Arrested in Helin!

Lily, Joe, Samuel, Arienne, and Grace in Helin, one hour south of Hohhot.

We were introduced to Lily by an American ESL instructor the first week we arrived. A couple days later she found me in the courtyard of our apartment building, ready to go on a bike ride with the kids. Since she doesn't speak English, she came with "Joe," her English teacher, and they asked me if I would come to their school in Helin (a small town near the mountains an hour South of Hohhot) and teach English. They actually wanted to hire me and pay me to be their English teacher. And we had only met for five minutes two days before! Apparently this kind of thing happens all the time (so I’ve now heard from other English teachers), but I didn’t have my defenses up. I was completely taken off guard. I tried to explain that I was not an English teacher by trade. This didn't deter them at all. I tried to explain that I had a job with my college in the U.S. as well as a job teaching at IMNU, and I didn't need another job. This did not deter them. Lily, who is very direct and ambitious, knew how to make her case: she said I would be helping the children greatly if I would visit the school.

I finally agreed to visit the school, but only on the condition that I would be a volunteer who helped when I could. I tried to explain that I would be teaching daily at IMNU and I needed weekends for my family as well as my own studies. But Lily was insistent: “It is not much for you, just part of every Saturday, and you would be helping the kids so much...." It was quite a give and take, with me mostly giving. I finally agreed to go to Helin on Saturday and tried to make it clear that I would determine whether I would go thereafter on a weekly basis. In fact, I was never firm enough, and for the three Saturdays that I visited Helin at least half of the hour drive south was spent wrangling over my commitment to the school.

Posing with Joe (back left) and Lilly’s father (back right) and the kids after a Kung Fu demonstration by the school children. The red banner hanging over the entrance to the school says, “Welcome Dr. David to Our School.”

You know those moments where you slap yourself and say, "Is this really happening?" That happened to me about one hundred times that first Saturday, beginning with us pulling up and seeing a giant red banner hanging across the front of the school that said, "Welcome Dr. David to Our School." After that, I needed a slap every few minutes to convince myself that all this was really happening. I was standing on a street in a small town in Inner Mongolia, television cameras running (the local news station was covering the event), watching kids in Kung-Fu outfits perform for me and my family as part of our welcoming. The moment was a bit surreal, for sure, and also kind of colonial. I felt like some nineteenth century Englishmen arriving at a village in India and receiving the red-carpet treatment from the locals. We were taken inside the school where we were seated at the front of the room and given ice cold water and watermelon. I then gave the elementary kids a one-hour English lesson, helped by Arienne who told them the story of Goldilocks, after which were taken to a restaurant, seated in a private room, and treated to a multiple course banquet. After lunch we were taken to the best hotel in the town where we rested for an hour before they took us to "South Mountain," a beautiful hill covered with trees and old Buddhist Temples, which had now been transformed into something of a Chinese theme park. We were not allowed to pay for anything, including the entrance fees to the park. The day concluded with us being taken back to Hohhot (about an hour north) by a series of buses and a private car. The day had begun at 8:30 am and ended for us back at our apartment at 8:30pm. It was an exhausting and special day. And Lily got what she wanted: after treating us with such great hospitality, how could I refuse to go back?

I learned a lot in the three trips to Helin, but most of what I learned happened on the third, and final, trip to the school. I taught the older students first, and after a short tea break, began teaching to the smaller children. About halfway through the class--around 11:00am, Lily opened the door to the classroom and pulled Joe from the class. A few minutes later, Joe returned and told me that we needed to go the police station. I was being taken in for questioning. (We found out later that some Policemen saw Samuel playing outside with some local school boys and inquired about the "waigoren." Moments later a Police van with at least five officers were taking me from the school.)

The Helin Police escorting me from the classroom, but not before I snap a photo.

Into the police van I go. Thankfully, Joe accompanied me the entire way.

The most alarming thing at first was the fact that I did not know where Samuel was and I had no time to get him a message. Lily assured me that Samuel was fine and would be taken care of and that I would be back shortly. In the police van on the way to the station, Joe tried to convince me that this was just a "small affair:" we would go to the station, "fill out some papers," and be back at the school soon. In a van full of policemen, he spoke pretty frankly, in English, about the nature of local police in China. "It's all about power," he said, "The Police in small towns are like the Emperor." "The laws of China are not yet complete, so the Police here have a lot power." This was just a "normal episode," he said, that would soon be over. These last words were somewhat comforting--and I believed him--but it is still somewhat shocking to be pulled by the police (who "have a lot of power") from a classroom where you are volunteering to teach little kids English (constituting a public threat?). This kind of thing just does not happen to innocent people in America (I can see all my lefty friends rolling their eyes), or at least it hasn't happened to me, to any of my friends, or to anyone that I've ever heard of.... I told Joe as he rode to the station that "In America, the police don't sweep into classrooms and take away teachers during the middle of lessons unless they have committed a crime." He was surprised to hear that I had never even visited a police station in America. So this was indeed a first.

For a first visit to a Chinese police station, it wasn't so bad, at least at first. No one frisked me. No one locked me up or subjected me to harsh interrogations. In fact, most of the guys (who, by the way, do not carry guns) seemed to be pretty relaxed, hanging around the station, sitting on their bunks, smoking cigarettes, reading, playing video games, laughing (weren't there any REAL CRIMINALS in the village of Helin? This was a question I tried to ask a confounded officer about three hours later when my patience had finally run thin.) Despite the jovial atmosphere, I couldn't shake a creeping sense of powerlessness and vulnerability. Here I was at a police station an hour South of Hohhot. I was separated from my little boy, who, as far as I knew, did not even know where I was (which, it turns out later, was entirely the case, because there was no one around him who spoke English. The only information he had was Lilly's cryptic message on the blackboard: WC--Go--11:30. He thought that I had gone to the bathroom for one of the longest poops ever!). I didn't have my passport or my "Foreign Experts Certificate," which no one had told me I needed to pack around with me everywhere. And although these cops weren't exactly behaving like mean thugs (at this point just jovial thugs), there is no denying that if the Police can whisk you away from a classroom with no warrant, no reading of rights, no apparent reason for their actions except to make your life miserable, there is really no limit to how miserable they could make things.

So far no one had tried to take any of my belongings, but I began to worry: what if they took my camera (which I had probably unwisely used to take a picture of being taken away from the school) or my cell phone. What then? I was particularly worried about Samuel's situation, and I didn't want to upset Arienne for nothing (if Joe was right that this was just a "small affair"). Yet, what if I didn't call Arienne and then they took my phone? As I was considering these things, Arienne called me. It was 11:30 and she figured I was done teaching. She had text-messaged me earlier (probably as I was on the way to the station) and I hadn't responded and she was starting to worry. Now she had lots of things to worry about!

The surly sergeant (left) and his protégé fold through the book of laws for foreigners searching for a law that I had violated. I thought twice before I took this, but I couldn’t resist.

The initial novelty of being "arrested" in China for teaching English to school children (as a volunteer) began to diminish after an hour turned into two hours and eventually three. The boss-man, or sergeant, was a little more surly than the average cops. He sat and morosely folded through a book of laws for foreigners, trying to find some crime that I had committed. Paperwork was also begun--toward what end I had no idea, but during the course of just over three hours, at least twenty different forms were filled out, including at least three where I confessed to being a foreigner without a passport. Indeed, the boss-man had found a law which I had violated. After perhaps forty-five minutes at the station, he put the book of laws for foreigners on Joe's lap with one rule underlined. It said that foreigners have to carry their passports at all times or be fined 500 RMB. I had indeed committed a crime.

I don’t know the exact translation, but this is the book of laws for foreigners in China.

Now more paperwork had to be completed, questions had to be answered, statements had to be signed and finger-printed. I must have signed and fingerprinted at least ten different documents, all of them, as far as I could tell from Joe's translation, essentially saying the same thing: that I had visited Helin this morning at 9:00am to teach English without pay and had left my passport at my dorm room at IMNU. This did not seem particularly damning, so I signed. I wanted to expedite the process, realizing that Samuel was probably totally unnerved by now.

Fingerprinted and not happy. Photo taken by Joe in the courtyard of the police station.

Along with paperwork, negotiations were also begun regarding the amount of the fine I would pay. In China, nothing seems to happen without regard to guanxi, or connections, which I can't really complain about, because I've been benefiting from Yongsheng's connections since I've been here. This is a great concept if you are well-connected, but it also means that each person is treated differentially within the infrastructure of Chinese power and authority--an idea that flies in the face of American notions of "blind" or equal justice. I know that American justice is not always blind, but, at that moment, I was becoming downright nostalgic for the American legal system. In our case, Lily's husband, who is a policeman in Hohhot (and, although off-duty, was wearing his uniform) tried to use his connections get me off or reduce the fine. The father of one of Lily's students is a police officer in Helin, and that connection was also used. Lily was on the phone. Her husband was talking with the officers. Joe also engaged in the conversations which sometimes turned quite animated and I would venture to say "heated." All of this dragged on and on through the lunch hour. I had not had anything to eat or drink since the cup of tea between my classes back at the school, and my patience was beginning to wear thin. I told Joe and Lilly that it was my fault that I hadn't brought my passport: "Let me pay the fine and let's go!" Everyone kept pushing the money back at me, refusing to give in. I know it was embarrassing to have their guest placed in this situation, but the impatient American just wanted to make the pay-off and get back to my boy.

It was about this time I received this pointed text message from Arienne:

"Tell Lily to shove it, pay money and get the hell out of there."

I tried to do this numerous times, even walking directly up to the surly sergeant and shoving my money at him, to the great embarrassment of both Joe and Lilly. In the end, Lily and her husband's guanxi was not enough to get me off. It was decided that I would indeed pay the fine after the paperwork was completed. That was okay by me. It was nearing 2 pm (going on three hours) and we needed to pay and go. I went to sign and fingerprint a few more documents. So far I had not lost my composure or temper. I was totally pissed off, for lack of a better term, but my strategy was to smile like a Buddhist and swear like sailor under my breath, keeping my exterior demeanor on an even keel. But while I was signing these last documents, Lily handed me a cell phone with Samuel crying on the other end. I had spoken with him about an hour earlier and he was well fed and doing fine, or so he had said. But now he had lost it, and this was my cue to lose it too. In Chinese culture, it is a major loss of face to lose one's temper, but by this time, as far as I was concerned, Chinese customs could kiss my ___. I was really angry. I said a bunch of stuff in English that most English speakers would not have understood unless they had spent two years in the Merchant Marine. I tossed my 200 RMB at an officer and stomped out of the office, no doubt delighting the officers. Then I stood in the courtyard and shouted a couple things and waited for Lily and Joe to wrap up the official proceedings.

We finally left the station about 2:15pm. We arrived back at the school and Samuel ran to meet me, tears in his eyes. He had needed to go to bathroom for about an hour but didn't know how to say it (I would have just crossed my legs and pointed at my crotch, but Samuel is much more refined than me). By this time, I was in no mood for pleasantries of any kind. I took Samuel to the bathroom (refusing the offer of a kindly old lady to take him) and then we raced across the street to buy water and some bread at the market. Lily's husband raced across and paid for our water and wouldn't let me buy the bread because they wanted to take me to lunch. It was a kind offer, but eating is a time for good feelings and toasts. I was in no mood. We went straight home to Hohhot…and we weren’t coming back.

I felt bad for Lilly and Joe for how things had gone. They were totally embarrassed and felt horrible. What happened was not their fault. At the same time, all my concerns about negotiating how many Saturdays I would teach in Hohhot had evaporated in the heat of righteous clarity. I certainly didn't have to explain to them why I wasn't coming back. I felt the worst for Samuel, who had suffered through over three hours of confusion with a bunch of people with whom he could not communicate. They had treated him well, bringing him food and drink, but it had been frustrating: he hadn't wanted most of the food they brought but couldn't say anything (now he wants a Mandarin phrasebook!)

I also felt rage towards arbitrary power and how it is wielded over people's lives--a reality that so many people around the globe live with everyday, but which middle-class Americans rarely feel. But I also felt relieved that my experience with arbitrary power was shortlived and without significant consequences. I had not suffered at all--except for missing one meal--and it was overwhelming to think that political prisoners and refugees world-wide live with this sense of powerlessness every singe day of their lives.

I also learned a few practical things:

1. Always charge our cell phones (mine had died at the police station, leaving Arienne in the dark for the last part of the saga)

2. Always bring water/snacks in the backpack

3. Always carry a passport or my "Foreign Experts Certificate."

4. Don’t take work at any other institutions (even as a volunteer) unless you are explicitly told to so by Yongsheng, Mr. Chen, or Mrs. Wu.

Customs of the Country

Having spent all of four weeks in Inner Mongolia, it would be silly to claim that I knew the first thing about Chinese culture. I don't. But I’m an academic, and a small matter like lack of knowledge can’t stop me from pontification (see previous blogs). There are, in fact, some easily recognizable “customs” (I use that term in its most superficial sense) that a foreigner notices within days, if not hours, of arriving in a place like Hohhot.

CUTTING IN LINE AND TRAFFIC

Above: The Air China information booth in Beijing, where I stood “in line” for over thirty minutes as people cut in front of me, hollering and shoving their tickets at the overburdened Air China staff. I finally just gave up.

In China, everyone cuts in line. I found this out first at the Beijing airport while trying to talk to "information" after my flight was cancelled. I stood “in line” for over thirty minutes as people muscled their way in front of me (and others). This happens to me daily at the grocery stores and markets. I stand a respectful (American) distance from the register waiting for the customer ahead of me to finish as numerous old women walk right in front of me and put their goods on the counter and pay for them. It’s hard for me to stand close enough to the customer who is paying to maintain my position at the register, because it just feels rude. But cutting is also understandable. It may sound cliché, but in China, you'll never get anywhere if you wait for others. There are so many people that waiting is simply folly.

The same is true of traffic here in Hohhot. People do not wait. They rush directly out into traffic without looking at all (old women on foot or bikes are the worst). Why? If they looked, they would see a stream of oncoming traffic and if they waited they would wait forever. The alternative is simply to forge out directly into traffic and let everyone else accommodate, which they do. What I find most brilliant is the left-hand turn into onrushing traffic. In America, a car that wants to turn left has to wait until the way is clear, but in Hohhot a car simply turns left, forcing traffic in the opposite direction to swerve around them into the middle of the road, in turn forcing oncoming traffic to accommodate by moving further to the other side of the road. This is brilliant, because no one has to wait to make a left, and traffic continues to move. People in Hohhot are remarkable in their ability to swerve and maneuver through traffic that, to American eyes, appears to be little more than chaos. But somehow it works, and with very few accidents.

STARING AT FOREIGNERS

Taking pictures of waigoren (foreigners) at Qincheng Park. Everywhere we go we attract attention. This time I took a picture back!

It is amazing to think that in this age of internet and satellite television that there are still places in the world where foreigners draw crowds and stares from everyone. Hohhot, a city of nearly 1.5 million people, is one of those places. Foreigners are very unique and therefore they become the object of popular attention on the streets. Total strangers assemble to gawk at the strange waigoren and old women come directly up to our children to feel their hair and touch their faces. This particular practice is hard for us to take--especially hard on the children and Arienne. We cannot go anywhere without drawing a crowd. We cannot relax on a park bench without having to deal with strangers who want to stroke Grace's hair or pinch Samuel's cheeks. Mostly, they are very, very nice, but it does make going out in public very exhausting. In America we are used to our sense of space.

These guys literally rammed our boat so they could get a closer look.

A couple weeks ago at Qincheng Park, I took the kids out on some paddle boats. We spent the entire time surrounded by other boats that were chasing us, sweeping in for close-up photo opportunities of the foreigners. Suffice it say, it wasn't very relaxing. Sometimes the boats literally bumped into us (see above), allowing everyone the chance to stare and take photos. This despite the fact that the lake is pretty large, and there were only, say, ten boats on the water--plenty of room for everyone. This kind of thing happens to us every single day. We get to experience, for once, what it feels like to be a minority within a dominant culture. And yet, in a place like China, where 95% of the people are Han Chinese, and the other nationalities share a very similar appearance, foreigners really stand out.

In "River Town," Peter Hessler talks about experiencing the same thing while teaching English in a small town on the Yangtze River in the mid 1990s. He responded with his own kind of theatrics, calling himself a "long-nosed foreigner" or a "capitalist roader": "This long-nosed foreigner wants a cup of tea!" This was his way of dealing with constantly being the object of attention and curiosity. When I'm grouchy, I feel the same way. I want to do a dance or sing a song and really give the onlookers a good show--not just some tame view of foreigners trying to enjoy a quiet moment at the park. How about a foreigner dancing and singing a song from "Grease"?

Tyler, an American teacher who has been here continuously for nearly two years and who speaks Chinese and has married a Mongolian woman, often stares back at people who stare at him. When people say, "Foreigner!" (which happened to me last week at a street-side baizi vendor), he says back, in Chinese, "Chinese Person!" But taking this approach puts you in constant confrontation with people. It is much easier for me to simply ignore people, or smile and play the role of the stupid long-nosed foreigner, giving everyone a laugh at my own expense. This is what I did at the Wei Duo Li mall last week. I was standing in the meat section staring at all the unfamiliar cuts of meat. I was thumbing through my "Mandarin Phrase Book" trying to locate the word for "ground beef" or "hamburger," neither of which I could find. There was a gathering crowd of shoppers watching as the butchers all congregated around me. I stuck with the phrase book, and by the time I gave up on it, there were easily a dozen people watching and laughing, enjoying the spectacle of a waigoren trying to find the words to buy his meat. I finally pointed at the meat I wanted and then performed an amusing charade to indicate that I wanted it ground. I got the meat and everyone was entertained along the way. No one was mean or rude, just interested and amused.

But these are all small things. In the big picture, our experience has been shaped more by the kinds of customs for which the Chinese are well-known: generosity, hospitality, friendliness, and modesty. Everywhere we go, people may stare at us, but they also help us. If we look lost, someone will help us, even if they do not speak English (which is usually the case here in Hohhot). In our short stay here, people have extended to us tremendous hospitality--they have fed us, guided us around the city and countryside, helped us get what we need. Despite our protests, they have paid our cab fares, bought us water and ice cream bars, and paid our entrance to tourist sites. And when we thank them, they say, "It was nothing at all." When we pay them compliments, they respond in the typical Chinese fashion, "No, No," as opposed to the typical American response, which is simply to say, "Thank you." We have learned to leave some liquid in our cups if we are done, or they will be refilled immediately. We have learned not to eat all the food on a plate, or it will be taken as a sign that not enough food was served. We have learned not to protest too much when someone wants to pay for us, because it is an insult.

The people at the university, moreover, have absolutely bent over backwards to make our stay here comfortable. Faculty members have taken us to stores, museums, parks, and pharmacies. The facilities people have brought us a five-gallon water dispenser, a new phone, pots and pans, and a new washing machine to come. Hospitality, so far, has been the primary Chinese custom that we’ve experienced thus far (except from the Police in Helin, but that blog is coming soon!)

Thanks for reading.

Dave

PS—yes the teaching blogs will be coming, but I’m trying to catch up!

Bursting our Bubbles

We’ve had our bubble burst twice in our first three weeks: first our preconceptions were punctured, then we were disabused of our first impressions as we learned more about our surroundings.

“Third World” Hohhot (above and below): This is how Hohhot felt to us at first: chaotic, noisy, polluted, filled with cars, bikes, carts, and people, a peculiar stench emanating from the sewers. It was all a bit overwhelming, and, I must admit, it was a little more rough around the edges than we had imagined.

“First World” Hohhot (above and below): This is the Hohhot that we encountered after more than a week in the city. The downtown is modern, filled with high end stores and shoppers, and yes, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and KFC. My colleague, Dr. Sun Yongsheng, did not even know that these American chain restaurants existed in Hohhot, and, in fact, they did not five years ago. The city is modernizing rapidly (more on that later).

For me and my family, the prospect of coming to China was largely about “bursting our bubble.” The prospect of leaving our comfortable lives in eastern Washington for an unfamiliar country was all about moving beyond our sheltered comfort zone and seeing China for ourselves.

Here is an entry from my journal before our departure:

“If there is any one thing that motivates me to take this trip it is a desire to puncture the bubble of ignorance that surrounds me with regard to China. To me, and most Americans, China is so foreign and incomprehensible--the language, the culture, the political system. My imagination conjures up poor peasants, disease, air choked with heavy smog from coal burning factories, party propaganda, passive masses cowed into submission by an oppressive regime. What is it really like?”

We came to Hohhot with a vague, impressionistic sense of China shaped by books and articles, most of them focusing on environmental problems, political repression, and how rapidly China is modernizing. With the knowledge that Beijing would be hosting the 2008 Olympics, and with all the discussion of economic modernization, we were a little shocked upon first arriving in Hohhot (at the shabby “Old” airport which will be replaced shortly by a sparkling new facility). Now that we’ve become more acquainted with Hohhot, I’m ashamed of our first reactions. But we were in shock. And we also hadn’t seen anything yet. Here is an entry from my journal after all of two days in Hohhot:

“Arienne and I are both reeling, trying to get our footing in unfamiliar territory, without any protective cushion, without anything familiar (like a hamburger or even the internet) to anchor us, to reconnect us to our familiar world. Don't be misled about the "New China"--the bullet trains, the public transit systems, the glamorous skylines, the Starbucks and McDonalds--this Brave New World has not yet penetrated the fringes of China. This should make the place quite quaint, except for the fact that a crude modernization has indeed come to Hohhot. It is transforming life here at breakneck speed, filling the streets with cars, SUVs, tractors, trucks, and motorized scooters, filling the tenements with people, overtaxing the frail and dilapidated infrastructure to the hilt. Modernization here is just another term for uncontrolled chaos--a "planned" economy that has collapsed into a nightmare of primitive and unregulated capitalism. This is not the "first world" by any stretch of the imagination.”

A wonderful piece of sociological observation from a person who had been “in country” for all of forty-eight hours and had seen a total of one square block of the city. Actually, we had seen a little more than that: On our second night, Yongsheng took us in our first cab ride to his in-law’s apartment in Hohhot, only a few miles north of Inner Mongolia Normal University. That first cab ride contributed to our initial shock. It took us over an hour to travel about three miles. To be fair, this was because some of the roads had been blocked off by central party officials who had come to Hohhot that evening to celebrate the sixty year anniversary of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous region. Traffic was at a standstill. We could barely breathe. When things began to move, the pattern of traffic was so frightening and seemingly unregulated that both Arienne and I had to look away, trying to maintain our composure with our little ones squeezed tight between us, no seatbelts, of course. (Note: No one in Hohhot wears seatbelts, and we’ve finally given up any pretense of even trying anymore. In fact, if you happen to sit in the front seat of a taxi and pull the shoulder strap over your shirt, you’ll wind up with a thick diagonal stripe of dust across your shirt, because NO ONE has ever worn the belt before.)

Traffic really was a big part of our initial culture shock. After 3 ½ weeks, we are now totally nonchalant about it. We easily stroll across the street in front of our apartment as bicycles, donkey-carts, motor scooters, and taxis whiz by us. We ride carefree and comfortable in taxis, not a thought anymore about seatbelts. But in those first days, traffic was really intimidating. Pictures cannot really capture the sense of what traffic is like here, because, obviously, everything in pictures is STANDING-STILL. Moreover, I have yet to attempt a picture while standing in traffic for fear it will be my last. This picture (below) was taken from a bridge above a downtown street in traffic that, I kid you not, is actually quite tame.

All kinds of vehicles choke the streets--cars, bikes, scooters, tractors, buses, all orchestrating an amazing choreography. Everything moves by the informal rules of the road, a process that, even to an American who lived in Los Angeles for ten years, is absolutely harrowing.

Again, my journal from the first few days:

“Here I could not even imagine a child riding a bicycle on the streets (and I have yet to see any), as our children do at home. I could not imagine myself riding on the streets, for that matter.”

Well, let me eat more of my first impressions. Within a week and a half, I had bought bikes for the entire family (with the exception of Grace who rides on the back of Arienne’s bicycle) and we happily ride along the streets for miles, just like everyone else in Hohhot (including little kids).

Samuel, Arienne, and Grace make their way down a shady street. We are apparently the ONLY people in this city of 1.5 million who wear bike helmets.

Our sheltered first impressions of “third-world chaos” began to be shattered in every way imaginable as we explored more of Hohhot and began to get our footing. In those first days it was hard just to find food that our children would eat, and, as we browsed the crowded shelves of markets in our neighborhood, we longed for a modern grocery store.

I wrote in my journal:

“There are apparently no modern super markets here--just small side groceries that compete with informal street vendors of all kinds.”

Wrong again!!! At the beginning of our second week, Helen (her English name), a faculty member in the International Exchange College here at IMNU, took us to the upscale “Wei Duo Li” shopping mall in down-town Hohhot, which has a gigantic modern supermarket that covers the entire ground floor, offering everything under the sun, including all those staples that American kids (and grown-ups) desire: mayo, tuna(fish), peanut butter, black tea. There are three huge supermarkets in town, actually, aisles bulging with so many brand name goods it’s hard to understand how China can still be considered a communist nation (more on that later).

Finally, as the chaos that we saw in the first few days began to look more orderly, we also noticed there were many places for kids to play and adults to exercise, another thing we had despaired of in those manic first days. May I embarrass myself once again? Here is my insightful journal once more:

“It is not just chaotic traffic and crammed streets (and the lack of Western things) that is so shocking to our sensibilities, it is also the seeming dearth of parks and green areas in the city. Where do children play?”

This is a particularly painful and embarrassing passage. What a freaking idiot! Can I still claim “shock” as an excuse? I really should have done less journaling and more walking around the city in those first days. The picture below is of Manduhai Park, one of the many beautiful and tranquil areas where the kids can run and play.

As you can see, the learning curve so far has been pretty steep. Things are now starting to normalize. I mean, it’s not quite like living in Des Moines, Iowa, yet, but life is beginning to take on familiar routines. Kids playing and whining. Mom and Dad screaming. Me working. Oh yeah, I am also working here. In fact, I’ve already been teaching for three weeks—the semester started August 6. More on that to come!!!!

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.

Dave

The Welcoming

We were greeted at the gates of the city by my dear colleague Yongsheng Sun, or as we call him here in Hohhot, Dr. Sun Yongsheng. I’m the bald guy on the left, still totally jetlagged.


Dear Reader (I promise I’ll never call you that again),

I begin this blog three long weeks after our arrival in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, P.R. China, the so-called “Green City” (which for some reason many claim is the “Blue City”). In actuality, Hohhot is mostly grey, brown, and green, with very little blue. It is a bustling city of 1.5 million people, about 80% Han Chinese with the remainder Mongolian and other minority nationalities, which makes it very diverse for China, which is 95% Han Chinese (the largest single ethnic group in the entire world). But Hohhot doesn’t feel very diverse to us, since there are very few “waigouren” (foreigners) in this large city (in fact we’ve seen only two others in the city at large since we’ve been here). More on that later.

As a historian (it is now, by the way, considered grammatically correct to say “a historian” as well as the more traditional “an historian”), I’m inclined to want to give the entire history of the past three weeks as written in my journals, but I will spare you most of the details (for now, at least).

Here is the most succinct rendering of the first day that I can muster. We arrived—myself, my wife Arienne and our two children, Samuel (8) and Grace (6)—completely fatigued after delays in Beijing made for a 25 ½ hour trip, point to point.

Beijing Airport: Absolutely elated because, after hours of delays and pandemonium in the domestic flights check-in area (which makes the New York Stock Exchange look like Bingo night at the rest home), we finally finagled some boarding passes to Hohhot (with the help of an Uighur interpreter).

By the time we arrived in Hohhot, our heads were already brimming with the many accumulated anxieties we had been storing up over the previous six months. We were fully prepared to be burned by acid rain or contract SARS, Avian flu, or, at the very least, led poisoning or dysentery within minutes after our arrival. We staggered out of the baggage area to be greeted by my colleague from Columbia Basin College, Dr. Sun Yongsheng, and Mr. Song of Inner Mongolia Normal University, where I would be teaching for a semester. We found the van in the parking lot, the driver catching a quick nap (it was, after all, 1 A.M.), and headed off into the thick Hohhot night. The air was heavy with a foggyish smog or a smoggyish fog, reinforcing our fears of the environmental nightmare we were hurling ourselves into headlong, two small children in tow. The dim roads, donkey carts, and decaying Stalinist architecture didn’t reassure us any. Arienne and I were both thinking the same thing: was it still possible to opt for the semester abroad in Paris?

All we needed, of course, was a good night’s sleep. Our apartment wasn’t ready yet and Yongsheng had arranged for us to be put up in a very nice suite at the Inner Mongolia Normal University Education Hotel. After our long and harrowing trip, we were tired but also wired. We showered (a paranoid Arienne and I screaming at the kids not to swallow the water!) and we all fell asleep about 3am and woke up at 7:30am. The day was bright. I went to a small bakery nearby and acquired some cookie-like-things for breakfast. We were optimistic. And then I burned my foot. I was filling a Nalgene bottle with boiling water and unwisely holding it by the plastic top when the ring slipped from the neck of the bottle, spilling scalding water on my right foot and arm. Luckily we were able to cool the burn quickly and the damage was not too bad.

The Burn: I am posting this picture primarily to gross you out. I’m sorry.

There are two reasons why I mention the burn. The first is that it provides a window into our fragile emotional state on that first morning in Hohhot. The excitement of early morning in our new life was immediately dampened by fear and paranoia and a nagging sense that perhaps we had indeed made a mistake (we love our cozy little safe lives in the Tri-Cities, just downriver from the nuclear waste site, why didn’t we just stay put?).

The second reason I mention the burn is that it was one of our first experiences with Chinese hospitality (with many more to come). I called Yongsheng, who was at that moment an hour outside the city in meetings at the new campus, and asked him to pick up some burn ointment before he met us for lunch. I insisted that the burn wasn’t very bad and no one need go out of their way. Yongsheng nonetheless called Mr. Song, one of the faculty in the International Exchange College, who showed up at the hotel within minutes (who knows what duties he was pulled from?), to examine my burns. He immediately went out and got some burn cream, which was just the thing. It worked better than any American over-the-counter treatment I've ever used. I was limping a little in the morning, but by evening, even though the top of my foot was deep red and blistering, the pain was almost entirely gone. I was able to wear shoes to the banquet that evening.

The Banquet

That night Mr. Chen, the Dean of the College of International Relations, organized a welcome banquet for us at the "Teacher's University Xueyuan Restaurant," just across from the Inner Mongolia Education Hotel. We dined in the Presidential Suite, an elaborate and colorful room, decorated with paintings and statues of Genghis Khan (who is omnipresent in the museums, tourist shops, and banquet rooms of Hohhot). Mr. Chen, the presiding dignitary, sat at the head of the table, with Yongsheng to one side and me to the other. On either side of us were Mr. Zhou, the Party Secretary, as well as Mrs. Wu, the Vice Dean for Instruction at the College of International Relations. Also there was Mr. Song as well as Yongsheng's family, and, of course, Arienne and the kids.

Still jet lagged and not quite so well briefed on the protocol of banqueting, the evening was remarkable and surprising, both in its formal ritualism as well as the deeply emotional nature of the toasts and speeches and songs.

Dr. Sun Yongsheng (the real one) of Columbia Basin College and Mr. Chen Yue, the Dean of the International Exchange College at Inner Mongol Normal University, drinking one of the many toasts at our welcoming banquet.



The toasts began quite soon after the food was served. Since this is Inner Mongolia, we were serenaded by a traditional Mongolian singer. The music was culminated with me being offered a plate with metal chopsticks, which I used to take a ribbon and a biscuit from the top of a sheep's head (the prize dish was "Mongolian mutton," which was crowned with the sheep's head). The plate also contained a knife, which I used to cut a cross on the forehead of the sheep. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and I nearly used the dull knife to cut the head off the thing, but Yongsheng fortunately conveyed to me that only a symbolic slicing was required. This particular ritual ended with me taking a shot of the Chinese liquor from a special metal cup, which was then also passed around to many others. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to down the entire shot, but it didn't seem to upset anyone.

Arienne and I joined in on the toasts.

Thereupon began a wave of toasts, beginning with Mr. Chen, and including one by me. Mr. Chen's toast was very eloquent, a metaphor about the grasslands of Mongolia being open, broad, and welcoming. It was all very nice, and although it sounds cliché, the toasting ritual was also sincere and emotional, especially the many personal toasts that were made around the table, form one person to another. After the toasts came the songs, the first by Yongsheng's father, who had traveled three days from Hailaer (sp?) to see his sons. It was beautiful and resonant--a Tibetan folk song. Afterwards came traditional folk songs by Mr. Zhou, the party secretary and Mrs. Wu, the Vice Dean. Yours truly performed next--a stirring acapella rendition of "Yesterday," by the Beatles. This was followed by Mr. Chen's version of John Denver's "Country Roads," as well as "Moon River" by Yongsheng’s kids, Alec and Joanna.

Despite the fact that a sleep-deprived Samuel melted-down when he saw the lamb's head and spent a portion of the banquet crying on his mother's lap, and that I called Mr. Chen "Mr. Wen" for the second half of the evening (for which I was forgiven, I think?), the banquet was tremendous. It also accomplished a number of business functions: the commissioning of Mr. Song as our “go-to” person; the decision that we should choose whichever of the faculty apartments we desired (maybe because of "Yesterday"?); and the determination that our apartment should have internet. We shook hands and thanked everyone profusely. I stumbled through “I am very glad to have met you” in Mandarin, and everyone pretended they understood. Then we headed into a thunder shower, across the chaotic street (more on chaotic streets later), and back to our hotel room.

By the way, if you got this far, you also might be interested in my wife’s blog, which is far more extensive, less pretentious, more honest, and totally uncontaminated by academic cant (I’m not even sure what that means). Check it out at:

http://www.arnoldsinchina.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading. More to follow.

Dave

David Arnold in Hohhot

Mimicking a "Beef" in Inner Mongolia. This is one way a foreigner can get "beef" for dinner in Hohhot. Another way is to bring your Chinese speaking friends. Still another way is to bring your Mandarin phrasebook and point at the Chinese characters for beef. Probably the least effective way is to put your language training to practical use and actually say, "Wo yao niurou," or "I want beef." This method is likely to be ineffective because the waiter will just stare at you blankly, as if you have just said something in Martian, which, in my case, you probably have.

This is largely a test post because the Chinese government blocks American blogspot.com sites. This means that I can post my blog, but I cannot actually view my blog from China. Can you see it????

Let me know. More posts to come!

Dave