‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and all Through the Club…

The power’s out, so our private room is lit by a collection of tall candles, held in place by the beer bottles we’ve already emptied. The feast isn’t traditional Christmas Eve fare, but it’s certainly one of the best meals we’ve had in awhile. Fish, deer, noodles of questionable origin—“It’s made from a plant,” my friend Daisy translates imprecisely—vegetables, cold and hot.

A small Christmas miracle, our set menu includes shrimp and some meat supposedly gleaned from a cow—delicacies that stand in for my mom’s “surf and turf” Christmas Eve spread. A bigger Christmas miracle, there’s a downpour of snow blanketing the streets, which is beautiful for the ten minutes before it gets covered in perpetual pollution dust. Perhaps not miraculous, but simply amazing: Some guy is moonwalking in the street when we rush to the window to watch the snow fall.

Sara, another teacher from Drake, celebrates her birthday on December 24, and her university’s kitchen made her a fantastically huge cake to share with eleven people. As we ate, I played Christmas carols from my cell phone. The students we invited were wide-eyed with entertainment (or fear?) as we bounded cheerfully through “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!” and turned momentarily somber when “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” came on.

I thought by now I’d seen all of Chengde’s seedy corners—there aren’t many corners at all, and few of them are exceptionally seedy—but Sara’s desire to dance lead us to the “KoKo Love,” Chengde’s only dance club. The building looks like an old bank or something similarly stately. I fell walking up the fake-marble staircase. Twice. Once when we unknowingly tried to go up without a ticket, and again after we purchased them. So, let that stand in for the inevitable slipping on the icy ramp that would have happened at St. John’s in Houghton on Christmas Eve. That’s probably the last parallel I can make between this experience and the other twenty-two Christmas Eves in my life.

The marquis behind the DJ flashed “Merry Christmas!” every few moments, as slightly chubby Chinese men threw their weight back and forth on the dance floor. A floor which, like many things around here, felt like it was about to snap and drop us into a sweaty, dusty pile on the first floor. Thankfully the men were less forward than American guys at a bar—no groping, grinding, etc—they just stood nearby and rocked their chubby bodies while smiling creepily at us. “These Chinese guys, they’re really just too much sometimes. Really, honestly, Too Much,” was Richard’s expert analysis of the situation. He, as the only foreign guy with four foreign ladies, may have made this comment after some gangster tried to buy the four of us from him. But I can’t be sure.

Sometime shortly before midnight, I covertly stole a basket of popcorn from a nearby table where a couple was making out. Cate promptly spilled the basket all over the floor, and Becky followed it up by accidentally dashing her half-full bottle of beer on top of it. Yes, at the stroke of midnight Christmas day, I was dancing in a pile of soggy popcorn, beer and broken glass while Lady Gaga was remixed China-style in a smoky club. Happy Birthday, Jesus.

"Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. -Liz Gilbert"

A month's worth of novel-ing left me less committed to verbatim honesty and more interested in entertaining myself with my writing. Early feedback on my most recent post suggests that a disclaimer is necessary.

While I did my best to elaborate upon my understanding of economics for Mr. Lei, I did so with humility and assured him that I am by no means qualified to break down a nation’s economic policies. He’s an incredibly smart individual and I know I’m not his primary source for information.

Although it would have entertained me greatly, I did not tell Mr. Zhang that all republicans think humans had pet dinosaurs back in the day. And I certainly didn’t bring up sexuality. But I could have.

When my students ask me, “What’s good?” I do tell them what I think is good, or, if I’ve gotten to know them well, I can better consider what they might think is good. While an entertainment critic could be inclined to disagree, I feel there’s nothing more subjective than one’s choice of media diversion. My students are bright. I think they get this.

My intention in the post was to convey the absurdity I feel when constantly responding to inquiries as though I’m a lifetime Gallup employee. Although I often feel like it is expected of me, I don’t presume to represent 304,059,724 Americans with my every whimsical statement.

The Perks of Being a Foreign Expert

“America is a very powerful nation. It seems to me, you are very strong and wealthy. So, can you tell me why the economic collapse?”

“Well, um, there were many reasons…”

“Yes, but I don’t know any. Please explain it to me.”

Mr. Lei summarizes the American conundrum in three almost-grammatically-correct sentences. You’re very powerful. You’re strong, and you’re wealthy. How could you let things go to shit like this? I’m not an economist. And the degree I hold didn’t automatically make me a journalist, so I can’t even claim that. I’m just an English teacher, but here I go.

“Well, there’s this thing called predatory lending… and there were all these bad mortgages that led to foreclosed homes…why don’t we have jobs? Well, sir, they’re all here… Yes, did you know we owe you, with your charade of being a poor, underdeveloped nation, billions of dollars?”

It took several days and one invasive, uncomfortable medical examination, but shortly after arriving in China I was presented with a miniature passport, sealed by the P.R.C.’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. I am, by government decree, an expert on all things foreign. Mr. Lei is only one of the university professors who expects me to spell out America’s problems in black and white, to defend with clarity the confusing mess that is my homeland.

“I think democracy is great, don’t you? Our situation sucks, we are not allowed to represent ourselves, only one party, one group to make decisions… power corrupts. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. So we are very corrupt, and can’t do anything about it.”

Mr. Zhang, an English teacher his students have dubbed “Mr. Right” because he is so opinionated, is expressing all of this to me on a crowded city bus. Curious about how much China has changed since the age of Mao? Mr. Zhang is the perfect caricature of a newer, more outspoken minority, though certainly not representative of the unwaveringly patriotic majority. Jason was so uncomfortable, he alternately answered questions and then pretended to have fallen asleep—on a 15-minute bus ride—to avoid going too deeply into the topic of democracy in public.

“If you are in a political party, which do you choose?”

“Democratic.”

“So you support Obama? Why?... How can you be so sure?... What is wrong with the other party?”

“The other party represents some views that I agree with, but I believe it’s been co-opted by religious fanatics who think humans had pet dinosaurs 4,000 years ago, and that religious figures who have spent their entire lives suppressing their sexuality are authorized to tell me what to do with mine…”

As you can see, there is ample room for me to indoctrinate on my own terms, and I simply can’t help it. When you’re asked these questions around the clock, giving P.C. answers becomes exhausting. Foreign expert-dom allows me to pass off all sorts of personal beliefs as legitimately, quintessentially American, and therefore trendy and desirable.

Among the students, I abuse the privilege by recommending my favorite movies and musicians when they ask for suggestions about what’s popular with American college students. I honestly have no idea, and rarely had any idea when I was in college. You want action movies? Watch the Borne trilogy. You want a musical? Try Across the Universe. Two of my sophomores are three seasons deep in Grey’s Anatomy. Because it helps them learn medical vocabulary, of course.

This week Jason & I taught Christmas carols. I’m sure the students would prefer the N’Sync Christmas album, but we’re going all classic—heavy on the Gene Autry, a touch of Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole. Some classes just look confused—this isn’t what pop music sounds like on the Internet—but a few choice students look like they might understand what it means to rock around the Christmas tree with Brenda Lee.

Farewell, November!

I have officially completed my largest single document thus far! I hesitate to call it a novel, because it becomes rather tangential in spots, droops into personal musings more than often than not, and because variations of, “How in the heck am I going to get this dooone!?” account for at least 100-200 words in the final product. One night last week, I was pouring through www.quotegarden.com, trying to see if anyone has ever said anything inspiring about writing that might inspire me to write 10,000 more words. I came across this gem:

“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” So, essentially, I’ve just had an enlightening month-long conversation with myself. I would like to think I’m better because of it, although honestly the exercise has left me feeling a bit schizophrenic. Lesson: Don’t model characters after yourself unless you really want to see what you would say—to yourself—in a variety of situations. You might be confused or appalled at your own audacity. At least pretend to model characters after someone else, so when they say really stupid things you can pretend it wasn’t you. That said, occasionally I found myself to be rather witty.

The quote belongs to a French guy, Jules Renard, who wrote many things and whose Wikipedia page tells me we would have gotten along great, had he not perished in 1910. Some other quotes I like:

“The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.”
“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.” (Hooray!)
“I am never bored anywhere; being bored is an insult to oneself.”
“If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.”

Seems like a cool guy.

What have I been doing other than typing frantically for the past 30 days? In addition to teaching at the university, I now have two tutoring jobs, which keep my both busy and entertained. First, Ms. Chen: Ms. Chen, I’m told, is one of the wealthiest women in Chengde. Her plush apartment with such amenities as dark hardwood floors, a piano, and a bathtub (!) supports this hypothesis. Ms. Chen wants to learn English because she hopes to send her adolescent son to an American boarding school sometime soon. My understanding is that she wants to go to the States with him and potentially work in business. She’s in her forties and has not studied English since college, which means her conversational English is for all practical purposes nonexistent. Often, we stare at each other and try to communicate telepathically until one of us cracks. Thankfully, we have textbooks to aide our conversations.

I am also tutoring a girl my own age who is preparing to take the international English examination next month. She goes by Daisy, and while I love spending time with her, I feel a bit uneasy about my own role in her life. Daisy’s story is not unlike most modern Chinese students’. She took a standardized state test before she went to college, and that test decided that she should study psychology. She also managed to study Chinese, a subject she seems to love dearly. However, as any English major in the United States would understand, her passion for Chinese does not lend itself to career trajectories her lawyer-father considers practical. As an English major in the United States might not understand, this essentially means she is not allowed to pursue her passion.

Although she found psychology both difficult and boring, she is now studying to earn a higher score on the IELTS so she can move to a foreign country and earn a master’s degree in the subject. Specifically, my job is to help her increase her speaking fluency and her English writing skills, because she scored too low on these portions of the test the first time she took it. I’ve also taken it upon myself to scour the worldwide web and introduce her to psychology programs that might genuinely spark her interest. I’m operating within this system of subjugation that she faces, helping her do what a group of superior men decided she should do, “for her own good,” but I’m trying to assuage my guilt by helping her find something to be genuinely passionate about within her circumstances. I wonder what my feminist professors would say.

Daisy said something that broke my heart the first time we met. We were talking about what we studied in college, and in response to my journalism degree she sighed and said, “I thought about studying journalism a long time ago. But then I thought, if I’m not allowed to tell the truth, what’s the point?”

Halloween in China

Walking across campus toward CDMU’s massive lecture hall, I hear Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way” booming from a glowing classroom three floors up. I cringe, I smile, I know that must be the room I’m headed for, where the university’s English Club meets. Ask any student what their favorite kind of music is, they’ll respond, “gentle.” Jason and I gave a riveting performance about the joys of Halloween in the United States. Perhaps the only thing that stuck was trick-or-treating, but that’s the most important part, anyway.

After nearly two weeks of Halloween-oriented lesson plans and side gigs like our Backstreet Boys-infused night with the English Club, I have this to say about Americans who celebrate Halloween. What the heck is wrong with you? Seriously. Try explaining a holiday that glorifies gory murder, or why we scare children by telling them the bogeyman is hiding under their bed, or in their closet, or whatever. Explain to someone why you craft fake spider webs out of cotton balls to decorate your front porch. Define the words “slime,” “corpse,” “monster,” “vampire,” and “skull.” Do this upwards of ten times with a group of students who prefer the gentle croon of Nick Carter over any other musician ever, and you will start to feel like Satan himself, will begin to wonder how your culture became so twisted. I’m just happy we showed them The Nightmare Before Christmas instead of a more age-appropriate Halloween flick, like Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They squealed and averted their eyes when the animated bogeyman died.

Halloween night, we found a KTV (karaoke bar) that was actually decorated for Halloween—the workers had great costumes and kept coming into our room to take pictures with us. I dressed as Mother Nature. Easily assembled with a flower-print dress and some leaves from the streets, it was neither the best nor the worst costume I’ve produced. It did become the most ironic costume I’ve worn, because on Halloween night the Chinese Weather Manipulation Gods created a massive snowstorm that dumped 16 million tons of snow on Beijing. A few flurries from the snow massacre drifted this way. Mother Nature was not involved, unless her weeping added to the poundage.

On an unrelated note, just in case you’re worried that I might be morphing into some sort of responsible adult now that I’ve been a college graduate for six months, take heart: This week I was locked out of my apartment for 24 hours due to a series of events that involved my own irresponsibility, Jason’s keys mysteriously disappearing days before, and our foreign affairs officer handing me a pile of six keys on an interesting mix of key chains that ranged from a shoestring to “I Love Minnesota,” none of which ended up being for my apartment. The saga culminated with someone making a run to campus, 30 minutes outside the city, around 10:00 p.m., and finally giving the correct spare key to a teacher who lives in my building.

My novel is up to 10,342 rambling words.

National Novel Writing Month

Sometime last summer, I turned to Jason and said, “I wonder what you would look like with a beard.” “Terrible,” He promised. Somehow this conversation led to the decision that both of us would take part in that timeless college tradition, No Shave November. My participation was mostly for solidarity reasons—I’m lazy enough to know what my legs look like when I don’t shave for a while.

November ended tragically, with Jason assuming the role his scruffy red beard suggested, drinking beer in bed in a worn-out undershirt. Pictures are on Facebook, if you’re brave enough to find them.

Last year’s curiosity satiated, I stumbled upon a new challenge for us to undertake this November. It’s a little less passive, and a bigger challenge than kissing an extremely itchy face (gross.)

Between November 1st and 30th, we’re each going to attempt to write a 50,000-word novel as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a tradition in its eleventh year that I just stumbled upon last week in an email newsletter.

It works like this: You spend your days and nights writing, and at the end of the month you upload your work to the NaNoWriMo website. If you’ve reached 50,000 words, you can download a PDF certificate stating that you “won.” The novels don’t go anywhere, and aren’t necessarily read by anyone, although some projects started during this month have been published—one was a #1 New York Times bestseller.

At this point I can’t tell you much about either novel, except that Jason’s writing satire and my novel is set entirely in a kitchen. This may be all I’ll ever tell you, so use your imagination!

If it seems crazy to you, you’re probably right. But we’re significantly under-employed and we love to write. As the NaNoWriMo folks declare on their FAQ page, “Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.”

This Morning

The weight of my blankets pressures me to stay in bed. I know the tiled floor is frigid, so I drop my hand to scoop up socks before moving another muscle. The steam from my water boiler fogs up the kitchen windows, trying to escape to the deceptively warm-looking sun.

My cell phone reveals the millionth message from David, our persistent, needy high school friend. “Hi Whitney. Weather is turning colder and colder. You must take care.” Maybe it’s all the Hollywood movies, but the Chinese refuse to believe that I’ve experienced cold before. I’m met with looks of pitying disbelief when I tell people that my home in Iowa is, in fact, colder than here. At least it was. Now it’s warmer. Tomorrow it will probably be colder again. Chengde’s weather is on some sort of steady axis I’ve never experienced. Once a warm temperature drops away, it won’t be reached again. If anything, it’s easier to deal with.

After breakfast I layer on the sweats and venture outside. The path inside the apartment wall is lined with the vegetable of the day, harvested from some hidden garden—last week it was leeks, this week it’s arugula. The wall, the windows, the stairs—everywhere, arugula.

I’ve never lived in a city that I didn’t prefer in the morning. I walk past the school, where parents and grandparents mill outside the gate, watching their kids meet up with friends or form rigid, green-uniformed lines to listen to the morning’s announcements. I laugh out loud at a small dog strolling by in a leopard-print suit with rhinestones.

On the corner of a busy intersection, men have an impromptu birds-and-cards gathering. They come out early in the morning carrying two wooden birdcages, connected by a board slung over their shoulders. Six or eight birds are lined up in their cages by the street, while the men play mahjong, chess or cards on a cardboard box. I don’t know why this is the meeting spot. Maybe it used to be something else—everything here was something else just a few short years ago—maybe the busy intersection was a park, and old men don’t care for change. When I walk past in an hour, they’ll be gone. The noise of the high-rise going up behind their post replaces the birds.

I’m pretty great at crossing the street now. The trick is, as I’ve suspected all along, to understand that your life is not as important as getting to your destination quickly. I step into traffic, preferably sandwiching myself between old people or small children, because drivers really don’t want to hit them. I shrug at horns and sing aloud whatever my iPod releases into my ears.

Across the street, fortunetellers on small stools line the sidewalk, the yin-yang that was emblematic of friendship necklaces in my childhood printed carefully on the posters in front of them, holding untold secrets. I don’t know if there’s a reason they congregate in front of the city hospital, but from my ear-plugged and ignorant American viewpoint, it sure does look like preying on the vulnerable. Occasionally I see them working, an elderly man squatting in front of a stool and extending a wrinkled palm to be deciphered.

If I brought 10 kuai with me, I could easily spend it on this 10-minute walk. Without splurging for an unintelligible palm reading, I could buy a whole, steamed-on-the-spot sweet potato or ear or corn, fruits both recognizable and exotic, toys dancing their way out of green plastic bags, socks, slippers and nail clippers laid out on strips of fabric. There are tiny caramel apples lined up on a stick, a fall delicacy, next to newspapers, magazines, and the omnipresent, vehement beggars—the same three every day.

No one else uses the gym in the morning. The gym is hilarious, and I love it. Every wall is adorned with cheap posters of (American) body builders, even though the only other patrons I’ve encountered are middle-aged women. When I walk down the stairs, a black man with bulging muscles grimaces at me. Upstairs, it’s Baywatch girls on steroids. Lots of steroids.

I run by natural light and the glow of the treadmill, pondering the billboard that hangs inside the retail building just across the alley. A grossly anglicized Chinese couple stands in sailing attire, ala Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger, and raises their eyes to the front of their yacht. Near the billboard, a Chinese flag whips in the wind. Above it all, some other community’s arugula is laid out on the roof.