Toll plaza near Beijing International Airport.
I’d signed on with a Peace Corps-style organization that trained and sent volunteer English teachers as a token of cultural exchange. Thirty-eight of us had spent six weeks in Los Angeles for a crash course in teaching English as a foreign language. We’d bonded in anticipation of our year overseas, which was a bit of an illusion since we would be scattered in small teams across the continent.
Before that diaspora, our waibans would take us from the airport to Youyi (“Friendship”) Hotel, a government-run hotel for foreigners, and spend a few days impressing us with Beijing’s attractions. We were arriving a week before the start of the fall semester to allow for sightseeing and train travel to our destination cities. Since my teammate James and I would be teaching in Beijing and didn’t need to take a train, that meant, we supposed, more sightseeing for us.
So we thought.
The airport terminal was a jumble of checkpoints and paperwork, stamps and forms – no real lines, just busy counters staffed with uniformed personnel asking questions and scrutinizing IDs. A short gentleman in glasses and a combover hovered at our side, and finally James and I realized he wasn’t with the airport at all – he was our university’s waiban. He escorted us to a waiting taxi, and on the drive into Beijing proper we discovered the airport was almost within city limits; closer in the streets were lined with lights aplenty. Still, at one in the morning it was a ghost town. We ogled the low brick buildings and Chinese signs.
Our taxi rolled through a gate into a courtyard surrounded by three buildings and filled with other parked taxis. Just beyond the gate a block-wide construction zone lit the sky, clanking and banging into the hot night air. “Welcome to your new home,” our waiban smiled.
“This isn’t Youyi Hotel?”
“No,” he laughed. “You are at Lin Da!” It was the nickname for our university – Beijing Linye Daxue (“Forestry University”), Lin Da for short.
“Why are there so many taxis?”
“Yes, many taxis,” he agreed. “Come!”
We entered the tallest building, five stories, and knocked on the thin door. A head of wiry hair and chin stubble poked out, eyes squinting, then ducked back in. He returned with a fat plastic ring of keys. Young and wizened, he seemed to inspect us with only one eye – the other veered sharply sideways. He smiled and repeated, “Hello. Hello.” Our waiban (whose name we had missed in the airport bustle) introduced him as Xiao Ming, superintendent of the Foreign Experts Guesthouse. We trooped up four flights of bare cement steps for a quick tour of our apartments: bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, combo living/dining room – each. The worn carpet was unpadded, the cabinetry chintzy, but James and I had expected to share an apartment. By Chinese standards, all this for one person was extravagant.
But weren’t we supposed to be with our fellow teachers at Youyi Hotel? “There’s a meeting tomorrow night,” I informed our waiban. “They want us to be there.”
“Yes, I know this. A taxi will come for you tomorrow.”
“At what time?”
“I’m sorry, at what time is the meeting?”
“Four.”
“Yes, a taxi will come for you at three I think.”
A final round of smiles, handshakes, and Xiao Ming and our waiban were off.
Somewhere out in the black night of Beijing, our friends were visiting each others’ hotel rooms, comparing first impressions, twittering. I wondered if they’d notice our absence.
Meanwhile, James and I took a wee-morning stroll around our hushed campus, keeping track of each turn so we could find our way home. We absorbed the smell of the air, the odd sound of the crickets, the backdrop of construction, and thirsted to know what the darkness hid around us.
Before turning in, I rigged netting above my bed and initiated what would become a bedtime ritual: mosquito squashing. That night I chalked up seven.
Two buildings on campus: 1) Foreign Experts Guesthouse, and 2) Foreign Languages Building.
Taken from the roof of the main campus building in winter: 1) Foreign Experts Guesthouse, 2) Foreign Languages Building, and 3) Beilin Hotel, where the taxi fleet was headquartered.
January 11, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Ah ha - this entry finally clarified your purpose for being in China. I must have read too fast at first and originally assumed you were there purely for individual travel/vacation/sightseeing, so I didn’t understand the references to your students.
January 14, 2008 at 8:08 am
Thanks for this feedback. I may reorganize. Originally this book had a longer “Overture” of about eight pieces, a sort of jump-right-in, all-at-once preview of the themes. I moved most of those pieces back into the later chapters after receiving feedback from a Chinese reader. I really like “Glue Pot” and “Olympic Bid” and wanted to highlight them somehow. But they don’t really work as an “Overture,” so eventually I’ll shift them into later chapters also.
All of that is to say this book is a work in progress, and I appreciate your feedback!