Proud Scars September 26, 2009

Isabel Allende wrote, “Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars”. Am I falling out of love with China? I find my tolerance level stretched to near-breaking limits, my patience thinning, and my balance toppling almost hourly. What lessons are in Lin’An for me, and did I mistake a need for challenge for foolhardiness?

Take last week: I sent my biggest, noisiest class happily home with a mental note to have assistant Nancy teach the most boisterous one to count in English while I stretched the others with “I want three blue Legos…” next meeting. Boss Shirley invited me to sit down, “explained” with Nancy’s interpretation my “problem with my visa because of age” for an hour. “What can I do?” I asked. “Nothing.”

Then Shirley gave me a cake box, too late to cut and share with staff, too big to fit in my bike basket. “Bear will take you home; it will go bad if you leave at school.” Mark and I did our best with late-night coffee, laughing about my “Happy Birthday” gift. He enjoyed it again for breakfast.  Eternal optomist, I headed out next morning. Our utilitarian concrete box-complexes aren’t picture-worthy, but bear hopeful banners like “Charmlinan” and sit atop mostly-empty shops.

Within 1 km, I found breakfast next to a communal garden–hot, sweetened soy milk and braids of fried bread or rounds filled with carrot (mild turnip), egg, and grated vegetables; I eyed the less popular, huge wok of noodles. I cycled past the mountainous repository for plastics, gleaned from smaller dumps like the one out my kitchen window, toward another development.

The roads over the river weren’t finished, but one skirted women washing clothes. A man and baby son pulled up a long fishing line, closed their still-empty styro cooler, and climbed aboard their scooter “Mei you!” he said to me. No fish for lunch today. Excited about the promise of a Hangzhou weekend–acquaintances who used to work at Babe School to show Mark and me around, hostel and West Lake jazz club reservations, the prospect of seeing KC friends who teach in Hangzhou, and a day in pagodas, Starbuck’s, and Silk Street–I packed my bag. E-mail arrived an hour before leaving: “Don’t forget your passport.” I made five phone calls to find out that Zoe had given our passports and receipt for them to the university official whom, we had understood earlier, could not help with our visas.

I swallowed my disappointment, and we walked to a neighborhood restaurant for fresh fish and vegetables. Mark was delighted that they gave us our own pot of tea and indicated we should take our time. (hut home picture here) I told him of the “homes” I had biked past, where the rag-pickers who daily go through our neighborhood dump may live. He said they might be construction workers, also poorly paid in China’s social pecking order. Back home in our comfy apartments, we started a Scrabble game; Mark hadn’t played since France, but it came back to him. “That sounds like a Bear voice,” and it was.

Zoe and Bear brought expensive pastries–filled with mushrooms, pickled vegetables, nothing sweet– from a new bakery and settled on my couch with more of their story, sprinkled liberally with. “Bob F__!” The Brit couple who used to work at Babe evidently linked up with Zoe and Bear’s old partners and a pregnant teaching assistant (“impossible to fire”) and started a rival school, using Babe School’s phone list to offer discounts. Bob “told the university that Mark had cancer and should not get a visa.” Mark told Zoe he had, indeed, had cancer near his eye that was “no longer a problem,.” He had told Bob over a meal soon after he came here. Zoe and Bear were astounded.

I sat and pondered the tense problem of “has” and “had” lost in interpretation. We ate unwanted pastries and reminded them that Mark had just passed his extensive physical in China. Conversation moved to new knowledge for me: Zoe’s offer to immigrate to Australia within five years (they will); my teaching “the majority of Babe’s 70 students; paying the old partner 150,000 yuan one year after he invested 100,000 “because he was a friend” who wanted out; the university official on whose decision hangs our visa approval being new partner, “Shirley’s friend;” Bear’s only making 2200 yuan/month as a university draftsman instructor; the university wanting us both to teach there (vetoed earlier, now with seeming approval by Zoe), and Mark’s needing to go to HongKong to renew his visa sometime. “Mama, you can go with him.” (As “foreign language expert in China’s past, it seems I don’t need to leave China to renew.) Does that mean a subsidized trip to Hong Kong?

Bear got up, wandered the apartment, “Shui?” They inspected my fountain flowing from a crystal ball rolling past changing light. Bear waxed ecstatic about my watercolors, scenes from the campus lake. High praise from one who teaches graphic arts, I figured. On our feet, I was glad they headed out the door, not noticing a granddaddy cockroach who met his demise in the hall.

Mark and I shook our heads, wondered if we’ll have passports by October 1-8 trip to Yellow Mountain, and said good night. Before sleep, I mentally ticked off a few positives: Zoe brought me her freebie iron (she sends her clothing out for cleaning) yesterday, the 3s and 4s class was sweet and fun (in spite of no assistant, one child throwing up, another crying three times when Mom repeatedly popped her head in, and another needed to pee in the middle of a colors lesson), I found myself laughing with all three kindergarten groups, Zoe’s request to “teach another grade 2 class on Saturday; the parents insist on you!” didn’t materialize, I received a gift of massage and facial “because the owner is Bear’s friend,” and to-my-knowledge health among friends and family on both sides of the globe, Kent’s successful pinot noir crush just finished, Janet’s saying her teaching was going well. I snuggled down under my duvet, glad to hear cooling rain fall.

Over next mornings’ left-over pastry and the last of my Hainan coffee for breakfast, Mark vehemently restated he’ll have nothing further to do with Bob. I reminded him we’d only heard Zoe and Bear’s side of the fragmented story. Unready to give up my only source of Lin’An English reading, I called Bob to swap their last three loaners for three more. No love lost or found–just a love of reading! I’m determined to stay above that fray. Midmorning e-mails came from the US. Lives that seemed bland a few months back momentarily connect me with longing for my Montana deck and its view of evergreens on Pat’s Knob.

From Laos came a half-joking note about friends’ cultural clashes, “Perhaps we need to get together for a group hug!” I wandered across to the Zhejiang U campus for a lakeside glass of hot lemon tea and a past pocket of sanity. Perhaps, weighing the tumultous tugs and positive pulls, I’ll have soon discovered elusive joy seeping back into life here.