© 2010 Chris Cash
Five years ago, I left my life in Newcastle on a crazy whim. I took a job teaching English in China. I’d laughed at the exact same ad six months before. This time, why not? I had my doubts, of course: the organisation was built from sticky tape and promises, but I would pull though. I was going to Qiqihar, in North-Eastern China: year-round average "low" temperature: -1.5°.
That was that: 2005 seemed like a horribly cold winter, which I was glad to see over. By the time it had begun to warm up properly, I was on a plane with a busted toilet and wet carpet, on my way to China. After two flights and a painful customs inspection, we were squeezed into hotel rooms along gender lines. The men woke early, and took a walk around the block. Every mundane thing we saw was like a holy vision: whether it was a woman berating her daughter for staying out all night or elderly tai chi practitioners.
That was that: 2005 seemed like a horribly cold winter, which I was glad to see over. By the time it had begun to warm up properly, I was on a plane with a busted toilet and wet carpet, on my way to China. After two flights and a painful customs inspection, we were squeezed into hotel rooms along gender lines. The men woke early, and took a walk around the block. Every mundane thing we saw was like a holy vision: whether it was a woman berating her daughter for staying out all night or elderly tai chi practitioners.
Then began my six-month long war against breakfast: while in China, I barely ever had a satisfactory morning meal or cup of coffee. I compensated by pigging out at lunch and dinner. Northern Chinese food is a bit of a shock if you’re used to Cantonese-style Chinese meals. A lot more salt, chilli and oil and some unfamiliar ingredients and combinations. I was served sheep’s intestine, pig’s trotter, candied sweet potatoes, and donkey dumplings, but escaped the tiny frog soup.
It was a massive turnaround for me: a new country, things were cheap and everything was an adventure. The first two weeks were designated as "training": we didn’t teach so much as see the sights, meet local teachers, have banquets thrown in our honour, try out bars, shopped, gawk at the strange new sights and be gawked at in return. I was nervous to begin, but soon learned that my blue eyes and freckles were more important than knowing the differences between you’re and your. I was never so proud to be Ginger.
Each week we would do the rounds of schools in and around the city. In given week, you might do a few classes at bizarrely named local schools, like Railway Number Five or Factory Number One, early in the week; then out of town to an outlying county to teach at one or two schools. The timetable would change each week, and just when you started enjoying a particular town, you’d be swapped off somewhere else. Fularji , Fuyu, Kedong, Tailai, Nenjiang, Longjiang, Gannan, Ang'angxi, Meilisi: the names of counties and districts I visited in the four months blur into various catches of memory, faces and incidents.
We arrived at the end of the Manchurian summer, the streets were dusty and local men rolled their shirts up to expose their bellies in the afternoon heat.
My first long-haul trip was to Kedong. I did a half-day at Fuyu, then several hours on the impossibly slow train eastward. I arrived, in the dark. I met two teachers from Kedong Number One High School’s English department, perhaps more. In the dark of the taxi to town showed off their mastery of the F-word. I hadn’t heard anything even faintly profane out of a Chinese mouth since arriving, but now heard such gems as “He is always mad at me because I am always fucking his wife.”
They took me to a "barbecue" restaurant – a local speciality, shredded meat cooked in front of you, much like Korean barbecue, except the lettuce often ends up getting fried as well. I enjoyed my first few visits to Kedong. I enjoyed the company of Mr. Zhou and his foul-mouthed friend. Once, the very friendly head teacher, Mr. Han, thought I might enjoy saucepan warmed beer as much as he did, grease and all. Mr. Han was perhaps the only non-smoking Chinese man ever met: in a film I saw later, a non-smoking policemen, was told “a man who doesn’t smoke is like a woman with a beard.”
High school students’ days begin at 7 or 8 am, with four or five classes and 15 minutes daily exercises by lunch time at 11:00am. Fortunately, lunch is two hours long, to allow a siesta. Four more classes at 1:00 pm, and at some point, eye exercises. Thanks to these, I will probably never forget how to count to eight in Mandarin, but left me confused if I needed to use 9. When 5 o’clock comes it’s time for dinner, an hour’s break (two hours in summer), and the day rounded by another three classes. That’s seven days a week, most of the year. The majority of schools I taught at were boarding schools, centralised, servicing the whole county. For 40 minutes a week, English was a relief of sorts: a funny-looking, funny-acting person would jump around for a while and then leave. If kids slept in my class, I let them be. Who could blame them?
At Kedong, and most schools, I would eat dinner in the school cafeteria. It was a surreal experience, with the local teachers are trying to ply you with beer (or worse, vodka-like baijiu) being surrounded by Chinese Coca-Cola posters featuring Chinese Hero Yao Ming, Taiwanese pop stars and World of Warcraft promotions. I thought the Olympic Gold Medal winning hurdler, Liu Xiang, was a pop singer because of his Coke endorsements. On the way to the school one morning, I asked what kind of job most people did in Kedong. To my horror, I was told it was unemployment or at a stretch driving taxis. There was a fireworks factory in town, but naturally there weren’t enough jobs to go around.
My real “welcome to China” moment came on my first return trip from Kedong. The guy who sat next to me was falling-down drunk, nice for him, not so much for me. He knew a few words of English, so asked me where I was from, but would not believe I was anything other than Russian. Every so often he would ask me "Russia?" to see if I’d changed my mind. After about half an hour of this I wanted to scream "If you say 'Russia' one more time, I will hammer and sickle you in the eyes." It wasn’t the best trip.
I got used to hearing the words Mei Guo ren wherever I went, meaning American person, typically you're expected to be either American or Russian in the north east.
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