Let me start off by saying I know it shouldn’t be done like this. It strikes me as pretty bad form to be incommunicado for months and then to let fly with something from way, way out in left field that had not even been hinted at before. So I apologize at the outset for doing precisely that, but really the only alternative was to continue in radio silence indefinitely and pretend nothing is happening here. That also strikes me as a pretty shabby trick, and I mean to treat my regular readers—both of them—better than that.
So let’s dispense immediately with the totally unforeseen, which, once absorbed, will make the rest of the news seem less shocking. I am in China now, Guangdong Province, to be precise—way down south on the northern edge of the tropics, near Hong Kong. I’ve been given a three-month teaching contract at a Sino-Australian accounting school, and will return to Melbourne in mid-November to pack up and prepare for the move to Vietnam in January. Kathryn remains in Melbourne, holding down the shoebox. My school is located about an hour outside Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton), which is the provincial capital. I’ve seen widely varying population estimates for the city, but I believe the most accurate is about 10.3 million people, so it’s not just a blip on the map. It’s the third-largest city in the most populous country on earth. I have been here just a week, and haven’t met my students yet, but never mind—there’s plenty to write about anyway.
I am in teacher accommodation here—foreign-teacher accommodation, I should say, because it definitely makes a difference. My first few days here I had been admiring the hardihood and eco-friendly outlook of the fellow whose balcony faces mine, because he never, ever closed his doors and windows, no matter how dreadfully hot and it was outside. He just went about his business shirtless and in shorts. I meanwhile was hunkered down in my apartment with the windows closed and air-conditioning on full blast. Then I found out that Chinese teachers, such as my friend across the courtyard, do not have air conditioning in their apartments—it’s only for foreign teachers, such as myself. Though I’ve never spoken to him, I genuinely feel for the poor sod, and wish I could take a few shopping bags of conditioned air over to leave anonymously on his doorstep. Strangely, the student dorms are air-conditioned, because students pay big money to attend these private colleges, but there are four to six occupants to each dorm room. So I have it pretty good, compared to people around me.
I’m on the sixth floor, and there is no elevator, so I’m getting plenty of exercise. My cooking facilities are spartan-bordering-on-primitive, and my kitchen sink is actually outside, on my smaller balcony, but I have been able to make do so far on rice, noodles, vegetables, some canned fish, and lots of fresh eggs. They have the freest of free-range chickens here—they wander everywhere—around the stores, along the roads, through the living compounds, and for all I know borrow motorbikes on weekends to visit friends who live further out. But if they can get a passport and emigrate, they should do it, because there’s no future in being a chicken in Guangdong. Cages at the markets are stuffed with them, panting out through the bars, and you are given the privelege of picking out the one who looks likely to make the tastiest soup or BBQ. “Come back in 10 minutes,” the vedor suggests, and when you do he hands you a warm, weighty little bag.
This past week has given me a strong dose of what my students must go through when they come to an English-speaking country. About the only word I have found that means the same in Chinese and English is OK. The rest is all new, but I have been trying to pick up a bit here and there. I have made a set of flash cards for myself with various words, and I’m constantly flipping through them. As I think of a new word or phrase I would like to know, I write the English on one side of a blank card and then go and bother an extremely patient Chinese lady who also teaches English at our school, and she writes the symbols and pronunciation on the other side for me.
Yesterday, despite my language deficiencies, I managed to get into Guangzhou—the big city—on the bus, and even to buy a few small items. Specifically, I was looking for short-sleeved shirts and a small chess set, and per a suggestion from a Canadian colleague, I went first to a large department store, Jusco, which stands for Japan US Company, or something like that. At the time I was there (about 10:00 on a Saturday morning), the employee-to-customer ratio seemed to be about 1 to 4, which meant that the instant I showed even a passing interest in anything, an assistant was at my side to call my attention to its many fine features. I stopped to inspect some shirts, for instance, which caused a woman to materialize from nowhere to show me that all of these Jusco shirts had sleeves and buttons, and came in different colors and were made of material. She took it well when I declined her shirts, however. I was a bit disappointed at the prices, frankly, this being China and all. But these shirts were about RMB 150 and up, or around AUD $30. I thought I could do better at the Bai Ma (White Horse), another market my colleague had told me about.
Next my thoughts turned to chess, and an intrepid pair of shop assistants led me to the stationery department, where we eventually turned up an acceptable set. And then there was some fun. When one of the assistants finally understood I wished to buy the set, she immediately took it back and wrote me a ticket. After some gesturing on her part, I carried this to a nearby cashier, who received my money and issued me a different piece of paper. I brought this back to my helper with the chess set. She then stuck a green sticker on the box and handed it over to me. Note to America: if you want to solve the unemployment problem overnight, simply institute the Jusco sales system in all of your stores.
One other interesting feature of Jusco was that they had a lot of their electronic and cooking devices revved up and going to show how well they worked. I saw humidifiers puffing out foggy air for the comfort of those who find the tropical atmosphere of Guangzhou unendurably dry. I also saw things like crock pots bubbling away on display tables beside the aisles. I could imagine a personal-injury lawyer prowling through the store, licking his lips and wishing he could persuade just one Wal-Mart in the States to set up a similar display. Then just turn loose a pack of mothers with young children, and his fortune would be made.
Eager for more commercial recreation, I moved on to the Bai Ma to look for shirts, but in the end I came away with only one. I was soon overcome by the sheer scale and labyrinthine complexity of the place. Imagine a multi-level rabbit warren lined with cubby holes selling jeans and women’s shoes and leather goods, with the cubby-hole staff sitting on low stools in the warren runs, eating noodles, and you pretty much have Bai Ma. I soon wished I had left a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back to the subway entrance. In the end I blundered into the men’s section, or part of it, but most of the cubby holes there seemed to be selling suits, jeans, and young-persons’ casual wear. A few were selling dress shirts, but these were mostly long-sleeved, and frankly the patterns were hideous. At last I found one small shop with some semi-decent, short-sleeved shirts and friendly shop girls who spoke a bit of English. Unfortunately, only one of the acceptable shirts was big enough—a polo shirt with a logo that delighted me immediately. It is in non-sensical English that is mis-spelled to boot. It is supposed to say “Paul & Shark Yachting,” whatever that means, but instead it says “Paul & S| ark.” Oh well, it only cost RMB 45, and I’m sure it’s one of a kind, “a genuine fake,” as a shop assistant once assured a colleague.
Wow—what a place! Remind me next time to touch on the local attitude towards traffic rules. Well, they’re not rules so much as a set of suggestions, to be followed or not at the driver’s discretion.
--originally posted 8/2010
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