| In mid afternoon, during a meeting several hours after we received news that the police wanted us to leave the summer camp, Daler told us that the police changed their minds and decided to let us stay at the school, but we didn't believe him. We asked Daler to have the head of the Xuan Cheng police department come and tell us himself that it was all right if we stayed, but Daler made an excuse. He told us in an emotional statement, "You don't understand Chinese culture! If the policeman told you to leave, and then now must tell you that you can stay, the policeman will lose face!" So he wouldn't allow us to confirm that what he said was true. We talked to Zelda and the other classroom teachers, and they said Daler was using us and lying to us, and that we should leave. Some of them seemed like they wanted to leave too, but they also wanted Daler to pay them for working there. I didn't feel comfortable with the situation anymore as I felt imminent danger closing in on us from all sides like we were in a trash compactor, and the police were the crushing walls, so I had decided that I wasn't going to stay. Nathan was a little hesitant to leave, probably because he didn't want to leave his new girlfriend Ke Yan behind. Franklin and Caro didn't want to leave because Daler still owed them money from other English training camps that they wouldn't receive if they left. They had decided to risk going to jail so they could receive their salaries from Daler. At sunset, in the teacher's office, we had another meeting with Daler, and Nathan and I told him that if we couldn';t get confirmation from the police, that we were going to leave the summer camp that same night. I also told him that I wasn't going to teach at the middle school in Anqing anymore because of his dishonesty, even though that would leave me jobless in a foreign country. Daler was very disappointed and had the look of someone who was enduring the pain of having lemon juice squeezed in his eyes. His face was full and fleshy and easy to turn red because he was a very expressive individual. "Oh no! That's so terrible!" he said as he self-destructed and slapped his hands on the meeting table. I hated disappointing him since he had done so much for me up until that point, but that disappointing result was the product of his own lies. Nathan contacted Jackie in Hefei with his mobile phone, and Jackie told him that we should come there away from Daler, and that he and Summer would take care of us. He also told me that Summer had a look of extreme pity on her face when he told her that I wasn't coming back to Hefei for a visit, and that made me feel quite guilty for wanting to abandon her. So later that night, Nathan and I quietly left the summer camp and went to a hotel not far from the school to escape the consequences of interfering with the law, and prepared to return to Hefei. The morning after we left the school, Nathan and I took a bus from Xuan Cheng to Hefei. Summer called about halfway into the trip to make sure both of us were coming. We were both excited to be going back to the big city after risking ourselves unnecessarily with Daler out in the boondocks of Anhui. But that didn't erase the guilt of leaving our students from our minds, so we decided that we would return to the summer camp on the last night to see everyone one last time. When we arrived at the bus station in Hefei, we called Jackie, and he left us directions to meet him at the hospital he worked at through the Anhui Medical University. I had wanted to be back in Hefei ever since we first left to go to Anqing. The air was thick with smog with a permanent haze that seemed to take a little of the color out of everything. There were plenty of street smells because many people didn't bring their children to public restrooms because of the holes in the bottom of their pants, and sometimes people would throw away their trash on the streets instead of garbage cans, but Hefei felt like home more than anywhere else I had been in China. Jackie showed up to the hospital to meet us, but Summer wasn't with him. She couldn't make it, so she called us and made plans to meet us for dinner at KFC later that night. Jackie helped us find a hotel since we didn't feel like dragging our suitcases around with us all day. He brought us to a five-story hotel near the downtown area that was of medium quality, about halfway between the small hotel we stayed at in Anqing, and the huge International Peace Hotel we stayed at when we first came to Hefei. To go into the lobby, we had to walk down a flight of stairs because the entrance to the hotel was just beneath street level, as were most of the other stores that were on that strip. There was an elevator next to the small lobby that we took to get to our room on the fifth floor to dump our luggage. Out of our hotel room window, there was a view of another hotel across the street that was styled similar to a Las Vegas casino on the outside, which had a bar attached to it called the Nighthawk Bar that caught our interests. We spent the rest of the day trying to let the time pass quickly until night came when we could meet Summer for dinner. Just after dark, we stood up on top of the circular overpass at the San Xiao Kou bus station, looking over the side at the traffic passing beneath us in all directions while waiting for Summer to arrive. We were surrounded by office buildings with a few lights that were still on from those who had continued working after regular business hours were over. On the streets below, taxis were beeping and swerving quickly around each other as usual, and buses loaded with passengers were thundering through with their loud engines as they had priority on the streets because of their size. A few expensive personal cars would also be cruising more cautiously between the masses of taxis and buses. There was no such thing as an old clunker because most of the personal vehicles were owned by wealthy businessmen. There were never any young people driving unless they had just begun driving taxi no younger than 18. Anyone who was not a highly skilled driver would not last very long on Hefei streets. Police vehicles were often the slowest moving vehicles on the streets, and it was regular to see them get cut off by taxi drivers without them taking any action against them. The overpass we stood on was the largest of several that ran across Changjiang Road between the medium sized buildings that lined either side of Changjiang road in downtown Hefei. Some of the overpasses had additional walkways attached to them that led directly into bookstores, barbershops with white and green ribbon barber poles outside, and other stores that were on the second level. San Xiao Kou was the center of all bus activity in Hefei located on the western edge of the busy downtown area. The station was divided into four different bus stops for each direction that could be traveled in, just outside the perimeter of the circular overpass on the ground next to the sidewalks. The sidewalks were never very small and made of either colored tiles or gray tiles, and had room enough so that at least four people could walk side by side. Changjiang Road runs from just east of the downtown area through downtown, and through the west side of Hefei into the countryside. It's one of the busiest and most popular roads in Hefei. Connecting to Changjiang Road at San Xiao Kou is Jingzhai Road, which leads all the way through the desolate and sparsely populated southern part of the city that has mostly schools, factories, and companies, with a few lonely groups of modern high-rise apartment buildings spread out across the land. Many people were walking down Changjiang Road and walking around the circular overpass where we stood, but I was disconnected from everything that was happening around me. I didn't know how to interact with anyone except for the people I already knew because of the language barrier, and also because I wasn't used to the life yet. Everyone in Hefei was walking around, talking to each other and thinking in a language that I couldn't understand, and living with experiences that have shaped their minds and lives into something completely different than what I was used to. It was like being born again into a new world where I would have to learn everything over again in a different way, except for motor skills. Finally, Summer appeared through the crowds of people walking around the overpass wearing a white dress, along with Candy and her younger sister Angel, who was about as quiet as she was. Summer said hello to me, but then quickly moved past me to talk to Jackie and Nathan. I thought she was supposed to be interested in me, so why did she treat me like a passerby? I knew I shouldn't have come to meet her again after she said she didn't love me! I thought to myself. But by this point, attempting to flee the situation would have been as possible as jumping out of quicksand when it was already up to my neck. They were the only friends who I could rely on in the whole country, so it would have been very foolish to try to go anywhere else for help. Nathan noticed the frustration on my face as we began to walk down the stairs of the overpass to a KFC that was on Changjiang Road less than one block away. Summer, Candy, and Angel walked ahead of us, so Nathan took a moment to comment on my appearance. "You're looking kind of cold, Andrew. Are you al lright?" he asked. It obviously had nothing to do with the temperature since it was a warm summer night. I didn't want to see her again, and now I know why. She hardly said anything to me. "But do you think she likes me?" I asked. "Well, she's all dressed up tonight. She doesn't usually dress like that," he said. That made me feel a little more confident, like she wanted to look nice for me, but it didn't take away from the feeling that I was heading for an emotional roller-coaster ride of insecurities. |
| China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling Escape from Xuan Cheng (A continuing narration of author's experiences in China while teaching English in 2005-2006) |
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