| Jackie called several of the phone numbers that we found at American Pie, and one of them turned out to be useful. A man named Forrest Wang received Jackie's message and called back asking us to meet with him in a few days. He had some information about a teaching job that sounded promising. Jackie and Summer were very helpful in finding me a job. It seemed almost like they put their entire lives on hold, riding around downtown or into the outskirts by bus and by taxi with me looking for a school that would hire me. They were part of the original group of friends I made when I first came to China, and I was lucky enough to have met them at he beginning of my journey. As night came, and most of the people in the neighborhood settled down for the evening, Summer and I sat down in my hotel room and talked. She no longer wore the necklace I gave her, so that her parents wouldn't start asking her questions about it. I tried to put my arm around her to express my pure feelings for her, but she gently unhooked my arm from around her shoulder. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Because I will go to Korea soon and my parents don't want me to have boyfriend." She really knew how to bring out the most from my heart whether it was happiness, sadness, or frustration because of misunderstanding. She had become one of my greatest reasons for staying in China since I cancelled my plans to teach at the middle school in Anqing where the first summer camp took place, after all of Daler's dishonesty had come to the surface. While I was still in Xuan Cheng at the second summer camp, she wrote me an e-mail that I didn't receive until I already came back to Hefei to get away from Daler. In the e-mail, she said that she missed me and didn't know why I didn't want to come back to Hefei to visit her. She didn't know I wanted to stay away from her after she told me she didn't love me. After reading that message from her, I wanted to continue to be a part of her life, but now what reason did I have to stay in China? After thinking for a moment, I regretfully said to her, "Maybe I should just go back to America and live the life I was probably supposed to live anyways." She looked at me and stared deeply into my eyes as though she was trying to remember exactly what my face looked like at that moment, or to find an answer to a silent question she had. She gave me a little smile, but the situation was too serious for me to smile back. Then she looked up at the ceiling, while her smile quickly faded from her face, and transformed into a look of sorrow. She stood up without looking at me, and then quickly ran out the door of my hotel room. I thought she just needed a moment to dry her tears in the W.C. of the hotel a few doors down, but then I realized that she wasn't coming back. I ran out onto the balcony of the hotel in time to see her come back around the corner and go straight back into my hotel room. "I forgot my purse," she said as she went past me while trying to avoid eye contact. When she came back out and prepared to leave me forever, I put my hand out in front of her and said, "Wait!" She stopped in front of me to hear what I had to say while keeping her head down. "I just wanted to know what you thought about my decision to go back to America. Why are you running away from me?" As a few tears squeezed out of her eyes, she said to me, "I don't want you to go back to America." Just at that moment, Rae appeared from out of the darkness like a mischievous child and asked, "What are you two doing?" She might have been listening in on our conversations because my room was in the back of the hotel in front of a small back alley across from where Rae's apartment room was two floors higher, and I left the door wide open. I asked Rae if we could have a few minutes to talk, but Summer shook her head at me. She didn't want anyone to know anything of her feelings about me. She was even afraid to hug me in public because she thought one of her father's friends would see us and tell her father about it. I surely would not be able to see her again if that happened. Hugging is not such a common thing in China, and is usually done only by couples in private places. The three of us walked down the street towards Changjiang Road, where there was a bus stop in front of Fengle International Hotel. Summer had to go home before it got too late, but I was afraid to leave her in her current emotional state. There was nothing else I could do at that moment, so Rae and I walked halfway down the street with Summer, and stood side by side in the middle of the road as we watched her disappear from our sights out onto Changjiang Road, where the silence of the neighborhood was met by honking traffic going back and forth across the small portion of Changjiang Road that was visible between small buildings on either side of the road like a television screen. I didn't know if she would recover from what I said to her, and it weighed heavily on my heart that night. The next morning, I woke up early to the sound of someone knocking on my hotel door. I opened up the door, but didn't immediately see anyone. Then someone surprised me from the side. It was Summer, and she looked happy again, as though nothing tragic happened last night. I invited her into my room and she discussed with me the plan for the day. She told me that Candy's parents wanted someone to come to their home and teach English to Candy and her sister Angel. She volunteered me to teach them later in the day, and I accepted the offer without hesitation. I already knew Candy and Angel, and was glad to be able to help them with their English. Before we went off to have breakfast at one of the restaurants underneath the hotel, Summer gave me a little sign that her parents' wishes were not completely shared by her about not having a boyfriend. Before I could reciprocate, Summer jumped up quickly to her feet and said "OK. Time to go eat!" Candy and her family lived in the deep south of Hefei. By taking bus 801 from the central bus station at San Xiao Kou on Jingzhai Road, it took nearly an hour to reach. Candy's family lived on the campus of Summer's old university. The university was somewhere near the edge of the city where there aren't many people, and three-wheeler carriage taxis and small electric cars can be seen driving around the lowly populated streets that were large and wide, and seemed to stretch out into forever. The electric cars can only be used in areas with a low level of traffic because the slow moving vehicles would end up becoming a traffic hazard to the lawless and speedy chaos of Hefei's honking taxi hordes. Candy's mother was actually Summer's old Korean teacher who had been living in Hefei for at least one year. That is why Summer and Candy were already so friendly with each other when I first met them at the Anqing summer camp. Rae was also in Summer's Korean class, and that is how they became acquaintances. Before entering through the gates of the university, Summer had to check in with the security guards at the front watch station. She wrote down both of our names and other information for them on a piece of paper. My name was the only thing on the whole paper I could recognize. We walked through the quiet campus where there were very few people walking around and relaxing on cement benches next to goldfish ponds spread around the campus. There were rows of bushes and small trees that lined many of the sidewalks that weaved like a masterpiece around a large central building that was tall and wide, but thin, with many large windows covering the front. We found Candy's family's dorm somewhere near the back of the campus, and had to check in again with some people who were in charge of dorm activity. Once we came up to their room, Candy's mom opened the door with such a wide and cheery smile as though she had nothing but positives inside of her, and her eyes looked like they were completely closed because her smile was so big. She wasn't very young, but she was agile and had a youthful energy about her. Candy's father stood behind her and nodded his head with a reserved smile on his face as I was introduced to him. Neither of them could speak English, but they welcomed me into their home as though we could understand each other perfectly. The dorm was quite large and suitable for a teacher's family. There were three large bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a small living room in the center of it all. On the wall was a map of the world, and Summer pointed to it and said, "I want to have a job so I can go here, and here, and here," pointing to every place on the map. It was reflective of her curiosity, expansive mind, and restless nature. In some ways I was the same as her, but I don't need to go everywhere at once. Summer and I taught Candy and Angel separately and alternated between the two of them using English study books their parents had bought for them. Also, I would teach them together using a small erasable whiteboard and an assortment of colorful permanent markers, drawing pictures and writing words with a different topic every time I would come to teach them. They would copy everything I taught them into their notebooks and repeat many of the new vocabulary words. This was my first teaching job in Hefei, and Candy's parents paid me kindly each week. Summer and I would teach them for two hours with two five-minute breaks until about 8:00 every Saturday night. We would then take the bus all the way back to the center of the city where everything suddenly became much busier. While traveling on the bus back to the center of the city, Summer tried desperately to suppress any affection towards me because she did not want to go against her parents' wishes, but since we spent so much time together, she couldn't hold out for very long. At San Xiao Kou, there were always large crowds of people waiting at each of the four bus stops with seemingly unlimited number of people traveling around the circular overpass up until the buses stopped running around 11 p.m., and several taxis would be waiting patiently for when their services would be required. The city was usually very busy with activity until around that time. After a while, Summer started letting me take the bus alone out of San Xiao Kou -- when she thought I no longer needed a guide -- up a small curving hill past a twin-tower bank with green metallic peaks, and other medium sized office buildings on Changjiang Road. Most of the buildings in Hefei were either white or varying shades of gray and made from concrete and plaster, except most of the tallest buildings that were always uniquely and artistically styled. About one out of 10 buildings or less would be colored. But there were many colorful signs hanging just above the first floor on many of the buildings, and also the many colorful neon lights at nighttime. Some buildings had stairways that strectched across as many as five or six entrances to different stores without any divider between them that were made of either old concrete, or marble that became extremely slippery when it rained or snowed. Summer taught me the name of the bus stop on Changjiang Road closest to my hotel, Sheng Nong Jing Xiao, but I had a difficult time with Chinese words because they were so different than anything I had ever learned before. At least there was an automated voice recording on each bus that would call each stop just as we were arriving, though it didn't help much because it always sounded a bit fuzzy. I would have to keep a watchful eye out for the towering Fengle International Hotel as it appeared on the left hand side of the road lit up against the dark sky, miles away from the center of the city, to know I should get off at the next bus stop. The bus stops on the main streets were usually on a thin elevated strip of concrete, with small lighted billboards standing in the middle that had a small roof above them to protect people from the rain that people tried to squeeze onto in between the road and a separate bike lane. The bike lane was big enough to fit a car, and sometimes cars would be driving down the bike lanes. People with bikes, or electrically powered motor scooters with horns that sounded light as a note from a recorder, and sometimes pedestrians, would be traveling down the bike lanes in clusters. Crossing over the bike lanes could be as hazardous as crossing the regular streets, and sometimes more. The day came when we were supposed to meet with Forrest Wang to talk about teaching at a school in Hefei. Jackie, Summer, and I went to meet him on Changjiang Road a couple of miles west of the downtown area. Summer greeted him very positively, and later told me that Forrest Wang was her old math teacher whom she hadn't seen for five years. Mr. Wang was a middle-aged man who was very friendly and had a slightly reserved manner. Behind his glasses, he possessed the sharp eyes of a clever man who wouldn't ever allow himself to be deceived by anyone. He had already talked to the boss of a teaching company called Wongas, which was originally based in Canada, and had offices in Guangzhou, one of the major cities in the south near Hong Kong, and a new office that had just opened up in Hefei. Mr. Wang took the three of us into a residential area called Hu Po Shan Zhuang just down the street from where we met him. The area was as big as three square miles, and was full of five-story apartment buildings. There was one main road connecting to Changjiang Road that snaked through the apartments, small patches of forest, a couple of ponds, and the main areas in Hu Po. Hu Po sloped down gently from Changjiang Road, with at least five different entrances to get into Hu Po all around. Near the entrance on the main road, there were restaurants and small general stores on the left side that were downhill from the road in large concrete pits with stairs and concrete ramps leading down to reach them for deliveries. Immediately after the restaurants was a bridge that went over the main road on Anqing Road that went all the way through the Hu Po neighborhood into downtown. On the right, there were old wide concrete stairs that led up the steep hillside in between the apartment buildings to meet with Anqing Road. In the center of Hu Po, there was a small police station next to a chain of stores and small restaurants that had tables with small and colorful fragile plastic stools out front on the sidewalk for customers. The main road went north straight toward the police station, and then curved sharply to the east, going past all of the stores and restaurants that were on that section of road on the right side of the police station. Mr. Wang led us through an entrance with walls on either side encompassing many apartments and a central parking lot that was intersected by different walkways going in between the apartment complexes on the left side of the police station. He led us through the walkways to the apartment building that I was going to live in once I joined the company. Two or three apartment buildings would be attached to each other side by side with no division in between them. Each segment of apartment buildings had its own entrance, and there were only two rooms on each floor with a staircase spiraling up in between them and never any elevators. My room was on the third floor of an apartment very close to the police station. Mr. Wang gave us a quick tour of my new apartment, and then told us that we should go to one of the primary schools to meet the boss of Wongas. |
| China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling She loves me not; she loves me ... |
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