It's Oh So Quiet
written for the web
in China, June 4, 2009.
I woke up this morning with dried blood on my temple. It would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t stood and analyzed myself in the bathroom mirror. The color was so dark, I don't think it was mine. I rubbed my face with damp cloth and the stain disappeared. My tiny victory, still a hazy dream with a popping sound. I drink more coffee then set out the door.
Good morning, Baoding. I’ve been here for nine months and I still don’t know how to say that. With my headphones on, I gaze out the half-opened window of the shuttle bus, letting the air bat my face. It is cool and brisk, soon to be warded off by the growing heat of June. I must come to life in the next 20 minutes before show-time, and this is the best way to do it. The thing I love most about morning is the curiosity of what’s in store. Will today matter 20 years from now?
So far it appears normal. Cars are blaring their horns, bicycles are whistling, steam is rising from all the street food. So much dust. There are thousands of symbols on signs and buildings, all in Mandarin Chinese.
I arrived nine months ago in September, after a 12-hour sleepless flight. Representatives from the university were waiting for me at the Beijing airport. I rode in silence in the backseat of the black company Audi for the next two hours, staring out the window in a sleepy haze. None of it seemed real.
We stopped along the way to use a public toilet and I wandered inside, instantly feeling the weight of stares from strangers. I opened the stall, only to find the toilet was a porcelain hole in the floor, with a brazenly putrid odor protruding out of it. Instantly, I became weary that maybe I had entered the men’s room by accident, but was too afraid to draw any more attention. So I pulled down my pants and awkwardly popped a squat, hoping not to make a mess while reminding myself that piss contains mostly water.
Over time I’ve adjusted to squatting over holes. I’ve also learned to appreciate relieving myself outside if I can find a secluded spot, as not having some filthy device between me and Mother Nature is quite comforting. I don’t mind that astringent odor so much either, it choked me in the beginning. The smell is sharp, like sweet and rotting flowers amplified. It’s an intense reverberation of cooking spices seeping out everyone’s pores. Sometimes the scent is alluring when it’s warm and promises a right kick in the taste bud if you dare order food inside the restaurant it drifts from. Other times it’s repulsive, like in that public toilet on the way to Baoding, because it still smells as sweet when it comes out. The stench can swallow the air in a tightly packed bus or a taxi.
It doesn’t smell too strong here on the bus today. I continue to gaze at the passing street.
There are more pedestrians on campus. Many girls clench thermoses full of tea, and parasols to avoid being flawed with freckles. Boyfriends hold their girlfriends by the wrist, which might seem possessive except plenty of boys also carry her princess-pink purse in the other hand. Love, it’s all very cute and almost picture-perfect. Wo ai ni.
Mandarin Chinese. It’s fickle and obtuse. Over 100,000 characters construct and define the written language, and orally the tonal sounds prevail over the amount of words themselves. This intricate system of tones attaches a word with hundreds of different definitions. The words are all pretty basic and painfully similar, but the tonal sound has to be just right or the meaning changes completely. Makes eavesdropping virtually impossible. When I latch onto the sound of a new word, I hold it like a strand of hair for as long as I can, until the wind blows and it vanishes. I press them in a little notebook I keep with me, hoping they will stick to the pages and resonate in my mind. The first tone is straight forward and direct. The second tone is uplifting. I swing my head up with that tone, it’s a bit overextended but I don’t want any confusion. The third sounds like going over a hill, leading to the fourth. Short, sharp, and final, like the unlucky number four. ‘Death’ in Chinese, suh suh suh suh.
I get off the bus and make my way to the fourth building. Inside the hallway it is muggy and humid. Some students stand near classroom doors, puffing cigarettes. I open the door to my classroom and step inside. All 40 students turn in their chairs and eyeball me. Almost all of them wear glasses. I walk alongside the rows of desks, cautiously waving my hand ni hao. It’s a chance to scan the room and gauge what I’m dealing with. Who’s looking back at me in the eye, who’s awake or sleepy--body language means everything. I dig my arm inside my backpack for Thursday’s purple folder, making faces as though I’m heavily concentrated, like I might pull out a lamp instead. I glance up at them with a feigned look of surprise, like I forgot they were there. They snicker. With shy, curious faces. I can tell them apart now, was scared in the beginning I wouldn’t be able to.
They’ve offered me bits of their personalities over the past nine months. “Amy” raises her left eyebrow, taps her nose in a thinker’s pose and blinks a lot. It’s totally genuine, as though she has no idea she’s doing it. For me, gestures like these are great because they let me know when I’m going too fast or just totally off the mark. Her handwriting sways like an orchestra. “Pamela” always sits in the front, distancing herself from the other clusters of classmates. When someone is reading aloud, she watches them instead of following along the text. Then she looks at me, a signal she wants to be the next to read. She confided in a journal entry that she absolutely loves to read in English, whether it’s Harry Potter or Louisa May Alcott. One of the four boys is “Nico," who loves grunge music. He saved my life one morning back in October, when I took off my jacket and exposed Bjork’s face on the breast of my shirt. When he said that she’s not really allowed over here I started to panic, but he just found it rather amusing. I guess in hindsight that was dumb on my part.
I remember being 20, at school. It was the first two years of living away from home, I don't recall having to think about anything that much. Things just seemed to play out without any kinks. I had a lot to talk about, whether it was printed in the newspaper or spoken on air. I campaigned door-to-door with leaflets saying Vote for Al Gore! only to sit in a bar with friends and watch the election unfold on the big screen. I saw another disaster on television a year later, on a Tuesday, when my then-boyfriend ran into his room and woke me up on his birthday. “Tara, you gotta come see this shit.” The first tower dropped, then came the second. None of it seemed real, so I drove off to class completely unaware of how much things would change after that. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years, but I will never forget his birthday. It's engrained in my mind.
My temple itches and snaps me back to the present, to English class in Baoding. De ja vu maybe, I remember what bit me last night. One of those blood-thirsty mosquitoes that jolts my ear every night now that it's warmer. This one burst the bubble to my picture-perfect dream, and I smacked myself in the face. Took one for the team. I silenced it forever, I think.
It seems to have set the tone today. No one's marching outside on campus. No Chinese flags or banners are waving around, and no candlelight vigils are scheduled for the evening. No these colors won't run and freedom fries. No one is forcing me to remember or acknowledge anything from the past. Choosing to acknowledge it, even if I'm saying nothing at all, provides a sense of freedom I never experienced in my country.
Next month I will celebrate my 28th birthday, just a couple of days before the two-hour drive back to the Beijing airport. Then I’ll bid zai jin to China, the lover with cunning red lips and bad breath. Sweet, alluring and repulsive China. Full of sounds, yet oh so quiet. I know I will miss that smell of the sweet, rotting flowers.
And this group of students, my Thursday class? “Pass your letters to the front,” I say. Their last writing assignment before finals. The papers are soft and fragile like they’re made of wax.
I woke up this morning with dried blood on my temple. It would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t stood and analyzed myself in the bathroom mirror. The color was so dark, I don't think it was mine. I rubbed my face with damp cloth and the stain disappeared. My tiny victory, still a hazy dream with a popping sound. I drink more coffee then set out the door.
Good morning, Baoding. I’ve been here for nine months and I still don’t know how to say that. With my headphones on, I gaze out the half-opened window of the shuttle bus, letting the air bat my face. It is cool and brisk, soon to be warded off by the growing heat of June. I must come to life in the next 20 minutes before show-time, and this is the best way to do it. The thing I love most about morning is the curiosity of what’s in store. Will today matter 20 years from now?
So far it appears normal. Cars are blaring their horns, bicycles are whistling, steam is rising from all the street food. So much dust. There are thousands of symbols on signs and buildings, all in Mandarin Chinese.
I arrived nine months ago in September, after a 12-hour sleepless flight. Representatives from the university were waiting for me at the Beijing airport. I rode in silence in the backseat of the black company Audi for the next two hours, staring out the window in a sleepy haze. None of it seemed real.
We stopped along the way to use a public toilet and I wandered inside, instantly feeling the weight of stares from strangers. I opened the stall, only to find the toilet was a porcelain hole in the floor, with a brazenly putrid odor protruding out of it. Instantly, I became weary that maybe I had entered the men’s room by accident, but was too afraid to draw any more attention. So I pulled down my pants and awkwardly popped a squat, hoping not to make a mess while reminding myself that piss contains mostly water.
Over time I’ve adjusted to squatting over holes. I’ve also learned to appreciate relieving myself outside if I can find a secluded spot, as not having some filthy device between me and Mother Nature is quite comforting. I don’t mind that astringent odor so much either, it choked me in the beginning. The smell is sharp, like sweet and rotting flowers amplified. It’s an intense reverberation of cooking spices seeping out everyone’s pores. Sometimes the scent is alluring when it’s warm and promises a right kick in the taste bud if you dare order food inside the restaurant it drifts from. Other times it’s repulsive, like in that public toilet on the way to Baoding, because it still smells as sweet when it comes out. The stench can swallow the air in a tightly packed bus or a taxi.
It doesn’t smell too strong here on the bus today. I continue to gaze at the passing street.
There are more pedestrians on campus. Many girls clench thermoses full of tea, and parasols to avoid being flawed with freckles. Boyfriends hold their girlfriends by the wrist, which might seem possessive except plenty of boys also carry her princess-pink purse in the other hand. Love, it’s all very cute and almost picture-perfect. Wo ai ni.
Mandarin Chinese. It’s fickle and obtuse. Over 100,000 characters construct and define the written language, and orally the tonal sounds prevail over the amount of words themselves. This intricate system of tones attaches a word with hundreds of different definitions. The words are all pretty basic and painfully similar, but the tonal sound has to be just right or the meaning changes completely. Makes eavesdropping virtually impossible. When I latch onto the sound of a new word, I hold it like a strand of hair for as long as I can, until the wind blows and it vanishes. I press them in a little notebook I keep with me, hoping they will stick to the pages and resonate in my mind. The first tone is straight forward and direct. The second tone is uplifting. I swing my head up with that tone, it’s a bit overextended but I don’t want any confusion. The third sounds like going over a hill, leading to the fourth. Short, sharp, and final, like the unlucky number four. ‘Death’ in Chinese, suh suh suh suh.
I get off the bus and make my way to the fourth building. Inside the hallway it is muggy and humid. Some students stand near classroom doors, puffing cigarettes. I open the door to my classroom and step inside. All 40 students turn in their chairs and eyeball me. Almost all of them wear glasses. I walk alongside the rows of desks, cautiously waving my hand ni hao. It’s a chance to scan the room and gauge what I’m dealing with. Who’s looking back at me in the eye, who’s awake or sleepy--body language means everything. I dig my arm inside my backpack for Thursday’s purple folder, making faces as though I’m heavily concentrated, like I might pull out a lamp instead. I glance up at them with a feigned look of surprise, like I forgot they were there. They snicker. With shy, curious faces. I can tell them apart now, was scared in the beginning I wouldn’t be able to.
They’ve offered me bits of their personalities over the past nine months. “Amy” raises her left eyebrow, taps her nose in a thinker’s pose and blinks a lot. It’s totally genuine, as though she has no idea she’s doing it. For me, gestures like these are great because they let me know when I’m going too fast or just totally off the mark. Her handwriting sways like an orchestra. “Pamela” always sits in the front, distancing herself from the other clusters of classmates. When someone is reading aloud, she watches them instead of following along the text. Then she looks at me, a signal she wants to be the next to read. She confided in a journal entry that she absolutely loves to read in English, whether it’s Harry Potter or Louisa May Alcott. One of the four boys is “Nico," who loves grunge music. He saved my life one morning back in October, when I took off my jacket and exposed Bjork’s face on the breast of my shirt. When he said that she’s not really allowed over here I started to panic, but he just found it rather amusing. I guess in hindsight that was dumb on my part.
I remember being 20, at school. It was the first two years of living away from home, I don't recall having to think about anything that much. Things just seemed to play out without any kinks. I had a lot to talk about, whether it was printed in the newspaper or spoken on air. I campaigned door-to-door with leaflets saying Vote for Al Gore! only to sit in a bar with friends and watch the election unfold on the big screen. I saw another disaster on television a year later, on a Tuesday, when my then-boyfriend ran into his room and woke me up on his birthday. “Tara, you gotta come see this shit.” The first tower dropped, then came the second. None of it seemed real, so I drove off to class completely unaware of how much things would change after that. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years, but I will never forget his birthday. It's engrained in my mind.
My temple itches and snaps me back to the present, to English class in Baoding. De ja vu maybe, I remember what bit me last night. One of those blood-thirsty mosquitoes that jolts my ear every night now that it's warmer. This one burst the bubble to my picture-perfect dream, and I smacked myself in the face. Took one for the team. I silenced it forever, I think.
It seems to have set the tone today. No one's marching outside on campus. No Chinese flags or banners are waving around, and no candlelight vigils are scheduled for the evening. No these colors won't run and freedom fries. No one is forcing me to remember or acknowledge anything from the past. Choosing to acknowledge it, even if I'm saying nothing at all, provides a sense of freedom I never experienced in my country.
Next month I will celebrate my 28th birthday, just a couple of days before the two-hour drive back to the Beijing airport. Then I’ll bid zai jin to China, the lover with cunning red lips and bad breath. Sweet, alluring and repulsive China. Full of sounds, yet oh so quiet. I know I will miss that smell of the sweet, rotting flowers.
And this group of students, my Thursday class? “Pass your letters to the front,” I say. Their last writing assignment before finals. The papers are soft and fragile like they’re made of wax.