TheBanyanTree: Transition to the Real China, Part 1

[Pat M]

My teacher's training at Buckland College in Yangshuo *
http://www.bucklandgroup.org/* was scheduled to start in early August. I'd
arrived a month early because I'd made my travel plans to coincide with my
Chinese friends' Joyce and Mao's summer holiday.  In China, employees can
not choose their vacation days; the boss decides which days they are allowed
to have off. In early June, Joyce and Mao were told their holiday would be
some time in July, but the dates were uncertain.  Based on that, I scheduled
my departure for July 12th. By luck, they were given the week of July 13 –
22 so we were able to meet and travel to some of China's famous sights
including: Wutai Shan (Shan = mountain), the site of many Buddhist temples,
the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.  After our holiday together, I said
my goodbyes and flew from Beijing to Guilin in southern China where I was
met by a school representative, a sweet, young Chinese woman named Sophy who
had endured waiting an extra 3 hours for me because my flight was delayed.



Aside from the blistering heat and humidity, and the spitting (men spit
everywhere including inside buildings and on buses—I saw a young man
miscalculate and spit on an old woman as he was walking down the aisle to
disembark the bus), my experiences in Yangshuo had been incredible.



I'd survived the horrendous traffic (there really are no words to adequately
describe it) and had ridden on motorcycle taxis several times.  I'd lived
amongst some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet, wandered through
Silver cave (straight out of a Star Trek set) for an hour, and cruised the
Lei River twice, once in Guilin (the only foreigner on a river boat) and
another time in Xingping on a bamboo raft with another teacher and one of my
students.



>From a restaurant perched high on the banks of the Lei River, I'd watched
the cormorant fishermen as they traveled up the river below on bamboo rafts.
Powerful lights suspended over the water sliced through the inky darkness
and reached deep beneath the water's surface to attract fish.  The
cormorants, tethered to their owners with rings around their necks to
prevent them from eating the fish, dove and swam beneath the water's surface
with remarkable agility.  I watched them catch and deliver fish to their
owners.



I'd made friends with many Chinese students and had received an open
invitation to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, by a student who gave
me an authentic rawhide water bottle as a gift for my volunteer tutoring.



But I'd been in Yangshuo a month and my stay had come to an end.  I'd
completed my training, and it was time for me to start my teaching contract.



Yangshuo, we were warned by Betts, Buckland's teachers' trainer (a Canadian
woman my age), was not the 'real China'.  After all, a few street signs were
bilingual and there were half a dozen restaurants with English/Chinese menus
offering western food. It was possible for tourists strolling on Yangshuo's
famous West Street to find shopkeepers able to bargain in English. (Prices
were horrendously inflated for foreigners though, as much as 500%.  Don't
worry. I didn't let them get away with it!)  In the 'real China', we were
told, there would be no English street signs, no western food and no spoken
English.



The night before I left Yangshuo, Buckland put on a barbeque for all the new
teachers. There were close to 30 of us.  It came as a surprise to see many
unknown Chinese faces in the group. I struck up a conversation with one of
them, a young Chinese woman with bright eyes and a friendly smile.  When I
asked her if she was a new student at the college, she told me she was a
recruiter for her school.  Then, it all made sense.  The barbeque was a
venue for recruiters and school principals to meet prospective English
teachers and woo them into teaching at their schools.  There is a huge
demand for English teachers and there are never enough to fill the demand.



Throughout the evening, I noticed appraising looks from these Chinese
strangers and for the first time in my life, I felt like a commodity; it
wasn't a good feeling.  I was glad I'd already made plans to teach at a
school in central China near the terracotta warriors of Xian (pronounced
SheeAnn).  Later, Sophy told me that many school principals had asked about
me and had wanted to hire me.



The next day, August 26th, an Australian woman named Tracy and her
10-year-old son, Jarrod (I was amazed that someone would have the courage to
bring a youngster to China), three Chinese principals and I flew from
Guilinto Xian together.
As soon as I arrived, I noticed the climate change.  Xian, a huge, bustling
city of nearly 7 million people, was much cooler and wasn't humid.  What a
relief!  But I was disappointed to discover that I had traded the fresh air
and clear blue skies of Yangshuo for smog.



As planned, Frank, Buckland's provincial representative (he oversees 30+
foreign teachers in Shaanxi province) met us.  Frank is a very nice Chinese
man in his thirties with fairly good English skills, and I warmed to him
immediately.  We chatted during the 45 minute drive from the airport to the
Defachang Hotel in city centre, where he checked us in. En route, we passed
through one of Xian's four city gates.  (Xian is one of the few cities in
China where ancient city walls are still visible.  They are 12 metres high
and form a rectangle with a circumference of 14 kilometers.)  Frank came to
inspect our rooms to ensure everything was acceptable to us. Buckland tries
very hard to ensure its foreign teachers are happy. The room was spacious,
clean and after a month without, I had a sit-down toilet again—what luxury!



Tracy and Jarrod were heading south by train the next day along with the
Chinese principals.



"Your school doesn't have your apartment ready," Frank told me. "You will
stay here for now."



Being alone in Xian was hard.  I was cautious and a little frightened to be
totally on my own.  I hesitated to go too far from the hotel for fear of
becoming lost. I was now in the 'Real China' and no one I came in contact
with spoke English.  Without a cell phone, who would help me if I got lost?



Before long, I realized the Bell Tower (built in the 14th century) a block
from the hotel was a famous landmark that everyone knew.  I bought an
English/Chinese dictionary to help me communicate and was able to find a
bilingual map.  Every day I explored further and further from the hotel.  I
power-walked the cavernous underground walkways that connected the streets,
weaving my way through throngs of Chinese pedestrians and their curious
stares.  I ascended and descended the many exits, trying to locate
myself.  Because
all the signs were in Chinese, I felt off-balance. The characters were
meaningless to me and all looked like chicken scratch.  I couldn't seem to
use them as reference points.



The shopping malls near the hotel looked like any in the west, and their
prices were the same or more than in Canada!  That was a shock!  Clothing in
Yangshuo had been cheap and it hadn't occurred to me that prices could be so
different depending on which city you were in.  Even if I had wanted to buy
clothing, though, it would have been nearly impossible.  Most Chinese are
very tiny.  In Canada, I am a size medium; in China, I am a size XXXL and
few stores stocked such large clothing.  Before the onset of winter, I would
have to buy some warm clothing, even if I had to have it custom made.



Meals were an issue in Xian.  The hotel provided a Chinese breakfast:
numerous plates of pickled julienne (long thin matchstick strips)
vegetables, steamed buns, rice porridge, watermelon, hard-cooked eggs and
moon cakes) but it had been a challenge to know where to eat lunch and
dinner.  Without knowing Chinese, I was unable to read any of the menus.
There was a KFC and a MacDonald's nearby but their menus were also in
Chinese.  Getting what I wanted was impossible. By luck, on my second
evening, I found the Bell Tower Youth Hostel.  There, the Chinese staff
spoke enough English to communicate, and the menu was in Chinese and English
and included western food.  Western food!  I was in heaven!  I felt as if I
had been thrown a life raft.  The hostel became my home base for meals and
internet access.



The days passed slowly.  I roamed the streets but purchased nothing; I read
two detective novels.  I waited.  On the fifth day, Frank phoned to say he
wanted to show me Buckland Lintong English College, an alternative to the
school I'd initially planned to teach.  By then, I'd been at the Defachang
Hotel for four nights and experienced the frustrations of dealing with hotel
staff who did not know one word of English. Every day there had been some
little problem that I had been unable to handle on my own.  Even tasks such
as saying, "My hotel key is not working," required a phone call to Frank for
assistance.  The language barrier crippled my ability to function
independently and I didn't like it.

***************************************

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover." (Twain)