Pretty Woman Spitting: An American's Travels in China Read online

  It was so frustrating not being able to express our thanks to his family. So, when we heard that the bus had no AC, we sucked it up, dragged Charles onto the bus, and pulled down the dingy windows. Luckily, there were lots of seats open on this bus and we could all spread out on two seats apiece and sweat by ourselves.

  Charles told us that he would keep watch so that we could go to sleep on the bus this time. My hair was whipping my face as I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the stale smell of dust and body odor emanating from myself and the other passengers.

  I closed my eyes as the bus pulled out of the parking lot and started bumping along the road towards Nanjing.

  When I hazily woke up, I thought that I saw hiking boots topped by white linen pants, propped on the back of the seat across the aisle from me. No one in China wore clothes like that. I wondered if my psyche was making me see things. Most Chinese men either looked like punk rockers or cookie cutter businessmen with black shoes, khaki pants, a belt, a buttoned down shirt and a man purse.

  I leaned forward and followed the linen pants up to the waist. There I saw a blue T-shirt covering a lean, tall white guy reading a book. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I shot back in my seat feeling like a schoolgirl who had just seen the captain of the football team bending over in running shorts.

  I wondered if the deliriously hot Chinese sun was cooking my brain. I hadn’t seen a Western man in at least a month. I hadn’t seen a handsome one in longer than that. My heart was pounding as I eased my head around the edge of the seat and tried to check him out without being seen. I had become Chinese. I couldn’t make out the writing on his very thick book, but I was glad that his head was stuck in it. He had brown, wavy hair, pale skin and nice arm muscles that were showing slightly under his shirt. I looked to my left and saw Margaret pressed between the seats in front of me like a piece of bologna in between a bun.

  “Do you see what I see?” I whispered.

  “I saw him first,” she said.

  “Do you think he’s American?”

  “Can’t tell. Linen pants?”

  “Yeah, I can’t tell either.”

  “Get Charles to talk to him.”

  I looked up to see Charles across the aisle curled around the side of his seat unabashedly staring at the man. His eyes were dancing as he looked at me and started pointing in the direction of the mystery foreigner.

  “Charles…” I hissed. “Ask him where he’s from.”

  “Wha?”

  “Ask him. Where he. Is from.”

  “Wha? You are so crazy, Lily!”

  “Shh. Charles, damn it, talk to him”

  “Huh?”

  After more pointing and hand motions, Charles understood what we wanted him to do. He rose and moved to the row in front of the mystery man and leaning into the aisle he said,

  “You are a foreigner.”

  “Huh?” the man said.

  Charles looked over at me with wide eyes.

  “I’m sorry; this is my student, Charles. He’s wondering where you’re from.”

  The man closed his book and placed it in his backpack and then slid to the seat beside the aisle. At this point, we all had our heads in the aisle, anticipating his response.

  “I am from France.” He slurred.

  He had one of those fake-sounding French accents. He gathered his things and moved to the seat beside me. Although there was a slight body odor that I noticed immediately, he was welcome company.

  “I’m Leanna and this is Margaret, we’re Americans,” I said.

  “Of course. You look like ze Americans.”

  “I am Thibaut (said Teeboo).”

  “Say that again,” Margaret said.

  “Thibaut, like ze Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Tybalt?” Margaret asked.

  “Yes, zis is ze English for Thibaut.”

  “Well, you know we actually thought you were American at first, but the linen pants threw us off,” I interjected.

  “Ze pants?”

  “Yes. Most American men don’t wear linen pants.”

  “Zey are cool in ze summer,” he said with a furrowed brow.

  Thibaut had been hiking in a mountain range near Chizhou. He was living in Nanjing for the year, doing research and trying to learn Chinese. We became travel buddies that day and he met us for a weekend in Shanghai. Seeing Thibaut made me remember that I was a woman for the first time in months. While I couldn’t help but think about kissing that smelly Frenchman, it made me miss George more than ever. Thankfully, Thibaut had a girlfriend in France and he missed her, too. One guilty conscience avoided.

  (me, Thibaut and Margaret in Nanjing)

  THE LITTLE RASCALS

  I had to start thinking about the students’ final exam. I was worried about making the tests too hard. I could never tell whether they understood what I was saying during classes and I made sure to only test them from their text book and the notes I had written on the board.

  I decided to let my sophomore classes use their books. Weeks before the final I wrote clearly on the board:

  “You can use your book and notes on the test.”

  I thought there would be no confusion. Then, I went through the book and the notes and made it as simple and straightforward as possible.

  When the exam day came it was a Friday and I was testing the class of sophomores that I had met on my first day teaching. I had prepared two tests to give out to every other student. I wrote the rules on the board:

  “You can use your book and your notes.”

  “You can not use your neighbor.”

  “You have until the end of class to complete the exam.”

  I passed out the tests and all forty-five heads went down to work. I had brought magazines to occupy myself while they worked. I flipped open a three-month-old Vogue that I had read through ten times already and I started looking at purses.

  When I glanced up the first time, I was flabbergasted. The students seemed to be working in pairs, whispering, pointing at the questions, looking over their shoulders and comparing notes. I walked around, warning them that I would take their test and fail them. They seemed to stop working together, but I couldn’t be sure. They could easily whisper in Chinese and I wouldn’t hear them or know what they were saying.

  At the end of the exam, the students started to really cheat, talking to each other while I was collecting papers and lingering to help the last struggling students. Upset and confused, I couldn’t believe that they would cheat so blatantly and stupidly.

  My next class cheated even worse. I caught one student texting another for answers with her phone. She hid it poorly under her shirt. She was in the second row. Another girl, who was sitting on the front row, sat still as a mouse for thirty minutes until her neighbor was finished taking the test. Then, when the first student passed in their paper and I momentarily turned my head, she grabbed her neighbor’s paper and started furiously copying the answers. It was an open book test. And they each had a different version. When I saw this, I took her test and her neighbor’s.

  It was easy to see who cheated because they had copied straight from their neighbor’s test and gotten every answer wrong. When I asked Linda about this she shrugged off my questions and said,

  “You cannot stop them from cheating.”

  She didn’t seem to want to discuss it further and she didn’t seem upset that the students cheated on my exam or that they cheated in general. I wanted to say to her,

  “You can’t stop them from cheating, but you can scare the hell out of them if they do.”

  I couldn’t be sure if cheating was allowed in China or not. Linda spoke of this behavior like they were little rascals that stole cookies out of a jar during the holidays. It seemed like she thought I should just shake my head at them and go about my business. I did not. And I was even more pissed off by her dismissive tone. I wanted to stop them from cheating by damn.

  Margaret was not as upset as I was. She saw it as the students hurting the
mselves and she wasn’t going to let it bother her. I wanted to feel that way, too, but I couldn’t. I made up more versions of the test for the next classes.

  When I asked Charles about the mass cheating, he said the same things that Linda said: that you couldn’t stop the cheating, that it was a bad habit and that the pressure to excel was great. I could only think that this last excuse was complete bullshit. If the pressure to excel were so great why wouldn’t these students review their notes and chapters? Then they would know the answer to, “Who is the current American president?”

  I told Charles that I had decided to make up all new tests and his plump mouth curled into a smile,

  “Ah, the fox.”

  Charles told me not to worry about the students cheating. He wanted me to feel like Margaret and just get over it. In the end, I did, but I was still very confused by this behavior.

  I called my sister Kristan and talked to her about it. She told me that if a woman wore shorts in Nepal, it was the most obscene and offensive thing she could do. That is why all Nepali women wear long skirts or pants – Nepali culture is as offended by naked legs as our culture is by cheating. Kristan told me to keep asking for answers about it and to read books so I could understand it better and not be so upset. I knew she was right.

  Finally, I asked Eva what the cheating was all about. She explained it in a way that helped me understand and move on. She said,

  “I know that you think this habit the students have is terrible. It happens all the time. In Chinese culture the students want to get top marks and to help each other. Even in my class, the students cheated when you were not looking.”

  I had been so happy with my “good class” because I thought not many of them cheated and most of them made good grades. I was sure that they had studied and found the test easy.

  It turned out that they were only better at concealing the cheating. I was disappointed when Eva told me this, but it made sense. These students clung to each other like school children and they were taught by situation to be codependent – the way they lived together for years and had the same teachers in the same classrooms. No wonder they felt that they couldn’t pass my test without each other’s help. They were lucky that Eva had softened me on the matter before I gave out final grades. Initially, I wanted to fail the ones that I knew were cheating. Instead, I did an internal headshake and I realized that while the students were the ones taking tests, I was the one learning the most by living in China.

  SO LONG, FARWELL…

  Two nights before we left Wuhu, Linda informed Margaret and me that there would be another dinner with the heads of the university. I wasn’t really up for an evening of raw lobster again and I hadn’t finished grading my exams, but Linda wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  That night Margaret and I were picked up at 5:30 p.m. Mr. One drove us to a restaurant near the downtown. Again, we were taken to a large room with a large round table and a Lazy Susan. The many smiling Chinese directors that we had met that first night in Wuhu greeted us. They were all holding lit cigarettes and a cloud of smoke had collected on the roof of the room.

  There was a couch in the room where we sat as more people gathered. Then, starting with Linda, we took a picture with each of the people that were there. That’s what I call a singlet. The Chinese we met – and the ones I’ve seen all over New York – love singlets.

  (me, already sweaty, Dean Li and Margaret)

  There was Dean Li, Director Li, Director Huang, Director Hu and Ms. Gu that I remembered from the first night. We were told that the president of the school couldn’t join us that night to say farewell.

  After we were finished with pictures, waitresses brought in tea. Although it was already hotter than Georgia asphalt in the room, I was getting used to drinking scalding tea on a boiling summer day. At one of our tutoring sessions, I told Linda that people in the southeast of America drink cold tea in the summer. Then, I asked her how the Chinese drank hot tea in the summer and stayed cool. She responded,

  “We sweat.”

  Well, duh.

  After one small cup of tea, my shirt was already sticking to me. I could feel circles of perspiration forming under my arms. Margaret and I carried our tea with us to the enormous round table. I sat between Linda and Margaret.

  The waitresses came out and poured us glasses of watermelon juice and the white liquor we drank the first night. Margaret and I tried to refuse by saying that we had a lot of work to do, but Linda insisted that we drink.

  Director Li started the toasting. Linda translated.

  “We are so happy that you are with us in our China. You American teachers are very beautiful and very healthy. We hope you enjoyed your stay in China. We wish you safe travels home.”

  We drank.

  Then three other directors gave similar toasts.

  We drank more.

  Later Margaret and I wondered why they kept saying that we were “healthy.” We thought that maybe it was a reference to Dianne. Then it dawned on us they thought we were plump.

  (Directors, Margaret and Linda at our final dinner, pig legs barely visible on bottom left corner)

  (Directors and Dean Li toasting the banquet)

  After Margaret and I gave a toast via Linda, we all drank one more shot of the white liquor and the feast began.

  The waitresses brought out plates of tofu, fish, curly brown mushrooms and steamed vegetables. I was happily piling things into my bowl that I knew I could eat. Then, I looked up and saw a big pile of pig’s feet circling around the Lazy Susan. As they motored around the table towards us, I noticed they all started just below the knee joint. They were not pig’s feet. They were pig’s legs! There was a stack of clear plastic gloves sitting next to them. When they got around to me, I turned to Linda. Just as I was about to decline, she looked at me and said,

  “These are a delicacy. They are my daughter’s favorite food.”

  I couldn’t pass one up after that. I would have been so disappointed if Linda had refused to try fried chicken in America. Linda grabbed the Lazy Susan with her hand, and I pulled on a plastic glove, put it on my right hand, took the smallest foot I could see and placed it in my bowl.

  Margaret just shook her head and said,

  “I don’t eat meat.”

  Wondering how to go about gnawing on the thing, I held the foot up in my gloved hand for the longest time. It was glistening and dark brown. To me, it looked exactly like a living pig’s foot would. I brought it to my mouth and began to gnaw.

  It tasted just like a hunk of fat you might accidentally eat with your steak, but the fat was the entire bite that I had to force down my gullet. I swear there was no meat on this foot. I wondered how people could eat this fatty foot and consider it a delicacy. I asked Linda,

  “This is mostly fat, right?”

  “Yes, it is good to your skin.”

  I found that to the Chinese I met, all of their foods was “good to” some part of the body.

  I gnawed on the foot some more in order to seem grateful. I could feel the grease coating my lips and part of my face. After four and a half months of eating things that would turn my stomach, I didn’t feel the urge to vomit, but I did want to toss the foot under the table and wipe my mouth off inside and out.

  I placed the foot on the side of my plate under my bowl, which was closest to Margaret, hoping that Linda wouldn’t see how much fat was left. Later, Linda tried to get me to eat another. At the end of the meal, she took the leftover feet home to her daughter.

  As I sat sweating in my seat, the last course was served. It was the noodles and rice course. Or what I thought of as the filler. Linda told us that the directors wanted to know if we preferred rice or noodles. We chose noodles. I was already full, but Linda urged me to eat two helpings.

  Before we left, Linda told us that the directors wanted to take us to a karaoke bar. We tried to refuse, telling her again how much work we had to do. Then, Linda said,

  “Tonight we will sing and
drink wine and dance in the streets. I must admit I love to sing.”

  It was then I realized that Linda was tipsy.

  We rode to the walking street in a car with Director Huang, the head of the English department of our school, and his driver. There, we walked into a building with neon Chinese signs that were overhead and a large KTV sign. The inside of the building looked like a movie theater lobby. There was patterned carpet, vibrantly painted walls, low lights and a counter for checking in. Director Huang walked to the counter to take care of the details. Meanwhile, Linda took Margaret and me to the room we would be using.

  The karaoke I saw in China was done in individual rooms. We found this out for the first time when we went out with the Aston teachers to sing karaoke.

  In our karaoke room there was a long couch that wrapped around two sides of the room, a large screen TV and a control panel on another side and portraits of Chinese pop stars with spiked hair and flashy outfits hanging on the royal blue walls.

  Minutes later, Director Li, Dean Li, Director Huang and his driver came into our room. A female and two male attendants carrying large bottles of beer, plastic cups and plates of fruit followed them. Linda poured us all a cup of beer. Then Margaret and I were encouraged to pick a song to sing. We chose “Country Roads” by John Denver.

  I thought how the words made sense to our situation.

  “Country roads/take me home/to the place/I belong.”

  We were going home. To a place where we belonged, where the food would agree with us and karaoke was usually done in front of a noisy, random bar crowd.

  Next, Linda and Director Huang sang a Chinese song. Margaret and I were sipping our beer when Director Li came over and asked me to dance by outstretching his hand to me. I stood up nervous about what kind of dancing we would be doing. Before, I could ask, he had pulled me close to him, holding out my right arm in a stiff embrace. I was a head taller than he was and we were waltzing. Director Huang’s driver was dancing with Margaret. By this time, sweat was pouring down my back and thick rings had formed under my arms. At the end of the song, I was glad to plop back down on the couch and take a large swig of beer.