9: on your mark...

now it was time to face the troops.

the first day of school is a bit anticlimactic when it doesn't start until after lunch; but we had learned (since the kitchen had reopened over the weekend) that lunch is indeed one of the high points of the day at jiao yuan middle school. it is serve-yourself on compartmented, stamped metal trays; a groove holds your chopsticks, and a round depression keeps your metal bowl from sliding away. the san quentin associations are unavoidable: first stop is at a washtub of rice, then at a washtub of soup, each with a bowl-sized scoop standing within. next is a tray of bread that looks like uncooked parker house rolls. and then, to the horizon it seems, is the main event: at least fifteen trays of vegetables and veggie combos and concoctions (chile peppers are not just seasoning here but a food group all their own), hot and cold greens and sprouts, some noodles, always a tofu selection, always a fresh (wholly intact) fish selection, rotations of chicken, duck, lamb (with innards and riblets and bones and feet and beaks thereof), seasoned with more chiles, aromatic black peppers, slivered ginger, whole star anise, and lots of stuff i haven't yet figured out. this is the most amazing institutional food i have ever experienced. final stop is always a bushel of ripe fruit: sometimes juicy pears, often mandarin oranges or asian apples, once we had persimmons...

the prep work is a bit like mosca's servings of chicken thru-the-lawn-mower: every bite of meat is sure to have a bone fragment in it, so you quickly learn to nibble and not to chomp. no adorable food-like pressed/processed white meat shapes for these folks: you confront your consumption head-on. you definitely consume less this way- and, hear this, dr. mcneil: i've kept all my dental crowns attached for more than three months now.

this banquet rolls out every day at 11:30; teachers not in the classroom hustle down to beat the rush at 11:50 dismissal. by 12:15, it's pretty much a buffet of bones; first afternoon class is at 1:40. everyone shuffles off to a corner for a (do the math) substantial nap; is this living, or what? we're lucky to have our apartments right upstairs; others have foldaway cots (with linen and pillows) in their offices, or drop into the "faculty resting room" to vie for a bunk. "not a creature is stirring..." until the bugle blares at 1:30: the kids return from their homes in the village, the cots are folded, and life goes on, refreshed.

the school day is a long one: four 40-minute periods morning, 4 of the same in the afternoon, wrapping up at 5:00. that first monday afternoon was a triple-header for me: three classes in a row, with 10-minute breaks between, an average of 48 head per class; this was a lot different than our cozy practice group of 16. first sessions were get-acquainted; james and i met for a beer afterward for mutual reassurance.

tuesday was a long one: two classes morning, two afternoon, with open periods between each. more get-acquainted; now 6 times 48 names and faces total, to try and track... my postponed birthday celebration was to be at a neighboring restaurant at 6pm. lulu came to fetch james and i from our digs and escort us to the restaurant; as we passed the gatehouse, she stopped in to retrieve a present for me: another tub of roses, this time with lilies, too, along with the palm fronds, streaming with ribbons. i felt like a prize bull being led to the rink...

at the restaurant, we were escorted into a private dining room, where about 15 people had gathered- most of the english department, and a few administrators. the headmaster had to send his regrets for the evening- perhaps that was a blessing, from what we'd been told. by the time we sat down to dinner, we were 20, at 2 round tables. opening course was half a warm papaya, filled with frog fat; i'm not making that up. frog fat tastes just about how you'd imagine it (if you ever thought about it) and the combination with the sweet fruit was... unique? as guest of honor, i got the extra one, too.



the rest of the courses were more mainstream: a whole fish, a whole, whacked chicken (head and neck extending over one side of the bowl, feet over the other), duck confetti in sezhuan pepper confetti (guess which is which and win the prize) scallops in black bean sauce on the halfshell, some chiles, some greens, some eggplant, and lots more to eat; some tea, some coconut juice, some beer, some red wine, and more to drink... toasting, bottoms up, challenges, bottoms up, more toasting, bottoms up- you get the picture; if this was the second string, i was going to have trouble with the varsity and the headmaster.



by the time they rolled out a chocolate cake, the room was rolling, too. and then the guys brought out some baijiu- the really lethal moonshine that westerners are never offered. they are doing us a favor with that; some few remaining brain cells got me out of that place and back to my room before that went too far. those who remained had writing exercises in their classes the next day, i'm sure. james went on to deejay at the club ibiza that night; i practiced being older and wiser. luckily, we had that following wednesday off; chinese classes wouldn't begin for two more weeks.

thursday was another four get-acquainted classes: three in the morning, one after lunch.

friday was a breeze: two morning performances topped off by lunch. a group meeting had been called at the adult education center in midtown, to count heads and check on our progress (or despair). and to turn in our passports; it was time to begin processing our resident visas. our entry visas were to expire late in september. the meeting was a therapeutic reunion, and our first since the great claiming race nearly three weeks before. most folks ended up at the 3-d bar nearby, familiar from our breakout from the monastery on the hill.

the first school weekend was a quiet one, for me spent working on class lists and map-in-hand exploration walks around shenzhen; there were certainly a lot more western faces in town now, and we often ran into fellow teachers on the streets. without papers, we couldn't even get on a train out of town. this was a more effective method of restraint than the silver lake resort: we could see hong kong, twinkling in the distance- but we couldn't go there. more correctly- we could go there, but there could be no return.

monday was back upon us; we had all been invited to opening ceremonies for international students at shenzhen university. with no classes til afternoon, i set out by subway, then bus to find the sprawling suburban campus. a few brave souls had also made the trip; it was held in the grand auditorium of a pretty amazing new building. we were introduced to the big crowd (and, of course, invited to a lunch banquet), then offered a campus walking tour while the students did their official paperwork. three cheerful young women (with great english) were our escorts; when asked if we had any special interests, i asked about the architecture school. right this way, sir- they took our group of about eight into the courtyard of a rather cool corbusian complex, right next to the north gate and the main highway. would you like to meet anyone? sure, if you're offering. scurry, scurry, they bring out my next friend: gan haixing- the best english speaker they could collar at the moment. he invited me up to his office for some tea, and i begged off from the rest of the group, so as not to hold up their tour any longer. are you sure you're ok here? i'm much better off here, thank you- gan was then, and continues to be a godsend. he's in charge of publications at the school, cranking out slick periodicals with great photography and chinese text translations that the students use like textbooks of current western design. though the students had yet to reassemble for the semester, it was great to get a sniff of the design world again. we got acquainted until noon, then with a sample stack of his magazines under my arm, i headed back toward my own school (i had to miss the banquet), with the hope that we could get a proper school tour together soon.

long-haul tuesday came and went; i was showing king street pics to my classes that week- snapshots katie and liam had taken of their own house to illustrate their life to folks in another country. the chinese students showed great interest in the toilets, the swimming pool, and their dog, rocky (in about that order). i sent a thank-you email to gan, just to set the hook- hoping we could schedule another meeting when he had the chance.

wednesday was still a free day; midday gan sent back a note that he could make some time later in the afternoon. i moved some portfolio pics to my flash drive, and set out again for the university. we made a studio tour, met some students and staff, shot the breeze and compared pictures of our work for hours; gan has great english (educated in wuhan by yalies), a fondness for things western (he wears a cowboy hat while driving his jeep wagoneer) and an evil sense of humor. did i have time for an early dinner? i learned that my new buddy likes good food and drink nearly as much as i do. his wife and son live in guangzhou, where she teaches english, so he's on his own during the week. he invited his niece to join us, and we set off for a local restaurant, owned by a high school friend from his home village. this local restaurant turned out to be huge, and the aforementioned friend served as our host, sat with us and ordered up his special new dishes for us; gan says he's a lousy cook, but has a great imagination and skilled employees. i was also introduced to rice wine: darker in color than baijiu, and laced with ginseng and herbs and spices- not quite cognac but sorta like sherry. later the duck station cook, then the dim sum chef each came to sit with us- and to insist that we taste their specialties, too. gan rode me back to my school gate after dinner- and said it looked familiar. he thought he had another high school friend who taught here, too. that must be some village you're from, i ribbed him- and said we'd check that connection out later.

thursday and friday played out; they'd now all seen the pics, and i'd cobbled together a semblance of a roster, with of all their english names. the faces were still a mental jumble for me, but already i was cordially assailed with "hello mister bill" everywhere i walked in the village.

friday night, james had some of his crowd of the other teachers over for a birthday party for his friend meghan, and i went with them later to watch him deejay at club ibiza. it was another hiking and exploration weekend for me, and i put together some stuff for the next class cycle.

monday again, and the internet connection had crapped out in our apartments- not so unusual an event. i spent the free morning hustling to print up a sheet for the students: a plan drawing of the king street house they had seen in pictures, and then a space for them to draw a similar description of their own houses. it took some bellowing to keep the big classes in line, but they produced some amazing diagrams (it seems that every chinese kid draws eagerly), then talked to me about them. tuesday's groups were even more productive.

wednesday was our first shenzhen chinese class, back in midtown at the adult education center. thursday's classes got me around the turn, friday's into the home stretch, and 4:30 was the finish line of my chinese class. i know it's only been three weeks of the new regime, but i was ready for a change of scenery.

gan had invited me to visit his storied home village with him, and was to pick me up at my school gate at 5pm.

next: trip to national geographic

8: bright lights, big city...

coming here feels like coming home now: shanghai was my introduction to china (can it be nearly 4 years ago?), and is still the city I’m most familiar with. my friend paul rice and his family have been the axis of my chinese experience; i was looking forward to seeing them again.

my plane was about an hour late in departing shenzhen, so I was messing up paul’s plans on arrival: he had reserved us a table at an indian restaurant he really likes. margaret and the kids were still in singapore, making their way back from a month in belfast, so he was looking forward sharing a bottle of wine and some conversation. i phoned him on landing, hopped on the maglev train, then the subway and met him at the people’s square station; from there we taxied to the restaurant, where they’d held our table for the extra hour. it was a pretty great dinner, the first “foreign” food I’d had since landing in china.

paul had a full calender of meetings scheduled the following day; we met for lunch, then I set out to meet margaret, keira and sean at their plane arriving mid-afternoon. i had a mental image of the mountain of luggage they would have assembled in more than 2 months of wandering; they weren’t expecting anyone to meet them, and were quite surprised to encounter their uncle bill. we managed to squeeze everthing and everybody into a taxi, and entered the grinding evening traffic for the long ride to their home. paul made it home for dinner, and a happy reunion was enjoyed by all.

the next couple of days were spent with the kids, squeezing out their last days of summer; we went one day to a water park that was nearly as giddy as my shenzhen construction site for all the swirling danger and hilarity: this place was huge! The centerpiece was a meandering knee-deep pool that had to cover several acres; winding around this pool and the legs of several huge slide structures was a float stream for tubing. the far end was a sandy beached wave pool- the biggest I’ve seen in every respect- that was like 3 blocks of coney island. The wave-making machines were awe-inspiring; where there was a chance of being swept along the concrete walls, stick-on pads like throw pillows were in place to soften the blow; where the tubing stream turned into whitewater rapids, staff swimmers were positioned to herd sailors swept from their vessels (and to fish out the body, if they missed one). the wading pool amusements could have been devised by the addams family: blocks of “ice” (irregular blocks of vinyl-glazed foam tethered to the bottom by rusting cables) let the little eva’s of any group make their way across the floe; when little hands would slip from the overhead cable, some more throw-pillows stuck to the pool edge would keep her brains from spilling into the water (and you thought disposable diapers were a potential hazard). the requisite climb-thru jungle gym here was more than 30 feet tall and plumbed for regulation firefighting: the kiddie-directed hoses and water jets knocked my on my ass- repeatedly. the tottering bucket atop the whole affair was the size of a minivan: when it tipped its torrent, everything around was flattened. i haven’t even mentioned the numerous waterslides: everyone knows about me and heights… these structures were visible from downtown. the biggest surprises? the whole affair was elaborately landscaped and immaculately maintained, patronized by thousands- and a helluva lot of fun! a glimpse (and remembrance) of life without insurance companies and personal-injury lawyers behind every bush…

on thursday, margaret and i brought the kids to their school to meet teachers and pick up schoolbags and paperwork; from there we continued into town for some lunch and urban adventure; i stayed on hoping to find some clothes to replace what selena was chewing up in shenzhen. couldn't find much to fit me down there; shanghai wasn't much better. maybe hong kong...

on friday, paul was travelling; the rest of us decided to flee the suburbs again and spend my birthday eating our favorite things. at lunch, we pulled up to the french colonial/vietnamese place near our old office that i'd been telling margaret about for years- to discover that the building had been gutted for renovation- about 24 hours earlier. not to worry, a really good chinese place was across the lane, where she and paul had entertained mom and i on another visit.



i'd reserved a 2-bedroom unit at the midtown apartments, where i'd lived previously, and had enjoyed on return visits; we went from lunch to check-in there. the same grinning doorman was there to greet us- another nice homecoming. spent the afternoon teaching the rices to play "oh hell" (after we burned out on blackjack). on his return from the airport, paul joined us at qian jude for a peking duck birthday dinner; then we all camped at the midtown. saturday morning, party over: nice lunch together, paul back to the office, margaret and kids back to the 'burbs, me back to the airport for the return trip to shenzhen. on stepping from the plane at the other end, i got a text message from lulu, my contact teacher: did you find your way back yet? we had agreed to meet on sunday morning to go over the class schedule and locate our classrooms. i replied with "present", jumped into a taxi and pointed to my map, hoping it would get me back to my school: i still couldn't say "jiao yuan zhong xue" convincingly. and that wouldn't get me there anyway- there's a lot of schools in this town. i was relieved when things began to look familiar in the darkness, and i was back at the gate; the map worked again.

lulu, james brook and i met at 10am sharp: lulu had 2 class schedules printed. she offered james and i our choice of either: both had monday mornings and friday afternoons free, and no classes on wednesdays. (the program had asked our schools to schedule around our group chinese classes on wednesday and friday afternoons, so it wasn't all free time.) both schedules had the same mix of junior 1 and junior 3 classes (7th and 9th grades); one had 14 classes and the other 13. the schedule with the least classes had mostly early ones; james and i agreed quickly that he valued his sleep more than i did- he had sort of landed a part-time job as a deejay at a local bar, and was counting on more late nights than i was. we set off on our first tour of the upper reaches of the school building, to match room numbers with our schedules.

our previous experience was almost entirely of the open loggia at the ground level of the central building: the bulk of the classrooms and offices were stacked on 4 more levels above, arranged around interlocking landscaped courtyards. lots of stairs and no elevators are typical in china; the five-level complex was bewildering at first, but the airiness and cascading greenery of the upper levels made it all quite pleasant.





the central building is bookended by a newish 6-story to the south, and an administration building/auditorium structure to the north.

we were familiar with the underside of the south building, traversing the tiled courts every day to get to our dormitory, but discovered a big ping-pong gallery above, with another glass canopy. art studios, a library, large lecture rooms, a campus radio broadcast studio and a school museum line the balconies above.







the north building is of the same vintage as the central building, and connected to it by more open balconies overlooking the west gate courtyard. the auditorium occupies the key corner where the campus meets the village; the roof has been developed as a pleasant garden overlooking the central square.





the school had begun to feel familiar, but we, quite apparently, had only scratched the surface. tomorrow, this quiet place would come alive, and we'd be off to the races.

next: on your mark...

7: be it ever so humble...

so this would be home: a smallish hotel room off a double-loaded corridor, two flights up. you enter into a vestibule, a blue-tiled bathroom on the right, sleeping room beyond. what had been an open balcony is now an enclosed addition to the room, and serves as a kitchenette and laundry; fancy drapery can screen the archway to this area from the bedroom. large operable windows from the former balcony overlook a tiled courtyard; parallel to our building and about 30 feet beyond is the school gymnasium: large neon-blue-film-tinted windows face ours. the entire courtyard is topped with clear glass panes laid flat on a space frame structure, that meets our building at the head of the balcony window; the gym tops out at about the same height, and thru the glass roof, we get a north sky view above it.

james and i have adjacent rooms with mirror-image plans: his on the left and mine on the right. furnishings in each are the same: a (quite comfortable) platform double bed, with new sheets, 2 pillows and a duvet, a blonde-wood dresser, and a built-in wardrobe and desk unit, with bookshelves above to match. a hotel-size television sits atop a low end table. there's a padded office-style armchair, and a small student desk table. the ceiling height is at least 10 feet, with elaborate crown molding and an atomic-inspired light fixture centered above the bed. the landlord-white plaster walls have lots of scotch-tape residue from former tenants: the solid concrete walls preclude nails or tacks. the floor is plaid carpeting, a rare luxury, we were to learn.

the kitchen/balcony has countertops at both sidewalls; a small washing machine (selena the 2nd) and sink on the left, a chest-high fridge/freezer on the right. wall cabinets hold some odd dishes and pans, a rice cooker and a hot plate. the best appliance is an asian-style package a/c unit, with the remote-controlled air handler mounted high on the wall behind the bed; the compressor hangs on the exterior wall to the right of the window.

the bathroom is another special luxury, in our "western-style" suites, outfitted for foreign teachers with real sit-down, ceramic toilets (as opposed to the floor-mounted "squatters" in the rest of the building, and the city, and the country). the ceramic vanity rivals the toilet in elegance: a matching set, they are decorated with painted garlands and ribbons, and would look like delft pottery if not for the central images- of mauve and gray camels (two humps) in amiable groupings. as happens so often here, i'm clueless as to that allusion... a standard-sized bathtub with package hot-water heater, and a hand-held shower complete the ensemble.

our building houses the school kitchen and cafeteria on the ground floor; the two floors above were student dormitories when built, about 10 years ago; now it houses teaching staff in 12 rooms on each floor. on the roof, additional dormitories have been built: pre-fab metal-panel structures, with an open-air breezeway between, topped with a translucent carport-type canopy. each room has 4 sets of bunk beds (reed mats on plywood). all rooms share a central wash trough, gang showers and toilets. this is where the service staff live, male and female: guards, cooks, maintenance and cleaning staff. i thought my quarters were austere until i visited theirs: jimmied in between the supports for our grand rooftop neon sign, it's another world up there... but quite a nice view.

there was a construction project underway on our arrival: a narrow, 2-level concrete structure had been erected across the west end of the courtyard, connecting our building with the gymnasium, but topping out a level below the glass canopy. the bamboo scaffolding was alive with workers and noise and activity from early dawn until 'way past dusk; they were on a mission to complete for the start of school in another week. the only access to our stair was thru this anthill; lulu and the headmaster apologized profusely about the inconvenience, but it was more fascinating than disturbing. these work-persons might do anything: in the following weeks (they missed their deadline, of course) we saw swinging bosun's chair plasterers, sparking electricians standing in puddles, and welders wearing a shirt cardboard with holes for a mask, held in place with a pair of ray-bans. tile-cutters squatted over bare spinning blades; pallets of bricks were hoisted up by fraying cables on ancient winches; workers on the roof held the belts of their colleagues as they lunged out to capture the loads. 'twas a comic circus of dickensian dangers...

on arrival at our new abode, lulu gave us some time to get out of our dress clothes, then offered us a tour; she had the rest of the afternoon free for us. the entire school complex was teeming with workers, unloading boxes and furniture and preparing for the new year, so we didn't venture above the ground floor, but left thru the west gate to survey the neighborhood.



jiao yuan middle school was ten years old, we learned, and situated in yitian village, one of the first planned developments of the new shenzhen, right on the hong kong border. within the gated, limited-access "superblock" roughly ten blocks square were several business districts, two other schools, a sports center and a medical complex, and scads of apartments. the earliest buildings are low-rise, seven story walk-ups. immediately ouside the school gate is a plaza ringed with small shops and three markets, some noodle stands, some barbers- pretty much everything you need. it truly serves as a neighborhood living room, a reality that western planners can only sketch and dream of... (but then again, westerners wouldn't be caught dead ballroom dancing with their neighbors to patsy cline tapes).



the "LGF" sign that appears to be sitting on the school roof is actually atop a new highrise on the hong kong side of the border, near what looks like our checkpoint charlie- we're that close. center city is still about 30 minutes away by commuter train or bus, however.



with the success of deng xiaopeng's experiment of easing open the border came wealth for the yitian villagers: the vacant land on the north edge of their complex was developed as 40-story high-rise apartments. they were now landlords, riding the boom; though it looks like a modest community, the village is now rich.



the afternoon was too hot to cover much distance on foot, so we asked our contact teacher to show us how to get around shenzhen on the bus. our closest stop is across yitian boulevard, in front of the complex where lulu lives, pictured below- typical of the party-hat exhuberance all over town.



lulu took us to the main electonics street, about a 15 minute ride, and we walked thru the dizzying emporia of gadgetry and widgets and circuitboards and equipment- some set up like tiffany's, some like the diamond district, with individual booths in towering, deafening halls. we went to the knock-off market, so shameless, they even call it that, and looked at clothing, handbags, jewelry... we walked the shady, bustling streets inside of the airport-runway superblocks. and of course, we ate: lulu is from the extreme northwest corner of china, five hours travel by plane. she took us to an ethnic restaurant of her people, with belly dancing and music and spicy lamb-on-a-stick and yogurt and smoky bread and wild colors and exotic seeds and seasonings: somehow, turkey collided with india, and dragged afganistan along for the ride. i'm still not sure what tribe this actually was, but that's just normal now. she insisted that we were her personal guests, on paying for everything; we'd most definitely hit the jackpot.

in the course of dinner, we learned that we were essentially on our own for the next 2 weeks: there was to be a faculty meeting on monday morning, but after that we were free until the start of school the following monday, september 4th. lulu was planning her wedding for late october, and wasn't going to have much time for us, but would be available by phone for problems. she knew my birthday was in the next week, and said that the headmaster insisted on having a dinner for the occasion. i asked sheepishly if it would be ok for me to be away for my birthday: i hadn't been to shanghai yet to see my friend paul rice and his family, and this free time looked like a hole in the fence for me. no problem: we'd do it later.

the rest of the week was spent unpacking and setting up, exploring the streets and stores, household shopping and learning our way around. on the morning of the faculty meeting, the empty school came to life. a couple of hundred teachers filed into the auditorium (lots of shorts and sandals, i was relieved to see- pretty informal bunch), but only after having collected a red envelope on checking in. inside the envelope was cash: 300 kuai per teacher (about 36 bucks), just for showing up on time! i was learning to like this gig.

the headmaster showed us he might be a replacement for castro: after introducing the new teachers, he spoke enthusiastically, and in chinese, for nearly 2 hours. i was afraid of nodding off, but sneaking a look around the auditorium, i saw that was pointless: those teachers not snoring with open-mouthed abandon were busy text-messaging on their cell phones. i'd forgotten an earlier lesson learned in china: there's a whole different ethos to paying attention here. it seems strange that in a culture where respect is so important, actual listening is not.

turned loose from my first official school event by noon, i jumped in a taxi and pointed to my map to show the driver the local airport; i was off to shanghai.

next: bright lights, big city...