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.
