Farewell, O Language of My People!

Dear America,

As of 19 hours ago, I can no longer speak English.

As I last left you right before my departure from the Gongyi Orphanage, a llittle explanation is necessary in order to clarify how I ened up this way. But first, let me tell you about Xuzhou.

Leaving Gongyi was surprisingly hard, especially saying goodbye to all the kids who kept asking me when I was going to return: the best I could offer was "maybe next year." I myself was moved more than I had expected when leaving, and the 11 year old boys who insisted on pulling my wheeled suitcase all the way down the from the orophanage to the main road a ten minute walk away didn't help me remain cold and unfeeling in my departure.

Moved though I was at my departure from the orphanage, my wanderlust quickly broke free: I must confess that getting on the train, travelling to new cities, seeing new foods to try and places and people and many other interesting things sparked my excitement. It was good to be on the road again. Though travel is often exhausting, I have found that wanderlust, a beautiful word in its own right, evokes a yearing I have cultivated for many years; either through the hundreds of fantasy and science fiction books I read as a youth, or through the travels to (to me) exotic and strange places such as China, Europe, or my very liberal college; and yet in each place I find some part, which resonates with me -- I have come close to finding the perfect place on several occasions (a certain youth hostel in a Swiss mountain-side town, a Christian worldviews and leadership camp over the summer) , but there is always something more which is lacking, something which drives me to meet new people, to go to new places, and to try to understand this world I live in, and ultimately, myself.

Those who have watched movies by the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai will understand what I mean: many of his characters express many of the same yearnings, yet their lives are almost always without any redeptive force: their search is cyclical and self-destructive -- and yet compelling to me, at least, for I understand some part of what they seek, or rather the need to seek. Those who are familiar with C.S. Lewis can also find an echo of what I mean (yet, unlike most echoes, Lewis's not only precede mine but also resound more clearly). Lewis, as quoted by my friend Anna Elwell, explains: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Ben and I arrived in Xuzhou after about four hours. The difference was stark. Xuzhou was cool, verdant, modern, and beautiful. It is a town nestled around a lake (originally natural, but then expanded) rings with lush mountains. I have seen more beauitful placed, but after coming from Gongyi, where the green plants are reduced to a rusty olive color at best by the pervasive dust which settles on them, Xuzhou partically seemed like paradise. Bob, the manager of the Xuzhou orphanage picked us up at the station and gave me a miniature tour of the city as we went to the orphanage, taking me through the city center, where every night there are is an automated show with fountains, music, and lights, and where hundreds of people (some old, some not so old) gather to dance, do aerobics, walk, talk, or just sit and enjoy the night. Surrounding the lake on almost all sides is a very nicely maintained park. The orphange itself was actually located on prime real estate: the local government had given them one of their own buildings, leased for $200 per month locked in for 50 years, a five-minute walk from the lake. There is a beautiful view, the school the kids go to is walking distance, and while they have less open grounds than the Gongyi orphanage, their building is bigger and the park is nearby. It is a grand set up.

The government is a big deal in China. While it can often be authoritative and directives sent out from Beijing must be followed, a stunted and mal-developed judicial system allows the local-level officials have an amazing levle of freedom to make life very difficult for people they don't like, or who refuse to bribe them. As a result, doing the exact same thing (opening an orphanage) can be a massive and continual headache in one place, as is the csae with Gongyi, or be realtively easy, as in Xuzhou. Examples of this are many, but let me just share one. In Gongyi the orphanage, though run by a Christian and almost entirely supported by Christian donors, is not allowed to engage in any sort of teaching of the Christian faith. Any such teaching would quickly result in the local government shutting down the orphanage and shipping all the orphans (all technically government property until they turn 18) to who-knows-where aweful government-run orphanage. In Xuzhou, by contrast, the government not only welcomed the orphange to come, but by and large lets them raise the kids however they want (it is still China, so complete freedom is out of the question). This difference allows the atmosphere (metaphorically) of Xuzhou to be a lot lighter than at Gongyi. There are certainly contributing factors to differences between the two orphanages (the types of kids they have, and so forth), but I am convinced that the freedom to practice Christianity plays a big part in Xuzhou's more energetic and optimistic atmosphere.

My time at Xuzhou was sadly very short: I was only there until Sunday night. In that time, however, I was able to meet up with Michele, who had already found out I was coming, and catch up with her a bunch. Sunday morning I had the thrill of eating an American breakfast! Ben, Bob, and I, after a series of misadventures, ended up frying eggs and pancakes for a very satisfying start of the day. Following braekfast, Ben and I went to a local park to see Xuzhou's miniature terracotta warriors (similar to the ones at Xi'an except from the Han dynasty, and only a quarter -life size -- still very neat!) and a few other interesting historical sites. There is a much-vaunted slide down a mountain, something along the lines of a bob-sled except no ice, which all the foriengers at Xuzhou praised highly, but as the weather turned to drizzle the slide trip got cancelled. In the afternoon Bob hosted his usual ex-pat fellowship/service, which included a message by him, some time of sharing, prayer requests, a few songs (with Michele doing honors on the keyboard), and all 22 orphans squeezing in to sing "This Is My Father's World" and "Lamb of God" in Chinese.

Following the service we all went out to dinner at MacDonald's (the first time I have eaten at an American fast food restaurant in China!) and continued to chat, which lead to some of us wandering around the down-town area, amusing ourselves by strolling through the games and arcades in an underground mall, and shopping for something with a pink cartoon cat (which, despite the ten thousand products we found, is NOT "Hello Kitty"). We met a crazy-looking fellow from New Jersey, but I help my tongue about what we think of that particular state. To finish off the evening we all flexed our muscles in front of a larger-than-life size statue of Popeye while the two Chinese girls we asked to take our picture pretended they didn't know how to take it so they, and the other 30 people watching us, could continue to laugh at us.

For one of the first times while in China, I didn't make any new friends on the train. I was very tired (it was a night train from Xuzhou to Beijing) and also experiencing the "sorrow" part of "Parting is such sweet sorrow". The Xuzhou people were amazingly nice; and I had ended up spending many many hours trading stories and discussing life goals and values with Ben, and yet to them I all had to say farewell. If I had not already purchased my ticket, I probably would have stand have stayed another day. Missing those folks, I didn't have much desire to begin the whole friendship-building process from scratch, and so simply slept the night away.

Monday morning I arrived in Beijing, and proceeded to spend the whole day visiting old Beijing friends. I went to my old Qian men haunts, with bittersweet results, yet more sweet than bitter. I visited the hotel I stayed at for several weeks, but my expectations were fulfilled, and none of the employees were the same. The shop-keeper across the alley remembered me, however, and gave me the phone number of the fellow who used to run the youth-hosel part of the hotel's operations, and is forever engrained in my memory because his voice sounds like a cartoon character, and he sort of looks like one too. Apparently he is working in another district of Beijing now. I visited the old internet cafe and found that it's still pretty cheap, still really smokey, and the service is still pretty bad. I asked for an hour of time, then when the computer shut off they tell me it's because I sat in the more expensive area; thanks for not telling me ahead of time! And then they refused to let me buy just an additional 15 minutes to round off the things I needed to do. I shake the dust from my feet.

I also went to the old restaurant I used to hang out at, with my maternal owner, her chef of a husband, and their two kids. I was shocked to find that their restaurant had been cut down to approximately a quarter of the original size, and none of them were there! It turns out the building most of their restaurant was in was going to be desmolished, so they had to move all operations into what had been their bedroom and 8-plus private dining room. Then they all had gone back to their home in Hebei to help their son prepare for his high-school entrance exam. If I understood the current workers right, they should be back sometime in July. I did bump into the woman's younger sister, however, who sells fruit in the same hutong, and told me some of these things. The other restuarant, which I know a little less well, still was in business, and I will go back there sometime.

I had made many friends who work at the Lao She Tea House, right nearby. I went there, but the people I knew were all out at the time; still, it is good to know at least some of them were still around. The Tea House itself had undergone serioous renovations and I almost didn't recognize the main entrace. I've only been gone for one year, and it seems every part of the Beijing I knew has changed. Even the ancient imperial palace had changed! The ominpresent scaffolding around the Forbidden City's north gate was now gone.

One thing that had not changed, however, was the two girls I knew who used to sell street-side barbequed skewers (and whose stand, along with the invitation of a crazy businessman to come and eat, set me down the path to knowing all of these Beijing friends), were still at the same Pharmacy. I spent an hour or so visiting with them at their pharmacy, during which time they reitereated their desire to learn English (something which I feel badly about, as I'd like to help them, but since yesterday I can no longer speak English...), and we caught up on life. From there I went to meet the civil lawyer I know (Li Bo, or Paul). He, his wife, and I all went out to dinner, and got to hear their big news: his wife is pregnant! They are really nice people, and I wish I could do more to reciprocate the stuff they have done for me. I made one small step in that direction by boying some Portuguese patries on my way to meet them, and rejoiced to see that Paul's wife ate one of them even before I left (sign that they weren't simply accepting them out of oliteness). It was a small but glorious success in my attempts at reciprocating Chinese hospitality.

The next day I had scheduled to meet up with my crazy businessman friend, who insisted that his english name be "Flower Huang" (this is especially cute, as "Huang" means "yellow"; also, he is a sunglass-toting, basketball clothes-wearing sort of fellow, and certainly not a hippie or the like). Spending time with him is always an adventure, somewhat akin, I would like to imagine, to riding a free-spirited horse. You'll definitely go interesting places and do fun things, but you're never quite in control, you can easily get lost, it's often uncomfortable, and sometimes you don't end up where'd you'd like.

For instance, Flower insists most times on linking arms as we walk, a tradition which is not all that unusual among same-sex friends in China, and yet one very foreign to westerners, and as those readers who are familiar with my relatively reserved view of personal space even in America will realize, this activity is quite out of character for me. In the heat of the summer day, it's also hot and sticky, the last time I want to be touching other poeple. Yet it's a cultural experience (even when at least two Chinese people asked if we were gay!)

Flower Huang and I were going to go to his hometown of Tianjin, an hour-plus train ride from Beijing, and in his mind spend a day there, then another day in his (real) hometown of Tanggu. Having experienced his grand plans before, I had the nerve to put my foot down and insist I had to return after just one night in Tianjin. We were supposed to meet in Beijing station at 11. Due to transportational difficulties, I didn't arrive until 12, at which point I found Flower (or rather, he found me) and he greeted me with scowls and punches, much to the bewhilderment of the Chinese people around us. Apparently he had gone to the loud-speaker announcer and had them send out an announcement to the entire Beijing Train Station that he was looking for an american named Guo Jiande! I felt a little guilty, but not too much, since this was Flower Huang, and I knew he'd forget about it in five minutes. I also had tried to call his phone earlier, but had not connected. As I found out later, he himself had arrived half an hour late, reducing the last residues of my guilt.

Many of my readers read my description of Flower Huang's antics last year, and so I will not repeat them here. Interested readers I refer to my old blog, douginchina.livejournal.com . Needless to say, he has not changed. He is still extremely hospitable, ordering fifty to a hundred percent more food at meals than we could eat, in order to show me appropriate hospitality, and paying for everything from train tickets to bottles of water -- until his money runs out and I finally can start paying for things. He also happily accompanied me to the touristy part of Tianjin and helped me buy presents for family and friends back home, advising me on the sly how much thigns should erally cost, and then haggling vigorously with the dismayed store owners until a price that was advantageous to me was agreed upon. I normally would not have bought presents so soon in my time, but Flower Huang is a resource not to be wasted.

One of Flower's greatest flaws is a failure, or rather an unwillingness, to plan ahead. His method of buying train tickets, for instance, is to go to the train station and ask for the next available train (the nearly disasterous results of this particular habit I recorded last year), and then wait for it, however long it may take. This trait of his again manifested itself when night fell and thought began toturn towards a soft bed and a good night's sleep. I had assumed that Flower knoew of a good hotel to stay in (or at least any hotel to stay in), but I soon discovered that he had no clue: we wandered around for over an hour, passing by desolte staetches of partment buildings and parks, with nary a hotel in sight. Finally I suggested that we just take the bus back to the train station, as there were many hotels near there (and, I confess, in my heart of hearts I thought also that if there were no suitable hotels, I might still get a train back to Beijing, a city which I at least knew). Flower proclaimed me a genius, we got back to the trainstation, and then employed the service of a pedicab driver who had just settled down for the night in the back of his cab to take us a to a hotel. This is sort of China's respond to hotel busses: except instead of a bus it sis sort of like riding on a giant tricycle inside a metal dog house perched on the tricycle, with the whole contraption powered by a lawn mower engine on steroids. It's a thrilling experience. Another difference is that instead of workign for one hotel, this fellow gets paid a commission by whichever hotel he takes us to, and he presents us with a range of price options to pick from. We picked cheap.

The hotel was fascinating. It was abotu the sixe of my house's first floor, and was subdividided by almost walls (the top foot or so of each division was open) between each room. Each room had enough space for a double bed, a television, and a foot to the side of the bed. The beds in China are harder than American standards, but our bed, I'm fairly confident, was nothing more than a slab of plywood with a sheet on top of it. I was tired enough that I wasn't going to compain, I was just happy we had any place to stay (especially since they technically aren't allowed to host foreigners except in approved hotels, which this definitely wasn't), even if it meant that Flower and I had to share a bed.

The night was hardly pleasant: someone had fallen asleep with his TV volume up on full (at that point my base-level dislike for television shot up into the range of pure, unadulterated hatred, and as I lay with my head coverd by my bean-shell pillow, I enacted in my mind beautiful fantasies of going into his room with an axe and cleaving the TV set in two). Eventually Flower Huang showed his mettle and after much banging and shouting the TV was turned off. My night was not peaceful, however, as our door was about five feet from the main entrace to the building, allowing us to hear all the ambient noise and conversation of those at the front desk. Furthmore, I discovered, Flower Huang snores something fierce. It was a night which was nasty, brutish, and short.

EArly the next morning I woke up sore and feeling very dirty from a lackof shower or change of clothes. After the day of shopping even Flower Huang seemed to be losing his pep, and while he originally claimed I should leave at 5, this time gradually changed to 3, and once we arrived at the train station his sense of honor and responsibility had waned to the point that he didn't protest at all when I told him I really didn't need him to wait with me for two hours until my train arrived. He left, taking with him crazy times like I've had with no one else in China and my some-times broken ipod shuffle.

I don't really know why Flower Huang has taken a shine to me in particular, as I think that we are really somewhat different. I know that on my part, I enjoy being with different people as they bring otu a different part of myself. With the Christian ex-pats in China, I can talk about the necessity of Christianity, the value of orphanages, the craziness of China, the need to depend on God for eveything. With the civil lawer in Beijing I can enjyo high-ish class life, talk about jobs and politics and cultural differences between America and China. With foreign backpackers I can swap stories of adventures, places seen, plans for the future. With Flower Huang I can live a crazy and unpredictable life, eating in hole-in-the-wall restaurants, hagglings, and daring to accuse each other of being terrorists while we are walking around Tian'anmen square and its famous plainclothes agents. It's fun to move in and out of different spheres, and yet sometimes dizzying when done too quickly.

Since my return to Beijing I have been settling down at my school. The primary reason for my trip to China is to study the language for two months at a program called the Associated Colleges in China (ACC). It's widely acknowledged to be the best or at least among the very best language programs in China. It is known for its rigour and its language pledge. The rigour bit involves four hours of class every day, and an estimated 4-6 hours of home work every day. The classes range from the "large"class of 4-8 people to the "single" class of one hour with one-on-one with a professor. There are 60-120 new vocabulary words every day. It's pretty intense. The language pledge bit is the part where you swear that for the entire duration of the program, you will not speak any English at any time (some exceptions, such as dire medical emergency, apply; written updates back home also apply, which is why this is not in Chinese.) If you break the pledge, you get a warning, then a grade reduction, and then you get expelled -- and it's happened before.

Our langauge pledge began yesterday, after a terribly long three-hour meeting reviewing the program, its policies, and so forth. I must confess, it was really exciting to go from a room full of 60 American students, sign your English rights away, and then once you left that room, it was only Chinese. We all went off to get supplies at the grocery store, get lunch, and desperately begin memorizing everyone's Chinese name.

Between Wednesday and Saturday, before the pledge and life here really began, was mostly a relaxed time for me. I settled into my room and discovered that I didn't have a roommate (initially a littel disappointing, but I've quickly come to enjoy a double room to myself). I managed to lock myself out again, and am now considering simply never locking my door, and just locking my valuables in one of my drawers (but I worry about losing that key, or the cleaning girl locking my room after she leaves). I also tried to begin my usual trick of befriending the front desk fuwuyuan (a generic term for service people), but with surprisingly little headway; I suspect it may be because my beoing a foreigner is not as novel when you work at a foreign students' dorm). I took the placement tests and was shocked at how much written Chinese I had forgotten (shocked to the point of worrying a little that I might get placed into 3rd year Chinese instead of 4th year), and so spent the nexy few days practicing writing characters and taking breaks to explore the vicinity. Gradually other students arrived, and most of them have surprised me with their dedication to the program: one would hope to expect it, but I feared too many of them would be more interested in exploring the city than really buckling down and learning the language.

I was also surprised at the teachers here. The teacher-student ratio is approximately 1:1.5 here, which translates into a lot of teachers. They all seem extremely energetic, friendly, enthusaistic, and competent. It had been really fun meeting them and talking with them, and they seem genuininely interested and excited to be here teachign us. Once or twice it almost seemed cute how eager they were (if that's an appropriate way to describe one's professors, even if many of them look younger than I am).

All in all, I am greatly looking forward to my time at ACC. Classes begin tomorrow, and I have 80 vocab words to learn and some discussion points to prepare on the lesson. For now, however, I'm off to join a Korean student and whoever else may join us in going to church. As work will increase and newworthy items dwindle, I may reduce the frequency or at least the length of these updates. But we will see what hte future holds!

Cheers,
Chris (Guo Jiande)