Strange Days

Now that my laduzi has dried up for a bit, it seems Shenzhen's weather is seeking to make up for it. Yesterday and today have both been cold and drizzly--bleak miserable days. On the bright side, I have the days off, so I have all the time I want to enjoy the dripping dampness.

Nersey and Jia left to visit the States Tuesday afternoon and apparently arrived safely yesterday morning around ten or so, I think. I can't be entirely sure, because my informant in this is Panda, Jia's mother, who speaks only a few words of English. She called at ten yesterday morning (presumably after hearing from Nersey and Jia) told me, "Tamen dao Meiguo le" (They arrived in America), and then asked me a bunch of questions I didn't understand.

Ten minutes later, I got a call from Zhongguoren* (an American friend in Bao'an, whose Chinese is much better than mine). "I just got a call from Panda," he said, "She says Nersey and Jia made it to America okay, and--I'm not sure I'm hearing this right--I think she wants to give you a sweater, or maybe go shopping or something." I asked him to call Panda back and tell her I'd stop by the apartment around two in the afternoon, figuring it'd be easier to figure out what she wanted to do mian-dui-mian (face-to-face).

When I got there, she first wanted to go to a gongyuan (park) to zuo yundong (do some exercise), but because of the rain, we settled on going to shop for yarn instead. Apparently, the invitation had been for her to teach me zhi mao yi (knitting), something I'd said would be interesting to learn. The actual skill probably isn't that difficult--I'm doing what's probably a ridiculously simple style of knitting, I'm sure--but learning a craft in a second language isn't the easiest thing in the world; "Bu dui" and "Yi dian bu dui" are certainly good hints that I've messed something up, but they aren't exactly helpful for figuring out how to fix a mistake. I got to practice a lot of Chinese during the lesson, though, so even if my knitting never improves, at least my listening will.

During my lesson, I had a brief moment of seeing myself from the outside: sitting in an apartment with Chinese music and a looped pre-recorded prayer playing in the background, drinking tea, eating oranges and taking knitting lessons from a friend's Chinese mother-in-law. Had you asked me before I first came to China what my expectations were, this scene wouldn't have been the first I'd mention. I didn't really have many expectations about China at all, except that I'd probably be taller than most people (check) and that I wouldn't understand the language (check). If I'd imagined myself learning any special skills while here, it maybe would have been a Chinese style of painting or pottery--something that struck me as a specifically Chinese version of something I could already do. Maybe this is an advantage to not having any expectations for a place before you move there; whatever I wind up doing with my time, it rarely seems that strange.

I've picked up at least one bit of knitting Chinese, though I'm not yet sure about the exact Pinyin: "Da liang zhi" (Hit two somethings). Maybe this is equivalent to "purl two" in English, though I'm not really sure just what "purl two" means anyway. Maybe I'll do a blog entry of Chinese knitting instructions in the future, if I get the hang of it this afternoon (Yep, I'm using my other day off for another knitting lesson).

*When asked, "Ni shi naguoren?" (What's your nationality?) this friend usually replies, "Wo shi Zhonguoren" (I'm Chinese), hence the name.

Another story that didn't seem that strange at the time follows:

Flashback: Bu Hui Pa Shan, Part One
Originally posted: 07:05, 2007-11-20

So it would have been around this time last year that I finally managed to get to the top of a mountain near my old neighborhood, Tao Yuan Ju in Bao'an. Earlier, I'd tried climbing the same mountain and failed. To be more accurate, I'd failed to get to the mountain, though I'd certainly tried for a while.

On my first attempt to climb it, I'd set off walking with an umbrella and a phrasebook. Mountains in Shenzhen aren't particularly tall, so I knew the mountain I wanted to climb couldn't be that far away. (The main reason I wanted to climb that specific mountain was that it had a peculiar building on top--something with what seemed to be a spire; that and the fact that the mountain was right in the background as you walked to RenRenLe made it a very interesting mountain at the time.) The problem, it turned out, wasn't the distance between the mountain and I, but the terrain between the mountain and I. My first hour took me on a long detour along a road that rounded what should have been a small foothill in the way, and when the foothill was past, a highway took its place. (No matter how daring I might be in some circumstances, trying to cross a highway full of Chinese drivers just isn't something I can summon the courage for.) By the time an hour and a half had passed, I had gone from the relatively rural highwayside into another developed area (still part of Bao'an) and had figured out I was walking in the wrong direction, as the mountain in front of me no longer had an interesting building on top.

I walked back toward home, then cut through a small factory yard, just as shift was apparently changing, and walked alongside a few hundred quite surprised workers wearing blue jeans and the standard blue smocks of Bao'an factory workers until a little dirt path appeared on my left, apparently heading directly for the mountain I wanted. I followed the path, and it soon began to run between a wall and an enormous gutter. Above the wall, I could spot buildings reaching up, and I figured I was walking beneath the developed area I'd been trying to avoid. I crossed the gutter, using a few stairs and a decidedly shaky plank, and headed across a small field. Within a few minutes, I was walking alongside another highway, apparently in the direction of the correct mountain. Now and then, I passed what must have originally been the beginnings of an overpass project--huge concrete supports with rusted steel rebar sticking out of the tops, each covered in months or years' worth of clinging ivy, some showing even the first saplings of small, vertical forests at the tops. The highway wound about until I was no longer walking in the right direction, and I took the first right-hand path I came to.

This path wound sharply up a hill, passing two parallel rows of trees. Farmers, normally shirtless and shoeless, dressed only in faded khakis with the legs rolled up at the cuffs, slept between the trees. (My first attempt on the mountain had been in early October.) One of them slept quite soundly beside a moulted snake skin about one and a half feet long. Further along the path, I started to pass a few homes--cheap, thrown-together plywood affairs--and thought how odd it was to see this just an hour's walk (for those who knew the way) from the over-development of my neighborhood.

Soon I was passing through fields of what looked like bai cai (a type of cabbage) and, glancing back to see whether I could spot home, realized I was doing so with a following of about twenty Chinese farmers. When I stopped to look back, they also stopped and made an effort of appearing to be examining the ground or the sky or their hands or eachother's hands. I walked on again, stopped, looked back; again, none of them were moving, all carefully examining something other than me, though the distance between us stayed the same. They followed me for about half an hour (and fairly enough, I figured, since I had to be walking through their farm), as the path took me out of the fields and into a small shanty town where dogs slept at the ends of their chains and mostly naked children blinked back at me from inside their little plywood shacks. The path went around a corner, and I found myself looking at a flock of chickens--big chickens,moving chickens--that were walking the opposite way down the same path as I. I turned, went back around the corner and found myself looking at a much-swelled crowd of Chinese all desperately trying to look disinterested. I figured that between the Chinese and the chickens, the Chinese would be the most likely to move, so I stalked back the way I had come, using one of the few Chinese things I knew at the time over and over: "Ni hao. Ni hao. Ni hao."

All the Chinese parted, slowly, and I walked as quickly as possible back to the highway and, from there, back to the wall I'd seen earlier. I climbed a set of stairs in the wall, up into a row of mechanical shops and outdoor pool stores, wandered around a bit and finally sat down in a restaurant and had two cold sodas, one after the other. I wandered through streets for a while until I found what seemed a promising highway, then followed that. About an hour later, I reached a road that seemed to go toward the mountain I wanted to climb and was grateful to see that it climbed upwards, since another foothill had since popped up in the way. It turned out to be the driveway for some college or other, and I got stopped by guards at the gate. I pantomimed walking for them, pointed at the mountain I wanted to get to and pulled out one of the other phrases I knew: "Hao bu hao?" They looked at eachother, talked a bit, shrugged and waved me through.

I followed a little road up through the campus and past a construction site, where workers called, "Hay-loo," at me from six stories of bamboo scaffolding. Maybe ten minutes later, the road turned to a gravel path skirting the side of some sort of concrete reservoir full of algaed water. I walked around to where a little pagoda looked out over the school's campus. Steps led upward and I followed them. They led to a narrow path about one hundred feet above the reservoir; one one side, a steep cliff dropped toward the black and green water; on the other side; a steep cliff dropped down further than I wanted to see: the path was about two feet wide and covered by foot-high grass and weeds. I thought about the snake skin I'd seen earlier and decided, "Wo bu hui pa shan." ("I can't climb the mountain.") I walked back the way I'd come, decided I was just too tired to try another approach, and finally managed to get a ride to RenRenLe on the back of a motorscooter for "Twenty money," as the driver said.By the time I'd walked home from RenRenLe, I'd managed to sweat through not only my shirt, but my jeans as well. I felt thoroughly miserable, disappointed and smelly, so I took a shower and went to bed for a few hours. I gave up on the mountain for about a month.

Flashback: Bu Hui Pa Shan, Part Two
Originally posted: 12:33, 2007-11-29

My first attempt to climb the RenRenLe mountain involved being followed by a flock of Chinese, chased by a flock of chickens, and finally giving up when faced with the prospect of walking a narrow ledge just to try to reach the mountain. I'd made this first attempt in maybe mid-October, and I largely put the idea of climbing it out of my head for a good month.

Then in the middle of November (or thereabouts) my Senior Teacher from last year and I wound up eating with a group of Chinese. One of the Chinese took a shine to me when he heard that I liked climbing mountains. (It's not so much that I actually enjoy climbing mountains, actually, as that there just isn't much to do in Shenzhen, and that it's nice to get above the pollution now and then.) He told me I had to come to his hometown sometime, since there were beautiful mountains there, not scrawny, littered little mountains like the ones here. I told (with my Senior Teacher translating) the story about my first attempt on RenRenLeShan, and the Chinese all laughed. I got a decent translation of some traditional Chinese wisdom: "The mountain looks near, but it's actually far away." I pointed out that it wasn't the distance to the mountain itself that was the problem, but all the roads, buildings and general confusion filling the distance that made for a problem: the labyrinthine approach was what had defeated me.
By the end of the meal, the Senior Teacher was explaining to them that I had a personal grudge against this one mountain and would climb any mountain once I'd gotten up this particular mountain. (Apparently the translation was closer to "This little mountain has made him angry. He wants to shame it first, then he'll look at worthwhile mountains.") The Chinese at the table swore to help me find the shang shan (the way up the mountain)--the next morning, at 7:00 am.

I woke up bright and early the next day and loafed down to the Tao Yuan Ju gate, expecting to wait around for a while before realizing no one was coming. The night before, the Chinese had been drinking baijiu (a clear, horrible-smelling alcohol that even Chinese don't seem to enjoy), and making promises while drinking baijiu, only to break them later, is something of a national pastime here. To my surprise, not only had everyone from the dinner shown up, they'd brought a driver with them, and they'd made arrangements with an English-speaker to help me clarify just which mountain it was that had angered me so.

After a short conversation over the phone, the driver took me, alone, to the mountain's main road. (My new friends were happy to help me get to the mountain, but actually climbing it after a night of baijiu was apparently going too far.) It was about a ten-minute drive, and it turned out I would have able to walk it quite easily had I skirted the mountain to the left instead of to the right. As it was, I later learned while going to climb Pheonix Mountain that I'd almost circled the mountain entirely in my first attempt--had I walked another ten minutes the first time, I would have found the right road. Live and learn.

At the foot of the mountain, there was some confusion over just what I wanted. The driver had come fully prepared to drive me to the top of the mountain, and it took a lot of talking over the telephone to get it across that I actually wanted to climb it. Since the shang shan was a road instead of stairs, the idea seemed ridiculous both to the driver and to my translator. I finally got the point across, and the driver left me on a little gravel road running up from a college campus through an odd sort of little village.

Along the sides of the road, two rows of houses had been haphazardly thrown up--better constructed than those I'd seen on my first attempt, but ragged nonetheless. Here, what might qualify as peasants were tending to huge stacks of some unidentifiable product (little tubes of some dry white substance flecked with black, each about two feet long and four inches thick, stacked in crosswise layers.) The stacks looked like orderly piles of dried bird feces. I got the usual gawking as I wandered past, including the silent children gaping from doorways, but here the children were at least clothed, albeit in split-crotch pants.

The road wound up and up in a series of switchbacks, providing for a more pleasant walk than I'd anticipated. One moment, I'd be walking along with a pleasant view of where I'd walked from, and only ten minutes later, I'd be crossing the shoulder of the mountain, with a view of the areas I'd gotten lost in a month before spreading out before me. I saw only one other person on the way up: an older man digging a hole in the middle of the road for no reason I could figure out, his bicycle leaning against a tree that angled out from the road over a drop of a few hundred feet. The best view I saw along the way was of Tao Yuan Ju itself, from a sizable enough height that I could only pick it out by finding my school's campus and then the RenRenLe, guessing at where my apartment sat in between the two. In a little over an hour's climbing, I was near enough the top, that I could see clearly the little spire-like object that had raised my curiosity about the mountain in the first place was some sort of radio antenna.

Another half and hour later, I rounded a turn and ran smack dab into a gate about four feet high. Beyond it was a wide courtyard with at least two peaceful carved lions squatting in it. I decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go much further, but was still half-tempted to hop the gate just to see what I could see (especially since one side of the courtyard had been cleared of trees, making, I was sure, for a wonderful view of my neighborhood). The thing that discouraged me from doing so was the large lump of brown fur lying motionless in the middle of the courtyard.

When I first noticed it, I thought it was something dead--like an elk or an especially large deer. I sat and wondered for a while just what sort of animal China had that might look like this, then it occurred to me that a place where elk (or their equivalent) might drop dead in the courtyard maybe wasn't a place I wanted to be. I turned back down the gravel road, figuring I'd at least climbed as far as was sensible and that I could now count the mountain suitably conquered.

I got about twenty feet before I heard the bark. I looked back, and the thing I'd taken for a dead elk was on its feet, charging toward the gate--not an elk at all, but the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life. I turned back down the road and started walking a little faster, then slowed back down, thinking, "Well, there's a big gate behind me; good thing I didn't jump it, or he'd be on me." I turned back to gloat a little and saw the dog jumping over the gate as though it were only four inches tall. I started walking faster.

The dog kept up a steady barking: "Won ... won ... won ... won," in Chinese fashion, and I relaxed a little, since the sounds weren't getting much closer. Then the barking picked up--"Won, won, won, won, won, won," as more voices joined in. I chanced a glance back, only to see that it was now five dogs following me instead of just one, and the latecomers were clearly more ambitious than the first. They were actually running.

I walked as fast as I dared, figuring that breaking into a run would trigger some latent hunting instinct in them, and stuck the tip of my umbrella out behind me, hoping they'd attack that before me. They pulled up close behind me, alternating between barking and snarling, and I thought, "My epitaph is going to read, 'Mauled by dogs in China, because he wanted to see the top of a mountain.' Either that, or my heart will give out first." My heart was pounding in my chest at this point, and since I was quickly getting below the pollution line again, my breath was getting rougher and rougher.

It took me about an hour and a half to get up the mountain and less than half of that to get down. The dogs finally gave up chasing me about two-thirds of the way down, but I didn't slow down or relax much until I'd reached the little village I'd passed on the way up. I didn't stop until I'd gotten back to the college campus, where I sat down for a while and tried to get my breath back. At a bus stop outside the campus gates, I ran into some students who hello-ed me and kept asking, "Ni hao ma?"

Embarrassed about my panting and sweating, I scraped together all the Chinese then at my disposal and put together a rough story: "Wo qu shang shan. Shang shan, da men. Wo bu qu. Wo qu xia shan, ting ruff ruff ruff. Yi ge da gou! Ruff, Ruff, Ruff. A, yi, er, san, si, wu ... wu da gou! Wo qu xia shan. [Here I pantomimed running with my heart pounding.]" (I go up mountain. Up mountain, big gate. I don't go. I go down mountain, hear, "Ruff, ruff, ruff." One, two, three, four, five ... five big dogs. I go down mountain.) It wasn't the most sophisticated translation, but to judge by the laughter, it got the point across.

Only one student responded in English: "You can't this the mountain." Then he started laughing again. When we piled into a mini-bus together for RenRenLe, they refused to let me pay my own fare. I guess the story (or just meeting a foreigner who'd been chased by dogs earlier in the day) had been worth five kuai.