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