Around me
thousands of people seemed to be dead to the world—in a world still dark except
for the wet leaves reflecting some light far below. Most of these thousands of neighbors slept, as
I had, with balcony and kitchen windows still flung open, even though
temperatures were dropping down to single digits Celsius. South of the Yellow River, there’s little
central heat, but people in Sichuan and Chongqing tend to like the cold fresh
air. This sometimes creates tension in the dormitories, where students from the
north want to close the windows and “turn up the heat” (whatever that might
be), and roommates from the south are invigorated by chilly temps. In my case,
the window latches don’t really work and I have plenty of long underwear from
my hiking days. But the little wheels were still spinning on the computer,
slowly loading something.
No matter
what the results would be, I was grateful for the help I had had on both sides
of the Pacific getting my absentee ballot safely delivered to the Boone County
clerk. Although my waiban and his assistant had helped me with some computer
glitches, my biggest help came from the shorter of two graduate students
rummaging through a pile of burlap bags and packages that had been dumped in a
corner of the post office. While the taller one kept trying to find her bag,
the shorter one realized that I needed to know if my letter would be delivered
by November 6th. Even though
it was still early October at the time, there was no stamp I could buy that
would guarantee delivery by election day. The sympathetic graduate student
thought my best option would be to mail it via a private delivery, ZTO. She
would take me there. Meanwhile, the taller student found not one, but two
colossal bags, each of which weighed nearly fifty pounds. I offered to carry
one bag, and the graduate students carried the other bag between them. The
shorter student and I loaded the taller student and her bags onto the first
campus shuttle we passed, and then the two of us proceeded to wend our way
through a maze of sky-scraper like dormitories to a complex that had a fed-express-like
ZTO. She “mei guanxi’d” me though all my protests and stayed with me to inquire about
costs and to negotiate in Chinese with the clerk who was about to close the
shop, and she waited to translate the Boone County clerk’s address into Hanzi
(Chinese characters), which were required for the ZTO forms but not for the
Chinese postal service. She tried to escort me back to the main gate, although
I finally convinced her that I knew my way around campus reasonably well. In the end, she had given me well over an
hour of her time and would take nothing in return.
Now, mind
you, this was the most expensive letter I have ever mailed—180 kuai—so dear in
every sense that one of my beloveds, who knew how much this vote meant to me,
decided not to cast a vote that surely would have canceled out mine. My family
is huge and of all political persuasions, but we love each other above all
else.
Before I
got any election results, I had an email pop up from Siren, Catherine, Gina,
and Cathy who had planned to bring groceries to my house on Saturday and make
jiaozi (dumplings) with me. The email was informing me that now I should expect
twenty people. I shouldn’t worry—they were bringing all the food. But! Even if
I seat every one on my cold tile floor, I don’t have forty chopsticks! Before I
finished that thought, another email popped up saying that they had decided to
rent a flat for the day and that they would meet me at Gate Two and then they
would take me there. Well, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I had been warned
throughout our summer training—we wouldn’t make it in China if we weren’t
flexible and “prepared” for all sorts of last minute changes. I tried to digest
that thought as I noticed that CNN, the NYT, the Guardian and other elections sites were still refraining from making any
projections. I’d have to forget about the elections for now.
Thanks to
texts and emails from home, as well as reports from some students who rushed to
my office as soon as they heard the election results, I eventually learned who won.
But, of
course, the US election is not the only change of leadership afoot. My
Putonghua and Hanzi are both so bad that it’s hard for me to get a good reading
of the Chinese coverage of their own leadership change during the 18th
Party Congress. The only thing I can really read is pictures, and from them I
can tell that everyone must dye their hair—men, women, young, old. They all
have pitch black hair, even if they’re 86 years old. From pictures, I can tell
that the Chinese media coverage of natural and manmade disasters here and
abroad is amazing. Beyond that, I have no clue what else is covered and how
well or what my students know about their government. I do know that any of my
seniors who anticipate becoming party members must compose some special essay
right now, and I believe that once a party member, always a party member—no
exit. I have no idea what the implications are. I don't know much. I’m still a seven year old in
this respect, too.
So, back to
the jiaozi party that is mushrooming into something else. . . tomorrow. Before
I go to bed, I should study my students’ names and faces. I have 180 of them,
and I can name most of them in class, but I’m often at a loss when I suddenly bump into them on the street. The students I remember best have names that depart from the
usual “Cathy," "Sally," and "Sam” and are either nature names like “Iris," "Rainbow," "Apple,"
"Rose," "Daisy," and "Snow” or—crazy names like “Pain," "Potato," "Guess," "Gallop," "Snail," "Soon," "Echo," "and Monk.”
Somehow, maybe not surprisingly, the students with the most unusual names are
also some of my most intellectually distinctive students.
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