Neither Here Nor There

Last night I dreamed I was waiting for bus 62 at the Jincheng Garden stop. It was both vivid and fleeting; more memory than dream. I’ve been home for three weeks last Monday, and I am still adjusting.

I am well adjusted to Spears farm stand produce. Yum.

I’ll admit I scoffed at the idea of reverse culture shock. It didn’t really affect me my last return home, after my Beijing semester. Perhaps that is because it was a shorter stay, or because my overwhelming emotion at that time was homesickness. Yes, I missed China, but it was the same ache of a good past vacation. This time, I have already caught myself, annoyed to the brink by some mild matter, tripping that internal switch that says “enough of this! I want to go back to where it is comfortable and normal and I feel in control.” Well, that place is supposed to be here at home, not far away in China. And, it’s a little scary to not feel entirely comfortable at home.

This little guy is making himself right at home.

I remember sitting on my parents’ couch days before leaving for Guangzhou, thinking about how short a year really was, and predicting that I would be sitting in the same spot before I knew it, wondering if anything had changed. I’ve spent a lot of the past three weeks sitting on the couch (or falling asleep there at 7:30pm – jetlag is no joke). I don’t really feel changed, but you know what? You can’t see your own face without a mirror.

Poor man's meditation mirror.

A few days ago, I was fighting with a certain member of my family about something. It could have been anything – so far, I’ve managed to fight one or the other of them about everything from educational reform to society’s intolerance of gender variance to exactly what “get really for the yard sale” means. In this argument, ze said to me that ze felt like I wasn’t the person ze’d said goodbye to a year ago. In response I slammed my door in zir face like the emotionally mature, 24-year-old that I clearly am not and proceeded to cry into my pillow for a while. Then I stared into the true darkness of a rural Maine night for an hour or two and wondered if I really have changed; if so, how; and is that a good thing or a bad thing?

These blueberries are feeling blue. But they're still delicious.

To zir, no, it’s not a good thing, because what ze meant is that I have been cranky, contrary, and argumentative and frankly impossible to get along with. As much as I want to blame this dark mood on other things, it’s lasted a little too long for other things, and I must face the fact that it’s just me. I’m struggling with repatriation and I’m taking it out on my family.

Cranky duck is cranky.

This post was originally going to be a light-hearted look at the quirks of being home after time away. There was perhaps going to be a joke about how hard it is to not be insanely pleased by public restrooms that supply toilet paper, soap, and hand driers. Then maybe an anecdote about how easy it is to remember how to drive, but how hard it is to remember that people can actually be polite when driving in traffic. I thought I’d throw in a few quick photos of blessedly underpopulated midcoast Maine in late summer (did I mention I’m handwriting this post in a cottage by a lake with no internet access? It’s sunny and lovely and the sky and water are as blue as a newborn’s eyes. Oh, I just looked up and saw a loon).

You wish you were here.

Of course, I expected to write this post three weeks ago. But, the first Wednesday back, I was asleep most of the day. The next Wednesday, I was busy getting ready for the reenactment in Oriskany (it was good, even with the rain on Sunday. I hand sewed a new shirt for my dad, with flat-felled seams, in three days. Also, I finally found an alcoholic beverage that the Second Mass won’t drink [moutai]). Last Wednesday I was occupied excavating the storage eaves behind my closet in advance of a family garage sale. This week, I have no excuse (save lack of internet access), and so I write. I’ll post this as soon as I find some internet.

Finding internet? I'll get right on that. After a quick paddle.
Maybe a swim, too...

So this is me, three weeks home from Cathay. I’m perpetually irritated, paralyzed by uncertainty about exactly what to do now, and already forgetting just want it was about Guangzhou that I disliked so much. I want to blame all of this on reverse culture shock, but I have to pin a significant portion of it on my deep discomfort with change, as well. This too shall pass, I suppose, and I will settle in eventually. New goals: take a breath and calm down. Don’t start fights just to scream out loud. Find a new way to fit into the puzzle of my family life. I’ve changed, they’ve changed, but we’re family and we’ll find a way to get along, even if it means taking each other’s edges off with a cheese grater. Yes, it’s deeply painfully that someone might think that it’s okay that society doesn’t accept non-binary gender identities, and I'm never going to see eye to eye with everyone on the topic of school reform. But, that’s okay. They’re family. Shut up and let it go. (Anyway, changing someone’s opinion is best done via siege tactics, not frontal assault).

Really, shut up. I'm trying to relax.

This post is getting long on melodramatic introspection, so let me leave you once again to contemplate some beautiful photos of glorious Maine in the flush of summer. Blueberries are in season and I’ve put in my order for 10 pounds from the farm. Zucchini, sweet corn, and pickling cucumbers are overflowing their bins at the farm stands. The weather is gorgeous, even when it rains. The whole of it is so beautiful you don’t even mind getting stuck in traffic with the tourists. But really, enough talking. I’m going for a swim in the lake. Until next time (and who knows when that will be?).

Sunset over Damariscotta Lake.

Last Wednesday

This is it, folks! This is our very last Wednesday post together. In less than a week, I will be back in Maine. I have no idea what my next steps are. I have a few short term plans (baby shower! yard sale! re-enactment! dentist appointment! No, it is not strange at all that I look forward to those) but nothing long-term. I'm okay with that. Well, no, that's a lie. But, I want to okay with that. I am making a conscious decision to be optimistic.

These flowers are being optimistic.

Time passes so quickly and so slowly. I'm speaking mostly about this last week, which seems long but is easily filled with all of the last minute things I need to do and last chances to do the things I've come to enjoy here. The sentiment stands true, though, when I consider the whole year. A year is nothing. A year is everything. This year has been new friends, new experiences, new perspectives, and new places. I had a short list of goals in my head when I arrived here, and I've actually done a rather good job on them (something that cannot generally be said about my new years' resolutions). In a week I will be home, and it will be time to try to make sense of my time in Guangzhou. Boil it down to two or three lines on my resume, if you will. I'm not sure it's possibly, though, to sum it all up -- to bring it to a tidy point. It's life, and it's messy. I've loved it and hated it and I can't stand another minute of it and I want it to last forever. The only thing that's constant and true is that it will end. Then, something else will begin.

When one oddly-shaped door closes...

I feel these are slightly large thoughts and I'm not being particularly articulate now (this is what I get for putting off my blogging until 11pm in favor of one last trip to the conveyor-belt sushi place). So instead, let's look at some pictures from my trip to Nanjing. I promise you one more blog post when I have made it home, because this needs some sort of conclusion, even if it is just the cliffhanger at the end of this particular episode.

Nanjing, from the city wall near Dongguanmen

Nanjing! Oh, it was fun. I've finally discovered what kind of person I am when I'm traveling alone. The answer: just like me in normal life, I am quiet, not particularly out-going, and stupidly stubborn about not taking taxis, even if the museum is two kilometers away and it's pouring rain.

It was an unexpectedly long gap between bus stops.

It did rain everyday, alas, but I still managed to do most everything I wanted to do (read: I visited 6 museums /historic sites in 2.5 days). My favorite was the Museum of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (hugely successful mid-19th century rebellion), but sadly there are few pictures of this, because my camera batteries died about 5 feet into the museum and I stupidly forgot to bring the spare batteries I had thoughtfully packed. I made up for it by taking eight pages of notes in my travel journal, which I was carrying. These include some diagrams of new battle formations for the 2nd Mass to try out. My personal favorite is the "formation of a small crab circle by a big crab," although the "snake" formation for ambuscades seemed to be both useful for battle and for dance parties.

This was a very interesting gun.

I also went to the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, which was a solemn and uncomfortable experience. There are a number of photographs and eye-witness testimony in text and video along with physical artifacts and an excavated mass grave. The capacity of people to both commit and survive atrocities stupefies me.

On a lighter note, I visited the Ming-era city wall, an imperial exam school, a Confucian temple, and the Nanjing Brocade Museum (oh yeah. A whole museum devoted to a particular type of textile? And you could watch people actually weaving!). I tried twice to find the folk handicrafts museum, to no avail (pro-tip: the Nanjing tourist map is worthless.) I took an evening cruise of the river, wandered around the tourist souvenir street, and ate delicious street food. Liangpi noodles! Jiangyouji dumplings! Black rice steamed cakes!

FYI, that pattern is hand-woven.

And that was about it. It was a nice, smooth trip. I can only hope my trip home this week is just as easy (35 hours of transit time). Here's a fun parting thought: as I'm going home overland/across the Atlantic, and I arrived in China on a transpacific flight, this trip really has taken me around the world. See you next week, in Maine.

Hodge-podge Hedgehog -- no Point, but lots of points

I do believe I've found an activity that is even more of a waste of time than running into Walmart for a single item (you know, between parking, hiking in from the parking lot, going to the very back of the store, hunting around for it, standing in the one open check-out line behind the person buying forty cans of tuna fish which the clerk must scan individually, paying, and hiking back out to the car, altogether it takes half an hour to buy a single pack of batteries). What is it? Why, going to the bank in China, of course.

I'm pretty sure I've griped about this before now, but I'm too lazy at the moment to check. But, banks here are slooooooowwwww. Today I went in to wire some money home. It was mid to late afternoon, as I had several other errand to do today, and I met some friends for a late lunch after my morning class. I got my ticket and sat down to wait. There were only four people ahead of me. When my number was called, FORTY-FIVE minutes later, I was very politely (you have to give them that, they're very polite) told that the hours for wire transfer ended at 4:30. What time was it at that moment? 4:32. Needless to say, I was extremely aggravated.

At least she gave me some helpful advice at the same time, which was that when I re-attempted my transfer,  I needed to go to the service desk first and get the form typed up. This is interesting, as I did the exact same thing yesterday at a different branch of the same bank, and there, they gave me a write-in form at the service desk, and then had me take that to the window where they typed it up (twice incorrectly, which involved a fun explanation about how I have two first names and no, you can't smoosh them together).

The nice teller also told me I should return at the start of business tomorrow to do my transfer. Well, this is unhelpful for two reasons. One, as a foreigner without a special form issued by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, I can only transfer 500 US Dollars per day out of the country, and due to my own negligence and laziness about wiring money home throughout the year, I sort of need all of the business days between now and my departure to get my money home (yes, I am planning on spending an hour or more at the bank every day for the next week. Doesn't my life in a foreign country seem so glamorous sometimes?). Also, I'm leaving for Nanjing tomorrow morning, before the banks open, so short of attempting this in Nanjing (I am horrified by the thought. That would be adding inter-province bank branch fees and processing to the whole affair.), this was a bust. Well, at least I got in forty-five minutes of reading today.

Speaking of reading, I finished the Bible! Cue the streamers, confetti, and balloons! Okay, so it's not that exciting. Having finished, I am left with two impressions. One, I need to reread it, this time with a highlighter and a pencil for marginalia and a notebook for making comparative lists, charts, and diagrams. I've read accounts of the Warring States period that are less complicated than trying to keep track of Old Testament chronology. Two, John was a little bit ... off his rocker, wasn't he? I mean, Revelation reads like the dream of a man on acid, but even his regular correspondence is a little off from center. Actually, concerning all of the letters between the Gospels and Revelation, I'm suddenly much more curious about the history of in-fighting in the early church. I'm thinking it would make a good reality tv show.

I had my last days of work this week. On Monday, I officially became a tourist. My flatmate has already departed for America, and I have about a week and a half now before I head home. I keep looking around at all the things I've acquired in my year here and then eyeing my suitcase dubiously. I feel like there are some hard decisions facing me in the week to come, primarily concerning shoes and books (they're bulky and they're heavy).I've already relinquished my Apples to Apples game, since I know very well that I can easily replace that back home. The biggest issue is what do do with all of the things I know I'm not taking, like my little flower vase, my desk lamp, a couple of bookends, and a Christmas tree that is shoved into a cupboard but not forgotten. I doubt my landlady would be particularly happy if I were to attempt to leave it all here. Ah well, these are problems for next week, after Nanjing.

You may have heard of Nanjing. It's a city on the Yangtze River, in Jiangsu Province. It was the capital of China for two short periods in Chinese history, once during the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and then again during the Republic of China period (ahem. It was also the capital of parts of China during periods of the Three Kingdoms and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, but that is a chaotic mess almost to the level of the aforementioned Warring States, so let's just ignore them). The legacy of these times can be seen in the Nanjing Ming-era city wall, and the abundance of Republican-era architecture. Nanjing is also well-known as the site of the Nanjing Massacre (aka the Rape of Nanking, and which is the subject/setting of Zhang Yimou's most recent film, The Flowers of War), during the Second Sino-Japanese war (aka World War II) when occupying Japanese forces killed upwards of 300,000 people in the city. I am quite looking forward to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. Well, perhaps 'looking forward to' is the wrong phrase. I expect it to be harrowing. There are a number of other sites to visit in the city, and I will have two and a half days to see them, so honestly I haven't decided yet. I've booked transport to and from the city, and reserved a spot in a hostel for the nights I'll be there. I think that might be a good life philosophy: secure the basics and decide the rest when you get there. What do you think?

Beating the Summer Heat

Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans. Happy day between July third and fifth to the rest of you. I justified all the walking around I did today in the 95 degree weather by reasoning that I'd have been walking around outside all day in Maine, too, if I was there (only there'd have been more fried dough).

I was walking around because I had to swing by the fabric market (for the last time, I swear) and pick up the last thing I had made. Isn't it pretty?

not that it's cool enough to wear it at the moment

On the way back, I was quite warm and thirsty, so I swung by 7-11 for a wanglaoji. A whatsit? I head you saying. A wanglaoji.

although this one is actually 'jiadoubao'

Wanglaoji is the most famous brand of herbal tea in southern China. It's been around since the nineteenth century. It comes in a green carton and a distinctive red-and-yellow can, and a nearly identical red-and-yellow can made by another company, and if you're really interested in Chinese trademark law, you should read up on the history of why there are three kinds of wanglaoji.

this one actually says 'wang lao ji'

Herbal tea is extremely popular here in the south, as it is believed to counteract and cool excess internal fire. Or, in other words, it cools you down when it's hot, or when you've done something to unbalance your inner humors, like eating a lot of spicy or fried food. It can also soothe sore throats and combat winter dryness.

and here it is in the green carton

Ok, so is it a miracle cure for what ails you, or is it just sweet herbal iced tea? I don't know, but it's pretty tasty.

Also tasty was the Indian food that my friend made last night. We had a going-away get together last night at her apartment, where we ate Indian food and apple pie (my contribution) and had some arts-and-crafts fun.

Or perhaps we were doing "lines of colorful coke off
a glass table?" Your guess is as good as mine.

We made beaded rings, which is just as hilariously difficult as it sounds. I got lost somewhere around step three, and gave up and made my own designed based on the last beaded-jewelry project I did (which, for the record, was a beaded bracelet, made at an afternoon activity session at Gould Academy summer camp). My coworker ended up liking mine so much that we traded. Of course, we'd used our own fingers are size guides, so she ended up with a thumb ring and I have a sweet pinky ring.

I also have nails painted what I call Ruby Slipper Red.
They sparkle (and there's no place like home).

Going away parties really bring home the fact that I'll be going away soon. This is my last weekend of work, and then I have a little less than two weeks of completely unplanned vacation time. I have a few last in-city day trips in mind, and I'm hoping to get in one last trip, probably to Nanjing. The future is uncertain, but that's half the fun, right?

Weekend in the Country

Not the city!

I'm back from lovely Yangshuo, and it was just as relaxing and refreshing as last time, although about a thousand times rainier. I should have expected this, of course, considering the current rainy season in Guangzhou and the fact that Yangshuo isn't that far away. But, first, before I attempt to amuse you with various anecdotes of my trip, a quiz!

On a boat?

Where was Hannah at 6am on Saturday morning? Was she...
A. on a bus
B. in a bed
C. in a bar
D. on a boat

On a bus? In a bed?

If you had trouble deciding, you're forgiven, as in fact, I was in all of those places on Saturday. However, the correct answer is C. At six in the morning on Saturday, I was sitting in a bar, drinking a beer, being told how to be a good teacher by an actuarial student from Leeds.

one misty moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather...

No, really. Could I make something like that up? Let me tell you the whole story. The 8:30p sleeper bus from Guangzhou to Yangshuo got in a tad earlier than I had remembered, and so we were deposited onto a silent, rainy street at about 4:45am. We made it to our hostel, but we hadn't actually been able to book a room for that night. The rooftop bar, however, was still open, so we headed up there. It was remarkably crowded still, with about seven people (counting the two who passed out on the couch shortly after we arrived) and we decided to chill there for a few hours. Well, what do you do if you're in a bar for an hour and a half? You drink beer and talk to your fellow patrons. They mostly seemed to be British, and I got to chatting with the aforementioned actuarial student from Leeds (we never did exchange names), who is in China for a few weeks visiting his friend who's been doing a study abroad semester (he was one of the ones passed out on the couch). We talked about math, the relative merits of financial math versus engineering math, and teaching.  He then proceeded to give me his views on how to be a good teacher, based on his understanding as a student. I listened and agreed to most of what he said, but I also spent a large time worried about how old he thought I must be, if I seem that disconnected from the student perspective. Ah, well. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt, as he had clearly been in a bar for at least six hours and I was looking rather travel-weary at the time. The bar closed about 6:30, and we were told there would be a room for us at 8am. So, we wandered up the street to the 24-hour KFC and spent an hour and a half drinking coffee and poking at youtiao (it's like a not-too-sweet Chinese doughnut? KFC in China is the king of localized menu items). Finally, it was 8, so we returned to our hostel and fell into bed for a couple of hours.

Safety first.

It was still raining when we re-awoke. We went to have a lingering real breakfast/brunch, and then spent some time checking out the souvenir shopping opportunities on West Street and getting whacked in the face by everyone else's umbrellas. By the time we made it down to edge of the Li River, the rain had actually stopped a bit, so we jumped on the opportunity to check off one of our vacation activities and hopped on a PVC bamboo boat for a hour's cruising about. I now have about forty more pictures of karst mountains. My apologizes in advance to whoever has to sit through my post-trip slideshow.

It's raining, it's pouring, but no one is snoring...

Sunday and Monday followed the same weather pattern. It would rain all morning and taper off around noon or one o'clock. Then, it would be mostly dry until about dinner time, when it would begin raining again. Our pattern became: sleep late, have a leisurely brunch, go for a stroll, have tea/coffee if it was still raining, and then, as soon as it stopped, do the day's outdoor activity (most of the fun things to do in Yangshuo are outdoors). On Sunday we went for a bike ride (our guide tells me that it always rains during Dragon Boat Festival, by the way) and on Monday we took a walk through Yangshuo Park and loaded up on souvenirs. Souvenir shopping is hard for me. I see lots of things I would like, because I am the type of person who appreciates Cultural Revolution-era propaganda posters. As for all of my friends and family -- this is my third trip to China. There are only so many silk scarves and fans I can give you guys. And let's not get started on shopping for the male members of my souvenir circle. I wish you were the type of people who wore bathrobes or man-jewelry. Well, not really, but it would make this easier.

Modern propaganda posters.

One last amusing story. On Sunday, my flatmate bought a tee shirt from one of the many vendors of amusing Chinese tee shirts that said ‘听不懂’ (ting bu dong) or ‘I don’t understand (what you’re saying)’. It’s personally amusing because it’s what our students are always saying to us, and because she doesn’t really speak Chinese except for the most bare-bones survival basics. She wore it on Monday, while we were shopping, and a good half dozen vendors decided to call it out to her like it was her name, trying to get her attention, which cracked us up beyond all belief.

Awkward bike pose!

We had planned to take the 9:30 sleeper bus back to Guangzhou, but it was overbooked (meaning we'd have been the lucky people whose 'beds' were actually the floor of the aisle) and so we hung around the hot, humid, sticky bus station until the 10:30 bus. It goes directly to GZ without making any stops, and we arrived  back in the city at around 5:15. That's too early for the subway and most of the buses (and the only ones that were running from the coach station stop don't go near our apartment) so we hopped in a cab. Guangzhou feels very different in the early hours when there's no traffic and you can actually cruise around at a normal driving speed. We made it to our apartment, took quick showers (all day in rainy/hot Yangshuo+1.5 hours in disgustingly hot bus station + 7 hours on bus = feeling kinda gross) and went back to bed. Alas, I had to be up again after a short nap to get to Chinese class. Good thing I had today to chill out and do laundry. Although you know what? It's raining again.

the Yulong River