One day, as I was coming to meet Niall in his office that was connected to the teacher’s office in Tai An building, I saw a
new face that I hadn’t seen before. A young man in his twenties with short black hair and glasses was sitting in front of a
computer at one of the tables in front of my vision as I stood with my back towards the open door to Niall’s office. “Who is that?” I
turned around to ask Niall. “Oh, that’s Tony, the guy from the United States that you referred to us a while back who had a
Chinese girlfriend here,” he replied. “Oh. How is he? Everything alright?” I asked, as I felt partially responsible for his
performance even though I didn’t know him at all. “Fine. He’s been doing a good job so far.” Niall said. “Good,” I said as Niall
and I began to discuss what I had come for.  Here in Tai An building, it was like a family of teachers, nearly two-dozen foreign
teachers as well as about a dozen or so Chinese teachers cramped into a small teacher’s office. Everyone wasn’t there all at
once, but there would sometimes not be enough seats for everyone. Aside from the teachers were the bosses; Niall from
England, along with Becky and Susan from China. But they all fell short of the title “Big B.” That title was reserved for a Chinese
man who had the English name Johnson. He was a man not too tall in stature but had a solid looking build with an uncommonly
large head. He had kind of a bulldog body build, though he wasn’t ripped out of his mind. I was told that Johnson once served in
the Chinese military, and he claimed to be number one in the army. I’ll give him this, he did appear a bit tougher and more
intimidating than just about any Chinese person I had ever seen, but I wasn’t sure if he was all that. Webster’s Tai An office
certainly had its share of characters.
      I was basically stranded out at Guangxi University alone, except for my coworkers Chinese Jamie and Vivian, but what
common topics did we have? Mostly we could only relate to each other about work, and Jamie wanted to complain about Nina
most of the time, to me and to Vivian. I also had the students to talk to, but we talked to each other all day in the classroom
anyways and spoke about nearly anything to the point of exhaustion. I didn’t take the traditional teaching stance of being that lone
figure who all must respect and obey at all times. I did want respect and to be listened to, but I did not want to use force in any
way if possible because who am I to force anyone to learn? When the students were messing up in class, I would try to use my
mind to outsmart them or give them some kind of advice like, “If you don’t pass this test, then you can’t go abroad and study, and
your parents probably won’t be too happy that they spent all that money for nothing.” I wanted them to see me as more of a helpful
friend than a strict authoritarian ruler, and they responded in kind by inviting me to their dormitory to hang out several times and
also play basketball with them.
      Sometimes Nina, Chinese Jamie, Vivian, and I would have company meetings at a coffee shop called UBC Coffee that was
almost directly across from where my street intersected with Da Xue Lu not far from Guangxi University’s front gate. The place
had two circular levels with tables arranged on the outside next to the windows and a spiral staircase in the middle. It was a
very quiet and polished looking place that was ideal for brief business meetings. They had many different dishes there, including
waffles with whipped cream and a green cherry on top, some Korean dishes, ice cream, juice with bits of diced fruit floating
around inside, and many more. For the ice cream, they had three scoops, strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla on top of small
pieces of watermelon and apple inside of a bowl. I never thought to mix fruit with ice cream in this way. On each table was a
small spherical fortune-telling machine with a glass dome on top and something that looked similar to a roulette machine with
two micro-sized dice on top of it. Around the outside were the 12 signs of the zodiac and a slot above each one of them where
one could put one yuan inside and then pinch together the starting mechanism. I was curious to see what it was all about, so I
looked for mine, Leo, and put one yuan inside of the slot that was just above the image of the lion. I started the machine and the
part on top that looked like a roulette machine began spinning with flashing red and green lights, and a very small piece of paper
less than an inch long that was contained by a small plastic tube fell out of a hole in the bottom of the sphere. I unraveled it and
tried to read it, but it was all written in very small Chinese characters. I asked Jamie if she could translate it for me, and she did
as best as she could. This wasn’t like the newspaper daily horoscope back home. Whoever wrote this went into some detail and
was very descriptively speaking about several aspects of living for the day. I found it very accurate, but who knows how many
other people who read the same thing would think it described them, no matter when they were born? The thing I thought was
most interesting about it was at the end they have a question with four possible answers. Your answer is supposed to reflect
what kind of person you are. I suppose like anything in life, what you get out of it is based on what you are able to put into it.
      For lunch, sometimes Jamie, Vivian, and I went to a restaurant called Bang Yang (Bahng Yahng) near the beginning of Houju
Lu next to the main gate. It was part of an eight-storey hotel called the City Convenience Inn inside of a security checkpoint
where security guards halted motor vehicles before opening the gate to allow them inside to park. There was also a Shenzhen
Airlines ticket office, a barber shop, and another shop under construction, all on the first level of the hotel with separate
entrances. Bang Yang was a Chinese-style fast food restaurant. They had combination meals which included soup, a bowl of rice
(the rice was so stuck together it could fall out of the bowl and remain in the same bowl-shape), a small dish of meat, and a
small dish of green vegetables. I ordered chicken and duck, but I was a bit disappointed with the portions of meat they provided.
It was mostly pieces of bone with scatter amounts of meat on them.
      There were also several noodle restaurants down Houju Lu that were easily accessible. Houju Lu was like a street for
students. To walk from the beginning to the end of the street required only about 10 minutes. It had nearly anything a college
student needs: inexpensive restaurants, school supply shops, clothing stores, barber shops, banks, and Internet bars. There
weren’t any regular bars because the students’ parents would kill them if they spent all of their monthly allowance of several
hundred yuan or so on binge drinking. Students would occasionally have some beers with their friends at restaurants if they
wished, but it definitely wasn’t party every night. Perhaps some students from very wealthy families who had credit cards could
do that, but definitely not the majority. There were always students walking up and down Houju Lu in groups, pairs, or
individually, with motorcycles and taxis rolling through without congestion. Of course when the students would walk past a
foreigner, like me for example, their eyes would stay focused a little longer than usual on me as they were using what they knew
about the world to try to reach some kind of conclusion about who I was. It depends on anyone’s mood how to accept looks like
that. If feeling in a happy mood, maybe I will say hello to them, or if my mood is not so clear, maybe I will stare back at them until
they look away. It’s sometimes hard to judge exactly what people are thinking when they look. Sometimes they are just curious,
and other times they are looking down upon you and laughing with their friends and probably calling you names that you are glad
you don’t understand, but they don’t dare make any universally impolite gestures.
      I could not get over how safe and quiet Nanning was. It seemed to be the safest place I had ever lived in my whole life so
far. I never saw any fighting or provocative behavior and never heard anyone talking about any big problems from their lives or
from the news. Was all of this because of the ban on firearms? I wasn’t sure, but it often puzzled me. I certainly didn’t feel unsafe
at all, but as someone once said to me, “No place is safe forever. The wolves are never far behind.” Certainly history has
proven that time and again. Even Madison, the last time I was there, didn’t feel as safe as I remembered. Nanning can’t be the
only place on earth that is immune, can it? And why did training martial arts come back into my life at this particular point in
time? These questions I did not wait for the answers to come, but I kept them in the back of my mind as I continued on with my
peaceful and simple life of teaching in the university.
      Life every day began to follow a certain pattern. Wake up and get ready every morning at 8 a.m., and then walk down my
street, Xinai Lu, which took about five minutes, and then head over to the university which took another 10 minutes. On Da Xue
Lu in front of the main gate is where I bought my breakfast. There were several stands that sold food and drinks in the area, and I
always chose one where there was a couple selling juice boxes full of flavored soymilk, water bottles, juice and Chinese iced
tea, hard-boiled eggs, and what they call mantou (mahn tow), or steamed bread. It was a strange kind of bread that I had never
eaten before. It was more compact than regular bread and a bit chewy. It was almost cube-shaped, but it was a bit smoother with
curves instead of flat surfaces, and it was either white or yellow. The bread was pretty much tasteless, and I wasn’t sure about
its nutritional value, but I would get a couple of those, a couple of hard boiled eggs, and some of that flavored soymilk and then
head to the teacher’s office inside the university on the first floor of the Foreign Language College. After a full day of teaching, I
would head back home. Near the start of Xinai Lu there was a small restaurant without a front door, and one of the keepers
would always say to me, “Hello.” And then smile a friendly smile as I walked on. Sometimes he would play folk songs on his
guitar and sing. I began to notice a pattern of behavior at the restaurant. Around dinner time, I would hear people at their tables
sound like they were chanting something very excitedly and using their hands to indicate something. Almost every night I would
hear the same thing happening in the restaurant, but I still had no idea about what they were doing. As I walked a few shops
down, there was a smaller than garage-sized shop that was run by a man and his wife, and they had a little baby son about two
years old. Sometimes the man would catch me walking late by myself and offer me cigarettes and beer as is Chinese culture. We
would attempt to communicate with each other by speaking and writing, but there wasn’t much we could communicate since we
were equally lacking the skills in each other’s language, but the friendliness was still there. As I made it down to my apartment,
the entrance to the apartment block was guarded by several young security guards wearing light blue shirts, dark blue pants,
and dark blue berets. Sometimes they would say “Hello,” but with their pronunciation, it sounded like they were asking a
question, “Hello?” They had some big sticks with electro-zappers on them in case anyone got out of line. Sometimes I saw them
practicing combat skills with each other, perhaps because they were bored. One of them said as I was passing in a very high
voice, “Chinese Kungfu!!!” I didn’t know he knew enough English to be able to say that. My window on the second floor was right
across from where they were stationed, and sometimes I could hear them playing around making Bruce Li noises like “Wahh!”
“Yaaa!” as I was trying to go to sleep. At least I knew I was safe.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling
    More Nanning observations