Two months ago, we started this trip to China. “The Eleven” who later became “the Twelve” roamed the streets of Jishou for 7 weeks, passing through Miao villages, Dong villages. Zuolongxia, Wangcun, Dehang, Fenghuang, Yuanling, Shanghai. Guizhou province, Guanxi province, Hunan province. On Friday we took a train- Jishou to Shanghai, 23 hours non-stop; similar to the same train that we had taken when heading to Kaili for the beginning of Wild China. I remember how on the first train Miryam had to hold my hand while I ventured into the squatting toilet on that train. “Which way do I look?! Why is there no paper?? Can I hold on to something?!” Now, we are all pros at squatting toilets, immune to the worst of them (you look away from the hole, not at it; a Miao village will do that to you). Some of us even find them comfortable and preferable to Western toilets. In the words of Reubes, chew gum and don’t wear flip-flops. Trust us on this one.
The smells of China have become a part of us. Its sounds and grunts- part of our vocabulary. Want a sticky bun? Uh. What? Ah? Want some ice-cream? Uh-uh. Some of us even hock loogies and roll our shirts up to fight the heat- Chinese man style. We all have QQ accounts and chat and stalk our students and the statuses and photos they post of us. Some of the teachers even know their QQ IDs by heart (QQ is a state-of-the-art social media website: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Spotify, all rolled into one.)
By the end of the 7 weeks, we we’re not only living in Jishou, we were having fun with it. Memorable is the ice-cream parlor near Jia Le Fu where for Cameron’s birthday Nick and I pointed at an empty Tupperware and the ice cream machine with the DQ Tornado picture on it and asked the lady to fill it up with whip-creamy ice cream. She stared at us, laughed, charged us 20¥ and then filled it up. On Thursday, Miryam and Nick went coning at the same place- same bewildered ladies staring and then laughing as Miryam grabbed the cone backwards, took a bite, said “xie xie” and smiled. 4 weeks ago, there’s no way we would have done that- we already called enough attention by walking, let alone by pranking people. Tonight at dinner in Shanghai, we all complained that the food was not spicy enough when weeks earlier we were kissing bottles of beer and chugging water to soothe our lips. Hunan heat indeed.
At the train station on Friday, thanks to the wonderful university officials (Mr. Dai, Tony, Chris Wu, Linda, Miss Yang) and our students, we were able to at least have a chance against the horde of Chinese people trying to get on the train. The meek Americans who were unwilling to push or cut lines at first, were now pushing and running with their suitcases, trying to at least gain some advantage on the Chinese. It was an Olympic event- suitcase lugging- and this time, we were not losing. Train food -which had seemed sketchy weeks before- a feast. No ramen for us this time. Eggplant and tree ears with beef and two bowls of rice plus a bottle of wine.
While everything else in comparison was so much better than we had first remembered- I’m telling you, being a foreign country for two months changes your perspective on things (ask any SOSer how fast we ate the queso fundido last night at a Mexican restaurant)- we were still surprised by the amount of children and babies running around in our cart, counting us, eating with us. Stares from Chinese people that had gradually diminished in 7 weeks reappeared as soon as we stepped onto the train. I hope someday, I will be able to come to China and be stared at- not for being a foreigner- but for fitting right in. For now, there is nothing to do but smile back at them.
A whirl-wind analysis of the before and after. In the meantime, I have to go deal with arriving 6 hours earlier and reliving the morning and evening of Tuesday, August 21st in the Dirty Salv. Jet lag, here I come!
-Arianna, MengNa.