Summary
I arrived on-time in Shanghai on the evening of July 31 and to my surprise, Marsha and her family greeted me at the airport. Though unplanned, I joined them as they returned to Marsha's sister's house for a couple of days, a seven-hour train ride from Shanghai.
In her sister's hometown, the weather was a hundred degrees for almost twenty-four hours a day. There was no air-conditioning and sporadic electricity. For a few different reasons being there for a couple of days could have been torture. However, even while there, I thought of it as an experience. It appropriately ended with a 40-hour train ride back to Kunming (where I am living).
The next school term starts on August 25. In the meantime I am reviewing my textbooks and getting tutored by both my old Tutor, Zhang, and a new tutor, Xiao.
Details
July 30 (Wednesday)- August 3 (Sunday)
I had previously arranged with Marsha to await her phone call after landing in Shanghai. As far as I understood, she was in a town near Shanghai with her mom, visiting her sister. I decided to send her my flight information a couple days before I left New York. My flight landed early in Shanghai. I got my luggage and was surprised she had not called by 6 PM. A few minutes past six, I went through customs and to my surprise, I saw Marsha's mom smiling and waiting for me. It was her and Marsha's first time ever at an airport. I returned with a huge smile.
Marsha and her sister came over and I quickly saw that Marsha looked much better, having recovered a good deal from her bike accident four weeks earlier. Though she had two medium-sized scars on her face, they were not as bad as I had expected though she was still missing her three front teeth. I at least felt comfortable that she would still be cute, as she had been before. She still had scars on her arms and legs, but I was not worried about those. She looked as good as I could have expected and I told her so.
After hugging and smiling, Marsha and I immediately discussed the plan. We would go into Shanghai and take a train to her other sister's hometown, the one that lived near Shanghai. On the bus we discussed the plans in detail. We would stay at her sister's place a short time before heading to Kunming. Though I was eager to get back to Kunming, I liked the plan because I would get to see a town off the beaten path and meet her family.
She did not know if there was a train to her sister's town that night. Her sister's house, which Marsha considered close, was seven hours away by train. Marsha, her sister and her mom had come to Shanghai that very day (leaving the night before) to both meet me at the airport and see Shanghai for their first time.
We took a bus into the city and found out there was a train leaving Shanghai at 10 PM, and arriving at her sister's hometown at 5 AM. We went for a walk and dinner as we had some time to kill. I wanted to take them to a good restaurant in Shanghai but they were happy with the cafeteria-like place near the train station. I did not sleep for more than an hour on the train ride, instead reading a book that I did not feel like putting down, Wild Swans.
We took a taxi from the train station to her sister's town and her sister and family woke up when we got there. The entrance to their house (though it is nothing like a house in America) was simply a gate about 15-feet wide, sliding open like an accordion. It was similar to the doors you might find in an old elevator. When you enter the house you are in their living room. The floor is cement. The room had a table for eating and some tiny uncomfortable chairs. Right behind the living room was the kitchen and the bathroom, without a shower. There was a second floor, with a bedroom, and a large room with nothing in it but a 13-inch TV.
Soon everyone was awake. All three of Marsha's siblings were there. She has two older sisters, both married with kids, and a younger brother. Her siblings were all currently living in this town.
The sister whose house we were in has a 10-month old baby and a 7-year-old daughter. I found out her marriage had been arranged.
This was not her other sister's permanent home, but she and her husband were currently working here. She has a daughter who was now living in Marsha's hometown in Yunnan, who I had met when visiting there. Lastly, her brother lived and worked in this town.
Marsha's other sister and brother did not have houses in this town but rather rooms a few minutes away from the main house, where they all congregated to eat. Marsha and I stayed in her brother's room and soon after arriving we brought our things there. We walked by some water. I'm not sure what to call the body of water - it was about 30 feet wide, and some people bathed in it. It did not look natural. Then we walked up a narrow alley that had one door after another, all rooms for people or animals. When we got to the room I saw where we would sleep - on a bamboo mat, on the cement floor, with no sheet or blanket. We entered the room and there were a couple of beds with bamboo mats and a bamboo mat on the cement floor. The mats were similar to the kind Americans sometimes bring to the beach. We would end up sleeping on the mat on the floor. There was a fan we could use if the electricity was working.
I was warned of the mosquitoes, and bought this towns version of bug repellant later that day, a liquid to put on your skin and rub all over. Her sister's 10-month-old baby had enough bites to cause me concern, and in addition had a bad heat rash. But he didn't cry at all, and I think if he could talk, he still would not have complained.
We went back to her sister's house for breakfast and then I said I wanted to go fishing. Marsha had told me her family went fishing every day. It was not what I had expected. We walked to the water. I'm not sure if it was a river, pond, lake, or what, but it was small and opened up to a larger body of water, which I never ended up seeing. We walked down from the path a few feet, through trees, and arrived at the water. From there, they lay down their wooden, seemingly hand-made, fishing rods. I asked, "What about the boat?" I found out there was no boat and quickly lost interest in the romantic notion of going fishing on a lake.
At the house I read my book. There was no comfortable place to sit. It was very hot, over a hundred degrees, and often no electricity. Marsha's family would often sit in a shady area behind the house and do nothing. Everyone was just sitting around and chatting in their dialect. I read my book, and for breaks walked to the nearby store for cold water. I did not particularly like the shady spot where they sat around and talked, and besides, they were not speaking standard Chinese so it was not very beneficial to my learning Chinese to hang out and listen to them.
I used the toilet in the kitchen, but it did not flush. No surprise. That evening I took my first shower or bath where I only used a bowl of water and soap. I did not like being naked with mosquitoes. But it was not as bad as I thought it would be.
Though it was interesting to be in this town, sitting around doing nothing in extremely hot weather and no comfortable place to sit, I decided to find out from Marsha her plans on leaving for Kunming, in hopes that it would be soon. She said she wanted to look for work the next day and that there was some special holiday now so we would leave on Sunday. That was three days away and sounded like a long time, too long!
We had a good dinner. Before eating, the men at the table (her brother and her two sister's husbands) would drink by putting beer in their eating bowls. Once that was finished, they would eat. After dinner the whole family sat outside chatting and fanning each other. The house opened onto a big square, and some people had beds on the square so that they could more comfortably sleep outside rather than inside. I slept fine that first night and fortunately the electricity was working. I did need to use the bathroom once and the room we were in did not have one. In the middle of the night, Marsha showed me where to go. Just a few steps across from our room was another unlocked room, with an ox in it and some chickens. Also in it was a bucket with a cover, with everyone's feces and piss in it. That's what I would use. I ended up using the bathroom various times and never ended up having to do a big one there.
After breakfast the following morning, Marsha, her sister, and I biked to the city to buy train tickets and for Marsha to look for work. The ride took 40 minutes. On the way there we stopped at a company that looked big and asked the security guards some questions. They said the people Marsha would want to speak to were not around. When we got into town, we went to anther place. Again, Marsha spoke with the guards, who took some of her information. That was it for job seeking - talking to security guards at two places. In town, I got online to let my family know I arrived safely.
We went to buy train tickets but were told we could not buy them at this train station, we would need to get them at the train station we would be leaving from, which was an hour-long bus ride away. We were now planning to leave Saturday morning and not Sunday, I was glad to know. We returned to the small town and did nothing the rest of the day, but I did read a lot of my book. Everyone was getting sick.
We went for an afternoon nap, but when we got to the room where we had planned to rest, Marsha's sick brother was laying down on our bed (the matt on the floor). A few seconds after we entered the room, he spit by his bed. Everyone was getting a cold and you could easily see why, when one person got sick, everyone else would get sick. He got up soon, but I did not feel like taking a nap there anymore.
I learned about an interesting traditional treatment for a cold. When I had seen Marsha's mom at the airport with what looked like hickies on her neck, I did not ask. But I learned that it was treatment for a cold. What they do is pinch the back and the neck all over the place (regularly distributed), one spot at a time. They pinch a spot over and over again, until a solid bruise develops (that soon turns purple). I saw this done to various people, and each time it hurt just to watch. Sometimes various people participated in inflicting the pain. Once it was Marsha's mom, sister and baby all doing it to her brother! Each pinch made a heinous sound, because the his body was moist with sweat from the heat.
After thinking more about how bad it would be for me to get sick, I decided to let Marsha know that I wanted to leave that very evening, Friday. I asked Marsha to inquire about it, which she did. Unfortunately, her sister was not ready to leave. Her sister and her baby were going with us because the weather was so much better in Marsha's hometown in Yunnan than here and it would be good for the baby. Her sister planned to spend the rest of the year there, without her husband or her daughter. Marsha, her mom, her sister and her baby would all be going to Kunming.
That night, there was no electricity and we slept without a fan. It was not a comfortable sleep, but I admit the mosquitoes were not as bad as I had expected and I was not eaten alive. At 4 AM, we found the electricity had started working and used that during our last hour of sleep. We woke up regularly throughout the night. You just can't sleep well in that weather. We bathed in the morning, and the four of us plus the baby left by 6 AM. We took a taxi to the bus to the train, and had plenty of time to catch the noon train.
Marsha, her mom, and I, along with our luggage, went in a taxi, which was more like a tiny buggy that hardly had the strength to drive all of us. A couple of times I wasn't sure we would get started again after stopping. Her sister's husband took her sister and their baby to the bus station on his motorcycle. Busses for our destination left frequently, but her sister forgot her ID card at home so we waited over an hour for her husband to fetch it for her while we had some breakfast, noodles, from a vendor outside.
Her sister's husband returned an hour later and soon we caught a bus. We arrived early at the train station, at 9:30 AM. We found out the train would not leave until 6 PM (someone had told Marsha noon). Further, they could only sell us one assigned seat. We could buy three other tickets but would not be guaranteed a physical seat.
The train station had air-conditioning. It was too hot outside to make exploring the mediocre city appealing so we sat around, me reading, everyone else sleeping. Marsha's sister felt sick and it seemed she slept for days straight. Beggars came by every few minutes to make the wait pleasant, and occasionally other people sitting around would give them some spare change to make it worth their while. The beggars get very close to you and you have to kind of push them away, sometimes using force, as they lean into you.
An hour before the train was to leave we positioned ourselves so that we would be among the first to board - so that we would have seats. A five year old kicked my suitcase a few times for no apparent reason, even after I asked him to stop. Fifteen minutes before boarding, everyone stood up with their backpacks on, ready for the small gate to open so we could rush through to the train. When it did, we were the first among hundreds to board, and got seats. But the section we sat in was one where most seats were assigned, and minutes later people came over with tickets for our seats. Fortunately, we got a couple of seats, I don't know how. So there were three seats for four of us plus a baby.
The train ride was 40 hours (38 if not for the two hour delay) and for the first 30 we only had 3 seats, but people were not anal, and Marsha often sat on her bag and leaned on me, or squeezed next to me in our next seat. On the train ride there was plenty of spitting and open-mouthed coughing. There was one guy standing near me that sneezed regularly throughout the trips, though it was only his germs, not spit, that got all over me. Every few hours the train would be swept and mopped because food and garbage was also thrown in the aisle.
The air-conditioning worked well, which made the experience bearable. I had considered getting a sleeper (a seat that was a bed on the train) but did not feel comfortable doing that instead of traveling with Marsha and her family. We were not sure if we could get away with sharing one bed and alternating who used it, so I didn't do it.
I slept an hour that first night and read the rest of it. In the morning, I stood and did not have a seat, while Marsha slept. Later in the morning Marsha and I had breakfast in the dining car, which I particularly liked because the tables were booths by the window. They restricted the time you could sit there and made sure you ordered food. After breakfast Marsha and I stood in an aisle leading to the dining car (and without seats) and talked, while looking out the window. She put her medicine down on the floor, and as we talked, a worker on the train picked up her medicine. I said to Marsha, "Isn't that yours?" She hesitated and after a few seconds went over to ask for it, but he said it was gone, he had thrown it out the window. It was a special medicine her mother had given her to treat her wounds with, made of snake and other strange things, not replaceable.
Inside I was angry, and so was Marsha. Why did he throw it out the window? Marsha said there was nothing we could do about it, the guy was just a jerk. In America, if a worker on the train did something like that, the company would certainly do something to at least compensate you, and probably discipline the worker. Marsha started telling me how sometimes she hates the Chinese.
I read all day and a few people came up to me, including two English teachers. At train stops people from the platform would come on the train selling different foods. I would wait for the interesting ones, though none were that interesting. Once the train started moving the vendors might jump off from the door with their hands holding the box with whatever they were selling, or jump out the window with the box.
I slept a fair amount that second night, until the train stopped for two hours. We arrived in Kunming at 10 AM in the morning. I had previously suggested everyone stay in my apartment. Marsha only had a tiny room with one bed and it would not be comfortable for so many reasons. Besides, it would only be for a short time, a couple of days.
August 4 (Monday) - August 10 (Sunday)
When we arrived Monday morning at my apartment everyone but me slept. In the afternoon I took Marsha to the dental clinic I had previously been to, a clean and expensive place, and she wasn't impressed with the job they did. She found a place that she really liked, where they worked more slowly and carefully.
Late that evening we went to McDonalds. It was a twenty-five minute walk away and we got there shortly after 10 PM. It closed at 11. It was the first time at a McDonalds for all of them. The Big Mac was not such a hit, though it was finished. The spicy chicken sandwich was the favorite and I ended up going back to buy us another one. We also got fries and a strawberry shake. For desert, Marsha liked the apple pie and her mom and I went for the soft serve. I made sure to take them to the bathroom to check out the automated soap dispensers and hand dryers, as I thought they had never seen such things before. They did find these things interesting.
On the stroll home, Marsha's mom made fun of the clothes she herself was wearing as no one in the city was dressed like that. Marsha gave me a turn carrying the baby, her nephew. Until then I did not realize how difficult carrying a baby was (they did not have a special strap to help out). I had to be very careful and it felt heavy. If I were to have slipped the baby could easily have fallen and died. I carried the baby for five minutes and then Marsha's sister took it back. I asked if she was sure she wanted it, thinking she must be tired, and she said of course, it's her baby, how could she not want it.
Tuesday afternoon I went to school and found Zhang, my tutor, there. We had lunch and figured out a plan (to review and finish the last few chapters of the book I am on) and approximately when we could study together. She said she did not want to take money from me but instead I would help her with English. She wanted me to record some tapes. She had bought some that went along with textbooks she had, but the reader on the tapes was a Chinese person, with a strong accent.
Later in the afternoon I met with a former teacher of mine, Xiao, for whom I had brought back dental floss from the US. We went for a walk, and I tried to find out what she was up to so that I could avoid asking her to tutor me if I knew the answer was likely that she was too busy or not interested. I concluded that it was a safe question and asked. She said she also wanted to do an exchange rather than have me take money and that she definitely was interested.
That evening I met up with Shelly, her roommate, her brother, and cousin and we had dinner, including, "Shelly meat," as she liked to call it. When everyone left the room after awhile, Shelly and I talked about all sorts of topics for a couple of hours.
Wednesday morning Marsha's sister and mother left for their hometown. I met Zhang and an American girl, Aurelia, a twin, that she was now tutoring. Aurelia's Chinese name was Jintian. Zhang brought tomatoes and the American had some French bread, which she shared with me. They both were encouraging about my staying for the session (Jintian's one on one tutoring), despite the fact that it was beyond what I was studying, so I did.
After lunch with Zhang we reviewed my textbook for half an hour. In the evening Marsha and I planned to go to the track, where she could show me some exercises, but on the short walk there it started raining. She showed me anyway in a place on the street protected by rain. After exercise we ate snack food on the street for dinner.
On Friday morning I met Zhang at her house and studied until lunch-time. I went home to study and later in the afternoon went to meet her at her office. I awaited Zhang, as she was tutoring someone else. Then her and her student came down. The man she tutored was English, and he went off about how good my Chinese was though he hadn't as much as heard me say a word, he just saw the reference character book I was using. In Zhang's office, I recorded some tapes and started to lose my voice. At that point I went home.
Marsha came over in the evening. I went online and it was so slow, it was unusable. I over-reacted, like I sometimes do, by getting upset. I went to my room to lie on my bed. Marsha came over to me and said I hated her, which really annoyed me, because I wanted to be left alone and the last thing I wanted to hear was a comment from her with no meaning. I still don't understand the relevance of that comment - obviously my bad mood had nothing to do with her.
At 8, we went for a walk to Green Lake Park. Once there, after fighting off some flower vendors (little kids that sometimes do not take no for an answer, though they would have to from me), we found some music and dancing, sort of like aerobics, and joined in. We both smiled a lot and it changed my mood completely. We didn't get home from our stroll till late, after buying pastries, corn, minced beef on an English-muffin-type bread, pig-intestines, Chinese scallions and edamame beans (like the Japanese ones). I tried the pig-intestines, and it was not bad at all, though I still did not want to eat it.
On Saturday morning Marsha, while I was still sleeping, Marsha went downstairs and brought breakfast in the restaurant's metal dishes and tray, two different kinds of rice noodles, one round like spaghetti, the other thick and flat. She had learned that I did not like to have two of the same dish. I did not want to eat too much because I knew I would be having lunch at Zhang's.
I arrived at Zhang's and she tutored me until lunch-time. While she cooked, I did some exercises from the textbook. She would occasionally check my answers. She stir-fried some tofu and then mixed in some chopped beef. Then she started making dumplings. Some she made from scratch, a time-consuming process. She had done preparations the previous night, making the dough and the meat-vegetable mixture. The others were pre-made at the supermarket and just needed to be boiled. Her husband came home from work and rested for awhile, until Zhang woke him up to help with the dumplings. I had asked if I could help and she said it was not possible. Maybe she did not like how I made the dumplings last time. I did not mind not helping, I just offered to be polite. She explained that she was making both types of dumplings so that I could see the difference in the taste.
Lunch was ready at 1:30. Her and her husband were very disappointed because she used too much dough in each dumpling. To me it was clear her dumplings were much better than those from the supermarket but she said that this time, the supermarket's dumplings were better. She felt her dumplings were a failure, only because of the dough! Her husband ate most of one dumpling but put some of the dough on the side! I would have explained how much better her dumplings are, but then in the future she might feel like she should go through the trouble of making them for me, and it is not worth the trouble. I don't like even the best dumplings that much. After lunch I studied at home for a few hours.
Saturday night Marsha and I hung out and she was planned to leave apartment early Sunday morning, but instead had breakfast, hung out a couple of hours, napped, and then left around 2 PM. The night before, when we went for a walk, she parked her bike at the university, and now she could not find her the keys to her bike and apartment. She did not have pockets the previous night so she had put them down and picked them up at various places. She had to go home without her keys and without her bike. She ended up calling her landlord to get the key to her place, and had a lock person cut her bike-lock before buying a knew one.
That afternoon, I studied with my new tutor. She arrived for our first session at 4 PM. I first taught her some English. Of the options I presented (DVD, TV shows (Sex in the City and Friends), magazines or a text book), she chose to read a magazine article. She had me pick one, and I made a bad choice, an article in MIT's technology review about SPAM. When teaching another language it quickly becomes apparent how many expressions are used that are figurative or just plain difficult. Some of the words we read in the first two paragraphs were plaintiff, hack, SPAM, court injunction, abandoned, school-house. That is all we got through and her English was good. Xiao (meaning small) is my teachers name and she said she did not have an English one. I could give one to her.
She had been my teacher in school for my listening and speaking class (the other class is called comprehensive class, where characters, reading and grammar are emphasized). She told me how weird she thought it was when she first knew me in her class because I would ask her to repeat things and speak slowly. She said she thought I was not too bright. I understand in the eastern culture and often enough in the west people don't ask questions but you would think the teacher would know that often the students who do not ask also do not understand a lot. The session went well.
Misc.