| It was the beginning of 2005. I was living in the city of Albuquerque, NM at the time, working for a temp agency and taking whatever job was offered because they were hard to find. As much as I liked Albuquerque, I had the feeling that there was somewhere else for me to be, but I didn't know where. I had already done a lot of traveling around the U.S. and have lived in several different cities, and basically had seen what I wanted to see of the place, so what's next? The only thing left was to go to another country, I thought. I talked to my father on the phone, and he told me about a group that was going to Africa to help with agriculture and other volunteer services. I wanted to go because from what I have heard, the place could use some outside support. At the same time, someone offered me a full-time job -- something I had been searching for. My choices were to keep the life that was becoming more predictable and less fulfilling every day, or go out blindly into the world and experience soemthing completely unlike everything else I had come to know. So I came back to Madison quickly and was interviewed by someone representing the volunteer organization. Everything seemed great, but without me knowing it, some of my friends did some research on the volunteer group and told me that it looked like the same volunteer organizationwas more interested in getting money from people than helping anyone. So I decided not to join up with them, but I was still anxious to leave the country. Then my father told me about someone whom he had gotten acquainted with and who was looking for people to teach English in China. I never thought of myself as being fit to become a teacher. All of my previous jobs relied on physical strength much more than intelligence. Teaching was a complete reversal of everything that I was prepared to do at any job, but I accepted the challenge. I was interviewed again, and shortly after, I was ready to go. There were nearly 20 others in the same program who were going to several different cities around China to teach English at summer camps. There was one other who was going to the same city as I was to teach at two different summer camps. His name was Nathan, and I met him at Chicago's O'Hare airport. He had been taking a Chinese language class at the UW for more than a year, so it was very helpful to me to be traveling with someone who understands the language. The flight was about 14 hours from Chicago to Shanghai. I had images in my mind about what China looked like, but I had not much to base that on. When I got there, it was much the same as I imagined, but it was a little more modern and there were many more people than I thought. Nathan and I were met at the Pudong Airport, in Shanghai by someone who worked for the company we were to be teaching for. He was young, very friendly and helpful, and he spoke English well. He put us on the bus and headed for the train station like it was any other day of the week. I didn't feel out of place or culture shock at all. The bus was full, but not extremely packed. I was listening to other people's conversations trying to figure out what they were talking about, even though that would have been impossible. I heard one word that people kept saying over and over that sounded like the N word. I thought to myself, "Man, I came to the wrong place. These people hate me. I also thought it was strange that that was the only English word they knew. But later I found out that the word I heard them saying was really a Chinese word for "that," and not some kind of unwelcome form of communication, much to my relief. I was imagining a serious problem that wasn't even there. Those people weren't even paying attention to me! Shortly after sunset, we arrived at the train station after about an hour of travel on the bus on a highway that extended from the center of the city. The train station was somewhere near the heart of the city. Shanghai is like the New York of China in almost every way. For instance, size, population, diversity, importance, and popularity. Right away, as soon as I got off the bus, I almost got sold on a hotel room because some guy came up to me talking about something in Chinese holding pictures of hotel rooms. I thought he was part of the company that I was supposed to work for, so I started to follow him to the hotel nearby. But my guide swam through the river of people and caught me before I went inside. I didn't know what was happening. I wasn't even sure what city I was supposed to be in. We went to a restaurant across from the train station to have our first meal in China. The restaurant was quite different than any place I had ever seen in America. It had different people, different styles, and a different atmosphere inside. Everyone was staring at us with curiosity when we came in. We chose from a number of dishes that were ready to serve at a cafeteria-like section of the restaurant, most of which I had never seen before. I played it safe and chose some crawfish because it was most familiar to me. I can't remember what Nathan ordered. Our guide paid for the meal and sat us down, and then disappeared for a while, probably to make a phone call and get our train tickets. There was a table of three young Chinese men nearby. I noticed they were taking extreme interest in what we were doing. They were smoking their cigarettes and staring at us while we tried to eat our first authentic Chinese dishes. I didn't know what here were talking to each other about. They were laughing at Nathan as he tried to use chopsticks for the first time and sometimes had looks of disbelief on their faces. And they really thought it was funny when Nathan tried to open a can of Pepsi, but broke the tab before he could get it open. They were watching us for what seemed like about 15 minutes. I thought they were gangsters that were planning to rob us after we left the restaurant since they were paying so much attention to us. I asked Nathan what they were saying, and he replied that they were just making fun of us. I didn't know what a safe place I was in, and I didn't know how rare foreigners were. China has a law against carrying firearms and other weapons, and punishment against people who commit crimes against foreigners is more severe than the usual crime. China is generally much safer than America for violent crime. To be continued ... |
| China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling The beginning of the journey |
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