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

  Traveling with Linda and Tao, we walked from the hotel to a ferry and took a ride over the Huangpu River to the fancier west side of Shanghai. I was glad that I’d worn my North Face jacket and an extra undershirt as the cold air from the river sliced past my face.

  Our ferry was packed with thin, black haired people propping up their motorcycles and bicycles. They were probably all heading to work for the day.

  You can really learn something about a city from watching the locals go to work. These people were just like New Yorkers. They were in their own world, taking multiple modes of transportation to get to their final destination. They were big city folk like you’d find anywhere. The main difference I saw was that they were mostly all Chinese. I only saw a handful of my white-skinned brethren that morning.

  On the other side of the Huangpu River, we took a short walk and stopped at a Starbucks attached to a giant mall not unlike those in America so Linda and Tao could experience American-style coffee. It was the last thing I wanted to spend my morning doing. I wanted to do Chinese things. If I had known then how much I’d come to miss my old haunts, how starved I would become, I would have ordered a Grande and savored it until the last drop.

  Then we walked along the Bund, which is what the Chinese call the buildings and docks on a portion of Zhongshan Road. Linda told us that it was the old British section of Shanghai. There, we saw a beautiful row of European-style buildings that seemed so oddly out of place in the middle of a Chinese city. It boldly said to me, the West was here.

  (the Bund)

  Two hours was all the time we had in Shanghai that morning. The only monument that was recognizable to me was The Oriental Pearl Tower, which is a TV tower. It is not a piece of artwork or a space shuttle launch (as I had always imagined). It looked like a gleaming silver and burgundy exclamation point put in the middle of Shanghai to prove what a modern and exciting city it is. To me, it was the Eiffel Tower of Asia and it was beautiful. Feeling the rush of energy and awe that comes from seeing new places, I thought then that I could go to a new city every day for the rest of my life.

  (The Oriental Pearl Tower)

  No one paid much attention to Margaret and me that first day in China. I’ve since decided that Shanghai isn’t the real China, though. Not by a long shot. It’s one of those globalized places that looks like a computerized movie set. Everything seemed big, shiny and intense. That’s not the China that I came to know and think of as the real China, the interior. May the real China never vanish.

  Parts of Shanghai are more like the smaller cities and rural countryside, but I only saw them briefly as I gazed out of the window of the school van as we headed west to start our lives in Wuhu.

  (Linda, Tao and Margaret)

  WELCOME TO OUR CHINA

  That first full day traveling in China, I wondered, where the hell are all the Chinese? After hearing about the 1.3 billion Chinese in China, I’d expected to see rows of apartment complexes lined up like LEGOs as far as the eye could see. During the five-hour drive from Shanghai to Wuhu, I’d mainly seen vast fields with a few workers squatting down amongst the vegetation.

  When we arrived in Wuhu, I finally got an idea of what China would really be like. Anhui Normal University came out of nowhere as we traveled along a four-lane, dusty highway. When the van slowed down to enter the campus, which I was told was twenty minutes outside of downtown Wuhu, all I could see was a row of poorly built shacks with faded, tattered awnings, selling fresh vegetables and dried goods on rickety tables on each side of the highway. The shacks, which were crammed side by side, had open fronts that were only about ten feet wide, and all seemed to be selling the same things. It reminded me of the Chinatowns in New York and L.A. except I didn’t see any faux Prada or Gucci bags or oversized Chanel sunglasses.

  Next to the row of shacks, on the right side of the street, there was a red marble wall with large brass Chinese characters on it – that was the school sign. Further past the school sign on what looked like a sidewalk running along the highway, Linda pointed out freestanding picnic tables next to street vendors serving food that steamed and formed low-lying clouds in the cold winter air. She said, “This is the school’s food street. You can go there and eat prepared meals for a good price.”

  This called to mind the warning I had read on the Center for Disease Control’s travel health website, “Do not eat food purchased from street vendors.” I knew then that I would have no choice but to disregard it.

  Looking at my new home, I couldn’t help but wonder where, in all these stands, the college we would be working for was.

  (the road across from Anhui Normal University)

  The van slowly turned into the small entrance by the school sign, making sure not to hit the meandering people that didn’t seem to be bothered by a large vehicle approaching them. Then, for the first time, I could see that we were turning onto an actual college campus with real, sturdy-looking, white cement buildings and open grassy areas where students could congregate. There was even a large basketball court with at least twenty hoops. The school looked like other small colleges in America. It was serene with young people strolling around and sitting on benches and in groups with open books. I’d been wondering if I would be teaching at one of the picnic tables out on the food street.

  (a road on the Anhui Normal University campus)

  Mr. One parked near a row of grey, cement, apartment buildings, where we were told we’d be staying. I stepped out of the van into the frigid Wuhu winter and I might as well have stepped off the Discovery space shuttle. I was on planet China. A minority for the first time in my life, all eyes were on Margaret and me like we were under a spotlight in a dark Broadway theater. I saw people point and stare at us, laugh out loud and even start to walk toward us.

  “The students are very excited to see two new foreign teachers,” Linda said to us excitedly. That’s what I was then, foreign. I’d never been that before and it was so strange to hear myself talked about in this way.

  I felt like a zoo animal – The Rare White American Female! In most Western countries, we have no idea what it’s like to go to a place with the kind of homogeneity that exists in China. Even where I grew up in the Deep South, we at least had black, white and 1% other. I have never in my life felt the need to stop and openly stare at someone because of his or her general appearance, except maybe at a Halloween party.

  The way the Chinese were looking at me made me wonder if this was how handicapped people and little people felt when their abnormality caused people to turn, even for a brief moment, to glance at them.

  All I could do was stand still and stare back at these people. My thoughts were interrupted when I heard Tao say, “Bye bye.” Then two, small, eager boys ran toward us speaking excited Chinese to Linda. She told us that they were two of Dianne’s students and that they would help carry the bags to our apartments.

  Margaret had told me on the phone that there might be one more Western teacher, but she wasn’t sure. As we walked towards our building, Linda explained that Dianne, who Linda called Diana, had come to the school from Australia two days before. And she had already started teaching classes.

  I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to carry my overstuffed bags myself, but I wondered how these two spindly boys, with pencil-thin arms and waists most girls would kill for, would carry our bulging packs. Mr. One ended up carrying Margaret’s bag and the boys struggled to carry mine.

  “My name is David. Dina is our teacher. Do you know Dina?” squeaked one, a prepubescent boy with square, red glasses framing his sweet-looking face.

  I explained that we had not yet met her, but I could tell they suspected all us Westerners knew each other. The two boys, David and Potter, struggled to help carry my bag up the two flights of cement stairs. My apartment was on the third floor in an open-air style building in the center of similar basic, gray, cement buildings. Huffing, the boys dropped the bag inside my apartment and left me to check it out saying, “See you!” in singsong
unison.

  My apartment was across a breezeway from Margaret’s. Dianne’s was up another flight of stairs in the same building. Before that very moment, I had no idea whether I would be sleeping on the floor, in a dorm room or in a bed smushed up next to Margaret. I’d left behind five roommates in Atlanta. Now, for the first time in my entire life, I was going to be living alone.

  As I looked around the inside of the apartment, I was relieved to find a bedroom, kitchenette and a living room with a small balcony that had clothes lines strung through the middle of it. I also had a desktop computer, a television and a washing machine. My apartment, while way more than I had hoped for, reminded me of Munchkinland. Everything was teeny tiny. Even the stove seemed like something a dwarf might special order. I was like the big Alice in Wonderland stuffed into a small house.

  Best of all though was my bathroom. There was a miniature washer next to the sink, a regular-sized Western toilet and a showerhead hanging on the wall to the right of the toilet. If I wanted to, I could sit on the pot and shampoo my hair at the same time. It wasn’t exactly a bathroom at the Ritz, but it was mine.

  (my bathroom, which encouraged showering while going to the toilet)

  It had been one day since I landed in China and I could finally say with certainty that the teaching program was legitimate. Starting the next morning, I was actually going to be an English teacher at a rural college, with the eyes of Chinese students upon me. This was a little bit disconcerting considering the fact that I’d never actually taught anything before. A minor detail. I had moved to China. I had left everyone I knew and gone in search of adventure. It felt amazing.

  As I explored the apartment, I saw Linda standing in the doorway. She was staring down at a row of different-sized, pairs of slippers, which I noticed for the first time in the entranceway.

  “You can use these for entertaining guests,” she said.

  Beside the slippers was a bag of plastic blue footies that looked like hairnets for feet. Linda expertly slipped two out of the package and onto the bottom of her black boots before entering my apartment. I wondered about this Chinese custom and made a mental note to Google it. I knew that the Japanese took their shoes off in peoples’ homes because I had done that in Japanese restaurants in America, but I didn’t know the Chinese did, too.

  “Are you satisfied with your apartment?” Linda asked.

  “Yes. It’s very nice. Thank you so much.”

  “Good. I bought you some things that I thought you could use. You see you have many new sets of chopsticks and a container for lunch that you can take to the school canteen.”

  I followed Linda as she walked into the kitchenette, pointing out items she’d purchased for me.

  “You will also find new towels and cutting tools in the kitchen for when you buy food.”

  I saw a brand new meat cleaver on top of a white plastic cutting board on the counter. I wondered what kind of “food” Linda had in mind for me. I couldn’t help but envision a huge, dead animal being hacked up on the counter with that enormous dagger. Obviously, it never occurred to Linda that I mostly ate Raman noodles and chips with dip.

  “Tonight you will come to a welcoming supper with the heads of the school. Margaret and Diana will come too,” she informed me.

  “Okay, great, what time?”

  “I will be here to escort you at six o’clock and Mr. One will take us to the restaurant. Tomorrow Dean Li will take you to meet your first classes and give you a schedule for your classes. This weekend, I will show you where to shop for food. Do you cook?” she asked as she surveyed my kitchen.

  “Sometimes,” I lied.

  “Hum,” she said. Linda had a way of mumbling and sucking her teeth when she wondered about something but didn’t quite know how to express it. “You will find the price of food in the market very reasonable here. I will see you tonight.”

  With that, she turned and walked across the hall to tell Margaret of our plans.

  CHINA TAKES ALL TYPES

  Just before six o’clock that first evening in Wuhu, Linda knocked on my door. Next to her was an older white woman who stood 5’4” with short, curly brown hair sticking out of a puffy, hooded, black jacket.

  “Lina, this is Diana, the other foreign teacher. She is from Australia.”

  “Ello, I’m Dianne,” she corrected with a kind smile.

  Dianne had sparkling brown eyes. I immediately loved that she wore a puffy jacket reminiscent of one a rapper might wear. Another sixty-year-old woman might have chosen a frumpy wool overcoat. Of course, another sixty-year-old woman might not be in China.

  There are people that you meet and like immediately. Dianne was one of those people. She was kinder than me – I knew that right away.

  “I’m Leanna. It’s great to meet you. When did you get in?”

  “Just yes-tday,” she said. “And I sawr snow for the first time in my life. When did you gurls get in then?”

  It took a few seconds to tune my ears to Dianne’s thick Aussie accent. After a quick exchange, we rounded up Margaret and left campus in the school van.

  On the ride to the restaurant, which was near the downtown of Wuhu, I learned that Dianne was from Brisbane. She was planning to stay in China for two years. She was contracted to stay in Wuhu for a year and then she hoped to get a job in Beijing in order to be there for the Olympics. She had two daughters, Danielle and Michelle, three grandkids and a husband, Neville. I had thought that I was courageous for leaving George behind, but a husband and kids had to be a lot harder than that. I wondered why she had left them. Did she feel like she had something to prove to herself like I did?

  On the ride to the restaurant, our small village disappeared behind us as we passed vast sunflower fields and several lone buildings that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I even saw a three-story tall metal sculpture and a desolate road behind it. Linda told me this was an area that was going to be developed. I was amazed that artwork would go up in a new neighborhood before the buildings did. The rapid development of China could even be seen in the empty fields of Wuhu.

  GAN BEI!

  Mr. One whipped the van in front of what looked like a five-story hotel with large cement columns and parked. As we stepped onto a dusty Wuhu street and walked into the hotel, Linda had a hand on both Dianne and me. Margaret was hand-escorted by Mr. One. I wondered why they kept holding us by our jackets. It was such a protective action. Like we were fragile or in danger.

  The Tieshan Hotel was covered from floor to ceiling in floral decorations. Gilded mirrors and dark teak furniture lined the hallway we walked down. At the end of the hall, we entered a square room that seemed small only because of the enormous round table that took up most of the open space.

  The room smelled like fried fish and was as hot as an oven. Mr. One took our jackets and put them away. Linda showed us where to sit. Margaret was to my right. There was an empty chair to my left, where President One (no relation to Mr. One), the head of the school, would sit. Then, Dianne sat on the other side of his chair and Linda was on the other side of her. Mr. One, the driver, sat at the far side of the table, smiling, as he lit a cigarette and stared at us while more men trickled in.

  As each new person entered the room, we stood and shook their hands. The three of us naturally mirrored their behavior by doing slight, jerky bows with our heads as we greeted them. None of the next nine men who came in and filled up the chairs around the table spoke English except for the odd, “Hello.” They included Director Li, a five-foot-tall man with a huge smile and Director Huang, who was the head of the English department of our school. It didn’t make sense to me that the head of the English department didn’t actually speak English. Several other directors and one “party secretary” were also introduced to us. As Linda rattled off all their names and titles, we shook hands with them and they bowed to us. Then we bowed to them.

  Then Mrs. Gu arrived. She had Linda’s job at the downtown campus of our school. We learned there were three b
ranches of the school. The one we worked at was the smallest and had recently been a separate small college before being acquired by the larger system.

  Thankfully, Mrs. Gu spoke some English.

  “Welcome to our China,” she said in a whisper. “I am very happy to meet you.”

  She was a tiny lady with very little hair that was hair sprayed into a black helmet that sat an inch from her head. I guessed Mrs. Gu was about forty-five years old. She had a sweet smile under a birdlike nose. She wore a long-sleeved white buttoned down shirt and black pants with tall black boots, very classic on her pencil thin frame. She looked like Chinese Audrey Hepburn to me.

  Then, Mrs. Gu turned to her Chinese colleagues and began barking Chinese from her diaphragm as if she were speaking to a crowd of fifty people.

  Twenty minutes after we greeted the school administration, the president had not shown up. By then, all the Chinese people were speaking at full-volume to one another. The sound was jarring to my ears as Margaret, Dianne and I stood staring at the new people we’d met. I wished that I could even get a hint of what they were saying. If we were in Spain, where words sounded similar to ours, this might have been possible, but in China, even the hand gestures seemed unfamiliar to me. Finally, one of the directors decided we should sit down. As I settled down into my chair, Margaret whispered, “What is a party secretary doing here and why is he a man?”

  I looked at her, confused. I hadn’t thought much about the party secretary. I leaned over and asked Dianne the same question. She gave a mischievous laugh and said, “The Communist Party, of course. He’s here to check us out.”