Climbing the highway ramp up, up, and away from ChongQing and its 35 million inhabitants, I look out of my bus window as though from an airplane and see a pile of yellow taxis in a dump far below. Hazy polluted day in January. Everything gray and scrubby green, and there in a crater is a splash of yellow like so many pretty weeds. Little taxi cabs heaped in a yellow, rusting pile. How many? Five hundred? Two hundred? They stand on end, on their backs, sides, axles facing the sky, hoods flung open to God, snouts burrowed in the asses of other taxis. Engineless but bright. Tireless and tired. Not tired but dead. Someone somewhere must be singing a lullaby for little yellow taxis. I sing a lullaby for little yellow taxis.
My buddy Ted Maloney, who has been to China several times, has asked me to write a few posts that address why we come to China. In spite of the smog, the traffic, the street smells, all the stuff I’ve written about in this space, what is the attraction? The answers could run into hundreds of pages. Last week, I felt I had a real tangible answer to Maloney’s question, best laid out here in the description of an hour.
Lunch in the school canteen with Yu De She. Trays piled high with mounds of tofu, chicken, rice and bok choy that only cost a dollar. The food is not bad. The company is better. We talk about the Three Gorges Dam and my upcoming trip to Sichuan Province which will only cost 1,200 yuan, or about 200 dollars, because the university subsidizes these outings for the foreign experts. We talk about his daughter, an electrical and computer engineer at the University of Montreal who is now on vacation in California. As we stand to leave, he asks if my grades are in and I say, “Yup.” Outside is cold January. With an impossibly blue sky and yellow dust whipping up from the construction site on west campus, I walk a block to a convenience store to buy mechanical pencils for an afternoon of writing. At the store I run into the Mexican diplomat I met at the Foreign Experts salon a few weeks ago, a debonair and gregarious man named Guillermo. He really looks like he ought to be the president of the world, or chief executive officer of The International Office for Official Affairs, if not for his headgear. He wears brown fuzzy earmuffs atop his felt hat, which, I tell him, make him look a bit like a mouse. We chat in Spanish for ten minutes, talking about his children spread far and wide in the Americas, in Mexico City and San Antonio, his daughter’s impending marriage, the drop in US students going south of the border, and the sad fact that narcotraficantes have become the face of Mexico. Things are so bad that the bank here in China won’t allow his Mexican friend to open an account for fears of money laundering. Back at the Foreign Experts Building, I see my friend Suzana ushering her parents into the building for a holiday visit. Catching up with them in the stairwell, I say, “People from Slovakia!” and grab the old man’s suitcase. Heavy load up two flights. After an introduction, I shake hands with a small woman who has the same dyed red hair as her 30-something daughter, but the father for some reason is having trouble drawing his hand. His name is Otto. He is tall, with a rugged face and wiry white hair, looks like a Samuel Beckett character if Beckett named one of his characters Samuel Beckett, which would be so Beckett-like, the way he fumbles with something in his coat during introductions. He unscrews the cap on a green plastic soda bottle and offers me a drink. Warm sting of alcohol on a cold January day. Tastes like Europe. Suzana says, “That’s ______,” but I don’t catch the name. “I like it.” “It’s from our garden in Slovakia,” she says. “It’s good.” I walk upstairs happy to get to work, though I wouldn’t mind drinking all day. Election Tuesday arrives a day early in China. My wife and I print our ballots, try to make sense of the legalese on Prop 6635, and march across the campus of Beijing Foreign Studies University in search of a fax machine. The day is sunny and cool, the air uncommonly clear. We have been stricken with anxiety for days, grinding our teeth at night, snapping at our daughter, watching too much CNN for good health. We can feel our blood thrumming now, as we climb five flights of stairs to reach The School of English for Specific Purposes. Rumor has it the dean has a working fax machine.
Professor Yu nods vigorously when we arrive, shoos a graduate student out of his office, and indicates a grubby fax machine on his desk. A stout man in his late fifties, with black collar-length hair and a fashionable sport coat, Professor Yu seems more artist than Communist Party Secretary. At least we think he’s a party member. We don’t really know. He feeds my ballot into the aging machine and says, “We don’t vote here. No, no.” “But you’re voting right now,” I say. “You’re helping us put Obama back in office. “No, no, no,” he says, taking up Julie’s ballot and aligning it just so in the feeder. He adjusts his glasses and says, “You don’t keep it a secret then?” “Nah. I’d be embarrassed if you thought anything else.” On our ballots are referendums for legalizing pot and same-sex marriage. If all goes well, our neighbors Scott and Dan can get hitched and smoke weed in our backyard—if only I liked marijuana. We’re voting for more freedom while the Chinese people can’t even vote. It could also be said that we’re endorsing less freedom for the likes of Monsanto, JPMorgan Chase, and those uninsured individuals who would collectively drive up healthcare costs. We hold these truths to be self evident, that Mitt Romney has never had an original thought in his life, that his faith in the almighty amoral corporation to solve decidedly moral problems is a blind faith. Romney is a capitalist roader! Meanwhile, back in Beijing, the government has beefed up public security to ensure a smooth transition of power. The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China begins in two days, and no amount of political punditry will change the trajectory of Xi Jinping, who, like so many presidents got his mojo in Iowa. Men in navy uniforms with red armbands stalk the sidewalks. Volunteers in plainclothes hover near bus stops. Even the barista at Starbuck’s, cranking out lattes at factory speed, wears a red armband emblazoned with yellow characters (and the customer-friendly English translation “Security Volunteer”). The boys on campus in their military greatcoats carry walkie-talkies, ready to report any suspicious activity, say, a group of hippies carrying a spray-painted banner that says “OCCUPY TIANANMEN”—but the kids mostly look bored. I often see them checking text messages. With each passing day, more volunteers show up in subways, in malls in front of the Spicy Grandma restaurant, glancing at my camera when I walk past. We’ve heard that the government has forbidden the airing of live entertainment shows during the Grand Congress. Knives are supposed to be taken off racks, but we have seen plenty of kitchenware for sale at department stores. Google is really slow. I ask some of my students if they pay attention to the CPC congress. “No, it is so boring.” “Could you vote if you wanted to?” “Yes, we think so. Everyone has the right to vote, but nobody does.” They are sophomores with baby-smooth skin and white teeth. Perhaps they are too busy wrestling 37 hours of weekly classes to watch the proceedings. They tote backpacks with teddy bears stitched on the flaps. Fu Cai Lan, a chaste-looking girl with ethnic features and innocent eyes, wears a winter jacket bearing the same silhouettes of babes we see on mud flaps of big rigs crossing Montana: two busty women sitting back-to-back with knees raised. Have two real women ever sat exactly in this pose? America is coming, America is coming! With or without a black first lady. I go for a swim late that night, hoping that exercise will help me sleep through election anxiety. I’m awoken at 4 a.m. by the clanging of construction on campus: always the same ging, gong sound that I guess has to do with the taking down and putting up of scaffolding. Later that morning, Julie gets an email from the Whatcom County election board saying her ballot was received but cannot be counted because the signature got cut off. If we resend it by eight o’clock PST, eleven o’clock in the PRC, the votes will count. This is amazing. Already, more than a hundred million votes have trickled in (normally not a big number when in China), and somehow our town has enough staff to check every faxed ballot on the day of the election. And get back to us. Of course we feel stupid for waiting until the last moment to get this done. It’s just that our hearts haven’t been jumpstarted—literally, with this hum of adrenaline—until now. Back to Professor Yu’s office, where he opens a browser on his computer to check the latest results. I glance at the monitor, wondering if there are Chinese characters for “Ohio,” and see no less than three pop-up screens. Gargoyles flap their wings. Pleasant Goat hops up and down. A camera catches a man snatching a woman’s pert butt. No nudity on China’s internet; she’s wearing athletic-style panties and appears to be in some underwear-themed nightclub. Professor Yu finds the U.S. news among a dizzying grid of Chinese characters. Why is it that I am perpetually impressed by professors who can read Chinese so rapidly? They’re professors. BFSU is a famous institution. The electoral count shows up in blue and red: Obama ahead by twenty or so votes. “Very close,” says Professor Yu. “He needs 270 to win,” I say. “Two-hundred-and-seventy, yes, I know.” By now, we have heard the news about Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. If Mitt were to mount a charge, it would have started with the keystone state. We’re feeling better. Yu says “Pennsylvania” with perfect pronunciation, like he’s been there several times shopping for Amish furniture. “Sorry to bug you,” I say, bending humbly with the ballot, asking him to orient the I.D. page to guarantee the transmission of Julie’s signature. The fax emits a queer ringing that sounds at once old school and space-aged. Yu handles the papers with a nervous energy. He is one of those brilliant people who seems forever frustrated that language and gesture are so much slower than his lightning mind. Yu is one of our favorite people in China. He is a great storyteller, the life of any party, and one of those men who seem to have lived nine lives. I’ve heard all about his adventures in Alaska, Belgium, Iraq, all kinds of crazy stuff, but I’ve never caught one clue as to his status with the Party. I know for example that when he lived in Iraq in the eighties, he and his Chinese compatriots were allowed to eat for free the turtles and donkeys the Iraqis didn’t want. I know that his daughter goes to school in Montreal. I know that his brother once brought an entire frozen dog in a suitcase to his parents as a gift of good meat. I know he knows my choice for president, and yet he has said, “We don’t vote,” which may not be the same as saying, “I don’t vote.” Julie and I hustle over to the post office to mail our original copies of the ballots in accordance with election rules. Just inside the door, an eager postal worker inspects the letters and starts chatting away, pointing at the return address, flipping the envelope, speaking so fast I feel my head going warm again. I catch the words for “address” and “back side,” and as usual Julie understands the gestalt before I do, in spite of the fact that I am the one studying Chinese every night. We have worried too much already, and add to that the frenetic quality of spoken Chinese, we think the worst. Our ballots will be rejected by the Chinese postal authorities. We will fail to give gay people their constitutional and natural right. Tim Eyman, that conservative prick, will pass another one of his bogus tax initiatives. Obama can take Washington state without us, but what about the rally to restore sanity to marijuana laws? What about the coal terminal? We’ve got to get forward-thinking county commissioners to stop the trains that would ship zillions of toxic fossils from Cherry Point, Washington to China. We know that our emotional state is to some extent an illusion, that we are likely projecting every adult worry we’ve ever had onto the 2012 election. When I think about Republicans who feel equally anxious, equally righteous, angry, and distraught I am tempted to think they are fooling themselves. Their sky-is-falling state of mind is all for naught. They’ll get over it. Values change. But if their feelings are illusory, then ours must be as well. Maybe it doesn’t really matter if Romney or Obama is president. Maybe the forces that have brought these two men to the fore are no more in my control than the forces that will put Xi Jinping at the helm of the PRC. Considering that our own Grand Congress is ever gridlocked, perhaps my little vote is hardly more potent than the air balls launched by all these basketball-loving Chinese. But the gay marriage ballot measure is supposed to be close. Scott and Dan can get married or they can’t. What patriotic American doesn’t fantasize about casting the ultimate deciding vote in a close election? You could prevent a war. Five hundred votes in Florida, one supreme court justice, one Albert Gore, and the veteran you met at the bar last month would have full hearing in his left ear. His buddy would have both legs. As for the coal trains, we seem to be burning plenty of fossil fuels over here, what with air conditioning in September and the radiators now sputtering to life in November. The fluorescent lights in the ChinaPost cast a bluish haze on our envelopes. The postal worker takes a strip of white tape and covers the return addresses on front, then indicates that we need to write the address on the back side. All is well. The envelopes go on the scale. I’m tempted to point and say, “Obama,” but I don’t want to screw this up by breeching some obscure national law. The lady behind the counter sets the envelopes on her desk and gets snared in a conversation with a co-worker. She sets a receipt of some kind on top of our ballots. In a country obsessed with official seals and stamps, nobody postmarks our envelopes in full view. No postal meter sings out a clacking song. That’s it. Descending the steps from the ChinaPost building, Julie asks if we can turn back and ask the lady to postmark the ballots. “My Chinese isn’t that good,” I say. “I think it’s just one of those things we can’t control.” When you come back to China two years later, it’s hard to tell whether certain buildings are missing, business have vanished, or your memory is faulty. You walk down Third Ring Road to get cash from the China Construction ATM, but the bank is no longer there. The Stairway to Love Café has no stairwell—only the sign beside the second floor window where the café used to be. Where there had been rustic wooden steps leading to hip heaven, there is now some sort of outside barbecue station belonging to the Ma Hua chain restaurant, open 24 hours.
The restaurant on the other side of Third Ring Road, the one with the bar seats facing the street, where you swear you ate kung pao ji ding two years ago, is either gone in reality or in memory. Maybe the booths by the window are new and the business has exercised its right to upgrade without regard for your nostalgia. The upholstery on the seats looks new, but it’s equally possible you are in a different restaurant on the wrong street. Twenty hours after landing, you don’t know if it is memory, China, or jet lag playing tricks on you. | AuthorTed O'Connell, a writer from Bellingham, Washington, is on exchange at Beijing Foreign Studies University for the 2012-2013 academic year. He lives on campus with his wife, Julie, and daughter, Amelia. Back home, O'Connell peddles fiction and plays mandolin with the Prozac Mountain Boys. ArchivesMay 2013 Categories |
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