11: the national holiday

china takes only a few holidays, but they are serious about them when they do: national day and mid-winter festival are two of the biggest. the primary objective of both celebrations is to return to the home village and to visit with family; it's a wonder we don't feel it on the western side of the globe when this is set in motion.

national holiday marks the founding of the republic on october 1, 1949. it also conveniently coincides with the "mid-autumn festival" celebrated with the arrival of the harvest moon. everyone pools the workdays before and after to maximize the time away from work: this year the saturday before and the sunday following were deemed workdays, so that the time off started on sunday and ran through saturday for a full 7-day holiday.

this holiday is also widely anticipated as the last hurrah until mid-winter festival (which coincides with chinese new year, and usually falls in february)- it's another looong march between breaks. for our teachers' group, it's one of the peak travel times, too. except for this year: none of us had travel papers. our passports and visas were trapped in a bureaucratic logjam, that looked pretty insoluble. we were warned not to commit to any travel plans until visa documents were in hand. individual interviews with the authorities were arranged in each of our home municipal districts to try and help things along. my particular interviewer was incredulous: i see that you're an architect, but you come here to teach in a junior high school? you make so much money in the states, why would you do such a thing? my answer that money wasn't the issue for me left him speechless; he could think of no other way to approach the subject with his limited english. he sputtered a bit, shook his head in the patented chinese official "this will never do" manner, walked away, walked back, and eventually stamped my sheaf of papers. at least it was a quick meeting...

my plans were to meet with the rices in hong kong; paul had meetings scheduled there for a few days, margaret and the kids were to fly down from shanghai on sunday. if i was confined to china, they were going to have to cross over to see me; the prospect of finally visiting that city twinkling in the distance was far more appealing. the days ticked by, with no passports or news of them.

school had fallen back into the old routine as soon as i returned from the country weekend in gan's village. the internet connection to our dorm rooms was still fried, and lulu was letting me use her office computer to check email. my classes were reading chinese newspaper clippings and telling me what they were about; i had completed a roster of their "english" names. most students volunteered their own, that were usually phonetic permutations of their chinese names, or pleasant sounds like "puppy" and "rain". i downgraded a few who would be "superman" to "clark" or "kent", and discouraged one kid who wanted to be called "queer". but there were a few chances for mischief with those who asked to be christened by mr. bill; the most notorious was a rather large, scowling, angry girl. when i asked her what was her english name, a boy behind her piped up "she's football player!". she hurled her notebook at him like a frisbee, nearly severing his head. her english name is now "lorena".

an excursion downtown to my chinese classes marked the middle and ends of the workweeks, and gan usually planned some sort of dinner on friday nights. after dinners we now indulged in a new ritual he'd introduced me to: the chinese foot massage.

my first visit had me more than skeptical: up a grand flight of curving marble stairs, hostesses in long white gowns and debutante gloves welcomed us enthusiastically. what's this, are we here to get married? i saw that his niece was still with us, as we were ushered into a private room, and felt mildly relieved. the room contained four enormous easy chairs, with doilies and ottomans, and a blaring flat-screen television. that was doused pronto...

soon our technicians appeared, healthy girls each carrying a small wooden washtub filled with a steamy, dark herbal brew. the ottomans were pushed away, and we were each set down to roll up our britches and soak in one. so as to make best use of the soak time, the girls were back in about ten minutes to stand us in the tubs, spin us around and drop back onto the ottomans- so they could go to work on neck, shoulders, and back. i thought this was a long way from my feet, but they soon dug into muscles that i never knew were back there; maybe this was where catholic nuns learned their paralysis grips. it varies from place to place, but guaranteed in each session is a quick knee to your spine, a pull back on your shoulders and a resounding crack that has you seeing stars... and the shadow of a wheelchair in your future. and then you realize that already you feel better- tension and stiffness you thought normal are gone.

now to the main event; helped to stand, spun around and plopped back into your easy chair, she goes to work on your now-tenderized feet. it's impossible to document every move- every masseuse has his or her own ritual- but for the next forty minutes you're in her hands. it always starts with a scrub and an oil rubdown, sometimes wanders up to pressure points in your calves or behind your knees, but always includes popping your toe joints, some vigorous limb-shaking, aggressive manipulation of every bone and tendon, and a thorough pounding of fists all over the place. the signature moment is when they go for the muscle that runs down the inside of your arch from the bottom: your mental image is of a hot wire with thousands of volts coursing through it, and she's digging in her locked knuckle for the entire length. you finally figure out you gotta just relax (or else you might scream), and suddenly it's all ok- just a tingling, warm glow that spreads up to your knees.



i think this must be the point i've reached above, though my face looks like i'm enduring a crucifixion. for more than an hour you sip tea and let them work on you- usually for about 40 kwai (5 bucks u.s.); how in the hell do they do it? walking out, you understand the marble stairs: you fell like fred astaire dancing down them. about once a week is all i can stand at the moment, but i'm looking forward to the full-body treatment sometime. i've also tried the special ear cleaning in another place: feathers and a toolbox full of implements they don't let you see. but what a difference when they're finished! seems they've figured out a lot of tricks in a few thousand years...

our first working saturday before the holiday was designated a thursday: we'd follow that day's class schedule. lots of bustle as students dragged luggage through school, ready to be picked up for the start of their vacations; by afternoon, we foreign teachers were still quiet and visaless.

at about 6pm, my cellphone buzzed with a text message: teachers from our district were to rush to starbucks near ke xue guan subway stop. our passports had just been released! our group leader had them in hand and would distribute them immediately. it was comforting to have it back in hand, but having made no plans, sunday was spent making arrangements and preparing to travel. paul made a reservation for me at the hotel where they were staying in kowloon; i was to meet up with them at midday on monday.

early monday morning, i joined up with next-door james and a few teachers from our neighborhood to make the trek to luohu station, and our first border crossing. from the railway station plaza, directional signs to hong kong lead you into what looks like a scruffy shopping mall; threading your way up escalators and past jewelers and chicken feet sellers, following strange and conflicting signage (must use lift leave country) you arrive at the foreigners' departure hall. just like an airport, you fill out a card and choose a line to have your passport scrutinized. past this gate and up some more escalators, you the rejoin the stream of chinese passport holders and emerge onto a glass bridge spanning several stories above a dull-surfaced, gray-greenish channel; this must be the "deep ditch", the meaning of "shenzhen" in chinese. while urbanization stops abruptly on the shenzhen bank- the hong kong side is what passes for virgin landscape here- what has to be sewage gushes into the channel from openings in both banks. this ain't the fountains of rome; the openings are fitted with elaborate metal grillage on the hong kong side; there must have been some desperate folks trying to make this crossing. the railroad bridge that parallels our crossing 100 feet to the west is similarly fortified with razor wire and gun placements; the border presents an ugly dissonance rare in my chinese experience to date. but i guess few people stop to check it out, rushing freely now in both directions.

on the hong kong shore, foreigners are again peeled off into a special line, this time to be body-temperature scanned, passing by a table of masked medical techs. cheery multilingual literature on bird flu and sars is available, if you so desire. further on is an arrival hall for foreigners: more cards, more lines, more perusal. past this barrier, you emerge into- what else? another shopping mall, this one considerably more upscale than on the shenzhen side, with atm's, moneychangers, and ticket machines for the suburban railway that will deliver you to center city for 35 hong kong dollars (about us$4.50).

the train equipment, the number of stops and the distance covered is comparable to metro north from port chester into new york city, but it runs at subway intervals. the landscape changes quickly from rural villages and farmland at the northern border to dense urbanity; hong kong is much more eager to build on the slopes and hilltops than their neighbors in shenzhen. occasionally, a turquoise bay pops into view; the train ducks underground for the final few stops, and you emerge from the terminal into the bustling streets of tsim sha tsui, near the kowloon dock of the star ferry.

our group of teachers, after 2 full months in china, stood blinking like rubes in the big city- more london than asia. the whole world had changed in 30 minutes. we'd forgotten how many things we'd learned to do without across the border, just because figuring out how to ask for it was more difficult than it was worth. anything was possible here: signs in english, bookstores with english titles, pubs with western food. while china has made huge progress, crossing the hong kong border is a transition nearly as profound as crossing our own border with mexico. we had a quick lunch together, then went our separate ways. the hotel guangdong, where the rices were staying, was only a few blocks away.

i let margaret take all the pictures of our time together in hong kong, and haven't gotten copies of them yet, so i'm lacking in visual aids here. hong kong is as beautiful and exciting and accessible as i remembered it; our biggest excursion together was a day at disneyland, which was a lot more fun than i expected. we had some great meals and big laughs; wednesday evening i put them on the shanghai express, the 24-hour sleeper train to home, and returned to my own side of the border. thursday was laundry and more travel plotting, friday morning i was back at luohu station to travel in the other direction: about an hour north to guangzhou.

i had no idea what to expect of guangzhou; all i knew was that it was the old canton, and was historically the most outward-looking of chinese cities. people in shenzhen spoke disdainfully of it as "too many people", "too old", and "too dirty". to me that was sounding pretty good- i was feeling a need for a dose of history. i'd read about shamian island, where the europeans had made their treaty port settlement, similar to the french concession in shanghai and gu lang yu island in xiamen. i'd found an internet listing for the victory hotel on the island, made a reservation there, and set sail.

the one-stop, high-speed train ride north had less drama than the one to the south; it's pretty much a conurbation all the way up, with only a few rural glimpses. this is also the main line of the mighty chinese rail system; beijing, shanghai and other major city trains also follow this route. huge construction continues most of the way to guangzhou: it looks like an entire new line is being built parallel, with heroic new concrete trestles leaping obstructions. armies of yellow-jacketed workers shuffle along the heights in conical straw hats, carrying lengths of rail slung from bamboo poles across their shoulders; this could have been the construction of our own transcontinental railroad, circa 1869.

the train pulls into guangzhou east station, which looks pretty much like what i'd just left. i found a newsstand with a map in english, located shamian island, and set out in a taxi to find my hotel. it was about a 30-minute ride, first down boulevards scaled for mayday parades, and later through more textured neighborhoods with jazzy buildings from the 20's and 30's. glimpses down side lanes gave promise to lots of "old china" to be found here. i'd barely noticed that we'd crossed any water, but we pulled up a tree-lined street to the victory hotel.





it was a big old neoclassical stone building, with an arcade and columns and arches, facing the waterway that separates the island from the mainland. the interior had obviously been gut-renovated, but the room was great, particularly the bedding, with a big down comforter and huge pillows. and it was exactly half the price of the one not nearly so nice in hong kong.