I spent most of my free time in the apartment exercising and trying to do handstand pushups. I was always trying to find new
ways to improve the great machine they call the human body. I would do them until my arms were too tired to support my body,
because what else was I going to do in a city that I had just moved to and had no friends? It wasn’t like I could just go to the
bookstore and buy an interesting book. They had several bookstores called Xinhua (sheen hwahh) Bookstore, but the only books in
English they had seemed to be English study books and not anything I was interested in reading. I also couldn’t turn on the radio
and listen to my favorite songs for obvious reasons. I didn’t know enough Chinese yet to be able to appreciate their songs, and the
songs I did hear seemed to lack the kind of emotion of inspiration. At least with exercise, I could stay busy enough to keep from
realizing how little there was to do.
        I had to find an Internet bar so I could at least communicate with my family and friends and let them know I was alright. Not far
from my apartment up Gucheng Lu, I came to a major street where on the corner I saw some interesting lights that looked like DNA
strands. I’m sure I looked a bit out of place as I looked from shop to shop trying to find an internet bar. There were some taller
buildings among the smaller ones in this area, mostly apartments but also some offices. I wasn’t totally out of place since I had
already lived in China for more than a year, but it still felt a little bit strange. I came to another intersection after walking up the busy
street for a few minutes where there was a structure made of cement that almost looked like a bridge, but it didn’t cross over
anything. It just went up and down at the corner, and at the height of it, there were entrances to some small and old looking shops.
Perhaps there was a small hill that the buildings were built on there that made it necessary to build that ramp to reach them. The
intersecting street was called Sixian Lu (Sih Shin Loo), and I found an Internet bar about halfway down the block. The place was
run by young people around college age, as is typical of those places. I wasn’t sure if they were working part time and also going
to school or not, but I guessed they were working full time because of their low English level since knowing English well is a
requirement to go to college. The place was a bit dirty and broke-down, but at least it served its purpose. I always had my guard up
in this place because some people told me the Internet bar is not such a safe place. I finally reestablished contact with the outside
world.
        In the beginning, Joyce accompanied me several times to a small restaurant on Gucheng Lu. It was a noodle restaurant that
serves what they call mi fan (mee fun), or rice noodles. It was a bit spicy, just how I like it, and I would usually order them with a
hard-boiled egg inside. After eating the noodles, we would drink the soup that filled up about one-third of the total volume of the
bowl. The soup was oily and red because of the hot spices, and sometimes it burned the throat a little on the way down. Some
people could be seen sweating and using napkins to wipe the sweat and tears from their faces. The man working the counter got to
know my face after I came to the restaurant a couple times and always gave me a friendly nod when I came in. I also went to the
restaurant “Best Food”, the first restaurant I ate at in Nanning which was a few doors down from the noodle restaurant on Gucheng
Lu and tried to order food there sometimes. There was one girl that would always try to talk to me and then laugh when she realized
I wasn’t getting a word of what she was saying. Sometimes a young man would come from behind the counter and say, “Can I help
you?”, and then I would try to tell him what I wanted, which made life much easier for me. Sometimes there is no one who could
help.
        One day during our lunch break, my new colleague Jamie invited me to Pizza Hut with a couple of her friends that were going
to meet up with her there. This Pizza Hut was located on the corner of the Minzu Da Dao and Gucheng Lu intersection diagonally
across from Tai An building in a large shopping complex called Dream Island, or Meng Zi Dao (mung zih dow). Joyce once took me
shopping there. On the first floor of the building were many beauty products for women in a large area where many serious-looking
women stood around ready to assist customers. Their attire reminded me of what a stewardess on an airplane would wear. They
had about seven floors with many clothes and shoe stores and had escalators going up the whole way. Also there was an
underground supermarket there. On the first floor was the Pizza Hut. Inside of Pizza Hut, I met Jamie’s two friends. They were a bit
older businessmen in their late 30’s or early 40’s. One of them had the English name Steven, and could speak English, but the
other could not. Steven had an interesting way of expressing himself. He reminded me of a fashion designer the way he would use
his hands when speaking and also the way he spoke, but he had a little more meat on his bones than those guys usually do. He
had very big eyes, or maybe just his glasses made them look big. He usually had a large and toothy smile on his face like a shark,
but a friendly shark (if they could be that way). Steven worked for an electric company somewhere in the city and was once taught
English by Jamie, which is how they got acquainted.
       We ordered two pizzas, and also Steven ordered a salad which he could make himself from the buffet they had there, but
people can only make one trip. Steven spent almost a half hour stacking up vegetables in his bowl intricately to get his money’s
worth and then returned to our table. I couldn’t believe how much time he spent doing that. It looked like he was trying to build a
building. While we were talking and eating our lunch, Jamie said to Steven, “Can you please pass me a nappy?”, and then pointed
to a napkin on the table. I said to Jamie, “Nappy??”. “Yes, that’s what we call it in Australia”, she replied. “Oh. In my country,
nappy means something else. It’s when you try to comb your hair and the comb gets stuck like this!”, I said as I made the action of
getting a comb stuck in my hair. Then out of nowhere, Steven goes, “Suicide!”, and makes an action of pointing a gun to his head
and shooting himself. “What??? What are you talking about?”, I asked. “Nappy is suicide!”, he said as he repeated the action of
shooting himself. And then I realized he thought when I was making the action of getting the comb stuck in my hair that he thought I
was shooting myself in the head. I explained everything to Jamie and she translated it for him. “Oh oh oh! Sorry!”, he said. Then we
all started laughing. Clearly there are many misunderstandings that can be made between people of different countries because of
the language. Some are funny and others are not so funny. It’s obvious I still had much to learn about China, and China also had
much to learn about me, at least the portion of China that actually cared about it. Each day brought me greater awareness about the
place I lived in, and soon, hopefully, I would be able to function in this city without the help of others and know what the city was
truly about, or not so soon.
        I met several other colleagues of mine during my training days at Webster. One of them I met while he was sitting at the front
desk for some reason even though he had no work to do there. His name was also Jamie, and he was from England. He was tall
and slightly, but not disproportionally, heavy and he had reddish-brown hair that was a bit wild and spiky. He seemed like a very
agreeable person to me by my first impression of him.
        Another I met was a guy from the U.S. named Stanley. He wore glasses and was a bit older and his hair was starting to go
gray, but he always had his backpack on and looked like he was always ready for an adventure. In addition to teaching at Webster,
he also ran a restaurant somewhere in the city. His attitude was, “This is China! I can get away with whatever I want!” Some
foreigners came to the country thinking that since everything is backwards that they can take advantage of the people and
trespass against the law whenever they want, but that kind of behavior is bound to catch up with them at some point. Stanley also
seemed very agreeable, but almost too agreeable as though he was acting. Whenever people are too pleasing, it makes me
suspicious of them.
        Jamie from England told me about another person who worked for Webster from Arizona named Chad. He told me he was a
big guy who used to be in the Marines and once went to fight in Afghanistan. He also said he could curl 50 pound weights with one
arm. That was more than I was used to hearing about. I finally met him in the front lobby of Webster and was surprised at how
easygoing an ex-killing machine could be. Chad was a funny guy who was always making jokes whenever he could. Sometimes
he was funny without even trying to be. He did have an intensity in his eyes, though, that spoke of a warning to others who were
observant enough to recognize not to cross him.
        After work, or during free days, Chad, Jamie and I would go for walks through the city to find restaurants and other places of
interest. Walking through Nanning streets at night was quiet and relaxing while looking at medium-sized buildings that were nearly
empty after the workday. I always thought Chinese architecture was impressive. Each building has a different style, yet there are
some common themes that can be found occasionally. Jamie took us to a shop that sold cheesecakes, which was something very
unusual for a city the size of Nanning. Usually cities of that size only have Chinese style bakeries which are not typically up to
standards of the tastes of most foreigners. Nanning was a very modern-looking city that reminded me of nothing about old China.
When everything is new, it shows almost no signs of the history of the place. We also found a Brazilian barbecue restaurant which
was just like another one I had been to in Hefei with my old student Candy from Korea and her twin cousins a year and a half
earlier. That is a place for people who love meat, because they have many different kinds that the waiters keep circling around
with. Some of that salty, juicy and tender meat is quite mouth-watering!
        After several days, Jamie from England told me about a group of people that were training mixed martial arts in the city. I was
always interested in learning martial arts, and was a big fan of the UFC, so I asked Jamie where I could find those people and he
gave me contact information of one Chinese man named Adam. The connections in Nanning were beginning to form, and I was
looking forward to discovering what fighting was all about.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling

Slowly transitioning to Nanning