Shopping for Greens

I invite you to go shopping with me. If we go to the foot of my hill, we'll pass this little corner shop where the mahjong players might stop to take a look at us. Then, if we decide to go around the corner to the left, we'll find a dozen veggie vendors. But, if we turn to the right, again, within fifty steps we'll find another dozen veggie vendors.

We've gone to the left and can see another apartment complex--a newer, more upscale one--looming behind the little farmer's market. Barely visible to the right is JinYun Mountain.

We'll find an abundance of fruit and vegetables here.

 But if we go back and turn to the right, as we would if we were going to head on up to campus, we'd pass these folks. Lately, they have had a lot of corn, which they husk on the spot.

 I pass this woman several times a day, going to and from campus, and buy most of my eggs, tofu, spinach, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, garlic, and cucumbers from her.

When we take the steps just out of sight to the right, we'll pass the people doing taijiquan and then more steps that take us to the lane going back up the hill to my building, number four. If we keep going way up to the top of the hill, beyond all of the apartment buildings, we come to a mountain lane that houses another community. I suspect that many of the vegetables I buy come from back here.

 Although the fruit comes and goes with the season, most of the vegetables are available year around. It's a vegetable paradise. Now we'll have to see what we can do with the wok!

Of Geese and Gaokao

The buses pushed impatiently past each other until they slowed to a crawl on Tian Sheng Road.  Everything slowed down.  Trucks. Motorbikes. Bus 565 and then 502 virtually stopped. More buses. An accident? A police car? Or just the morning rush? I kept walking along, keeping parallel to the long, long vine-covered wall. Whatever it was, things started moving before I got to the next corner. And then things slowed down again. At last the culprits came into view—two bundles of white, a couple of confused geese who weren’t sure if they were headed east or west. They seemed to be consulting with each other and clumsily bumped into each other now and then before they finally crossed the busy road and stepped up on the curb in front of me. Really?! Who knew these little guys could stop traffic on Tian Sheng Road?! I don’t understand the physics, but I figure they virtually halted many tons of heavy metal holding tons of people and cargo, all moving at a good clip.

So, I don’t pretend to understand the physics, but one thing is certain—something seemingly puny could alter the path of a great force. But the physics of geese is nothing compared to the biology of the gaokao, as I discovered last week.

Some of my students were singing last week—and we got into a discussion of romantic songs and romance and dating. I asked some questions about dating—about dating in college, in high school. Now, my students have astonishing vocabularies, but they weren’t sure what I meant by “to date.” They eventually understood I meant something to do with courting, with a boyfriend and a girlfriend, with going out. And what they made clear was that they didn’t date in high school—they were forbidden to. And so I asked some other questions, and then when I had the chance I asked other students. Over and over and over I got the same story. They simply did not date. Maybe, one student would allow, some kids did secretly. Maybe, another student would say, a high school teacher would know but wouldn’t report it. Consistently, though, they said they simply weren’t allowed to date because they had to study. And over and over, most of my students said that, really, with few exceptions most kids didn’t. Why?  They didn’t have time. Of course! The gaokao! The famous college entrance exam.

I knew, of course, that my students studied hard throughout high school and devoted a good deal of their weekend time, month after month, year after year, to memorizing things for the gaokao. What I didn’t know was that the gaokao had the power to render inconsequential teenage hormones. I didn’t know that it was biologically possible.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I applaud the Chinese for placing a high value on education, and I admire within reason the self-discipline and work ethic that is cultivated nationwide. I also believe in the value of a prolonged innocence.  

My students might not be representative, but most of them say they didn’t go out, not to the movies, not anywhere. They didn’t have romantic relationships. Period.

I’ll spare you my temptation to go on and on about duty and desire. I’ll spare you my temptation to talk about the pros and cons of the gaokao, other than to share one quotation from Duncan Hewitt (below). I’ll just leave you with this thought: I simply didn’t know two geese could effectively cause a traffic jam in Beibei, and I didn’t know a paper pencil test could effectively arrest teenage feelings and relationships throughout the vast country called China.

And here's this from Hewitt:

"The gruelling three-day exam takes place in June each year, provoking a state of frenzied anxiety among parents and pupils alike. Local governments divert traffic to ensure that students arrive at the exam halls on time; building sites near schools are ordered to close in order not to disturb the candidates; some parents even hire hotel rooms so their children will not have to make too long a journey, and to allow them to do their final preparation in air-conditioned comfort. Crowds of parents wait for their children to emerge from the exam halls ready to ply them with snacks and drinks, or to fan them against the summer heat." (China, Getting Rich First, A Modern Social History)
 

Getting closer

(a continuation of the last two stories)

"Ni hao, shi fu! Qing, da biao, Wo yao qu pai chu suo."

I hoped the taxi driver would understand that I wanted to go to the police station. He did. I just didn't understand that he wanted to know which one. That is, when he mentioned that we were on Tian Sheng Lu, which I in fact knew, I didn't realize he was actually asking me if I wanted to go to the Tian Sheng Lu Station. Apparently Beibei has several police stations. Or, in hindsight, I think that's what he was asking me.

I might have been Moses parting the Red Sea when I walked into the all too familiar police station, with both uniformed folks and civilians stepping to one side or the other of me, watching me closely as I approached the receptionist. She patiently listened when I explained that on May 25th I had lost my passport, I had already come to the police station, and I already had a report. But there was a mistake in the report, and I needed a new one. That much I said, and, even if she didn't understand my Chinese, she said, "I know, I know, I know," and told me to sit down.

A tall young woman stopped in mid-conversation with another receptionist and asked in English if she could help. Her boyfriend, whom I later knew as Fang Qi, rose from his seat and came over to me, gently asking questions, also offering to help.

The big officer who had been smitten by my beautiful Chinese tutor when we last went to the station laughed "Come in!" a dozen times, laughing more each time he said it. He cheerfully led me--and my new friend Fang Qi--through the room with a bicycle or two to the back room where my sister and her friend had so patiently waited for hours on my last visit.  The thin young officer with glasses smoked at the adjacent desk, and other uniformed people, all friendly enough, came in and out of the room. I explained the problem in English this time, which Fang Qi translated. Each time the officer repeated the question, Fang Qi would repeat the answer, and the officer would explode in loud but friendly English: "I know, I know, I know!" And then proceed to ask more questions we'd already gone over.

Other people who'd lost cell phones and such occasionally swept in and out of the room, all talking excitedly.  A woman in uniform came in to wish me well for Dragon Festival--did I have any zongzi? The girlfriend, a grad student in psychology who had just lost her cell phone, occasionally poked her head in. I tried to get Fang Qi to go with her, but he insisted she wasn't done and didn't need him. Meanwhile, Fang Qi told me about the three phones he'd lost and all about his hometown, which was not Beibei. He allowed that he felt just like me, a foreigner. He asked me lots of questions and offered observations of his own about the region while my policeman worked away on the correction process (we needed one word changed, but changing that word required several other policemen to go check out more information).

At last, the new report was almost ready--but then the computers froze. Fang Qi kept talking and eventually the computers worked again. At last, I had a new report, duly marked with red thumb prints. Most of the police force came out to wave me off as I turned down Tian Sheng Lu for the 45 minute walk home.

Back in my apartment, I heard my cell phone rumble in my backpack. Fang Qi was texting to see if I made it home okay and to wish me well for Dragon Festival.

Now that I have the new police report, I can go back to the waiban tomorrow and meet someone who will accompany me to the Public Security Bureau in another city to get the form needed for the US Consulate. It was the Public Security Bureau officer, after all, who insisted I go back to the police station to get a new report when we last went to the Public Security Bureau.

It goes on and on. . . but we're getting closer.

Meanwhile, Lingfang and Ling and Xiaodan and others, Mr. Wang, have periodically checked up on me, offering help about some of the related issues--for getting these forms to the U. S. Consulate are just a few of the many to go.

I just got a text message from Fang Qi. His girlfriend found her cell phone.

You need a -- what? A passport?

(a continuation from last week)

I confess I've had fantasies about shooting holes into the tires of crazy drivers who risk mowing down pedestrians, cut sudden U-turns on busy streets, and barrel through red lights. The aggressive Chinese taxi drivers I've observed make their New York City brethren look like old ladies. Those fantasies utterly vanished this morning.

I had gotten up early, pooled my vital documents together and gone down to the bus stop at the foot of the hill, where I watched buses 502, 535, 555, and 565 roll by about every 20 seconds. Where was 558, the bus whose last stop was the Chongqing North train station? The bus stop crowd expanded and contracted as passengers were exhaled onto one bus after another. My bus, which I'd taken twice before, wasn't to be seen. A bystander suggested I take 516, 518, or 898 to downtown Beibei and catch an empty 558 there. My cushion of time was completely flat, though--and the small pink train ticket in my hand said I needed to be at the Chongqing train station, ready to depart in just an hour and fifteen minutes. Panicked and poor and far from Chongqing, I flagged a taxi, knowing it would cost ten times as much as the bus. A student, also bound for Chongqing, piled in and we took off.

We had been weaving madly through thick traffic and were then zooming 25 km over the speed limit on the shoulder when a police car came into sight. My heart sped up. Not to worry--the policeman apparently had exactly the same driving proclivities as my taxi driver and tore around a belching truck, also using the shoulder to do so.

My hero the taxi driver pulled up to an underground part of the train station, anxious to know if I knew how to get to the boarding hall. I did. Twenty minutes later I was zooming in and out of tunnels, rushing past rural Chongqing's lush mountainsides. Sichuan's mountains came into view, also thick green with occasional villages--none of which seemed to be troubled with signs of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. No neon or ugly parking lots or conspicuous gas stations or sprawl to be seen from the train window--just a little outcropping here and there of square-topped buildings clustered near terraced rice paddies and neatly patterned vegetable patches on the lower slopes of the mountains.

Once in Chengdu, the directions to the US Consulate were easy, now that I know the word for consulate: Lingshiguan. The address was simply "4 Lingshiguan Road." There, a line of mostly Chinese travelers snaked around the US Consulate, mostly students waiting patiently in the hot sun. One guard checked numbers, another occasionally thrust his hand in the chest of someone approaching the door.  Inside, my laptop and just about everything else were swapped for a clip-on blue badge. None of these officials spoke much English, so much of the process remained a mystery to those of us who do--and quite possibly to those who don't.

Several check points and badge-switches later, a red-uniformed woman's hand went up and she told me to go home. I couldn't point to my name on the list of appointments--it wasn't there, although my appointment was supposed to be for 1:00. The room was packed with hundreds of people, mostly Chinese--most very tidy and stoic. No entrance, I was told. Go make another appointment. (Appointments can only be made on Wednesday mornings and Friday afternoons, teaching days both for me.) I felt my head grow thick, my eyes almost lose focus. I seldom sweat, but I started sweating profusely and felt dizzy. I wanted a bathroom. My physical reaction subsided, partly thanks to an observant musician-turned-kindergarten-teacher who fetched me a little water. I gently protested that I did indeed have an appointment at one o'clock and thought that Greg was expecting me.

Greg? I hadn't intended to drop names but that apparently was a magic bullet. However uncompromising the guards were at the gate, the staff (both Chinese and Western) behind the barred windows couldn't have been kinder, gentler, more accommodating. "The process is somewhat opaque," said one, between my many rounds of being helped, being seated while something was checked, and being helped again.

Having made my appearance in person, as required, to humbly apply for a new passport, the process still promises to take another four to six weeks, with a few more this's and that's to do. The passport story is a long one, and I'm not sure how it will end or how the visa one will go after that. The good news is--ah! The first chapter is done, partly thanks to Mary, Ling, JiaYue, Xiaodan, Kairong, Lingfang, Xiang, and Peace Corps friends, among many others who've helped me along the way. And the taxi cab driver!

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