This is it, our last night in Shanghai. We have 90% of our stuff packed and our bags are 100% full. That’s what happens when you come to a country that makes everything for the world.
The biggest challenge will be getting Henry’s new bass back home. Inside its hard case it is about seven feet tall and weighs a ton. It clearly violates every luggage limit set by the world’s airlines. Our travel plans involve spending a night in London before heading back to Minneapolis, switching planes in Detroit. I think that my curses about the great white bass case will be heard far and wide across the northern hemisphere.
Fortunately we had a great couples weeks of traveling over the holidays. We spent five days in Beijing, taking the overnight train to get there. Mingxu, the brother of our good friend Ming in Minnesota, acted as our host. He is an enthusiastic skier and took us to a different mountain every day. We even skied one day with the great wall surrounding us on three sides. At the end of each day Mingxu would take us to a different style Chinese restaurant. Much bai jiu, pi jiu and huang jiu were consumed. We ate amazing feasts, including our first authentic Peking duck. Hen hao che! The last day in Beijing Frances, Henry and I rented Bicycles and got a tour through an old neighborhood (hutong) near the forbidden city. It was beautiful and fascinating to wander through the maze-like ally ways and see homes hundreds of years old.
Then we said goodbye to Mingxu and flew to Hainan, an island that is the southernmost part in China. We stayed in Yalong Bay at a resort that two weeks before had hosted the ‘Miss World’ competition. The hotel was generally full of Russian tourists, since most Chinese do not take their winter vacation until Chinese New Year at the end of January. Henry and Jack played pick up games of beach soccer every day while Frances and I walked up the nearly desolate mile and a half of beach. The most unusual part of the resort was the group of wandering Paraguayan minstrels that serenaded the food buffets. It was hard to remember where we were.
But now it is over, except for the grunting and groaning part of forcing zippers closed. It has been an interesting adventure. After six months, Shanghai does not feel exotic any more. I no longer assume that I am going to die every time I ride in a taxi. Having twenty different kinds of dumplings to choose from is not a big deal. I no longer fumble when reaching for tiny one mao(12.5 cents) bills in my wallet. Time to go home.
Eva, the Spaniard, is a whiz at bus routes. She has the only map I’ve ever seen of the routes, and has been willing to try them out. She convinced us today to forgo our usual taxi ride home (16 kuai – or 2 dollars) to take the “76� bus home.
Price was 1 kuai, maybe 12 cents. Fall had arrived and so we didn’t need to pay double to get an air conditioned bus. During rush hour the buses are like sardine cans but at mid day, it was quite comfortable. Chinese busses have set, occasional stops so you can’t get off when you want. The closest stop was not too far from our house, but was in a direction we hadn’t yet explored. Walking in a new neighborhood is always a treat. Now that it was cooler we got a look at what changes fall was bringing. In the fancy gardens in front of official buildings they were pulling up the summer flowers and replacing them with pansies, a sure sign that the winter wasn’t going to be THAT cold. On the corners guys were selling sweet potatoes, cooked in big converted metal drums, plump and sweet smelling. Other vendors now had big woks with roasted chestnuts and peanuts. The smells of fall were much nicer than the smells of summer.
I noticed a shop selling incense and Buddha statuettes. When I saw a second one, my antennae went up – this usually happened only around temples, and I thought we were familiar with all the temples in our neighborhood. Passing an alleyway, I noticed something that made me stop – small plants growing in old containers lined both sides of the alley – this was not a usual event. We hesitated – walking up small alleys as a Westerner is still not fully comfortable – not for safety issues, but just for not wanting to intrude. An old man turned the corner, this made us back off even further. Then he suddenly smiled and motioned that we could come it – the vibe warmed considerably. We smiled back and followed the twists and turns back into the little lanes that make up much of neighborhood living here. An equally old and venerable looking woman saw us and started chatting away, pointing further down the lane. We finally arrived at what looked to be a neighborhood temple, informally set up inside an old warehouse, the kind of informal project which individuals were setting up and which would not be likely to make any tourist maps anytime soon.
As we neared areas we recognized, I saw the pearl store which I had been inside of a month of so earlier. I dragged Steve and Eva in – partly because I knew this place gave a cool demonstration of how pearls are made, opening an oyster right in front of you. After the demo – one of the salesgirls recognized me from earlier, and treated me with that warm recognition we had been lacking so much as newcomers here. We practiced our month’s worth of Chinese with them and they were duly impressed, even if I’m sure they really would have liked us to buy something. I was feeling heady with that sense that “hey, I live here� (even if it was only a pearl vendor) when we rounded the corner by the little stationary shop I had gone into several times in the first week of our setting up house. The sweet old fellow who had engaged willingly in sign language with me then to find tape and scissors walked out of the shop and greeted me with a big smile. Like a line out of our current dialogue, I was able to introduce him to my husband and my friend. Then I asked him how his health was, which appeared to surprise him a touch, but it was the next sentence in the dialogue, I knew I could pronounce it, and you have to work with what you’ve got. He asked me a question which was not in the dialogue, and there we got stuck – both feeling a little silly and uncomfortable. Hey, we’re making progress.
The process of networking is a weird one, and one which I haven’t had to worry about for a while, what with having a steady job. To do it in another country is even more odd.
You can’t FORCE people connections, you simply have to let them evolve. For several weeks after arriving I was frustrated at the pace at which I was meeting people who could help me get in to see different Chinese schools – I had several nibbles but people were on vacation, or were busy, or not returning my calls. I finally stopped worrying about it some and continued on with life.
One day we went out to brunch at a hotel nearby. The food was awesome; there was something for Chinese diners, Western ones and Japanese ones. We even got the guys some prosaic waffles. I noticed a long table with several Asian families and thought, “how nice, a family reunion perhaps.� On the way to the dessert display I looked more closely at one of the children, a little moppet with a classic “bowl� hair cut, and realized that I recognized him from the Thursday class I had been going to at a local preschool. It was Devon, the amazingly precocious three year old with the ability to already write every letter in the alphabet AND come up with the word it corresponded with.
We chatted, met the whole group, they were all American born Chinese recently returned to China with their young children to work here. Devon’s mom had a US law degree and a business degree and yet had left that and gone back to school to take education classes when pregnant so she could start her child off well. The other families were equally accomplished, and, amazingly, each had a connection of interest to me – One mom’s child was enrolled at another school I had hoped to visit, while another lived in our building and offered to introduce me to the director of the preschool there.
The next week my calls were returned, I even had one school director call ME – asking if I wanted to visit and offering me a job. Thanks to Devon, I finally had some “guanxi� some “connection.� Doing any kind of business here is impossible without personal connections, until you have some, you are NOBODY, though fortunately, once you make even a small connection, the doors start to open.