Christina in China

As of Friday afternoon, I finally finished being a teacher for the first semester and can now become just a regular laowai/backpacker again. I had been plugging away on check-marking about 600 papers, turning my scribbled notes on oral exams into actual scores, and then transforming all the other little scribbled check-marks into actual numbers. Then calculating the actual final grades, which turned out to be much more mafan than I imagined. But I finally got into a regular routine of punching away at the calculator, and lovely people like Eunice and Liu Chang Zhu, one of the headteachers in the department, whose given names incidentally mean “long bamboo,” helped me. The venerable and wonderful Ms. Xiao, getting up from her desk, said to me, “Tao Le, bu yong ji. (Tao Le, no need to hurry.) You see, I have not finished my scores either, and I have a meeting.” In exactly that combination of Chinese and English.

So yes, I’m finished. And it’s not a minute soon enough, as my energy has been waning. So what else to do but to…travel. Hugh is going to Hong Kong. “It’s just like San Francisco,” he says. He’s staying at the Kimberley Hotel, buying books and music at the HMV, and drinking good, coffee-snob-friendly steam-brewed espresso. Eunice decided she didn’t want to travel, so she’s going to have a spiritual retreat here in Jiangyou, at the various coffee shops across town, trying a new one every day. And up till a few days ago, I thought I was going to go to Kunming and Lijiang and then hike Tiger Leaping Gorge like every other foreigner that comes to southwest China. I realized this the most fully when I was in Chengdu with Josh for a day, staying at a backpacker place. Everyone was heading to Kunming/Lijiang/Tiger Leaping Gorge next, as if there was a chip in their head that told them when to go and where. Beijing –> Xi’an –> Chengdu to see pandas and fly to Tibet –> Tibet –> Chengdu –> Yunnan. After Yunnan, they go to Yangshuo. I know it.

But…I’m stubborn. And I don’t want to be like every other foreigner that comes to southwest China, and I have this unexpected vendetta against English menus and lots of tourists. So I’ve been living on Eunice’s computer and in my Lonely Planet and have decided to take the train to Guiyang in Guizhou Province, then another train to the smaller-than-Jiangyou city of Kaili, then various forms of transportation to the Dong, Miao, and Gejia villages in the area. It’s not a highly traveled area, and it may be cold. But it will be safe since Guizhou is, after all, south of Sichuan, and it’s the dry season. I was thinking yesterday, and I thought about what a great opportunity this is for me, what a unique opportunity. I’m in a non-English speaking country, but I have the advantage of being able to speak enough Chinese to get around with minimal difficulty in a country where it’s very hard for non-Chinese speakers to get around. In the future, I might be wandering around in countries where I can’t speak the language. So might as well stretch my legs and be brave here.

One of the villages I’m planning on visiting doesn’t have a bus there. You have to ride on the back of a horse cart or somebody’s tractor. There is no guesthouse that I know of–you have to ask one of the families and pay them to let you eat dinner with them and put you up for the night. I suppose probably a lot of people back in West Virginia would say I’m crazy, but one thing I’ve learned is to watch out for myself but also that you can’t live your life in fear. And that sometimes it’s freeing to depend on the hospitality of strangers.

I actually haven’t bought a train ticket yet. I have to get that in Chengdu, I think, and it could possibly be sold out. In which case, I’ll just buy a ticket to Panzhihua in south Sichuan and then catch a bus to Lijiang…because even though I’m slightly annoyed by English menus, I do like good pizza, and I’ve heard that it can be found there. I haven’t had pizza in five months. Eunice laughed tonight when I said that I had printed out the train times and information for two different places.

“It’s like Greek tragedy,” I told her. “On a much smaller scale, of course. Let the fates decide.” So however the fates decide, it should be interesting.

Regardless, I’ll be catching a train or bus to Yibin, where I’ll meet my student Joan (I don’t want to print their Chinese names online for everyone and his/her cousin to read) and hang out with her in the village in the Bamboo Sea National Park where she and her family live.

Then I’m returning to Chengdu, the place where all roads lead in western China, where I’ll meet other CEEers and fly together to Bangkok! Two weeks of warm, warm, warm places. I’m excited about taking off my long underwear for the first extended period of time in three months. Heck, I’ll even shave my legs for the first time since September. We’re staying in Bangkok for two days before our flight to Chiang Mai, where our CEE conference is. So I’ll get a whirlwind introduction to the chaos that is Bangkok and just shua (Sichuanhua for “hang out”) for a bit, see this big enormous golden palace, and eat a bunch of pad Thai noodles.

CEE’s paying for not only our flight to Bangkok but also the connecting flight to Chiang Mai. Yes, it’s a meeting, but it’s at a resort with a Thai restaurant and a swimming pool and Thai massage and an elephant you can ride. So it’s not a real meeting.

And after that, I’m probably going to head even farther south and fly to Phuket (pronounced POO-kit, for all you giggling smart-alecks), which is a beach town in the southwest with crystal blue water and seafood and banana pancakes and guesthouses where $25 will buy me a week of lodging. So I am going to do nothing but shua shua shua all day. Read a book, journal on things to update the blog with (so many things!), sleep on the beach, get a suntan so that all my Chinese friends will think I’m ugly…

After I fly back from Phuket to Bangkok, and Bangkok to Chengdu, I’m going to go to Sharry’s home and see her family for a couple days before coming back to do lesson prep, clean my house that will be inevitably dusty from being un-lived-in for a month, rest, and (maybe, maybe, maybe) work on getting moved in to my new host “family.” The latest possibility is that I’ll move in with Sister Yang from the church, the lady that sings off-key to teach the songs to the congregation, lives alone in a small apartment in the steel factory worker housing, works full-time at the church teaching literacy classes to the grandmas and leading Bible studies and doing those work-at-a-church sorts of things. Ms. Yang, who up till last week I thought was Ms. Tang, is one of those older ladies that dye their hair and squeeze people’s arms as a source of affection. She’s also trying to learn English…which I’m kind of leery about, since “trying to learn English” often means that someone wants me to teach them English. But it would be really nice to have someone who would just speak Chinese with me so that my two-year-old vocabulary could get better.

So yes. New possibilities. I only have 2000 RMB (about $250) to my name right now, plus $25 American that my Aunt Laura and Uncle Mike sent me, and I’m traveling for four weeks, though I might have to withdraw a little money from my American bank account. I have no final plans, no train tickets, no hostel reservations, and no real agenda. I’m taking a mini-backpack with an extra sweater, a bathing suit and sandals for Thailand, underwear, socks, a book to read, the scissored-out pages of the Lonely Planet for eastern Guizhou/Lijiang/Yibin, my digital camera, a small Chinese dictionary, pictures to show to strangers that I meet, a notebook to journal, a tiny Gideon Bible, my travel sizes of everything from anti-diarrheal meds to shampoo to earplugs, and a plastic bag of food for the train. I’m just going to buy a couple cheapie Thai batik shirts and pants/skirts when I get to Bangkok and keep them for souvenirs.

I love the way I can travel now, layering on all my extra clothes on my body, wearing the same sweater for a week before washing it, carrying a tiny bag. I’ve got no super-Christian complex, but I love that I can kind of understand what Jesus said when he sent out the disciples, two by two, when he told them to take only a small bag with them and to go to whatever town would receive them. It’s about simplicity, about the freedom that comes from taking a day at a time, about not being fanatical about being well-dressed or even a bit smelly. But mostly about trusting God and about learning how to accept hospitality from other people–to empower them by letting them take care of you.

I’ll update at least one time in the next month, but until then, zaijian!