China memoir | Speaking of China

Chapter 76: The Bench on Su Causeway

Park bench — John and I went to Su Causeway in Hangzhou not for the view or a walk, but to find the bench where we first kissed.

There are endless reasons to visit Hangzhou’s Su Causeway. A stroll with a lake view. A walk through — or rather on — history (it was, after all, named for Su Dongpo, the Song Dynasty poet). A brief respite from city smog. Or even just to fawn over the lotus blooms that grace the lake in the summer.

You don’t go to see a bench. At least, you don’t — unless you’re John and I, a couple minted beside the shores of this breezy little lake just a little over a year ago, on one otherwise unspectacular bench.

“This is it, isn’t it, sweetie?” I asked, pointing to the bench closest to one of the causeway’s bridges — a bench that happened to hold an entire family, curious why John and I were ogling their chosen seat.

“Yes, it’s ‘our bench,'” John beamed. We had secretly christened it our own bench, with John often suggesting that we plant a tree nearby, to commemorate a love that grew right from this very spot. Continue reading “Chapter 76: The Bench on Su Causeway”

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Chapter 75: Buying Amway in China

Amway Shop in Sanya, China — My friend Chris had completely bought into Amway as a way of life, when he began working as a sales rep for them. But while I bought Amway vitamins, I wasn't buying his sales pitch. (photo by HNPIX from Wikimedia Commons)

“I’ve discovered a new confidence and joy,” exclaimed my Chinese friend Chris, who I also visited during my trip to Hangzhou in August 2003. He spoke with all of the passion of a born-again Christian pastor. Except this wasn’t about finding religion — it was about finding Amway.

I don’t know just how Chris went from masters studies in Chemistry to layman’s studies of direct sales. He had finished a year of graduate school at Zhejiang University, one of the country’s top ten schools, and presumably had two more years. Yet, here he was, in a dress shirt and tie, passing out Amway business cards — and demonstrating their products as if this was a sales call, instead of the friendly meeting over tea.

“Here try this,” he said, passing around an Amway hand moisturizer. “The glycerin and honey makes your skin feel softer and smoother than any moisturizer I’ve ever used.” My Chinese friend Caroline — the one who had been a matchmaker to John and I over a year ago — raised an eyebrow at me, and looked as if she was stifling laughter.

But it was no laughing matter to Chris. Continue reading “Chapter 75: Buying Amway in China”

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Chapter 74: F@lun G0ne

664559_21620051 — During a reunion lunch with one of my favorite former Chinese coworkers, Jane, I discover she's gone over to F@lun G0ng -- and hopes John and I will too.

In late August 2003, John and I returned to Hangzhou to reunite with our friends — including my former Chinese coworker Jane.

This was the same “almost vegetarian,” sprightly young twentysomething with a zen chime ringtone, and a grin that could breath even a little humor and grace into the ultra-serious “technical room,” where the two of us used to work. Jane even worked her own hours, and wore edgy outfits, defying the usual “good-girl” pastels most Chinese women wore. Jane reminded me that, even in China, there are girls who just want to have fun — their way. My inner feminist adored her.

If only this were the same Jane I’d known. That day, she served up Hangzhou-style, stir-fried veggies — and a surprise helping of F@lun G0ng. Continue reading “Chapter 74: F@lun G0ne”

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Chapter 73: Finding Friends in Unfriendly Shanghai

Typing on a black computer keyboard — When my computer needed fixing in Shanghai, I discovered a helpful -- and friendly -- face from the most unlikely person: a computer-chat addicted, shy Shanghai college kid.

In the city of Shanghai, undulating with more than 17 million people, you still can feel lonely. After being here for over five months, I still didn’t feel like I had the same reliable, warm friendships that I remembered from Hangzhou. I had the company of John, my Chinese boyfriend, but I wanted other people, new friends, to share my life with. Some say that’s the flavor of Shanghai — a snobbish city that brands any non-Shanghainese as outsiders.

But not everyone in Shanghai snubbed John and I, as we discovered a kindly soul in the son of our downstairs neighbors, born and raised in Shanghai.

We didn’t know much about this young man, at first. He spent his evenings on the computer, using a popular Chinese chat application called QQ — the arrhythmic chirp like a vital signs monitor, reminding us, begrudgingly, that he was still around. If anything, it was an annoying reminder. He often stayed up late, blaring the television downstairs and disturbing our sleep.

But then we discovered another disturbance — internet spam. Continue reading “Chapter 73: Finding Friends in Unfriendly Shanghai”

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Chapter 72: Private Parts in China

Jeans zippered down — When I need a doctor to look at my private parts in China, I am reminded just how elusive privacy really is.

To a foreigner, the most precious resource in China might just be privacy. If you start out as an English teacher, like I did, you learn to roll with untimely knocks at your door, appearing before your students in pajamas, or well-intentioned Chinese forcing medicine after medicine on your poor weary foreign self that you wouldn’t even let your best friend see. Some moments and circumstances demand a privacy that China just can’t give us.

I desperately needed privacy this one weekend in early August when I sought help for what every woman likes to refer to as her “female problems.”

Chinese hospitals work like this. You go to the information/check-in desk at the front, usually mobbed by people, and shove yourself in as you announce your symptoms, in front of everyone there. Easy enough if you have a cough or headache. But what do you do when it’s a little more, well, personal?

“I need to see the gynecological department,” I told them. Surely, this was the perfect solution — by naming the department, the nurse would know I needed a little help under the hood, and get me registered to see a doctor. Continue reading “Chapter 72: Private Parts in China”

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Chapter 71: Migrant Workers in Our Staircase

Chinese migrants — When a noisy Shanghai city works project brings migrant workers into our home -- literally -- I begin to wonder: just whose life is being disturbed?

Our neighborhood still echoes with a sour symphony of drills and hammers as the city of Shanghai makes water line repairs and fire extinguisher replacements.

The project finally reached our house in mid July, 2003, with work starting at the convenient hour of 6am (convenient, that is, from the point of view of Shanghai, which would never have its workforce toil in the heat of the day). The swarthy-faced men descended on our home like an invading army, with the grimaced, sweaty brows of exhausted soldiers in a foreign land. The truth is, Shanghai probably was a foreign place to them, because they had the look of migrant workers, perhaps from Anhui Province (which supplied many of the Shanghai migrants). I should know, because I walked over them, napping on the wooden staircase leading up to my apartment — the entire house oozed with grimy, slumbering men, as if they had just magically grown out of the cracks after I left for work that morning. Continue reading “Chapter 71: Migrant Workers in Our Staircase”

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Chapter 70: Tested Under the Shanghai Heat

oriental pearl tower — Under the fierce July heat in Shanghai, I was tested when the neighborhood filled with the din of a city works project.

Shanghai’s July heat has a way of testing you. Barely a month ago, you were still in that delightful Shanghai Spring — with its warm breezes perfumed in osmanthus and peach blossoms. But suddenly, the romance is over, and you discover you’re locked in a pressurized sauna. You almost have to part the humid-heavy air aside as you walk down the streets, now weighed down with moisture beading all over your face and body. It’s a public penance, where everyone must pay for those golden Springs and Autumns with molten, unbearable summers.

As July began to strangle Shanghai in searing heat and humidity, I felt strangled once again in my neighborhood as yet another source of noise and confusion marched through our lane. Continue reading “Chapter 70: Tested Under the Shanghai Heat”

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Chapter 69: The Bad Luck Kittens

Newborn kitten in someone's hands — Someone in Shanghai dumped newborn kittens into a garbage can near my office -- all over superstition. I wonder when luck was more important than life.

Black kittens with soft white paws don’t belong in the garbage can. But that’s where they were, carelessly tossed into a dumpster near my office in Shanghai. Only days old, these tiny, partially blind bundles of fur were saved by what nature gave them — plaintive mewing that drew the attention of a cleaning attendant. Somehow, the cleaning attendants must have known that a couple of the trade show girls in our company had a soft spot for animals — because there they were, in front of the womens bathroom on my floor, trying to nurse them back to health with eye-dropper filled with milk.

I’ve raised kittens all my life, and this miniature feline nativity drew me in instantly — but not without drama. Continue reading “Chapter 69: The Bad Luck Kittens”

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Chapter 68: The Soliciting Shanghai Peddlers

three-wheeled bicycle in China piled with junk — Riding a loaded down, rickety, three-wheeled bicycle (like this one), peddlers infiltrated my community, with its "no solicitor" signs posted at every gate.

“No soliciting.”

These words, written in black Chinese characters on a rusting white sign hung at each gate into my new community — a traditional Long Tang — read more like a dare than a warning. The one guard station, at the southern gate, stood empty more than half the time. The other two gates never locked, even though each one had a rusty red loop that could have easily held a lock of some kind — but it never did. Nothing about the setup suggested security, or even the attempt to stop solicitors. It might as well been a prison with all of its doors open, with a sign hanging at the door that said “no escaping.”

John and I escaped here, to Luwan District, after post-midnight garbage runs disturbed our sleep night after night. The nighttime here lay as dark and still as the streets, with their garage-door-like storefronts shuttered tight, the only sound a stray taxi here or a drunkard hobbling there. It was the night we hoped for, after a wrenching departure from our old apartment. “It’s very quiet here,” the real estate agent assured John with nodding confidence. For once, the agent was right.

But he forgot to tell John about one thing — the days and, especially, the daytime peddlers, crooning their wares as they bicycled in and out of the lanes of our community. Continue reading “Chapter 68: The Soliciting Shanghai Peddlers”

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Chapter 67: One Landlord, One Less Deposit

faucet on a bathtub — When John and I decide to move in Shanghai -- before our lease is up -- all understanding gets flushed down the drain by a not-so-understanding landlord.

Changning — the long peace — was never meant to last. That’s what I discover when we asked the landlord, a Shanghai native, for permission to move. He was sympathetic about the garbage problem, even understanding. Or so we thought.

“You ruined the tub, and I need to deduct the costs from your deposit,” accused the landlord.

John, my Chinese boyfriend, and I were stunned. The tub was a scratched-up hull of its former self when we moved in. How could the landlord — a man John once described as “reasonable” — suddenly turn against us? Continue reading “Chapter 67: One Landlord, One Less Deposit”

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