My day as a country gal

My neighbor Zhou Jie -- Big Sister Zhou -- invited me to the countryside for a birthday bash. Her friend's mother was turning seventy. Zhou Jie said I probably had never seen the countryside here. I told her I had barely seen the countryside in America. She said the celebration would be very re nao -- lively.

Two of Zhou Jie's friends picked us up in the morning from downtown Lengshuijiang. As we drove, the road became one lane and then narrowed. I stared out the window at the small crop plots and the wooden houses built throughout the terraced green hills. The huge black SUV we rode in seemed out of place in this simple landscape.

We drove for an hour before we turned off the narrow road and pulled onto a winding dirt path until there was nowhere to go by car. Then we climbed a hill and followed a rock-strewn footpath toward the sound of a marching band. On an outdoor stage a dozen men and women in red military jackets and caps played their rusty trombones, trumpets, baritones and a booming bass drum.

We followed the path as it curved around a lily-covered pond and through a giant inflatable arch before reaching a two-story brick house. Along the way, the path was scattered with red paper -- firecrackers. The men unfurled and lit the firecrackers, then ran up the hill away from the smoking and popping.

On another outdoor stage closer to the house, women wore the traditional qi pao dress and waved bright red scarves. A man on a stool in front of the stage played the erhu, the quivering two-stringed instrument sometimes drowned out by the pop!pop!pop! of firecrackers.







Huge red and yellow banners with Chinese characters covered the front of the house. At the main door sat a woman accepting cash-filled red envelopes, birthday gifts. Surrounding her on the front porch were about ten small tables with people seated playing cards and eating sunflower seeds and peanuts.

We squeezed into the main room of the house, a large space with concrete floors and bare walls. An eight-tiered birthday cake was displayed at the back of the room and in front of it sat the 70-year-old mother surrounded by her great-grandchildren. Before we ate, the mother's eight daughters performed a song and dance with the erhu in the main room. Then each of her children's families bowed before her and wished her a happy birthday and good health.




Before the speeches ended, Zhou Jie, her friends and I sought out a table, knowing the food would be served soon. Tables and benches appeared in every room of the house. The 500 guests found seats on the front porch, in the house or in neighbors' homes. Then we feasted for two hours. First there was chicken, turtle, rabbit ears and pork. The pig was the family's own and had been slaughtered that morning. Later the pig's intestines were served with some celery-like vegetable. When we all said we were full, more food came. Shrimp, duck, fish. The food tasted real, from the earth. Nothing processed.

I spent a sleepy afternoon watching the women play mahjong while the rest of the guests watched a countryside singing and dancing troupe perform on the outdoor stage. The women played mahjong through the performance and until the sun went down. Then we ate again, more chicken, shrimp, fish, and also winter melon soup, a favorite of mine.

As we prepared to return to the city, we heard a boom overhead. I looked up as hundreds of yellow and red and purple lights burst and then fell toward the earth. We watched the fireworks from the car and then slowly went back the way we came on the darkened dirt path.

Why am I always surrounded by a dozen middle-aged men?

(Always might be an exaggeration, but this has happened three times. I call that a trend.)

The first time: It was the day before classes started. As usual, I went to the teachers' dining room for dinner. The dining room is two small rooms with an adjacent kitchen, where the teachers serve themselves. But that day the tables in each room were covered with about a dozen dishes -- bullfrog, duck, pork ribs.

One of the school directors waved me in the direction of the smaller room. Soldiers were seated at the table with school officials. The soldiers were at the school to train new students. Everyday I had woken up to military music blaring from the speakers. I took a seat between two of them, both stripped of their military jacket and wearing black undershirts. They were about 20 years old, tanned, cigarettes tucked behind their ears.

Before I could pick up my chopsticks, a man from the other room came to the doorway . He was in his forties, thin, hair disheveled and wearing a blazer that was probably two sizes too big.

"Li Zhao Li!" the man shouted. My Chinese name.

"We are family!" he said and waved me over. I had never seen him before.

"My family name is Lee too," he said. "You can call me big brother." Then he turned to everyone and announced, "I have found my little sister! She has come all the way from America!"

The man pointed to another man to his right and said, "He is Lee too. Call me Big Big Brother and call him Little Big Brother."

I sat between my two new brothers as they pointed to the dishes and said, "This is good. Try this."

They kept filling my shot glass with beer.

"Are you drunk?" my big big brother asked me.

I had had four shot glasses of beer. "No," I said.

I noticed that I was the only female teacher at the table and probably the only one under the age of 35. These teachers I now ate with I had not seen at the dining hall before. I assumed most were married and ate at home. I wondered if the younger, single teachers I normally ate with were told not to come tonight. I was not told to come or not to come.

The second time: After the Teacher's Day assembly, Big Big Brother Lee invited me out to dinner with some other teachers. A student was treating.

One of the teachers drove us into the city. We climbed a staircase and were led into a private room. Someone opened a bottle of baijiu and started pouring. Someone else opened bottle after bottle of beer.

"Can she drink?" one of them asked, referring to me.

"Yes, she can," Big Big Brother Lee answered for me, and a bottle of beer was placed in front of me.

The teachers started talking about the new headmaster, who had given a speech during the assembly. The headmaster's speech was completely incomprehensible to me, the Hunanese accent so thick that I couldn't even pick out individual words. The teachers I sat with spoke in the local dialect and sometimes switched into the standard Mandarin. I lost track of the conversation, only entering the conversation when they said, "Gan bei." Bottoms up.

Again, I looked around the table and realized I was the only female. Even the student, a girl, and her mother were not eating with us. They were eating in another room. I had unknowingly entered an all boys club, yet I was not pushed out nor did I want to leave. The food was delicious and the alcohol flowed. I felt full and satisfied and a little sleepy inhaling the cigarette smoke.

After the meal, the student's father passed out boxes of cigarettes to each of us. "I don't smoke," I said in Chinese when he came toward me, but he pushed the box into my hands. It was like an invitation to stay in the club.

The third time: Two days ago I ran into Big Big Brother Lee in the senior one office building between classes. He told me to go to the school gate at noon. We were going out to lunch.

At noon I went to the gate. A teacher was in his car with the passenger door open. Get in, Big Big Brother Lee said. A few other teachers got into the backseat. The driver, Mr. Wang, spoke English and asked what I thought of Lengshuijiang.

"It's a bit dirty," I said.

"Yes, it's very dirty," he said. "There is a factory in the city. Lengshuijiang is developing but at the cost of people's health."

We drove past giant concrete cylinders by the side of the road. As we entered the downtown area, the air became grittier. I looked out the open window and could only see brown dust.

At the restaurant we were again led into a private room. Some teachers were already waiting on the couch, smoking and eating sunflower seeds. A TV on the wall was tuned to a news channel but no one watched. I looked at the screen. A woman was being dragged out of a house.

As the first dishes arrived, everyone found a seat at the round table. One of the men, a teacher from another school in Lengshuijiang, said something about me in the local dialect. A teacher next to me translated.

"He says you are the highlight of the table."

I smiled and awkwardly sipped my water. Generally the men did not talk to me during the meal, only when they wanted me to drink. The teacher to my left -- a short, skinny fellow who looked 22 but was actually 40 -- kept my glass full.

"She can drink," I heard someone say about me as I downed another glass.

It was 1:30 p.m. when we got back to campus. I had eaten my fill of river fish and rice-covered pork ribs and duck. The teachers who ate at the dining hall would have had plain rice, pickled vegetables and maybe some soup.

Teacher's Day

Sept. 10 - I was walking back to my apartment after lunch with a couple of teachers when we passed a blackboard with an announcement written on it.

"There's an assembly this afternoon," one of the teachers translated for me. "I think you will have to shang tai." Be on the stage.

"No one even told me about the assembly," I said, but I already knew my fate was written. I would end up on stage in front of thousands of students at some point that day.

I had two afternoon classes and then walked with my students out to the playground. Students carried their stools from the classroom and were lining up facing the outdoor stage.

I spotted Peter, an oral English teacher.

"You should be up there," he said.

I knew that. I was just trying to avoid the inevitable. Instead, I said, "No one said anything to me," as if that might get me out of it.

"Mr. Pan [my school liaison] has not told you?"

"No," I said, just as my cell phone rang. It was Mr. Pan. He wanted me to report to the stage.

My name, in English, was on a placard on a table on-stage. I sat next to head masters, department directors and other important people who I had not seen before. The important-looking men made speeches. For the most part, I understood nothing. They spoke with a thick Hunanese accent or possibly a dialect. I couldn't tell the difference. I zoned out. I tried to look alert in front of all those staring eyes and tried not to think about having to pee.

Each teacher at the school received 800 RMB for Teacher's Day. They are expected to donate some of that back to the students. I had not received my money yet, so Mr. Pan gave me 400 RMB from his wallet and told me to give it to the students. I would get my remaining 400 RMB the next day.

After the speeches, each person on stage brought their envelope of money to a man sitting next to a box on the stage. The man announced the amount each donated and then we dropped the envelope in the box. Considering most teachers gave 100 or 200 RMB, my "donation" looked very generous.

Despite my dread of having to be up front and center, things could have been much worse. I have heard that some foreign teachers are expected to give speeches at such events. I even heard of one teacher at another site having to sing -- in Chinese.

Badminton Beauties

I've learned two things about myself: I love playing badminton and I suck incredibly at it.

But that's OK. Badminton has been a great way to meet people, especially students who I don't have for class, like these ladies. They are seniors who often play in the courtyard between the teachers' dormitories. I like playing with them because they are not as competitive as the teachers and some other students, so that means they don't mind playing with am amateur like me.

In the hour after dinner, the students have the only free time of the day before they must report to their classrooms for two hours of self-study. In this hour, the playground is packed. Several full-court basketball games are always in progress with students lined up along the sidelines watching. I have yet to play ping-pong because the outdoor tables are also always in use at this time. Badminton has been my go-to sport because you don't need a court, just two rackets, a shuttlecock and a narrow strip of space.

A pagoda with a view

Downtown Lengshuijiang is pure grit. Smokestacks from a coal-powered factory cough up clouds of gray, and thick black exhaust trails the buses. There seems to be a road construction project on every street. Broken-up concrete piles up next to trash.

But a respite from this industrial backwash does exist. In the middle of the city is a hill; at the top of the hill a pagoda.



The climb to the top takes about 30 minutes. Along the way, I realized I could inhale deeply and not have to hack up half a lung after doing so. I realized, too, I could hear birds chirping.

At the top of the pagoda, I could see the river curve through the city and into green hills. Buildings and houses became more sparse until there were only layers of trees upon layers of trees.

After feeling isolated and lost and lonely for a few days -- and doubting myself for coming to China -- I was reminded that I had made the right decision.

First day of school

Sept. 3 – In the classroom, I've discovered, another personality takes over me. I lose a sense of myself and am just focused on communicating an idea, or sometimes just the meaning of a word. I am not that timid Midwestern girl who came here. I am loud, I crack jokes and I don’t take no for an answer.

There's no room for weakness in the classroom. I have at least 60 students. My classes today were with vocational students. They are in senior 1, equivalent to high school sophomores. The vocational students are studying to become kindergarten students. Most of the students are girls, but in my first class, the handful of boys seemed to have to prove they were truly boys. They were mischievous and obnoxious. They talked, they joked and they said over and over, “Ting bu dong.” I don’t understand. If this was a taste of the rest of the classes, I was doomed.

But my second class went much more smoothly. There are more girls and only six boys (out of 60 students), but the boys mostly kept quiet. The class applauded before and after class. When I needed help hooking up my laptop to the projector, a group of about nine girls huddled around me to try to help. I stayed past the class time into their study period because they insisted seeing pictures of Chicago that I had on my laptop. As I left, I said in English, “See you next week!” I heard one of the girls say, “That’s too long!”

I just got killed on the badminton court by a middle-aged chemistry teacher in heels

First, I must admit that my right forearm is sore and a bit shaking right now, so much so that it is a struggle for me to type but I will soldier on.

I am in pain -- and slightly humiliated -- because today I was destroyed in badminton by Mrs. Wu. She is a 20-year veteran of the teaching staff here and, apparently, a badminton badass.

After dinner a couple of senior 2 (high school juniors) asked me if I was busy. I suggested badminton. I had been wanting to play and the new rackets and birdies I bought last week had yet to be taken out of the case.

Next to one of the students' dorms are a couple of courts. The net is just a string tied to two poles but it does the job. The boys and I played for half an hour before Mrs. Wu appeared, watching from the sidelines.

She was dressed in a pretty green top, black slacks and heels. She smiled as she watched and commented on her students' shots.

I walked over to her and asked in Chinese, "Do you want to play?"

I expected her to decline but she agreed immediately. The boys stepped aside and Mrs. Wu and I took the court.

From the start, I knew she was good. She whipped the birdie at me hard with little effort, only swinging her right arm. She looked relaxed and wore an easy smile the entire time we played.

I, on the other hand, felt my competitive juices flowing. I put my whole body into every shot. My face was tense and I grunted. My shoulder started to burn. My thumb was red where I gripped the racket. I could feel my sweat soaking through my shirt.

But even when I tried to slam the birdie across the net, the birdie only floated down.

"Do this," she said, and flicked her wrist.

So I did and it worked. The birdie started floating closer to the net. But my sudden improvement in playing only made Mrs. Wu increase the difficulty of the return shots I had to make. She sometimes rocketed the birdie so high to test my timing, or tapped it so lightly that I had to dive forward. All the while, she stood in the same place, right arm easily swinging.

"We play every morning here. You should come," she said. At 6 a.m.

When we finished our game, she again encouraged me to join the game. I said I would come.

"But I won't be as good as all of you," I said.

Mrs. Wu only laughed. She knew that already.