5: moving on...

just as nothing can happen in new orleans without a parade or a festival to mark it, nothing in china passes without a ceremony and a banquet. we, of course, had both.

i realize i’ve uncharacteristically neglected the food in beijing to date, other than the breakfast cart and the melon vendors. that’s not to imply there wasn’t great food to be had. beijing has a fervent attachment to spice: black pepper and star anise (together) seem to dominate. our favorite “wu kuai” (5 yuan, 60-cents-a-hearty-bowl) noodle shop across the street was open ‘round the clock with steaming bowls of beef broth and home-made noodle, swung like a braided rope overhead and beaten on a worktop while you wait. some slices of beef (and things), a handful of fresh cilantro, and you were off to your table to add your own measure of their seasoning paste to your bowl: a black goo that looked like asphalt but would make even your flip-flops a meal to remember. wash that down with a 36-cent super-litre bottle of tsingtao beer (significantly cheaper than bottled water) and you were well-satisfied for less than a dollar.

in a gatehouse below our hotel, we were soon to discover an enterprising guy had set up a business for “er kuai” beer: 24 cents a giant bottle. better yet, if you brought him back four empties, he’d give you a new full one: the closest thing yet to a perpetual-motion machine, with this crowd. with the small lobby and front driveway as our only common space (and refuge from roommates- james the gerbil was never awake past 9pm), our group pretty well took over the furama hotel every evening: lesson plan confabs became beery frat mixers, launching pad for the nightly club sorties.

evening dining options included some sidewalk-table muslim grill shops (spiced lamb on wooden sticks, 10 to an order) with roasted eggplant and cubed potatoes, a rather fancy place next door, with choose-your-filling dumplings and stir-fried squid with chiles (they sort of adopted me, and would feed me after closing), a hot-pot shop, a few mom-and-pop kitchens, and lots of other things I didn’t get to.

midday dining was surprisingly varied, too: there was a discreet commercial district on campus, with privately-run restaurants to augment the soviet feeding halls. though I skipped those most days for melon-on-a stick and a nap in the shade (scenes below), the few meals I shared there were quite good.





our graduation banquet was a szechuan extravaganza in an upper room in the campus dining district. coats and ties, lots of good and spicy food and rivers of beer served banquet-style to at least fifteen tables of ten, we were awarded our red silk credential folders (fancier than any other diploma I’ve scored, and probably more useful: certified now to teach anywhere in china) and told to prepare for evacuation the next day.

but not before a closing ceremony…

we had to surrender our luggage and our rooms early the next morning, but our train departure was not until late in the evening. morning was a reunion with our class, to help them rehearse for their skit in the big show. unknown to brooks and i, they had expanded and enhanced their newscast into a full-blown burlesque, complete with fake commercials and an "entertainment tonight" sequence.

final ceremony was just after lunch. the preamble was typically chinese: a last march to find suitable spots for lots of group pictures. (in all fairness, it was the americans who stage-managed this final trek, but they had learned from the masters.) we filed into the theatre over an hour behind schedule. with twelve groups to take the stage, a time limit was imposed: no one brought out the hook, however, as our group brought down the house in at least triple the allotted time.

grand finale, tearful goodbyes, more pictures- we were on our own until a 6pm bus departure from the hotel. i had a chance to make a last campus meander, check out my old haunts, revisit my morning study hall- the cap on this memory of beijing.



in previous years, the entire group made the train trip to shenzhen together. this year we had to be divided into two groups: the early-departure 24-hour train, and the late-departure 30-hour train. i got assigned to the latter.

we were all bussed together to the station, arriving around sunset; the early folks would have a wait of about an hour for their 8pm train- the rest of us had 5 hours to kill before our midnite departure. the station was even more vast than i remembered; mom and i had been through here on our trip, but the scale of the place just doesn't fit inside your head. even a head as big as mine. the waiting room itself was hardly remarkable, to anyone who's ever been in penn station or a big train depot in europe; but this waiting room was only one of twelve just like it. threading your way through the concourse to find the waiting room, you were sure that nearly all of the 1.3 billion chinese were here for roll call. sitting on our luggage, we were islets in the ebb and flow of the nearly biblical human tide over the five hours; we were awestruck. it was the perfect comprehensive test of our readiness for immersion in chinese culture.

our berth tickets were handed out about an hour before boarding: six bunks per compartment, three high each side. our scramble to board was all you can imagine, but we pulled out on time; auld lang syne was blaring from the speakers. beijing was still flashing by our windows at least an hour after departure- the city is just huge- but on our side of the glass, the party had started. sales carts worked the aisle with noodles, pies, snacks, and of course beer. the compartments reminded me of the old submarines i'd visited with pop. the only place to congregate was on the bottom bunks or in the aisle; we had pretty much occupied an entire car. a few chinese- and james the gerbil- cowered on their assigned shelves and peered out with frightened eyes; this was going to be a long trip for them.

i understand there was a pretty emphatic "lights out" around 2am- i missed it. i made a tentative climb to my assigned top bunk around 1:30am- to be certain that i could make it! personal space gets a little dented with strangers stepping in your bed, but i was surprised to find how pleasant the windowless aerie was once i arrived- the vaulted roof gave lots of headroom, the a/c was good and the bedding was thin but comfortable. and it was quiet; i promptly fell asleep.

it was my first wake-up without my cagemate! the whole carriage slept late, in spite of the "happy travel morning music" from the speakers; it was full daylight when i heard rustling below me, and peered over the edge to see dan on the middle bunk across from me staring out the window. when i asked him where we were, he replied "iowa, i think"; no one had ever seen so much corn.

it was a beautiful day for an eye-popping ride: after the farmland, we traversed rice paddies, the mighty yangtze, canyons and mountains. we saw water buffalo, ancient villages and waterwheels, dams and bridges, nuclear cooling towers and cities of millions that none of us had ever heard of. i tracked our progress on my big map of china, and earned the name "mr. gps" as the go-to guy for location.

like the kids in the grapes of wrath, we giggled at the plumbing on the train: a squat-hole in the floor with daylight flashing under. "don't drop anything!" was the warning passed on to the next occupant; the lavatory was a communal trough in an alcove off the aisle. our meals came from the carts on board, or contraptions wheeled out on the platforms at the station stops. lots of naps and story-telling and card games thru the afternoon; at about 4pm, the party atmosphere rekindled. everyone had stashed a bottle of something; bars were set up and snacks appeared. by dark, all the action was back on our side of the glass...

i think it was near 1am when someone started tuning a mandolin; i started the climb back to my aerie before that got going...

next i knew, the overhead lights were flashing and the chinese anthem was blaring over the speakers; it was 5:30am and we were arriving in shenzhen.

next: by the dawn's early light...