden where... I tell you, nothing in this world will make me forget watching those fireworks with the other lao wei, over the low redbrick wall, in the vegetable garden where Jessica was squatting and doing her business.
I don't think she will either.
After dinner, we made our way back to the van in teh darkness, punctuated often by the harsh light of fire, and onward to Mongol Land. It's strange to find oneself walking teh same windswept, dustswept grassy plains as the khans of old. Those hard men had their savage, merciless gift: these plains and freedom (nothing left to lose). Stranger still, a theme park over the hallowed cairnes where those same hard men lay mouldering and humbled before the Chinese peasents. The customers dress up in fantastic "historical" costume, while employees throw tattered grey coats over their vibrant attire of this Far East Neverland. Planes drone overhead, rented for less than five dollars per flight, while the erhu, feathered spear, mighty steed and khan's cairn are paraded on...what does this say of our Renaissance faires, our pirate stories, of our Roman days? Would you dress up your child in front of King Richard's tomb?
As I mentioned, there was drunken bonfire techno traditional dancing. I note for Jessie's sake that there was no sign of patapata, even though everyone had heard of it. Also that one dance involving holding "fire sticks" of red bamboo and red ribbon, beating bunches of them in both hands together and running to and away from the fire, may be related to the lion dance. Maybe, I'm not sure.
We spent the night in a yurt. I dreamed in Franglishhua. The beds were hard, and morning was gloriously chill. High plains drifters, we rode off into the sunrise on our charter bus, only to stop an hour out and, because we had a tire out of alignment, proceeded to change all six of them. This involved at least five men at any one time standing around and smoking intently. "What can be done by one man, the Chinese can do with at least a dozen."
Finally, we get to Beijing and I'm moved into the new apartment, where I drew the attention of Beijing's own secret police because my passport was Not in Order. It was a typo on their part they were too proud to cop to, but it all worked out in the end. Do understand, I was a little worried...especially as I'm not in possession of said passport. (Ironically, the regular police have it.)
Right now, I'm being serenaded by some of the best French accordion music I have ever heard, being practiced across the way by a kind young gentleman as his mother looks on sternly. I called from across the alley, 'hao tun!' ('good playing!') which brought forth a 'sanku' and a smile.
I've finally pegged this sore throat and cough. According to Ian, the outgoing teacher, the air in Beijing is *just that bad*. Glad I'm going down to Chengdu and the Nine Valleys. Everyone tells me it's much prettier out that way.
So, to sum up...
Day 1 - locked in apartment, went ledge-dancing
Day 2 - drunken bonfire revelry
Day 3 - drew attention of secret police
And tomorrow I start work. I wonder what else the day will bring...
Zai jian,
Roscoe
HAT STATUS - present
All material © 2006 R. Jean Mathieu.