A Walk to Work, or, The Theory of Polite Relativity

Walk with me a moment. We’re on the way to work, and we’ve just exited the gate from our apartment compound. It is a hot day, 98 degrees by the thermometer, but it feels like 106 or so. The sky is high and blue above the skyscrapers. We’re walking down the brick tile sidewalk on Mei Dong Road, toward the pedestrian overpass. The sidewalk is probably 15 or 18 feet across here. To our right there is a bus stop, where one can catch the 545 to the malls at Ti Yu Road, or another half dozen buses to various points. To our left is part of the wall which circles our apartment compound. It is about knee high, with some shrubs and a metal fence atop it.In front of it, there are a few vans and carts pulled up onto the sidewalk. Today, various vendors are hawking sweet potatoes and garlic, peaches, some sort of limp leafy green, grapes and cherries. The cherries tempt us, but we don’t have any way to wash them at work, so we walk passed without stopping. Closer to the overpass, some people have spread out little items on blankets: one sells credit-card sized stickers (we look closely for a Maobama, but alas, there is none), another, glittery hair accessories. There is a man handing out flyers for an apartment agency as we head up the overpass (on this side of the street it is a ramp, on the other side it is stairs. The ramp is better, especially on rainy days, when the uneven stairs fill with water and climbing them becomes like climbing a waterfall). There is also a beggar. He is missing one arm below the elbow, and holds out a small aluminum bowl in the other. On the ground next to him, he has laid out a large poster full of carefully written characters. We cannot read it. We make it to the far side of the street and skip-trip down the stairs. At the bottom, we dodge other pedestrians and the cars trying to park on the sidewalk in front of the corner bank. We make it into the building and from there it is just three sets of stairs up to the school.

            My morning commute takes about 8 minutes, only half of which is really on the public street. At first glance, you wouldn’t think there was much opportunity to encounter cultural differences. And yet, and yet. Let’s look back at our walk and break it down.

            The gate from out of our compound is one person-width wide. Thus, if two people wish to go through in opposite directions at the same time, one must yield to the other. Or so one would think. While people sometimes yield, it is equally likely that a person will turn slightly like a schoolchild about to make an attempt to break the line in a game of Red Rover and shove his or her way through.

            One you are through the gate, you are on a busy sidewalk. On the right, people are gathering in clusters for the bus, and others are trying to read the bus stop sign, which rather inconveniently requires one to stand directly in the flow of passing pedestrian traffic. On the left, the street vendors are taking up half the sidewalk, and their customers further impede the flow of people. Now, there is still plenty of room for people to walk. Alas, there is no sense of “keep to your right” when walking, so traffic in both directions is completely mish-mashed. No one is willing to slow down behind a slower walker, and so you have people darting in and out and all around. Actually, if you look over to the street, the situation on the sidewalk is not so different from the roadway, where cars seem to completely disregard all known traffic laws. This leads us to a philosophical question for the ages: Do the Chinese walk like they drive, or drive like they walk?

            Now, a busy sidewalk can be found in any country. Let’s add some details about the people. It’s a sunny day in Guangzhou, which means every woman is carrying an umbrella. Yes, when you buy an umbrella here, you can find one with UV ratings. You can also find one that actually is a parasol and will not keep you dry in the rain. Those are usually identifiable by the glittery bits or lace edges. So, here we are on the walk to work, and we’re getting whacked in the head every six or eight steps by the edge of a passing woman’s umbrella.

            As for the beggar on the overpass, I will admit that I don’t know what to do with beggars. Every time I see one, my heart clenches at the injustice of our world, that we so fail to support those weakest members of our society.  I know it is a complex social issue that we have been struggling with for thousands of years. And yet I find it significant that we cannot so much as make eye contact as we walk passed. To do so would be to acknowledge that we stand by and do nothing. Sometimes I feel like the passengers in the lifeboats who listened and watched the others drown after the Titanic sank. I don’t know what to do.

            But these are heavy topics, so let us continue on a little lighter path. Down off the overpass, we’re dodging cars trying to park on the sidewalk – because cars park on the sidewalk in China. If we were going to continue down Mei Dong Road toward the subway station instead of going in to work, we would have to cross Shui Yin Street. It is the responsibility of the pedestrian to dodge turning cars, bicycles, and other pedestrians. No one is going to stop for you. If you happen to be crossing a lane, cars may swerve around and in front of you, if they have space and you are in the way.

            If you stop in any of the little restaurants on the way to the subway station, you will have a waitress hover over you until you order. She’ll bring your order and then disappear. When you want the check, you’re going to have to find her and ask for it. Don’t tip: they won’t take it. They may chase you out into the street to give you back your “change.” If you’re in a fast food restaurant, like McDonald’s or KFC, you don’t need to bus your own tray. In fact, if you do try to bus your own tray, be prepared to hunt around for a place to put it.

            Subway etiquette is actually improving. People actually will kinda sorta line up while they wait, and people trying to get off the train will get a moment or two to disembark before the crowd starts pushing its way on. If it’s rush hour, though, forget about personal space.

            So, if you haven’t cottoned on yet, the general topic of this post is what it means to be polite. Many of the things people do in Guangzhou would be considered very rude in Maine (clearly, I cannot speak to any other part of the US. For all I know, someone in Los Angeles would read this and think ‘but that’s just life in the city’ and maybe it is.). In Maine, if I bumped you with my umbrella, I would say sorry. If I cut you in line at the 7-11, it would have been truly an accident. If the cashier didn’t say anything, but I noticed, I would apologize. If I left my tray on the table at KFC, I would totally deserve the looks of scorn from the counter staff. If I didn’t tip at a restaurant where I had received decent service, I would completely deserve all the things the waiter said about my mother, my associations with swine, and the probable intelligence of any future children. If you failed to stop for me while I was crossing the road in a crosswalk, you would deserve any and all hand gestures I might make. Here, though, that’s just how things work. If I apologize for bumping people with my purse while trying to find a line to stand in the subway, they give me weird looks (admittedly, it could be because I’m foreign, because I’m speaking Chinese, because I’m speaking Chinese badly, because I’m speaking Mandarin, or a list of other reasons). It makes me wonder what horrible etiquette faux-pas I am making, without even realizing I’m making them.

Needles, Kidney Punches, and Free-Form Philosophy

I've been in Guangzhou for less than a week, now, yet so much has happened. Since arriving last Saturday evening (local time), I have gone through preliminary orientation, completed my medical check, searched for an apartment, observed classes at my school, and reacquainted myself with the wonderful deliciousness that is Chinese yogurt. The drinkable yogurt I'd been enjoying for the past month in Maine was good, but it just doesn't compare to the yogurt here. I don't know what it is, but here is it creamy and rich and hits that perfect balance between tangy and sweet.

But enough about yogurt. The real highlight of the past few days was the mandatory medical check required for foreigners desiring to get a residence permit to work in China. So you know, I am one of seven new teachers newly arrived in Guangzhou, and we are all going through orientation together before being split up to our different Centers. We arrived at the hospital at 8:15am, and spent a good 45 minutes queuing first for one person to check our forms and then for another person to check our passports and collect the fee. Then, we took our forms across the street to the hospital proper, where we began our round of tests. This was, potentially, the most thorough medical exam I have ever had, and when you consider how many tests we underwent, the 3.5 hours we were there doesn't seem so bad. We had an abdominal ultrasound, a resting ECG, and a chest x-ray, they examined our eyesight, looked in our ears, noses, and mouths, weighed us, measured our height, temperature, and blood pressure, took 2 vials of blood and a urine sample, and listened to our lungs, whacked us in the kidneys, and asked us about four times if we were pregnant or had any communicable diseases. And throughout the whole process, you had to be vigilant about when it was your turn, because the Chinese doctors and nurses weren't  even going to attempt to read your name. Instead, they would hold up the form to the waiting area, and you had to squint to see if it was your 1 inch square photo taped to the top. Nonetheless, I survived and I don't think they'll have found any medical reason to deny my residency application.

GZ Metro (http://fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/)

Now, I'm still in the process of getting an apartment, so I will save that whole story for later. One last thing, though, about my first day of observation. I sat in on a class of primary-school aged kids and one of 15-16 year-olds. The older kids were doing a speaking game where you have to talk as long as possible without stopping (even to say "um"). The girl who managed to go the longest offered us this piece of philosophy: women are like pizzas; there's a lot of different things about them all on the surface, but men are like (Chinese) buns (steamed and stuffed with filling), where they hide everything inside. Oh, and life is like a bowl of porridge: blank and bland, you have to strive to fill it in with your own actions to give it some color and flavor.

Well, the porridge that is my life is certainly getting some color and flavor here in Guangzhou. What exactly that does to the mix of my life as a whole, well, that remains to be seen.

This, the Moment Before the First Step

You must know that old phrase, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step? Well, this is the moment before that step. The moment when everything is in place and all you can do is wait, and contemplate the vast distance you are about to cross. And I do mean metaphorical, emotional, and personal distance as well as physical. I find myself wondering how Miss Rumphius felt, 38 hours before setting off to travel the world.

If you do not know who Miss Rumphius is, then you must find your way to the nearest library or bookstore and head down into the children's section. Miss Rumphius, or the Lupine Lady, is a 1982 story by Barbara Cooney. In it, our eponymous character grows up listening to her grandfather tell her stories of his world travels. She vows that she, too, will travel to faraway places when she grows up and then she will return home and live by the sea, and he makes her promise to do one more thing: she must do something to make the world more beautiful. So, up she grows, and she travels the world, and eventually she slips a disk getting off a camel, and she decides to retire to the sea. She achieves Crazy Old Lady status and spends her time sowing lupine seeds, which, come Spring, do in fact make the fields more beautiful.

As a child, I wanted to be Miss Rumphius. Her life seemed exciting and full and glorious. Now I am older, and about to set forth on my own world travels. Now, I have a few more questions for Miss Rumphius. Was she ever lonely? Did she leave anyone behind when she set off for tropical climes? Did she ever wish for more in her life? At the story's end, she is a Great-Aunt, but she, herself, seems to be alone. In many ways, I think I do not want to be Miss Rumphius. But perhaps I can have my cake and eat it, too.

Miss Rumphius seems to live in the days before air travel: certainly in the days before internet. But I can email and phone and video chat with home instantaneously. Even the post can make the 8,000 mile trip in just two weeks. In an emergency, 19 hours of flight time could get me home. Even this blog is a way to stay connected: one long, rambling letter to my friends and family and the world at large. And I am only going for a year, which though it seems a bit like forever, is really not so long at all.

So I take will take Miss Rumphius with me, in my heart (and in my suitcase: along with Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine). As I wait, and finish packing, and try to envision what my life will be like next week (to travel to Mars could not be less alien), I will try to remember the second thing Miss Rumphius did: she came home and told stories. Travel is a form of personal growth, a way to enrich the soul and help us better understand the world we live in. This world we live in is already beautiful in so many ways, but hopefully, if we can better understand the people with whom we share it, we can make it even more beautiful.

This will not be an easy journey. I have already had doubts, and second thoughts, and emotional crises that have left me awake in the dark, paralyzed with uncertainty. I have doubted my reasons for going, my own desire to go, my motivations, my own confidence in my ability to endure the hardships. Rene Descartes said, 'If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." I have faith in my decision to go. To me, faith is not belief without question, but belief because there are questions. This is going to be hard, but it is also going to be amazing. There's a lot I don't know, and a lot I am going to learn. And, you'll be with me the entire time, so really, there's no reason to be afraid.