Dragon fruit and fuchsia dresses

Befitting my seven-year old existence these days is great pleasure in pretty things—such as dragon fruit! Have you ever had this exotic fruit, something that perhaps popped out of Dr. Seuss’s head? It has a pineapple-like exterior, deep pink with yellow shadows; it has a kiwi-fruit-like interior, soft white, speckled with black.

But dragon fruit is nothing compared to the dresses and fabrics in our Chinese tailor’s shop. The pretty fabrics hanging from rods in this little shop range from famous Sichuan brocades (the silk road has deep roots in Chengdu) to cheap, thin cottons with pink floral patterns. One of those beautiful brocades just might be in the tunic for which I was just measured. I’m not quite sure. The tailor spoke not a word of English, my host didn’t speak many more, and you know how many Mandarin words I have mastered. I’ll find out just exactly what I ordered when I pick it up next week.

Whatever our conversation lacked in some respects, it made up for with high drama and volume, especially when my petite little host kept the price for everything (matching trousers trimmed with the fabric as well as a flimsy but cool little Sichuan dress) under four bai kuai. The poor little tailor probably had never measured an Amazon woman like me before. He came up to my chin and he measured just about every muscle, perhaps out of curiosity. (Panda beauty?)  His wife, buzzing fabric through a little electric sewing machine half hidden by the prettiest brocades, occasionally looked up, perhaps worried that it would take every millimeter on one of the bolts above her to cover me.

My pleasure in pretty things might be the least of my seven-year old traits. I sit at the breakfast table and eat what is served me. I can’t ask my host’s husband what kind of chemistry he teaches or what his research is about. I can’t ask my host if she serves a special group of faculty in the university library where she works. And just when does she work? She obviously isn’t working there this July. I can’t ask why they are going to Thailand—whether for academic or personal reasons—and, in fact, I’m not 100% sure when they are leaving and when they are returning. I have many facts straight—for instance, something is going to happen at 8:00. Is that when the sister comes? Or is that when they depart for the airport? Or does the sister come tonight and they leave in the morning? I do know they’ll be gone about five days, but, given that I’m not 100% sure when they’re leaving, I’m not 100% sure when they’re returning. Our conversations are limited most of all by the little words—the prepositions and conjunctions that make all the difference in meaning. I might have five of the words I need but lack the significant sixth one. And vocabulary is the easy part. Tone is everything. The difference between buy and sell is just tone; the difference between mother and marijuana is just tone. So, I sit at the table where I’m served milk (don’t Americans drink milk at every meal?) and ask questions about the food and the weather and what we will be doing that day. Thank goodness, they never tire of hearing me talk about my family, especially my sons.

My host frequently moves my milk away from the edge of the table. It was only once that I knocked it over with my chopsticks, but, you know, that’s what seven year olds do. When I go out to the landing to sit down and put on my outdoor shoes, my host checks to make sure I have my key and umbrella and asks when I will come home from school. Given my cheap umbrella—the fabric had sprung loose from one of the spokes, my host packed me off to class with her fancy umbrella. When I got home, mine was duly repaired.

But if I’m seven at the breakfast table and during morning Chinese lessons (where I’m the student), I’m not a seven year old in my afternoon English classroom (where I’m the teacher). There I have absolute authority. Today marks the half-way mark through our two-week “Model School,” where we ply our new TEFL trade. Many of our student guinea-pigs are faculty members’ children, I’m guessing, but what a delight they are. Some of us have college-bound students; some of us have elementary students. Mine are thirteen- and fourteen-years old. They listen intently, spring to a stand when answering a question, LOVE to work on pronunciation where they answer in chorus to whatever we are working on (voiced and unvoiced th’s). The oral tradition is not dead in China—students learn a lot by recitation and have phenomenal memories. But I’ve discovered that my students will throw themselves into skits and try their best to use expression (English word meanings change with a different kind of intonation—Really?  Really!) and debate and discuss and describe  they will.  They’re just not used to doing so in school.

Once we get to our permanent sites, all of us Peace Corps China 18 volunteers will be teaching university students, but we’re told that some of our Chengdu twelve-year olds here in Model School have mastered more English than the university students we may encounter at more remote sites.

Before signing off for this week, I need to share a few milestones. For one, the vegetable lady who sets up her produce on old boards and stones outside the university gates, passed me one day after closing. She was going home, with a bamboo rod over shoulder and her wares suspended from either end in bags. She lit up when she saw me and, crossing class and nationality barriers, shouted out “Ni hao!” As I walked home, I passed two of my students who gasped and smiled and waved and waved. They might be thirteen, but they seem younger—they don’t have “adolescent attitude” yet. Then the most amazing thing—I had already buzzed my way into my gated apartment community when a distraught Chinese woman came up to me and asked me directions to such and such. I couldn’t help her, but I could apologize and say so.

For anyone who has endured this long-winded post but who didn’t read my very first one, “Jing” in the blog title refers to me. My Chinese name (given to me) is Pan Jing—so just call me Jing.

Dong bu dong

When my head finally hits the pillow, my laoshi's repeated query "dong bu dong?" is still pingponging between my ears. I have the dubious honor of being the best student over sixty my teacher has ever had. (Never mind that I'm not quite sixty.) So, remember being in the high school band, perhaps in third chair, and being challenged by the fifth chair? Language school is a little bit like that. We are constantly evaluated, ranked, and shuffled back and forth among very small classes (four students per Chinese teacher). Even if it is a little humiliating not to be top of the pack, I love being a student, and I very much enjoy my high octane youthful colleagues.

It's hard to believe that it was only three weeks ago that seventy-four of us Peace Corps China 18s flew into Chengdu. I must confess that  my first impression was a scene from a dystopian novel. Scores of drab concrete skyscrapers spiked into the metallic haze. Far below, a metallic river snaked through the city. But the more we zoomed in, the more we saw color--laundry from every balcony, mini-skirted women on scooters with umbrellas, red neon signs with yellow characters, and, believe it or not, lush subtropical trees everywhere. The grounds of my hosts' apartment are exquisitely landscaped and carefully manicured--never mind that overhanging branches are pruned to about five feet five, about three inches too low for me. But drab as the rust-stained concrete buildings are, many are covered with ivy, and other things catch the eye: every imaginable pattern of tile and stone in the walkways, exquisitely shaped street lamps and ironwork on windows and balconies, beautiful big pots of every imaginable sub-tropical plant. The city is pulsing with life.

My hosts, a chemistry professor and a librarian, have been most kind to me. We both read and write the other's language better than we hear and speak it, so dinner conversations tend to be lively three-year old discussions about the day, the food, and relatively concrete, name-able things. My hosts are patient with my clumsy handling of chopsticks and sometimes serve me heaping stickfuls of the four or so dishes. It's true that we always have rice, but the diet is rich in vegetables and high in protein (often soy-based ingredients as much as meat). My host Li Ying is a fabulous cook.

So have you ever heard of shoveling food? That's what I witness in the university cafeteria. Somebody from the kitchen rolls out a barrel of rice that is subsequently shoveled with a garden variety shovel into each of the huge stainless steel bowls from which the servers spoon out helpings onto our waiting trays. The menu options are all heavy with shucai--vegetables. So strange to go into a Chinese market and see tables laden with fruit and vegetables, some of which I've never seen before and some of which are unlike any I've seen in the US--round pears, also teeny tiny pears (like huge cherries), carrots as fat as potatoes. Chicken and bits of pork hang from metal hooks at the back of the market, where a butcher stands ready to whomp off the chicken feet on the tree stump. On a back balcony is a fish tank, where the butcher's wife will net the fish you point to and proceed to scale and gut it while the tail is still flipping.

I'm not sure if I have adjusted to being the freak that draws and holds every pair of eyeballs on every bus. Not only am I a waigoren--foreigner--I'm huge and I have white hair. Today, though, in one of our cross-culture sessions, I was introduced to the idea of "panda beauty." The speaker flashed a panda on the screen and suggested that Americans would look hard at a panda if one mosied down Main Street in our home towns in the US. He was trying to assure the twenty-somethings that, even though they would be stared at, they're simply interesting and the Chinese have overwhelming curiosity and think nothing of staring at some novelty. Unlike the twenty-somethings and like the Sichuan pandas, I'm white haired and some nights have dark lines under my eyes.

As I get close to drifting off, I hear something by Mozart. The windows are open as always, hot as it is, and I hear as usual one or two neighbors in nearby apartments pounding out one concerto after another.  I hear several pianos going from early in the morning until late at night. This apartment complex is populated with lots of faculty, and I'm wondering if one of the musicians is a music professor. The music is fabulous, but I hear lots of it elsewhere when I run around the complex--everywhere. Sometimes I see a child bent over the piano, more often I can only hear the music.

And before I say good night, I want to send hugs and kisses to my three sons (Chris, Ben, and Nick) and wish my dear friends Ann and David a happy anniversary!

Emerging from the cocoon

I'm sprawled across my host's daughter's pink bed, where I toil over my Mandarin many hours an evening. It's the second week of Pre-Service Training for China 18, the eighteenth group of Peace Corps Volunteers to serve in China.  The first week found all 73 of us bunking together in a hotel across from Peace Corps headquarters, housed on the campus of Sichuan University in Chengdu.  There we started our language classes but had access to English speakers 24-7. The second week found us unpacking our bags in the apartments of our host families, many of whom do not speak any English. My hosts, Li Ying and her husband Peng Laoshi, do not speak much English, so I have no excuse not to practice what little Mandarin I have.Our Chinese teachers meet with us daily (except for Sunday) through these summer months. Gradually, we're emerging from our cocoon of native speakers of English and are beginning to attune our ears to different sounds.