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By Stacey LaFayette September 4, 2010
It was dark when we flew into Zhengzhou, so I had no idea what it looked like. Were there hills? Mountains? Lakes? Rivers? I knew it was the capitol of the Henan Province in the middle of China, but that was about all. I knew that was where my step-grandmother Carol and I were going to be staying for the next five weeks, while she taught an ESL course. I didn’t know if they spoke Mandarin or Cantonese. I certainly didn’t know how to pronounce Zhengzhou. (Hint: say “Jungle Joe” without the “le.”) Turns out, Zhengzhou is flat. Completely, one hundred percent flat. Flat, flat, flat. And dusty. We learned this a week into our stay, when a friend set up a speaking engagement for us at a countryside school. A Chinese man and woman picked us up outside our hotel in a shiny black town car, and while the chauffeur drove us through the flat, flat countryside to the school, we got to know them. “I am Du Jun Mei,” the woman said. “You can call me
Joy. I am your interpreter.” Turns out, family relations are a little blurry to the Chinese. I would meet dozens of students who would tell me all about their brothers and sisters, then I would find out later that they had no siblings, because, well, this is China. They were always referring to their cousins. “We are going to the Ying Xie School,” Joy said. “It
is a popular school. There are ten thousand students.” When we got to the school we were taken to the headmaster’s office and introduced to various important-looking people. One man was introduced as a party secretary, and I never did find out if that meant he was a secretary of the Communist party. They took us on a tour of the campus, and while we walked around, Joy explained that most of the students and the people in the town had never seen a foreigner, so Carol and I were the first white people they had ever laid eyes on. They acted towards us the way I would act towards just about anyone I had ever seen in a movie: shy and excited. They would stop whatever they were doing when we walked by, and followed us with their eyes. They would giggle and point at us and, as Dave translated to me, whisper, “Did you see the foreigners?” That was the day that I learned what lao wài meant, so that I could always know when people in China were talking about me. Joy, Dave, the headmaster, and two teachers from the school took us out to lunch before we spoke to the students. We were driven to a local restaurant, where we were seated at a round table in a private room. The waiters brought out about twenty dishes of food and set them on the lazy Susan in the middle of the table, so that we could all take some of everything. “Why is there so much food?” I whispered to Joy. “We
can’t eat all of it.” Joy, Dave, and the teachers looked surprised, and it took several rounds of “You must take a rest,” “No, we don’t need a rest” to convince them that we were serious. So we all walked outside along the dusty streets, and ate watermelon slices bought from a street vendor. Even in a small town, the traffic was madness: cars and bikes zooming every which way, oblivious to stoplights and pedestrians, each traveler thoroughly absorbed in their “every man for himself” mentality. The townspeople stared at us, and I heard several of them whisper, “Lao wài.” To those people I would smile, wave, and say, “Ni hao.” That would make them giggle and whisper even more. We returned to the school and gave our speeches. I don’t even remember what they were about, but I do remember the questions the students asked us afterwards as we sat at our table at the front of the auditorium. “Do you like Harry Potter?” We shrugged and said sure, and with that, the entire auditorium stood up and stampeded towards our table. I thought, for a brief moment as my life flashed before my eyes, that we might make international news with this: Chinese-American relations strained: American women trampled to death in autographing frenzy. For ten minutes we signed hundreds of autographs, until every student left satisfied. This delightful fame that had suddenly been thrust upon us kicked my ego into high gear. I imagined the students pulling out our autographs and showing them to all their friends, and then going home from school that night to show them to their parents and neighbors. I may live and die in anonymity in America, but I like to think that there’s a little village in the middle of China where everybody knows my name. Opinions expressed on Readers' Submissions pages do not necessarily reflect those of talesofasia.com, its publisher, or anyone else that could be remotely affiliated with the talesofasia name. Unless otherwise credited, the copyright on all text and photographs appearing on a Readers' Submissions page belong to the credited author and are not the property of talesofasia.com. Inquirires regarding this material should be made to the author. Unless stated otherwise, all other text and photographs on talesofasia.com are © 1998 - 2010 talesofasia.com. Commercial or editorial usage without written permission of the copyright holder is prohibited. |
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