LOST IN TRANSLATION
You know it was only a matter of time before I used that title for one of my entries, right? It’s not what you think though. I assure, at no point have I faux-hooked up with Bill Murray or become married to Spike Jonze’s doppelganger.
Instead, I was out with my Chinese Angel this evening for a fantastic dinner of soups. On Monday (11/27), my homesick-crankiness continued from Sunday evening, though it was lessened by the presence of my babies who tried really hard. Today was Tuesday and as my mother tells me, "There is a reason every job you will ever have will pay you." Tuesdays are the reason I get paid to be here. Tuesdays by and large suck ass. Fortunately, Tuesdays are very short. I have one hour of classes first thing in the morning with the Kindergarteners starting at 9-ish and then I have two classes in the middle school starting at 2:55pm.
When classes were over and my interest in teaching completely obliterated, I went to find my Chinese Angel. She too is having a bitch of her time with her job and we support each other in very realistic and maternalistic ways. We have similar interests and we teach each other our languages. She also is in possession of the urge to roll her eyes just a little too much for convention’s liking, loathes being in photos, has no problem maintaining her sense of self and loves to travel. So, we eat together quite regularly and it’s always a pleasure for me to be with her.
Tonight (11/28) we went to one of the restaurants nearby school for soups because I wanted soup desperately. Cold, blustery, overcast days demand soup and so that’s what we did. I had a sour soup with noodles, chives and sesame seeds. She had my favorite soup of tomato, egg and leek soup with noodles. We both shared, as a starter, the thick corn soup (consistency of egg-drop soup) with egg. (They like egg here, by the way. It’s in everything.)
The food was delicious. As I gobbled it all up, I am once again amazed at how much I can eat here and not just not put on weight, but lose it as well.
Once we left the restaurant, my Chinese Angel brought up my weight loss and, as she’s one of the few who possesses the subtlety to talk about it without declaring in the loudest voice possible how FAT I used to be and how SLIM I am, we talked about it. She asked how I did it and I told her I have no idea.
"I actually eat more in China than I do in the States but I just lose weight here."
"I guess you can say the Chinese diet is good for keeping fit."
"Yes, I think so. Or, maybe it was just lost in translation."
Once I explained to her what "lost in translation" means, she doubled over laughing.
As we were laughing there on the street, I heard a familiar, masculine, "Hello." Before I knew the voice rationally, I knew it in my knees. The sound made me want to peel off my glasses, wrap my arms protectively about the source of the voice, nuzzle my cold nose into the fabric-softner-scented body and lose myself in every sensation but sight. Everything about that sound begs to be snuggled.
I looked up and there was Alpha Hottie, smiling his broad smile and hand pulled out of his puffy parka to wave at me though he was not five feet from us. Alpha Hottie’s always rushing from place to place but he stopped dead in his tracks to say hello to me.
In my insomniatic crankiness on Monday, I hadn’t really looked for the opportunity to say hello to my boy and so we sort of missed each other. I had been feeling uber cranky Monday and figured the reason he’s not been more forward with me were all the reasons a Western boy would not be forward (primarily, "Thanks, but no thanks"). Frankly, that sort of thinking only feeds on itself, so in the inside of my head was confident he was not interested.
However, as he stood there smiling, my Chinese Angel studied him. The moment he saw her looking at him, he slipped behind the mask, nodded politely at her and continued on his way. She watched him scurry away, said, "So that’s him" and nodded. She then shot me an approving look and we continued on our stroll.
I guess some things are never lost in translation.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
HOMESICK
I think it is the plight of every 20-something to get pangs of homesickness around the holiday season. It’s not so much that you want to go home but that you’re still sorting out what your home is. Granted, 20-something or not, I doubt "home" ever feels as stable as it did when you were a toddler and the magic of holidays were imprinted upon you. However, the weather has finally turned cold enough for me to viscerally recognize the season as winter and I’ve seen enough blondes wrapped in velvet to trigger my rhythms into recognizing now (late November) as the holiday season.
I have this image of my "home" as the last Christmas my parents were together. It wasn’t a particularly happy time in our household; my mother was overextended (as always from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day) with the holidays and my father’s downward spiral and self-imposed alienation from our family was reaching epic proportions. All the crap aside, we had family in our house and we were all doing our best to be with each other. I remember flopping backwards over the arm of our couch in the living room and lying down to feel the heat of the glowing embers in the fireplace warm the right side of my cheek. The scent of citrus, spices, baking, roasting, cooking, expensive and spicy perfumes like Shalimar, fabric softener and fireplaces hung in the air. It was dusk and my mind was thick with afternoon sleepiness. The sound of Medieval music came through the stereo (always the sound of the holidays to me) and I swirled my dangling toe in time with the music. In the distance, I could hear all our relatives arguing about the finer points of musical theater in the dining room, my father’s keyboard clicking away and I remember thinking, "This is home."
And I miss home. I miss the smell of it. I miss the twinkle lights and the anxiety of preparation. I miss wood burning fireplaces. I miss the dysfunction of family. I miss cider and hot chocolate. I miss the frozen streets of New York as wind comes racing off the river, blows through the street and nearly knocks you into the avenue as you cross. I miss cold so strong it burns. I miss the sound of Jonathan Schwartz’s voice saying, "This is Sunday afternoon, 12 o’clock in the East and 9 o’clock in the West" as he then proceeds to give sports stats in a voice that lulls you to comfort. I miss trying not to slip on the ice in Chelsea as my friends and I stumble through to get to City Bakery for their obscene hot chocolate and marshmallow. I miss putting a bottle of whole cloves through the skin of an orange and then having that to sniff for days on end. I miss the random days off in order to get ready. I miss shopping with my friends for the perfect present for other friends. I really miss looking at the price tag and just paying what the price tag says.
I think most specifically, I miss being around boys I want to hug who want to hug me back. I am physical because I need physical. I really need physical now. I need boys who want to hug me. I love and miss my girls more than anything but I’m getting my regular fill of female contact and there is something about the scent of a man, being engulfed in that smell, those arms and knowing that he wants you there that just sets my mind at ease. It’s not really a sexual thing. When my dad used to hug me, it put me at ease. When my brothers hug me, it puts me at ease. When my gay boys hug me, it puts me at ease. No, it’s not a sexual thing. It’s a comfort thing. Hugs from boys make me safe and protected. Hugs from boys who want to hug me are all the more wonderful. They make my world okay.
My Eastern men would never dare to disrespect me with something so intimate as a hug. My Western men here are all of the European ilk and therefore go the sophisticated bisous route, in lieu of my preferred hug. A world without hugs from boys feels entirely too adult in all the wrong ways. It’s a constant reminder that I cannot have post-pubescent male contact without it being explicitly sexual. It feels worlds away from anything I understand as home.
So here I sit, 8 o’clock at night, classes tomorrow, work not done just feeling blue as the sound of WNYC’s Sunday Baroque echoes in my big, empty marble apartment. (I really should get a rug or something.) For the first time since my first week here, I find myself crying. I’m not bawling or gut-wrenching weeping, just crying at the thought of so many more months without a hug from a boy or any other traces of home.
I just want another moment where I can lay back and think, "This is home."
I think it is the plight of every 20-something to get pangs of homesickness around the holiday season. It’s not so much that you want to go home but that you’re still sorting out what your home is. Granted, 20-something or not, I doubt "home" ever feels as stable as it did when you were a toddler and the magic of holidays were imprinted upon you. However, the weather has finally turned cold enough for me to viscerally recognize the season as winter and I’ve seen enough blondes wrapped in velvet to trigger my rhythms into recognizing now (late November) as the holiday season.
I have this image of my "home" as the last Christmas my parents were together. It wasn’t a particularly happy time in our household; my mother was overextended (as always from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day) with the holidays and my father’s downward spiral and self-imposed alienation from our family was reaching epic proportions. All the crap aside, we had family in our house and we were all doing our best to be with each other. I remember flopping backwards over the arm of our couch in the living room and lying down to feel the heat of the glowing embers in the fireplace warm the right side of my cheek. The scent of citrus, spices, baking, roasting, cooking, expensive and spicy perfumes like Shalimar, fabric softener and fireplaces hung in the air. It was dusk and my mind was thick with afternoon sleepiness. The sound of Medieval music came through the stereo (always the sound of the holidays to me) and I swirled my dangling toe in time with the music. In the distance, I could hear all our relatives arguing about the finer points of musical theater in the dining room, my father’s keyboard clicking away and I remember thinking, "This is home."
And I miss home. I miss the smell of it. I miss the twinkle lights and the anxiety of preparation. I miss wood burning fireplaces. I miss the dysfunction of family. I miss cider and hot chocolate. I miss the frozen streets of New York as wind comes racing off the river, blows through the street and nearly knocks you into the avenue as you cross. I miss cold so strong it burns. I miss the sound of Jonathan Schwartz’s voice saying, "This is Sunday afternoon, 12 o’clock in the East and 9 o’clock in the West" as he then proceeds to give sports stats in a voice that lulls you to comfort. I miss trying not to slip on the ice in Chelsea as my friends and I stumble through to get to City Bakery for their obscene hot chocolate and marshmallow. I miss putting a bottle of whole cloves through the skin of an orange and then having that to sniff for days on end. I miss the random days off in order to get ready. I miss shopping with my friends for the perfect present for other friends. I really miss looking at the price tag and just paying what the price tag says.
I think most specifically, I miss being around boys I want to hug who want to hug me back. I am physical because I need physical. I really need physical now. I need boys who want to hug me. I love and miss my girls more than anything but I’m getting my regular fill of female contact and there is something about the scent of a man, being engulfed in that smell, those arms and knowing that he wants you there that just sets my mind at ease. It’s not really a sexual thing. When my dad used to hug me, it put me at ease. When my brothers hug me, it puts me at ease. When my gay boys hug me, it puts me at ease. No, it’s not a sexual thing. It’s a comfort thing. Hugs from boys make me safe and protected. Hugs from boys who want to hug me are all the more wonderful. They make my world okay.
My Eastern men would never dare to disrespect me with something so intimate as a hug. My Western men here are all of the European ilk and therefore go the sophisticated bisous route, in lieu of my preferred hug. A world without hugs from boys feels entirely too adult in all the wrong ways. It’s a constant reminder that I cannot have post-pubescent male contact without it being explicitly sexual. It feels worlds away from anything I understand as home.
So here I sit, 8 o’clock at night, classes tomorrow, work not done just feeling blue as the sound of WNYC’s Sunday Baroque echoes in my big, empty marble apartment. (I really should get a rug or something.) For the first time since my first week here, I find myself crying. I’m not bawling or gut-wrenching weeping, just crying at the thought of so many more months without a hug from a boy or any other traces of home.
I just want another moment where I can lay back and think, "This is home."
Saturday, November 25, 2006
WEST EGG
To be totally fair, I wouldn’t want to hang out with the vast majority of the foreign teachers in Xi’An. Just like the foreign students, they seem to come with a certain kind of opportunistic baggage in regards to the people here. Granted, the West Egg community is opportunistic as well but that is in regards to the resources here; the people are almost superfluous to their task at hand. Neither is ideal, but the West Egg community makes no bones about what they are whereas my peers do. We teachers seem to try to fool ourselves into thinking we’re saving the community from itself.
Regardless, West Egg has requested me back. Mere hours after the rather rude rejection email, I was called to go to Saturday brunch yesterday (11/25) with the West Egg community. I explained that I had received an email that requested I not attended functions as it would compromise the "integrity of the community" and I no longer felt welcome. A few phone calls were made and then I was called back explaining that it was not understood who I was and that there are "teachers and then there are teachers." Feeling nervous about it all but knowing there was no real way out of brunch without being rude, I accepted.
I went to the brunch with my Brazilian Angel and met up with the American/German couple in the lobby of a Shangri-la Hotel. Soon a lovely Englishman and his Taiwanese wife appeared. We wandered to the restaurant where the red carpet was rolled out and immediately we were swarmed by the chef, maitre-d’, hotel manager and countless other important hotel people eager to take care of our every whim. While we were busy being swarmed with complimentary this-that-and-the-other, the lovely Englishman pulled me aside and said, "I think it was you that I sent the rather rude email to."
"Yes, I think so," clear that the email I received was rude but aware that there has been more than one rude email on the planet and it was entirely possible he was speaking of another rude email.
"Yes, I’m sorry about that. You see, I receive many emails from all sorts of foreigners and the group had decided only to be businessmen in Xi’An." Yes, we were speaking of the same email. "If I had known it was you, if I had realized, well, you’re a special case. You’re not really… You’re already one of us." He businessman-sheepishly explained. And there it was again, the notion that has plagued/saved me my whole life; "the answer would be ‘NO!’ but you’re you." For whatever reason, I am always the exception to the rule. I don’t know why that is but it is. Most of the time, it is as fantastic as it might seem and on the whole I am infinitely grateful for it.
I shook my head and said, "Don’t worry about it." Frankly, if "you compromise our integrity" written by a completely anonymous stranger was even remotely close to the rudest thing ever been said to me, I’d be a lot thinner-skinned than I am.
The Englishman and I ended up sitting next to each other and having quite a good chat, though I should have asked him more questions about himself. We talked shop for a bit (he has a friend in film production and knows a staggering amount about the film industry in Xi'An) and then we talked about movies he’d seen recently. I then turned to talking with the women and he with the men and, at long last, we talked about all sorts of things besides shopping. Once we got off the topics where racism and colonialism could be injected, the ladies were a pleasure to speak with. They soon began to resemble the familiar, doting matriarchy I tend to socialize with in the US
We talked about art and life and politics and language. The women have all lived here longer than I and consequently are a wealth of information regarding access to things.
It was soon declared that I was the artist of the group and I gave the women taking painting classes the right to blow off the tedious "perspective" piece. I felt a bit like the "artist and her patrons" but that wasn’t a bad thing in this setting and I can most certainly pay my own way. We spoke in a multitude of languages and the men joked that I should work for the CIA with all the languages I can function in. I joked that, "Perhaps I already do."
We settled up the bill and headed out; me having turned a corner and starting to really like my foreigner friends.
Friday, November 24, 2006
GET STUFFED
Happy Thanksgiving!
This year, I am overcome with gratitude about my life. I have always felt lucky, always been grateful for my life and this year is no different.
I spent my Thanksgiving straddling my two worlds. My day was spent immersed in the hectic schedule of my classes and the evening was spent in the four-star Sheraton of Xi’An in the company of my brethren expatriates. My kids were ungodly unruly and my brethren were ungodly disassociated.
My kids were, well, my kids. Even though it was a holiday for me, it was just another day for them. They had varying levels of interest in what I was doing but at the end of the day, I had to stay an extra hour to listen to their newly installed oral exam for one of my classes. I quite liked it and my kids were very excited to have me there. When I walked into the massive room (the one I used with the same class for my open class in the middle school) all the kids swarmed me to say hello. Several of my kids told me how nervous they were and they all had questions about the exam. As I talked with the kids who approached me, other kids sitting on the far side of the room waved to me. I flashed them a "V" with my right hand to indicate I knew they were going to be victorious. It made them smile and they nodded back.
The oral exam was quick and just like the classes that I teach; they are given a topic, a little time to prepare and then asked to speak. Most of my babies did phenomenally well and I can’t wait to tell them how proud I am of them next week.
Once the exam was over, I raced home to get changed and await my Brazilian Angel’s phone call to go for the Thanksgiving party at the Sheraton in the South of Xi’An. She called just as I finished getting ready and we were off.
We got to the Sheraton just as our fellow expatriates were finishing the first course of their buffet dinner. The food was good, I think, but as it’s been several months since I’ve sat down for an honest to god Western meal, it’s hard to say for sure. I proceeded to stuff myself silly and drown myself in the company of "people like me."
There were three couples (my Brazilian Angel and le Francais, an Australian and his Spanish wife and the American and German team who hosted me for dinner previously), two single women (a woman from the Netherlands and myself), two men without wives present (the man from Bern and a fellow New Yorker who may or may not be married) and a Canadian woman whose husband was away. I’ve never seen so many glum, forcibly gay people in my life.
The conversation amongst the women boiled down to where to purchase the best things, the pitfalls of doing said purchasing and the best spas. I was one of two women with a full time job and neither my Dutch counterpart nor I said much during the dinner. My Brazilian Angel made mention of her part time job in passing but she immediately dismissed it as too bothersome, too banal with no pay and only for the "psychological relief." No one spoke of children or passion (outside of haggling over prices) or anything that gave back to the community. Whenever the conversation died down, the women all retreated into their space of sulking until the next conversation of purchasing name brand labels at wholesale prices came up. It was rather sad to me to see how proud the women were to elucidate just how much a mere adjunct to their husbands they are. The only deviation the conversation took from the minutia of a life I can’t relate to was to discuss how (with rolling eyes) the wives need to bribe their husbands to do things with sex.
And I was left to wonder, as I felt a bit like Nick Carraway surrounded by all this excess and frippery, how I would ever marry my two lives. Ultimately, I am Western and the party is what Xi’An knows of Westerners despite the fact that I am not the miserable counterparts who sulked there before me. I don't know how to rectify my two worlds without ostracizing one of them.
However, as I write this entry, it would appear my answer has materialized. The man in charge of organizing the email list replied to my contact (I was told to contact him to get on the list of updates) by telling me that "in order to maintain the integrity of the group" I am not welcome with in the e-list. My suspicions confirmed and my graceful exit offered; I shall no longer visit West Egg!
Happy Thanksgiving!
This year, I am overcome with gratitude about my life. I have always felt lucky, always been grateful for my life and this year is no different.
I spent my Thanksgiving straddling my two worlds. My day was spent immersed in the hectic schedule of my classes and the evening was spent in the four-star Sheraton of Xi’An in the company of my brethren expatriates. My kids were ungodly unruly and my brethren were ungodly disassociated.
My kids were, well, my kids. Even though it was a holiday for me, it was just another day for them. They had varying levels of interest in what I was doing but at the end of the day, I had to stay an extra hour to listen to their newly installed oral exam for one of my classes. I quite liked it and my kids were very excited to have me there. When I walked into the massive room (the one I used with the same class for my open class in the middle school) all the kids swarmed me to say hello. Several of my kids told me how nervous they were and they all had questions about the exam. As I talked with the kids who approached me, other kids sitting on the far side of the room waved to me. I flashed them a "V" with my right hand to indicate I knew they were going to be victorious. It made them smile and they nodded back.
The oral exam was quick and just like the classes that I teach; they are given a topic, a little time to prepare and then asked to speak. Most of my babies did phenomenally well and I can’t wait to tell them how proud I am of them next week.
Once the exam was over, I raced home to get changed and await my Brazilian Angel’s phone call to go for the Thanksgiving party at the Sheraton in the South of Xi’An. She called just as I finished getting ready and we were off.
We got to the Sheraton just as our fellow expatriates were finishing the first course of their buffet dinner. The food was good, I think, but as it’s been several months since I’ve sat down for an honest to god Western meal, it’s hard to say for sure. I proceeded to stuff myself silly and drown myself in the company of "people like me."
There were three couples (my Brazilian Angel and le Francais, an Australian and his Spanish wife and the American and German team who hosted me for dinner previously), two single women (a woman from the Netherlands and myself), two men without wives present (the man from Bern and a fellow New Yorker who may or may not be married) and a Canadian woman whose husband was away. I’ve never seen so many glum, forcibly gay people in my life.
The conversation amongst the women boiled down to where to purchase the best things, the pitfalls of doing said purchasing and the best spas. I was one of two women with a full time job and neither my Dutch counterpart nor I said much during the dinner. My Brazilian Angel made mention of her part time job in passing but she immediately dismissed it as too bothersome, too banal with no pay and only for the "psychological relief." No one spoke of children or passion (outside of haggling over prices) or anything that gave back to the community. Whenever the conversation died down, the women all retreated into their space of sulking until the next conversation of purchasing name brand labels at wholesale prices came up. It was rather sad to me to see how proud the women were to elucidate just how much a mere adjunct to their husbands they are. The only deviation the conversation took from the minutia of a life I can’t relate to was to discuss how (with rolling eyes) the wives need to bribe their husbands to do things with sex.
And I was left to wonder, as I felt a bit like Nick Carraway surrounded by all this excess and frippery, how I would ever marry my two lives. Ultimately, I am Western and the party is what Xi’An knows of Westerners despite the fact that I am not the miserable counterparts who sulked there before me. I don't know how to rectify my two worlds without ostracizing one of them.
However, as I write this entry, it would appear my answer has materialized. The man in charge of organizing the email list replied to my contact (I was told to contact him to get on the list of updates) by telling me that "in order to maintain the integrity of the group" I am not welcome with in the e-list. My suspicions confirmed and my graceful exit offered; I shall no longer visit West Egg!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
PRECISION
I’m unclear exactly what it is that makes our vision precise. I’m not talking about 20/20 vision but seeing things we had not before. Considering the infinite quantity of visual information our cortex gets, what is it that filters some things out but not other things? And what is it that makes us filter the same image differently? For me, it has something to do with moods; I literally see the world differently depending on my mood. However, I don’t know what it is exactly; I just know what shifts it.
Alpha Hottie and I went for a stroll today (11/22) and he just looked different. It wasn’t just that he’s grown a little stubble on his chin but he looked decidedly different. Well, not different but more precise. In fact, he looked so precise, I found myself wondering who I had been looking at before.
Bless his heart, he’s more than willing to make the effort to speak to me in English because, "Wo meiyo poutugnhua" (I have no Mandarin). So, as we strolled, it became evident to me just how different he is.
Thus far, I’ve only really known married men and single men too nervous to treat me like a human being. Everyone has leapt at making me comfortable and/or treating me like a precious, fragile specimen. Alpha Hottie just is with me. It’s really nice.
He was clearly nervous about his English as he hasn’t really used it in a long time (dear god, were that I in possession of that man’s recall) but he wasn’t nervous about me. He was simply happy to see me and when we first bumped into each other, he asked if I would walk with him. After some serious arm-twisting on his part, I relented.
Today has been a lovely, gray, Pacific Northwest sort of drizzly day. It’s the sort of day that makes me comfy in my skin and talking with Alpha Hottie just added to the loveliness. Without the external distractions of others, we really had a chance to introduce ourselves and I like him even more than I did before.
His face has taken on such specificity that I am embarrassed by the brevity with which I must have been looking before. As he talked and said the occasional word in Chinese, I watched his mouth (helps me comprehend) and his chin seemed to have completely altered itself beneath his new scruff. His lips seem a darker shade of red. His eyes lit differently when speaking to me in English and his skin, dark from a job that keeps him outside most of the day, seemed to have more a cinnamon hue than a honey one. More than the beautiful creature I (and a lot of female primary school teachers) had been watching, he took on the distinct and full features of a man. At one point, I was almost overcome with the urge to kiss his cheek for his specific beauty.
While we talked about our backgrounds, I got to watch him and noticed that there was no time spent behind the mask that I could see. Whenever he couldn’t think of a word, his face would reflect either frustration or confusion. It was such a comfort to be with someone who is not only lovely enough to meet me in my language (which he has no practical need of in his life) in his country but who trusted me enough to let down his guard fully. By the end of our chat, he was even offering up personal information of his own volition. I quite liked it and am utterly smitten with his easy charm.
I’m unclear exactly what it is that makes our vision precise. I’m not talking about 20/20 vision but seeing things we had not before. Considering the infinite quantity of visual information our cortex gets, what is it that filters some things out but not other things? And what is it that makes us filter the same image differently? For me, it has something to do with moods; I literally see the world differently depending on my mood. However, I don’t know what it is exactly; I just know what shifts it.
Alpha Hottie and I went for a stroll today (11/22) and he just looked different. It wasn’t just that he’s grown a little stubble on his chin but he looked decidedly different. Well, not different but more precise. In fact, he looked so precise, I found myself wondering who I had been looking at before.
Bless his heart, he’s more than willing to make the effort to speak to me in English because, "Wo meiyo poutugnhua" (I have no Mandarin). So, as we strolled, it became evident to me just how different he is.
Thus far, I’ve only really known married men and single men too nervous to treat me like a human being. Everyone has leapt at making me comfortable and/or treating me like a precious, fragile specimen. Alpha Hottie just is with me. It’s really nice.
He was clearly nervous about his English as he hasn’t really used it in a long time (dear god, were that I in possession of that man’s recall) but he wasn’t nervous about me. He was simply happy to see me and when we first bumped into each other, he asked if I would walk with him. After some serious arm-twisting on his part, I relented.
Today has been a lovely, gray, Pacific Northwest sort of drizzly day. It’s the sort of day that makes me comfy in my skin and talking with Alpha Hottie just added to the loveliness. Without the external distractions of others, we really had a chance to introduce ourselves and I like him even more than I did before.
His face has taken on such specificity that I am embarrassed by the brevity with which I must have been looking before. As he talked and said the occasional word in Chinese, I watched his mouth (helps me comprehend) and his chin seemed to have completely altered itself beneath his new scruff. His lips seem a darker shade of red. His eyes lit differently when speaking to me in English and his skin, dark from a job that keeps him outside most of the day, seemed to have more a cinnamon hue than a honey one. More than the beautiful creature I (and a lot of female primary school teachers) had been watching, he took on the distinct and full features of a man. At one point, I was almost overcome with the urge to kiss his cheek for his specific beauty.
While we talked about our backgrounds, I got to watch him and noticed that there was no time spent behind the mask that I could see. Whenever he couldn’t think of a word, his face would reflect either frustration or confusion. It was such a comfort to be with someone who is not only lovely enough to meet me in my language (which he has no practical need of in his life) in his country but who trusted me enough to let down his guard fully. By the end of our chat, he was even offering up personal information of his own volition. I quite liked it and am utterly smitten with his easy charm.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT
I decided to test the waters of corporal punishment. Frankly, it’s what my students understand in terms of discipline and to be a truly independent teacher here, one needs to embrace it or forfeit their position as head of the classroom. I’ve been watching my coworkers closely when they punish the students and I’m feeling more comfortable with the lines. Granted, I have no intentions of pushing any lines or boundaries but it’s becoming clear to me with my naughty students I need more than just "Get out!" Remembering the story of the little duck Ping on the Yang Tse River from my childhood, I was inspired to try light swatting.
Having had my sorted past, I’m quite adept at hitting someone and make a loud noise without causing much pain (and vice versa). I decided on Friday (11/17) to start bringing a folded up map to class to swat the naughty students with. Folded up maps make a lot of noise for what little they hurt when you hit someone.
So, for the past few days (it’s Tuesday 11/21 evening) I’ve been swatting at the naughty students. It makes a loud noise, everyone gets jolted for a second and then the class laughs. I don’t do it out of rage or anger and I don’t yell at them about what bad students they are (like my coworkers do; I’m not comfortable with that AND I’ve been told that our school is quite "progressive" in terms of not hitting students) when I do it. I simply yell them to "Stop," "Be quiet," "Behave," or "Wake up!" I’m not worried about hurting them as they hit each other full-on for the ten minute break between each class and I pat my friends’ backs harder when I hug them hello.
They love it. I don’t get it but they love it. They stand up immediately after being swatted and give it their all. It’s fired them up.
Quiet students who used to nap during my class and insisted that they can’t speak English have been giddy and leap to say, "Hello!" as I pass in the hallway. The giddy bad boys who sit in the back of class who used to make eyes at me now line up and breathlessly say, "Hello teacher [insert the title of the last class’s lesson]" whenever I pass. And it’s really inspired them to try harder and pay attention in their class. Again, I don’t get it but it works and they love it.
I spoke to my Brazilian Angel about it and she said, "Of course it works. It’s quite sexy."
I think it’s fair to say I don’t get other people’s libidos.
I decided to test the waters of corporal punishment. Frankly, it’s what my students understand in terms of discipline and to be a truly independent teacher here, one needs to embrace it or forfeit their position as head of the classroom. I’ve been watching my coworkers closely when they punish the students and I’m feeling more comfortable with the lines. Granted, I have no intentions of pushing any lines or boundaries but it’s becoming clear to me with my naughty students I need more than just "Get out!" Remembering the story of the little duck Ping on the Yang Tse River from my childhood, I was inspired to try light swatting.
Having had my sorted past, I’m quite adept at hitting someone and make a loud noise without causing much pain (and vice versa). I decided on Friday (11/17) to start bringing a folded up map to class to swat the naughty students with. Folded up maps make a lot of noise for what little they hurt when you hit someone.
So, for the past few days (it’s Tuesday 11/21 evening) I’ve been swatting at the naughty students. It makes a loud noise, everyone gets jolted for a second and then the class laughs. I don’t do it out of rage or anger and I don’t yell at them about what bad students they are (like my coworkers do; I’m not comfortable with that AND I’ve been told that our school is quite "progressive" in terms of not hitting students) when I do it. I simply yell them to "Stop," "Be quiet," "Behave," or "Wake up!" I’m not worried about hurting them as they hit each other full-on for the ten minute break between each class and I pat my friends’ backs harder when I hug them hello.
They love it. I don’t get it but they love it. They stand up immediately after being swatted and give it their all. It’s fired them up.
Quiet students who used to nap during my class and insisted that they can’t speak English have been giddy and leap to say, "Hello!" as I pass in the hallway. The giddy bad boys who sit in the back of class who used to make eyes at me now line up and breathlessly say, "Hello teacher [insert the title of the last class’s lesson]" whenever I pass. And it’s really inspired them to try harder and pay attention in their class. Again, I don’t get it but it works and they love it.
I spoke to my Brazilian Angel about it and she said, "Of course it works. It’s quite sexy."
I think it’s fair to say I don’t get other people’s libidos.
Monday, November 20, 2006
THIS AND THAT
I think I’m supposed to talk about the wedding I went to on Saturday November 18th but it was a wedding. It was pretty standard as beautiful weddings go. I don’t really feel there’s much I can add to “The Bride was the most beautiful bride ever” and “The Groom looked like the luckiest man on the planet that he was.”
Granted, there were a few differences between a Western wedding and a Chinese wedding, none of which I saw but was told about. The first of which is that the groom pays for the wedding. The next is the ceremony itself. It begins in the morning when the groom pulls together a caravan of his friends and family to haul over the feast they’ve cooked for the bride’s family. While the groom is collecting his friends, family and food, the bride’s house is abuzz with activity too. Her home (her parent’s home; unmarried/divorced children live with their parents, regardless of age unless their careers take them away from their hometown) is filled with family, friends and children who prepare the home for the groom’s arrival. The children run about, hide the shoes the bride is to wear for the civil ceremony and then barricade the front door. When the groom’s caravan arrives, the groom must bribe the children to let his caravan into the house. He has the money tucked into a red envelope and gives it to the child who gets the door open.
Then, the caravan arrives, food in hand, and the groom and his men set about finding the bride’s shoes. If ever there were an appropriate metaphor for the kind of marriage I think I would have, it is “She’s lost her stuff again and he’s got to get it found.” Once the shoes are found (and the groomsmen properly paid for rendered services) the couple heads off in their caravan to the municipal building to get hitched. After the municipal stuff, the caravan arrives at the location of their reception where hundreds of guests await their arrival and the entertainment portion begins.
I was invited to the reception and it was lovely. In a room full of several hundred Chinese, I was the only foreigner there. I did not know the groom but the bride was my beautiful colleague. Consequently, everyone knew who I was by virtue of the fact that by simply making a New Yorker appear, she was infinitely more sophisticated. I knew I was in trouble when the groom’s father, happily sauced from all the toasting, stumbled by my table, took one look at me, got wide eyed and hollered, “Meigua ren!” Normally, the word used for a Westerner sounds like “”Lo-why.” In fact, once most people know that I’m American, they still call me “Lo-why.” To identify me by country is seen as a slightly more intimate and familiar; the first step to welcoming me into the fold. (After identifying me by country, the levels of intimacy following are “Miss Teacher” [in English] and then “Teacher” [in English] and finally some permutation of “Christina.” Ultimately, the most intimate is "Chris" and touching me. The men who are close with me are allowed to touch me when in private and the women are allowed to touch me in public.)
Within 20 minutes of my arrival, I had been singled out, hugged by everyone in the wedding party, toasted five times and pointed out to everyone. It was very sweet and very well intentioned but, as you may have noticed, I loathe being the center of attention especially when what’s going on has nothing to do with me. I was very happy sitting with my Chinese Angel, our colleagues and just hanging out, admiring how beautiful my beautiful colleague was in each of her multitude of costume changes. (The first dress she wears is her wedding dress. The next is a traditional Chinese gown; hers was snow-white with poppy flowers printed on it and a faux white fur wrap. The rest are a variety of party dresses.)
After we had been at the wedding for an hour, and I was in danger of being very drunk, my Chinese Angel had the good sense to pour me out of the building. We said our goodbyes, a few more “Meigua ren!”s were shouted and we were off.
From there, (the reception was held near the Bell Tower) my Chinese Angel walked me about to get some air until my head cleared and then we headed to the Big Goose Pagoda.
Frankly, I love the Big Goose Pagoda. It is tranquil and beautiful and everything you would hope a Buddhist sanctuary would be. Incense filled the air. Ancient chant was projected by one of the buildings in the compound.
And then there was an announcement in Chinese over the loudspeaker.
Around back from the pagoda (the front entrance to the pagoda faces South) is a massive (the largest in Asia) water fountain display (on the North side). They play music (a half hour’s worth of traditional Chinese music to Russian marches to Viennese waltzes) as the jets of water dance in time to the music. It is beautiful and apparently, even more so at night as they’ve got lights to go along with it too.
After the dancing water, we got dinner of pulled pork in thick flatbread and a huge bowl of dumpling soup. It was delicious and very spicy. Satiated and tired, my Chinese Angel poured me into a taxi and I headed home madly in love with my new country and my new Angel.
The next day, Sunday, is my usual day to tutor my handsome, nervous young student. My Brazilian Angel happened to be about (her computer is on the fritz and the least I can do is help her) checking her email. To my great pleasure, he managed to have an extended conversation with her even though he was clearly nervous. When we first met, he was unable to look me in the eye for being so nervous about his “lack of’ English. Now he’s having conversations with my friends.
With her presence, my student was definitely nervous and formal but once she left, it was really, really nice the way he loosened up. Nothing makes me happier than to know that my students who are raised with all these societal notions of who “I” am, who “they” are in respect to what “I” represent and the intimidating ideas said interaction implies are actually comfortable enough with me to let down their guard. As my student and I finished our lesson with an intense discussion about Islam, Muslim and the Muslim Quarter (he was having a hard time understanding that “Islam” is the religion and “Muslim” are the people though not “all people” are Muslim… to say nothing of the fact that all Muslims must speak Arabic to study the Koran. He has a Muslim friend and he had no idea his friend might speak Arabic.) we were both finished giddy.
Once he was gone, I met up with my Brazilian Angel and we both talked about how gorgeous my student is. It’s not just that he’s handsome as all get out and well dressed but that he has an honesty and earnestness that registers clearly on his face, making him all the more luminously beautiful. His eyes tell you more than his mouth ever could, Mandarin or English. She is unfazed by the age difference whereas I find it a pity that he’s too young and that I am too provincial to find the age difference a problem. Nevertheless, god never closes a door without opening a window, right?
My window appeared at long last, on Monday when Alpha Hottie made his reappearance at lunch. It had been a week since I had seen him at lunch. I tried to say hello to him but I couldn’t catch his eye (he was sitting at the table next to mine, facing me) which means either he’s got a serious case of the “shy” or he’s avoiding me. After about 5 minutes of glancing in his direction, I gave up on making eye contact to say “Hello” and I was promptly swarmed with emphatic students and my lunch mate.
I, being me, figured he had been avoiding me because, well, that’s what boys do with me. When my lunch mate asked what was going on with the two of us, I told her this. Bless her heart, she shook her head and said, “No.” My lunch mate then informed me that while I was with him on the motor scooter, he blushed while talking about me and that she thinks he going to be shy around me. “Simple words in English he might understand from me he might not understand from you because he is nervous.” She then glanced at him. “He is not shy but I think he is shy around you.”
Score one for the honkey! It looks like it’s time to break out my very worst Mandarin to help someone feel more comfortable.
I think I’m supposed to talk about the wedding I went to on Saturday November 18th but it was a wedding. It was pretty standard as beautiful weddings go. I don’t really feel there’s much I can add to “The Bride was the most beautiful bride ever” and “The Groom looked like the luckiest man on the planet that he was.”
Granted, there were a few differences between a Western wedding and a Chinese wedding, none of which I saw but was told about. The first of which is that the groom pays for the wedding. The next is the ceremony itself. It begins in the morning when the groom pulls together a caravan of his friends and family to haul over the feast they’ve cooked for the bride’s family. While the groom is collecting his friends, family and food, the bride’s house is abuzz with activity too. Her home (her parent’s home; unmarried/divorced children live with their parents, regardless of age unless their careers take them away from their hometown) is filled with family, friends and children who prepare the home for the groom’s arrival. The children run about, hide the shoes the bride is to wear for the civil ceremony and then barricade the front door. When the groom’s caravan arrives, the groom must bribe the children to let his caravan into the house. He has the money tucked into a red envelope and gives it to the child who gets the door open.
Then, the caravan arrives, food in hand, and the groom and his men set about finding the bride’s shoes. If ever there were an appropriate metaphor for the kind of marriage I think I would have, it is “She’s lost her stuff again and he’s got to get it found.” Once the shoes are found (and the groomsmen properly paid for rendered services) the couple heads off in their caravan to the municipal building to get hitched. After the municipal stuff, the caravan arrives at the location of their reception where hundreds of guests await their arrival and the entertainment portion begins.
I was invited to the reception and it was lovely. In a room full of several hundred Chinese, I was the only foreigner there. I did not know the groom but the bride was my beautiful colleague. Consequently, everyone knew who I was by virtue of the fact that by simply making a New Yorker appear, she was infinitely more sophisticated. I knew I was in trouble when the groom’s father, happily sauced from all the toasting, stumbled by my table, took one look at me, got wide eyed and hollered, “Meigua ren!” Normally, the word used for a Westerner sounds like “”Lo-why.” In fact, once most people know that I’m American, they still call me “Lo-why.” To identify me by country is seen as a slightly more intimate and familiar; the first step to welcoming me into the fold. (After identifying me by country, the levels of intimacy following are “Miss Teacher” [in English] and then “Teacher” [in English] and finally some permutation of “Christina.” Ultimately, the most intimate is "Chris" and touching me. The men who are close with me are allowed to touch me when in private and the women are allowed to touch me in public.)
Within 20 minutes of my arrival, I had been singled out, hugged by everyone in the wedding party, toasted five times and pointed out to everyone. It was very sweet and very well intentioned but, as you may have noticed, I loathe being the center of attention especially when what’s going on has nothing to do with me. I was very happy sitting with my Chinese Angel, our colleagues and just hanging out, admiring how beautiful my beautiful colleague was in each of her multitude of costume changes. (The first dress she wears is her wedding dress. The next is a traditional Chinese gown; hers was snow-white with poppy flowers printed on it and a faux white fur wrap. The rest are a variety of party dresses.)
After we had been at the wedding for an hour, and I was in danger of being very drunk, my Chinese Angel had the good sense to pour me out of the building. We said our goodbyes, a few more “Meigua ren!”s were shouted and we were off.
From there, (the reception was held near the Bell Tower) my Chinese Angel walked me about to get some air until my head cleared and then we headed to the Big Goose Pagoda.
Frankly, I love the Big Goose Pagoda. It is tranquil and beautiful and everything you would hope a Buddhist sanctuary would be. Incense filled the air. Ancient chant was projected by one of the buildings in the compound.
And then there was an announcement in Chinese over the loudspeaker.
Around back from the pagoda (the front entrance to the pagoda faces South) is a massive (the largest in Asia) water fountain display (on the North side). They play music (a half hour’s worth of traditional Chinese music to Russian marches to Viennese waltzes) as the jets of water dance in time to the music. It is beautiful and apparently, even more so at night as they’ve got lights to go along with it too.
After the dancing water, we got dinner of pulled pork in thick flatbread and a huge bowl of dumpling soup. It was delicious and very spicy. Satiated and tired, my Chinese Angel poured me into a taxi and I headed home madly in love with my new country and my new Angel.
The next day, Sunday, is my usual day to tutor my handsome, nervous young student. My Brazilian Angel happened to be about (her computer is on the fritz and the least I can do is help her) checking her email. To my great pleasure, he managed to have an extended conversation with her even though he was clearly nervous. When we first met, he was unable to look me in the eye for being so nervous about his “lack of’ English. Now he’s having conversations with my friends.
With her presence, my student was definitely nervous and formal but once she left, it was really, really nice the way he loosened up. Nothing makes me happier than to know that my students who are raised with all these societal notions of who “I” am, who “they” are in respect to what “I” represent and the intimidating ideas said interaction implies are actually comfortable enough with me to let down their guard. As my student and I finished our lesson with an intense discussion about Islam, Muslim and the Muslim Quarter (he was having a hard time understanding that “Islam” is the religion and “Muslim” are the people though not “all people” are Muslim… to say nothing of the fact that all Muslims must speak Arabic to study the Koran. He has a Muslim friend and he had no idea his friend might speak Arabic.) we were both finished giddy.
Once he was gone, I met up with my Brazilian Angel and we both talked about how gorgeous my student is. It’s not just that he’s handsome as all get out and well dressed but that he has an honesty and earnestness that registers clearly on his face, making him all the more luminously beautiful. His eyes tell you more than his mouth ever could, Mandarin or English. She is unfazed by the age difference whereas I find it a pity that he’s too young and that I am too provincial to find the age difference a problem. Nevertheless, god never closes a door without opening a window, right?
My window appeared at long last, on Monday when Alpha Hottie made his reappearance at lunch. It had been a week since I had seen him at lunch. I tried to say hello to him but I couldn’t catch his eye (he was sitting at the table next to mine, facing me) which means either he’s got a serious case of the “shy” or he’s avoiding me. After about 5 minutes of glancing in his direction, I gave up on making eye contact to say “Hello” and I was promptly swarmed with emphatic students and my lunch mate.
I, being me, figured he had been avoiding me because, well, that’s what boys do with me. When my lunch mate asked what was going on with the two of us, I told her this. Bless her heart, she shook her head and said, “No.” My lunch mate then informed me that while I was with him on the motor scooter, he blushed while talking about me and that she thinks he going to be shy around me. “Simple words in English he might understand from me he might not understand from you because he is nervous.” She then glanced at him. “He is not shy but I think he is shy around you.”
Score one for the honkey! It looks like it’s time to break out my very worst Mandarin to help someone feel more comfortable.
Friday, November 17, 2006
I HEAR THERE’S TROUBLE IN SHANGRI-LA
My wealthy compound is in the North East and is built to attract wealthy Asian businessmen from around the globe. The sanitized South has a reciprocal compound being built to attract wealthy Western businessmen.
Both compounds are wealthy beyond reason but mine is distinctly Chinese with its garishly extravagant (and I find ugly) Bauhaus architecture and surrounding authentic Chinese venues while the Southern one is distinctly New Money European with its columns, classical statue reproductions and surrounding Disney-fied tourist attractions. There is no question by anyone living in either of these compounds that they are fortunate beyond compare… well, perhaps except the errant angst riddled teen.
I was invited for dinner at a lovely couple’s home last night (11/14). My Brazilian Angel has made friends with the American wife of the couple and another European gentleman from my father’s family’s hometown of Bern, who happens to currently live in my compound.
The lovely couple (she is American and he is European) was truly lovely. Their home is lovely (a house with several, beautiful, spacious stories) and adorned with things from their travels all over the world. His job has moved them to every country on the “Must See” list of international travel. Her job is teaching English and she knows how to find all the best resources money can buy. Their relationship has the ease, comfort and familiarity of a decade of loving compromise, hard work and being each other’s touchstone. Their beautiful dogs are well-trained, loving and large breeds (in China, if families have a pet dog, it’s never larger than a teacup breed of any sort). The lovely couple has the kind of relationship and life I used to envy and it wasn’t until last night that I realized that I no longer recognize that part of myself. It was very strange and I’m still mourning the loss of that piece of myself but I don’t know that, in the end, I’ll miss it.
In my choice to have as authentic an experience afforded a six-foot-plus white girl in China, I found a real community with real friends, real politics and, well, reality. For all its idiosyncrasies and real-life-issues, it is a home for me. There is a specificity for me here. I find comfort in my Chinese friends who protect me as best as they know how, I have found clumsy steps towards romance with two of the men and I find respite in the two men charged with caring for me. I am surrounded by a community of people who do their best to understand me with what they’ve got, do everything in their power to provide me what I need and act with the best of intentions; you cannot ask for more than that in this world. The Chinese, for my newfound Western friends, are simply job titles and career roadblocks. The Chinese women boil down to “Maid” and “High Powered Official.” The Chinese men boil down to “Driver” and opaque moneygrubbers or “China Businessmen.” China is literally nothing but a European ghetto sprinkled with some good tourist sites and shopping. I find it very strange and am left to wonder why one would come to China to, at best, avoid it.
Our drive South on the Xi’An beltway to the other compound took over an extra hour (it normally takes 20 minutes) because, well, frankly, don’t try getting ANYWHERE in Xi’An between 6 and 7. It won’t happen. We left at 6 just as the rush to go out to dinner begins in Xi’An. (In Xi’An, everyone eats out at the very least 3 times a week, the bus system is over-crowded and there is no subway system consequently everyone drives to their destination.) So, in the car it was my Brazilian Angel, the gentleman from Bern, the Chinese driver and myself.
Practically speaking, it simply makes sense to hire a driver if you must drive regularly when you live abroad. In some countries, all drivers in car accidents are placed in jail until the months-long process of settling the “People’s” case against the drivers is concluded. In other countries, drivers simply disappear. In other countries, there are the routes to keep you alive, the routes that will put you in the hands of people looking for something to ransom and it helps to have someone who can discern the difference. When the whatever hits the whatever, you want someone who knows the geography, the language and the politics intimately. The Bern gentleman told me stories of the practicalities of living with Chauchesko and surviving revolutions in the developing nations in which he lived only to return a few months later in an attempt to salvage the unsalvageable. Essentially, as a high profile businessman representing an even higher profile company, it is only safe to have an extra, in-the-know presence when out in public. In fact, China is one of the few places where he has worked in the numerous decades he’s been abroad where he felt he didn’t need full-time security.
All this drama aside, the in-the-know presence is still a human being and I was mortified by my fellow Westerner’s constant discussion of his harsh and myopic knowledge of “the Chinese.” At full volume, he discussed how “disgusting,” “crude” and “vulgar” they can be. He then commented that, perhaps, “in a few generations,” the Chinese might be more “civilized.” While I admit I was thinking the same words and evolutionary thoughts, the Chinese had nothing to do with said words and thoughts. Being a precious, fiscal resource to a company does not a learned diplomat make. Needless to say, I had a hard time making conversation in the car, as, under the guise of “polite conversation,” I have nothing to add to, “The Chinese are a disgusting and dirty people.” All I could think was of the Chinese guy who was silently driving us having to drive this loud, myopic man everyday. No job is worth that bullshit.
When we finally arrived at the house in the compound in the South, we got stuck at the gate because, apparently, the guard was not prepared for us. While that sort of thing is a pain in the ass, it is not an issue specific to China; try getting into the Dakota to just poke around. The driver was attempting to sort it out when the man from Bern leans over and starts shouting in English, “Go, make a call. Go! Make a call! Go!” I must admit, the dismissive waving of the hand was an extra lovely touch.
The English yelling, of course, made the Chinese guard stop and look at the yeller from behind the mask to see if he could sort out any of the words. Sitting behind the driver I could see that the driver didn’t even miss a beat as he continued to talk at the guard in Chinese. The only thing that mortified me more than the scene we were making was the fact that the driver was accustomed to said types of scenes.
Finally, the gates were opened and a line of guards led the car to the lovely house. In that moment, I think I finally understood viscerally why it is that developing nations envy Western money. Western money gives the power of unparalleled physical comfort with the ability to be dismissive and blasÈ about it. It simply appears to be a birthright. I always knew that but this was the first moment in which I understood it. For the first time, I saw my world from the outside and I got it.
We pulled up to the house and as I reached to get the flowers resting on the floor of the very clean van, the driver leapt out and rushed to open my door. I thanked him and wished him a good night in Chinese. For the first time, the stone-faced man broke into a warm smile and reciprocated my sentiments. I then said a little prayer that he was unable to understand the bulk of what his boss says, despite the fact that I think that prayer was in vain. Nothing unsettles me more than thinking that my babies at school have careers full of such vulgarity and racism ahead of them. My babies did nothing wrong. In fact, they are helpful, kind and generous to a fault and it upsets me to no end that someday, they will understand the brutalities of the world. In moments like those, I realize why “knowledge” is the true fall from grace.
And there I was, standing with my Brazilian Angel and the man from Bern. The Nouveau-Renaissance influenced house complete with mosaic water fountain (in a desert city) and glass walled house (in a city crunched for power) stood before me in a stunning display of Baroque, disposable income akin to a storage room full of Thomas Kinkade paintings. I had a brief flash of learning in Middle School that the Robber Barons lit their cigars with hundred dollar bills.
I must admit, a childhood spent amongst the wealthiest of the wealthy, an education from the top economic and academic spheres and a professional career that has afforded me access to some of the most exclusive places with the most exclusive people has rendered me somewhat weary of such nouveau shows of money. I am cautious of anything that tries too hard to prove itself rich (because it never stops once my pedigree is revealed) and I had the sinking feeling we were entering the realm of new money.
While it was somewhat true that we were entering the realm of new money, my hosts for the evening quite lacked the stench of it. They were incredibly gracious and unbelievably kind. I very much enjoyed their company but I knew that inside that house there would be no mention of my China. All night I kept glancing at and fidgeting with the steel ring with the small piece of violet glass that one of my babies gave me and only fits on my left ring finger as a reminder that my China was still out there, somewhere, awaiting my return.
I must admit, I was perplexed by the party’s apparent distaste for China. While in China, they only frequent French or American eateries and shop for groceries only in European markets. Now, I’m the first to admit that I need a few staples from the West (hello bread and salted butter!) but the bulk of my life in China is (highly privileged) Chinese. I slowly began to realize that the incredible warmth extended to me was not “to me” but to what I represent; ironically the exact opposite of my current situation with my Chinese friends. As a professional (read: not student here on daddy’s money) “foreigner” in China, the presumption was that I was experiencing the same difficulties, trials and tribulations that they were with the uncouth Chinese. As a “New Yorker” in China with my pedigree (that always proceeds me), it was presumed that I would be the truly erudite commentator on said suffering. “Foreigners” in China really stick together in a way they don’t in the West. Try speaking English in Paris and spitting on you is too good. Speak English to a Parisian here and they’ll hug you. The Swiss Germans find me to be a philistine with my Swiss German heritage. In China, mention your father’s family is from Bern and suddenly you’re long lost cousins.
Amongst the foreign community, English is embraced as the language of the civilized and even fellow countrymen not of Anglo countries speak English to each other. Parisian French is embraced as the language of the sophisticated civilized and spoken amongst those who have proven themselves capable of English as a way to discuss the romantic elements of life. Having attended classes at the Sorbonne, I am one of the few trusted with the subtleties of translating the notions of French-speakers’ with limited English into English. Everyone is jealous of those who speak Parisian French and their inherent, cultured backgrounds. Regardless of where we have lived, we have all been members of an Alliance Francaise at one time or another. For some of us, it stuck, for others it did not. Canadian and Swiss French are merely joked about as bastard children of Parisian French and if anyone speaks either Canadian or Swiss, they do not admit to it. German is the language of business and spoken amongst the men, despite the reprimands of their wives. German is considered practical but too crude for dinner parties. Spanish is considered an extra talent; like being able to split a check and sort out tip. Portuguese is considered a thing of superfluous beauty; like a Fabrige Egg. My rudimentary Welsh, Hungarian and Arabic simply reinforce the concept laid by my capacity for French. Chinese is merely mentioned from time to time as a strange language that has taken Western language noises and turned them into the most “silly” of words or phrases. I guess we shall let them eat cake, non? (And yes, I know she probably did not say, “Let them eat cake.”)
My American hostess clearly has the same issues as I do with America and subsequent baffling foreign policy but I was unable to figure out exactly what country she’d prefer. I am unable to make peace with America for what she has inflicted upon people I love, not because it’s hip to hate the establishment. I am willing to accept alternatives and am fascinated by exploring other options. However, I was unable to sense any real openness on her part towards other options. Most perplexing of all was how much she felt like a belated echo; you recognize it as your own but it was something you never thought you’d see again. It was truly bizarre but I couldn’t quite figure out why I was so unsettled by her.
And then I put my finger on it.
Though many years my senior, she was precisely where I had been in college. If I had coupled with the hypothetical guy I concocted in my head in college, I would have remained in the place where she is. Frankly, it was the most unsettling feeling I had felt in a while. It upset me so much that I got no sleep last night. I saw her there with her comfort and her money and her dogs and her husband and it was all lovely but it is all clearly a bubble. She studies art and life and beauty but never engages the countries she lives in beyond the good shopping. Hell, she’s never even taken a bus much less lived without a driver for most of her adult life. I immediately recognized her ability to host a party and maintain the light banter just a little too well as a former forte of mine.
And I don’t begrudge her those things, I am just entirely unsettled by what a near miss that was for me. I love my “uncivilized” little babies and my maid-free messy home. I love my friends who speak this funny language and expand my world in ways and with a kindness I never thought possible. For whatever monies I lack, there is passion, affection, love and life in my world. I am engaged in my community. I am not plagued by loneliness. I feel like, as much as I may lack and as short as I may fall, I still was able to move to the other side of the planet because passion drove me to it and find a home. I gave it all up back home and was still able to find a little piece of the world where I can just be me… nothing imported.
What I fear is that my voice is not the voice of the “Foreign” experience in China. Theirs is.
My wealthy compound is in the North East and is built to attract wealthy Asian businessmen from around the globe. The sanitized South has a reciprocal compound being built to attract wealthy Western businessmen.
Both compounds are wealthy beyond reason but mine is distinctly Chinese with its garishly extravagant (and I find ugly) Bauhaus architecture and surrounding authentic Chinese venues while the Southern one is distinctly New Money European with its columns, classical statue reproductions and surrounding Disney-fied tourist attractions. There is no question by anyone living in either of these compounds that they are fortunate beyond compare… well, perhaps except the errant angst riddled teen.
I was invited for dinner at a lovely couple’s home last night (11/14). My Brazilian Angel has made friends with the American wife of the couple and another European gentleman from my father’s family’s hometown of Bern, who happens to currently live in my compound.
The lovely couple (she is American and he is European) was truly lovely. Their home is lovely (a house with several, beautiful, spacious stories) and adorned with things from their travels all over the world. His job has moved them to every country on the “Must See” list of international travel. Her job is teaching English and she knows how to find all the best resources money can buy. Their relationship has the ease, comfort and familiarity of a decade of loving compromise, hard work and being each other’s touchstone. Their beautiful dogs are well-trained, loving and large breeds (in China, if families have a pet dog, it’s never larger than a teacup breed of any sort). The lovely couple has the kind of relationship and life I used to envy and it wasn’t until last night that I realized that I no longer recognize that part of myself. It was very strange and I’m still mourning the loss of that piece of myself but I don’t know that, in the end, I’ll miss it.
In my choice to have as authentic an experience afforded a six-foot-plus white girl in China, I found a real community with real friends, real politics and, well, reality. For all its idiosyncrasies and real-life-issues, it is a home for me. There is a specificity for me here. I find comfort in my Chinese friends who protect me as best as they know how, I have found clumsy steps towards romance with two of the men and I find respite in the two men charged with caring for me. I am surrounded by a community of people who do their best to understand me with what they’ve got, do everything in their power to provide me what I need and act with the best of intentions; you cannot ask for more than that in this world. The Chinese, for my newfound Western friends, are simply job titles and career roadblocks. The Chinese women boil down to “Maid” and “High Powered Official.” The Chinese men boil down to “Driver” and opaque moneygrubbers or “China Businessmen.” China is literally nothing but a European ghetto sprinkled with some good tourist sites and shopping. I find it very strange and am left to wonder why one would come to China to, at best, avoid it.
Our drive South on the Xi’An beltway to the other compound took over an extra hour (it normally takes 20 minutes) because, well, frankly, don’t try getting ANYWHERE in Xi’An between 6 and 7. It won’t happen. We left at 6 just as the rush to go out to dinner begins in Xi’An. (In Xi’An, everyone eats out at the very least 3 times a week, the bus system is over-crowded and there is no subway system consequently everyone drives to their destination.) So, in the car it was my Brazilian Angel, the gentleman from Bern, the Chinese driver and myself.
Practically speaking, it simply makes sense to hire a driver if you must drive regularly when you live abroad. In some countries, all drivers in car accidents are placed in jail until the months-long process of settling the “People’s” case against the drivers is concluded. In other countries, drivers simply disappear. In other countries, there are the routes to keep you alive, the routes that will put you in the hands of people looking for something to ransom and it helps to have someone who can discern the difference. When the whatever hits the whatever, you want someone who knows the geography, the language and the politics intimately. The Bern gentleman told me stories of the practicalities of living with Chauchesko and surviving revolutions in the developing nations in which he lived only to return a few months later in an attempt to salvage the unsalvageable. Essentially, as a high profile businessman representing an even higher profile company, it is only safe to have an extra, in-the-know presence when out in public. In fact, China is one of the few places where he has worked in the numerous decades he’s been abroad where he felt he didn’t need full-time security.
All this drama aside, the in-the-know presence is still a human being and I was mortified by my fellow Westerner’s constant discussion of his harsh and myopic knowledge of “the Chinese.” At full volume, he discussed how “disgusting,” “crude” and “vulgar” they can be. He then commented that, perhaps, “in a few generations,” the Chinese might be more “civilized.” While I admit I was thinking the same words and evolutionary thoughts, the Chinese had nothing to do with said words and thoughts. Being a precious, fiscal resource to a company does not a learned diplomat make. Needless to say, I had a hard time making conversation in the car, as, under the guise of “polite conversation,” I have nothing to add to, “The Chinese are a disgusting and dirty people.” All I could think was of the Chinese guy who was silently driving us having to drive this loud, myopic man everyday. No job is worth that bullshit.
When we finally arrived at the house in the compound in the South, we got stuck at the gate because, apparently, the guard was not prepared for us. While that sort of thing is a pain in the ass, it is not an issue specific to China; try getting into the Dakota to just poke around. The driver was attempting to sort it out when the man from Bern leans over and starts shouting in English, “Go, make a call. Go! Make a call! Go!” I must admit, the dismissive waving of the hand was an extra lovely touch.
The English yelling, of course, made the Chinese guard stop and look at the yeller from behind the mask to see if he could sort out any of the words. Sitting behind the driver I could see that the driver didn’t even miss a beat as he continued to talk at the guard in Chinese. The only thing that mortified me more than the scene we were making was the fact that the driver was accustomed to said types of scenes.
Finally, the gates were opened and a line of guards led the car to the lovely house. In that moment, I think I finally understood viscerally why it is that developing nations envy Western money. Western money gives the power of unparalleled physical comfort with the ability to be dismissive and blasÈ about it. It simply appears to be a birthright. I always knew that but this was the first moment in which I understood it. For the first time, I saw my world from the outside and I got it.
We pulled up to the house and as I reached to get the flowers resting on the floor of the very clean van, the driver leapt out and rushed to open my door. I thanked him and wished him a good night in Chinese. For the first time, the stone-faced man broke into a warm smile and reciprocated my sentiments. I then said a little prayer that he was unable to understand the bulk of what his boss says, despite the fact that I think that prayer was in vain. Nothing unsettles me more than thinking that my babies at school have careers full of such vulgarity and racism ahead of them. My babies did nothing wrong. In fact, they are helpful, kind and generous to a fault and it upsets me to no end that someday, they will understand the brutalities of the world. In moments like those, I realize why “knowledge” is the true fall from grace.
And there I was, standing with my Brazilian Angel and the man from Bern. The Nouveau-Renaissance influenced house complete with mosaic water fountain (in a desert city) and glass walled house (in a city crunched for power) stood before me in a stunning display of Baroque, disposable income akin to a storage room full of Thomas Kinkade paintings. I had a brief flash of learning in Middle School that the Robber Barons lit their cigars with hundred dollar bills.
I must admit, a childhood spent amongst the wealthiest of the wealthy, an education from the top economic and academic spheres and a professional career that has afforded me access to some of the most exclusive places with the most exclusive people has rendered me somewhat weary of such nouveau shows of money. I am cautious of anything that tries too hard to prove itself rich (because it never stops once my pedigree is revealed) and I had the sinking feeling we were entering the realm of new money.
While it was somewhat true that we were entering the realm of new money, my hosts for the evening quite lacked the stench of it. They were incredibly gracious and unbelievably kind. I very much enjoyed their company but I knew that inside that house there would be no mention of my China. All night I kept glancing at and fidgeting with the steel ring with the small piece of violet glass that one of my babies gave me and only fits on my left ring finger as a reminder that my China was still out there, somewhere, awaiting my return.
I must admit, I was perplexed by the party’s apparent distaste for China. While in China, they only frequent French or American eateries and shop for groceries only in European markets. Now, I’m the first to admit that I need a few staples from the West (hello bread and salted butter!) but the bulk of my life in China is (highly privileged) Chinese. I slowly began to realize that the incredible warmth extended to me was not “to me” but to what I represent; ironically the exact opposite of my current situation with my Chinese friends. As a professional (read: not student here on daddy’s money) “foreigner” in China, the presumption was that I was experiencing the same difficulties, trials and tribulations that they were with the uncouth Chinese. As a “New Yorker” in China with my pedigree (that always proceeds me), it was presumed that I would be the truly erudite commentator on said suffering. “Foreigners” in China really stick together in a way they don’t in the West. Try speaking English in Paris and spitting on you is too good. Speak English to a Parisian here and they’ll hug you. The Swiss Germans find me to be a philistine with my Swiss German heritage. In China, mention your father’s family is from Bern and suddenly you’re long lost cousins.
Amongst the foreign community, English is embraced as the language of the civilized and even fellow countrymen not of Anglo countries speak English to each other. Parisian French is embraced as the language of the sophisticated civilized and spoken amongst those who have proven themselves capable of English as a way to discuss the romantic elements of life. Having attended classes at the Sorbonne, I am one of the few trusted with the subtleties of translating the notions of French-speakers’ with limited English into English. Everyone is jealous of those who speak Parisian French and their inherent, cultured backgrounds. Regardless of where we have lived, we have all been members of an Alliance Francaise at one time or another. For some of us, it stuck, for others it did not. Canadian and Swiss French are merely joked about as bastard children of Parisian French and if anyone speaks either Canadian or Swiss, they do not admit to it. German is the language of business and spoken amongst the men, despite the reprimands of their wives. German is considered practical but too crude for dinner parties. Spanish is considered an extra talent; like being able to split a check and sort out tip. Portuguese is considered a thing of superfluous beauty; like a Fabrige Egg. My rudimentary Welsh, Hungarian and Arabic simply reinforce the concept laid by my capacity for French. Chinese is merely mentioned from time to time as a strange language that has taken Western language noises and turned them into the most “silly” of words or phrases. I guess we shall let them eat cake, non? (And yes, I know she probably did not say, “Let them eat cake.”)
My American hostess clearly has the same issues as I do with America and subsequent baffling foreign policy but I was unable to figure out exactly what country she’d prefer. I am unable to make peace with America for what she has inflicted upon people I love, not because it’s hip to hate the establishment. I am willing to accept alternatives and am fascinated by exploring other options. However, I was unable to sense any real openness on her part towards other options. Most perplexing of all was how much she felt like a belated echo; you recognize it as your own but it was something you never thought you’d see again. It was truly bizarre but I couldn’t quite figure out why I was so unsettled by her.
And then I put my finger on it.
Though many years my senior, she was precisely where I had been in college. If I had coupled with the hypothetical guy I concocted in my head in college, I would have remained in the place where she is. Frankly, it was the most unsettling feeling I had felt in a while. It upset me so much that I got no sleep last night. I saw her there with her comfort and her money and her dogs and her husband and it was all lovely but it is all clearly a bubble. She studies art and life and beauty but never engages the countries she lives in beyond the good shopping. Hell, she’s never even taken a bus much less lived without a driver for most of her adult life. I immediately recognized her ability to host a party and maintain the light banter just a little too well as a former forte of mine.
And I don’t begrudge her those things, I am just entirely unsettled by what a near miss that was for me. I love my “uncivilized” little babies and my maid-free messy home. I love my friends who speak this funny language and expand my world in ways and with a kindness I never thought possible. For whatever monies I lack, there is passion, affection, love and life in my world. I am engaged in my community. I am not plagued by loneliness. I feel like, as much as I may lack and as short as I may fall, I still was able to move to the other side of the planet because passion drove me to it and find a home. I gave it all up back home and was still able to find a little piece of the world where I can just be me… nothing imported.
What I fear is that my voice is not the voice of the “Foreign” experience in China. Theirs is.
TEE HEE
My lunch mate realized that I was interested not in the gym teacher she was thinking of but, in fact, the hottie we all know and love as Alpha Hottie. Even Ms. Formerly Of The He’s-not-my-cup-of-tea said, “Oh, him. I think he’s handsome. I thought you meant another teacher.” The man is universally hot. That’s all I’m saying.
Consequently, she took it upon herself to convince him to give me a ride on the back of his motor scooter in lieu of our (lunch mate and I) regular stroll from the primary to the middle school after lunch today (11/13).
Normally, I wait at the front of the school while my lunch mate fetches her bike but today, Alpha Hottie happened to be leaving at the same time we were. My lunch mate and Alpha Hottie disappeared behind the school to where they keep the bikes and scooters and then she reappeared, giddy about something. My “Oh. Fuck.” meter went off instantly.
“Just wait a moment,” she said, giggling in her conspiracy.
“Oh god. Oh no. Really, it’s fine.” I beg, knowing the approximate route this situation is about to take. The last thing I need is my dating life to be sorted out for me in a language I don’t understand. Rejection sucks. Rejection via translator who also works with me (read: public stage) is horrifying. The Chinese have no problem telling you exactly what’s wrong with you, as far as they’re concerned, in a public setting and the last thing I need is to hear about my shortcomings as a reason to romantically reject me while everyone listening nods knowingly. I’m insecure enough and the regular monologues several teachers have at me about how fat I was and how slim I am and how “all the teachers” talk about how much better I look and that I should keep losing weight does nothing to quell my insecurity. They all want me to be a model if I’m not “very fat, like when you first here.” Yes, it’s all meant with the best of intention but it doesn’t upset me any less. I certainly don’t want to have to deal the critical monologues that will result when the hot man rejects me. I can hear them now, “Well, of course. We all thought…” as nerve after nerve is pounded. Suddenly, I’m back in middle (or primary, as it were) school, where everyone is watching as someone else sorts out my love life. The only difference this time around is that we fit in our clothes better, have larger paychecks and have some vague notion of the things we’re “supposed” to be doing in proper society.
Alpha Hottie reappears with his motor scooter and the control freak goddess that is me is left to watch helpless, as the chain of events I set off takes on a life of its own. My lunch mate talked with Alpha Hottie and they argued about something. “Great, he’s already not happy and she’s going to bludgeon him into dating me. Please god, kill me now. Just please, let me stroke out and die right here. Please,” was the sum total of my inner dialogue. The arguing died down and my lunch mate said something else.
Alpha Hottie walked his scooter out the front gate and my lunch mate said something else. Instantly, Alpha Hottie sat up straight, slid forward on the scooter seat and turned to look right at me, expectantly. I now have proof that god does not exist because had their been a god, it would have struck me dead to shut up the mental shriek I unleashed as I realized I was supposed to be getting on the scooter with him. All I have asked for is sitting there awaiting me but it comes with a fucking live, studio audience. I have suddenly realized there is no way I’m going to survive this without making a complete ass of myself and I for the first time in a long time, really care about that.
My lunch mate explained that she was going to ride her bike along side the two of us on his motor scooter. Fortunately, I have NO experience with motor scooters and so my “motor scooter etiquette” is nonexistent. Thank god I was extra unprepared for today’s mortifying experience because pure blindsiding and utter usurping of control isn’t enough; I must be fully ignorant as well. I decided, as I was not comfortable with the whole “sidesaddle” thing they seem to prefer here, I’d just go for the whole “spread eagle” enchilada. If you’re going to cross a line, really fucking cross it, right?
As I tossed one leg over the scooter and slid down to the seat, I was slapped in the face with his amazing smell. I realized that it’s not the poppies that emit opium in China; it’s the boys. My mind went clear and I took a deep breath. I could stay in that smell forever.
Once my ass was on the scooter and my mind became my own again, I decided to let my legs dangle and not put my feet up on the foot part as I really wasn’t able to deal with the notion of actively squeezing him between my thighs. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I could do it and not make an inappropriate noise.
So, there I am, dangling a bit off the back and he half turns to me and then speaks to my lunch mate.
“Put your feet up on the platform.” My lunch mate tells me.
To recap, I’m living in a country where I’m not allowed to touch men, much less hug my guy friends, but suddenly it’s totally okay, nay, I’m being URGED to wrap my thighs around a relative stranger in public while other people negotiate our dating potential. Yeah, my ability to comprehend has rather vanished.
I lean back a little to see the platform. “When in Rome,” right? I pop my feet up on the platform and there I am, with my legs wrapped fully around him and face the color and temperature of freshly steamed lobster.
I then mentally debate putting my arms around his waist. I figure the only thing more mortifying than offending him with my forward contact is eating pavement. Fully expecting him to at least flinch or, more likely, turn around in that “What the fuck are you doing” sort of way, I wrapped one arm about his waist. Nothing. He was totally blasÈ.
“Okay, if he’s fine with that, I’m putting my other hand on his waist to counterbalance myself because I will be damned if I’m going to crack my skull on the pavement to get a date” I thought.
And then I did it.
And he remained blasÈ.
And realized just how solid he is.
And we were off.
He made a little “Oof,” teasing sound at first realizing my weight. I immediately thought, “Enough. I’m walking. Bye-bye. I’m out. I’m done,” as I discovered that my flight reflex is firmly intact. As I pulled back, took my arm from his waist and started to lift my legs, he said something to my lunch mate.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry, he’s had two women on the back of his bike. You’re fine.’” My lunch mate explained quickly.
“What’s he doing with two women on the back of his bike?” I joked, trying to be silly and relax a bit.
My lunch mate’s eyes went wide with horror, “No, no, they were just friends, I’m sure.” She nodded nervously. “Only friends.” Horrified silence hung in the air as she glanced nervously at me and then at him.
Right. Well. That misfire cleared two things up for me; one, this is definitely about dating and two, my mouth is only going to get me in trouble. I clarified, “I was just teasing.”
My lunch mate nodded with relief.
I did my best to settle back down again but all I could do was cringe. Normally, I’m a pretty good sport but I don’t do well when stripped of all control, knowledge and resourcefulness. While I had a general idea of what we were doing, I wasn’t really clear on why I needed to be there as it was clearly a negotiation between the two of them, I had NO idea what they were saying and I was even less sure of how the hell it was fully acceptable to for me to be pressing my breasts against his back considering the fact that I was about to be riding with him between my thighs.
Oh. My. God. My breasts are against his back. Fuck. I hadn’t noticed, much less planned that. FUCK.
I freaked out, unsure if that much forwardness is rude or uncouth or what. I hadn’t meant it to be forward, it just happened. Granted, there’s absolutely no way I could have held on to him and not have leaned the cousins against him but I hadn’t realized what holding him meant. Frankly, the cousins, while not huge, are most certainly present and so they often require a little strategic planning. To top it off, by the time I realized exactly what I was doing, it was too late to casually readjust away.
I have to admit that it was beyond surreal to have the fact that we’re both interested in spending time together negotiated by a third party while my thighs are wrapped around his hips, my arms are around his waist, my breasts are pressed against his solid frame and we’re in broad daylight, in public, in China with a friend looking on approvingly. Frankly, the last man to be that close to me is (and was) happily married… to a man. It’s been a loooong time since said contact has meant anything and even longer since it wasn’t contact I’ve since come to regret. I’ve gone months without (post-pubescent) male contact and suddenly, I’m straddling the hottest man (who’s infinitely casual between my thighs) on the planet while a number of us are casually discussing his and my mutual interest in one another, the wonderful and practical fact that he excelled in English in high school, that he would very much like to “work on his English” with me and all I can think is how good he smells.
I’m fairly good with crash courses. In fact, if I have a forte, I’m pretty sure “crash course” is it. However, this was a bit much. I had to recalibrate my “China” sensitivity gauge while the fact that he smells like warm, fresh laundry that needs to be nuzzled kept wrenching me away from lucid thought. We rode down the street and I couldn’t stop thinking about how lovely it felt to be wrapped around him and how I desperately wanted to curl up into him and go to sleep. Suddenly, and for the first time in China, I genuinely didn’t want to cross a line that would make me lose face. Hello vanity!
As we made it to our destination, I thanked him for the ride, he shook his head indicating it was nothing and then was off. Then my lunch mate turned to me and said, “Good, now you’ve been introduced, you can sit with him at his table at lunch.” Um, I can’t even begin to unpack the notion that hanging out with a dude riding between your thighs is merely, “Introduction” in a country where I’m not really allowed to shake a dude’s hand. To say nothing of the fact that, at almost 30, I’m literally discussing school lunchroom table politics as highly relevant to my dating life. What?
Because I’m a lucky bitch beyond compare, I bumped into my Brazilian Angel right after said ride and I immediately told her what happened. I escorted her to lunch across from the compound while we talked.
She leveled her gaze at me and spoke. “Did you push your breasts against him?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. I was holding onto him and so yeah. No stomach or anything, because it wasn’t tight, just boobs. Wait, what?”
“Good. The women here have none so he’s going to be thinking about that.”
“I don’t know. He seemed very comfortable. Nothing really fazed him.”
“Excellent. That means he liked it.” Or it meant nothing to him. I’m just sayin’.
“What? I was dying.”
“Chris, you really must lighten up.”
As my Catholic friend is reprimanding me for being too hard on myself and not blasÈ enough with my sexual finesse, Alpha Hottie happens to ride by us on the street. He turns around to look at us as he drives by and I holler, “Hello” after him.
I look at my Brazilian Angel and point to him.
“Was that him?”
“Yeah.”
“Chris, he’s really handsome” was blurted out in surprise from the woman who, until that moment, thought there were no good looking Asian men.
“I know,” I say, truly comprehending I am most certainly flirting with a hottie way out of my league.
“Perfect. You’ve got a boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Well, actually, the only problem is if he doesn’t want you.”
“Duh. Hello. He’s way out of my league in the looks department and the virtues of my intellect aren’t exactly going to make it through the language barrier.”
“Chris, don’t be so hard on yourself. Look at yourself. You’re lovely. You have beautiful eyes.”
“But…”
“I won’t hear anymore of this shit. Enough.”
“But…”
“No, really. No more. I don’t where you get these ideas that you’re not pretty. You are. Enough. Do you really think these things about yourself? It’s shit.” And my Brazilian Angel continued to reprimand me for my lack of self-confidence for the better part of a half hour.
Later today, after classes, I returned to my apartment to drop off some books before I went out to buy some water. (I have a water heater but, frankly, if I had to wait for the school to replace the bottles of water I’d have died of dehydration long ago.) As I’m replaying Mr. Not-So-Much-A-Toad’s Wild Ride, I walk out of my apartment sans keys. 50 Yuan and some unexpected visitations later, a locksmith came and wrenched my door open.
Fucking boys.
My lunch mate realized that I was interested not in the gym teacher she was thinking of but, in fact, the hottie we all know and love as Alpha Hottie. Even Ms. Formerly Of The He’s-not-my-cup-of-tea said, “Oh, him. I think he’s handsome. I thought you meant another teacher.” The man is universally hot. That’s all I’m saying.
Consequently, she took it upon herself to convince him to give me a ride on the back of his motor scooter in lieu of our (lunch mate and I) regular stroll from the primary to the middle school after lunch today (11/13).
Normally, I wait at the front of the school while my lunch mate fetches her bike but today, Alpha Hottie happened to be leaving at the same time we were. My lunch mate and Alpha Hottie disappeared behind the school to where they keep the bikes and scooters and then she reappeared, giddy about something. My “Oh. Fuck.” meter went off instantly.
“Just wait a moment,” she said, giggling in her conspiracy.
“Oh god. Oh no. Really, it’s fine.” I beg, knowing the approximate route this situation is about to take. The last thing I need is my dating life to be sorted out for me in a language I don’t understand. Rejection sucks. Rejection via translator who also works with me (read: public stage) is horrifying. The Chinese have no problem telling you exactly what’s wrong with you, as far as they’re concerned, in a public setting and the last thing I need is to hear about my shortcomings as a reason to romantically reject me while everyone listening nods knowingly. I’m insecure enough and the regular monologues several teachers have at me about how fat I was and how slim I am and how “all the teachers” talk about how much better I look and that I should keep losing weight does nothing to quell my insecurity. They all want me to be a model if I’m not “very fat, like when you first here.” Yes, it’s all meant with the best of intention but it doesn’t upset me any less. I certainly don’t want to have to deal the critical monologues that will result when the hot man rejects me. I can hear them now, “Well, of course. We all thought…” as nerve after nerve is pounded. Suddenly, I’m back in middle (or primary, as it were) school, where everyone is watching as someone else sorts out my love life. The only difference this time around is that we fit in our clothes better, have larger paychecks and have some vague notion of the things we’re “supposed” to be doing in proper society.
Alpha Hottie reappears with his motor scooter and the control freak goddess that is me is left to watch helpless, as the chain of events I set off takes on a life of its own. My lunch mate talked with Alpha Hottie and they argued about something. “Great, he’s already not happy and she’s going to bludgeon him into dating me. Please god, kill me now. Just please, let me stroke out and die right here. Please,” was the sum total of my inner dialogue. The arguing died down and my lunch mate said something else.
Alpha Hottie walked his scooter out the front gate and my lunch mate said something else. Instantly, Alpha Hottie sat up straight, slid forward on the scooter seat and turned to look right at me, expectantly. I now have proof that god does not exist because had their been a god, it would have struck me dead to shut up the mental shriek I unleashed as I realized I was supposed to be getting on the scooter with him. All I have asked for is sitting there awaiting me but it comes with a fucking live, studio audience. I have suddenly realized there is no way I’m going to survive this without making a complete ass of myself and I for the first time in a long time, really care about that.
My lunch mate explained that she was going to ride her bike along side the two of us on his motor scooter. Fortunately, I have NO experience with motor scooters and so my “motor scooter etiquette” is nonexistent. Thank god I was extra unprepared for today’s mortifying experience because pure blindsiding and utter usurping of control isn’t enough; I must be fully ignorant as well. I decided, as I was not comfortable with the whole “sidesaddle” thing they seem to prefer here, I’d just go for the whole “spread eagle” enchilada. If you’re going to cross a line, really fucking cross it, right?
As I tossed one leg over the scooter and slid down to the seat, I was slapped in the face with his amazing smell. I realized that it’s not the poppies that emit opium in China; it’s the boys. My mind went clear and I took a deep breath. I could stay in that smell forever.
Once my ass was on the scooter and my mind became my own again, I decided to let my legs dangle and not put my feet up on the foot part as I really wasn’t able to deal with the notion of actively squeezing him between my thighs. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I could do it and not make an inappropriate noise.
So, there I am, dangling a bit off the back and he half turns to me and then speaks to my lunch mate.
“Put your feet up on the platform.” My lunch mate tells me.
To recap, I’m living in a country where I’m not allowed to touch men, much less hug my guy friends, but suddenly it’s totally okay, nay, I’m being URGED to wrap my thighs around a relative stranger in public while other people negotiate our dating potential. Yeah, my ability to comprehend has rather vanished.
I lean back a little to see the platform. “When in Rome,” right? I pop my feet up on the platform and there I am, with my legs wrapped fully around him and face the color and temperature of freshly steamed lobster.
I then mentally debate putting my arms around his waist. I figure the only thing more mortifying than offending him with my forward contact is eating pavement. Fully expecting him to at least flinch or, more likely, turn around in that “What the fuck are you doing” sort of way, I wrapped one arm about his waist. Nothing. He was totally blasÈ.
“Okay, if he’s fine with that, I’m putting my other hand on his waist to counterbalance myself because I will be damned if I’m going to crack my skull on the pavement to get a date” I thought.
And then I did it.
And he remained blasÈ.
And realized just how solid he is.
And we were off.
He made a little “Oof,” teasing sound at first realizing my weight. I immediately thought, “Enough. I’m walking. Bye-bye. I’m out. I’m done,” as I discovered that my flight reflex is firmly intact. As I pulled back, took my arm from his waist and started to lift my legs, he said something to my lunch mate.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry, he’s had two women on the back of his bike. You’re fine.’” My lunch mate explained quickly.
“What’s he doing with two women on the back of his bike?” I joked, trying to be silly and relax a bit.
My lunch mate’s eyes went wide with horror, “No, no, they were just friends, I’m sure.” She nodded nervously. “Only friends.” Horrified silence hung in the air as she glanced nervously at me and then at him.
Right. Well. That misfire cleared two things up for me; one, this is definitely about dating and two, my mouth is only going to get me in trouble. I clarified, “I was just teasing.”
My lunch mate nodded with relief.
I did my best to settle back down again but all I could do was cringe. Normally, I’m a pretty good sport but I don’t do well when stripped of all control, knowledge and resourcefulness. While I had a general idea of what we were doing, I wasn’t really clear on why I needed to be there as it was clearly a negotiation between the two of them, I had NO idea what they were saying and I was even less sure of how the hell it was fully acceptable to for me to be pressing my breasts against his back considering the fact that I was about to be riding with him between my thighs.
Oh. My. God. My breasts are against his back. Fuck. I hadn’t noticed, much less planned that. FUCK.
I freaked out, unsure if that much forwardness is rude or uncouth or what. I hadn’t meant it to be forward, it just happened. Granted, there’s absolutely no way I could have held on to him and not have leaned the cousins against him but I hadn’t realized what holding him meant. Frankly, the cousins, while not huge, are most certainly present and so they often require a little strategic planning. To top it off, by the time I realized exactly what I was doing, it was too late to casually readjust away.
I have to admit that it was beyond surreal to have the fact that we’re both interested in spending time together negotiated by a third party while my thighs are wrapped around his hips, my arms are around his waist, my breasts are pressed against his solid frame and we’re in broad daylight, in public, in China with a friend looking on approvingly. Frankly, the last man to be that close to me is (and was) happily married… to a man. It’s been a loooong time since said contact has meant anything and even longer since it wasn’t contact I’ve since come to regret. I’ve gone months without (post-pubescent) male contact and suddenly, I’m straddling the hottest man (who’s infinitely casual between my thighs) on the planet while a number of us are casually discussing his and my mutual interest in one another, the wonderful and practical fact that he excelled in English in high school, that he would very much like to “work on his English” with me and all I can think is how good he smells.
I’m fairly good with crash courses. In fact, if I have a forte, I’m pretty sure “crash course” is it. However, this was a bit much. I had to recalibrate my “China” sensitivity gauge while the fact that he smells like warm, fresh laundry that needs to be nuzzled kept wrenching me away from lucid thought. We rode down the street and I couldn’t stop thinking about how lovely it felt to be wrapped around him and how I desperately wanted to curl up into him and go to sleep. Suddenly, and for the first time in China, I genuinely didn’t want to cross a line that would make me lose face. Hello vanity!
As we made it to our destination, I thanked him for the ride, he shook his head indicating it was nothing and then was off. Then my lunch mate turned to me and said, “Good, now you’ve been introduced, you can sit with him at his table at lunch.” Um, I can’t even begin to unpack the notion that hanging out with a dude riding between your thighs is merely, “Introduction” in a country where I’m not really allowed to shake a dude’s hand. To say nothing of the fact that, at almost 30, I’m literally discussing school lunchroom table politics as highly relevant to my dating life. What?
Because I’m a lucky bitch beyond compare, I bumped into my Brazilian Angel right after said ride and I immediately told her what happened. I escorted her to lunch across from the compound while we talked.
She leveled her gaze at me and spoke. “Did you push your breasts against him?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. I was holding onto him and so yeah. No stomach or anything, because it wasn’t tight, just boobs. Wait, what?”
“Good. The women here have none so he’s going to be thinking about that.”
“I don’t know. He seemed very comfortable. Nothing really fazed him.”
“Excellent. That means he liked it.” Or it meant nothing to him. I’m just sayin’.
“What? I was dying.”
“Chris, you really must lighten up.”
As my Catholic friend is reprimanding me for being too hard on myself and not blasÈ enough with my sexual finesse, Alpha Hottie happens to ride by us on the street. He turns around to look at us as he drives by and I holler, “Hello” after him.
I look at my Brazilian Angel and point to him.
“Was that him?”
“Yeah.”
“Chris, he’s really handsome” was blurted out in surprise from the woman who, until that moment, thought there were no good looking Asian men.
“I know,” I say, truly comprehending I am most certainly flirting with a hottie way out of my league.
“Perfect. You’ve got a boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Well, actually, the only problem is if he doesn’t want you.”
“Duh. Hello. He’s way out of my league in the looks department and the virtues of my intellect aren’t exactly going to make it through the language barrier.”
“Chris, don’t be so hard on yourself. Look at yourself. You’re lovely. You have beautiful eyes.”
“But…”
“I won’t hear anymore of this shit. Enough.”
“But…”
“No, really. No more. I don’t where you get these ideas that you’re not pretty. You are. Enough. Do you really think these things about yourself? It’s shit.” And my Brazilian Angel continued to reprimand me for my lack of self-confidence for the better part of a half hour.
Later today, after classes, I returned to my apartment to drop off some books before I went out to buy some water. (I have a water heater but, frankly, if I had to wait for the school to replace the bottles of water I’d have died of dehydration long ago.) As I’m replaying Mr. Not-So-Much-A-Toad’s Wild Ride, I walk out of my apartment sans keys. 50 Yuan and some unexpected visitations later, a locksmith came and wrenched my door open.
Fucking boys.
SOCIALITE
My Chinese friends and I are growing even closer and it is lovely. My beloved colleague has clearly been talking me up to the department and everyone is now making a serious effort to get to know me. The hot “math” teacher must be the “main” teacher because he teaches English and is in my department. (Each class is divvied up into what their particular test strength is. So, class 1 of each grade tests well in English, class two is math and so on and so forth. Consequently, their homeroom teacher is from the department that they test best in.)
I’ve been hanging out in the middle school teacher’s room as much as possible and so they’ve been making an effort to talk to me. As it has been midterms week this past week (11/6-11/10) all the teachers in the department have been under enormous stress and have been leaning on each other for support. I’ve been around and doing my best to support them. After all, my job and salary don’t depend on the results of the students’ work while theirs do and the least I can do is show them that someone is pulling for them… even if the students are too overworked to give a damn. They have seen my support and have consequently tapped me for help with some of the exams, some planning and some emotional support.
It’s been nice to have the hot main teacher about too. We have a nice flirtation and there’s something about a man who makes his living speaking English who has yet to muster up the whatever to say a single word of English to me. The sum total of our entire relationship is comprised of our glances, gestures and my occasional, brief English monologue. Frankly, as I don’t know him personally, I am only able to observe the very general and the very specific about him. I must say, there’s something about him that is the essence of what I like about the masculine half of Chinese culture. Case in point: the English department had a meeting regarding the implementation of an oral exam. As the hot main teacher was talking (in Chinese) with great severity at length and depth about something about permission to create the exam (my Chinese is still rather weak so I only got the general idea), he was sitting at the desk of another (female) colleague; the desk next to my beloved colleague. On the desk was a yellow pen made up with the bobble head of a curly haired blonde girl and feet with a suction cup on the bottom. The whole time he was orating with gravitas, he was playing with the head of the pen and watching the curly blonde hair bounce. Not surprisingly, I was the only one who got the giggles.
As I stifled my laughter and the room erupted into conversation, he glanced at me. I looked at the doll and then at him and he smiled too, put the suction cup feet down and fluffed her hair. He shot me another look and made her head bounce again, making me laugh as the rest of the room continued with their fevered and serious conversation.
Then, the next time I saw him, I was sitting at the desk he had been sitting at. He took another seat to have a serious conversation with my beloved colleague. As they spoke, I saw the pen. I shot him a look out of the corner of my eye and, mid conversation, he shifted his gaze to me. I let him finish his end of the conversation and then offered him the bobble head pen. He smiled at my flirting and had to ask my beloved colleague to repeat himself.
Then on Thursday (11/9) I was alone in the office with an older female colleague with whom I’ve never really spoken, one-on-one. She opened up a conversation about the frustrations of having to work with and, ultimately, be dependent on students who are so overworked that they are rendered ambivalent about test taking. I did my best to offer her support. And then we talked about some ideas for new approaches.
My beloved colleague then showed up, spoke with her briefly in Chinese and somehow they brought up the strange idea that people who aren’t lovers or related hug in the West. It seemed a strange opener but I was more than willing to discuss the topic. I explained that in the US, I hug everyone I know socially and that it’s very strange for me to not be able to hug people here. My beloved colleague laughed and told me that I should never hug him because his wife would be utterly shocked and upset. He did the funniest pantomime of his wife’s shock at seeing me hug him. He opened his eyes wide, dropped his jaw and lurched forward, gasping and saying, “Oh no!” He had me on the floor, I was laughing so hard.
Once I collected myself, I also explained that when I’m living in Europe or with my European friends, I kiss them too. At this, he became a bit more serious and said that in China, “Kiss means love.” I thought it was a very sweet notion and so I didn’t bother to further explain.
We went to lunch and then I met up again with my beloved colleague, his darling daughter in tow, as I was heading back to my apartment (he and his daughter recently moved into a building near mine in the compound). He and his daughter escorted me back to my building and we talked some more about cultural differences. As we approached my building, he told me how much he admired me. He explained that he felt it was very brave of me to leave everything and everyone I knew to come to such a foreign place. I explained that China is not so foreign as it might seem and that the essence of youth is to do foolish, reckless things. Sometimes youth gets away with recklessness and sometimes does not but I feel that this time I had gotten away with it. He smiled at that and I suspect he dipped into the memory of a few of his own youthful follies.
I then told him how much I admired him for raising such a lovely girl. My own paternal drama makes me entirely over-sensitive to men who are good to young women so I felt it appropriate to tell him how I admire him for raising such a lovely daughter. He translated what I had said to his daughter and then he told her to thank me.
“Thank you,” she said in English just as I had taught her to do in class a few weeks back.
I smiled and said, “Don’t thank me. Thank your father.”
She demurred, smiled and shook her head.
We then parted ways as I went to have my siesta in the window seat in my bedroom. (Rough life, right? Well, someone’s gotta live it.)
The next day, I got to see my lunch mate. When I eat in the primary school, I usually eat with a lovely young woman of 22. She is another English teacher and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we usually have lunch together. However, she’s been getting to the cafeteria late and the students who are the children of the staff and administration (they are allowed to eat in our smaller cafeteria) have taken to sitting with me if I’m free. Fortunately on Friday, my table started to clear quickly as the kids wolfed down their food. So, by the time my lunch mate showed up, there was plenty of space for her to sit. We talked for a bit and she teased me about the fact that Alpha Hottie wasn’t at lunch. (Something that made me rather sad.)
As my singledom has been spread far and wide, everyone’s been on my case about finding a new boyfriend. What type of boy do I like? Who do I think is handsome as a beautiful woman like me needs a handsome man? (I’ve learned to stay far away from any generalized “looks” discussion as the Eastern and Western notions of “good looking” can be VERY different.) How many times a week do I see Western men? Are there potentials? Most of the people seem amazed that I might even consider a Chinese man and they all think that my parents would faint dead away if I brought home a Han. I’ve tried to explain that, ultimately, his race doesn’t matter to my mother, just so long as it’s a good match. No one seems to believe me. Then again, no one seems to believe me when I talk about the fact that Chinatown in New York is huge; I think that their perspective of China’s lack of power as a global player and presence is a bit skewed.
Nevertheless, my lunch mate is the only teacher who knows explicitly of my crush on Alpha Hottie and knows him as well. (My Chinese Angel has probably guessed but she doesn’t know him at all and had never seen him before I pointed him out.) She’s done a little reconnaissance for me (“I will help you!” “He’s shy”), declared herself a neutral party (“He’s not my cup of tea”) and has even offered to bridge the gap (“I will translate for you. I think his English is little. I will teach you some Chinese words so you can talk alone.”). I thanked her but told her I was very shy and certainly wouldn’t know how to approach him… which means a standstill.
In terms of dating, I unfortunately come from New York; the male to female numbers are ridiculously in favor of men (to say nothing of the percentage of the population the gay men take up) leaving the remaining single men a mixed bag of emotional landmines, narcissism and petty bullshit who have little talent for genuine company. (Not that I can throw stones but still, I’m the girl. I’m supposed to be the psychotic one.) Men in New York can discard women like tissues because there’s always eight more women lined up to take her place. I’m insecure to begin with and regularly going out on dates with men who can’t be bothered to pull their gaze from everyone else’s short skirt does nothing for the confidence. You can practically read the ticker on New York men’s foreheads “What else is out there?” And New York men never open the door for you. Wanting to be treated like a lady and while not being supermodel-hot in New York is a fantasy akin to wanting that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Not being one willing to work so hard for a situation that felt like settling, I gave up active dating by the time I was 25. A single conversation with a coworker who is a stunningly beautiful young woman from Philadelphia Mainline money and always has a boyfriend managed to kill what was left of my waning desire to date. I was complaining that the dating world felt like such a haze of smokey bars, massive tabs and the same tedious games via the same tedious conversation over the same deafening music when all I wanted was connection with a friend. She explained to me her mathematical approach to dating. She told me how many dates I needed to have in a week, how many different men I needed to be dating when I wasn’t interested in anyone versus how many men I needed to be dating when I was interested in someone (astronomically more, by the way), how many times he needed to call me before I called him and how, if either of us ever moves, I must simply cut all ties with him. I immediately gave up on dating as I realized I could either be single, miserable and in possession of some self-respect or single, miserable and in possession of no self-respect. All my relationships post that period were coincidental and primarily of his pursuit.
Forfeiting my dating life was a survival mechanism; I love New York more than anything but the only thing that rivals the brutality of the dating world in NYC is the real estate world of NYC. Consequently, it has left my talent for dating utterly atrophied and my nerves fried. To have to dive back into the nightmare of dating in front of my lunch mate while she translates for us is a notion beyond horrible. Granted, most of my dating hang-ups of, “What happens when he decides that I’m too.. whatever, tries to find the cowardly way to ditch me and then avoids me like the plague when I don’t get it” aren’t, per say, culturally relevant here but they cripple me nonetheless. Hell, rationally speaking, the numbers are all in my favor and his culture couldn’t be more accommodating or loving towards me but in my gut, I am assured that it’s going to be just like New York. Hence, “standstill” if the boy doesn’t know how to make a move.
Alas, Alpha Hottie did not show up in the lunchroom at all on Friday but that did leave my lunch mate and I free to talk about men. My Brazilian Angel had clued me in to the fact that Chinese women are always on the pull (for those of you not familiar with the British slang term “pull” it means to be on the active hunt for a wo/man; if you’re “pulling,” you’re doing the flirt dance that leads to hooking up) however, I was not viscerally abreast of this situation until I spoke with my lunch mate.
My lunch mate has a boyfriend she loves very much but her parents want her to find someone with a better job. Consequently, she’s looking for a more suitable boyfriend. She figures, if she finds a guy she likes more than her current boyfriend and he makes more money with a more stable job, she’ll try dating him for a while before jumping ship with the other guy. My lunch mate is sweet and kind and in the West, not the “type” of woman who would ever actively look to cheat on a boyfriend she loves. Considering the relative comfort with which she looks for a new boyfriend, I can only image what the less scrupulous women about are up to. Frankly, it seems remarkably old world to me. Granted, I’ve never understood the whole, “Either marry for love or marry for money” debate as “money” and “love” don’t seem mutually exclusive or inclusive to me and I don’t really see what one has to do with the other. Then again, maybe that’s why I’m single without a prospect in sight.
Nevertheless, being single and without prospect has not hurt my (platonic) social life. Today, (11/11) I spent in the company of my Chinese Angel. She is a lovely woman in her late thirties, perhaps early forties. We’re good friends and her English is so superb that I am often caught off guard when she speaks Chinese. I tend to forget that her native tongue is not English.
We spent the day wandering around my new favorite part of the old city; a rebuilt market area nestled in the Southeast corner inside the old city wall. The buildings, instead of the newfangled monstrosities of the center of the old city, are rebuilt to look like an old city. It’s beautiful and quiet as the streets are blockaded off and no one is allowed to drive down them. Granted, it’s a bit of the Disney version of China with its disingenuous recreation-for-money faÁade but is the Chinese-Disney version of Disney; cleansed of anything remotely unpleasant to Westerners and yet very subdued.
I took it upon myself to wrap my arm around her arm as Chinese female friends do when they walk about and so we spent most of the day arm in arm. I really like her and I want her to know that our friendship is truly precious to me. I figured the best way to do that was to treat her the way that the Chinese treat good friends. It was truly quite lovely and amongst the Chinese, it was presumed that we spoke Chinese first and English second. As we walked along the stalls lined up in the middle of the vehicle-free street, we perused the wares. Puppets carved out of thin sheets of velum hung in window store shops, cut paper silhouettes lined the stalls and every peddler there sold jade trinkets. I managed to find several birthday presents and a special something for my new niece Isabella. My Chinese Angel managed to negotiate the prices down enough that we all felt comfortable with the purchase.
While we were strolling about, we came upon one of thousands of peddlers peddling sweets on a stick. Essentially, several pieces of fruit (all approximately the size of globe grapes) are kebobed onto very sharp wooden skewers and then glazed with caramelized sugar. While it’s almost like caramelized apples, the sugar coating isn’t chewy but rather very brittle and it shatters very easily. My Chinese Angel pushed me to try one of the sticks with globe grapes (my favorite fruit ever) and I obliged. It was very strange to have warm globe grapes that were very sweet and yet still more bitter than the other item I was eating. Usually, I have the sweet of the grape to cut the savory flavor of the other item I’m eating, so it was a brief and pleasant trip to opposite world.
We then strolled up to the Muslim quarter to poke around. We had some dinner at one of the fantastic kebab places. Frankly, I could live on the kebab meat, it is so damned good.
Satiated from dinner and one of the best leisurely afternoons I’ve had here, my Chinese Angel insisted upon walking me back to my bus and on the way back to the bus, I discovered truly what a whore I am.
Starbucks is coming to Xi’An. I just about wet myself I was so excited. I jumped up and down, clapped and squealed a little “Yay!” My Chinese Angel, bless her, was elated for my pleasure and made a point to remember the name of “Starbucks.”
Truly, there is a god, her name is “Starbuck” and she likes me.
My Chinese friends and I are growing even closer and it is lovely. My beloved colleague has clearly been talking me up to the department and everyone is now making a serious effort to get to know me. The hot “math” teacher must be the “main” teacher because he teaches English and is in my department. (Each class is divvied up into what their particular test strength is. So, class 1 of each grade tests well in English, class two is math and so on and so forth. Consequently, their homeroom teacher is from the department that they test best in.)
I’ve been hanging out in the middle school teacher’s room as much as possible and so they’ve been making an effort to talk to me. As it has been midterms week this past week (11/6-11/10) all the teachers in the department have been under enormous stress and have been leaning on each other for support. I’ve been around and doing my best to support them. After all, my job and salary don’t depend on the results of the students’ work while theirs do and the least I can do is show them that someone is pulling for them… even if the students are too overworked to give a damn. They have seen my support and have consequently tapped me for help with some of the exams, some planning and some emotional support.
It’s been nice to have the hot main teacher about too. We have a nice flirtation and there’s something about a man who makes his living speaking English who has yet to muster up the whatever to say a single word of English to me. The sum total of our entire relationship is comprised of our glances, gestures and my occasional, brief English monologue. Frankly, as I don’t know him personally, I am only able to observe the very general and the very specific about him. I must say, there’s something about him that is the essence of what I like about the masculine half of Chinese culture. Case in point: the English department had a meeting regarding the implementation of an oral exam. As the hot main teacher was talking (in Chinese) with great severity at length and depth about something about permission to create the exam (my Chinese is still rather weak so I only got the general idea), he was sitting at the desk of another (female) colleague; the desk next to my beloved colleague. On the desk was a yellow pen made up with the bobble head of a curly haired blonde girl and feet with a suction cup on the bottom. The whole time he was orating with gravitas, he was playing with the head of the pen and watching the curly blonde hair bounce. Not surprisingly, I was the only one who got the giggles.
As I stifled my laughter and the room erupted into conversation, he glanced at me. I looked at the doll and then at him and he smiled too, put the suction cup feet down and fluffed her hair. He shot me another look and made her head bounce again, making me laugh as the rest of the room continued with their fevered and serious conversation.
Then, the next time I saw him, I was sitting at the desk he had been sitting at. He took another seat to have a serious conversation with my beloved colleague. As they spoke, I saw the pen. I shot him a look out of the corner of my eye and, mid conversation, he shifted his gaze to me. I let him finish his end of the conversation and then offered him the bobble head pen. He smiled at my flirting and had to ask my beloved colleague to repeat himself.
Then on Thursday (11/9) I was alone in the office with an older female colleague with whom I’ve never really spoken, one-on-one. She opened up a conversation about the frustrations of having to work with and, ultimately, be dependent on students who are so overworked that they are rendered ambivalent about test taking. I did my best to offer her support. And then we talked about some ideas for new approaches.
My beloved colleague then showed up, spoke with her briefly in Chinese and somehow they brought up the strange idea that people who aren’t lovers or related hug in the West. It seemed a strange opener but I was more than willing to discuss the topic. I explained that in the US, I hug everyone I know socially and that it’s very strange for me to not be able to hug people here. My beloved colleague laughed and told me that I should never hug him because his wife would be utterly shocked and upset. He did the funniest pantomime of his wife’s shock at seeing me hug him. He opened his eyes wide, dropped his jaw and lurched forward, gasping and saying, “Oh no!” He had me on the floor, I was laughing so hard.
Once I collected myself, I also explained that when I’m living in Europe or with my European friends, I kiss them too. At this, he became a bit more serious and said that in China, “Kiss means love.” I thought it was a very sweet notion and so I didn’t bother to further explain.
We went to lunch and then I met up again with my beloved colleague, his darling daughter in tow, as I was heading back to my apartment (he and his daughter recently moved into a building near mine in the compound). He and his daughter escorted me back to my building and we talked some more about cultural differences. As we approached my building, he told me how much he admired me. He explained that he felt it was very brave of me to leave everything and everyone I knew to come to such a foreign place. I explained that China is not so foreign as it might seem and that the essence of youth is to do foolish, reckless things. Sometimes youth gets away with recklessness and sometimes does not but I feel that this time I had gotten away with it. He smiled at that and I suspect he dipped into the memory of a few of his own youthful follies.
I then told him how much I admired him for raising such a lovely girl. My own paternal drama makes me entirely over-sensitive to men who are good to young women so I felt it appropriate to tell him how I admire him for raising such a lovely daughter. He translated what I had said to his daughter and then he told her to thank me.
“Thank you,” she said in English just as I had taught her to do in class a few weeks back.
I smiled and said, “Don’t thank me. Thank your father.”
She demurred, smiled and shook her head.
We then parted ways as I went to have my siesta in the window seat in my bedroom. (Rough life, right? Well, someone’s gotta live it.)
The next day, I got to see my lunch mate. When I eat in the primary school, I usually eat with a lovely young woman of 22. She is another English teacher and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we usually have lunch together. However, she’s been getting to the cafeteria late and the students who are the children of the staff and administration (they are allowed to eat in our smaller cafeteria) have taken to sitting with me if I’m free. Fortunately on Friday, my table started to clear quickly as the kids wolfed down their food. So, by the time my lunch mate showed up, there was plenty of space for her to sit. We talked for a bit and she teased me about the fact that Alpha Hottie wasn’t at lunch. (Something that made me rather sad.)
As my singledom has been spread far and wide, everyone’s been on my case about finding a new boyfriend. What type of boy do I like? Who do I think is handsome as a beautiful woman like me needs a handsome man? (I’ve learned to stay far away from any generalized “looks” discussion as the Eastern and Western notions of “good looking” can be VERY different.) How many times a week do I see Western men? Are there potentials? Most of the people seem amazed that I might even consider a Chinese man and they all think that my parents would faint dead away if I brought home a Han. I’ve tried to explain that, ultimately, his race doesn’t matter to my mother, just so long as it’s a good match. No one seems to believe me. Then again, no one seems to believe me when I talk about the fact that Chinatown in New York is huge; I think that their perspective of China’s lack of power as a global player and presence is a bit skewed.
Nevertheless, my lunch mate is the only teacher who knows explicitly of my crush on Alpha Hottie and knows him as well. (My Chinese Angel has probably guessed but she doesn’t know him at all and had never seen him before I pointed him out.) She’s done a little reconnaissance for me (“I will help you!” “He’s shy”), declared herself a neutral party (“He’s not my cup of tea”) and has even offered to bridge the gap (“I will translate for you. I think his English is little. I will teach you some Chinese words so you can talk alone.”). I thanked her but told her I was very shy and certainly wouldn’t know how to approach him… which means a standstill.
In terms of dating, I unfortunately come from New York; the male to female numbers are ridiculously in favor of men (to say nothing of the percentage of the population the gay men take up) leaving the remaining single men a mixed bag of emotional landmines, narcissism and petty bullshit who have little talent for genuine company. (Not that I can throw stones but still, I’m the girl. I’m supposed to be the psychotic one.) Men in New York can discard women like tissues because there’s always eight more women lined up to take her place. I’m insecure to begin with and regularly going out on dates with men who can’t be bothered to pull their gaze from everyone else’s short skirt does nothing for the confidence. You can practically read the ticker on New York men’s foreheads “What else is out there?” And New York men never open the door for you. Wanting to be treated like a lady and while not being supermodel-hot in New York is a fantasy akin to wanting that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Not being one willing to work so hard for a situation that felt like settling, I gave up active dating by the time I was 25. A single conversation with a coworker who is a stunningly beautiful young woman from Philadelphia Mainline money and always has a boyfriend managed to kill what was left of my waning desire to date. I was complaining that the dating world felt like such a haze of smokey bars, massive tabs and the same tedious games via the same tedious conversation over the same deafening music when all I wanted was connection with a friend. She explained to me her mathematical approach to dating. She told me how many dates I needed to have in a week, how many different men I needed to be dating when I wasn’t interested in anyone versus how many men I needed to be dating when I was interested in someone (astronomically more, by the way), how many times he needed to call me before I called him and how, if either of us ever moves, I must simply cut all ties with him. I immediately gave up on dating as I realized I could either be single, miserable and in possession of some self-respect or single, miserable and in possession of no self-respect. All my relationships post that period were coincidental and primarily of his pursuit.
Forfeiting my dating life was a survival mechanism; I love New York more than anything but the only thing that rivals the brutality of the dating world in NYC is the real estate world of NYC. Consequently, it has left my talent for dating utterly atrophied and my nerves fried. To have to dive back into the nightmare of dating in front of my lunch mate while she translates for us is a notion beyond horrible. Granted, most of my dating hang-ups of, “What happens when he decides that I’m too.. whatever, tries to find the cowardly way to ditch me and then avoids me like the plague when I don’t get it” aren’t, per say, culturally relevant here but they cripple me nonetheless. Hell, rationally speaking, the numbers are all in my favor and his culture couldn’t be more accommodating or loving towards me but in my gut, I am assured that it’s going to be just like New York. Hence, “standstill” if the boy doesn’t know how to make a move.
Alas, Alpha Hottie did not show up in the lunchroom at all on Friday but that did leave my lunch mate and I free to talk about men. My Brazilian Angel had clued me in to the fact that Chinese women are always on the pull (for those of you not familiar with the British slang term “pull” it means to be on the active hunt for a wo/man; if you’re “pulling,” you’re doing the flirt dance that leads to hooking up) however, I was not viscerally abreast of this situation until I spoke with my lunch mate.
My lunch mate has a boyfriend she loves very much but her parents want her to find someone with a better job. Consequently, she’s looking for a more suitable boyfriend. She figures, if she finds a guy she likes more than her current boyfriend and he makes more money with a more stable job, she’ll try dating him for a while before jumping ship with the other guy. My lunch mate is sweet and kind and in the West, not the “type” of woman who would ever actively look to cheat on a boyfriend she loves. Considering the relative comfort with which she looks for a new boyfriend, I can only image what the less scrupulous women about are up to. Frankly, it seems remarkably old world to me. Granted, I’ve never understood the whole, “Either marry for love or marry for money” debate as “money” and “love” don’t seem mutually exclusive or inclusive to me and I don’t really see what one has to do with the other. Then again, maybe that’s why I’m single without a prospect in sight.
Nevertheless, being single and without prospect has not hurt my (platonic) social life. Today, (11/11) I spent in the company of my Chinese Angel. She is a lovely woman in her late thirties, perhaps early forties. We’re good friends and her English is so superb that I am often caught off guard when she speaks Chinese. I tend to forget that her native tongue is not English.
We spent the day wandering around my new favorite part of the old city; a rebuilt market area nestled in the Southeast corner inside the old city wall. The buildings, instead of the newfangled monstrosities of the center of the old city, are rebuilt to look like an old city. It’s beautiful and quiet as the streets are blockaded off and no one is allowed to drive down them. Granted, it’s a bit of the Disney version of China with its disingenuous recreation-for-money faÁade but is the Chinese-Disney version of Disney; cleansed of anything remotely unpleasant to Westerners and yet very subdued.
I took it upon myself to wrap my arm around her arm as Chinese female friends do when they walk about and so we spent most of the day arm in arm. I really like her and I want her to know that our friendship is truly precious to me. I figured the best way to do that was to treat her the way that the Chinese treat good friends. It was truly quite lovely and amongst the Chinese, it was presumed that we spoke Chinese first and English second. As we walked along the stalls lined up in the middle of the vehicle-free street, we perused the wares. Puppets carved out of thin sheets of velum hung in window store shops, cut paper silhouettes lined the stalls and every peddler there sold jade trinkets. I managed to find several birthday presents and a special something for my new niece Isabella. My Chinese Angel managed to negotiate the prices down enough that we all felt comfortable with the purchase.
While we were strolling about, we came upon one of thousands of peddlers peddling sweets on a stick. Essentially, several pieces of fruit (all approximately the size of globe grapes) are kebobed onto very sharp wooden skewers and then glazed with caramelized sugar. While it’s almost like caramelized apples, the sugar coating isn’t chewy but rather very brittle and it shatters very easily. My Chinese Angel pushed me to try one of the sticks with globe grapes (my favorite fruit ever) and I obliged. It was very strange to have warm globe grapes that were very sweet and yet still more bitter than the other item I was eating. Usually, I have the sweet of the grape to cut the savory flavor of the other item I’m eating, so it was a brief and pleasant trip to opposite world.
We then strolled up to the Muslim quarter to poke around. We had some dinner at one of the fantastic kebab places. Frankly, I could live on the kebab meat, it is so damned good.
Satiated from dinner and one of the best leisurely afternoons I’ve had here, my Chinese Angel insisted upon walking me back to my bus and on the way back to the bus, I discovered truly what a whore I am.
Starbucks is coming to Xi’An. I just about wet myself I was so excited. I jumped up and down, clapped and squealed a little “Yay!” My Chinese Angel, bless her, was elated for my pleasure and made a point to remember the name of “Starbucks.”
Truly, there is a god, her name is “Starbuck” and she likes me.
CRACKIN’ THE WHIP
In my class, there are precisely two things I do not tolerate; the first is violence and the second is undermining my authority. I love to provide the kids with fun and games and make the class a safe environment but like I said before, sometimes “gentle hopefulness” in a classroom does need teeth behind it. Frankly, I simply cannot condone violence between students. I know that kids are more physical than adults but I simply cannot allow one student to hit another in my presence. It’s a moral call on my part but it’s my classroom and it bothers me to the point of distraction to see a child get hit by another child. As for the respect thing, I do not tolerate any disrespect towards me as that sets a destructive precedent in which students learn they may be disrespectful towards foreigners with no consequences. That is a strange thing for me to enforce because I’m accustom to dealing with equal adults and if peers feel the need to disrespect me, I just laugh at them. Disrespect amongst adults only carries weight if you let it matter to you. Disrespect amongst children, while rather similar in that if it flusters you they keep doing it, when left unchecked sets patterns of behavior. Consequently, I punish them quickly and am done with it.
My punishment comes in several stages. The first stage is that they are told to stop and the item fought over is removed, the fighting kids are separated or the disrespectful kid is singled out. If that doesn’t work then I have them stand at attention by the door. If that doesn’t work, I send them to the dreaded “outside” where they must stand in hallway (and pray that a Chinese teacher does not come along) for five minutes. If that doesn’t work or they clearly are doing things to flaunt their disrespect of me, I banish them to hallway for an unknown and lengthy period of time. The key to maintaining a productive and loving relationship with my students seems to be that once the punishment is over it’s done. If the student has been punished and chooses to join the class after his or her punishment, they are welcomed back in like nothing happened.
It has taken me over three months of keeping my cool, being really sweet and projecting over the din but I’m finally beginning to have some control with a few of my classes while maintaining their profound affection for me. I am actually able to teach a lesson that they remember and use with me outside of class as well as in the next class with classes I couldn’t even get to sit down before. It’s no giant leap for mankind but it’s everything to me.
Nevertheless, the worst class for me to wrangle in the primary school is my little monkeys’ class. I love them dearly but they are crazy. It’s been a lot of work but I’m finally getting several of them to sit down and pay attention. However, some of the boys are really nuts. Yesterday (11/6) one of the boys really pushed me. He was beating up on a smaller boy and I have no tolerance for that. However, being the Jude’s daughter, I know that generally if one kid is getting hit by another kid (that isn’t a bully) chances are there is a good reason the fists are flying. (When we would run to her crying, “Mom! [Insert Sibling’s Name] Hit Me!” she would respond with, “What did you do to deserve it?” She was right in that it’s near impossible to sort out all the crap and it’s certainly not cost effective to get involved in the minutia when all you want is the violence to stop.) So, I make the two students stand up in front of the class together.
As they stand there, considering the dynamic revealed, it’s pretty clear who’s prepared to let it go and who’s holding the grudge. And it became clear with the two boys fighting yesterday who was prepared to let it go and who wasn’t. I sent the boy who calmed down back to his seat and the larger boy stood at the front of the class a little longer. Then I sent him back to his seat.
I watched him walk back to his seat and then proceed to pound on the little one again. Consequently, I had to peel him off the little boy and throw him out. My “Mean Teacher Chinese” is quite fluent. I am amazed at the kind of things I can express when my blood is up and wish I had that capacity in my everyday life.
I yell (all in Chinese), “Get out” as the boy sheepishly walks out the door and then I point to the wall across from where I teach (so I can keep an eye on him) “Stand there.” The boy takes his place in the hall and turns to face me. “You just earned yourself five minutes.” The boy hung his head, admitting defeat. I took a deep breath and let it go because once it’s done, it’s done and there’s no point in holding a grudge.
I shot the boy one final stern look on the off chance he was being deceptively naughty and had looked up defiantly. He had not so I dropped the stern look and then looked up. Who is standing there but Alpha Hottie. Considering the speed with which Alpha Hottie lowered his gaze in the same manor the little boy had just done and then hustled by, it was safe to say that he had witnessed the whole thing.
To be frank, I’m glad that some teacher witnessed me being the bearer of bad news and not just basking in being the adored foreign teacher here only for a good time. I try not to shuck the less pleasant pieces of my job off on to other people; it’s just not fair to be the party person all the time while other people have to do your dirty work. However, I did lack certain abilities in Chinese and therefore needed the Chinese teachers to help me on certain less pleasant aspects of my job. Fun is easy. Discipline requires a bit more verbal power than I have had until quite recently. Methods of discipline have been the topic of conversation with me of late and I get the sense that my predecessors have set a rather low bar in terms of classroom control and rather high in terms of disapproval and judgment of corporal punishment. (Like I said, I don’t think that corporal punishment is bad, per say, I just am not comfortable with doing it myself if for no other reason than I am not calibrated for it nor would it have been effective for me as a student.) In other words, I think that my predecessors were really fond of lecturing the teachers on the ills of corporal punishment and seeing themselves as the great white hope to offer the students “a moment of release from their very hard lives” (be clear, no child wealthy enough to attend my exclusive, wait-listed, expensive private school leads a wholly neglected lifestyle; sure they have the standard traumas and horrors of childhood but they also have access to a far more resources than most children in China) and yet my predecessors were utterly dependent on said corporal punishment doled out by others as the device to keep their students in line. Putting my students in the hallway to be found by corporal punishment wielding teachers is my absolute final line of defense, not my first. I’ll sort out my own issues, thank you. Frankly, the greatest gift feminism ever gave me is the ability to fight my own battles and so my absolute last resort is letting someone else fight for me.
However, my vanity was a bit wounded in that it was Alpha Hottie to catch me disciplining my students. “Mean teacher” is not really what I think of as one of my “finer” moments. It needs to be done and it’s nothing I plan on apologizing for but it’s certainly nothing you want the hot guy to catch you doing… especially now that I seem to have fallen off Alpha Hottie’s radar completely. Since Picture Day, also the day in which the true dynamic of me as “powerful figure” was revealed, Alpha Hottie has stopped watching me. On picture day, the men who run the school that none of the teachers would approach casually all went through the chain of propriety and asked to have individual pictures taken with me. My casual nature aside, my true position within the ranks of teachers was fully articulated.
I figured, as I’ve lost his attention and now he’s seen me be mean to a little kid, I should definitely abandon all hope.
However, as I was strolling back to my office right after “Mean Teacher” class, we passed each other in the hallway and he was looking at me from behind the mask. I looked at him and nodded politely, not saying “Ni hao.” I always initiate the hellos but of late he’s only been nodding instead of returning my hello. As I look back up at him after nodding, he was still staring at me from behind the mask.
Feeling like the world was seeing me as a mean old hag who picks on little children for kicks, I looked at his mask like a Westerner would and figured he simply did not want to deal with me. So, I looked away, defeated and continued to walk towards him. I did everything I could not to cringe as he approached me to go the other way.
As our shoulders passed by each other, he said “hello,” quietly.
It was the first word of English he has ever spoken to me. I could have done cartwheels down the hallway. Who knew being a bitch could yield such wonderful results?
In my class, there are precisely two things I do not tolerate; the first is violence and the second is undermining my authority. I love to provide the kids with fun and games and make the class a safe environment but like I said before, sometimes “gentle hopefulness” in a classroom does need teeth behind it. Frankly, I simply cannot condone violence between students. I know that kids are more physical than adults but I simply cannot allow one student to hit another in my presence. It’s a moral call on my part but it’s my classroom and it bothers me to the point of distraction to see a child get hit by another child. As for the respect thing, I do not tolerate any disrespect towards me as that sets a destructive precedent in which students learn they may be disrespectful towards foreigners with no consequences. That is a strange thing for me to enforce because I’m accustom to dealing with equal adults and if peers feel the need to disrespect me, I just laugh at them. Disrespect amongst adults only carries weight if you let it matter to you. Disrespect amongst children, while rather similar in that if it flusters you they keep doing it, when left unchecked sets patterns of behavior. Consequently, I punish them quickly and am done with it.
My punishment comes in several stages. The first stage is that they are told to stop and the item fought over is removed, the fighting kids are separated or the disrespectful kid is singled out. If that doesn’t work then I have them stand at attention by the door. If that doesn’t work, I send them to the dreaded “outside” where they must stand in hallway (and pray that a Chinese teacher does not come along) for five minutes. If that doesn’t work or they clearly are doing things to flaunt their disrespect of me, I banish them to hallway for an unknown and lengthy period of time. The key to maintaining a productive and loving relationship with my students seems to be that once the punishment is over it’s done. If the student has been punished and chooses to join the class after his or her punishment, they are welcomed back in like nothing happened.
It has taken me over three months of keeping my cool, being really sweet and projecting over the din but I’m finally beginning to have some control with a few of my classes while maintaining their profound affection for me. I am actually able to teach a lesson that they remember and use with me outside of class as well as in the next class with classes I couldn’t even get to sit down before. It’s no giant leap for mankind but it’s everything to me.
Nevertheless, the worst class for me to wrangle in the primary school is my little monkeys’ class. I love them dearly but they are crazy. It’s been a lot of work but I’m finally getting several of them to sit down and pay attention. However, some of the boys are really nuts. Yesterday (11/6) one of the boys really pushed me. He was beating up on a smaller boy and I have no tolerance for that. However, being the Jude’s daughter, I know that generally if one kid is getting hit by another kid (that isn’t a bully) chances are there is a good reason the fists are flying. (When we would run to her crying, “Mom! [Insert Sibling’s Name] Hit Me!” she would respond with, “What did you do to deserve it?” She was right in that it’s near impossible to sort out all the crap and it’s certainly not cost effective to get involved in the minutia when all you want is the violence to stop.) So, I make the two students stand up in front of the class together.
As they stand there, considering the dynamic revealed, it’s pretty clear who’s prepared to let it go and who’s holding the grudge. And it became clear with the two boys fighting yesterday who was prepared to let it go and who wasn’t. I sent the boy who calmed down back to his seat and the larger boy stood at the front of the class a little longer. Then I sent him back to his seat.
I watched him walk back to his seat and then proceed to pound on the little one again. Consequently, I had to peel him off the little boy and throw him out. My “Mean Teacher Chinese” is quite fluent. I am amazed at the kind of things I can express when my blood is up and wish I had that capacity in my everyday life.
I yell (all in Chinese), “Get out” as the boy sheepishly walks out the door and then I point to the wall across from where I teach (so I can keep an eye on him) “Stand there.” The boy takes his place in the hall and turns to face me. “You just earned yourself five minutes.” The boy hung his head, admitting defeat. I took a deep breath and let it go because once it’s done, it’s done and there’s no point in holding a grudge.
I shot the boy one final stern look on the off chance he was being deceptively naughty and had looked up defiantly. He had not so I dropped the stern look and then looked up. Who is standing there but Alpha Hottie. Considering the speed with which Alpha Hottie lowered his gaze in the same manor the little boy had just done and then hustled by, it was safe to say that he had witnessed the whole thing.
To be frank, I’m glad that some teacher witnessed me being the bearer of bad news and not just basking in being the adored foreign teacher here only for a good time. I try not to shuck the less pleasant pieces of my job off on to other people; it’s just not fair to be the party person all the time while other people have to do your dirty work. However, I did lack certain abilities in Chinese and therefore needed the Chinese teachers to help me on certain less pleasant aspects of my job. Fun is easy. Discipline requires a bit more verbal power than I have had until quite recently. Methods of discipline have been the topic of conversation with me of late and I get the sense that my predecessors have set a rather low bar in terms of classroom control and rather high in terms of disapproval and judgment of corporal punishment. (Like I said, I don’t think that corporal punishment is bad, per say, I just am not comfortable with doing it myself if for no other reason than I am not calibrated for it nor would it have been effective for me as a student.) In other words, I think that my predecessors were really fond of lecturing the teachers on the ills of corporal punishment and seeing themselves as the great white hope to offer the students “a moment of release from their very hard lives” (be clear, no child wealthy enough to attend my exclusive, wait-listed, expensive private school leads a wholly neglected lifestyle; sure they have the standard traumas and horrors of childhood but they also have access to a far more resources than most children in China) and yet my predecessors were utterly dependent on said corporal punishment doled out by others as the device to keep their students in line. Putting my students in the hallway to be found by corporal punishment wielding teachers is my absolute final line of defense, not my first. I’ll sort out my own issues, thank you. Frankly, the greatest gift feminism ever gave me is the ability to fight my own battles and so my absolute last resort is letting someone else fight for me.
However, my vanity was a bit wounded in that it was Alpha Hottie to catch me disciplining my students. “Mean teacher” is not really what I think of as one of my “finer” moments. It needs to be done and it’s nothing I plan on apologizing for but it’s certainly nothing you want the hot guy to catch you doing… especially now that I seem to have fallen off Alpha Hottie’s radar completely. Since Picture Day, also the day in which the true dynamic of me as “powerful figure” was revealed, Alpha Hottie has stopped watching me. On picture day, the men who run the school that none of the teachers would approach casually all went through the chain of propriety and asked to have individual pictures taken with me. My casual nature aside, my true position within the ranks of teachers was fully articulated.
I figured, as I’ve lost his attention and now he’s seen me be mean to a little kid, I should definitely abandon all hope.
However, as I was strolling back to my office right after “Mean Teacher” class, we passed each other in the hallway and he was looking at me from behind the mask. I looked at him and nodded politely, not saying “Ni hao.” I always initiate the hellos but of late he’s only been nodding instead of returning my hello. As I look back up at him after nodding, he was still staring at me from behind the mask.
Feeling like the world was seeing me as a mean old hag who picks on little children for kicks, I looked at his mask like a Westerner would and figured he simply did not want to deal with me. So, I looked away, defeated and continued to walk towards him. I did everything I could not to cringe as he approached me to go the other way.
As our shoulders passed by each other, he said “hello,” quietly.
It was the first word of English he has ever spoken to me. I could have done cartwheels down the hallway. Who knew being a bitch could yield such wonderful results?
IN WHICH I RETURN TO HAVING ROOTS
I’ve decided to become a blonde again. In the States, blonde hair on me feels indicative of all things teenybopper and obnoxious. Ironically, three of the people I most respect in my private life are blondes but there’s just something about blonde hair on me that feels bimbo-esque. I try not to let other people dictate my opinions about my personal appearance but frankly, watching all the vapid pop stars vie for who’s going to be the blondest bimbo with the most orange skin, loudest sniffle and basketball-like breasts really turned me off to being yet one more blonde drone slathered in fake tanner, enjoying her thinly veiled drug problems and playing with her painfully large breast implants. Consequently, I went red and continued to avoid self-tanner, drugs and surgical enhancement. Besides, I cannot deny that there was something remarkably appealing about actually being the “loathed, bastard redheaded stepchild.” (I was six months old at my parents’ wedding.) Not that my stepbitch actually knew I was red but I liked the concept nonetheless.
However, “Auburn” is the “Blonde” of Xi’An. All the girls here who want to be cute, vapid, fashion forward and pop culture savvy are all auburn. No one at all is blonde. Here, “blonde” does not imply the things it implies in the States. Here, “blonde” implies Westerner. Frankly, I am a Westerner, there’s no way to hide that and I don’t really think I would if I could as the Chinese are too cool for me to want to be anything but what I am around them. I’m no longer afraid of being a blonde now that I am free of the restrictions it implies within my culture. In fact, in this culture, blonde is the antithesis of what I loathe about blonde in the States. Blondes in Xi’An are, by virtue of geographic selection, powerful (Western) women who know their own mind.
I’ve decided to become a blonde again. In the States, blonde hair on me feels indicative of all things teenybopper and obnoxious. Ironically, three of the people I most respect in my private life are blondes but there’s just something about blonde hair on me that feels bimbo-esque. I try not to let other people dictate my opinions about my personal appearance but frankly, watching all the vapid pop stars vie for who’s going to be the blondest bimbo with the most orange skin, loudest sniffle and basketball-like breasts really turned me off to being yet one more blonde drone slathered in fake tanner, enjoying her thinly veiled drug problems and playing with her painfully large breast implants. Consequently, I went red and continued to avoid self-tanner, drugs and surgical enhancement. Besides, I cannot deny that there was something remarkably appealing about actually being the “loathed, bastard redheaded stepchild.” (I was six months old at my parents’ wedding.) Not that my stepbitch actually knew I was red but I liked the concept nonetheless.
However, “Auburn” is the “Blonde” of Xi’An. All the girls here who want to be cute, vapid, fashion forward and pop culture savvy are all auburn. No one at all is blonde. Here, “blonde” does not imply the things it implies in the States. Here, “blonde” implies Westerner. Frankly, I am a Westerner, there’s no way to hide that and I don’t really think I would if I could as the Chinese are too cool for me to want to be anything but what I am around them. I’m no longer afraid of being a blonde now that I am free of the restrictions it implies within my culture. In fact, in this culture, blonde is the antithesis of what I loathe about blonde in the States. Blondes in Xi’An are, by virtue of geographic selection, powerful (Western) women who know their own mind.
MARATHON MAN
Le Francais is not only married to my Brazilian Angel but he’s also a marathon runner. He’s one of those dudes who flies around the world for the weekend to run in a marathon. In other words, he’s just crazy enough to have my serious respect. Yesterday (11/4) was the Xi’An International Marathon. As Xi’An’s center is the ancient, walled city, the marathon ran around the wall. Frankly, it’s a pretty cool idea… if you’re into that sort of thing.
My Brazilian Angel and I talked it over and her original plan was to go to the city with le Francais, see him off to the marathon and then go clothes shopping (we’ve found some stores that may carry clothing large enough for me and so we were planning to return to see if the shop owner located clothes large enough for me). She’s seen him run in marathons all over the world, so she was less than excited at the thought of hanging around for him to finish another one.
We got to the South Gate (entrance for the marathon) and it was quite a spectacle. The fevered pounding of the traditional drums inside echoed its way out of the thick walls. The main entrance at the South Gate of the wall was decked out with banners, potted plants (they don’t really have landscaping here, just potted plants moved about appropriately) and dudes dressed up as terra cotta warrior era guards, complete with real spears.
As we arrived, we were all about to enter the wall to see le Francais off when it was discovered that his entrance only allowed one guest. Another guest would have to pay the standard 40 RMB fee to enter the wall. Granted, 40 RMB is only 5 bucks but in Xi’An, it’s like paying 40 bucks to stand on a wall for people who aren’t tourists; not very appealing in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that the sum total of our visit was to be, “Okay, good luck! Bye!”
My Brazilian Angel and I were polite as we sorted it out in Mandarin with the one of the ticket guys and he was very nice about it all (read: he spoke very slowly in Mandarin and did not get short with us for not understanding everything immediately). We decided I would just hang out in the front and wait for her to return.
While I waited, I watched bus loads of American tourists arrive loudly and become belligerent when the ticket-taking guys lacked fluent English. I wish I could say that I swell with national pride when I’m abroad (as most Americans I know do) but I don’t. You only see the entitled assholes who live for making scenes (and they are far and away Americans; second runners up are the Germans who look and speak English like Americans thus enhancing our already well deserved title of “Biggest Asses on the Planet”) while the fellow quiet Americans (by virtue of design) escape your notice. Americans who like to mortify me aside, I was pretty proud of the way the Chinese handled themselves as they managed to stand their ground without losing their temper; abroad in other countries, I’ve only ever seen one of the two.
After a solid half hour of cringe worthy American antics and watching them repeatedly get chased off the (clearly) restricted lawn areas, my Brazilian Angel showed up again. I was very ready to be anywhere but right there. She asked if I would mind joining her up on the wall as le Francaise really wanted her to be there for the run. She insisted upon paying for my ticket and so I went and bought one.
As I had a 100 RMB note with which to pay for the ticket, when I bought the ticket, the ticket agent asked if I had “small change.”
I answered her in Chinese, “I don’t know.” She smiled broadly and became very accommodating upon hearing my (pathetic) Chinese. I returned her smile and then I rifled through my wallet to find smaller change. “Nope, I don’t have any,” I finally answered again in Chinese.
She smiled at me, shook her head and said that it was not a problem. As I stepped away to count my change and allow the Americans behind me to purchase their tickets, her dour expression returned. And for good reason. The Americans behind me were not of the “non-belligerent” genre, much less the “quiet” genre.
I returned to the gate, ticket in hand and locked eyes with the ticket-collecting dude we had been talking with earlier. There were about six men collecting tickets at the front gate and by this point, loud Americans had started lining up and flooding the front entrance. I glanced at the crush of people and thought, “This is going to take forever.” Then the ticket-taking dude cocked his head ever so slightly in a gesture of, “Yes?” I waved my ticket, smiled my sweetest smile in the hopes that he’d help me out and mouthed, “Here it is” in Chinese.
The dour face that he had on for the loud Americans melted and he smiled at me. He waved me forward and took me in before the large masses of loud foreigners. He took my ticket, I smiled and said “Thank you” in Chinese and he winked at me.
I truly have no idea what it is between the Chinese men and me but there must be something. No matter who I walk with, stunning foreigner or stunning Chinese, I am the one who gets stared at. Everyone who speaks with me calls me “beautiful” but the other Westerners are always told they are “pretty.” It strange because in the West, I am comfortably “pretty”; the kind of plain pretty that becomes “beautiful” if you love her. Not so much here. Regardless, this phenomenon was made most clear to me on the wall with the warriors.
I must say, the army guys dressed up to look like they were part of the terra cotta warrior army were intimidating. They were not only real army guys but they were also holding real, notably ferocious-looking, serrated spears. They were to take turns standing at attention and doing photo ops. While the photo op shift was supposed to be approachable, the guys at attention were not allowed to budge, in sort of the same way the guards at Buckingham Palace are. However, when I passed with my Brazilian Angel, each one turned his head a little and looked at me. My Brazilian Angel teased me about how I was going to get them dishonorably discharged.
However, a most unsettling piece came a moment later. First, I should preface this by saying every morning, I watch everyone here practicing martial arts of some sort. I watch them methodically perfect the art of bringing down the foreign threat. It is beautiful to watch such mastery but it is also vaguely unsettling as there is nothing more foreign to them than the things I represent. (Granted, at home they have identified me beyond the dismissive, generic and [what they consider to be] racist “Foreigner” and now know me as the specific “American” but in the current climate, that still grants me little comfort.) And I just see the laymen practicing, not the trained warriors. Hell, the precision on Alpha Hottie’s control rivals most soldiers I’ve known (and I’ve known a few) and he’s a gym teacher. I am clear on the fact that the Chinese kindness and generosity isn’t one of a subservient people trying to place themselves on your good side but of a strong and virile people polite enough to make friends. Consequently, when I came around the blind corner of the first tower of the wall and I was greeted with the business end of eight notably nasty looking spears held by eight terra cotta warriors truly come to life, I nearly fainted.
The guards were changing shifts and they march in and out of the areas in formation with their spears level with the right side of their waist, business end pointed straight in front of them. I managed to come around the corner and land in the middle of the two marching rows of four. I gasped and my knees went weak.
There I stood, trembling and feeling more vulnerable than I ever have as the spears glinted in the sun and the tassels dangled rhythmically with the silent, terrifyingly disciplined march filing past me. I have had the business end of a gun pointed at me and I have (now) had the business end of a spear pointed at me. There is just something more visceral about a spear than a gun. With the gun, all you can sense is that if it goes off, you will cease to exist in some ugly way but there is no sensual point of reference (at least for me as I’ve never been shot). With the spear, there are far more organic images of being gutted that flood your mind. I’ve been cut with a knife and so I can extrapolate out. My midsection has never felt so soft and vulnerable.
As I gasped for air and trembled, trying to stay upright, I found myself in a flood of the kind of marching warriors only found in story tales. There I stood, entering an ancient and fortified city, the sounds of anything not medieval muted out by the labyrinth of towering walls drowning me. All I could hear was the faint, rhythmic rustling of their sleeves rubbing against their leather chest plates. The place I stood was the same place my ancestors stood as they entered Xi’An for silk so many centuries ago. The warriors around me are the same warriors my ancestors dealt with. This isn’t some plasticized, Disney recreation. This is the real thing in the real place complete with the real weapons on real soldiers. And I was real unprepared for that.
The helmets of the warriors all turned to look at me revealing real the faces of flesh and blood men and, as all men in armed forces are prone to do, they smiled at the damsel rendered light-headed by their presence. Upon seeing the truly happy smile of the warriors, my knees came back under my control. If Chinese men like you enough to smile their genuine smile at you, there is nothing they won’t do to help you.
Embarrassed by my panic, I started to giggle to release my nerves while the last of the warriors passed me by. At the sound of my laugh, most of the warriors turned around to look at me and a few even winked.
My Brazilian Angel, who had been far enough to the side to not get swept up into the middle of the march, shot me a look and said, “Chris, they really like you here.”
I was unable to respond as the adrenaline was still wreaking havoc on my nerves. My Brazilian Angel checked to make sure I was okay, I nodded and we headed off towards the top of the wall.
The wall was a sea of “international.” It was a veritable United Nations of hundreds of people to cheer and people to race. Asians and Westerners mingled while Middle Easterners and Africans strolled about. Young Muslim women chatted with young Jewish men. Towering Australians worked with diminutive Asian interpreters to get the appropriate stickers for their number card. White students talked with African students in their only common language; Mandarin. English women of a certain age made friends with American college boys. Everywhere there were people photographing and Asian biker dudes on Harleys and BMW motorcycles. Personally, I was flooded with young Chinese girls who wanted to take their picture with me. Even the women paid to promote Coke asked to have their picture taken with me.
Le Francais, not being one for lots of people found a quiet corner where we could all be together and prepare him for the (half) Marathon. As we prepared him for the marathon, we were flooded with professional photographers taking pictures of us preparing him as well as pictures of the professional photographers taking pictures of us preparing him. It got quite surreal with the various layers of photographers photographing photographers photographing photographers photographing us.
Soon, our entourage of paparazzi attracted more young Asian girls, politely requesting a photo with me. I complied with all of them and as they got their photos with me, my newfound paparazzi swarmed photographing me being photographed with the young girls and women. Eventually, everyone had enough photos of le Francais preparing and of/with me and they dissipated.
We met back up with the paparazzi later when they were photographing one of the coaches from the States wearing a red Addidas sweatshirt that said “China” across the back and who was photographing his runners. Frankly, I can’t get over the idea of people photographing people photographing. It’s too meta to not make my head spin.
Paparazzi aside, it got close to race time and le Francais was not fully registered yet. Consequently, we had to rush around in a blur of French and Mandarin to get him all the proper stickers and ribbons to run. At last, we had it all sorted and we saw le Francais off.
Once le Francais was off, my Brazilian Angel and I returned to English (anytime le Francais is around or my Brazilian Angel is tired, we simply speak in French; English is as equally present in my Western life here as French; in fact, I’m considering joining the Alliance Francaise de Xi’An) and we strolled the length of the south side of the wall. It was super cool to get the aerial view of the South of Xi’An and to see all the Chinese people who paid the 40 RBM just to cheer on the runners. (“GO!” or “COME ON!” sounds like “ts-I-YO”) As the runners came down the final stretch, they’d cheer the runners on and tell them how close the runners were to the end. It rocked.
While we walked around the wall, checking out the cheering squad apparently the biker dudes were checking out me. I didn’t really notice, as I am so accustomed to biker dudes checking me out that it no longer pings on my radar. They are the one demographic I can rely on to have no problem eyeballing me without creeping me out. It may strike many as counterintuitive but I have never felt so safe or protected as when a biker dude is trying to hook up with me; I know he’ll protect me from everything and I know he’ll respect me if I tell him to fuck off. I have never had the sort of trouble a girl has with frat boys with biker dudes. However, my Brazilian Angel seemed quite surprised by this and felt the need to point it out. Constantly. As my Brazilian Angel is a petite, beautiful woman, I think she’s never been confronted with the fact that big, burly men tend to like big women who can push them around. I look like the kind of woman who can slap a man around and won’t take any shit. Biker dudes love that. Yes, even the Chinese biker dudes. Not surprisingly, sex is more universal than racism.
Biker dudes and paparazzi notwithstanding, the stroll on the wall was quite peaceful and beautiful. We made it back to the Start/Finish line in time to find a good spot to take pictures of le Francais’s triumphant return and what a return it was! He came in 5th. It was fantastic!
He was glowing and again there were more paparazzi flooding us, snapping away. Though he wrecked his back and legs, he did brilliantly and was very proud of himself. We hobbled our way back to the car uneventfully and drove home just in time for the afternoon siesta.
Le Francais is not only married to my Brazilian Angel but he’s also a marathon runner. He’s one of those dudes who flies around the world for the weekend to run in a marathon. In other words, he’s just crazy enough to have my serious respect. Yesterday (11/4) was the Xi’An International Marathon. As Xi’An’s center is the ancient, walled city, the marathon ran around the wall. Frankly, it’s a pretty cool idea… if you’re into that sort of thing.
My Brazilian Angel and I talked it over and her original plan was to go to the city with le Francais, see him off to the marathon and then go clothes shopping (we’ve found some stores that may carry clothing large enough for me and so we were planning to return to see if the shop owner located clothes large enough for me). She’s seen him run in marathons all over the world, so she was less than excited at the thought of hanging around for him to finish another one.
We got to the South Gate (entrance for the marathon) and it was quite a spectacle. The fevered pounding of the traditional drums inside echoed its way out of the thick walls. The main entrance at the South Gate of the wall was decked out with banners, potted plants (they don’t really have landscaping here, just potted plants moved about appropriately) and dudes dressed up as terra cotta warrior era guards, complete with real spears.
As we arrived, we were all about to enter the wall to see le Francais off when it was discovered that his entrance only allowed one guest. Another guest would have to pay the standard 40 RMB fee to enter the wall. Granted, 40 RMB is only 5 bucks but in Xi’An, it’s like paying 40 bucks to stand on a wall for people who aren’t tourists; not very appealing in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that the sum total of our visit was to be, “Okay, good luck! Bye!”
My Brazilian Angel and I were polite as we sorted it out in Mandarin with the one of the ticket guys and he was very nice about it all (read: he spoke very slowly in Mandarin and did not get short with us for not understanding everything immediately). We decided I would just hang out in the front and wait for her to return.
While I waited, I watched bus loads of American tourists arrive loudly and become belligerent when the ticket-taking guys lacked fluent English. I wish I could say that I swell with national pride when I’m abroad (as most Americans I know do) but I don’t. You only see the entitled assholes who live for making scenes (and they are far and away Americans; second runners up are the Germans who look and speak English like Americans thus enhancing our already well deserved title of “Biggest Asses on the Planet”) while the fellow quiet Americans (by virtue of design) escape your notice. Americans who like to mortify me aside, I was pretty proud of the way the Chinese handled themselves as they managed to stand their ground without losing their temper; abroad in other countries, I’ve only ever seen one of the two.
After a solid half hour of cringe worthy American antics and watching them repeatedly get chased off the (clearly) restricted lawn areas, my Brazilian Angel showed up again. I was very ready to be anywhere but right there. She asked if I would mind joining her up on the wall as le Francaise really wanted her to be there for the run. She insisted upon paying for my ticket and so I went and bought one.
As I had a 100 RMB note with which to pay for the ticket, when I bought the ticket, the ticket agent asked if I had “small change.”
I answered her in Chinese, “I don’t know.” She smiled broadly and became very accommodating upon hearing my (pathetic) Chinese. I returned her smile and then I rifled through my wallet to find smaller change. “Nope, I don’t have any,” I finally answered again in Chinese.
She smiled at me, shook her head and said that it was not a problem. As I stepped away to count my change and allow the Americans behind me to purchase their tickets, her dour expression returned. And for good reason. The Americans behind me were not of the “non-belligerent” genre, much less the “quiet” genre.
I returned to the gate, ticket in hand and locked eyes with the ticket-collecting dude we had been talking with earlier. There were about six men collecting tickets at the front gate and by this point, loud Americans had started lining up and flooding the front entrance. I glanced at the crush of people and thought, “This is going to take forever.” Then the ticket-taking dude cocked his head ever so slightly in a gesture of, “Yes?” I waved my ticket, smiled my sweetest smile in the hopes that he’d help me out and mouthed, “Here it is” in Chinese.
The dour face that he had on for the loud Americans melted and he smiled at me. He waved me forward and took me in before the large masses of loud foreigners. He took my ticket, I smiled and said “Thank you” in Chinese and he winked at me.
I truly have no idea what it is between the Chinese men and me but there must be something. No matter who I walk with, stunning foreigner or stunning Chinese, I am the one who gets stared at. Everyone who speaks with me calls me “beautiful” but the other Westerners are always told they are “pretty.” It strange because in the West, I am comfortably “pretty”; the kind of plain pretty that becomes “beautiful” if you love her. Not so much here. Regardless, this phenomenon was made most clear to me on the wall with the warriors.
I must say, the army guys dressed up to look like they were part of the terra cotta warrior army were intimidating. They were not only real army guys but they were also holding real, notably ferocious-looking, serrated spears. They were to take turns standing at attention and doing photo ops. While the photo op shift was supposed to be approachable, the guys at attention were not allowed to budge, in sort of the same way the guards at Buckingham Palace are. However, when I passed with my Brazilian Angel, each one turned his head a little and looked at me. My Brazilian Angel teased me about how I was going to get them dishonorably discharged.
However, a most unsettling piece came a moment later. First, I should preface this by saying every morning, I watch everyone here practicing martial arts of some sort. I watch them methodically perfect the art of bringing down the foreign threat. It is beautiful to watch such mastery but it is also vaguely unsettling as there is nothing more foreign to them than the things I represent. (Granted, at home they have identified me beyond the dismissive, generic and [what they consider to be] racist “Foreigner” and now know me as the specific “American” but in the current climate, that still grants me little comfort.) And I just see the laymen practicing, not the trained warriors. Hell, the precision on Alpha Hottie’s control rivals most soldiers I’ve known (and I’ve known a few) and he’s a gym teacher. I am clear on the fact that the Chinese kindness and generosity isn’t one of a subservient people trying to place themselves on your good side but of a strong and virile people polite enough to make friends. Consequently, when I came around the blind corner of the first tower of the wall and I was greeted with the business end of eight notably nasty looking spears held by eight terra cotta warriors truly come to life, I nearly fainted.
The guards were changing shifts and they march in and out of the areas in formation with their spears level with the right side of their waist, business end pointed straight in front of them. I managed to come around the corner and land in the middle of the two marching rows of four. I gasped and my knees went weak.
There I stood, trembling and feeling more vulnerable than I ever have as the spears glinted in the sun and the tassels dangled rhythmically with the silent, terrifyingly disciplined march filing past me. I have had the business end of a gun pointed at me and I have (now) had the business end of a spear pointed at me. There is just something more visceral about a spear than a gun. With the gun, all you can sense is that if it goes off, you will cease to exist in some ugly way but there is no sensual point of reference (at least for me as I’ve never been shot). With the spear, there are far more organic images of being gutted that flood your mind. I’ve been cut with a knife and so I can extrapolate out. My midsection has never felt so soft and vulnerable.
As I gasped for air and trembled, trying to stay upright, I found myself in a flood of the kind of marching warriors only found in story tales. There I stood, entering an ancient and fortified city, the sounds of anything not medieval muted out by the labyrinth of towering walls drowning me. All I could hear was the faint, rhythmic rustling of their sleeves rubbing against their leather chest plates. The place I stood was the same place my ancestors stood as they entered Xi’An for silk so many centuries ago. The warriors around me are the same warriors my ancestors dealt with. This isn’t some plasticized, Disney recreation. This is the real thing in the real place complete with the real weapons on real soldiers. And I was real unprepared for that.
The helmets of the warriors all turned to look at me revealing real the faces of flesh and blood men and, as all men in armed forces are prone to do, they smiled at the damsel rendered light-headed by their presence. Upon seeing the truly happy smile of the warriors, my knees came back under my control. If Chinese men like you enough to smile their genuine smile at you, there is nothing they won’t do to help you.
Embarrassed by my panic, I started to giggle to release my nerves while the last of the warriors passed me by. At the sound of my laugh, most of the warriors turned around to look at me and a few even winked.
My Brazilian Angel, who had been far enough to the side to not get swept up into the middle of the march, shot me a look and said, “Chris, they really like you here.”
I was unable to respond as the adrenaline was still wreaking havoc on my nerves. My Brazilian Angel checked to make sure I was okay, I nodded and we headed off towards the top of the wall.
The wall was a sea of “international.” It was a veritable United Nations of hundreds of people to cheer and people to race. Asians and Westerners mingled while Middle Easterners and Africans strolled about. Young Muslim women chatted with young Jewish men. Towering Australians worked with diminutive Asian interpreters to get the appropriate stickers for their number card. White students talked with African students in their only common language; Mandarin. English women of a certain age made friends with American college boys. Everywhere there were people photographing and Asian biker dudes on Harleys and BMW motorcycles. Personally, I was flooded with young Chinese girls who wanted to take their picture with me. Even the women paid to promote Coke asked to have their picture taken with me.
Le Francais, not being one for lots of people found a quiet corner where we could all be together and prepare him for the (half) Marathon. As we prepared him for the marathon, we were flooded with professional photographers taking pictures of us preparing him as well as pictures of the professional photographers taking pictures of us preparing him. It got quite surreal with the various layers of photographers photographing photographers photographing photographers photographing us.
Soon, our entourage of paparazzi attracted more young Asian girls, politely requesting a photo with me. I complied with all of them and as they got their photos with me, my newfound paparazzi swarmed photographing me being photographed with the young girls and women. Eventually, everyone had enough photos of le Francais preparing and of/with me and they dissipated.
We met back up with the paparazzi later when they were photographing one of the coaches from the States wearing a red Addidas sweatshirt that said “China” across the back and who was photographing his runners. Frankly, I can’t get over the idea of people photographing people photographing. It’s too meta to not make my head spin.
Paparazzi aside, it got close to race time and le Francais was not fully registered yet. Consequently, we had to rush around in a blur of French and Mandarin to get him all the proper stickers and ribbons to run. At last, we had it all sorted and we saw le Francais off.
Once le Francais was off, my Brazilian Angel and I returned to English (anytime le Francais is around or my Brazilian Angel is tired, we simply speak in French; English is as equally present in my Western life here as French; in fact, I’m considering joining the Alliance Francaise de Xi’An) and we strolled the length of the south side of the wall. It was super cool to get the aerial view of the South of Xi’An and to see all the Chinese people who paid the 40 RBM just to cheer on the runners. (“GO!” or “COME ON!” sounds like “ts-I-YO”) As the runners came down the final stretch, they’d cheer the runners on and tell them how close the runners were to the end. It rocked.
While we walked around the wall, checking out the cheering squad apparently the biker dudes were checking out me. I didn’t really notice, as I am so accustomed to biker dudes checking me out that it no longer pings on my radar. They are the one demographic I can rely on to have no problem eyeballing me without creeping me out. It may strike many as counterintuitive but I have never felt so safe or protected as when a biker dude is trying to hook up with me; I know he’ll protect me from everything and I know he’ll respect me if I tell him to fuck off. I have never had the sort of trouble a girl has with frat boys with biker dudes. However, my Brazilian Angel seemed quite surprised by this and felt the need to point it out. Constantly. As my Brazilian Angel is a petite, beautiful woman, I think she’s never been confronted with the fact that big, burly men tend to like big women who can push them around. I look like the kind of woman who can slap a man around and won’t take any shit. Biker dudes love that. Yes, even the Chinese biker dudes. Not surprisingly, sex is more universal than racism.
Biker dudes and paparazzi notwithstanding, the stroll on the wall was quite peaceful and beautiful. We made it back to the Start/Finish line in time to find a good spot to take pictures of le Francais’s triumphant return and what a return it was! He came in 5th. It was fantastic!
He was glowing and again there were more paparazzi flooding us, snapping away. Though he wrecked his back and legs, he did brilliantly and was very proud of himself. We hobbled our way back to the car uneventfully and drove home just in time for the afternoon siesta.
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