How Sweet the Bitter Soup Read online

  “Well, Lori,” she said with a certain air of authority, “you might not be able to get to a store right away. You don’t know what kind of conditions you might find when you get there.”

  I made a mental note to thank her, and then spent the next few minutes trying to get the water heater to work. Kassie had briefly gone over it the previous night but that all seemed like a long time ago, and I now realized I must not have been listening very carefully to her. She had said something about turning a certain button if I wanted hot water, but it didn’t seem to be working. The water was either boiling hot or freezing cold.

  I made another mental note to ask Kassie to re-explain the inner workings of the water heater when I saw her. My first shower wasn’t quite as relaxing as I’d hoped it would be, but at least I felt clean.

  Kassie had left me some crackers and Pepsi the night before, and I made that my breakfast. As I crunched my last cracker, I decided to unpack my suitcases and begin to put some things away. I knew I needed to go shopping for household things, not to mention food, but Cindy had said something about all the new teachers going shopping as a group. I would need to find out when, because I was anxious to get my new home in order.

  I had a calling card I had bought in Chicago. I put my unpacking on hold and decided to use it now to try to call home. I was surprised when the call went through without a problem. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to just pick up this little red phone in my Chinese apartment and call Chicago.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “Hi!! Oh, thank goodness, you’re there.

  You’re there?” “Yeah, I actually got in last night but I didn’t think to call then. What time is it there?”

  “Um, let’s see, about seven.”

  “Oh, seven at night, huh? It’s six in the morning here. We’ll have to remember that we’re about thirteen hours apart.”

  “So, how is it there? How was the flight?”

  We went on to talk for several more minutes about my flight and what I had observed of my surroundings so far. She said that Dad was resting but was doing okay. I promised to email her and everyone else as soon as I got settled. We said our love yous and good-byes and hung up.

  I felt a little twinge in my heart after saying good-bye. I love my mom, I thought, and I hope she knows that. She had always been phenomenally supportive of whatever I wanted to do. I knew how lucky I was.

  As I began to slowly unpack a bit, my mind drifted back to my mom again. She had been on my mind more as I’d prepared to go to China, and for some reason I kept thinking back to our little house in Wisconsin where we’d lived before Chicago became our home base. It was way out in the countryside; we called it “the house on 80th.” I was in fifth grade when we moved there and had just gotten my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans—a life-changing experience for me as a ten-year-old.

  I remember a particular day, wearing those jeans. Even though it was Saturday, and I wasn’t leaving the house, I was wearing them, feeling like the coolest little chick on the planet. I walked by my mom’s room and noticed her sitting on the bed holding a pair of her underpants.

  What was she doing? She was clearly doing something with her hands, but what exactly? And why was she holding her underwear? Her hands moved quickly and with purpose, as if she’d done whatever it was she was doing a thousand times before. As I crept closer, for some reason not wanting her to see me, I noticed that she was tying small knots to close some of the holes in her underpants.

  I took the last shirt out of my suitcase and set it on the shelf. I hadn’t realized how selfish I had been back then. Then again, shouldn’t she have just said no to me? No, Lori, you cannot have fifty-dollar jeans when I can’t even afford underwear without holes in them! But she hadn’t said no. She’d never said no to me. She had always believed I could do anything. Somehow, she must have believed that setting boundaries or saying no would have limited me in some way. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, though, and it’s obvious now that a clear sense of limits would have helped me tremendously.

  I looked at my now-empty suitcase and realized it was time to get ready to go. I wanted to go to the school early and look around, sort of get my bearings before the orientation began.

  I had read over the school’s mission statement several times since accepting this job, and now I was finally going to see the school for myself. The school claimed to be unlike any other school in China, and its bold mission was to prepare its students to become elite international leaders. From what Kassie had told me through emails over the summer, few other Chinese schools employed foreign English teachers, and that fact alone did indeed make our school unique. It also made the school’s tuition very high—about sixty thousand yuan per year. For the average Chinese citizen, this school was clearly out of reach; most people earned only a fraction of that amount. The families who sent their children here were wealthy, and for most of them, the tuition was not a big sacrifice. There were some families, though, that had sacrificed a great deal to be able to send at least one of their children, usually a son, to this school. They did so in hopes that their children would learn to speak English with ease, and would in turn have bright, international futures.

  Kassie further explained that the students felt a great deal of pressure to do well in school, and this pressure was shared by their teachers. In fact, Chinese teachers at the school were often compensated or punished financially based upon the success or failure of their students. From what Kassie had told me, the same was not true for the foreign teachers, but I should still expect to feel the pressure of helping the kids to do well.

  I hoped I was up to the challenge.

  As I walked to the school that morning, I noticed that the neighborhood looked different in the morning light—still beautiful, but not as surreal as it had when we’d driven through the gates the previous day. There was a bus I could take to the school, but I’d decided I would prefer to walk. It felt good to move, even though I knew it would take me twenty minutes.

  Still, despite enjoying the exercise, after twenty minutes of walking, I was sweating profusely and suddenly wishing I had worn cooler clothes. Kassie had warned me about the severe humidity, but this was much hotter and stickier than I’d imagined. I looked forward to getting used to it.

  chapter 5

  I could see the school from several blocks away, and I suddenly realized it was more like a campus than a building. The kindergarten was behind the elementary school and was its own little campus, and there were student dormitories beyond that. Seeing those, I remembered Kassie telling me that many students lived here during the week while their parents worked in Hong Kong or other places.

  The yard surrounding the school was gorgeously landscaped with flowers and even palm trees. There were several glass-enclosed displays advertising the school and the caliber of the students, all colorfully decorated with writing in both Chinese and English. The Chinese characters fascinated me; I hoped to learn more about them someday.

  As I walked around, I began seeing adults (I assumed they were the Chinese teachers) carrying papers and supplies through the halls. I imagined they were setting up their classrooms and preparing for orientation. All of them wore neatly pressed uniforms—a requirement for the Chinese staff, I was told, but not for the foreign teachers. Some of the teachers nodded as they walked past me, some just stared, and a few of the women smiled.

  The orientation meeting was held in a large conference room on the first floor of the secondary school building. I saw Kassie as soon as I walked in. Those teachers who already knew one another chatted in small groups as their colleagues entered the room. The room was full, and there were about thirty of us new English teachers sitting around the table and on the surrounding couches. I recognized Mr. Zhong, the school director who had interviewed me at the conference. I shook his hand and then went to find a seat.

  As I walked over to the table, I said hello to a young guy who looked like he was happy to be there, but not sure
what to do with himself. Just like me.

  “Hi, I’m Lori,” I said. “I think I saw you leaving the same apartment building today. Are you in Building Three?”

  “I am!” He extended his hand, which I shook. “I’m Ryan.” He smiled.

  He was young—only twenty-four—and had just graduated from college in Arizona. He’d heard of the job opportunity through Cindy. Through our conversation, we figured out that he was my upstairs neighbor. I felt like we could be friends. He was funny and relaxed, as far as first impressions went.

  The woman on my right was Marie, an American woman who’d been teaching in Thailand. She seemed nervous, even though she wasn’t new, so I deduced that this was just her personality. She was nice enough. I was interested to hear more about Thailand.

  Everything that was happening was thrilling to me for some reason. I shifted in my seat, full of anticipation, as Mr. Zhong stood up and the room became quiet.

  Mr. Zhong began by welcoming us and telling us how pleased he was to see us. He gave us a bit of background about himself, explaining that he had been born in China but had gotten his graduate education in the US and had lived in Canada for many years prior to coming to the school. He kept referring to us as “Western” teachers, and it seemed to fit. I had never thought of myself as a Westerner before, but it made sense.

  As I looked around at the faces of the other teachers, I wondered what had brought them to China. Were some of them as surprised by their decision to come here as I had been?

  Mr. Zhong invited us to introduce ourselves, and I learned from the different teachers that some had been in China for several years while others, like me, were here for the first time. They each talked about their families and hobbies as well, so we could get a nice sense of who people really were. The younger ones actually shared their age. I wondered if I should. I thought it was kind of weird that people were sharing that, and guessed that it one of those things where since one person had done it, they were all doing it. Anyway, I figured I would share as much as everyone else had.

  Most of my new colleagues had some experience as teachers, but few had advanced degrees in the field of foreign language teaching. That helped increase my confidence just in time for me to stand and introduce myself.

  Here goes. I stood up, smiled, and said, “Hi, everyone. I’m Lori Frank, here on my own. I’m twenty-eight and I’m from Chicago. My parents and two sisters are still there. I earned my master’s degree in applied linguistics and my BA in anthropology. I’m really excited to be here, although I’m not sure it’s hit me yet that I’m actually in China!”

  Everyone laughed at this as I took my seat again. I scarcely heard the next few people introduce themselves, I was so deeply absorbed in my thoughts. What had happened to me just now? I suddenly felt a great sense of freedom, even fun. Freedom because I was now whomever I wanted to be. I wasn’t defined by being from a poor family. I wasn’t defined by living in a rundown apartment. I wasn’t defined by the responsibility of taking care of my family’s finances or handling my dad’s health needs. I was no longer thinking about medications, trips to the Veterans Hospital, or my own lack of a life. In this moment, the most fun thing in the world was simply to sit among these people and say that I was Lori from Chicago.

  chapter 6

  After lunch we were directed to meet with our individual departments. The group of teachers I would be working with was the smallest: there were seven of us, plus three teaching assistants. It looked like an interesting mix of people. As I listened to Kassie and the other teachers describe their experiences, I knew I was going to like working with them. They seemed positive and friendly, and I liked the fact that we were a small group. It felt like there would be a chance of us becoming friends.

  I was pretty sure I would also like teaching second grade. It seemed like that perfect age where kids still love school yet are old enough to do more than the basics. I thought it would be fun. I’d spent the previous few years teaching college students and adults, and I was looking forward to teaching the little ones.

  It was a long day—the orientation, a tour of the school, meetings within our departments, and then a visit to the accounting office downstairs, where we were each given our little envelope of cash. It was a very strange feeling to be handed a small brown bag of Chinese currency. In China, the largest bill is the hundred yuan note, and a month’s pay for me was over two thousand dollars. That meant that when I picked up this money, there would be sixteen thousand yuan, all in hundreds—a huge stack of cash. I learned that this would be how we were paid every month. I was kind of concerned about keeping all that money around my apartment, but all the returning teachers said they’d never had a problem and that getting paid in this way wouldn’t seem so strange after a while. When I asked where they kept it, a couple women told me they just stuck it in their underwear drawer.

  Okay, I thought to myself. Whatever. I would have to figure out how to arrange having some of my pay taken out and wired to my bank back in Chicago; part of the reason for taking the job, after all, was to help my family financially. The more than two thousand dollars a month I was now earning was a nice chunk of change considering what we were used to. I felt proud and deeply thankful that I would be changing their lives for the better, if even a little bit.

  One of the strange things that had come up at orientation was the idea of having a maid. Apparently, all the foreign teachers employed household help, or ayis. I had gotten an email from the school secretary over the summer asking me if I was interested and I had responded “no thank you.” It seemed absurd. Who was I to have a maid? My own mother had earned her living as a member of “the help” in the past, and I could not imagine myself in a position to hire a maid.

  When I mentioned this to Sally, a returning teacher, she had a different take on it.

  “Well, it’s actually a really good deal for them,” she said. “Fifty dollars a month to us is a living to them, and they really do a good job.”

  Another teacher chimed in with, “Yeah, and they do everything for you—the shopping, cleaning, running errands, even cooking. After long days at school, you’re going to wish you had an ayi.”

  The more I listened to their more experienced opinions, the more sense it made. Maybe I would consider it after all.

  That night after returning home, I sat in the middle of my living room floor once again and thought about the events of the day. I thought of my family. I thought of the past. My life had taken so many turns and had followed a route so different from most people—at least, that was how I felt. It was still hard to believe that I was in a new country and had been given such a special opportunity. I wasn’t sure what this chance was for or what I would do with it, but I knew deep inside that there was a reason I was here.

  chapter 7

  As I prepared my classroom, I felt like a kid playing school.

  I knew I was spending far too much time making a sign that said “Miss Frank” for my door, but I couldn’t help myself. Every few minutes I would look around my classroom with pride. Things were coming together. I had hung colorful paper on the walls and created thematic bulletin boards on each one. There was also room to hang the students’ photos and drawings, as well as a place to display their work. I had distinguished the “reading corner” with a large piece of carpet so the children would be more comfortable during story time. I was having so much fun, and my lack of confidence about being able to decorate a classroom had disappeared.

  After hanging my name on my classroom door, sharpening pencils and making name tags for each desk were my next tasks. I found little baskets and put crayons in one, erasers in another, and put them on the bottom shelf. I made a folder for each student and put them in piles on another shelf—one section for the morning group, another for the afternoon. Perusing my books, paper, and flashcards, I then zeroed in on the stickers Mom had bought for me in Chicago. She’d thought it might be fun to give those to the students when they had done particularly good
work—such a sweet idea. I was really grateful she had thought of it. I thought it was ironic, though, that my mom spent her hard-earned money on things that these kids could easily afford to buy themselves. At least it was something unique; some of the holiday stickers she’d purchased couldn’t be found in China.

  It seemed that everything was in order. Now all I needed were my students.

  I arrived at school an hour early on Monday morning and noticed that Kassie was already in her office. She reminded me that the welcome assembly would be held at eight and the students would come up to the classroom immediately afterwards. I paced the floors of my classroom, arranging and rearranging what had already been done. Before I knew it, it was eight thirty, and I heard children’s voices and lots of noise coming from the stairwell.

  Kassie had encouraged us to be at our classroom doors to greet the children. The TAs were pointing them in the right direction, helping them find their classrooms.

  Three kids, a tall girl and two boys, ran past me into the classroom—each one saying, “Good morning, teacher,” as they did so. Clearly, they were super pumped to begin English class. They skipped around the room talking in what I could only guess was Cantonese.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Can you find your name tag and sit down?”

  They looked at me, then each other, and then laughed.

  Okay, they don’t understand anything I just said. Let’s try this again. “What is your name?” I asked the girl.

  Again, she just laughed and looked at the other kids as if to say, “What is this lady saying?”

  By this time five more students had come in and that was everyone. I had to take control from the beginning, I knew that, but suddenly it was harder than I thought. These eight-year-olds were running around the room now, shouting and laughing, and I was just standing there, helpless. I kept remembering everything those classroom management books had said about the first day being the most important, about it laying the foundation for the whole school year. Okay, Lori, you can do this, I told myself.