How Sweet the Bitter Soup Page 8

  He told us he had been on his way to sell vegetables, which was how he earned his living, when he met us. I was touched that he put that off for us. Later, we found a way to give him a little money to compensate for what he’d missed out on.

  One always has to be careful about giving money in China. Sometimes it’s appreciated, but nobody will ever accept it the first time it’s offered. Also, it’s very difficult to give money without upsetting the delicate balance of friendship. To have just handed this man money would have made him lose face and would have sent him the message that he was not our friend. In some ways, that was true, but in China everyone always tries to maintain the premise that we are all friends and equals.

  That afternoon, we visited the local school. One of the old man’s former students was now the assistant principal at another school, and he took us there. I’d always known that the school where I was teaching was truly the exception in China, but now I knew to what degree that was true. Plain and simple, this school was very poor. They had one overhead projector; they had saved the money for it themselves, and they were incredibly proud of that. Old desks, old books, no supplies, broken windows—the whole thing made me feel like I was in a different time period, maybe even a different world. However, despite these conditions and the fact that there were fifty kids to a classroom, the atmosphere was extremely positive and the kids worked so hard. I watched a few classes and talked with the kids and the teachers afterwards. I kept thinking that I wished I could bring my students there so they could see how the rest of China attended school each day. I know there were schools in between—not as poor as this one but not as rich as ours—but it was really good for me to see the other end of the spectrum.

  We ended up staying there, rather than in a hotel. We slept in a couple of rooms behind the school. No running water, no heater, just a very simple existence. Our hosts were the kindest people. They took us in, opened up their school and their homes to us, and even cooked for us on the last night. They prepared some of their hometown specialties for us as well—one of which I had to pray to God He would help me choke down without getting sick right then and there. The woman had gone to so much trouble to make it, using bark and syrup from a tree and some other things that were special to her but definitely not so special to me. Somehow, though, I finished it off with a smile. After dinner, as a special treat on the last night, this family also went and got us hot water so we could soak our feet.

  This was the travel experience I’d been yearning for.

  chapter 17

  For my final trip of the year, I went to Sichuan province for one week. I’d heard about the pandas there and figured I couldn’t say I’d really seen China if I didn’t see its pandas. I flew into Chengdu and went to a biological preservation place where they bred pandas and had an area where visitors could watch the pandas in an environment almost identical to their natural one. It was refreshing, and not like a zoo at all. I was only about ten feet away from the pandas and really got to watch them play and eat—which was very cute, of course.

  I spent the rest of the day walking around the city. After seeing a tea house and some temples, I sat in a bamboo forest and wrote in my journal. I ended the evening by eating some wonderfully spicy Sichuan food (still definitely the spiciest I’ve had to date!).

  The next morning, I took a bus ten hours north to a place called Song Pan. The people of Song Pan represent one of China’s fifty minority groups. They look very different from Han Chinese and are Muslim by religion, which makes the cultural feeling there quite different from other parts of China. The town is very poor, and their major source of income seems to be from tourists. People go there on their way to Jiuzhaigou, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful spots in China. I didn’t go quite that far north.

  The reason I went so Song Pan was because I’d read about the horse treks offered there. They give you a horse and you ride up in the mountains until you get to the top. You camp for a day or two, and then you come back. They provide the tents, the food, and everything else. I couldn’t wait.

  The horse trek proved to be a very interesting few days. The scenery defied description. The whole time, I kept thinking, This can’t be earth, because it was just too beautiful. Blue skies that seemed close enough to touch, green mountains that stretched farther than I could see, hills, and valleys . . . and everything was so quiet. The trails we were on could not have been more than two feet wide, and we just kept going up and up. If my horse takes one tiny step to the left, I kept thinking, we’ll fall right off the cliff! It was horribly terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

  One thing I had not prepared for before this adventure was how freezing it would be in the mountains. The first night I couldn’t find a hotel, but luckily I met two girls from Korea in the same boat, and together we found someone who let us stay with them. We paid them fifteen RMB each (about two dollars) for the night. For this, we got a bed and use of a public toilet—two things, mind you, that were nowhere near each other in proximity. That made late-night bathroom trips a joy.

  The second night I spent in the area was actually in the mountains in a tent, which of course was freezing again. So, after all this freezing, I decided when I got back to Song Pan the next night I would really live it up and stay in the best hotel in town.

  “Best,” of course, is a relative term.

  The hotel I chose was “best” because it was the only one that had bathtubs and, during certain hours, hot water. Hardly any place in China has heat, and this place was no exception. So once I checked into the room, I decided I would take a bath so I could get warmer.

  It took forever for the water to get hot and the tub never did accumulate more than an inch of water—it didn’t have a plug to hold the water in—but I have never been so happy and grateful for hot water in my life. So I just sat in the tub for about an hour and a half letting the hot water pour out of the faucet. With the bathroom door closed, I was actually warm. It was amazing. Honestly, I will never forget it.

  Later that night I was even more freezing, so I decided to take another bath to warm up. According to the schedule they’d given me, I knew they should have hot water for another three hours.

  I was so overjoyed at the thought of another hot bath that I didn’t actually wait for the water to get hot before I jumped in the tub; I just jumped in and turned on the faucet, anticipating that nice, hot water pouring out and warming me up.

  I waited. It was cold. I thought that was strange, but figured it would take a few minutes to warm up. It never got warm. So, I was freezing before, and now I was sitting in a freezing cold bathtub whose faucet is pouring out freezing cold water and I was really freezing. At that point, the thought of moving and even getting out of that tub and facing a whole night like this, knowing it was only going to get colder, made me want to cry.

  I had bought some long underwear and undershirts two days before, and after getting out of the tub I put both pairs on, along with two pairs of pants, my sweater, my scarf (which I wrapped around my head), and two pairs of socks. Then I jumped around my room, trying to get warm, but because I had such a terrible headache due to the cold, altitude, and general exhaustion, with every jump I felt even worse. Great. My options were to freeze or aggravate an already splitting headache.

  I decided to try to sleep. I was a bit paranoid because several thefts had been reported at local hotels while I’d been in town, and foreigners are, of course, the target since they are presumed to be rich (which, comparatively, we are). The town was so poor, I almost wouldn’t have blamed them if they had robbed me— but with a bad headache and freezing body, I wasn’t up for a room break-in on that particular night. So, to feel more secure, I moved my bed against the door and tried to move the chair in front of the window that wouldn’t close, which meant an unsecured room and a freezing draft as well. I knew the chair in front of the window wouldn’t actually keep anybody out, but I thought it would at least make a noise if someone stepped or trip
ped on it while trying to break in, and I’d have time to get out.

  Am I crazy? Am I the only person who does things like this? Do other people, even subconsciously, make escape plans when feeling frightened? I can’t be the only person who does this—and if I am, then I guess this admission can be evidence for the commitment hearings.

  That night as I lay there saying my prayers—eyes closed, hands folded, silently reaching out to God—I asked for three things: please let my head stop pounding, because this pain is terrible; please let my body stop shaking from cold so that I can feel just warm enough to sleep; and please keep me safe. Then it occurred to me that I had just prayed for three things that I had taken for granted every day of my life. True enough, I had had real problems before, but I could not remember a time when my immediate needs were health, safety, and warmth. Who thinks about these things? I thought. They are the givens.

  Well, for me they were; but for so many others, they were not. It was a humbling thought.

  The happy ending to my little trauma was that I got to sleep, my headache went away, and I woke up with my money belt still intact.

  I got up at five thirty the next morning so I could catch a six o’clock bus back to Chengdu. As I woke up, I noticed my stomach hurt a bit and I felt sort of sick, but I didn’t think much of it. It’s sort of par for the course when traveling.

  Well, about fifteen minutes into my ten-hour bus ride, I started to feel really, really sick, like I was going to vomit at any second. So, I kindly (in broken Mandarin, of course) asked the driver to pull over. He refused. “We’re on a schedule,” he said. I begged him to pull over but he wouldn’t. His answer to the problem was to give me a bag. Thanks, I thought. This tiny little bag will really help a lot. . . not.

  I returned to my seat, which was in the very back row. The roads we were using were not paved and were very, very bumpy. For an already upset stomach, this was not good. Because I was in the last row, I was higher up than everyone else and was not level with the window. So in order to lean out the window to vomit, I had to bend way down and get in a really awkward position. While my head was out the window, it banged against the window ledge with every bump in the road. Ouch.

  Now, our bus wasn’t exactly going slowly and it was a cold, windy day. As I began to vomit, I realized that this was going to be a problem. Since the wind was blowing in my face, as I vomited the vomit itself was also blowing right back in my face. However, I was very sick so I absolutely had to get it out.

  The one benefit to the fact that we were on a very windy road going down the mountain was that the driver had to slow down frequently. Also, when he slowed down, my head hurt less because the bang on the window ledge was not quite as sharp. So I started trying to time my vomiting with the slowing down of the bus and the bumps in the road. After five hours or so, I had this down to a science.

  Five hours after our departure from Song Pan, we stopped for a bathroom break. The driver pointed to the bathroom as if he were helping.

  Yeah, thanks, I thought, internally rolling my eyes. I really didn’t have a need for the bathroom at that point. A nice older lady gave me some medicine to settle my stomach during the break, however, and I was able to sleep for the next few hours. I still don’t know what was wrong with me that day, but I had never felt that sick in my life.

  When I finally got back to Chengdu, I did go to a very nice hotel, and the first thing I did was take a hot bath—simply because I could!

  chapter 18

  I decided to stay in China for another year. It was the easiest and most natural decision I’d made in a long time. When the option presented itself, I could not even think of leaving. Funny, because I wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d had to commit to two years at the outset. I was only planning to go away for a year, and was not sure I’d even last that long. The job really had surpassed my expectations, and I’d even been offered a promotion—director of the English Language Center—for the next school year. Although I missed my family, I knew I could help them more from here and I didn’t see a good reason to leave.

  Beyond that, though, there was also this sense that I wasn’t finished there, that there was something else I was supposed to do, or find, or become. I still hadn’t found out why I’d really come to China. Sometimes I felt okay that I didn’t know; other times, I felt anxious about it. I knew it was more than the job. Over the past year, I’d had so many growing experiences—spiritually, personally, and socially. These things had meant a lot, but I had a strong feeling that these were not the core reasons I was here. I couldn’t leave yet. Maybe next year, I thought, I’ll discover what it was that really brought me eight thousand miles from home. And even if I didn’t find it, something told me things would still be good things in the process.

  Coming to China had turned out to be one of the best decisions I’d ever made. I now looked back on the process of making that decision as nothing short of a miracle. So many things had to fall into place for this experience to happen, and I was grateful they had. I’d been there less than a year and already I felt that so many changes had taken place in me. I was more comfortable with myself than I’d ever been, and I’d begun to really love the learning process, whether it was learning about China or about myself. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d felt this much peace and had been this happy just to be alive. From where I was sitting right now, life was good.

  chapter 19

  Going home was hard. I knew that once I was there and around my family, I’d remember what I was missing, and it would hurt to know I’d be leaving them again in a matter of weeks.

  This summer’s visit would be my second trip home; I’d taken the first at Christmastime. During that visit, I remembered thinking how comforting it was to be with my family again, to see the snow, and to be in a place where I didn’t have to stutter and whip out my dictionary every time I wanted to order food, go to the bathroom, or take a cab. Even after having lived in China for only a few months, it was shocking to be back in the States. It was a positive shock, I guess, as I marveled at the cleanliness and the endless choices available—but it was definitely a shock.

  This visit would be different, though, I was sure. My plane would be touching down in Chicago in less than an hour, and suddenly I was nervous. My nightmare had come true. The thing I’d always been afraid of had happened. Why was I not falling apart?

  I’d always thought I would be fine living in China, knowing Dad was at home and still coping. It seemed it would be the end of the world if he got so bad that he had to live in a nursing home. Well, when I landed in Chicago, a nursing home was the first place I’d be going to—Meadowbrook Manor.

  Mom had talked to me about it several months earlier, after she and Chrissy had discussed it. They really hadn’t found another solution. Mom still had to work full time at this point, and it was impossible for her to leave Dad home alone. I knew it was an extremely hard decision for her, but I stood by her choice. She really had no other. She said it wasn’t too far from home, the care was pretty good, and Dad’s medical card covered the expenses. Logically, it all made sense—but now, as I was about to go visit my dad in a nursing home, I felt sick.

  My first impression was that it was far better than the Veterans Hospital, and I was thankful for that. I was also grateful that it was in a nice neighborhood. It struck me as odd, suddenly, that I would notice such a thing and that it would matter so much. Most people, at least the people I associated with in China now, wouldn’t understand why that was important to me. But I remembered almost holding my breath for the last few miles, just praying we would make it through the dangerous neighborhoods, when I’d visited Dad at the Veterans Hospital in the past. I suppose it’s up to a sociologist to explain why, but here in the States we associate poor, inner-city neighborhoods with crime. In China, in contrast, there is absolutely no link between poverty and crime. I don’t worry for my safety when visiting the poorest areas in China—it’s not an issue.

  As m
y mind was exploring the sociological reasons behind this difference, I heard Chrissy’s voice ask me, “Are you ready? His room is just down this hall.”

  Am I ready? That was a good question, and maybe the answer was no, but not seeing my dad was not an option.

  I shrugged. “I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”

  In the car on the way there, Chrissy and Mom had filled me in on the place and on Dad’s condition. They told me not to be surprised if he didn’t recognize me—and I told myself I wouldn’t be, but I secretly hoped he would.

  The first thing I saw was a little TV, which Dad clearly had set on the highest possible volume. With Jerry Springer blaring in the background, I caught my first glimpse of my father. He was sitting up in his bed, drinking Coke through a straw and not even looking at that obnoxious TV.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said, giving him a hug and kissing his head.

  He was surprised to see me. I couldn’t tell if it registered right away who I was, but he knew he hadn’t seen me in a while and that I had come a long distance to see him. He just stared at me.

  Please, Daddy, I thought. Some recognition.

  He reached for my hand and gave a little laugh.

  That’s good enough for me. I didn’t need him to say my name, which surprised me. Just having him hold my hand and give some different expressions made me happy.

  “What are you watching?” I asked.

  “It’s trash,” he said. “You should turn it off.”

  No problem.

  “But Dad, you always have that show on at this time when we come,” Chrissy said in a teasing voice. She whispered to me that Dad seems to have gotten interested in talk shows since coming there and that sometimes in the day room, she saw him and the other patients all blankly staring at the likes of Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones.