According to Putnam County folklore when I was girl, if I dug deep enough in the red clay of the Willard community, I could dig to China. I used to imagine my head popping into the world of cherubic little children with straight black bangs and slanted eyes. Little did I know I’d have an opportunity to test that from the other side of the globe.
I’m living in Shanghai this summer, a place of 25 million people (five times Metro Atlanta; three times New York City) compressed into time and space that speak centuries of history. As if the population isn’t challenge enough, I arrived with a broken foot. While my husband is teaching at East China Normal University, I fend for myself. So far I’ve managed to hobble safely across intersections where red lights and crosswalks are mere suggestions. I keep a cheat sheet of survival Mandarin in my pocket, but I can’t read a single written character on signs or packages, or identify any food other than rice.
Our neighborhood streets are teeming with more people than I’ve ever seen, doing things I’ve never imagined. I look for the cicada lady riding her bicycle piled high with the droning creatures in tiny hand-woven slat cages. After bearing the hoard of cicadas this spring, Putnam can easily sympathize with her life. Women ride bicycles to church in their Sunday best, including high heels and hats. By making a motion like I was biting a sandwich, I asked a man selling turtles if they were to eat. He shook his head emphatically and made a caressing motion to indicate they were pets. One woman was laying flat on the bare sidewalk – asleep, drunk, dead? No one took notice. I’ve found those cherubic children I used to imagine and I don’t have to know their language to understand them. The exaggerated eye roll of a recalcitrant child being made to eat her cauliflower is the same here as in Willard.
Shanghai traffic is a wonder in and of itself – like a dance, fluid and flexible, without the frustration you see in drivers at home. Nothing akin to road rage happens here because the only way is to keep with the flow, bumper to bumper, everybody cutting in front of somebody all the time. I saw a woman on a bicycle pedal blithely across a major intersection and no tires screeched, no fists shook. Had she made an erratic move, however, they’d be scraping her off the pavement.
Except for death-defying street crossings, I enjoy limping around our neighborhood. An elderly man sets up a folding chair at the gate of Civilized Park nearby and gives haircuts. I doubt Wooten’s would take kindly to that in Eatonton. Irwin is itching to partake of the Chinese barber’s services just for the novelty. I watch families on boat rides in canals, impromptu musical groups, singers, badminton, tai chi, and card games. I’m hoping to luck up on a mahjongg game soon.
When I need a taxi, the hotel desk clerk writes the Mandarin characters for where I want to go. I show her note to the driver and end up at the right place…so far. There is an art to hailing a taxi when I want to come back. I have to wade out into the street – cane, cast, & all – and signal by holding my hand flat and making a quick downward motion, like patting a dog on top of the head. I give the driver the hotel card and by some magic he gets me back…so far.
“No” doesn’t get rid of beggars. I was told to say forcefully, “Poo!” It makes them vanish but I have no idea what it means in Mandarin. It’s easy to remember, though, because I do know what it means in English. I’m told the tens of thousands of apartment dwellers surrounding our hotel are considered “upper lower class,” the indicator being they hang their wash out the windows to dry. The sun-dried sheets we’re sleeping on seem like a luxury to us.
After three weeks here, I felt fairly immersed in my surroundings and did not fully understand “culture shock” until this past weekend. We took the bullet train on a day trip to Hangzhou.
That train is an absolute marvel, but the station was equal to Hartsfield-Jackson on its busiest day – doubled. The temple we went to see was situated at the top of a mountain trail too treacherous for an old lady with a cast. I sat in the shade of a shrine and waited for Irwin to make the trek and bring back pictures of the amazing statues carved into the mountainside. A blue-eyed blonde with a southern drawl doesn’t exactly blend in a place like that. One professional-looking Chinese man asked me kindly if I needed help, and two little girls wanted their pictures made with me, all of which made me feel welcome. But an unsmiling uniformed guard stared at me in a stern and menacing way. After an hour, he steamed across the plaza directly at me and my heart leapt into my throat. That was true culture shock. There are rules here and I don’t know what they are. Had I unwittingly broken one? He looked for all the world like he was about to arrest me. I have never, ever felt so vulnerable. Ten feet before he reached me, someone else drew his attention and diverted his course. But the damage was done. If I could’ve found that rabbit hole back to the Briarpatch, you better believe I would’ve jumped in it – head first.
Thanks to my parents and Putnam County schools my risk of being illiterate was zero – until I came to China, that is. I’m living in Shanghai differently from those who come on prearranged tours with English-speaking guides. Amidst thousands of people at a bus station reading characters instead of letters and yelling in musical tones at the top of their lungs, I consider it a victory just figuring out which line to stand in. Knowing which stop to get off is a minor miracle. I’m glad I don’t complain about signs at home being printed in other languages, because boy am I grateful to come upon a random directive in English.
In Mandarin the word for horse has four other meanings by varying the tone slightly. Remembering my aunt called a Guatamalan official a worm in Spanish, I quit trying. But Chinese people never quit. It’s no surprise they built the Great Wall. Once they’d thought it up, it was just a matter of getting it done. One man on a bicycle can move a load of refrigerators; I saw him. When a fellow on the street asked where I came from and I replied Georgia in the United States, he said, “Peach State. Your capitol Atlanta.” Laughing at my obvious surprise, he whipped a U.S. state quarter out of his pocket. “I learn all. New Jersey very hard to find.”
Our accommodations have undergone a change we in Athens call Town vs. Gown. The neighborhood hotel grew seedier by the day until – a la Dorothy and Toto – I peeked behind a curtain in the lobby and discovered the ugly truth. The twenty foot pile of debris I exposed meant the incessant jack-hammering was de-construction, not re-construction. Promised university housing was supposedly unavailable, but the steel in my magnolia glinted just a tad and we now reside in the presidential suite at the best hotel on campus! Tree-lined avenues where ECNU controls the traffic are much less hazardous. It’s nice to have come up in the world enough to appreciate the fantastic light shows of Shanghai’s futuristic skyline.
For those who’ve asked, yes the bullet train whose track I was so joyfully shooting up and down was the one that crashed. My husband calls me Powerful Katrinka at home, because if a thing can be torn up, I am likely to do it; but I did not break that train.
And for you asking about food, the noodle shop gives me complimentary glasses of cold milk, maybe to strengthen the broken bone in my foot, or they’ve somehow pegged me as a Putnam County girl. Not an adventurous eater, I gave up counting carbs when all I was living on was rice and bread. I’ve since learned the trick is to order quickly and close the menu. Don’t remind myself of pork blood soup, duck tongue appetizer, jellyfish, eel, dog, donkey, offal, or bladder while I eat my tofu and vegetables. Even if the sweet potatoes are purple. Nor am I inquiring into a dish labeled Grandma. Restaurants outside the back gate of the university are filled with local flavor, food and otherwise. We dodge across streets lined with pushcarts roasting and steaming anything edible, and land amongst a noisy jumble of families, students, tourists, and traffic. Sensory overload, it’s a world away from any experience I’ve ever had, but it’s never dull.
After dinner we trade the cacophony of the streets for that of cicadas in the lotus beds along the river.
Irwin really enjoys plump Shanghainese dumplings. Shaped like figs, they’re almost as big as my fist with unidentifiable nuggets stuffed inside, some good and some not. He doesn’t ask what a food is, but my stomach wants to know what’s coming. This man brought his poor, hobbled wife a breakfast of corn and pumpkin gruel on the train instead of Egg McMuffin and coffee. Don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but unlike Oliver Twist, I was not begging “more please.”
I’m getting used to meals served on rotating tables where everyone eats from everyone else’s dish. And I’m proud to say I haven’t had to break out the fork I smuggled from home. One of Irwin’s chopsticks flew under the table, though, and a grinning waiter materialized with a fork for him. Duck is a delicacy, but not for me. At our first hotel I was plotting an intervention for one being raised outside the kitchen door. I miss my familiar southern flavors, so I understood a Shanghai girl, home for the summer from USC, when she closed her eyes and sighed over what was ‘home cooking’ to her.
We’ve had one major mistake meal. The beautifully garnished beef Irwin ordered appeared at our table as three dead minnows that Putnam Pete would’ve thrown back in the lake. Without one hint of garnish to soften the shock. My piled high bowl of boiled shrimp turned out to be a handful of grubworm-looking things scattered over gelatinous, yogurty, egg whitey, tasteless goo. Thank you, Lord, for mi fan (rice) and green tea. Hot dandelion tea, complete with floating flowers, is popular here because of its cooling effect in the brutal summer heat. Y’all might give that a try back home.
One of our compatriots broke a tooth and on the way to the dentist his calamity worsened when the taxi sped off with his wallet. Turns out the tooth fairy also services Shanghai. We passed the hat and by morning had enough to order his crown. Ironically, he is the only professor in our group who is proficient in Mandarin. What would I do in his predicament? Probably sit down on the curb and cry. Pretty sure that’s universal in any language.
As Typhoon Muifa bore down on Shanghai and ultimately gave her a glancing blow, we were on a bus to Anhui Province. Our quest was two-fold: visit granddaughter Sofi, who is becoming a Primatologist like her grandfather; and, meet her research subjects, threatened Tibetan Macaques, one of the few monkeys Irwin has never seen. Coming out of the Yangtze Delta, we approached green foothills that I could easily trick myself into believing were North Georgia, the drive through Clayton into the Blue Ridge. A closer look showed the foliage to be tree-size plumes of bamboo and tea fields terraced straight up the mountainsides.
The Red-Crowned Crane is China’s national bird, but it ought to be the construction crane. Everywhere I looked, machinery towered over buildings that wore exoskeletons of bamboo scaffolding, lighter and considered stronger than steel. Sad bits of laundry fluttered in windows of partially demolished hovels, gallant flags representing families undefeated until the moment the wrecking ball hits. The amount of construction is hard to fathom. New communities thrive where open fields existed a year ago. Superhighways snake across the landscape while, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, interchanges more complex than Spaghetti Junction are rising four to six stories into the air. If something like that ever comes through Putnam County, I’ll be real glad I hung onto my Willard land.
Irwin’s teaching assistant, Bing Zhu, accompanied us and demonstrated as well as any Southern Belle that a sun umbrella is more than shelter. In this society of intense bartering, umbrella opening closes negotiation. After six hours of travel we arrived in Tangkou to find Sofi obviously in her element. She swims in waterfall pools and can’t wait to climb the 60,000 step “Stairway to Heaven” to watch the famous Huangshan Mountain sunrise. My limit, even if I hadn’t been encumbered with cast and cane, was 400 steep steps up to a viewing platform. I could’ve watched those monkeys for days.
Wild and living free, they played in the falls and performed acrobatics in trees overhead. Innately curious, they joined us at will, so we were instructed to pretend throwing rocks if they became aggressive. The alpha male displayed huge teeth but came to sit amiably with Irwin – my good man doesn’t speak Mandarin, but he does speak monkey. I was slow descending the stairs and embarrassed to have research director, Dr. Li, shepherd me down. He insisted, saying the macaques attacked tourists there only the day before. Sort of flashed me back on Oz again with its flying monkeys!
Upon reaching the main trail, I claimed a bench while Irwin and Dr. Li followed Sofi to the next site. Crossing a swinging bridge over the river gorge, they hiked to a set of 425 steps up another mountain. Their voices receded and I took in the splash of rapids below me, surrounding hills swaying with bamboo, and finally found the China I’ve been seeking. Not amongst Shanghai’s skyscrapers, which from all appearances could dock alien spacecraft, but in the serene forests of fabled mountains and legendary scenery. I closed my eyes in meditation. When I opened them again three local men were staring at me. They frowned and spoke, but I couldn’t understand. Ever notice when you don’t know what’s being said, the tone seems aggressive? They eyed my cast and cane, shrugged, and continued down the path. Holstered in the small of each back was a seriously sharp knife, a short machete with a wicked hook on the end. I’m glad I didn’t see those until they’d passed. They reappeared down by the river chopping trees – aha, woodcutters.
Eventually light rain fell and they climbed back up, gesturing for me to get under the overhang of a nearby trench toilet. Doing Bing Zhu proud, I opened my umbrella in refusal, it was only a sprinkle. They held an agitated conversation, and then one turned and yelled at me. He pointed adamantly toward a mountaintop and his expression was a well-remembered one Daddy employed whenever he meant “get your butt over here…now!” I looked up to see a blacker than black cloud round the peak. Okay, time to move. Without two seconds to shoulder my backpack, I unsuccessfully tried juggling it, cane, and umbrella. Woodsmen to the rescue! They rushed out to get me just as the bottom fell out. While rain poured, they smoked and laughed and shook their heads at me. And I laughed and shook my head at myself, huddled under the roof of a trench toilet with three chivalrous Chinese woodcutters.
Before we left Tangkou Dr. Li feted us with a banquet, and back in Shanghai the university pitched another to celebrate the successful close of its summer program. Irwin’s classes at UGA begin two days before our return, so he used this free weekend for a well-deserved adventure of a different kind. Memories from his Brooklyn boyhood drew him to explore Shanghai’s subways. Having heard about pushers, men who cram people in so the doors will close, I passed on subway surfing. Let him kick up his heels city style; I ate my first peach of the summer and started packing. I heard Brer Rabbit went on vacation and one of us really ought to be getting back home.
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