Dan in La Crosse

The Indomitable Okinawan

We arrived in Yueyang to darkness and driving rain. Raindrops shot across the sky horizontally, with enough velocity almost to bruise skin, with the temperature hardly warm enough to keep them rain. Within minutes, Manabu, my diminutive friend and fellow teacher from Okinawa, and I were drenched to our adrenal cortexes. It felt like that one special high school football game every fall when the skies open up, the players roll around in the slop and the fans shiver. And now it visited me in Yueyang (yu-AY-yang), a town of five million people where China’s longest river, the Yangtze, meets China’s second largest lake, Dongting Hu.

I had my water-proof, knee-length, blueberry-colored parka on, hood up. I stood on the road and attempted to hail a taxi, as headlights raced past, lighting up the rainy night. Manabu stood beside me, nothing covering his head of buzzed black hair, a flimsy navy blue windbreaker covering his torso, and gray jeans on his legs. He already had a cold before we left, and I could hear, over the constant car honks and cell phone rings, Manabu’s furious coughs and chattering teeth. He tugged on my arm at one point, as cabs shot by without a pause, and said, “Daniel, we are in paradise!” He gave me a high five. Indeed, paradise found. It took over ten minutes to hail a cab, which then dropped us at our hotel.

The hotel has no heat. Located nearly in the center of China, Yueyang stands as the dividing line between heated and non-heated buildings. By government decree, buildings north of Yueyang may have indoor heating; buildings south of it, no heat, apparently to save coal. The hotel did thankfully have a hot shower, three warm blankets per bed, a bottomless supply of hot tea and a restaurant that serves heaping bowls of steamed noodles. Children, their parents and their grandparents were there, all warm-hearted, all wrapped in sweaters, all attempting to converse with us, giggling the whole time. It was that moment in travel when a singular force - rainy misery - conspires to unite all people as brothers and sisters. Or, in China, as gege (GUH-guh) and jiejie (JEAH-juuh).

People have no idea how to categorize Manabu and me. It’s enough drama to have in their midst a white man, seemingly the height of Yao Ming. Then, throw a dark man, seemingly the height of their grandmother, beside the ginormous white man, and, huh?

Immediately, they start firing questions at Manabu. And, time after time, Manabu politely explains: “So sorry, I don’t speak Chinese. I am Japanese.” And then, I step in. “Women shi gege (WUH-muhn shuh GUH-guh),” I say, pointing to Manabu. In Chinese, it means, roughly, “We’re brothers.”

And then Manabu tells them, in his own dialect of JapChinglish, that we are actually twins. We were separated at birth in Okinawa -- Manabu stayed in Okinawa, I was shipped to Minnesota. And I ate nothing but hamburgers my whole life, hence my height. Manabu ate nothing but sushi, he tells them, hence his height. Finally, we have stumbled back into each other in China. “And,” Manabu adds, “I will feed my children nothing but hamburgers!”

Manabu awoke on Saturday morning hacking up his lungs. Only his head of black, spiked hair, resembling an Alaskan Kodiak, showed, his face and body mummified in three layers of white down blankets. Immediately, he sat up in his bed and proclaimed, smiling broadly, “Daniel, today is Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday, the next day is Monday. I will see Sky on Monday - just three days. I am happy man!”

To Manabu, Sky is Dulcinea. She’s his private English and Chinese teacher, 24 years old, radiantly beautiful and sweet like a persimmon. The lungs he was hacking up mattered nothing to him. Nor did the freezing temperatures. Nor the rain beating against our window. Nor the lack of heat. Nor the still-drenched clothes he was about to step into. He was three days from Sky, three days from another chance to “catch her heart.”

After we each took a long, hot shower and packed up to head outside, Manabu stopped me, tugging on my arm. “Daniel, I want to tell you just one thing,” he said, the usual look of total sincerity in his eyes, his voice dead serious, as always. “Today is travel day. I don’t need the sleep. I don’t need the rest. We must do the travel all day.” Perfect.

Frigid rain fell in torrents. We were virtually the only people on the streets, except for the vendors cooking up steamed breakfast on their oil drum stoves, sheltered by rainbow-colored umbrellas. We feasted on some noodles, pancakes and edible bags of fried rice, bought a disposable camera, and scampered around like chickens to stay warm. Manabu continued to hack furiously, and my nose dripped. We walked down to the docks, beside Dongting Lake.

Barges floated by, a few fishing boats idled in the distance, but the docks were completely empty. Rain continued to fall, the sky was deadly gray, whitecaps crashed onto shore. We played Charades with the one guy we saw, asking about the ferry. No ferry service today, he gestured. He crossed his arms, holding them against his chest, shivering. “Too cold.”

We walked up the steps to the second floor of the dockhouse. And a quick left turn brought us into a tiny room packed with about twelve people, three oil-drum heaters and a card table. The men were smoking, playing mah-jong -- a kind of Chinese gin rummy -- and screaming at each other, customary when playing cards. The women were wrapped in sweaters, sitting close together, warming their hands over the flaming oil drums.

It’s hard to say if they were more shocked at the sight of us, drenched to our adrenal medullas, or if we were more shocked at the sight of them. In any case, everyone immediately burst out laughing, a moment so spontaneous and unexpected that it can only bring joy. They spoke Chinese at Manabu, he told them, so sorry, I’m Japanese, and the Charades began.

We want to take a boat to a famous island called Junshan Dao (june-SHUN dow), we gestured. And they recognized Junshan Dao, and recognized that we wanted to take a boat there, and nodded as if to say, yep, let’s roll. Manabu attempted to ask how much in Chinese, and they responded. Manabu tugged my arm. “Daniel, ohmygod, just two yuan!” So, 24 cents for the two of us. No need to bargain. We nodded yes, gestured toward the docks.

Two of the younger men put their mah-jong on hold, leaped out of their chairs and led us downstairs. Manabu handed them our two yuan. They laughed hysterically. After more gestures, it turned out there was a misunderstanding: actually, they wanted two hundred yuan. If they had asked for my little toe, I would gladly have hacked it off and forked it over. We were so intoxicated by the prospect of riding the waves that any price was alright. We forked over the 200 yuan -- about 25 dollars -- and were on the water within minutes.

The boat was an old fishing vessel, about 30 feet long. We sat in the captain’s cabin, along with the two men, who are about our age. They smoked enough to ruin our lungs as well as their own, wore nice dress coats and pants and loafers, and told us fishermen jokes in Chinese. Of course we didn’t understand, but we laughed anyway. They were jolly fishermen. Over and over, they offered us a cigarette. We declined, recognizing the redundancy of inhaling more smoke in a room already full of it.

We cruised along at a steady speed, the boat gently tossing us up and down, side to side as it hit wave after wave after wave. A huge amount of mud and sludge make the water a sea of cappucino. Everywhere, bamboo rods stick fifteen feet out of the water, twenty feet apart, with nets suspended below, into the water, to snag some wu, or fish. We passed dozens of long, slender, wooden houseboats, moored together in harbor, the women cooking noodles and the men playing mah-jong on the back deck. As we passed, the idle fishermen and their wives waved and screamed greetings in Chinese.

About halfway through the ride, as water began to leak into the captain’s cabin, Manabu tugged on my arm. “Daniel, do you know the Bangles?” he asked. I told him I had heard them a few times, but wasn’t a big fan. He told me he worshipped the Bangles when he was a teen-ager. “But, Daniel, do you know the song Manic Monday?” Yes, I know it. “Daniel, the Bangles are liars! Monday is a beautiful day. I get to see Sky!”

This made me remember a scene in the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” in which the two main characters take a wrong turn. They’re supposed to be in the Rocky Mountains; instead, they’re in a Nebraska cornfield, and one of them says, “That John Denver is full of shit!” And so I taught Manabu to say, “The Bangles are full of shit.”

We landed the boat in a mud bog on Junshan Dao. After maneuvering the vessel between idle houseboats and fish farms, one of our captains killed the engine, while the other jumped out of the cabin, scurried on the deck toward the front of the boat, jumped onto land and staked a Chinese flag into the mud. Manabu tossed him a rope, he tied up and we jumped to shore.

Shore was mud and rocks for as far as I could see. No docks. No buildings. No people. No hills. Our captains gestured something about how it costs money to land the boat where all the other boats land, so we landed on the other side of the island and were going to hoof it. And so the journey began, as rain dumped out of a gray sky and we sank to our ankles in a chocolate bog.

I found myself in the unusual position of being the best prepared of the four of us. As our captains slipped around in their loafers, and Manabu shivered in his flimsy blue windbreaker, I relatively glided over the bog in my hiking shoes and stayed relatively dry under my hooded water-proof parka.

After about ten minutes’ walk, our world instantly turned emerald green. I’m not sure if it was just grass or some crop such as tea, but, suddenly, flat fields of verdant green surrounded us, stretching endlessly. Brilliant. I made good time, opening a large lead on the other three, connected with them only by the distant echo of Manabu’s hacking coughs.

At one point, we came onto a forty-foot wide branch of the lake. Over it stretched a homemade, jerry-rigged footbridge. Six bamboo poles were its stanchions, supporting about five steel ladders, welded together at their ends and stretching horizontally from land to land, over the water. At the peak of its arc, it was probably thirty feet high. I paused at the entrance. Our captains didn’t hesitate, crossing it in their loafers, and we followed. It was wobbly, and the ladder steps were slippery, but we made it across no sweat and what a rush it was.

We trudged onward, our shoes sloshing in the mud, our bodies long ago numbed to the frigid raindrops. Again, I opened a large lead, and Manabu’s coughs echoed in the air, and little plumes of smoke rose from each of our captain’s heads, ubiquitous cigarette hanging from their mouths, step after step. It had all the gruesome beauty of Irish cross-country -- isolation, gray sky and rain from above, green landscape all around and mud bog below -- without the leg-wrecking hills or the cardiovascular agony. We were together but we were alone, each man keeping a distance from the others, pacing the vast nothingness and reveling in the empty space, so rare in this country. So rare, too, not to hear car horns blaring or cell phones tooting or children shouting “hello” at the top of their voices. All was still, the raindrops pitter-pattered against my hood, my shoes sloshed step after step. Life had a lovely rhythm.

It occurred to me: we could be their captives. And the thought thrilled me. I had a burning desire to get on my toes and do some running. This stroll, while peaceful, was getting tedious. What better way to cap off the journey than to become most dangerous game, hunted on a deserted island on a gray day, with sheets of rain falling and rivers of mud to slog through. And, with them in their loafers, I felt quite certain I could leave them behind no sweat.

Alas, the two fishermen were as excited about the trip as we were, each telling us more jokes in Chinese, offering us more cigarettes, being jovial. Nothing sinister or devious about them, almost unfortunately. And, finally, a Buddhist temple appeared in the distance.

The temple looked beautiful. An enormous copper Buddha statue stood in front of it, with huge sticks of incense burning beside it. From the Buddha, a flight of steps led to the temple itself, with sloped red tile roof and two pillars supporting it. We entered.

Soothing music played and incense burned. However, any threat of spirituality quickly died when the sales clerk approached us. She was dressed in traditional Buddhist prayer clothes and, unfortunately, spoke English. Manabu and I would look at one of the thousands of knick-knacks on display -- jade Buddhas, incense sticks, scented candles, tea leaves -- and she'd start packaging it for purchase and say, "How many of those can I get for you?"

Even though the temple had a roof, giving us shelter from the rain, I longed to be back on the trail with our captains. The long walk represented all that's great about China -- spontaneous meeting, shared adventure, camaraderie with no common language. The temple brought us right into all that's annoying about China -- let's exploit the rich foreigners, with a smile, under the guise of the "sacred." Manabu bought some tea for Sky, and we headed out.

After walking a ways with the captains, same way as we came, they gestured to us: one of them would walk to the boat and drive it home; we were to go with the other captain, to the bus, and take it home. Apparently, they thought we preferred to be in a bus, instead of in the driving rain. Manabu's coughs were growing more furious, though, so we agreed it may be a sound plan.

The bus sat idle for fifteen minutes. On it sat four rough-looking men, the bus driver, Manabu, our captain and I. At one point, Manabu tugged my arm and said, "Daniel, ohmygod, look there." He pointed at a sign, in the front of the bus. It said, in Chinese characters, in Pinyin, and in English, "No Smoking." And yet, sitting in front of us were six men, including the driver, smoking a cigarette. The sign was hardly visible through the thick cloud of smoke. They had a good laugh when we pointed at the sign.

The bus meandered throughout the island, picking up a lot more rough-looking characters along the way until it was packed, people standing up and hardly room, or air, to breathe. Periodically, there would come the sound of a puppy yelping or a chicken squawking. A lot of the men were carrying bags, apparently home to live creatures.

It was supper time when we finally got back to the hotel. For Manabu, this presented a problem: his one pair of shoes, white Adidas, was drenched and covered in mud; his one pair of pants, the gray jeans, weighed about 30 pounds, soaked with two days' rain; his blue windbreaker, and long-sleeve shirt and turtleneck below it, also were sodden with rain. I asked him what he was going to wear, that he might be kind of cold. "It's okay," he replied. "No problem."

And he went into the bathroom and emerged from it wearing all he had left: athletic shorts, a light blue short-sleeve "U.S. Navy Sea Bees" T-shirt, and the flip-flop slippers provided by the hotel. "Daniel, I think the restaurant will be heated. No problem." Indeed, no problem.

And it wasn't a huge problem, all things considered. Manabu sat in the restaurant, close to the heater, arms crossed against his chest and a few goosebumps, no more than usual, covering his bare arms. Then, we heard a sudden crash, and looked at the entrance -- one-half of the sliding glass door was now obliterated, a pile of glass crumbs.

Manabu, now completely exposed to the subfreezing air, sitting with his knees against his chest and his arms tightly around his knees, dressed in his t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, his arms a goosebump plantation, his teeth chattering to three-quarter time, his skin whiter than mine, insisted everything was okay.

I suggested we move to a different room, that had a door and was further away from the now-missing restaurant door. "Daniel, I want to tell you just one thing," Manabu said, staring straight at me with his enormous brown eyes. "I am okay. No problem." And so we remained at the same table and ate the food as it came -- fried eggplant, Japanese tofu, steaming noodle soup -- and I watched as the food would shake on the end of Manabu's chopsticks, as his shivering fingers moved it toward his chattering teeth. As he said, it's okay. No problem.

I was awakened at 7:30 the next morning by a bright flash of light. I looked up and there was Manabu, standing about three feet from me, snapping a photo of me with his disposable camera. "Daniel, CHURCH!" he screamed, "church" ryhming with "starch." I had mentioned the possibility of going to 8 a.m. Mass on Sunday but was well prepared to sleep through it. I didn't for a second think Manabu would want anything to do with a church on a Sunday. What I didn't realize then, and found out later, was that our trip to Mass would be Manabu's first ever trip inside a church, in his 27 years. It was the field trip he'd always wanted to take.

Mass was Dostoyevsky takes Yueyang. The youngest of the 100 or so congregants was in her early 50s. It was an assembly of gray hair and wrinkled skin and weary eyes, and it was cold enough to see each breath emerging out of each congregent and confirm they were still with us. All wore old, tattered knit coats, knit hats, mittens and scarves.

The service was entirely sung, with no instrumental accompaniment and no priest, and people from the congregation took turns leading songs. The songs were more chanted than sung, primarily in minor tones, and each note lingered long and hard in the church's vaulted rafters. Of course, I was completely illiterate, but I heard struggle and oppression and desperation in the minor tones looming in the church's rafters. In China, religion is not a way to show vanity or a matter of prestige; all who come do so out of profound faith, a faith that's been battered and bruised and tested to its core, and it's apparent in every breath I saw, every minor tone I heard, every Rosary clutched by old, wrinkled hands.

Soon enough, we were walking to the train station, through the still driving rain, to head back to Zhuzhou. And the train ride included all the usual characters -- the young and eager, the middle-aged and desperate -- approaching us, saying, "can we be best friends," asking for our phone numbers, snapping photos with us.

We got back to campus and, suddenly, it was winter. We had left on Friday afternoon after six weeks of almost uninterrupted gorgeous weather -- nearly constant sunshine, hardly a drop of rain, suitable for shorts and a t-shirt. We returned on Sunday night to a campus still wet from the weekend's rain, our students wrapped in scarves and knitted hats, the outdoor basketball courts virtually empty for the first time since I've been here. We needed help getting our film developed from our disposable cameras, so we caught the first two students who passed, Risky and Water.

At 5:25 on Monday morning, I heard Manabu walking up the flight of stairs to my apartment, hacking up his lungs. He rang the doorbell, said it was Manabu Kawahira. I opened the door. Manabu, smiling broadly, proclaimed, "Daniel, the Bangles are full of shit!"

My students in Minnesota, please

What follows is a letter I wrote to Larry Coleman, chair of the St. Paul-Changsha Sister Cities Committee. Basically, I want to bring some of my students to St. Paul this summer for intensive English study. We need money. Ideas or donations welcome. Thank you.

Hello Larry,
My name is Dan Simmons, I'm from St. Paul and I now teach at a university in Changsha, China. You can imagine my excitement when I found out, recently, that St. Paul and Changsha are sister cities! Some beneficent force put me here, as I applied to any city in China and was randomly placed in Changsha, completely unaware that my hometown is so closely connected to my Chinese "hometown."

I teach spoken English to First-year and Second-year students (ages 18-22) at Central South Forestry University. My students amaze me with their diligence -- each morning, from about 6:30 until classes begin at 8, hundreds of students are walking around campus, reading aloud from their English textbooks or listening to the BBC and Voice of America on their Walkmans.

And yet, despite their determination, their spoken English needs a lot of work. This is partly because the two languages sound so differently, and also partly because their teachers heavily emphasize writing and reading throughout their schooling. What the students need, but can't afford, is time in an English-speaking country, where they can't fall back to speaking Chinese with their fellow students, and where they're surrounded by the sounds of native English speakers.

It is my singular mission to give some of my students -- probably 5-10 -- this opportunity, and I want them to come to St. Paul. I think that the best time would be this summer, and I see that the College of St. Scholastica's St. Paul branch has something called the Global Language Institute, with one-month, intensive English programs, including homestay with a family. This program would suit my students perfectly.

I also think that St. Paul would benefit from their presence. My students are excellent ambassadors and would be very happy to give presentations about life in China, to assist people trying to learn Chinese, or to help out in other ways. In addition, most of my students will be working in international business in a matter of two to three years, and will of course remember fondly their time spent and connections made in St. Paul.

Larry, please let me know if you have ideas about helping to fund my students' visit to St. Paul. I figure, roughly, that the trip would be about $2,500-$3,000 per student, beyond the financial reach of most of them. Could we apply for grants from your organization, or from the city of St. Paul, or from businesses with a Changsha connection?

I'm a bit stumped about whom to make a pitch to, but I'm determined to make this dream a reality for my students, and I hope you can give us some ideas. When the idea takes shape, and when I announce it to my students, you will hear their shouts of joy all the way in St. Paul. First, though, I need to know where to start.

Sincerely,
Daniel Simmons

Bravo, Johnnies

I awoke Sunday morning to an email from my father/sports correspondent, with the subject "24-6." That's the score by which the Johnnie football team dispatched big, bad Mount Union, winner of each of its last 55 games, to win the Division 3 National Championship. It's a stretch to call the Johnnies "underdogs" in any game, but they pulled it off perfectly in the press the week before the game. To listen to their players, you'd be led to believe they were the SJU Three Little Pigs, about to devoured by the Mount Union Big Bad Wolves. The game revealed that the Little Pigs are made of bricks, and the Big Bad Wolves were actually cross-bred offspring of a wolf and a miniature poodle. SJU's toughest tests of the season came against St. Thomas and Bethel in the regular season, two foes much more formidable than any SJU faced in the national playoffs, including the pipsqueaks from big, bad Mount Union. There's a certain justice in the powerful falling, as Mount Union did, and there will also be justice when Bethel, probably the second best team not only in the M.I.A.C. but also in the nation, knocks out its perennial nemesis, the big, bad Johnnies. For now, though, it's the Johnnies moment, richly deserved, the perfect end to their magical, record-breaking season. Hat's off!

I was looking at photos of the game and found this one, of a Johnnie Rat Packer, which is one of the funnier images I've seen. Check it out at: http://www.d3football.com/gallery.php?photo&event=5935&photo=027

Night out, Zhuzhou

I spend more time eating and less time running than at any point in my adult life, and yet I have become more resistant than ever to the pull of gravity, a walking, talking human chopstick, liable at any moment, in a gust of wind, to float skyward like a runaway kite. A daily diet of oatmeal, noodles, bananas, oranges, apples, rice, fried eggplant, Japanese tofu and boiled cabbage, even in portions suited for Humpty Dumpty, does nothing for the cause of girth expansion, or even girth maintenance.

And so it was that I, with Manabu, approached our Friday evening jaunt into Zhuzhou City, destination McDonalds, with the savage zeal of a crow. In America, a trip to the Golden Arches is accompanied by profuse apologies to my conscience and my blood vessels; in China, I am a giddy child, eager to see Ronald and the Hamburglar, recognizing that a Happy Meal is my best ally in the battle against weightlessness.

McDonalds parked its two-story, neon-lit rump exactly in the center of Zhuzhou City about five years ago, I'm told. People here speak with pride about it, and I can understand why: it's a symbol of progress, an acknowledgement that, on the global map, the great capitalist empire has determined that Zhuzhou City is a colony worthy of exploitation. Everyone's seen McDonalds in the movies, and having one in your town makes you feel more a part of the rest of the world, I think.

The marketing strategy is clear: instill in young Zhuzhou McChildren a lifelong addiction to Big Macs. The ground floor of the two-story restaurant is occupied by the same billboards, the same registers, the same production factory, and the same fake smiles on each and every teen-ager wearing a light-blue button-down McDonalds shirt, as in every other McDonalds all over the world.

But, adults may only place their order on the first floor, not have their meal. Every table is occupied by children, all wearing pointed black hats and shining silver capes, the capes making them look either like marathoners just finished or potatoes about to be baked. Of course the hats and capes have Golden Arches emblazoned all over them, and I think they're supposed to be some kind of McWizard outfit.

An adult McDonalds wizard woman, also dressed in black hat and silver cape, sings cheesy sing-along songs through a microphone, all in praise of Ronald McDonald, with accompanying arm gestures, and the McChildren follow along. Periodically, a hot-fudge sundae, or a steaming apple pie, or a cheeseburger, will be held up and given away to the first child to successfully state the phrase, "I'm lovin it," into the microphone. This phrase, I'm told, is McDonalds' global marketing effort-du-jour, basic and easy so that McChildren all over the globe can use it to start their own McAddictions.

Meanwhile, Manabu and I sat upstairs and fed our own McAddictions. I ordered a Big Mac extra-value meal. The French fries are the same as anywhere: morphine-laced, salted potato twigs, deep fried and sublimely delicious. A look beneath the sesame seed bun of the Big Mac, however, reveals something not seen by me before: a round patty, paper thin, sawdust-brown, juiceless, looking even less like food than an American Big Mac. Even more startling was what lay below the burger: a square slice of orange plastic, the closest resemblance to "cheese" I've witnessed in China. The sawdust burger did little to satisfy my zeal for girth expansion; ever hopeful, I thought that the plastic cheese maybe, maybe is loaded with calories and devoid of nutritional value.

By some chemical enhancement, the Big Mac tasted the same, equally delicious, as an American Big Mac. I was struck by how unconsciously I shifted back into American eating ways. After three months of eating with nothing but chopsticks, I thought nothing of stuffing my mouth full of hand-held burgers and fries, and drinking Coca-Cola.

And I realized again how much more efficient a food-delivery procedure we have in the West. With chopsticks, eating an extra-value meal would consume a solid 20 minutes, as French fries are particularly laborious to the chopstick-wielder. With my hands, it took about six.

And I also realized that the act of eating with chopsticks, in itself, burns calories. There is a lot of motion involved in dipping the sticks into the dish, often located at arm's-length, stabbing the desired food, steadying it over the bowl, and then transporting it from dish to mouth. This process is repeated over a hundred times every meal, as all dishes are shared communally. In other words, because there is no personal plate, you must extend the arm a greater distance to procure the next bite. Further, each bite is considerably smaller than it would be with fork and knife, and each bite requires probably four times the effort. So, you're getting fewer calories per arm's trip to mouth, and expending more calories in the pursuit of each bite. Which explains again the ancient Chinese secret: eat with chopsticks, look like chopsticks.

The Zhuzhou City McChildren, thank God, are finally breaking away from the old ways, given the opportunity to start young their McAddictions, and the invitation to continue subjecting themselves to capitalist exploitation, and girth expansion, via fake McFood, for the rest of their lives.

On the way home, our cab driver was cruising along a service road beside the highway. Suddenly, a man in a green bicycle rickshaw came into view from the right side, about five feet in front of the cab. Our cabbie veered left, slowed slightly, and plowed into the rickshaw. The rickshaw driver went flying off his bicycle, into the street, and heads of cabbage, which he was transporting, spilled everywhere. Manabu and I laughed more out of amazement than glee, and the cabbie kept going, yelling at the fallen rickshaw driver as he lay on the road, surrounded by cabbage.

I found it fitting that, on the first and only night I decided on an alternative to Chinese food, in an effort at girth expansion, cabbage still crossed my path, as it has every other day of my time here. And I realized that, like it or not, I will be chopstick-boy as long as I'm in China, and on my two months' summer vacation in the States, I will, every night, eat a tub of butter.

The best profession

Read this story, on China Daily's website: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/17/content_291038.htm. It's written by one of China's most celebrated photographers, who tells the story of his father. As a boy in a rural village, his father happened to tag along with a British photographer for awhile, and became fascinated by photography. When the British guy left, the Chinese boy sold his family's only cow for the British guy's camera. Ever since, still using the same camera, the man has walked the villages of Fujian Province, documenting daily life and giving the villagers photos of themselves once developed. It's a touching story about an inspiring life.

Mary to the rescue

I did an activity with my classes that was supposed to be great fun. I brought in six magazines from America: 4 Rochester magazines, with my stories in them; a New Yorker style issue; and an issue of Outside. The students got into six groups, and each got one magazine. I assigned each group one or more pictures in the magazine and told them to, basically, write their own caption for it.

It's a takeoff of the New York Times Magazine feature called "What Were They Thinking," in which a provocative photo of someone living daily life is shown, followed by a description, in the subject's own words, of what was going through his or her head at the time. I thought it would be a great opportunity for creativity and silliness, all in English.

Unfortunately, the activity seemed a little beyond the reach of most of my students. For the most part, each group gave a very bland, factual account of what was happening: a photograph in Roch mag of me striking a ballet pose was described as, "I am trying to keep balance;" a photograph in Outside mag of a naked man standing under a waterfall in Oregon was described as, "I forgot my towel;" another photo in Outside mag, of a woman in a South American rain forest looking through binoculars, was described as, "I'm so happy it's a sunny day."

Thankfully, Mary saved the collective reputation of my students. She described the naked man standing under the waterfall as, "I am Teacher Daniel. I think it is so wonderful that I can have a bath, free-of-charge. I am a little bit afraid of an alligator right now. I better finish my bath soon, for I am getting very cold." The class erupted in laughter.

About five minutes later, we were discussing the next photograph, of the woman looking through binoculars as she sits in a boat in the South American rain forest. I asked the students to describe what the woman sees through her binoculars.

Showing true comic timing, Mary raised her with about a minute left before the bell was to ring. "Through my binoculars," Mary said in the most innocent of voices, "I am watching Teacher Daniel take a bath." The class burst into laughter at precisely the moment the bell rang, and no one moved for two minutes, paralyzed by Mary-inspired mirth.

Oral espanol

I really need to improve my Spanish pronunciation, because it's just not working for me in China. And it's not complex phrases that aren't understood; the most basic attempts at conversation are met with puzzled stares.

I say "Hola" to a group of my students as they pass me on the street, and they just can't make it out. I ask, "Cuanto cuesta?" at the dumpling stand, and the dumpling guy seems confused. I get in a cab with Manabu and announce, "Vamos a la universidad," and the cabbie for some reason doesn't know where to take us.

I speak better Spanish in China than I ever did in America, use it more frequently, discover a vocabulary I previously didn't realize I had. And yet, for whatever reason, it just isn't an effective communication tool, probably owing to my poor oral espanol.

And so I've proposed, and Manabu's agreed to, a 4:30 Spanish conversation every morning, followed by our 5:30 Chinese lesson. Now, I have to find us a good tutor. Shouldn't be a problem finding one in Zhuzhou City, I figure.

Kawahira declares for draft

Manabu Kawahira today announced his intention to enter June's NBA draft lottery. In a press conference, Kawahira denied rumors that his move was fueled by pressure from Phil Jackson, coach of the L.A. Lakers, who covets the diminutive Japanese low-post man to replace the aging Shaquille O'Neal. Instead, Kawahira (nicknamed "Kawabunga!") insisted his move was motivated more by a desire for sanitary playing conditions. "Zhuzhou, very dirty," Kawahira said. "NBA arena, very clean."

Kawahira was somewhat strained by the NBA's failure to provide an adequate interpreter. After the NBA-appointed interpreter translated the first question to him, Kawahira gestured with his arms and replied, "But, I am Japanese! So sorry, I don't speak Chinese."

In English, Kawahira showed a gift for dealing with press questions. Asked if his 5-foot-2, 109-pound body could withstand nightly poundings from the likes of Kevin Garnett, Kawahira paused long and hard. Finally, with confidence, he replied: "No problem. It's okay."

Asked about his greatest asset as a basketball player, Kawahira again paused before replying, "Larry Bird really likes left-handed layups." A scout, who requested that his name not be publicly associated with the Los Angeles Clippers, remarked, "here's a kid who knows his NBA history, who has great reverence for the past, who has the humility to defer to Bird on a question about himself, who can pronounce his l's and r's. The perfect package? Hmmm."

Kawahira further displayed his marketing appeal when a reporter asked about his current level of fitness. "I am working with an Arabic instructor every day," he said. Some reporters speculated that, along with electrifying NBA fans with his low-post moves, Kawahira could bring about peace in the Middle East. Again, Kawahira was deferential when asked about it. "I just want Skye," he said.

Thursday

I had big plans for Thursday: write a few letters, clean my apartment, run 10 miles and feed my blog. My schedule was light: 5 a.m. meeting with oatmeal and coffee, 5:30 a.m. appointment with Manabu and our Chinese textbook, and a noon lunch, at Kentucky Fried Chicken, with Joan, my Chinese teacher. Between 7 a.m. and noon, and from 1 p.m. on, my time would, for once, be my own.

At 8:53 on Wednesday night, just before bedtime, my phone rang.
“Daniel, this is Hellen,” spoke the voice on the other end, “are you free tomorrow morning?” Technically, I was free tomorrow morning, but I quickly searched for a reason I’m not free. Among China’s 1.3 billion people, Hellen alone has the ability to drive me completely insane every time we speak. And we speak all too often: she sits next to me on the bus to and from Changsha every Monday, she calls me at least once a day, she sits in my classes, she walks with me to and from English Corner every Sunday night.

To begin with, I had nothing but admiration for Hellen. She teaches comparative law here, she’s very well educated, quite young and very eager, married with a beautiful one-year-old daughter. She told me she wants to study law in America for a year, and needs to learn English. And so I helped her research programs at Columbia and the University of Minnesota, and all seemed well.

Over time, though, she has managed to squander every morsel of goodwill I once felt toward her, as if she were George W. Bush since 9/11, and I the rest of the planet. Part of this takes root in her sheer ubiquity. Anyone so omnipresent in life will grate on nerves. However, with Hellen, it's not only that she's around every corner; it's her motivations for being there and what she says when, unfortunately, she opens her mouth.

In a cab a few weeks ago, she announced to my friend Liz that her dream in life is “to make lots and lots of money.” She then asked Liz what is her dream, and Liz said she doesn’t have a clear dream. “But,” said Hellen, “if you have no dream, life will be so empty!” On the bus to Changsha one day, she told Manabu that he has a “very easy teaching schedule, with lots of spare time,” demanded to know his salary, and asked for private, free Japanese lessons from him. Manabu hardly has the word “no” in his vocabulary, but he wielded it in on Hellen.

Then, one day in my class, which she illegally sits in, her cell phone rang. My students know the rule: if a cell phone rings in class, and the student answers the call, I call in the firing squad. So, as Hellen, a teacher here, sat in my class illegally, in the front row, she not only didn’t turn off her cell phone when it rang, she answered it! And talked in Chinese, as I tried to lecture, as my students tried to listen. No apologies, no acknowledgement that this may be inappropriate.

And so, back to the phone call, I told Hellen that I wasn’t free and asked her what she wanted. She told me that she wanted me to come lecture to her English class, and suddenly, it dawned on me: I was talking not to Hellen, China’s most annoying human, but to Helen, a fellow English teacher who’s 21 years old, fresh out of college and everything Hellen isn’t: considerate, respectful, polite. Every time I see Helen, she has a list of questions about English that she’s compiled since our last meeting. For her, I am only too happy to answer her questions and help her out, because I know her motivations are pure and her determination is strong.

This goodwill must extend to lecturing in her class on Thursday, I decided, so I told her yes, I’ll come lecture to your class, from 9 a.m. to 9:40 a.m. Although I felt I needed to do it, I agreed grudgingly, as it signaled one less chance to do the things I had planned for Thursday. After hanging up, I changed into my black turtleneck, white longjohns, gray wool socks and St. John’s stocking hat, mummified myself in four layers of blankets, and lay down on my bed. Lights out, 9:15.

At about 9:45, as I was two-thirds into sleep, the phone rang. I unwrapped myself from the blankets, sprang to my feet and rushed to the phone.
“Daniel, this is Helen.” Oh, boy, what now. She said there was something she needed to tell me about class tomorrow. As soon as she began telling it to me, the phone went dead. And so I waited five minutes for her to call back. She didn’t, and I rewrapped myself and lay down.

Five minutes later, my phone started ringing again. I decided I would let it ring, that nothing could be so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow. The phone rang four series of ten rings, but I remained wrapped in my blankets, winning the battle of wills.

Or so I thought. Within minutes, my doorbell rang five times. And so I unwrapped myself, stumbled to the door, asked who it was.
“Daniel, this is Helen,” said the voice on the other side of the door. And so I opened the door, dressed in my stocking hat, turtleneck, longjohns and wool socks. Helen said she had to explain tomorrow’s lesson to me. “It will take just 10 minutes,” she said.

As soon as Helen entered my apartment, at about 10:15, my phone rang, so I picked it up.
“Daniel, this is Hellen,” said the voice on the other end. I looked at my couch, and there sat Helen. The Hellen on the phone could only be China’s most annoying human. Unbelievable.

For the next fifteen minutes, as I stood there shivering in my Arctic pajamas, and Helen sat on my couch, Hellen blabbered on the phone. It was all the usual platitudes: she hopes I am a happy man, may my every day dreams come true, do I ever feel lonely, I must miss my family very much, how can I eat Chinese food, what stories am I writing about China, what do I think about President "Push," I am so lucky that God gave me such a rich country.

After the litany of platitudes, this: “Daniel, I want to have conversation with you, one hour every week.” Unbelievable: we have countless hours of annoying conversations every week, which I do my utmost to avoid, and now, at 10:30, Hellen demands we schedule even more conversations! Taking Manabu’s lead, I told her no chance in hell, goodnight. Living here, the ability to say “no” is the most vital survival skill. At first, I did so with regret; now, I relish every opportunity. Of course, I distinguish between the Hellens of the world, and the Helens.

At this point, though, Helen started to show Hellenic tendencies. Notifying me the night before, ringing my phone until it went deaf, stopping by my apartment as I slept, argh.

As soon as I was rid of Hellen on the phone, I sat down on the couch, next to Helen. And she told me that I should introduce myself in tomorrow's class, tell a bit about myself, talk about what I did that morning. No problem. I said goodbye to her, rewrapped myself in blankets, lay down for my too-short hibernation, thought about the perfect convergence of annoying Helens, at the superlatively annoying moment, and laughed myself to sleep. Lights out, again, at 11 p.m.

At 5:45 on Thursday morning, my doorbell rang. And so I unwrapped myself, stumbled to the door, asked who it is.
"Daniel, this is Manabu Kawahira speaking," said the voice. Brilliant, I thought, and opened the door.

Manabu and I didn't study a lot of Chinese that morning. I told him about the epic convergence of annoying Helens, and he laughed hard enough to generate electricity. Then, he asked my help in explaining, in English, the term "IV drip." Manabu is always in "bad condition," coughing, turning pale, shivering. Yet, he rings my doorbell every morning at or before 5:45 for our Chinese lesson, he tutors students in Japanese well past 11 p.m. every night, he sleeps an hour or three, and he absolutely never complains. He wanted to know about IV drips because, for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, he was to have an IV drip at the campus hospital. "How is your condition?" I asked him. "No problem," he replied, as always, "I am okay."

At 7:36, my phone rang again.
"Daniel, this is Nancy," the voice said, "are you free now?"
Again, I technically was free, until 9 a.m., but I searched for reasons not to be free. Nancy is one of my favorite students, a first-year who has the innocence and purity of a girl in a First Communion dress.

One day, Nancy and I were eating peacock stew and stringy potatoes, flavored with garlic, cilantro and chili peppers, in the campus canteen. I remarked on the delicious taste of the potatoes, and Nancy said she agreed. In fact, she said, she eats this kind of potatoes every day, as her father, a doctor, told her that it is very nutritious. Her father died seven years ago of a heart attack, she said, and eating this food reminds her of him.

To me, Nancy's daily ritual is the perfect image of China: a culture in which cooking and eating are sacred acts, in which health and nutrition are persistent topics of conversation, in which family bonds are deeply cherished and extend well past death.

Nancy went on to tell me that she had wanted to be a doctor, like her father, but her mother wouldn't let her. Her mother felt that her husband's beastly schedule sank him prematurely into his grave, and didn't want the same fate to befall her daughter. So, Nancy studies English instead, and with vigor. "I have a dream, Mister Daniel," she said in her soft, sweet voice, "I want to help many, many people in China learn English, as their teacher. But first, I must study very, very hard in university."

And so, when Nancy calls with a request for extra help, how could I turn her down? I told her I would meet her at 9:40, after my lecture to Helen's class, before my KFC lunch with Joan. And there went another slice of my quickly vanishing free time.

At 8:10, I stepped into the shower. Showering, along with eating, is the height of existence in Hunan, with its cold, wet winters and no indoor heating. Any source of heat, whether from a shower spigot or a bowl of steaming noodles, is a gift from heaven. I shower just for the sake of it sometimes, whether or not my bones need a scrub.

A few minutes into my shower, as I was about to wash the shampoo out of my hair, the water stream sputtered, went ice cold, and then ran completely dry. Seconds later, my phone rang. I threw a towel around my waist and rushed to answer it, dripping suds and shivering.

"Daniel, this is Helen," said the voice on the other end of the line, "we're expecting you right now in my class. Two of my students are outside your apartment, waiting to escort you to the classroom."

Should I tell her that I thought we had agreed to meet at 9 a.m. and that it's only 8:20? Should I explain to her that my shower just ran dry, while I was in the middle of a shower? Should I explain to her that I'm talking to her in my towel, dripping wet, with a thick lather of shampoo in my hair, with my torso sprouting BB-sized goosebumps? Of course not. "Okay, I'll be right out," I told her, and dried off, threw on some clothes, met the two students and off to class we went.

I walked into the classroom, filled with 66 first-year Civil Engineering students and Helen. Instantly, the class rose to its feet and greeted me with radiator-rattling applause. I hadn't yet said a word, I was five minutes removed from being a walking suds factory, my hair was still wet and filled with shampoo, I was wearing a tattered old Totino-Grace Cross-Country sweatshirt, and I was given a standing ovation. Only in freakin China.

I gave my usual lecture about Minnesota's 10,000 lakes, got them to spell "Mississippi" faster and faster, told them about the Mayo Clinic, St. John's University, Lake Superior and the Boundary Waters. The students listened attentively, answered my questions intelligently, really made me feel welcome. Then, I asked if they had any questions. Hands shot up, so I called on a boy in the middle of the classroom.

"Do you know the Garnett?" he asked. It's amazing -- this is the first question I get asked whenever I speak about Minnesota. There's not a mention of 10,000 lakes, of millions of acres of forest, of the five Great Lakes. Minnesota, to students here, is the land of one Kevin Garnett and 11 other Forest Wolves, the direct Chinese translation of "Timberwolves."

After a short break, I went around the class, row by row, and talked to each student for a few minutes. The first student, a boy, said he wanted to tell me that he believes the Wolves will win the title this year, and that Garnett will win the MVP. "Last year, he was second to the Duncan," he said. "This year, he will be the winner." And I told them they had to find other things to talk about, which shortened each conversation considerably. We talked about their hometown, their favorite food, their hobbies, over and over and over.

At about the 52nd student, who happened to be the same student who had asked me if I know KG, he said, "Mister Daniel, I have a surprise." Then, he explained that he would like to invite me to play for his class' basketball team in an upcoming tournament against other students. I thanked him but explained that it's a bit unfair for them to get a 6-4 American when no other team has such an option. Plus, I told him, he's never even seen me hoop it up. "Trust me, you don't want me on your team," I told him. He then said, "Okay, Mister Daniel, now for the surprise."

He handed me a bag. I opened it and pulled out a white Timberwolves jersey and matching Timberwolves shorts. "Here's your uniform for when you play with us, okay?" The class again erupted in applause as I held the jersey against my torso. On the back, where the player's name is usually written, are Chinese characters that mean, "Civil Engineering, Class 5." Fair or not, I had been drafted as a Forest Wolf, and I had my jersey to prove it.

Indeed, this was a wonderful surprise, a reminder of home, a jersey I'd never buy myself but am giddy to have as a gift. The bell rang to end class, and I shook each student's hand as they walked out, thanking them for their generous gift.

And the meeting with Nancy came and went, and lunch with Joan came and went, and water returned to this campus later that night, immediately after I had purchased a bottled water machine so that I could brush my teeth.

I got just about nothing accomplished that I had planned for Thursday, but I gained 66 new friends, a vintage Wolves uniform, a spot on a basketball team, fresh food for my blog and many new reasons to laugh myself to sleep, many new stories to tell Manabu at 5:30 in the morning and be warmed by the electricity radiating from his uproarious laughter. All in a day in this Chinese life.