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

  After we finished our cakes, Linda took us to another nearby market where meat and vegetables were sold. This market was more like a row of three-sided shacks with raw meat sitting out on rickety tables underneath tin roofs. The vegetables were kept in tin barrels on the ground. There were all sorts of foods that I’d never seen before. One of these was lotus, which is a purple eggplant-looking vegetable. It became my favorite Chinese food with its water-chestnut-like crunch and bland taste. I preferred the lotus sautéed instead of candied, which were the two most common ways I saw it prepared.

  The small men and women selling vegetables from bins on the ground at the market hovered over them like crabs, squatting over their wares. They wore thin, traditional Chinese jackets with toggle clasps. Their hands were worn like old gardening gloves and their faces were dark and gnarled like tree bark. I couldn’t believe their clothes were so thin in such cold weather. And they didn’t have gloves on. I had on multiple layers and was freezing.

  After breakfast, we went to the highway and waited to catch a bus downtown with Linda. A fairly large group of students and villagers were waiting for the bus that morning as well. When our bus stopped, the door swung open and the whole crowd, including us, tried to get on AT THE SAME TIME.

  Linda pulled Dianne and me by the coat to get us on the bus. The closest I had ever come to seeing a mad scramble like this one was when I was trying to get on a subway car with a thousand drunken people after a major league baseball game. Linda didn’t seem phased, though. That was when I realized that the Chinese don’t do lines. After shoving our way on, the four of us stood on the bus, holding onto the poles. I could feel multiple pairs of eyes scanning us.

  I looked out the dingy windows of the crammed bus and saw a cloud of dust that lay over the town like a brown blanket. It was giving me a sore throat already. Through the haze, dozens of nondescript high-rise apartment complexes appeared standing side by side. So that was where China’s 1.3 billion people lived. I saw very few houses on our way to town. The ones I did see were more like the wrecked ships in the middle of expansive, flowing farmland, crumbling with no windows or doors.

  Then, out of nowhere, I heard someone spit on the bus right behind us. They hocked a long, slow big one that sounded like it came from the bottom of their stomach. And they spit it right on the bus floor. I heard it go “thwack.” I grabbed Margaret’s arm in amazement.

  “You should see who just did that,” she whispered.

  Margaret was facing me, looking over my shoulder.

  “Who was it?”

  I started to pan the crowd behind me for the offender.

  “Someone’s grandmother,” she said. “Over there in the blue jacket.”

  I turned to see a tiny woman standing behind us with a pinched-in, wrinkly face surrounded by a thick helmet of gray hair. She was wearing a bulky blue jacket, polyester pants and old-fashioned Chinese slippers with white socks. I couldn’t believe that this old woman had spit on public transportation. And she didn’t even look embarrassed!

  When we got off the bus, with the crowd pushing us like there was a fire about to engulf them, I started noticing people spitting everywhere. I hadn’t seen this in Shanghai. I wondered if they didn’t spit as much in a posh, big city or if I hadn’t noticed it because the anti-anxiety drugs hadn’t worn off. Either way, I was completely stunned by the spitting. I shouldn’t have been. I had read on bootsnalltravel.com that Wuhu was:

  “…China in all its filthy glory, a stereotypical Chinese city with all the bells and whistles; beggars, chaotic traffic, rubbish strewn streets and footpaths covered in gobs of spittle.”

  But when I read that people spit in China, I thought of it like people tripping and falling down in front of you. It happens, but it doesn’t happen often. Well, in China spitting happens everywhere. To combat this problem in big cities they’ve put up signs and enforced fines. But with pollution covering China like a fresh coat of paint, it’s no wonder that the people spit. I did it, too. Only I did my spitting in the bathroom like my mamma taught me to.

  When we got to the downtown of Wuhu, I couldn’t believe how enormous and new it looked compared to our village by the school. It had a pedestrian walkway the length of two football fields. As I looked down the center, I saw that five department stores the size of Macy’s on 34th Street lined each side of the wide footpath. And we were just in Wuhu, a small Chinese city of two million.

  (statues in downtown Wuhu)

  Then I saw the Golden Arches down the way. I couldn’t believe Mickey D’s had made it all the way to Wuhu, China. As we walked towards the grocery store with Linda, we passed Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, too.

  Even though I had made a pact with myself to do as the natives did, I was secretly ecstatic that I could eat at these places if I got desperate. To Linda, however, we all three said that we never ate in those fast food restaurants. She was amazed. Apparently it’s widely believed by the Chinese that Westerners, and especially Americans, eat at McDonald’s regularly. Although, as a child, I did want to have my birthday there three years in a row because of the little circular pancakes, McDonald’s is definitely not a place I eat at regularly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had their little pancakes or the cheeseburger with the little tiny onions on it. Thinking about these things after my Wuhu breakfast, I almost veered in for a combo.

  We made our way to Century Mart, the grocery store in the center of the walking street that Linda wanted to take us to. There she showed us how to lock up our purses in the community lockers and get a ticket with a combination to unlock it. This was mandatory in order to enter the grocery store.

  Afterwards, we went up the elevators to get to the food section of the store. Linda pointed out where we could buy rice, tea, and other things that she considered staples. I kept my eyes open for the things that I considered staples: wine, cheese, bread, pasta, jars of sauce and cereal. I saw some of these things in a similar form (I learned the word for wine right away) but there was no cheese, except for processed cheese singles and no milk, only a powdered form that I decided to pass on.

  As I walked, hundreds of short Chinese people stared at us in amazement. I wondered if there was more to my mother’s words about milk and cheese making my body grow tall and strong than I gave her credit for.

  As we browsed through the store, I could feel people watching us everywhere we went. One store clerk started to follow us and seemed to be surveying the items we picked out. It was starting to sink in that this staring deal was going to be part of my daily life in China. Right then though, during my fascination period in China, it didn’t bother me that we were stared at. Although the constant attention could still take me by surprise, at the time, I was completely fascinated with Chinese culture. I was in awe of our differences. Even the sight of a pretty woman spitting seemed amazing during those first few weeks in China.

  CHARLES IN CHARGE

  In my life, I have always attracted the stray cats. It seems that I collect them like others collect wine glasses or broaches. I could tell that Charles was a stray the first time I saw him. He had straight, black hair that stuck out in all directions on top of a round head that sat on his sticklike body like the top of a lollipop. He wore small, round glasses and spoke English like a stuffy old Englishman, dragging out the word ‘maybe’ (said: may-beee) and speaking in a kind of singsong way.

  I had seen him in the first few days I was at the school, walking around campus with Dianne, sitting next to her in the school cafeteria and following her between classes. I had thought to myself, I’m glad he’s not my student.

  Late one night, Margaret and I nearly bumped into him as we were leaving our apartment to sneak off and eat at Pizza Hut in downtown Wuhu. He was bounding down the stairs from Dianne’s apartment with a huge grin on his face.

  “Hello. I am Charles Lincoln,” he announced.

  “Hi, Charles, I’m Leanna and this is Margaret.”

  “I know. You are the two new fore
ign teachers. Where do you go?”

  “We’re going downtown to have dinner,” I said.

  “Wha? Maybe, it is too late,” he said, looking stunned.

  “Well, it’s not too late,” Margaret snapped.

  “Do you go by yourselves?” he asked with wide eyes.

  “Yes,” Margaret said.

  “Maybe it is too dangerous for you.” He took a step closer to us.

  I could see the wheels turning in Charles’s head. He was getting the idea that he should come with us.

  “We’ll be fine,” Margaret asserted. “We take the buses all the time. Nice to meet you, Charles.”

  She turned and led the way down the stairs.

  “Bye, Charles, nice to meet you,” I called and turned to catch Margaret down the stairs.

  “Bye, Maggie. Bye, Lily.”

  Charles didn’t pursue us like he did Dianne. After a few weeks passed, we would still see him in her apartment having tea most nights and walking with her to class most mornings. We had to wonder if something was going on there, perhaps a schoolboy crush or maybe he was just a suck up.

  Charles was like the guy from the movie Rushmore – the guy who was in the math club, the drama club, and the French club and the guy that had many light friendships, and had cultivated a relationship with all of his professors.

  I liked my independence. I liked seeing students around campus and doing my own thing as well. Once, Dianne asked that us to help Charles after class by acting as judges in a freshman English speaking contest that he was in charge of putting together.

  The judging consisted of us sitting in one of Dianne’s classrooms in a row of cramped chairs that were attached to one another pre-school style. During the contest freshmen stood in front of us one at a time, telling stories about their heroes using broken English. Two of the male students couldn’t get through their speeches because they were so nervous in front of us. Their classmates cheered them on as they stood looking miserable and ashamed. After each contestant spoke, we had to judge them on their English, content and composure. The contest lasted for four hours. On top of a day of teaching and speaking broken English, there was only so much we could take. We decided not to work with Charles on any more projects.

  Tina, an English teacher at the downtown campus, had taught Charles the semester before we arrived. When we had lunch with her, she told us that Charles liked to kiss up to his current teacher to gain “face,” or the respect of his peers, by associating with foreigners. The concept of face was hard to understand and is very important in China. Losing face means that you were disparaged in front of your peers, and, on the other end, gaining face means gaining stature or status in the eyes of your peers. Tina also said that she had to set strict ground rules with him about when he could call or come by her apartment. I wondered if we would have to do the same with Charles.

  Dianne was very patient and giving to the students and especially Charles. She ate in the school cafeteria every morning and held unofficial English lessons for anyone who wanted to join her.

  One day, Dianne was taking Charles to lunch for helping her buy new glasses after she lost hers on a city bus. Margaret and I bumped into them at the school entrance. It was lunchtime, so we decided to join them. For the first time, we saw the benefit of having Charles around. He could order exactly what we wanted at a nicer restaurant that had actual plates of food – otherwise you might end up with a bag of noodles. Prior to that, we had been pointing to the food we wanted to buy or using students that walked by to help us order food from the vendors on the street.

  That day with Charles and Dianne we went to a small place near the entrance of the school. We walked into the restaurant and went to the second floor to a large round table. Charles ordered us a pot of tea, fish with a tangy sauce, Chinese pizza, which is fried scallions and eggs in the form of a flat cake, and sautéed vegetables and rice. It was the best meal I had eaten in China since Margaret and I ate at Pizza Hut (again) two nights before. Afterward, I didn’t feel the guilt associated with the eating half of a medium-sized deep-dish either.

  After that day we started having lunches with Dianne and Charles several times a week. Then, he slowly became attached to us, too. First, he started dropping by sporadically in the evenings. We avoided him until we found out how well he could work our DVD player that had Chinese on the buttons and always played our DVDs in Russian or French. Admittedly, we were using Charles, but then again he was using us to gain face, so we felt it was okay.

  Charles became someone who would run errands with us or help us figure out how to solve our numerous problems in China. He took us to a market where we could buy mosquito repellant when the humongous Wuhu mosquitoes emerged in the spring. He showed us what foods were edible in the school cafeteria like the sticks of cooked vegetables.

  Charles was like a radical new hair cut. At first you found it irritating, but overtime it grew on you and you got used to it. After you’d had it for a while, you couldn’t imagine life without it.

  I began to really like Charles when we started having discussions beyond whether or not I liked Chinese food and China.

  I was hoping that he would be the one student that I could talk freely with about politics and that he would help me understand real issues facing the Chinese. One evening Charles and I were out buying food. I was stocking up on bananas and single serve, instant, coffee packets for breakfast. He was choosing a melon for the grocer to chop up. We were talking about the future of different students who were majoring in English, when I asked him whether or not he would join the Communist Party in China. He gave me a mischievous grin and said,

  “Maybe the Kuomintang.”

  The Kuomintang was the party that was in power in China until 1949 when the Communists took over and drove the Kuomintang to Taiwan. Charles had just cracked his first joke in English. I roared laughing when I realized what he was saying.

  “You laugh so loud,” he hissed.

  I could see that I had embarrassed Charles. I was leaning my head back and having a full belly laugh and I had completely forgotten that the Chinese and especially women don’t do that. They cover their mouths and giggle; and some of the men do too. Thinking of that made me laugh even harder after I got going.

  “Shh! You are so crazy, Lily,” Charles said.

  Although Charles was growing on me, I could only take him in small doses at first. He was like a gnat swarming when he was around. He was constantly trying to make tea, do something that needed to be done around the apartment or play video games on my computer.

  When Charles showed up at my door, he stayed in my apartment until I asked him to leave. He did the same with Margaret and Dianne. When he invited all three of us to go see his hometown and meet his parents and grand parents I immediately wanted to refuse. He told us that they lived two hours away in Chizhou (said Chee Joe) and that his family wanted to welcome us to China. I wondered if they just wanted more “face.” I told him that I would have to think about it. Then he started to put the pressure on us saying,

  “Maybe you will meet my dog, Mimi.”

  “Maybe you will see my home and we will go to my high school.”

  “Maybe you will meet my mom and dad, yeah?”

  Charles began detailing out our trip before we had even committed to it. The Chinese don’t like to take “No” for an answer. That is probably because in old times they did not refuse an invitation from anyone. It wasn’t done in China because it was considered rude. Clearly, they weren’t familiar with the American way of wriggling out of unwanted situations or holding out until something better came along.

  When Dianne told me that she would be going on the trip and that she wanted to see how people really lived in the countryside, I knew that was doing the right thing and that I should go, too. I had to rise above the frustrations of China and seek the experiences that would be lasting memories. We planned to go to Chizhou with Charles the next month.

  (Charles and Dianne)


  THE DEANS

  On the first Sunday afternoon we were in Wuhu, Margaret and I had our first visit from both of the deans of the English Department. We had already met Dean Li when he introduced us to two of our eight classes. This day, he came over to our apartments and brought Dean Lu with him. She was about 5’7” and was the tallest woman I had met or seen in China so far. She had a puffy, yellowish face with light brown freckles on her cheeks.

  We met in my apartment. After each of the deans put on a set of slippers at my front door, we led them into the living room. They sat uncomfortably on the futon and spoke Chinese to one another for a few minutes before telling us about our classes. They said that we should continue getting to know our students. We had six classes of sophomores and two classes of juniors each week. We would both be teaching the same students, but we would teach them different subjects. One of us would teach American culture from a textbook to sophomores and juniors and the other would teach oral English to the sophomores and Bible stories to the juniors.

  I couldn’t believe that in a predominately atheist country, with little tolerance for dissention, that one of us would actually be teaching Bible stories.

  “You do have your Bibles with you?” Dean Li asked.

  “Uh, no,” Margaret answered.

  “Yeah, no, I’m not religious,” I added.

  “Neither am I,” Margaret said.

  Dean Lu turned to Dean Li and said, “That is good. Yes? Dean Li?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The students will learn the Bible stories from you as literature, of course.”

  I couldn’t believe how progressive our deans were. My father had told me not to mention politics or religion while I was in China because he said he wasn’t going to come and get me out of a Chinese prison. And here they were asking us to teach the Bible as a class.