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!