An American Girl

With a name like Gipsy Danger, she seemed destined for international travel from the very beginning.

My Shanghainese street cat has now logged more cage time than an MMA fighter, I'm fond of saying.

We've arrived in America.

But it wasn't easy.

********

Her story began about two years ago, when she wandered past the lobby of the apartment building I lived in.  My neighbors, Balvinder and Cissy, were with me on the couches, drinking 3 RMB (50 cent) 750 ml bottles of Qingdao beer.  Bal had Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" on repeat and was smoking cigars.

 

"A kitty!"  I exclaimed.  I'd had a couple of Qingdaos by this point, so my enthusiasm wasn't unexpected.  Cissy followed my pointing finger and drew a quick inhale.  "She's lovely," she breathed.

And she was.  The kitten was five months old, we found out later, and had the most incredible markings--gray and black tiger stripes and orange marmalade whirled over a white belly and four white paws.  At the corner of each eye was a downward cheetah tear stripe that could've made her look pathetic--but her eyes were bright and her body language was confident and curious.

As Cissy and I cooed over the kitten and tried to coax her into the lobby.  "That cat is from the street.  Probably has fleas and God knows what," Bal said.

Cissy and I zipped to the nearby convenience store and bought a can of mackerel to feed the cat, and a few more beers.  The cat sniffed curiously at the fish we'd placed outside the building, but didn't eat it.

"Well, there goes my 7 kuai," I grumbled, but I was smiling.

"I'm talking to myself right now," Bal griped from the couches.  The cat followed Cissy and I back inside.  She made figure eights around Bal's ankles and meowed, purring.

"This is a helicopter cat!"  Bal said.  He seemed delighted now that he was receiving the cat's attention.

I picked her up and checked under her fur.  "No fleas.  Or flea eggs," I reported.  My orange tabby back home, Sitka, had had quite a few of both when I'd gotten him five years ago.  It'd been an easy fix, but in China?  Probably can't pick up a flea collar at the supermarket, I thought.

"Boy or girl?"  Cissy asked.

"Hold her upside down and check!"  Bal laughed. 

We all giggled.  "I can't tell, I'm not a vet," I said, "but most calico cats are female.  My guess is girl."

We all commented on the silky smoothness of her fur, and how she didn't appear to be starving.  Cissy and Bal both asked several people, including the lobby security guard, about the cat.  The answer was always the same:  "Homeless."

A couple of hours later we'd grown attached, and Cissy asked me if I'd take her home.  "I can't take her, I already have a cat at home!"  I protested, holding up my hands.  "I can't cheat on Sitka!"  I'd only been in Shanghai for a couple of months, and I was only planning on staying for a year.  But Cissy was Chinese, and her and Bal were committed to staying in Shanghai for the next year or two.

 

I told Bal about how my sister had captured kittens in her hoodie, and so he did the same--we rode the elevator up to their floor.

The next morning I showed up at their door with cat litter, a plastic basin for a litter box, and some kitten food I'd purchased at Jiadeli, the local supermarket.  Cissy was in the pajamas that Bal's mom had made for her, and she looked delightfully Asian in the bright red and pink colors.

"Oh, this cat," she started worriedly.  "She's too wild, Bal says.  She kept running over us all night, meowing and meowing.  Bal says we might put her back on the street."

I remembered how Sitka had been at that age.  "She'll outgrow it," I said, as we set up Gipsy's things.

Gipsy wouldn't have survived the winter at her young age, a Chinese vet later revealed.  A subtropical city, Shanghai is nowhere near as cold as Spokane, but we did have a couple of freezing cold mornings.

But Gipsy had other challenges ahead of her, most notably, an unstable living situation.  Frustrated with China and especially EF, Bal had resigned his position in April and returned to England.  At that point, he and Cissy had been married only a couple of months, and she'd decided to return to her hometown of Guangzhou in the south to take care of her ailing mother.  Taking Gipsy was not an option--Cissy already had a dog at home, and she'd be busy with her visa application and studying for her IELTS (English language test). 

I encouraged Cissy to call the two Shanghai animal shelters we could find, but one never returned her call and the other was full.

Cissy missed Bal terribly.  Though we watched Jason Statham movies and went to a pub quiz once a week, I was often working, so Cissy was quite lonely.  She also told me she'd started feeding Gipsy people food. 

"She likes it.  She'll eat anything, even the spicy dishes...But then she vomits."  Cissy looked at me, her eyes watery.  "I'm trying to get her ready to return to the street."

"What are you talking about?"  I demanded.  "You know I'm taking that cat."

"What?"  she asked, startled. 

"Sure, I'll take her," I committed, "and I'll try my best to find her a good home."

When Cissy left at the end of May, she hugged me tightly--something she didn't usually do--with tears in her eyes.  "Thank you so much for everything," she said.

I asked around:  coworkers, my chiropractor.  I posted a cute sign with Gipsy's picture at Avocado Lady, a small local shop patronized by many wealthy ex-pats.  I went home to Spokane for three weeks and had a coworker take care of Gipsy.  By the time I got back to Shanghai, I was growing quite attached to her.

I started looking into taking her home with me.  Oh, the regulations!  Oh, the horrors of quarantine!  Oh, the horrors of shipping animals in China!  I heard about epic quarantines--beloved family pets incarcerated in cages for six months; the pets were never the same afterward.  I heard about pets suffocating or freezing to death due to Chinese airline staff failing to pressurize the cargo hold.

I learned that certain airlines would allow in-cabin pets (thank you, United).  I learned that Chinese bureaucracy, while a slow nightmare of paperwork and money, can be handled, even if it means waiting in the vet's office for two hours with your cat for that official pet health certificate that cost 1150 RMB (about $200 US).  I discovered that China has strange demands--the rabies shot Gipsy had gotten the year before wasn't "official", so she was revaccinated, and micro chipped, on the same day--in spite of my reservations that the microchip wouldn't work in the US. 

When Gipsy and I arrived at Pudong International Airport an hour before our check-in time on July 8th, she'd already been in the carrier for an hour. 

Going through security, I had to take her out of her carrier (with about 25 curious Chinese passengers behind me, and doors opening up to the rest of the airport on either end) so that they could scan it.  What if she runs away?  I was sweating and tense by the time we got to our gate, and the sweat really popped when an cute female employee approached me, saying my carrier was too big to fit under the seat.

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?"  I said angrily.  Why tell me now, after security and everything?  It seemed that everything I did in China had some kind of problem, and after two years, I was more than ready to leave.

My rude response should've earned me a smack in the face, but the employee and her coworker called the purser of the plane to come out and speak to me. 

"My name is Laura," she said, shaking my hand, "and I have nine cats myself."  She smiled at me and eyed the carrier with a sharpness.  "Well, the flight isn't fully booked.  Let's go for it."  (Again, thank you, United.)

And the employees were right.  The carrier was about a centimeter too tall to go under the seat, but I shoved and tried.  About five minutes after we got settled, a couple of older Chinese ladies wanted to sit together and asked the attendant in Chinese to ask me to move.  I rolled my eyes and grumbled, but we ended up sitting in an aisle seat, rather than a window, a blessing on an 11-hour flight, and had an empty seat between us and a quiet Chinese man.

We landed in San Francisco.  The Customs guy calmly and carefully looked over her Chinese certificate and took her Ziploc baggie of cat food.  "You and I both know what this is," he said kindly, "but Uncle Sam has rules."

"That's okay," I sighed.  "She's not eating, anyway."

And she wasn't.  No eating, no drinking, no bathroom accidents.  I was starting to wonder if Gipsy's body had completely shut down.  I was starting to worry, but I couldn't do anything about it.  I sweated some more.  I'd only slept a couple of hours the night before we left, and maybe dozed an hour on the flight from Shanghai to San Fran.  I have no idea if Gipsy slept at all.

Again, we had to take her out so that security could scan her cage.  This time we were allowed to wait in a private room with ridiculously high walls.  I kept telling Gipsy how much I loved her, what a good cat she was being, and how proud I was of her.  My mom had sent a hormone collar from the US with supposedly calming effects, and although Gipsy still seemed nervous, it appeared to be working.  When the TSA guy returned, he commented, "By now, most cats are climbing those walls.  You've got a nice, mellow cat."  I beamed with pride and put her back in her carrier, and she was pretty good about it.

We landed in Denver.  And there we waited.  And waited.

A computer glitch had grounded some United flights earlier that day, I learned.  We'd already planned for a 7 or 8 hour layover, but it got later and later.  I'd eaten, but, as the airport's restaurants closed down, I felt hungry again.  I peered into Gipsy's cage.  She seemed fine, and she hadn't eaten.  I drew strength from that.  As we waited some more, I curled up around her carrier, draped between two chairs, freezing cold.  I'd forgotten my new jacket in San Francisco--my only worry then had been getting us through Customs.  The sweat seemed to have frozen on my body.  I was tempted to take Gipsy's blanket and use it for myself, but I kept it draped over her carrier--partly to keep her warm and partly to block off any sights that may have frightened her.

Finally we got on the flight.  It was full.  Gipsy's carrier wouldn't go under the seat.  I had to prop my feet on top of it, and my backpack on top of my knees.  It's only for a couple of hours.  Strangely, I never got reminded or reprimanded about her carrier or my backpack.  Lucky.  No one bugged us.

We finally, finally landed in Spokane.  It was about 1 am.  And I could hear jack hammering coming from near the luggage carousel.  My sister Laura met us and I could tell she was worried about us and the jack hammering. 

"I think Gipsy's kind of in shock, anyway," I said, laughing, loopy from lack of sleep.  It hadn't quite sunken in that we'd made it--that we were in America.  I unnecessarily reminded my sister that we'd lived next to a construction site for two years.  I joked, "It's probably a 'welcome home' sound for her."

********

It's been over a week now, and Gipsy has met Sitka and Nellie, my sister's cat.  She's explored both levels of the house.  So much space compared to our tiny 40 square meter studio in Shanghai!  Yesterday, she even went outside with the other two cats.  She has fallen for Sitka, following him around like a starry eyed teeny bopper.  There's been some hissing, and some batting of paws, but no biting or scratching.

My Shanghainese girl is now an American girl--out in the open spaces of the West, enjoying the fresh air and grass under her paws, exploring this New World--just like I'd promised.

 

A question of physics: How a city moves

It ain't rocket science; rather, simple physics:  two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  Physicists would agree--check out Einstein or Pauli. 

But the laws of physics do not apply in Shanghai, arguably the largest city in the world.  Countless experiences with subways and elevators have taught me (and many other ex-pats) that Shanghainese do not believe in physics.

Let me elucidate.  Imagine it's the tail end of the morning rush, and you are on subway line 10, heading south to East Nanjing Road.  As the subway pulls in, you see people in single file lines, five deep, on either side of the sliding doors.  Ah, queues!  To most Westerners, an orderly line is probably one of the highest benchmarks of what we consider developed civilization.  And for two seconds after the doors open, the illusion holds.  Your right foot crosses the gap between subway car and station platform, but before it makes contact, you are suddenly pummeled backward, carried by the oncoming rush of 5'2" Asians, their families, their suitcases, backpacks, and trolleys.  But...but...what happened to the queues?  you wonder, fighting (as politely as you can at first) to get out at your stop.  The queues had scattered into chaos, like a platoon in the face of an enemy grenade.  Because, you see, this is China.  People don't do lines here.  When the train arrives, it's every person for themselves.

This is understandable if you look at the history of this nation.  Not even 50 years ago people queued up for rice, or whatever was on their ration ticket, or queued up for the train.  But tickets guaranteed you nothing, and neither did waiting in line.  It was always first come, first served.  You wanna eat today?  Push to the front.

I saw the train phenomena for myself in late 1980s Qinghai.  As foreigners, my family paid double or triple what a local would pay and secured a soft sleeper cabin--four bunks for the four of us.  We were lucky.  Our expensive tickets and foreigness seemed to let us escape some of the pandemonium.  For the Chinese, a ticket with a seat didn't mean the 30 people cutting in front of you respected that at all.  People pushed each other in through open windows, forgoing the line at the door once 50 bodies mashed together trying to get in.

To be fair, my mom lived in Florence, Italy for a year in the late 60s and said the Italians were just as bad.  So I'm not saying the aversion to lining up is strictly a Chinese thing.  But it does happen to be true for the 23 million Chinese people I move with every day.

The same anti-physics illogic applies to elevators and escalators as well.  With escalators, I'd always taken it for granted that people walk on the left, ride on the right.  And there are a few places where people follow this seemingly obvious logic.  But mostly people rush and shove to get on the escalator, and then they all stand there sedately until it reaches the top.  What was all the rushing for?  I always wonder, if you're just going to stand there?  The Chinese logic appears to be this:  Why take one minute going a flight of stairs when you can wait five minutes for the elevator to descend from the 26th floor to the first and then take it one floor up?  Why wait for people to exit, kindly leaving you ample space, when you can elbow, squeeze, shuffle, or cigarette burn your way in NOW? 

Well, I can't beat 23 million people!  So I've joined them, to some extent.  I'm not afraid to shove past an elderly couple (I jostle, I don't plow!) in order to exit the subway at my stop, and I've gotten over my friendly "I'm just a foreigner" ways when some granny tries to cut in line at the grocery store.  As a second in line, I've actually put out an arm past the person in front of me to the counter and said "No way!"  I don't care if they don't understand English.  My glittering eyes and body language say it all.  The longer I wait in line, the more protective I am of my place in it.

People in China are extremely kind if they know you.  If they don't, you're just the 20 millionth piece of meat they've pushed past today to get home.

China...and Greece?!

One of the best things about teaching adults is that it's not verboten to hang out with students outside the classroom.  So when one of my students, a girl named Lynn in her early 20s, invited me and a handful of other students to watch fireworks in Century Park, I said yes without hesitation.

We met in Pudong:  outside exit 6, metro line 2, the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum stop.  I was the last to arrive, and I was still five minutes early.  The Shanghainese have impressed me with their ability to be consistently, politely on time.  With Lynn were Ben, a 20-something athlete and his classmate from Fudan University; and Jessie, Lynn's friend and also a student.  Jessie was a sweet girl who had the misfortune of looking like a boy.  (I also have a student named Simon who looks like a girl.)

Right away I could sense that this was one of the largest crowds I've ever been in.  Police and soldiers (all unarmed--no one, including private citizens, is allowed to own firearms in the Middle Kingdom) looked perfunctorily at our tickets at three checkpoints before we approached the viewing area:  a large promenade around what looked like a small, man-made lake.

Our tickets, I was pleasantly surprised to discover, listed Greece as the first act and China as the second.  I loved Greece!  After spending three months there as a student, I still thought it was one of the best places I'd ever visited.

The Greeks get around.  They've made it to Coober Pedy, a tiny opal mining town in The Middle of Nowhere, Australia, scrabbling for a living along with 40 other nationalities...and lizards.  In fact, back in '03 I'd stayed in a hotel called Radekka's run by a Greek couple.  The hotel's rooms were in old opal mine shafts--polished reddish stone walls deep enough underground to render air conditioning unnecessary, and so dark and quiet that I'd had one of the best nights' sleep in my whole life.

The Greeks have also made an impact in Shanghai.  The hole-in-the-wall Amphora sells everything from Greek olives and wines to cookies and ouzo.  There are a handful of Greek restaurants, too, from the mid- to the ridiculously priced.

The students and I were about an hour early, and changed spots a few times (searching for the best view) before sitting on Lynn's thoughtfully provided plastic sheeting.

"I want to cut down the tree."  Lynn, normally buoyant, was frowning, pointing at a large, leafy tree directly in front of us.  "It's hindering our sight."

I managed to stifle a smile.  Many of my students used overly academic language because their experience with English was with grammar textbooks:  reading, writing, memorization, rather than speaking.

"It's okay," I soothed, and lifted both of my arms up and to either side of the tree.  "We can see around it."

Lynn and Jessie unloaded fruit--black plums and sliced cantaloupe--and a six-pack of Coca-Cola from their backpacks.  They reminded me of moms on an outing--taking care of the children:  the two boys and the foreigner.  It wasn't the first time I'd been treated like a child because I couldn't speak the language and didn't know the culture, but it didn't bother me so much at the moment.

"I don't know what you like to drink, so I buy--bought?--American!"  Lynn giggled.

"I love Coke," I said honestly.  "I also like Wang Lao Ji," referring to the sweetened herbal tea that sponsored The Voice of China.  The drink came in a red can decorated with yellow characters that spelled out "King Old Lucky".  Apparently, there was a famous dispute over the recipe of this drink.

The four students looked impressed and nodded.

After about half an hour, I started to feel a bit nervous about the fact that we were sitting down.  We were now completely surrounded by people sitting, standing, eating, smoking; people with toddlers on their shoulders and people in wheelchairs.  The Chinese have a saying:  Ren shan, ren hai:  people mountain, people sea.  I thought, not for the first time how accurate and logical Chinese can be, and how poetic--crowds of people large as a mountain, large as the ocean.

The sky darkened, the crowd deepened, and the time ticked down.  "That tree!"  Jessie moaned, pointing, leaning her arm around my shoulder.  Chinese people are not usually very touchy-feely unless they are with friends.  Lynn and Jessie had been walking arm-in-arm earlier, and it was common to see women my age doing the same, or even holding hands, when walking around the city.  Ben and his roommate looked at each other, looking a bit embarrassed, before smiling a little at me.  This was another China thing--when you are their guest, they will do anything to keep you happy.  I had a feeling that, if it had been within their power, my students would've pruned every offensive branch so that we could have the perfect view of the coming show.  I resolved not to complain once.

"Well, I'm too busy making friends with all the babies right now!"  I said.  It was true.  I'd smiled and waved at a little girl with a bowl haircut who was gnawing at corn on the cob, a popular snack in Shanghai; I'd then played peek-a-boo with a little boy on his father's shoulders.  They were sooo cute!

Soon a man with the loud, traditional, Beijing-accented Chinese got on the PA to announce the beginning of the show.  The sponsors were saluted with small bursts of fireworks after each company name was announced:  a warm-up.

the Greek and Chinese national anthems were played, and then the Greek show began--it was maybe 20 minutes of dazzling, sparkling, fireworks synced with Moby and AC/DC, among other artists that I hoped were actually from Greece.  The finale:  flash-bang grenades that blinded us and evoked applause from the audience.

The sky was choked with yellowish-brown smoke that was, thankfully, blowing away from us.  "So angry about the trees!"  Lynn said again.  "We don't see!"

I thought we could see fine, mostly--yes, we were missing the middle of the display, but I wasn't going to admit that and make my hosts feel bad.

"I want to cut it!"  she repeated.

"But trees are good!"  I said.  "They take the smoke out of the air!"  The boys laughed, but the girls still looked upset.

China's show was a bit more thematic:  "My Heart Will Go On" the ticket had said in English.  Oh, no, I thought, not--

And there was a small, brightly-lit replica of the Titanic, cruising from left to center before going dark.  China is still obsessed with James Cameron's late 90s flick.  Even people who speak no English hum along with Celine Dion's theme, and it is sung reverently at any KTV parlor you can find.

The Chinese fireworks show was just as exciting as the Greek, and more so--there were green lasers dancing in the smoke; Jack and Rose's Chinese voices playing over lamenting music; floating white sparklers twirling on the surface of the lake, a tribute to those who had lost their lives at sea.  There were fireworks spinning on stands like pinwheels and golden showers of glitter that looked like heavenly willow trees dipping toward the water.  The finale left me feeling like Lindsay Lohan in front of a million paparazzi.  I was almost totally blind and deaf from the flashes and bangs.

It was the best fireworks show I'd ever seen.

But as soon as the lights came back on, the audience turned on their heels and made their way steadily to the metro.

"Uh..."  I mumbled as we joined ren hai, holding on to each others' backpacks or shoulders to stay together.  Surely not all of these people, these millions, were going for Line 2 back to Puxi, the other side of the river?

Oh but they were.  And no shouting police or soldiers crying "Bu hui!" (you can't) could stem the stampede, the avalanche, of people tumbling down the stairs.  The security check (x-ray machines) were always suspended when there was a rush like this:  moving millions of people was the emergency now, not what people might've had in their bags.

Somehow--somehow--we managed to stay together.  The benefit of just missing the previous train meant that we were first in line for the next one.

"'Fireworks'" zenme shuo?"  I asked.  After some debate, Ben and Lynn agreed on the characters.

"Yanhua."  Smoke flower.  Ah, the Chinese language tells it like it is.

 

Qingting 13 August 2014

I was on my way to record audio at EF headquarters, walking along Nanjing Xi Lu and listening to my headphones.  Voice acting is fun for me, and today's session would be mostly dedicated to the Rio project.  EF is the official English language provider for the 2016 Rio Olympics, and I feel proud to be contributing to that.

As I walked, I noticed a man coming toward me on the sidewalk.  His yellowish robes, shaved head, and ready smile seemed very familiar and friendly as we made eye contact.  My family and I had visited some monasteries and had met a few Buddhist monks here and there during our time in Qinghai in the late 1980s.

While still about 50 feet away from each other, I noticed he was holding a small pink book in one hand and a little yellow card in the other.  I saw a couple of Shanghainese swerve widely around him, as if he had a disease.  I wasn't surprised at their reaction, but it still hurt a little.  After all, this guy had renounced everything in his life to follow Buddha--couldn't people treat him like a human being?

I smiled at the monk as we passed each other, and he handed me a little card.  It was a cheesy holograph of the Guanyin Boddhisattva.  I was familiar with her--a being of compassion that figured as prominently in The Journey to the West as Athena did in The Odyssey.  A boddhisattva, for those of you who aren't sure, is a being that had achieved enlightenment (like a buddha), but has stayed on Earth to help others do the same.  The closest thing in Christian religion?  Sort of a guardian angel.

I'd barely taken a quick look at the card before the monk pushed his pink book under my nose.  I noticed that others had written their names in the book (in Chinese characters, of course).  I think he meant to pray for me?  A pen appeared from one of the folds in the monk's robe, and I said, "Oh!  Okay, I'll sign your book."  We smiled at each other again, and as I was signing, he slipped a bracelet around my left wrist.  It was made of brown and tan marbled plastic beads, with a silver buddha on one side and a Chinese character on the other (I later learned this was the Mandarin for buddha). 

"Oh!"  I said, delighted, "thank you.  Xie xie!" 

"Bu keqi," he said, and pointed at the next column in the book.  I noticed that there were numbers.  200 and above.

Something clicked in my brain.  He wanted money.  Well, that's how a lot of religions work, I thought.  Amazingly, I wasn't getting frustrated about this.  I pulled out my little wallet.  It was a cross between burlap and canvas.  My sister and I had bought them at Yuyuan Gardens--a total tourist trap--for 10 kuai (or $1.50) each.  Mine had Chinese characters on it that read:  Qian bu shi wenti.  Wenti shi mei qian.  Money is not problem.  Problem is no money.

When I started to pull out 20 kuai (I knew that bracelet couldn't have been worth more than that), the monk waved his hand back and forth:  no no no!  "One hundred," he said in English.  I was pretty sure he'd peeped into my wallet and knew I had the money.

"Oh, God," I mumbled.  "Okay, okay."  100 RMB is around $17 USD.  I handed him the note.  All RMB is stamped with Mao's visage, which I thought was really funny right about now, considering Mao had tried to shut down Buddhism during the Cultural Revolution. 

In spite of shelling out more than I'd wanted to, I couldn't stop smiling at this guy, and I continued to feel delighted for the next half hour or so. 

Later that same day after work, I was walking to the train.  Passing through the tunnels was always interesting around Wujiaochang.  A recessed circle--a sort of courtyard--was sunken beneath the freeways overhead, and The Egg--an interesting oblong shape made of woven metal--was all lit up overhead.  Blue and green lights chased each other over The Egg's entire 100-foot length.  People bustled here and there, holding fancy paper bags with Uncle Tetsu's cheesecake inside, or plastic bags with takeout in them.  The ladies wore bright green and yellow dresses with jungle patterns, tiptoeing on their high heels like exotic birds.  Men held their girlfriends' pink handbags without the slightest hesitation, and other men looked like dandy gay models in their super-skinny red cropped jeans and tilted fedoras.

There were a few old people I always saw--grandmas trying to sell little things they'd knitted or men trying to sell puffed rice or corn cooked up earlier in the day.  One old guy was always shirtless, sitting on some steps and playing a Chinese flute--quite well, I might add.  His music sounded like old China--imagine one of those traditional black and white watercolor paintings, the misty mountains and waterfalls of Guilin.  I'd given this guy money before, but wasn't passing close enough to him today.

There was another old dude I'd passed before, a guy with tufty white hair and a broad, childlike grin who wove interesting animals out of palm fronds.  Dragons, birds, and crickets dangled on the long palm "leashes" he'd somehow woven into their backs.  He held these in his hands like balloon strings.

I'd talked to him before going home to the States for 3 weeks.  Our conversation, all in Mandarin (I say proudly) consisted of me bartering the price down to 10 kuai each and telling him I couldn't buy them now but would buy three when I went home to visit my family in America.

However, when the time came for me to pack up and leave, I couldn't find the old man. 

The same night I met the monk, I ran into the palm animal guy.  We smiled big smiles at each other, and I walked right up to him, my eyes on a specific one.

"Shi kuai, shi kuai!"  he said, remembering our price, even though it had been nearly two months since I'd seen him.  "Qingting," he continued, noticing where my eyes went. 

"Qingting," I replied, unnecessarily pointing to the dragonfly.  I handed him my 10 RMB with both hands, a sign of respect, and he laughed, one small little laugh.  I walked away, delighted, like a child holding her first balloon.

Spring Miracles

It's Spring--or is it summer?!--in Shanghai!  Although most of the trees lining Haining Road have yet to leave out, I saw a tree blossoming on the Bund (Waitan); I saw two determined Shanghainese brides taking wedding photos with their grooms, their lips set on creating the perfect image; and I felt a hint of sweat on my face. It's nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit today, and although the mists of pollution have colored the sky gray, the sun is shining and the birds are singing.  At work the students are flirting with one another in class, no matter their ages, and the British-Chinese couple who are my good friends here have gotten engaged.  Yep, it's definitely spring.

The construction site below me has gone from pouring and curing concrete to jackhammering it all up and setting round rebar cages at seemingly random locations.  I've decided that the Germans are probably the only construction workers I'll ever enjoy watching; everyone else seems illogical and haphazard.  The more I accept that the Chinese have their own methods (no matter what I think of them), the better I feel.

However, this is the fifth or sixth full day of almost continual jackhammering down there--I'm talking 10-12 hour days; and with drilling and hammering in the upstairs apartment, I'm afraid I must report that peace and quiet are not in my immediate future!

I was turned down for an alternative boarding school in Colorado.  As much as quiet and fresh air appeal to me right now, I've decided this was for the best.  Being cold and isolated up in the mountains sounds great for a week or so, but after NYC and Shanghai I'm not sure I could handle it.  Like I said, it's already 80 degrees here; there'd be maybe two weeks of that in CO!

I haven't given up entirely on the job scenario, which is a miracle in and of itself.  I'm working on my Yakima School District application (the second time--the first time was in 2008), as well as applying for an international school here in Shanghai.

There's a Chinese saying that the true miracle in life isn't flying in the sky, it's walking on the Earth.  When I consider the vastness of the universe, this certainly seems to be true.  My feet have taken me to many ends of God's Earth!  I'm grateful for my feet and my ability to travel.  Perhaps I'll never make much money in life, or find stable work as a high school teacher in America.  But I've seen and done much more than the average human being, and that is its own wealth.  I value it and am thankful for it.