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...