| west of Shanghai. After the summer program ended, Gramling, through the assistance of friends he had met that summer, landed a job teaching English to primary school -- the equivalent to elementary school -- and middle school students in the city of Hefei, a "small" city, by Chinese standards, of about 1.5 million people. We had a "father-son" reunion in Shanghai in January 2006. This is his story and observations about adapting to China. At first, Gramling admitted, he was like a fish out of water. "It isn't easy picking up and moving to a country by yourself where you know hardly anything about it," Gramling observed. "As I grew up in the United States, history didn't focus too much on China and its early beginnings and even what's going on in present-day China. I didn't know what to expect when I came here. So I went off into something I knew nothing about and have had to slowly, over time, work that "blob of clay" and chisel something out of it that I can recognize. I've had to orient my mind a certain way to function in Hefei. At the beginning, I was walking around, stumbling, crashing into people, and not knowing how to cross the street even. Now, I'm right with everyone else. I can't speak with everyone, but I can move with everyone else though." Gramling lived in a cramped apartment that was provided by his employer, with a living room no bigger than a hotel room, two bedrooms that were much smaller, and a kitchen. His apartment is on the fourth floor of a six-floor building, which has similarities to Western architecture, but definitely isn't Western. He has a space behind his apartment to hang his clothes after he has washed them -- no one uses dryers, he said. And although he and his roommate have a kitchen, it gets little use. "We eat out all the time," Gramling admitted. "It's much quicker than trying to make a meal by yourself. Plus, I don't know much about cooking food in China. It would probably turn out nasty and not something I would want to eat. I love the local cuisine." Gramling teaches in a school that is housed in a four-story building with a courtyard in the middle and walkways outside the classrooms. The students must go outside to get from class to class. Gramling admits that it's been difficult teaching English to the students when he knows very little Chinese. He has a translator present in the classroom with him -- and a monitor to help him keep the class disciplined for there are perhaps 40 students in his class. "If I have a good enough rapport with the students, I don't need a translator, so they can ask me questions and I can tell them what they need to know," Gramling said. "With primary school students, we always need a translator. Very often, I'll ask the students if they understand and they say yes. Then the translator asks them and then they say no. So, it is very necessary for the young people to have a translator or they will hardly learn anything." Over the course of several months, Gramling has developed a special rapport with his students. "I love teaching my middle school students," Gramling said. "They will laugh with me and talk to me outside of class. They make me feel like I'm a part of the class and not just the teacher and they are the students. We're all friends together. When students are acting up, the class monitor punishes them. They'll smile at me and they know I want to smile back, but I try not to encourage their behavior because I know it is difficult being class monitor. So the biggest joy has been the friendliness I have received from many people. It will be very difficult to leave China. I want to see what happens to my students after I leave. I'm sure someone else will take care of them, but I have a personal interest in what happens to them, knowing I probably won't ever see them again." Hefei, in Gramling's opinion, is a secondary city, much plainer than Shanghai or Beijing. "I recently heard that there were more like 4-5 million people who live there," Gramling said about Hefei. "It's really hard to tell. Every time you go outside, the streets are crowded. I don't quite know how big the city is because I haven't seen every part of it. There's a large downtown with tall buildings, but the city is also spread out pretty far. It has buildings that are probably as large as a medium American city like St. Louis. I think the downtown is pretty big, but it isn't a downtown like Chicago where you know exactly when you are in the downtown and when you aren't. The tall buildings are more spread out than that. The downtown sort of dissolves into the rest of the city. Its borders aren't so clearly defined." Gramling has noticed a blend between the traditional and contemporary in Hefei. "It's not like one part of the city looks completely modern and then another looks completely traditional," Gramling observed. "You'll see modern buildings and then people wearing very traditional clothing. And you'll see people wearing business suits and fashionable clothing. Everything is acceptable like that. The only people who get looks are foreigners." "Hefei isn't as clean as Shanghai or Beijing," Gramling continued. "I've noticed in Hefei there are no rules about people spitting on the streets or even throwing trash on the streets, while in a bigger city like Shanghai, you'll get fined. People throw litter all over the place. You can see trash on most of the streets." Out on the streets, the interactions are a little different because not everyone has been exposed to westerners. "Most of the time people have curious looks on their faces when they see me," Gramling said. "'Who is this person?' There are many people in some of the smaller cities who have never seen a foreigner before. So when they see me, their eyes pop out of their heads because they don't know where I came from and why I am there. It's like a mystery to them. And then there are other people who seek out foreigners whenever they see them and speak English with them. They are used to the presence of foreigners. So you have both extremes." Another thing Gramling had to adjust to was the vehicular traffic, even if he was always a passenger of a pedestrian. "The drivers have to be very skilled and they are; otherwise there would be crashes everywhere you look," Gramling said about the chaotic traffic patterns. "I don't know if there are traffic rules or people just don't follow them, but they aren't following them, I can tell you that. When you cross the street, not only do you have to look both ways, but you have to look both ways the whole way across the street. Otherwise, someone will come out of nowhere and maybe hit you. Buses don't wait to get onto the street. They just come out in front of anyone. A car will be driving and the bus will just come out in front of them and they have to slow down, otherwise they will crash into the bus. It isn't orderly at all. There's no order to it, but the people still know what they are doing. I would say there are two rules. Don't get hit. And don't hit anyone if you are the driver. If you are a pedestrian, the only rule is don't get hit." While American and other western companies have penetrated relatively deeply into the commercial life of Shanghai and Beijing, the penetration in Hefei is a lot less. "I haven't seen a Starbucks in Hefei, but I have seen a few McDonalds scattered throughout the city," Gramling observed. "There's also a KFC. Those are the only Western restaurants I've seen in that city. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are all over the place. They are as common as you would see them in America. Western looking advertising isn't extremely common. I think especially with clothing stores, there is Western influence in them. You can see people from other cultures dressed in the clothes they are selling, perhaps to show they are from a different place and to create an appeal for those clothes because they represent something different." Gramling noted that a meal at McDonalds is as expensive as a meal in a high class Chinese restaurant. So Gramling has stuck to the small restaurants in close proximity to his apartment. And he has developed a rapport with the restaurant owners; it's kind of like "Cheers" where everyone knows your name. "I stick to a few places where I have good relations with the people who work there," Gramling said. "They usually know what I want before I say it. But I say it anyway just so they know. I try to speak as much Chinese as possible and they try to speak English too. They know my name and I know theirs. We laugh sometimes because of the way I sometimes pronounce words. But that's okay, I laugh at their pronunciation too. It's not a hateful thing. We just have a good time because we realize that we don't know much about each other's languages. There's a mutual respect there." While Gramling admits that there were times when he just wanted to pack up and leave China because he felt isolated from the people he loves in the U.S., he has also begun to establish some roots in Hefei. "Some of the genuine friendships have been great," Gramling said. "Some people have been very kind to me, kinder to me than many people in America have been to me. You know it's real because of what you see on their faces and how they make you feel. They aren't just acting considerate. They are happy people with families and they care about their families and they care about their customers. I make friendships with people whom I can't even talk to. I can't say very much to them, but we still enjoy each other's presence. The prospect of never seeing my closest friends ever again is also a tough thing to think about. So I try not thinking about it, but it's always in the corner of my mind." Since the interview took place in Shanghai, Gramling has put off saying good-bye to China. He made the decision to stay another year. |
| A story about living and adjusting to life in China An American in Hefei by Jonathan Gramling |
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| Andrew Gramling (right), the son of the author of this article, was looking for a change in direction in his life in May 2005. Through a series of coincidences or providence, he entered a summer program that recruited Americans to teach conversational English in Chinese summer camps. Gramling ended up at a summer camp in Anhui province, about eight hours by train |
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