Rough Start

View from my apartment in the Foreign Experts Guesthouse.

Eight a.m. Past the cracked field outside my window a stream of bicycles, blue trucks and yellow compact vans flowed in two directions, the motion gentle and tiny as a snowglobe. I watched until hunger spurred me out of bed.

Nothing in the fridge, cabinets, closets – no food, no dishes. Just one knife, two glass jars and an iron wok with hints of rust.

I knocked on James’ door. No food there. No bottled water between us, either, which was a problem – we’d been warned against unboiled tap water.

Call our waiban? Great idea, except the phone still issued a dead squawk. We were on our own.

This is pathetic, we thought, boiling water in the rusting wok and then pouring it in the glass jars to drink. The first jar cracked when we didn’t wait for the water to cool, so we were left sharing the remaining glass jar. We boiled a second wokful of water and left it to cool while we surveyed our surroundings.

Campus was just as deserted under the glaring sun as it had been the night before. Somewhere in Beijing our colleagues were being escorted through world-famous sites; we tromped down dusty, isolated streets in search of food.

Without Chinese money we needed a bank, or at least a restaurant that would accept US dollars. After probing several blocks in all directions we found neither – just empty dormitories and classroom buildings, bustling construction zones, and what looked like non-university housing.

Maybe our waiban would call. We returned to our apartments, fussed with the inactive phone. Waited.

At noon our waiban knocked. Accompanying him was a teacher from Lin Da’s Foreign Language Department, one of our Chinese counterparts – a slight woman with a loose ponytail and a distinct British accent. Together they walked us farther from campus than we’d dared, between the skeletal cranes of new construction and down a dust-blown road paralleling train tracks and electric towers. We turned into an open-window restaurant that buzzed with oscillating fans and flies.

Over noodle and stir fry dishes pooled in oil (the more the better – a sign of generosity), they informed us that Lin Da would remain unpopulated for another week until the fall semester began. Until then we were free to explore Beijing on our own. On a napkin the waiban drew a map to a local bank where we could exchange US dollars. Instead of renminbi (“people’s money”) we would receive Foreign Exchange Currency (FEC), which we’d find tough to spend anywhere but tourist traps. He would check into getting us an advance on our salaries in renminbi. And, he assured, a taxi would pick us up at three for our meeting.

After lunch James and I walked many blocks in search of the bank. Wholly illiterate, and without recognizing architectural clues, picking the correct building wasn’t easy – we blundered into a clothing store, a grocery store and a mom-and-pop version of Kinko’s before finding the right one.

They wouldn’t exchange our money. Something about missing paperwork.

After a bout of frustrated gestures and loud, slow-motion language, we slunk back to our apartments in defeat, drank the second wok, boiled a third.

Three p.m. No taxi.

Still no phone. We debated hailing a cab, but we weren’t sure a driver we hired ourselves would accept US dollars. Our decision to wait paid off when the cab showed half an hour later.

Though it had been only sixteen hours since we’d been separated from our colleagues, their company was an immense relief. “Where have you been?” they demanded before launching into descriptions of all they’d seen: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Ming Tombs, Great Wall. They’d been given advances on their salaries, bought souvenirs to mail home.

“Listen,” I implored, pulling two friends aside, “we’re going to starve. We’ve got no money, we can’t even exchange it at the bank. Our apartments have no food. We have to boil water in a rusty wok. We can’t even get in touch with our waiban – the phone doesn’t work and we have no idea where he lives! Is there any way you can lend us some renminbi?”

They graciously loaned us two hundred yuan (¥200). Thus armed, James and I returned to Lin Da that night determined to conquer.

Little did we know the city wouldn’t go down that easy.

In subsequent days we found Wu Dao Kou, the local marketplace, and bartered for food, only to learn later we were being gouged in prices. We ate one meal a day at a restaurant, only to leave hungry after receiving dishes like deep-fried chicken gristle. Unwilling to fritter our borrowings on taxi fare or risk a bus system we didn’t understand, we walked an hour and a half to the Summer Palace, only to be turned away at the gate because they wouldn’t accept renminbi from foreigners. Every time we tried to call our waiban, the phone squawked its customary line-dead tone.

Despite it all, by the end of the week we’d bought a bona fide teakettle and several one-liter sodas (I never saw two-liters) to use the bottles for storing water. We’d also found a government-owned grocery store with fixed prices so we could cook without bankrupting ourselves.

Anything beyond walking radius of our university remained a mystery, but by the time students arrived, springing campus to life, we had duked it out within the tight ring of our surroundings and held our own.

East of campus — no food here.

South of campus — no food here, either.

On the way to our first restaurant.

On the way to Wu Dao Kou.

The independent sellers’ area of Wu Dao Kou.

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