Since I returned to the USA, Anne has kept me informed of some of the goings on in China. I've extracted some general items from her emails that may be of interest to our friends. My comments or explanations are enclosed in [square brackets] — Tim.L
July 20 — It's 4:15 a.m. I woke up a while ago and can't get back to sleep so thought I would write you a newsy email.
On Friday afternoon, Yvonne came over with her little friend Mary, age 6. Tariqa and Mary played together all afternoon. Tariqa dumped out all of her little plastic people and animals and we bought and sold figures for 45 minutes, using the American play money that I use in my lessons. We also taught them to play Uno. Mary giggled furiously whenever she made Yvonne draw 2 cards. It was an afternoon filled with laughter and games. The wildest time was when we held hands in a circle and tried to step on each others' toes. Around and around we went for about half an hour.
Yesterday I went downtown with Tariqa, Scott and Emily. [Scott and Emily are Americans who have just moved in upstairs. They will be teaching English. They have lived in several other countries in Asia.] They are totally focused on experiencing as much of China as they can. When not teaching they want to be studying local subjects. Scott is interested (in order of importance) in cooking, martial arts with a sword, watercolor painting, and erhu [a Chinese two- string "violin"]. Emily wants to study calligraphy, martial arts of some type, and erhu. Both speak much better Chinese than I do and want Chinese instructors so that they can practice their Chinese during all these lessons. I am sure that they will do a good job teaching, but they are completely uninterested in any other activities that the university may want them to take on. For example, I don't see them volunteering to help out with the English speech students. I took them to visit Frank [Fang Yuan] yesterday and he had us all stay for dinner. Scott studied Frank's new housekeeper as she cooked the meals, and we all played games with Tariqa.
Right now it is raining quite heavily. The farmers are having a difficult time getting in their rice, though a lot of fields are still not ready to harvest. A few days ago we had a really heavy rain for about 45 minutes. When I took Scott and Emily up the side road to the Taalan's friend's little restaurant, we saw that a 40-foot stretch of the retaining wall had slumped down into the field. The whole thing is just gone. Again I wonder about the quality of all the construction going on around us.
Although Scott and Emily have been in Asia for 7 years, they say that China is constantly surprising them and topping their list for the most extreme in many categories. The other day Scott saw the weirdest person ever in all their travels. He was a youngish man, with in the usual tangled rolls of hair that identify your typical street people and homeless wanderers. However he wore only a red plastic cloth wrapped around his waist, which covered next to nothing, and a barbed-wire necklace around his neck. Not simply a single strand of wire, no, it was wrapped around and around into a roll about three inches thick.
July 21 — I've had a busy day today. I have a new carved wooden couch and a fairly long, low coffee table. Usman [a young man from Pakistan who taught her last year] is back for a few days, so he and I carried the old couch sections upstairs to the empty apartment on the fourth floor. Would you believe that Mr. Zhu wanted to keep them! [For three years we suffered with a set of vinyl couches. After only the first week they began to tear. Every month or so Anne would get out her needle and thread and patiently mend all the tears. Soon even the tears had tears. After a year or so Anne got the idea of using a different color of thread every time she mended. You might say that we had a thread-tear couch of many colors... Despite our many hints, Mr. Zhu had never offered to replace it. Actually, Mr. Zhu had bought the new couch and table for Scott and Emily, but they spurned them, saying they wanted to use cushions and sit on the floor, so the furniture found its way down to our apartment.]
This afternoon Scott and Emily brought down some Nepali tea that they had brewed. Usman was here, and he said it was just like his tea in Pakistan. We sat around the new coffee table for about an hour, just chatting and drinking tea. We were talking about our children; Emily said it was good to see American kids that weren't spoiled, and that made me feel good.
July 27 — We are doing well here. Swimming class ended today. No one drowned and everyone can swim 25 meters and some a good deal farther, so it was considered a success. The instructor told me that a new class was beginning tomorrow and he wanted me to continue helping him teach, but I told him that I was probably going traveling for the next couple of weeks. Taalan wants to go to the Sichuan area, so we are going to look into options.
I have had some interesting times watching and dealing with children lately. I was waiting at the bus stop the other day and was watching some children nearby. They were playing rock/paper/scissors, and when someone lost they had to do something. A little girl, only about 8 years old, very confidently went into a handstand and then over into a backbend and then back onto her feet, four times in a row in slow motion. When the boy lost, he attempted to do a cartwheel — little success, but great laughter. The big girl could also do the backbend, but she was very fast and obviously much less in control. They were so happy just playing on the sidewalk outside their parents' shops.
At swimming class, one little boy refused to swim and was yelling at his father. When he was in the water he would take one or two strokes and then grab the side and gasp desperately. I was getting him to hold onto a pole and float and practice kicking but he didn't want to put his head in the water. I finally got in with him and held him and he proceeded to yell and scream at his father. I don't know why; maybe it was just his habit. I finally told him that if he continued to yell he would sink under the water, which I allowed to happen several times before he stopped. He then decided to try crying, with the same result. He finally stopped all the scenes and swam, not badly either, so I let him get out. All the other children had already left the water. He ran to the pool entrance and attacked his father, hitting him repeatedly with his fists. This was more that I was willing to tolerate, so I grabbed his arm and smacked his butt with my hand and took him outside and told him that he was not to hit his father, period. After making sure he understood that I really meant it I let him go change and went in and apologized to the man for grabbing his son. Everyone there said bu bu, hao le [No, no, it's all right], so I guess they agreed with my actions.
That was yesterday. Today he was back again. After starting the same way and getting several facefuls of water he settled down and swam much better and finally swam the entire width of the pool with little help from me. He has many ploys to get his own way with his parents, and they let him. He was much better today, though, because he knew that I wouldn't take his shenanigans. The coach said that even his father cannot control him. He plays his big scenes all the time. Anyway maybe it will have some influence on him and his father. Now I have a topic for the next lecture I give at the auditorium: marriage and family.
July 29 — It has been a busy day, as Mondays always are. Taalan has begun ping-pong classes with a new coach. The coach does not actually belong to the club, but is paying to use the facilities. He is a good friend of Frank's, so I am sure Frank asked him specially to teach Taalan. He is going to have three private lessons per week over the rest of the summer while we are here.
Tariqa and I went to my yang qin [Chinese dulcimer] class this morning and then met Lily and her 3-year-old niece, Gloria. If you can believe it, it was the first time Gloria had really played with someone near her size. Tariqa and I showed her how to play on a slide. She caught on very quickly. On the way back to the bus stop Tariqa held her hand just like a big sister. It was so sweet.
Taalan cooked noodles for dinner tonight. It was a classic to tell to your students. By the time he had broken up all the long noodles, the floor was covered with noodle confetti. When he tried to pour the finished noodles into his bowl, he got burnt slightly by the pot and spilled soup all over the stove and counter. Our noodles were a little flavorless, because I had asked him not to use the pepper part of the spice mix. All in all, though, he did a great job cooking and did a fantastic job cleaning up the mess afterwards [Is this the same Taalan?], so I was very proud of him.
I saw something unique while riding the bus into town this morning. One of the small ponds had been drained to make way for the new road. A large backhoe, with its bucket filled with mud, sat at the edge of the old pond. Out in the middle of the pond, Lord knows why, stood a little girl about 9 years old, stuck up to mid-thigh in the mud. She wore a bright red shirt, plastered with black, black mud. As we rode by I saw another young child, maybe a year or two older, clambering out to help. My last view was of the girl straining towards her helpmate, with hand outstretched but not quite able to grab hold. When I looked again on the way back from town, the girl was gone. The hole was being filled in; dry dirt was being dumped on top of 2 feet of mud. I am sure she got out safely, but I am not so sure that the road will ever be solid over that stretch.
July 31 — Guess what I did in a moment of weakness. I didn't have an affair. I didn't beat any children, mine or others'. I didn't gamble away all my money. Aren't you glad? However, I did buy the children some fish and a turtle. As you predicted, they have been very good at dying. After only four days, two have died already. One died the first evening — maybe not enough oxygen in the water. I bought a small air pump the next day for 12 yuan. The second and third days were the honeymoon. Everyone was happy and healthy and friendly. Today disaster struck. Our cute turtle, a little guy the size of a 50-cent piece, turned cannibal. While I was in town checking into airfares, he attacked the smallest fish; apparently he ambushed it in its hidey hole and dragged it out in his mouth, taking a chunk out off its side that later finished it off. This evening Taalan arrived home to find the turtle accosting another fish. This one was twice its size. It was our orange goldfish with the bubble cheeks. He had chewed off both of the poor fish's bubbles, a front fin, and a large portion of its tail. Taalan was one upset boy. The other two fish had been Tariqa's, but this one was his, along with the turtle. The turtle is now housed in the big porcelain bowl that I make granola in and the invalid is at the surface of the fish bowl in a metal sieve to give it lots of oxygen but keep it safe from the others. It is really a sorry sight. I am sure the saga will continue tomorrow. The children are getting quite a lesson in detachment, in more ways than one.
The children and I have been swimming. We went out to dinner tonight and I cut my hair short again. It occurred to me that not only was long hair very hot but that if I was moving back to Florida I would always be hot due to the long hair. The reason for growing it out became irrelevant after that revelation.
August 1 — We just had a rip-snorting game of Hand-and-Foot [an uncivilized version of Canasta] this evening. I had played earlier with Tariqa and she had whupped me, 12000 points exactly to 9570. In this game Taalan was ahead after the first hand but made the strategic mistake leaving a canasta open one too many turns, which allowed me to go out and catch him short. In the third hand he caught up to within 300 points. In the final hand he already had everything he needed to go out except his last red canasta, while I still hadn't even melded. I finally got a wild card and was able to meld, and then my luck changed. I got into my foot and found 2 jokers and 4 deuces, and within two draws had three more deuces [all wild cards]. He still hadn't gotten the card, a 10, that he needed to go out. Well, Tariqa drew two 10's and then I drew two 10's and went out, leaving Taalan short again. In the final tally, I beat him 9910 to 9690. Very unfair indeed, but he was a good sport all in all.
Jeffery [a student friend] will be glad to stay here while we are away, as he will have air conditioning during the hottest part of the summer. He has had gold fish before and likes caring for them, though he agrees that they are good at dying. Amazingly the fish that was attacked is still alive and seems OK. This morning I went and gathered some large rocks, gravel, and a small piece of board. We made a turtle home in the other basin and got it another critter like itself. Both seem very happy, though the first one, whom we have named The Terminator, likes the deep water better.
August 3 — Tariqa and I went into town for medicine for the fish. We have three left from our first round of replacements. The original six are all dead; yesterday we lost three. We took the last one into a little shop to show to the fish lady. She gave us some "golden powder" that is supposed to cure fungus. The fish died on the way home.
August 7 — Yesterday Tariqa, Frank, and I went to Zhuzhou to see if we could get tickets for the train. We bought two hard-sleeper berths and a child's ticket to Guiyang, a city northwest of Guilin. We are leaving Friday afternoon as we need to pick up the tickets by 6:00 p.m. Then we wait around until after midnight when the train leaves and arrive the next day at 5:00 p.m. Guiyang apparently has the most famous waterfall in China, so I am sure there will also be lots of people. Tickets are very difficult to get right now. Apparently the travel agent had to contact the head of the train station to get these tickets, and I hope we can find a way back.
[Anne wrote about her vacation in Chapter 36 — Traveling Tales]
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