THANK GOD FOR MEN

Fickle, young men and lecherous old creeps aside, thank fucking god for men. They really can make your day. They can make you feel more beautiful in a single glance than all the destruction of the naysayers could ever undo.

I was feeling out of sorts this morning (10/17). My cold has shifted south from my head, resulting in a case of bronchitis and so I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in over week and a half. Nonetheless, I had four classes at 9 am with the kindergarteners jammed into an hour. So, I got shuttled back and forth, managing the wee ones for an hour and then I was released until class at 3 in the high school (they call it “middle school” here but “high school” seems to be more a year than a school). I decided to skip lunch and sleep from 10:30 until 2 in an attempt to make up for all the sleep I’m missing with coughing to say nothing of the extra sleep my sick ass should be getting.

I decided at 2 (the hour lunch is adjourned and everyone who is Chinese must return to the school building; I, being Western, am allowed to come and go as I please) that I should make more of an effort to be more of a joiner and so I went to spend an hour in the English Teacher’s Office in the high school. And I am glad I did.
My colleague of dim sum fondue was there and we got to talking. Frankly, I adore him. He’s a Chinese anomaly in that he does what works best for his family, not what society dictates. His wife is a busy gynecologist and so he takes care of their daughter. In China, it is unheard of that a man would care for a child but he is so loving with her and he is so proud of his wife’s work that you can’t imagine a more lovely man or why anyone would want to do it any other way. He told me that he pushes his daughter to develop a strong bond with her mother despite the fact that she lives an hour away and only sees them when possible. To me, that is the essence of a good man; a man strong enough in his principles and secure enough in himself to go against the grain when necessity dictates. My favorite thing is being around such men who like to be around me. My colleague enjoys my company and even confides in me about his frustrations of work.

As we were talking, he heard my cough and took me to the pharmacist’s immediately. On the walk over, we talked about everything from the Japanese (there are more delegates visiting) to his high cholesterol levels. We talked about why the Chinese are afraid to move abroad (a stronger sense of family leads to a stronger sense of loneliness and isolation when culture shock hits; in America, our sense of family is more mobile and transient and so I think our way of life is simply tinged with more loneliness than the Chinese lifestyle) and how only the Chinese who will be able to afford to move their families with them would move.

We got to the pharmacist’s and he explained my illness. I was given amoxicillin capsules OVER THE COUNTER (granted, I don’t think anyone ever destroyed their lives to get one more hit of amoxicillin but still) as well as Chinese herbal cough drops. The logic was that as a Westerner, my Western (read: significantly larger) body needs the stronger Western medicine but the cough drops should be gentler as my system will be treated harshly enough with the amoxicillin. Medicine here is really quite casual. You only need to know what to ask for. It’s impressive in a thank-god-my-parents-are-medical-pros-and-so-I-have-some-idea-of-what-is-going-on sort of way. Though, I must admit, I had a moment of panicked, “Whoa, I think something has been lost in translation,” when I saw “for treatment of acute gonorrhea” on the package as one of the ailments it treats. I relaxed when I continued reading and it mentioned something about “productive cough.”

Packages in hand, we returned to our office and I took a cough drop. I cannot suggest “Golden Throat Drops” highly enough. They are mentholated and taste like a standard herbal cough drop but they lack the bitter aftertaste of Western cough drops and they work better than any Western cough drop I’ve ever had.

Back in the office, my colleague explained the dosages to me, we talked a bit more about casual life in the West and the East and then I went to class. I taught my two classes (3pm-5pm) and returned to the office to use my colleague’s computer. (My loaner is still MIA and so I’m dependent on the kindness of my colleagues for internet access.) I used it until 6pm, when school was over and I collected my things to leave.

The main area of the High/Middle School is in the shape of a square with the middle of the square being an open courtyard. It is four stories tall and all the hallways and stairwells are open to the elements. The only inside “inside” the building are the actual rooms, be them the classrooms or the offices. All the school buildings in the compound are like this and it’s a bit intense as we’re at a rather high elevation, bordering the Gobi desert (dry air for people who spend all day talking at full volume) and with New York type weather (HOT summers and COLD winters).
My office is on the third floor of the Middle/High School. On my floor are the extraneous administrative offices (tech support for one) and the English teachers, the second floor houses the 9th and 10th grade classrooms and on the first floor are the 7th and 8th graders. (They use American floor method, not the European “Ground” and then “1st“ floor method.) By the stairs I use is the classroom one of the math teachers of the 9th grade. As teachers move, not students, when the subjects change, I have not been able to figure out why he is always at that classroom when I pass (although, considering the conversation I had with one of the 7th grade math teachers I had today, math teachers may also be the homeroom teachers… or I am mishearing entirely and they are saying something like “main” teacher) but nonetheless he is always there.

The 9th grade math teacher is often on the periphery of my world. He clearly understands English but has never spoken English to me. We pass on the stairs all the time. He’s always about when I’m wandering. Upon my first official day here, he sat with the English teacher assigned to care for me at lunch. (I should mention here that my guide is the kind of girl who is too beautiful for her own good.) The three of us sat, my guide speaking English with me and Chinese with him. My guide declared with great surprise that I not only could use chopsticks but I used them with my left hand! My great talent for staving off starvation with my dominant hand somehow enhanced her prowess because in my continental company, she was suddenly that much more attractive.

I made some comment about being self-conscious that I use my left hand for chopsticks (no joke EVERYONE here is right handed) and the English teacher repeated what everyone has always said, “In China, a person who can use chopsticks in their left hand is said to be very clever.” I nodded half-heartedly at the platitude I’d heard a million times that week and said, “Yeah, everyone says that,” to myself. Frankly, I stick out enough and my guide is a pretty young thing confident (or dependent) in the permanence of her beauty the way youth is confident (or dependent) of its immortality. In other words, she couldn’t have cared less about my discomfort because it is nothing that affected her ability to be adored.

The fact was lost on her that I had spoken because I was weary of being “clever” or “fresh” or generally different and didn’t want yet one more scene made of my unique nature. I wanted to be able to fit in some little way. I don’t want much but the idea that not EVERYTHING about me is unique (from my sex life to my eating habits) and therefore up for infinite study, communal debate and eventual public judgment would be nice. Sometimes, a girl just wants to eat in peace without a hundred sets of eyes staring at the Elephant Man. Me aside, my guide was proud and made a scene about my latest point of freakdom.

Upon the lowering of my eyes and the raising of her voice to inform everyone of my latest great talent, the math teacher snorted a small laugh to himself, briefly glanced at my guide who wasn’t paying attention to either of us and then directly at me, half-smiling that cocky smile men get when they’ve got a secret they know will make you happy (something that, in retrospect, was incredibly brazen of him to do). He immediately got my full attention. He looked pointedly over my left shoulder, gesturing ever so slightly with his chin and I turned around.

I didn’t see it immediately. Behind me was a table full with four students. Each one looked totally normal with nothing amiss. I looked at what they were eating and they were having the standard lunch. I looked at what they were wearing and each one was dressed as a usual student dresses. Each one was sitting, eating, talking and generally being a kid. Each one was holding chopsticks and a spoon in their other hand. (Note: if you’re ever in China and can’t use chopsticks, spoons are a perfectly acceptable, native option. Many children eat with spoons exclusively and most adults use them as an adjunct to chopsticks. I am a rarity even among the Chinese here in that I use chopsticks exclusively.) I turn around, shaking my head and not seeing anything. I looked at the math teacher and he shook his head and looked back at the table more emphatically. This time, he raised his eyebrows, something the Chinese never do. So I turned back around and thought, “Not only am I left-handed freak, I’m a moron to boot. Now, what would I be trying to tell me if I was him?” I noticed it as I realized what I’d be telling me. There was the one left-handed student in the whole school sitting just over my left shoulder. There was the mirror image of the right handed norm; my brethren in “cleverness.”
I turned back around smiling, my mouth open to say “Thank you” in Chinese and the math teacher cut me off with the small, lower lip jut of “Don’t mention it,” a slow blink and a nod. My English teacher guide noticed nothing of our exchange.
It is safe to say the insightful, discreet man has held my affection for some time. He even came to my open class: the only teacher who hasn’t spoken English to me to do so. I like him and he always gets a smile when I pass him.

However, I wasn’t thinking of him today as I bounded down the stairs from the third to the second floor, even though I should have been able to predict his presence. I was looking out to my left to see if my friend the physics teacher (the one with the son fluent in English who wishes I had a younger sister, one his age) was in her office. The wind was blowing from my right so my hair was doing that obnoxious hair-commercial blowing thing across my face that boys love but cause more knots than anyone knows what to do with. As I hit the landing on the second floor, the math teacher was there, openly staring at me, making no secret of liking to look at me.
A look like that from a man like that turns off all ability to think, in any culture. It was the look of a man clearly intent on engulfing himself in a woman; from her minutia to the grandeur a man and a woman can create. It is the look that spurs a gal to simply react without thinking. It is a look I have rarely gotten in China. It is a look I have never before gotten in China from anyone socially able to do anything about it. It is a look I really, really like.

My payment, in China, for people who do things I like has been to smile sweetly (usually in a picture) as that is all most want from me. It is an innocent transaction but it does reinforce the idea that somehow I am post-their-human. There is an expression in Chinese about “the Horse follows the Snake.” As a White Westerner, I am seen as the “horse” in China; the horse being infinitely stronger than the snake and fully capable of crushing the snake. (Yeah, the whole, “A single snake bite can kill a massive horse” argument wasn’t addressed in my explanation.) However, when the horse (the Westerner) needs the “snake” (the Chinese) it will obediently follow the lead of the weak snake and “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” (The Horse/Snake analogy has been loosely and incorrectly equated to the “When in Rome” expression; the presumption is that Rome was a backwards/weak and ancient/intolerant place. The over usage of the “When in Rome” things makes much more sense now and, in fact, is poignant. It is a self-effacing apology.) My sweet smile firmly delineates the difference between “me” and “them.” My sweet smile is the statement, “I recognize I could crush you but I have no intention of doing so.” My sweet smile is what most Chinese need to feel comfortable with me. Frankly, I hate it but there is nothing I can do to undo centuries, if not millennia, of Whites invading to say nothing of the West’s current, archaic, naively ignorant foreign policies. I do not get to choose the parameters but I do get to choose how I play the game. And though I am complacent in said game, if I were not, the difference would be seen as a horse preparing to trample the snake. I am seen as a horse. There is nothing I can do about that. I am even born of the Horse year. The Chinese will always see me as a Horse and they will always see themselves as the Snake. My currency is my innocent smile and their currency is their kind generosity.
But, the math teacher’s gaze was decidedly not about a horse and a snake. It was about the lotus (woman) and the bamboo (man). It was the kind of gaze that slows time down towards the infinite. So, I took a gamble and decided to not bring race into the visual discussion. There would be no complacent smile. If I was wrong in interpreting his gaze, there will invariably be a federal case made out of my unhappiness. I’m sure they’d convene some sort of meeting to figure out how to keep the Western teacher happy and I’ll be lectured on the “great sadness” I am feeling so many worlds away from home. I will be told I must stave off the bad thoughts and only think happy things as numerous teachers are assigned ‘round-the-clock shifts of attending to my loneliness by obliterating my brief moments of solitude.

But, I’m brazen and a flirt. The thought of being tediously lectured yet one more time to “think happy thoughts” does not scare me in the least, so I did not smile. I stayed in that naked place, stripped of all platitudes and simply was myself, unedited. If he liked watching me free from the restraints of being “The Westerner” as much as his look implied, I had no intention of bringing up those arbitrary shackles. Besides, with a look like that, the hurdles he had to overcome were far more than the brief few I risk. His immediate culture fears and desires the completion of centuries of Western thought that I represent like a moth to the flame. I am too tall, too educated, too emotionally androgynous, too physically feminine, too willful, too promiscuous, too white, too free, too fertile, too discreet, too new, too liberated to ever be acceptable in real time, much less accepted as “human” (and forget about the “subservience” that is “woman”) and yet I am the benchmark the men push their women to strive for. As my Brazilian Angel puts it, “Of course they would never flirt with you. You are too much.” I am the unattainable Western ideal and yet here before me stands a man with the courage to put all that bullshit aside. The one thing that breeds a sense of kinship in me more than anything else is the willfulness to make your own decisions. The one thing all my ancestors have in common is that they all came to America because their unacceptably willful behavior amounted to treason. Rebels are my blood and no revolution is more difficult or frightening than unapologetic ownership of sexuality. I would be forsaking the most crucial element of my genetics to leave a man like that hanging. So I held his gaze.

It felt so good to be there in my own skin without having to be accommodating and it was the first time I’ve been there in a very long time. I’m built to challenge the men who approach me and so that’s what I did. I can’t get away with being the cute, giggling girl in the bar but I am allowed to not just know what I like but demand it as well. I held his gaze as I would any man who looked at me that I liked and continued on my path, remaining ensnared in his gaze. As I rounded the landing to turn and continue on my way down the stairs, he smiled the half smile and head shake of the contented man. The residue of my crap Saturday utterly vanished in the breeze. I love adult sexuality.

Like I said: Thank God for men.

NO! DON’T! STOP! NO, DON’T STOP!

I have at last found sexuality well placed. Thank friggin’ god. I was in need of it. Granted, it was highly inappropriate but it was highly inappropriate in ways I am accustomed to. Well, not accustomed to so much as “would have expected.” In other words, it was not a 6 year old lewdly grabbing at my breasts.

For my 8th graders, I decided to teach them a brief passage from Romeo and Juliet. I figure, in the States, they’d be learning the whole thing, the Balcony Scene (“What light through yonder window breaks?”) isn’t blatantly sexual and I happen to have a copy of the Claire Danes/Leonardo Dicaprio version here with me. I figure, in 45 minutes, I can explain the basics on 2 minutes of text. The only issue with this is the fact that my Zone 1 DVD only plays on my 12 inch PowerBook G4 and the high-tech overhead projectors they’ve got here are built for their Compaq PCs. In other words, to show my students the snippet of the film, I’ve got to go around show sections of the class at a time while hold my computer up.

I had been doing so throughout my four classes of grade 8. When I got to the third class, there is a moment where Juliet/Claire is leaning over by the pool discussing “Any other rose” and as she squats down by the water waxing poetic on how “any other part belonging to a man would retain that certain perfection” she shifts and shows a bit of cleavage from the top of her corseted, empire waist Angel costume.

Now, here’s the thing. In China, the clothes are the tightest thing I’ve ever seen. The women wear clothes so tight that it leaves NOTHING to the imagination. (They also don’t believe in thong underwear, so VPL is the order of the day.) Their jeans (which they wear everywhere) are skin tight to the point of occasionally needing to lie down in order to zip them up with a wrench circa 1970 USA. Their tops are so tight I’ve actually been able to tell when women are wearing their bra inside out because I can see where the fabric instruction tag is, to say nothing of the eyelets that fasten the overly-tight bras shut. And, all this tighter-than-skin cloth wearing technique has led to a surplus of women with no body fat having love handles and crazy back fat.

Generally speaking, the clothes I am comfortable in are not only not tight, they are not fitted and are “loose” by American standards. I have lost a fair amount of weight and so my previously super-tight clothes (which I packed in anticipate of said weight loss) are now fitted and I now have the body to wear fitted clothing. However, I have almost always, as an adult woman, liked my rack. It’s pretty decent and so I am comfortable showing off the cousins… a LITTLE. No vulgarity, no navel skimming necklines, just a little glimpse of the curve of the breast. I’ve always found them cute and perky. The Chinese, however, lose their minds at a little glimpse of skin. Tighter-than-skin tight fabric is okay but the moment even the smallest peak of flesh is available, the men are unable to maintain eye contact. I have had full conversations with men unable to tear their eyes from my chest when I wasn’t even showing cleavage, merely the part of the sternum above the cleavage and below the collarbone.

The argument of the Chinese (I have been told by the Chinese) is that my skin is the most desirable shade of honkey and, unlike the negligible body fat women, I actually have a rack. I’ve been told (in secret) something about my breasts be “white like dumplings” or good enough to eat which, not surprisingly, put me off dumplings. How my upper ribcage dumpli-fies me escapes my understanding.

Nonetheless, I am the scandalous teacher who wears daring tops the teenage boys seem to be fond of and I was holding the PowerBook in front of me, screen propped against the top of my chest. As Juliet/Claire leans over to wax poetic as she reveals minimal cleavage, one of the boys leans over to try to look down her shirt. The other boys laugh along and so he repeats the gesture, except he over-extends his gaze to appear as though he is looking down my shirt.

Granted, I had to pretend to be mad (and resist the urge to laugh along) and slap him upside the head but it was nice to be objectified again after my crushing day of being a grandmother’s senior.

SPECIFICITY

I think there is nothing more lovely than the specificity with which I am loved. After yesterday’s discussion with my college friend and my purging into the last entry, I decided to surround myself with the birthday cards my beloveds have sent me. Normally, I would have hopped online, shot off a few emails of “ugh, I’m feeling very not okay” and had supportive replies but my computer is in the shop and it’s a Sunday (10/15) which means I’m feeling too lazy to get all my grocery shopping done, finish my week’s preparation and then spend hours hunting down a internet cafÈ.

Instead, I caressed the notes from home and thought about my favorite Tori Amos lyric, “So then I thought I’d make some plans, but fire thought she’d really rather be water instead.” I have always known that I am that tempestuous fire whose will fuck everything up. Just like my maternal grandmother, I very much need to be reigned in from time to time. My Chinese horoscope is a horse and it is fitting in that the horse cannot be made to stay still. “She is a thing of great beauty who must always be free to run” was how my precocious college friend explained it. I just never thought I’d have people who were fully aware of that and would still love me.

Aside from the lovely sentiments passed along, two of the most important people to me both quoted me back to me in their letters. One “borrowed” the way I sign my letters to them. That letter results in the written equivalent of a bear hug. The other quoted a conversation of great specificity about what is most important to me in our friendship. That letter results in a swelling of peace.

I eviscerate myself textually for public consumption in the hopes that someone might, someday, find my words and feel less alone or feel connected to something previously inaccessible. I write to provide the things for which I read; company, perspective and knowledge. The written words of others are what saved me in some of my darker chapters. I never thought my own words could be used to make me feel less alone. However, the specificity with which I am loved provides me such serenity that even when I am drowning in a culture unprepared to handle the inherent challenges of my mere existence, I still sleep well at night.

UGH

I am destined to die alone, a bitter, barren spinster. It is official. No man remotely appealing will ever find me attractive again. I will never again have sex. No man would ever feel more than pity for me. Every insecurity I have ever had about my unattractiveness is true. I am destined to die lusted after by only middle aged, married men looking for a trophy fuck as I am merely the default piece of “exotic” to be usurped the moment an actually attractive woman appears. The sexuality and attractiveness of “me” ceases to be, if ever it was.

I spent the day (Saturday10/14) with my lovely 18 year old “precocious” college friend. Now, I had no designs on him sexually despite the fact that I truly enjoyed being around him and the intelligent dialogue he provides. The bottom line is, an older woman and a younger man couple is simply unacceptable in Chinese culture. Period. Fine. There are over a billion people in this country; I was sure I’d find someone to flirt with. And, I also recognize that my sexuality is not something I am comfortable tossing out there for show, leaving me looking more like Betty Page meets the naughty librarian than anything else. In other words, I am not something your average 18 year old is looking for much less calibrated to notice. Fine. There is middle ground between sexual appeal and sexual repulsion. In fact, I am most comfortable in the land of neutrality. All this aside, I certainly never thought I’d feel like a teenager’s grandmother’s senior in my twenties.

We talked about dating and sex and it was clear that my role was as a mother figure, which is fine. I would much rather boys looking to experiment with sex have the appropriate medical advice than they muck about and get people pregnant or sick. I grew up in a medical household where such advice was readily available, never tinted with shame or revulsion and I know what my friends who didn’t have such an environment had to suffer (the very first of which was “gonorrhea” and the most permanent of which has already hit puberty).

He truly has no interest in me and as he was asking me about whether or not most “American Teenage Girls” look like me (I am told consistently; “fat” and “big” and “tall”; to say nothing of his “surprise” when he saw how little I ate for lunch and “yet, you are so...” [insert gesture to my body]). I told him I am uniquely tall and he was relieved. The worst part was he tried to hide his relief from me. So, my freakdom is not only to staggering, it is also to be pitied. He then told me, in the abstract, how Chinese men do not like to date women larger than them because we can beat them in fights. He then talked with me about how much I look like a teacher. He feels that being a teacher is the appropriate profession for me because, really, I look just like another English teacher in his college. “Really, just like her. It is amazing. She is from America too. She is two years older than my grandmother.”

So, to sum up; I live in a world where I am such a trophy wife in spite of all my physical flaws (that everyone consistently informs me of; hell, I have dinner with a friend once a week and every week she tells me how much “more beautiful” I am each week as I “get slim, slim”; I truly would not have a single Chinese relationship if I had to cut out all the people who tell me I’m “fat” daily) that I have been priced out of the “flirtation” pool. I am white, Western with the “perfect American voice,” well-traveled, well-educated and multilingual with functioning Chinese; the ultimate status symbol here in upwardly mobile China. (The weakling in me is tempted to take the path of least resistance by forfeiting my sense of self and submitting to the pre-feminist notions of “perfect white girl” by returning to being a blonde with an eating disorder, declare myself a virgin and get lasik because “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”) The only men able to approach me in any way had either be intent on marriage or clear that they will never actually have me. The rest of the men 28-40 cannot look at me, much less speak to me for the embarrassment of interacting with said trophy. Nevertheless, none of them could truly want me as they would a woman because I am the physical equivalent of a male.

In other words, marriage with me would be the best political move possible but they would have to stomach being married to me for said political move. Somehow I’ve entered a period piece where the unseen powerful heiress is known as much for her great wealth and political power as for her unfortunate aesthetic shortcomings. In college, as an art history major, you learn very quickly that all wealthy women were considered “beautiful” because of what their power bought them, not because they were attractive. I always pitied those women for being deceived like that. I never, ever occurred to me that I’d be one.

And, at 28, I look like my 18 year old friend’s grandmother’s senior.
All I could hear was the cocking of the shotgun I wished I had to put in my mouth.

MONTE SORRY

I’m a dirty hippie. My girl Michi tells me this and though I make arguments to the contrary I know, ultimately, that she’s right. (One of the “problems” with having friends who know you better than you know yourself.) Ultimately, I want to give the world a big, fat hug. Granted, I’ve got a bit too much New Yorker in me and so I don’t think everything can be solved practically with love (sometimes you have to kick a little ass to show that “gentle hopefulness” should not be taken for granted; also, if you cross someone I love, it’s just a whole lot o’ ugly) but when given the option between fighting and discussing, I’ll discuss almost every time. It’s safe to say I’m a bit more Montessori than Old School. I feel that hitting a child to make them more interested in a subject is counterintuitive. Frankly, if I got hit as an incentive to be better in school, I’d have probably turned out a lot more fucked up than I already am. As an adult, I have no interest in teaching anyone who doesn’t want to learn but I’m very interested in getting children excited about learning. Consequently, I’m of the “positive” reinforcement school of thought; if the kid feels good about her or his work, they always come back for more. Having gone to Reed College, I get that grades can, at best, be a bit of a hindrance to learning; learning being a life-long process and grades being a false terminus to said chronic process. Good grades lead to nothing but arrogance and bad grades lead to nothing but discouragement; neither of which breeds a good learner. To be a truly good student, I feel, that grades must be seen as irrelevant. Granted, in a real-life situation with goals that must be attained, I understand this is not even remotely the most effective perspective. Consequently, I try to be as willing as possible to tailor my immediate approach to the goal the students face.

However, the Chinese method seems to be more Old School than Montessori, in every way, which means that the children are accustom to coping within an Old School method. What they saw in me was the free reign that they were accustomed to having had with my predecessor. It would appear that my predecessor was built neither to handle harsh discipline methods nor harshly disciplined children suddenly liberated. He felt the most he had to offer the students in 45 minutes was a piece of paper for saying a single word of English. He felt his class was merely a “release” from all the stress of their lives. His self-proclaimed goal for each class was to make sure “they didn’t hurt themselves.”

I, being naively youthful, am trying to do more a little than that. Yes, the time with me is incredibly informal and overwhelmingly positive. Yes, I practice no severe discipline methods. However, I reward the children for making an active effort to conceptualize and then verbalize with English.

This is not to say I am right and the Chinese teachers are wrong. The Chinese teachers here do not have the luxury of being as conceptual and free with their thinking as I do. The Chinese teachers must have hard and fast results proven every month with the monthly citywide testing. Their job depends on it. I merely have to keep breathing and show up to class. Unfortunately for my Chinese counterparts, my school is testing far poorer than was anticipated and so my Chinese counterparts must work the children harder than before.

Nevertheless, it has been strange to be immersed in a world where corporal punishment is the norm. The children, at first, were unruly the moment they realized I was not about to put the smackdown on them. It is not unusual to see a teenage boy standing, facing the wall in a Middle School Teachers’ Office quietly crying to himself as a stern teacher continues to yell at him. It is not unusual to see small children having their hands’ or face slapped for every wrong answer they offer in the Primary School. So, not only am I physically foreign, I am emotionally foreign as well. At first glance, my methods are completely and utterly lax and the students took that as a license to be tyrannical. In fact, the young boys (6-8 years old) were really big on trying to grab my breasts and flipping me off. The obscene grabbing was so rampant amongst the second graders, the entire class had to be spoken to about it.

I had one particular encounter with a notably “naughty” boy. For some reason, the 10 year old was particularly keen on giving me a hard time. Week after week he was simply a nightmare with his running around and screaming and yelling obscenities (judging by the other students’ reactions) at me in Chinese. I tried ignoring him. I tried yelling at him. Nothing worked. We finally came to a head when he leapt at me, tried to grab my breasts and when I caught his hands just before contact he broke free of my grasp and flipped me off.

I had enough. I grabbed him by the arm and, literally, had to drag him out of the class. He allowed his whole body to go limp as I took him towards the door, intent on taking him to the principal’s office. He started screaming “No!” When screaming at me didn’t work, he started begging, “Please! Teacher, no! I’ll be better!” Suddenly the boy who knew no English was remarkably close to fluent.
Apparently, he’s got quite the reputation within the class as a problem. Consequently, when I was having trouble getting him out of the doorframe (that he had looney-tunes wrapped himself around) a series of boys did not hesitate to get up, grabbing him by the extremities and dragging him out of the class with me. There in the hallway, as my small group of boys is dragging the largest boy in their class down towards the principal’s office, my caravan and I meet up with the art teacher.

I pantomime to the art teacher what the kid did, the boy wrangling students explain in vibrant Chinese and she is horrified. She promises to take care of the situation and the boy, released, returns to his seat to be silent the rest of class. Quickly news spreads of what this boy has done. By the time I make it back to the Primary School English Teachers’ office that afternoon everyone knows what happened. Everyone apologizes on his behalf and explains to me how “naughty” the boy is. Judging by everyone’s reaction to what happened, I get the sense that no one has ever reported this boy’s behavior before. However, I can’t imagine why anyone would put up with such levels of shit from a child, especially in the land of corporal punishment.

Later in the week, the boy is commanded to apologize to me. The Western notion of “apologize” is not quite the same as the Chinese. I was brought in to the Homeroom Teachers’ Office and given a comfortable seat. All the teachers I have ever met and some who I had never seen appeared to witness the apology. The boy’s homeroom teacher (who, in spite of the gravity of the situation, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful he is; goddamned hormones) gave the boy a “stern” speaking to. He then commanded in Chinese that the boy to apologize to me in English, which the petrified boy did. This boy, who couldn’t be bothered to speak English in class suddenly produced, “I am very sorry, Christina.” The furious teacher then barked something else and the boy bowed deeply, not rising until I said, “I accept your apology and thank you for it.”

Now, I’ve been in rooms full of furious teachers before. I’ve never been a teacher in a room full of furious teachers. I’ve certainly never been the “special” teacher in a room full of furious teachers. Every teacher gave the boy dirty looks and “tsk-tsk” sounds. Everyone (including previously eye-contact-embargoing-hot-homeroom-teacher) looked at me and smiled kindly. It was incredibly surreal to be backstage like that. I have seen shunning like that but never been an openly accepted part of the society doing it. It was quite the intimidating abyss to see just how cauterized one can become when deemed unacceptable and how much of a conscious decision it is on the part of the society to shun. It’s not as though the rage aimed at the boy was overwhelming emotion and the shunning a visceral response to said emotion. Shutting the boy out was a calm, rational decision of the group. We certainly have our own equivalents of creepy, unsettling behavior in the West but this was something totally new to me.

However, now that boy is one of my most attentive students. Every time he sees me anywhere, he hollers out, “Hello Christina” and waves with his whole body. Every lesson I have in his class, he volunteers at least twice and does the best he can. He learned that though I may bend over backwards to help, if you fuck with me there will be consequences. And I learned that (for the moment; being a marginal man, I recognize that it is only a matter of time before the group turns on me) I now seem to have a whole crew willing to help me with said consequences.

I also learned that he is the son of the most powerful teacher in school. He had been running amuck because no one else dared openly complain for fear of retribution. The massive audience of teachers during my apology was the teachers the boy had offended but had not been able to complain. Fortunately for my political ignorance, sexual violation is beyond unacceptable here to say nothing of sexually violating a Western woman. So, political retribution, were there to be an issue of it if I had just complained about “bad behavior,” is now unthinkable. It’s very odd to know that I live in a world where, if I follow the rules, I am relatively safe.

ISOLATION TANKS

I once heard someone talk about how you should never take into your ownership a rental car or a hooker because “You don’t want something ridden that hard by that many people for that long.” We can now add “Computers Owned By My Predecessor” to said list of things ridden too hard for too long. When I got my loaner computer (the PC laptop owned by the school that connects to the internet) it had crumbs and garbage stuck under the keyboard. The “H” and “T” keys regularly did not work while, depending on what I was able to shake or blow out from beneath the computer, other keys at random would not work. The hard drive had never been defragmented. The computer had never been checked for bugs, spamware or spyware. She had too many memory-sucking, superfluous programs installed. It was one sad, abused little thing. Even for a PC, the operating system was remarkably unstable and I did my best to rehabilitate her from the damage her one previous owner had done. However, “Damnit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker” and she died, effectively cutting me off completely from home.

The system now needs to be rebooted from a disk I not only don’t possess, I have no idea how to get and when I tried to explain the disk, in simple English, the techies were at an utter loss. I have been told that the “super computer expert” will have a look at my computer and see what he can do. The earliest I will have my computer back is late next week, if ever.

And, I just found out (10/11) that “another plane crashed into another building” in Manhattan on the Upper East Side (where my Michi, my older brother and his pregnant wife all live) at some point “yesterday morning.” I hate being isolated from home.
I have no way to call home as my phone does not allow it or phone card calls and now I have no internet. And, I live in a country that is fast becoming a Global Super Power (make no mistake about it, once their currency becomes competitive with the dollar, China will have no need for the USA) with no need to be monumentally swayed by news of my home.

This sucks.

A lot.

MONKEY BUSINESS

I love my little monkey. My little monkey is my angel. He has decided, as all men can, simply to love me… no questions asked.

My little monkey is 6 years old and we began our love affair in the hallway from Grade 2 class 3 to Grade 2 class 4. You see, my little monkey is in class 4 and before I teach his class, I teach class 3. So, as he saw me on my way to teach his class the second week of school, he leapt up on to me and held on for dear life, giggling the whole way. There I was, waddling down the hallway with my spindly little man (who I later dubbed “monkey” because he loves to climb up on me and isn’t happy unless he’s actively dangling from some part of me) clinging to me; arms around my waist, legs around my knees. His sheer-joy laughter is infectious and I couldn’t help but laugh too. He is the abandon of children that most adults romanticize but very few children actually have.

Of course, as I was wrapped up in the sheer joy of such a small child so happy to see me, I happened to look up and there was the king of hotties or “Alpha Hottie” as my brain has dubbed him; the hottest gym coach of them all. As I’m making crazy animal faces at my little monkey who’s whole-body-hugging me, I look up to meet eyes with the hottest man I’ve ever seen in real life who, up until this point, has never looked me in the face. (The Chinese men are incredibly shy; any male who is even remotely within courting age and profession of me cannot look me in the face for the embarrassment. They most often cannot even speak to me. The few times that unmarried, courting-age-appropriate men have had to speak to me, they blushed and could not keep themselves still. My Brazilian Angel explained that while China makes communist claims, the Chinese are still remarkably Confuscist and thus any unmarried, white female of breeding age is the ultimate high-status mate. The great irony of this all is that the men who are remarkably inappropriate for me either through age or [lowly] profession are substantially more appealing as they have no problem flirting and talking with me.)

There I am, mouth agape in a crazy gesture of silliness; giggling, spindly boy laughing with abandon and shirt twisted around revealing obscene cleavage as Alpha Hottie is staring right at me. Now, if I was a normal human being, I would have died with embarrassment, run, hid and cried until the year was over. After all, China is the land of public propriety and never being caught indulging in anything less than appropriate behavior. However, I’m me, they have yet to come up with a stronger word than “shameless” and really, with a boy like my little monkey delighting in your silliness, airs of pretension for Alpha Hottie really stand no chance.

So, Alpha Hottie is staring at me, my little monkey is laughing and I’m looking like something out of Where the Wild Things Are. What to do? I just looked at Alpha Hottie, growled and nipped at him… to the delight of my little monkey. I then said “Ninhao” to Alpha Hottie so he would have to respond and would not be allowed to sit back in stunned amazement.

It took him a moment to respond; the sheer shock of such a public culmination of impropriety clearly having stunned him. But, like all good men, Alpha Hottie eventually came aroud, giggled too and said “hello” back.

I smiled broadly and continued to waddle down the hallway with my little monkey wrapped around me, overcome with joy.

Since our first waddle down the hall, my little monkey’s love for me has only increased. No matter where I am, if he sees me, he hurtles himself (all 40 pounds of him) at me as hard and fast as he can. He does everything he can to spend as much time as he can with his little arms wrapped tightly around me (preferably my neck but my waist, knees or arms will do).

In other words it’s safe to say my little monkey is one of my favorite things in this world.

So, today (10/11) I’m having a rather crap day emotionally. I’m just getting over being royally sick, the kids don’t give a damn as there were Japanese students visiting this week and while I’m feeling better, I have almost no voice.

I wasn’t supposed to see my little monkey today (we have class on Mondays) but he stopped by one of my officemate’s desk to speak with her. (I share an office in the Primary School with all the Chinese teachers who teach English grammar.) As soon as he saw me he came over to me very subdued (as the students know they will get hit if they’re out of line around a Chinese teacher much less if they’re out of line with the White English teacher) and just stood next to me, gently nuzzling in to my shoulder. I didn’t know it was my little monkey until I turned around and saw him, watching me shyly.

“Little monkey!” I cried out a little louder than I had realized.

Calmly and shyly, as he is not to be boisterous around the White Teacher under the gaze of Chinese Teachers, he smiled.

I opened my arms wide and enveloped him in a the biggest hug I could manage. Under my crushing hug, I felt my little monkey giggle a little. When I let go, he was glowing. There really is nothing like the sheer joy of a little one.

He returned to the teacher he was there to see, spoke with her and I returned to my lesson planning. As I was trying to figure out exactly how to make my lesson plan work better for students who don’t want to work, I felt a warm, small nose on my neck.

I turned to see my little monkey had returned after his brief meeting with his teacher to press himself against me. He dared not be so presumptuous (under the watchful gaze of his Chinese teachers) as to reach out to me, so he merely leaned. My right arm and the right side of my neck warmed up and again I wrapped my arms around him. However, this time he did not giggle, he just sighed. He stayed in my arms, nuzzled against me and let me hold him as he completely relaxed against me. It was the kindest, physical gesture anyone has ever given to me.

Goddamn, there is nothing sweeter than that. There are no words for the sort of love a little child can bring out in you.

WALLS

Xi’An’s downtown is a walled city. It is the old section of the city that is surrounded like the fortress it once was. Outside the walls is a moat with beautiful parks to stroll through. I love it.

Tuesday 10/10, my Brazilian Angle surprised me with the command that we were going to go downtown and check out the wall. So, I went and collected my paycheck (which they hand out in CASH by the way; never felt so much like a crazy bag lady) and told my Brazilian Angel I was taking her out for dinner.

We had dinner at Dicos because we were craving freedom fries (love you Frenchoise). Dicos is like a cross between KFC and McD’s (as that’s all the fast food that’s here in Xi’An) with a little egg drop soup for good measure. Their fries rock almost as much as McD’s and they serve pulled pork sandwiches with buns made out of sticky rice. It’s not like faux bread made out of sticky rice, it’s actual sticky rice squished into patty form and slapped on either side of the pulled pork.

We ate quickly and headed up to Maky Bakery (it’s a THE chain of bakeries around here; very chic). At Maky’s, we got two little tarts a piece and then strolled up to the North gate. We walked along the Northwest side of the outside of the gate in the dark. It was amazing to be so serene and think about all the history the walls have seen. Xi’An is a buzzing, modern metropolis but at the wall, time has stopped. And, unlike the museums I’m so accustom to, the Chinese in Xi’An live with their history. I went up to the wall, touched it and no one cared. As I stood there, I thought about all the people who headed to Xi’An and came to this wall, wondering if it had all been in vain. The wall is impressive and built to keep things out (or in, depending on where you’re standing) so if they decide at the last minute that in the few years you’ve been traveling that relations have deteriorated too much, you’re shit out of luck. You’re not getting in. I thought about that moment where their breath must have gotten caught in their throat as they waited for the final answer.

Finally, we turned around, deciding that 17 kilometers was a bit more “constitutional” than we were interested in.

When we reached the North Gate, we found a fleet of musicians playing in the dark to a crowd of about 30 people. Singers were lined up behind the musicians, one at a time taking turns to sing traditional Chinese songs.

One of the musicians offered me a seat and then told me to bring my Brazilian Angel along. (Being heads taller than everyone here and infinitely more pale, I’m easily spotted as a foreigner, even in the dark.) We sat there in the makeshift orchestra pit, listening to the traditional Chinese songs.

It must have been the fever I’ve been battling coupled with the exhaustion of being out way too late but I slid into the best headspace. Between the thought of Silk Route traders seeking entrance to Xi’An and sitting there among the traditional Chinese pastime of song, it just felt timeless. Sitting there in the dark, illuminated only by the lights at the tiptop of the wall, I watched the traditional instruments being played by people contented simply to spend time in the company of others. There was no sense anyone was pressed to be anywhere. There were no cell phones ringing. No horns were blaring. People were just sitting and indulging in a moment that could last forever. It simply was.

THE LOVER

Okay, if the notion of my sex life is unappealing to you, skip this entry.

Really.

So my Brazilian Angel lent me several DVD’s to comfort me in my time of illness, as a celebration of my open class and as thanks for hooking her up with an English Teaching job. I borrowed “The Story of O,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Lover.” Frankly, I borrowed “O” because it’s got such cache and I’ve never seen it. I borrowed “Brokeback” because my Brazilian Angel insisted I see it for cinematography. I borrowed “The Lover” because I’m madly in love with “Short Tony” but I’ve never seen anything with “Fat Tony.” (There are two actors in Hong Kong named “Tony Leung.” The younger one is nicknamed “Short Tony” and he was the bandit who steals Zhang Ziyi’s heart in “Crouching Tiger.” The older one is nicknamed “Fat Tony” [which he is anything but] and he has an amazing reputation though I have not seen any of his films.) I vaguely remembered “The Lover” being an important film in his oeuvre but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why.

Whoa. Yeah, I found out. It’s definitely something I would qualify as “pornographic.” As much as “O” was supposed to be sexy and racy, I found “O” to be tedious and self-indulgent. It epitomized everything I find unappealing about role-playing. “The Lover,” while tiresome in its dated (at least in my head) overt racism has some seriously lovely love scenes. The basic story is that a young girl (bordering 16) meets and is swept into an affair with a “Chinaman.” The narration is the young girl as an old woman and the voice is the gravely voiced goddess Jeanne Moreau.

Frankly, I’ve never been one for bodice ripping, colonial/forbidden affairs but I really liked this one. Hell, even the roles are inverted, as I like; the “Chinaman” has the upper hand financially against the broke white girl. Perhaps it’s the oppression of a sex-“free” China bearing down on me, perhaps it’s my own youthful lunacy looking me back in the face, perhaps it’s a little of those things and then some but wow, it made me realize just how empty my bed is. Even now, I’m plagued by the thought of a lovely gentleman having his way with me on the floor and then kissing me sternum to hip once we’ve both collapsed.

I watched the movie once and then immediately watched it a second time through the moment the credits started. While in college, I had an affair with an older man with whom I played similar games with the things that sound grown up verses the truly adult honesty. When I returned from Paris, what had been a passing interest blossomed into a lot more. I had apparently always held his undivided attention but something had (apparently) shifted in me to the point that he could no longer not advance. I was, for reasons I am unwilling to divulge, unable to discuss the affair with even my closest friends; telling my housemates I was with my friends and my friends I was with my housemates to buy time alone with him. He truly loved me and I was too damaged up to handle it at all, much less well. I toyed with him too much and eventually immolated the relationship, pushing him to take a position on the other side of the country. We had our stolen moments and, just like in the movie, every time I saw his very specific car I knew he was there for me.

OPEN SEASON

On Monday 10/8 I had my first “open” class. Mind you, I’ve got the flu (again) and no voice (again). Nonetheless, my school demands these things called “open classes” which is basically an observed class that all teachers who are free sit in on. After the class, the teachers find time to get together and critique/discuss the class. Because I’m the freak puppy “foreign” girl, EVERYONE attended my open class. We’re talking from the head of all the schools in my compound to the developer who owns the compound (and about 4 others around the city).

My class size is about 40 students and there were easily 60 people sitting in on my class. We’re talking a room full of at least 100 people all there for me. Fortunately, I got to choose which class I was going to use for my open class. Consequently, I chose the first class of the 7th grade. Frankly, those kids rock. They’re funny and eager and smart. They’ve got such amazing energy and it’s the only class where the students who don’t really follow the class not only don’t sleep, they police the class for people being disrespectful.

Okay. So, let’s recap. I’m American (to clarify: abroad, “American” is not really a selling point; for some reason, we’ve got the reputation as arrogant bastards desperate to save the world from itself). I’ve got minimal teaching experience. My colleagues have all been training to be a teacher since they were 15 years old. I’m ME. There is no reason on the PLANET for me to have the rapt attention of 100 people. And, the last time I had the center of that much attention, I was training New York’s first response disaster relief workers on emergency response as the Eastern Seaboard Blackout hit. In other words, my comfort level was nowhere near the auditorium I found myself in.

Nonetheless, I took a deep breath as the bell rang and focused on my students. Say what they will about me, my number one priority is my students. Ultimately, I can hop in a cab tonight, get myself to the airport and be on the next plane to New York before sunrise. I have choices about my life. They do not. They not only can’t leave Xi’An any time soon, they quite probably will never set foot outside of China. The Chinese culture is so much about saving face and the officials who sat in on my class certainly could have major effects on those kids’ lives.

Consequently, it may come as no surprise that my normally boisterous class was petrified. I could see it in their faces, clear as day. The boys I usually joke and pal around with could barely blink. The girls I usually gossip and trade complimentary giggles with could only do the forced, defensive smile of the sane person in a Terry Gilliam movie.

The deafening bell finished ringing and about 100 faces just stared at me, almost have of which were ready to wet themselves. I tapped into my “disaster relief worker calm reserve” (it’s the calm you manage to muster when the world is falling down around your ears but other people need you to keep it together more than you need to indulge in a meltdown) and do what I always do as I’m trying to collect myself; I smiled and said, “Okay.”

At the sound of “Okay” the entire room stood up and my mind went blank. This is part of no script I’m accustomed to. Where are my kids who tease me? Where are my girls who flit about the room? Where are my boys who laugh at the silly faces I make? Frankly, who the fuck is this class? I know the class I signed up to help me through this nightmare and these kids are not it. These kids are decidedly standing-on-ritual (literally) Chinese students.

I would like to think it was an inspiring moment but, tragically, all I could think of was that generic clip of “The People’s Court” that they always show where the Bailiff says something about, “Please rise for the honorable so-and-so.” Actually, that’s not totally honest. I was watching the tape inside my head but the voice inside my head was screaming, “FAST FUCKING FORWARD TO THE PART WHERE THE BLACK ROBE GETS THEM TO SIT DOWN!”

It must have been the nerves as my mental DVD player ate the DVD. The image stalled out as the black robe gets to the chair opens its mouth and then the picture pixilated. Which led to the train of thought, “Michi! Michi’s going to be a judge. What would she say?” And then I got another mental image of watching Michi in a black robe saying, “Please be seated.”

All of a sudden, I heard my incredibly mature voice from somewhere far away say, “Please be seated.” With that, they all sat down. In unison. And then, though I thought “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?” I smiled graciously.

I’d like to say I remember a lot about the class but the thing about slowing down the first 30 seconds of class for an hour and a half, is that the rest of the 45 minutes of class tends to be recorded in a blur (though I do remember glancing at my watch more than once thinking “There is NO way I’m going to be able to fill another X number of minutes.”). Essentially, I taught a class on “Introducing Things.” They have spent the last few weeks learning how to introduce themselves and then each other in real time (as opposed to just copying and multiple choicing it out of a book) in class. Consequently, they’re very familiar with the structure of the class.

I open the class with an extended example of real life introduction. I talk for about 10 or 15 minutes to warm them up to working on the fly and verbally. In that discussion there are a few loose questions that they may answer or I’m prepared to answer if they don’t quite get it. Then, I review the bulk of information in simpler terms; I break it down to 4 key questions. (This week it was: 1. What is it? 2. Who owns it? 3. What does it do? 4. What if they don’t have it?) I then break the answers to my example down in to four key sentences. (1. It is a [blank] 2. It belongs to [blank] 3. It is for [blank] 4. Without it [blank]) Once I have finished my example, we walk through one together, filling in the blanks as we go. (I use the “fill in the blank” route because it’s the most informal structure they’re accustomed to. Consequently, the students get both the structure they need as a springboard to expansion as well as an exercise in generating answers themselves.) Then, I break the kids into 4 “Teams.” (They sit in 4 rows of ten and each day, they sit in a different seat, so the teams are always different but the rows are always even.) They get two rounds to have as many team members as possible fill in the blanks. Between the pressure to answer quickly and the camaraderie that is so prevalent here, the kids don’t have time to be self-conscious or nervous. I also make a great effort never to reprimand them for “incorrect” answers. Rather, on the rare occasion there is a glaring error, I help them see another way out by offering them a few options. But, barring the occasional glaring error, they get nothing but praise during the game. I’ve decided to make my priority “communication” over “accuracy.” They get enough accuracy from their other classes. There is enough beat-down everywhere else. (We make a t-shirt out of “Beating will continue until morale improves.” China makes school policy out of it.) I just want them to get the message that they can use English, regardless of what the tests say.

Now, normally with my loud, energetic kids, the class ends with the game because we have so much back and forth during the rest of class. However, with the terror of the open class bearing down on the bambini, not so much. I was left with a full 10 minutes to spare.

So, I started walking around the room and pointed out things for the kids to introduce. I eventually had to go back to the observers and pick up things from them, to their surprisingly great amusement and entertainment. All in all, I had the day pegged as not a complete failure but not the smooth sailing I had hoped for.
As the bell rang, I returned to the stage upon which I’m supposed to stay all class period and as I turned around, the whole auditorium was standing again.

“Not again” I thought.

And then they all leaned over and said (in unison) “Thank you teacher.”

And I thought, “They’re bowing. A horde of people is bowing in my general direction. WHAT?”

As they came up, all I could say was, “Thank you for your time. “

It was definitely surreal but the most surreal part was the congratulations everyone gave me on the way out. Apparently, the class was the liveliest the teachers had ever observed and it was deemed a “great success.”

I dunno. We’ll find out Friday afternoon when I have the postmortem with my fellow English teaching colleagues.

IT’S MY PARTY AND YOU’LL HOST IF YOU WANT TO

My boss had been on my case about being invited over to my home. In fact, all the bosses had been. It would appear that my predecessor had been less than welcoming and so methinks everyone is a wee bit nervous about what I’m trying to pull over on the school. Ultimately, I am in the position of power in that I am the only English speaker they’ve got, I am the reason the parents are happy to send their students to my school and as you may or may not have noticed, Americans are not exactly banging down the door to take these jobs. My predecessor was so well aware of this fact that he felt it exempt him from doing his job at all, much less properly to say nothing of the fact that he feels it exempts him from normal, acceptable societal behavior. (ie. “creepy, old, lecherous white dude” is creepy, old and lecherous in any society; some societies are built less well to ostracize him than others) Consequently, when my boss doesn’t see me for a day or two, he freaks out that I’ve left (no joke, he fears I hopped a flight back to NYC) or that I won’t be going to class or some other doomsday scenario… none of which include the fact that he and I have conflicting schedules (that he created) and so we might only bump into each other on a Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon. His aggressive, paternalistic attention can be a bit tiresome but if you consider what your average Chinese woman would be experiencing her first time a million miles from home (and the way the men would anticipate her falling apart), it’s understandable. He’s doing his best to understand where my head is and for that I am infinitely grateful but what is beyond his grasp is that this is not only not my first time away from home but I come from a multicultural society and so being the “outsider” isn’t a role I’m entirely unaccustomed to. In fact, being “normal” and “of the group” as is the custom here is so abnormal in America that we tend to idealize people who’ve managed to create such a world for themselves. (Case in point: the Amish.)

All of these factors have conspired to make my boss, his boss, his boss’s boss and all the underlings more than a little nervous about my mental and physical wellbeing (if they only knew) and how that will affect my (and therefore their) ability to perform. I often think of the Twilight Zone episode where the spoiled little boy can, through telekinesis, cause anything to happen. Being a small child, he does not hesitate to kill anything that displeases him. Everyone in the town resents and worries about him because ultimately, if he’s not happy, everyone else has to pay for it.

I decided I had enough of the nervous patronizing and figured I’d throw a birthday party for myself in order to invite them all over, show them how well adjusted I am (shut the hell up; it’s relative) and show them how much I enjoy being here. I figured, if they see how much I’m willing to open up by welcoming them into my birthday celebration like family, they’ll understand I have no intention of abusing my position and as my birthday is but once a year, they cannot overextend the invitation or shift it to another day (as has a tendency to happen here). In other words, you can’t reschedule my birthday. And, I would be lying if the fact that the Moon Festival (a week in which it is expected that everyone be home with their family and therefore less available to the American) was this week didn’t make me feel more comfortable in sacrificing my birthday. As an American I don’t really feel a serious kinship with my colleagues by default, which means that while this party was a well-calibrated offering, it was a total sacrifice nonetheless.

On Tuesday (10/3), I called my Brazilian Angel and told her of my plan for my birthday the next day. She was very excited and immediately she started planning everything. We strolled to the supermarket (two blocks away from the compound but a half-hour walk because blocks are that big out here) and picked up her groceries as well as nibblies for my party. We decided we’d get the fruit more locally the next day. As we were checking out, her husband (le Francais) called, said he’d just gotten out of work and that he’d be over to pick us momentarily.

We piled into the Subaru Forester (gotta love that) and drove home. It was so cute watching my Brazilian Angel and le Francais. I had forgotten just how dependent men can be on their wives. My Brazilian Angel definitely knows her own mind and le Francais (an important international businessman) takes her lead on all the home tasks. Frankly, without a feminine influence, he’d be rather lost at home but he’s not resentful of her power. In fact, he maintains a healthy respect for all she does for him and takes her lead while maintaining lovely levels of chivalry.

We made it back to the compound and I hurried up to my apartment to invite my Chinese friend (of massage and tea fame). My Chinese friend is a wealthy self-employed businessman who has certain levels of show that must be attained or he’s disinterested, consequently, I knew he’d hate my home-grown party. Nevertheless, he knows everyone in the compound and the important thing was that I offered the invite in case he heard about the party. So, I called him and he told me to come over immediately.

I went over to his house and, once again, I was shown off like a new acquisition to his company. (Most people think of my friendship as the ultimate newfangled acquisition to impress their friends with; like some sort of on-demand-Femmebot) His company was an older gentleman and the gentleman’s teenage son. As I am the ultimate opportunity to experiment with English (and speaking English is seen as the key to a future in business), the son was commanded to speak English with me. Teenage boys are always beyond eager to speak with me, as I am considered very attractive but too old for teenagers to legitimately have to worry about courting, so I’m the best of both worlds (to say nothing of the fact that most teenage boys are about my height while the women are still as teeny tiny as the previous generation; I don’t know what it is about boys and a girl who can look them in the eye but that sexual thing seems to transcend all cultural boundaries). Teenage boys are so eager to speak with me, they often physically stop me in the streets to talk to me. The only caveat to the teenage-boy-motor-mouth is when their father is around. Their fathers are quite comfortable making ego-crushing comments and if the boys don’t speak well enough with me, they risk their fathers being ashamed of them. Consequently, whenever a boy is forced to speak with me in front of his father, I do my best to be utterly fascinated and entertained by any and everything he tells me. I even often stop to say to the father conspiratorially, “You must be so proud” especially if the father does not speak English (invariably the boy can’t translate the word “proud” as it is too conceptual a word for most teenagers and someone else around will translate for him making the boy look modest). It has been my personal experience that the largest impediment to learning a language is the abject humiliation of trying to speak with a native and in China where a man’s pride is everything, losing face in front of your father is the absolute worst. Details and fine points can be learned, what I can (and try to) offer is the broad notion that all that work actually accomplishes something with pretty “Western” (read: White) girls (the likes of which is so desirable, people bleach themselves and now ship their children off to Beijing for “Western Finishing School” in a society where it is unusual for any unmarried child, regardless of age, not to live with their parents). If you can charm me, my male (read: high powered businessman) counterpart cannot be far behind.

So the poor kid did his best and I was monumentally fascinated by the fact that he was studying business. We spoke a little more about sports and then the boy had to go. His father and my Chinese friend continued to speak for a bit and then the father left.

Once they were gone, I invited my friend to my birthday party and he did exactly as I expected. He started questioning how I was going to host so many people in my rather unfurnished home with a kitchen that has no working stove. I explained it would be an informal party and then he insisted we change the time and location to his house. He then invited me out for dinner with his mahjong friends and I begged off, explaining I had to meet up with my students for basketball.

I retuned to my apartment to call my Brazilian Angel and all my invitees to let them know about the change of plans. Fortunately, all of my “official” invitees had to beg off with familial commitments (as I had hoped for) and all the people I really wanted to attend confirmed.

Wednesday morning (10/4) was my birthday and I was awoken bright and early with a call from the Jude. She wished me a happy birthday and I said I thought there was something I should be wishing her as she is the one who did all the work. I was just along for the ride and haven’t died since; doesn’t seem like a lot of work for a big party. She told laughed at me (probably rolled her eyes) and we talked a little more. She hung up and then the phone started ringing off the hook.

My Chinese Boy Harem (as my friend Brett has dubbed them) called me, one at a time to wish me a Happy Birthday and pass along the happy wishes of their parents. My predecessor even called me because his “precocious” student who is now my friend had called him and told him that it was my birthday and so he needed to wish me a happy birthday. Several of my colleagues called me from their rural homes to wish me a happy birthday. It was really touching.

And then my boss started calling. He was utterly panicked about missing my party. He called, spoke with me to apologize and hung up. He called back to apologize again and then go cut off. He called again and promised to send me various items, asked which teachers were going to my party and then got in touch with them. My Chinese friend’s wife called me and we went shopping for the food for the party.
After the shopping, the phone continued to ring with well wishes. I tried to get ready for the party and what is usually a 15-minute process barely fit into two and half hours for all the calls.

Eventually, I made it out of the house and was only a few minutes late to the party. For all the people I invited, my friend invited twice as many. Fortunately, I had my Brazilian Angel there with me to hold my hand as I was, once again, turned into a showpiece. Teenage boys were commanded to speak with me. Teenage girls did their best to talk with me. Businessmen studied my “exoticism” and pronounced that their daughters would only study English with the “Great Beauty.”

We all settled down for lunch and we were served homemade mien-tao (“me-an tao”). Mien-tao is noodles and “mien” means “long.” (Mien-bao is “bread”. “Mien” has to do with the kneading process and how you pound out the dough into long strips before you shape the noodle or bread) So, on your birthday, you are supposed to eat “mien-tao” for a long life. As it was a traditional Chinese meal, we had a massive array of starters with everything from tofu to pigs’ ears to chili peppers and peanuts. Though I was not brave enough to try the pigs’ ears, I had some lotus root, shrimp, tofu, peanuts, cucumbers and some sort of meat sliced into dried, thin strips and soaked in chili pepper oil. (Like I said, if you’re not accustom to spice, do build a tolerance before you come to Xi’An.)

During the meal, my Brazilian Angel and I spoke rapid French to quietly talk between the two of us. I was lavished with presents (a broiler/stove from my Brazilian Angel, a box of the best pomegranates ever, tea, cigarettes[?], free massages, and the largest bouquet of flowers I’ve ever seen that wasn’t a funeral wreath) and compliments and then we left to stroll about the compound as the men collected to drink tea and play mahjong.

My Brazilian Angel and I returned to my apartment and chatted about the party. She commented how strange she found it that I was for show like that. She said she thought it was too bad that there weren’t other Westerners teaching in my school so I wouldn’t be so alone. She told me about all the Westerners who hung out in the city she had been in last year and how fantastic it had been for them to have each other.

I explained that being the show dog is the downside to the situation I specifically wanted. I never wanted to be trapped in a Western ghetto. If there were enough Westerners to provide me a community, the locals would be jaded enough and tired of Westerns. I wouldn’t be welcomed into homes. In fact, they would be tired of showing the new guy the ropes long before I got there. I wouldn’t have had nearly as much exposure as I’ve had to such a different culture. I didn’t come in to this looking for an extended vacation. I wanted as authentic an experience as could be provided a six foot plus honky girl. No bubble, thank you.

She eventually understood what I was seeking and she said as I was pushing 30, I would soon be facing serious questions and having quiet time alone to reflect would be good for me instead of going out to party. At that point I was too tired to explain that many of those questions have already bounced around my head (there’s a reason almost all my friends are in their forties) and the answer to “what am I doing with my life that is worth any value” doesn’t really exist because the question is bullshit. My life is what it is. There are things I wish were different about my life and there are things I wouldn’t trade for anything but, ultimately, I feel trapped by nothing (ie there is nothing in my life that doesn’t return more than it takes). My sum total is positive. I think that’s the best you can hope for in life. Period.

MORE MUSINGS

So, I’ve been doing more thinking about the differences between China and the US.

1. Jingle Bells. My retail friends will love this; Jingle Bells is played regularly here. At first, I thought it was for the ice cream man (because boy, they do love their popsicles in Xi’An) but actually it’s for the garbage trucks. Jingle Bells signals “Bring out your trash!”

2. “Nigga.” Okay, so that sound would get me shot in America. In China, it helps me teach. “Nigga” means “That” as in “That item over there.

3. “Jigga” I have no idea what that means in English but I’m sure it’s slang for something. In Chinese, it means “This” as in “This item right here.”

4. Languages. So, I just had a birthday party at a neighbor’s house. I spoke in English with everyone for breadth of conversation. I spoke in mangled Chinese for efficiency. I spoke in French with my one Western friend for privacy.

5. Basketball. The athletic guys in my compound all love to play basketball. My students love to bring me along to play basketball with them. I am the only woman on the court and no one (any longer) treats me like a “girl” on the court. I have completely and utterly proved myself in that I kick their ass (and they’re actually pretty good) and can (, will and have) body check anyone hard enough to knock them over if they get in my way. Play hard or die trying, I say. None of this is out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s identical to every court I’ve ever played at regularly my whole life. The weird bit is that the court is uneven, made up of faux grass that gets slippery with the evening dew (we can only play at night when everyone’s free) and you have to buy a basketball “card” for the exclusive right to play on said shyte court. They even have a security guard dude who walks around, randomly spot-checking cards.

6. New York. Everyone knows New York. Everyone thinks New York is a beautiful city. Everyone waxes poetic about New York with great specificity. I am becoming known around the compound as the “New Yorker.” The caveat is, they don’t usually know what country New York is in.

7. Gwar. There’s this band Gwar that my friend Justin listened to in college (he may still, haven’t thought to ask). They’re known for their onstage “antics” (their shtick is something about being aliens and then lots of “vomiting,” “bleeding” and other, um, “explosive” bodily functions during the show; the good seats in the house leave your clothes stained). Now, whenever I hear anything resembling the sound “gwar” I get the giggles at the thought of an alien version of Kiss on ‘roids. My problem is that “American” in Chinese sounds like “May Gwar An.” Yeah. Every time someone feels the need to know my origins beyond “New York,” I get the church giggles. I’m not sure if they think I’m crazy or really friendly but there you go.

8. Bed linens. So, you can buy bed linens here. They’re expensive, they’re luxurious and they’ve got no flat sheet. Huh? So, you get two pillowcases, a duvet cover and a mattress sheet but no flat sheet. I checked every single friggin’ store in a 10 mile radius. No flat sheets.

9. Tampons. This is a tampon-free country. Even the European stores don’t carry tampons. All they’ve got are teeny, tiny panty liners. What? And on an unrelated note, I want to thank my beloveds back home for the care packages now and in the future.

10. One kid. The Chinese are only allowed one kid per set of parents. Why did I think it was two? Your cousins and close neighbors are now what you call your “brother” or “sister.”

11. Envy. Even among my (few) Western friends, I am openly envied. From my skin color to the fact that I live alone; everyone sees all this hope and potential in me. It’s very strange. I don’t know when I signed up to be in Sondheim’s latest musical but here I am nonetheless. And to think, I always felt more suited to Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” not Robert from “Company.” (And yes, I truly am a gay man trapped in a woman’s body.)

12. My Gays. Speaking of Sondheim, I miss my gays. I miss everything about them. Everyone here is so… straight. I miss harmless differences. I miss the outsider humor. I miss people who grew up just outside societal boundaries and are therefore exceptionally conscious of the things that are taken as “given” (and therefore taken for granted) by most of the rest of the world.

13. Flirting. I miss flirting. I miss the “Will I… Won’t I” dance. They’ve got (behind closed doors) sensuality down pat but there’s no flirting. Okay, that’s not totally fair. The boys like being flirted with but they don’t flirt back. They don’t quite have the ownership of their own sexuality to counter my flirtation.

14. Napping. I love napping. This is a country of napping. They call it “having a rest.” It’s fabulous. You get a two-hour lunch in which lunch takes 15 minutes and the rest of the time is for napping. Who the hell do I speak to about getting it instated in the US?

A DAY LATE BUT NOT A DOLLAR SHORT

Today (10/2), it came to my attention that romance, in America, is dead. I spent the day at town about an hour outside of Xi’An with a colleague, her son, his friends and her husband. My colleague’s son is 16 years old, his male friend 17 and his two female friends are both 16. (In China, 16 years old is a high school senior and 17 years old is a college freshman)

Yesterday, I received a call from the top of a mountain carved into a sleeping woman from an 18 year old (who remembers my birthday and calls me in advance to make plans) because he thought of a beautiful conversation we had in a park once about said mountain. Today, I was escorted by two lovely, nervous, eager, bright teens who were so gentle I couldn’t help but feel the cynicism washing away.

The son of my colleague came with his father to pick me up and we immediately hit it off. About an hour into our conversation, he asked me if the people in China think I’m fat.

I instantly sank and thought, “Oh Christ, I spend everyday getting lecture, at some point, about how fat I am. Can I please, please, please have just one fucking day off? It’s my damned vacation!”

“Yes. I get told that a lot.” I told him.

He rolled his eyes. “You see, people in China are crazy. The women, they are always trying to be so skinny. It’s not healthy. You are healthy. You are not fat. You are very tall. You should not look like a skeleton. I think the women in China are so skinny they make themselves sick.” I remind you this boy is 16. He then proceeded to profess my “great beauty” in great detail. It was interesting to hear what, precisely, is esthetically pleasing to the Chinese. My nose is “tall and the perfect shape.” I have a narrow, English nose that is vaguely reminiscent of the Barrymore profile. We then briefly spoke of how some people have rhinoplasty to make their nose more “flat.” My lovely new friend couldn’t understand why anyone would want a “flat” nose. He then told me he loved the shape and the energy of my blue, Irish eyes. He explained the Chinese prefer a smaller lip, low cheekbones, a soft jaw line and pale skin. I explained how beautiful the West finds Eastern people. From their perfect, honey colored skin to their work-of-art face, they are all nothing short of beautiful.

We then talked about skin color (a great source of discussion around me as I seem to posses the perfect shade of pasty) and I talked about how in the US, we’ve got self-tanners in a vain attempt to turn our skin his delicious shade of honey. He explained that he hated his dark skin, that was too yellow (I was unaware of any indications of Jaundice) and that skin bleaches are all the rage here in China. He summed it up with “I think foreigners are most beautiful.” I said, “To me, you are foreign, so I agree.”

We continued to talk about movies and music and my new friend was amazed and excited to know that Chinese movies are seen at all in the US much less as much as they actually are.

We made it to my colleague’s flat and then went out for lunch; again, so much was ordered and I was teased about being a slow eater who is bad with chopsticks.
After lunch, we returned to my colleague’s flat to meet up with a childhood friend of her son. A tall, gangly young man of 17 with a hint of a lisp and a major in electrical engineering, I was immediately smitten with the lad. At about six foot four, the childhood friend was shyness and self-consciousness personified. He was nervous and too shy to make lots of eye contact at first. Within thirty seconds of meeting him, he professed how much he hated his height at least twice.

Knowing exactly what that feels like, I told him to stand up and we stood near each other. I said I had a brother that was taller than him and that girls “like me” like to date men as tall as him because we can wear tall shoes without having to worry. I told him he looked like he belonged in my family. He seemed to like what I had to say and he started making more eye contact.

We chatted some more, took tons of photographs and then were off to meet up with the two female classmates. As we were strolling to the car, the tall young man hopped off the curb to walk in the ditch to balance out our heights. (I recognized the behavior immediately as I often participate in it.) I said, “See, you are not so tall. I am now taller than you.”

“Yes. I do this often to balance out height.” He confessed.

“But we are no longer balanced, I am much taller. I think you are short.”

He smiled at that. If I feel like the occasional sideshow freak here, at least I’m not in adolescence and the awkward teen years. This poor boy needed to hear that the “exotic beauty” (shut the hell up; that’s what they were calling me) in fact finds his “weak points” assets. It must have worked because he used his English a lot, spent much time around me and translated everything for me.

However, the girls were a different matter. I intimidate the hell out of young women I intimidate (some young women are inspired by my presence and won’t stop talking but the rest simply cannot bring themselves to even look me in the eye) and, as I cannot really flirt with them, I was at somewhat of a loss. I asked them the occasional question and we had some good back and forth from time to time but for the most part, they shied away from me.

Once the girls were picked up and the obligatory comment about my beauty was made, we were off to the park for a lovely stroll. Parks in China are a lot like amusement parks back home; tons of rides, lots of candy stands and fun water activities. We strolled around a bit and debated going on one several of the rides but always decided against it. We strolled around a massive lake called “Youth Lake” that was built in three days (they apparently shipped in every single university student from Xi’An and in three days, the kids managed to build a sprawling lake).

After about an hour of walking around the lake (and making only about 3/4ths of the way) we decided to sit for a spell and just chat. For the 75th time today the camera was busted out and we took another 400 photos. The boys sat with me and reviewed every photo of me and told me how beautiful I am. I thanked them and then my colleague’s son repeated it, in earnest.

“I really mean it. You are the most beautiful. Look, beautiful” as he scrolled through more pictures of me, pausing on one and zooming in. “You are even more beautiful than your pictures.” I nodded, cynical to the intentions of any male insisting on being heard that I am beautiful. “I am not saying that to be nice,” he said in that earnest way that men really wanting to be heard always manage to muster. His childhood friend nodded.

“We say that because we mean it,” the young, tall man concurred.

I was really touched and I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “Thank you.”
Once our rest was over, we strolled some more. The girls and I spoke from time to time and the boys explained how they want to have Western girlfriends but that Western girls would find them ugly because Chinese people are ugly. I said I didn’t think that was true at all.

We finished up in the park and as my colleague and her husband returned to the flat to prepare dinner, the kids and I went window-shopping. I must admit, it is strange to see Maybelline and L’Oreal hair dye, to say nothing of Cover Girl singled out in the fancy shops as high end products. As we window-shopped, they asked if I knew anything of Korean movies and I tried to explain (without sounding like the obsessive freak that I am) that I do, in fact, enjoy the occasional Yu Ji-Tae flick. (Dear god, there is no man more beautiful that that man and there is nothing I wouldn’t give up for a moment alone with him. First born? Done. He is like some medieval statue God breathed life into and turned cold stone to warm flesh without altering any of the lyricism of line or distant melancholy of the mortal condition with the insertion of movement.) They had no idea who I was talking about and we eventually moved on.

As we returned to flat after window-shopping, we passed our thirtieth bride of the day (apparently today and yesterday are the two big days of weddings in China as they are considered incredibly fortuitous days to get hitched) and someone made the comment to me that, “Next year, that’s you.”

“Yeah, that would be nice and if you’ve got any takers, let me know.” I thought. Externally, I just nodded and smiled.

The girls parted ways with us and I was left with the two lovely young men. We chatted amiably for the rest of the walk and as we made our way to the apartment block they live on. The tall young man left us with warm goodbyes and my new friend and I made our way up to the apartment.

My colleague made us a dinner of crab and a ton of other things. I mainly ate crab because that’s what kept getting piled on to my plate. Stuffed full and my mouth on fire (the crab was cooked with equal parts hot peppers and cracked pepper), my colleague and her husband left the table for a moment.

My new friend looked down at his plate and spoke softly. “I am sad. I wish you had a younger sister. One my age.”

It was the best compliment I have been paid in a long time. I am surrounded by a world of young men on the cusp of adulthood and instead of being bitter, cynical, jaded and entirely too hip for thou, they are beautiful, open, earnest and romantic. Poetry has been lost in America. Cynicism, while occasionally entertaining, has turned us afraid of sentiment and fearful of true risk. A broken heart here is of monumental, societal proportions. A broken heart at home is either one more reason you should learn to be cautious and “not put yourself out there” or something the pop machine cannibalizes to make a buck.

This is so what I craved when I was young. I wish I had had access to it when I was young; it would have saved me a lot of time and wasted rage.

TEA TOTELER

On Thursday (9/28), my Brazilian Angel returned from her sojourn abroad in Europe. She’d left on Friday, the 15th and, frankly, I had really begun to miss her.

Bright and early Thursday morning, my phone rang and her soft voice eked through the phone line. Would I like to come to breakfast tomorrow, she asked.

I nearly leapt through my skin. Duh, of course!

I floated through the day, elated about seeing my Brazilian Angel and hearing the stories of “back home” (aka France). I promised myself I’d get some good sleep and be bright and fresh to see her in the morning.

However, the thing about the promises I make to myself is that I almost always find myself forced to break them. The reason I found to break my promise came in the form of my Chinese friend (of Muslim Quarter and massage fame) and an invitation to join he, some friends and his family for tea at the tea shop on the compound.
At first I resisted. He called and it was already 9pm. I knew that if I went out now I wouldn’t be home until late and I didn’t want to be overly tired for my meeting the next morning with my Brazilian Angel. But, my Chinese friend being my Chinese friend insisted. I must say, one of the things I am truly ambivalent about is how persistent the Chinese can be. When they are offering or demanding something wonderful, it is such a blessing as Westerns often demure at first blush and we miss so much because of that. The flip side to that is when they are offering or demanding something less-than-wonderful it takes a lot of energy to stand your ground. Coming from the West, where people tend to fear me considering my size and stern appearance, tenacity to sway me against my will is nothing I’m all that accustom to.

Nonetheless, truly ambivalent about going to the tea shop, I pulled my act together, put on my friendly face and went out to meet my Chinese friend. As I came around the corner of the row of apartment buildings to the main drag of store fronts, I was greeted warmly by his wife out front of the shop.

Up half a flight of stairs (as all shops on the main drag are) and immediately through the glass double doors sits the low tea table. Around the outer edge of the table are the traditional teacups (think porcelain shot glasses) sitting on their wooden tray. On three of the four sides of the table sit guests. On the forth side sits the tea hostess. Before the hostess and rather centrally located on the table is a large, butcher block-like wooden tray with a small plastic hose attached to it. The wooden tray is intricately carved with designs of trees etched in bas-relief around the outside of the tray. In the center of the tray is a slotted trap of some sort. Atop the tray is a teeny, tiny teapot; the sort you see in tea shops and wonder what the hell anyone could want with a teapot no larger than three inches in diameter. Next to the tray is a glass teapot (they type with the sachet column in the center) sitting on a Bunsen burner boiling away. The tea looks positively red-wine-like. Also, half a small gourd with a strainer sits by the teeny tiny teapot. At the far end of the large butch block-like tray is a cup of various carving and brushing implements, the likes of which I have not seen since the last time I took a sculpture class.

As I entered the tea shop, I was greeted with the Chinese warmth and the customary cloud of cigarette smoke. I took my seat between my Chinese friend’s wife (to my left) and a small boy (to my right). To my friend’s wife’s left was another woman (I later discovered was a doctor). To the little boy’s right was his father (a wealthy business man). To his father’s right was my Chinese friend. To my friend’s right was the husband of the lady doctor. Between the lady doctor and her husband sat the tea hostess. Everyone was charming and (to my eternal confusion) fascinated by me.

If I can make a broad generalization, it has been my experience thus far that large groups of Chinese adults consistently want to know about money and how it works in America while the kids want to know about American fashion and style. The very simple notion that, while the dollar is (at current) approximately eight times the yuan, America is also eight times as expensive as China is definitely hard to explain through a translator. In fact, in terms of buying power, the Chinese yuan in China is just (if not a tad more) powerful than the American dollar. So, in that respect, it’s sort of a one to one ratio. We spent much of the evening coming up with items and they asked me how much said items would cost in the States. After a while, I think the concept finally made it through translation as the parents made the firm decision to send their children to work in America and then we moved on.
Curious about all the implements on the table, I asked my friend just how they all got used. My friend (giddy and lovely as ever; I came to realize after watching him constantly touch and stroke his male friends that he’s just a toucher and I shouldn’t read into his touching) showed me the raw tea that we were drinking. It came in a disk about a foot in diameter and pressed hard to the point of sounding like porcelain when you tap it. He showed me how the tea hostess pries up pieces of tea and then dunks the tea in the large Bunsen burner teapot to boil.

The tea hostess then came over to show us the shop; a beautiful place with shelves full of fancy teas and tea accoutrements. She explained (and my friend translated) how the tea we were drinking was best when aged up to fifty years. She showed us different disks of tea in their original cheese cloth/rice paper wrapping and dated each one. A disk of tea that was fifty years old would be worth several thousand yuan.

She then showed me the statue of Quan Yin in the back of the store and I told her that the Jude at home has a statue of Quan Yin. You see, Quan Yin is the Bodhisattva of Compassion (a “Bodhisattva” is like a Buddhist “patron saint” only in Buddhism, once you attain “prajna” or enlightenment, only if you postpone Nirvana and return to help mankind are you a Bodhisattva; imagine a Saint who arrives at the Pearly Gates and says, “You know what, no, I’ve got go back down there and help. I’ll be back in a bit.”) and she is most directly linked with the care of children. I explained what I knew of Quan Yin and everyone seemed to be impressed. Thanks mom! Through my Tibetan fetish, I was able to place the chanting the tea hostess was playing and further impressed everyone with my knowledge of Buddhism.

We returned to our seats and spoke through my friend who acts, constantly, as a translator even though my Chinese comprehension is picking up and I’m able to follow many simple conversations. She poured me another cup of tea.

The tea pouring is certainly a sight to behold. She fills up one pot with water and pours that into the glass teapot atop the Bunsen burner. The tea boils and turns the color of a good cabernet. As the tea reaches the appropriate temperature, she places the gourd with the small filter in it atop the teeny tiny teapot and pours enough to fill the teeny tiny serving pot. The gourd filters out any fine particles left in the tea and you are left with a clear liquid.

I can truly say I’ve never had a perfect cup of tea before. It’s always been either too strong or too weak or over or under steeped. This was the perfect cup. The flavor was present without being demanding. It was pleasant and light and it is advertised as a tea that lowers blood pressure, settles the stomach and is good for weight loss (I think it was called something like “Po” or “Bo”). Frankly, it was not only the best tea I’ve ever had but it was also the most calming. We all joked around and chatted some more.

I must say, I am enjoying being teased a bit. There’s nothing quite like going to some place utterly foreign and being so accepted that they finally become comfortable enough to tease you. I’ve noticed that the attitude has gone from shock and awe that I can use chopsticks to teasing me at the fact that I am, while remarkably good for a Westerner, remarkably bad for a Han.

And as I write this, my favorite college student (remember the somber 18 year old still in love with a girl back home?) called me. In the park, we had spoken for a while about the mountain memorial to China’s only self-declared Empress that looks like a sleeping woman. Today is Chinese National Day (their 4th of July; October 1st) and so everyone returns home for a visit. My college friend returned to his home, climbed the mountain and called me from the top. He told me it was beautiful and he wanted to share that with me. I asked if the butterflies unique to the area he had spoken about were out and he said he saw one. He was so happy to be able to reach out and share that moment in English and once my high of getting that phone call wore off, I wanted to bitch slap my predecessor. There’s so much beauty to be had here if you just shut the hell up, put aside your cultural hang-ups and listen but so many Westerners waste that opportunity with their assurance that they understand the one “real” way to get things done. There’s plenty of time to be Western at home; embrace the brief moment when you’re not!