Boris, who has no such cultural issues, tells me he’ll leave the school in early July to return to Moscow, first travelling thirty hours by train to Beijing in order to see more of the country. He adds that Chinese railway carriages are Russian-made, and are identical to the ones at home, except that in Russia they use one of the three bunk levels for baggage. Here it is people on all levels.
When he stalks off, I climb the hill to the music room and spend an hour working on a tightly-sewn Bach fugue. Playing the piano isn’t easy when you have to engineer substitutions for the five bass keys that have lost their voices and the B flat that sticks.
I’m surprised they haven’t fixed this, but I need to remember that nothing is easy here.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
STANDING ALONGSIDE
It’s summer and the heat’s beginning to snarl, beating back against my body from the road and crowded pavements. Many men on the streets undo the top three or four buttons of their shirts and let them slide off their shoulders down their backs, while those who want a cool middle roll the tails of their shirts up under their armpits. Up till now, with memories of the heavy summer green of old English trees in Christchurch’s public spaces, I’ve not realised the importance of the poor dust-laden trees that line Chongqing’s streets. Only now I see what a critical baffle they will be later in the summer against temperatures that will soar into the forties and stay there for weeks. Those who can will retire to darkened rooms, but there will be millions here who still need to walk the blazing streets. At the roadsides, strawberry sellers are offering their fragrant gatherings in baskets covered with leaves, just a few glistening berries exposed to tempt passersby.
As my final term here moves into its last two weeks, I plan my lessons and farewells. One morning, Hilda drifts into the flat early to relay a message from the Principal. The International Studies University at Shapingba needs a foreign teacher to spend a few days in Guangyuan, near the northern Sichuan border, eighteen hours by train. The brief is to teach and to speak at the first anniversary of a Guangyuan Middle School becoming a Foreign Language School. The Principal has told Hilda that she’ll release me from my teaching duties here for the last week of the term – but only if I want to go, Hilda stresses – and she presses for an immediate answer to take back. I don’t want to miss these last lessons with my own students, but a trip to see northern Sichuan is tempting. I’d also, incidentally, quite like to stay on side with the Principal, if it doesn’t involve unreasonable capitulation. I’ve tried not to do anything too inappropriate while I’ve been at the school, and she’s looked after me well. It’d be good to leave here in a fortnight exchanging convincing smiles. Hilda’s not encouraged to have opinions, but I ask her what she thinks would please the Principal.
She looks into the distance:
‘I think she may be happy if you go.’
That’ll do.
The contact at the University is Jin, in the Admissions Department. Newly graduated, he’s been given the position of liaison officer with the Foreign Language Schools. On the phone, he sounds unctuous but insistent, as he makes arrangements to pick me up on the way to the station.
The Principal and I meet in a corridor. She claims she’s deeply concerned about my safety on this journey – this is her highest priority in the matter. I peer into the smoke screen in front of me, within which I know there is an element of genuine concern. The Westerner inside me mutters to myself: ‘Do you want me to go or not? Just say what you want.’ But the delicate evasions of Chinese life can’t be short-circuited. I tell her I appreciate her concern, take any risk upon myself, and believe Jin will be a conscientious guide. She smiles mysteriously, and I back out from her presence to go and pack my bag.
When Jin comes bounding up the stairs to collect me the next day, he proves fresh-faced and very careful. English doesn’t fit his mouth comfortably; the words have to fight to get out. In the waiting taxi I meet Jessica, a senior lecturer in English from the University, booked, like me, to teach and speak at the school in Guangyuan. Considering what she later confesses of her doubts about sharing the trip with a foreigner, she is welcoming.
The first class waiting room to which Jin nervously leads us isn’t China at all. There’s no-one there and it’s spotless.
Jessica, who’s in her fifties, has near-perfect English. A few years ago she spent ten months in the United States on a scholarship. The award allowed a trip to two United States cities. She very much wanted to see Boston. No, the authorities said, you should go to New York and Washington – so she did, asking nothing more than that she should see the museums. She was dazed with their resources and tells stories of a curator who let her do something against the museum rules, of a passerby in the street who spoke to her with particular kindness, of her warm friendship with elderly women in her apartment block – she did their shopping for them, and they explained American life to her.
She constantly tries to anchor her hair behing her ears: ‘My hair’s grey, you know. I dye it.’
I’ve been told it’s customary for Chinese woman to dye their hair until they’re eighty, at which point apparently they accept the inevitable. Kathleen, the grey-haired Californian teacher in her early seventies, told me she once overheard a Chinese woman behind her in a bus say to her companion (unaware that Kathleen had a good command of Mandarin): ‘The old girl doesn’t look too bad for eighty, does she?’
Jin was Jessica’s student before he graduated. She fusses over him, prods him, tells me he’s a good boy. Jin is certainly putting his heart and soul into his role. He’s scrubbed to a high shine, does everything with deliberate discretion, always has the tickets ready, remembers to buy water and bananas for us, and talks to me in a confiding murmur, putting his mouth close to my ear and nudging my arm with his warm muscular one. I can barely understand him. He’s a discus athlete and shows me the muscle on the pad of his thumb, which swells like a deformity. He slumps in his seat and cuddles up beside his old teacher with the silly smile of an indulged and beloved grandchild.
Jessica’s shy and a little awkward, passionate about teaching and English, and full of concerns. She’s also entirely scrupulous. Many times in the very public days that follow she repeats: ‘I don’t like these official things. I’m not good at it. I’m too simple for it.’
Public affairs may trouble her truthfulness, yet she chats, laughs, joins in as though they were a delight. Clearly she’s anxious to observe all the forms. On two occasions when she fears she’s made a slight gaffe she retreats, clucking softly like a disturbed hen.
In the days ahead, she’ll guide me through the slippery coils of Chinese etiquette, prompting me gently: ‘Here’s another toast.’; ‘You should try some of that - it’s a special local dish.’; ‘He’s the Party Secretary.’; ‘You can if you’re very quick.’
She says she likes to think for herself, is careful about her alignments.
‘I’m free,’ she laughs, but everything she does in the next few days suggests her first concern is to do her social duty. Like Jin’s mother, her mother was a countrywoman, who made all their clothes and cloth shoes and taught her daughter the same skills.
‘Cotton shoes didn’t last. She taught me how to pad them, but when we played hopscotch I’d wear out a pair of cloth shoes in a fortnight.’
Her father was a surgeon, and she wanted to be one too, but women weren’t welcome in the profession and she became a teacher.
‘For ten years I hated teaching. I hated it because I believed I’d have been a good surgeon. Then one day I realised this is a wonderful job for me, and I’ve loved teaching ever since – teaching, but not administration.’
When we board the train, a young girl in a red fore-and-aft cap, white jacket and red skirt stands to attention at the door of the carriage and senior male station attendants salute as the train draws out of the station. It all seems a little theatrical and I wonder if I should do up my top button, but China’s rail system is one of he
r national prides and deserves to be celebrated. Travelling north, we have our own four-bed compartment. Windows in China, except in very modern or pompous buildings, are generally small, and the one in the compartment allows only a handkerchief view. Surprisingly, the train lavatory has a picture window, one large pane of glass, which frames your side view for the interest of all those in the countryside who watch the trains go by. You look down the large hole to the sleepers rolling away under the train and a welcome cool up-draught.
This piece of Sichuan railway snakes through rugged country. It wasn’t until 1956 that this formidable landscape, fiercely resistant to penetration, allowed the provincial capital Chengdu to be joined by rail to the rest of China. Sometimes we flick in and out of many short tunnels in succession, with just a flash of sunlight between. According to a Chinese saying: ‘The clever rabbit has many homes.’
After nightfall we stop at small stations. Through the windows you can hear country sounds – a call, a bark, a whistle, a clank – from the calm world hidden in the darkness outside. The air is cool on our faces. We have a simple meal in the dining car soon after leaving Chongqing, at a table where we can see into the kitchen, oily and stained and dim, like a mechanic’s workshop. Several attendants are lolling at a table, smoking and abusing one another loudly and cheerfully. The song of the train rolls on – da-da da-da … da-da da-da. I don’t sleep during the eighteen-hour journey, but never tire of that deep voice from one of the great train systems of the world. I’m being carried – within a cargo of other lives I can only guess at.
In the compartment, Jessica fans herself anxiously and talks. Her undergraduate son has a talent for computer studies. When Jessica speaks of him, her face and voice light up. But the relationship isn’t unclouded: ‘I’m the strict one, and my husband’s the other one. My husband’s very, very good at his role.’ She laughs and then sighs sadly. She looks so downcast that I don’t ask any questions.
Later, when we know one another better, she talks about marriage in China. She says that she assured people in the United States that Chinese husbands are the best in the world.
‘Mine is very considerate’ – she looks out the window – ‘Yes, I’m very lucky.’
If a marriage isn’t happy, she tells me, divorce is relatively easy to get, the process usually initiated by the wife; but considerable effort is made to find some accommodation for both parties, to avoid a complete break. The affectionate middle-aged Australian couple teaching here, Gerard and Margaret, said they were surprised at how offhand Chinese couples appeared to be with one another, but I believe I’ve seen many good working partnerships, tolerant and balanced; perhaps this is love with its sleeves rolled up.
Jessica falls silent. Outside the window the countryside is lush, a vivid green. Vines are in flower. Farms here are what we’d call market gardens, with a few animals thrown in. A boy walks behind a large pink pig, which rolls along a path with the dignity of a philosopher, quite undisturbed by the train. The countryside under muted light, with no wind to stir its gentle humps and hollows, has a dream-like quality. There’s never a hurried movement among the people working in the fields. They move gracefully and look, from a distance, as if theirs is a contemplative occupation. It’s only when you’re nearer that you see the weight of the loads they’re carrying, the energy the land demands from them. From a classroom balcony, I’ve watched farmers in the market gardens behind our school. I’d like to take a closer look at what they’re doing but feel I’ve no right to walk casually among them. They’re busy; they’re trying to stay alive.
A group of teachers from the Guangyuan School meets us at the station at 5 a.m. The headmaster, with a pager on his belt and shirt sleeves rolled up, looks a young forty. With him is a local man connected with the school, He has teeth that are beginning to give up, and the noisy ways of one who knows and is well-known in the district. His jokes are apparently good.
At a two-star hotel – the best in town – we are shown to the room Jessica and I will share. We have an hour to rest before breakfast at seven and school at eight. Jessica flops on a bed; she too is going to find the pace tough. However, with the skill of her race, she slept for some time last night, standing up in the corridor of the train.
As I try to organise my belongings around my bed, I wonder how she feels about sharing the room. Two days later, she looks at me and says: ‘You’re very amiable, you know. I’m not usually comfortable with foreigners. When I learned we were to share a room, I tried to change it.’
We meet for breakfast with teachers from the school, the Party Secretary, the Principal and the local man with the jokes. It is the first of many such meals at the hotel, always semi-formal, semi-business. The atmosphere’s friendly and generous, but the constant public show, the strings of toasts requiring hasty swallowing, the obligatory tasting of too many local dishes – all are testing my reserves of sociability. I hear, in the voice in my head, the spoon scraping the bottom of the barrel, and I long for time to myself to digest all these crowded hours.
The school feels simple and airy after Chongqing. Six scheduled lessons grow to eight and later nine, plus a question-answering session in the school playground. Later the leader of the English teachers’ group whispers: ‘You’re very kind. Some foreigners don’t like the little changes we make.’
She follows me round the classrooms with a mug of tea.
‘You must be so tired,’ she murmurs kindly.
But surely she really means: ‘You must rest and drink this delicious tea, because we want to be friends and we’ve got stacks of work for you to do, and we’re still thinking things up, and if you prove to be a reasonable teacher, we’ll take your arm, pour you more tea, and give you classes until midnight.’
The thirteen-year-olds I teach are all energy and noise, faces alight, poised like springs in their chairs. They’re wild with excitement at this change from the routine, eager to put on a good show, to make friends, to show off their English. They roar their answers, beg for a chance to speak. Where else do students behave like these, alight with the longing to learn? I’ve seen a few in country primary schools in New Zealand. There’s no lack of enthusiasm among the teachers either. They follow us around and pack the back of the classrooms. The video camera wheels and blinks throughout the lessons. The sweat runs down my back and I furtively swallow some paracetamol with my tea.
Back at the hotel, Jessica takes something for her own headache and sits on the end of the bed, munching herbs.
‘It’s this problem I have with my health,’ she explains sombrely.
Then she talks about the school:
‘I think they’re doing a very good job. I want to help them.’
We’re to speak at the one-year anniversary celebrations on Wednesday – speeches designed to persuade the City Government, whose senior representatives will attend the occasion, to support the school with money. Jin advises me, in a low and significant voice: ‘Your role is to encourage and inspire.’
Jessica decides: ‘In my speech I shall say how good they are.’
Later in the day, however, she’s summoned to the room across the corridor that Jin shares with two senior officials from the University, to discuss her speech. She returns looking anxious:
‘They want me to change my speech. They want me to say the school is doing quite well, but has a long, long way to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. But, I must do it. I’ll do what they say. But … ’ she looks miserable, ‘I want to tell the teachers how well they’re doing.’
She wanders about the room, distressed.
Before we turn the light out at night, she announces: ‘I’ve decided what I’m going to do. I’ll say they’re really good and then say they have a long way to go. A compromise.’
The next evening, she calls from the bathroom: ‘I’ve decided what I’ll say.’
She comes and lies on her bed in her short night gown, tucks it around her bottom as a gesture of modes
ty, and points a toe at the ceiling as she puts her case: ‘I must say how good they are. They need to be encouraged. I’ll say that and then, at the very end, I’ll quickly say there’s a long way to go. That’s what I’ll do.’ She turns on the bed and looks at me: ‘As I said, I don’t like this. I’m not good at it … this … all this. I’m a teacher.’
Jin comes in and says that the interpreter needs a copy of my speech. I lie on the bed and write something. Looking at it carefully, I’m surprised to find it’s just like a Chinese speech, full of high-flown rhetoric. No wonder it was easy to write. I read it to Jessica.
‘Is that alright?’
‘Yes. What do you mean by “community” when you say “support from the community”?’
I tell her.
‘We haven’t got a word with exactly that meaning in Chinese. I’ll check that they translate it appropriately.’
After the four classes on the first day, there’s an hour in the playground with a microphone and the chance for children to ask questions. The microphone cuts in and out, but I notice it doesn’t worry me now – that’s what I expect it to do. I’ve been in China nine months.
‘Now you can rest,’ the teachers say smiling, but they don’t mean it.
That night Jessica is addressing the teachers, and they insist:
‘And you must say something too, just a little thing.’
In the event, it’s worth going to the teachers’ meeting just to hear the tone of Jessica’s speech to them, the tone of a modest, loving aunt speaking to her nieces and nephews – mildly suggesting, laughing with them. It’s a speech of mutuality. Later I ask her what she said.
‘I told them they must encourage their students – always. That must come first, before anything else.’
Under the Huang Jiao Tree Page 17