Freedom is...

"They can take our lives, but they'll never take...our...FREEDOM!!!"

Of course Braveheart's line kindles a fire within me.  As an American, freedom is my middle name.

Interestingly, there are things I am free to do in China that I can't do back home.  I can walk down the street, or onto public transportation, with a can of beer in my hand.  I can light off a fistful of fireworks whenever the occasion (or the mood) strikes.  I can smoke anywhere I want, even if there are a dozen signs claiming "NO SMOKING", because those signs in China are just there for decoration.  If I had a scooter, I could ride it onto the sidewalk and disregard any and all traffic lights.  If I had a kid, I could hold him/her over a garbage can to relieve themselves in public, and no one would call C.P.S. on me.

But what is public drinking compared to the right of free speech?  In my country, I can say whatever I want to about my government, and I won't disappear into some gulag, never to be seen again.  Even now, people disappear in China after saying politically volatile things. 

What is lighting off explosives compared to freedom of religion?  If I decide to run for political office in the U.S., I don't have to swear to renounce religion.  As a member of the Communist Party in China, you'd have to swear your only allegiance was to Communism. 

I don't have to put my age, gender, photo, health, or marital status on my resume. 

Feeling as I do, I still wanted my students to talk about the idea of freedom without feeling as if some foreigner were judging them.  Because the 4th of July is coming up, I thought it'd be a good idea to give them just a few minutes of U.S. history--specifically, why the U.S. declared its independence--and then the rest of class would mostly be open-ended discussion.

When I talked about the colonists' complaints against England (search and seizure; quartering soldiers; imprisonment without knowing the charges against you; and of course, taxation without representation), my students' eyes widened.  In China nowadays, and especially in Shanghai, some of these ideas are as foreign as they are in the U.S.

"After more than 160 years of this, the colonists were pretty upset.  Many of them had only lived in the colonies--they'd never been to England.  Sometimes whole generations had only lived in Boston or New York.  That made them more American than British (even though the United States of America wasn't a country yet!).  But the British government--over 5000 kilometers away over the ocean--was still ruling their lives.  Quite unfairly at times.  And that's why they declared independence."

I knew I was simplifying, but when your classes only run 50 minutes and you don't see the same students on a daily basis, you have to come to the point as fast as you can.

Still, sometimes teaching opens a door in me I didn't know was there.  For the first time, I could really put myself in the shoes of my ancestors.  I could feel a bit of what they must've felt.

I'd prepared about 20 discussion questions for my students--What is freedom?  What freedoms do you have, and which ones do you wish you had?  Is working 40 hours a week like slavery?  Should everyone in the world be able to bear arms (own a gun)?  I knew a lot of my students would be more comfortable if I ran the class as a partner discussion, where only one person might hear their opinions on the idea of freedom.  Running the class this way also would keep me from overwhelming them with my own opinions--at least, that was my hope.

Here are some of the things I caught from three different classes:

I try to escape from my mother's controlling!  [Laughter]  I can't make choices by myself.  [Her parents had said] "If you don't go to Fudan University, we won't send you to another one, and we won't visit you."

[Freedom means] I can read any book I want, watch any program I want...In our country, there are too many limitations, and you cannot choose...

Freedom is good, but we must have rules.

You have to say the [Communist] Party is always right...I don't think it's correct.

Freedom has limitation also.

We can discuss ideas [political, etc.] in private but not public...it will be deleted [by the government if posted online or written in print].

Governments make mistakes...[police] officers make mistakes.

We don't have complete freedom.

The government protects the rich man.  (Not a uniquely Chinese situation, I wanted to tell them.)

[Freedom means] you can say what you want, and no one can hurt you.

It was a bittersweet class, partially because it was my second-to-last Life Club class, and partially because so many of their opinions were similar to my own.  And yet they lived in a country where they couldn't have some of the freedoms they knew existed elsewhere.

At the end of my second class, a female student asked, "Teacher, what's your opinion?"

Part of me wanted to get up on my soapbox, but after living in China for a total of three years now, I knew it'd be the wrong thing.  I wouldn't have been surprised if the government had sent the occasional "guest" to "monitor" my classes, and I could also see myself getting hauled out of the country before the day was over for instigating a revolution.

"Well, this class isn't about me.  It's really about what YOU guys think freedom is.  My ideas about freedom will be very different from your ideas, because we come from different countries."

She looked disappointed, and asked again, "But what's your opinion?"

I wanted to tell her, but at the same time, this was a student I'd never met before.  I knew this was China, and I was feeling a bit paranoid.  The irony is that I'd grown up believing freedom of speech was a God-given right, and here I was, buttoning my lip...meanwhile, a Chinese person, who'd grown up under Big Brother's watch, was asking me to speak freely.  But paranoia won out.  I repeated what I'd said before. 

In the third class, it happened again, this time with a smaller class of students I'd known for a while.  I gave them a similar answer, then expanded a bit. 

"I think education is really the ticket to freedom," I said.  Not very original, but it's something I've believed most of my life.  "We're really lucky--American women, Chinese women.  We get to go to school."  All of my students in this class were women, and they were nodding.  "If we were in some places in Africa or the Middle East, we wouldn't be at school.  We'd be at home with the baby, or working in the field.  That would be our life.  I think it's great that China has such high respect for education."

This was true.  I've felt more respected as a teacher here than I ever have in the States.  Of course, most of my students in the States were considered at-risk youth, so that might have something to do with it.

I was also hoping a little flattery would cover up the fact that I wasn't completely giving my opinion--that on my VPN-sourced news, I've read how many Hong Konger's online posts are taken down; that the people here work hard, pay taxes, and have no right to say what the government does with said taxes.  Taxation without representation!  Censored art exhibits!  My sealed packages being cut open at the post office every single time to be searched right in front of me. 

Only one student seemed to catch on--a girl named Soonie, the one who'd been forced to Fudan University by her parents.  A bright student with smooth English, she looked a little disappointed at my lack of complete transparency. 

If I was ten years younger, I probably would've spoken my mind completely, and damn the consequences.  But was that the right thing to do?  To inspire my students into a democratic revolution less than two weeks before returning to my own "land of the free", leaving them to be silenced (by any means necessary) by their government?  I'm not saying I have that much power, but as a teacher, you sometimes never know.

My hope is that, by having them discuss freedom, by thinking about what it really means to them, that they will come to their own conclusions, their own truth.  My hope is that they will be inspired to discuss things more freely, that they will fight for freedom, not in my way, but in their own.

My hope is that, one day, freedom won't just belong to Americans.  It'll belong to everyone. 

Making peace with China

A ten-year-old sits on the second floor of a duplex and ties bed sheets together.  She's thinking about how she can use them to crawl out the window unnoticed--when her mother enters the room.

Months later, I'd try to run away again, this time while my family was in China.  I remember I packed a few RMB, some clean underwear, and maybe some White Rabbit candy or peanuts.  We didn't have many snacking options.  I don't think I brought any water--I was 10, remember?  I walked along the dirt road that wound through the sand dunes.  I was walking east.  I came to an overpass and stopped, realizing I hadn't seen any water the whole time.  I don't know how far I'd walked, but it felt like a good hour had passed.  All around me was sand--just sand.  No water.  No animals.  No people.  No plants.  I could count to ten in Mandarin, and say hello and thank-you, but I had no idea how to say, "Get me the hell out of here and back to my hometown and back to the life that my parents gave up so we could come to this hell hole."

I was only 10, and I wasn't exactly thinking of all of these things, but I could feel them.

Golmud (sometimes on the map as Ge'ermu) was at the end of the train tracks in Qinghai Province.  Back in 1988, there was no airport in Golmud, no high speed train.  A chugging steam engine took three days to go from Beijing to that little town in the middle of the desert, where criminals were sometimes sent.  As if the town were a penal colony without walls.  I'm sure it felt like the Old West in America--nomadic Mongolians and Tibetans (the "Indians") and the Han Chinese and laowai (foreigners) (the "cowboys").  It was poor and dusty and colorless, and there was plenty of moutai ("whiskey") to drink.  If Chinese people were allowed by their government to own firearms, I feel certain that there would've been a fair amount of shooting going on.

 

I think it was that first evening in Golmud, when our bus pulled up to the hotel, that Mom sat on her bed and cried.  I didn't see this.  She told me about it later.  I don't remember if I cried then.  I do remember seeing some wild white ponies on our way in, and, as a horsey girl, that sight alone made the idea of living thousands of miles from home seem not quite so bad.

But that didn't mean I wanted to be there.

I had friends back home.  My whole world was Cheyenne Road where our yellow and white house was.  Pets that had died were buried in the back yard.  My handprint was in the concrete we'd poured.  How could Mom and Dad have given that up?  It was my homeland.

I'm now nearly the same age now as my parents were back then.  The thought sometimes gives me pause.  Of course I understand better now.  But back then I was so angry.  My mind was dead set against China from minute one, and so was my heart.  I was determined to hate it, and it wasn't hard to do when we got out there, because the living conditions were worse than those I'd experience later as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  The locals, unused to seeing white people, touched my hair and my sister's constantly.  I started wearing my hoodie up with the strings tied tightly.  People said "Hello, hello!" and formed huge groups whenever we stopped to buy something at the market, or look at something at a tourist site.  We were stared at the way amoebas are examined under a microscope.  And China was gross!  People hawked snot and spat all the time!  Their cigarettes stank.  The men had long, dirty fingernails.  Sheep were butchered steps away from our dining room, and after walking around their bloody corpses, I had no appetite for the stuff.  Yak milk smelled funny and tasted funny.  The tofu was tasteless and looked disgusting.  The sweet and entertaining cook had some strange ideas, like putting cloves in the spaghetti sauce.  The bread grew mold at an alarming rate.  Beer had dead flies in the bottom of the bottles.  My sister and I existed on white rice and Chinese fruit juice that came in little green boxes.  We ate peanuts and White Rabbit candy and whatever luxuries came from home (my favorites were peanut butter and oatmeal).  There was one channel, CCTV.  The only bright spot were the interesting commercials, and the episodes of "Journey to the West".  Our newspapers came through DHL weeks after the news was fresh.  And of course, there was no internet or Skype back then.  The President could've been assassinated, and we would have never known.  Especially since the Chinese would've kept it from us if they'd found out first.  I feel pretty sure that that's true.

 

When it was 2013 and I'd accepted my job here in Shanghai, my dad smiled and shook his head.  "I can't believe you're going to China, Heather."

But here I am, and nearly two years later.  I've learned that Shanghainese are some of the rudest people in the world--they push, they shove, they cut in line, they never say "Excuse me"--but also some of the sweetest people--students give me gifts of candy and fruit juice, exclaiming, sincerely, about how great I am and how much they love my classes.  I've been invited to a Chinese home for Mid-Autumn Festival.  I've made some good friends with locals, both at work and outside of work.  And I know that some of those friendships are some of the most genuine I've had in my whole life.

China is not America.  That is the truth in 800 different ways.  But my mom is right--there is a sweetness about China that does not exist in America.  There is an appreciation for learning, for study, and a respect for teachers that I feel is lacking in my own country.  I have left my wallet accidentally in a market and half a dozen people yelled at me in Chinese, one man running up to me with it in his hand, grinning.

I'm not saying China is better.  I wasn't always wrong.  China can be gross!  I still dodge lugees on the sidewalk, and I still see men peeing on the street all the time--in broad daylight, next to main roads.  I saw an eight-year-old girl pooping about 10 feet from the gate to my apartment complex.  The side streets are still slippery with rotting vegetables and the blood of freshly butchered turtles and frogs.  There are sidewalks covered in dog poop and oily noodle water, discarded in the gutter.  And then there are sidewalks in Jing'an or the former French Concession, buffed to sparkling--neighborhoods I could never afford to live in or even to shop in.

And I'm not saying that America should be a Communist country--far from that!  But this experience in China has been my own.  It was my choice to come here this time.  And the experiences I've had have changed my mind and my heart about so many things that I thought and felt as an angry 10-year-old.



Shanghai Street Fighter 12 July 2013

It's the kind of heat that feels like it's against you, out to get you, and you struggle against it--to move, to function, to sweat--even to breathe.  The pollution, the horns, the metallic banging of construction, the bicycle bells, the soggy, oven-like air seeping into the pores on your face, your hands, your scalp.  Your pants stick to your legs, and the fabric feels clumsy as you walk.  The air forces its way into your mouth, up your nostrils--the ammonia-like stench of public toilets, the mouth-watering aroma of peaches, the musty, poopy smell of sewer, the sizzling burn of Shanghai fried noodles cooking up on a street cart, the unfamiliar tang of hard boiled eggs simmering in soy sauce--you don't know whether to hold your breath or to suck it all in. 

You can't fight this. 

In other places this hot, people walk slowly.  They refuse to go out from about 10 am until about 6 or 7 p.m. 

In Shanghai, people still hurry.  Hardly anyone wears flip flops.  Ladies wear high heels and risk turning an ankle--all in the name of fashion.  They carry umbrellas when it's not raining, and the women on scooters wear long sleeves and gloves, and even sometimes a visor that looks like the kind of mask welders wear--all in the name of white skin.  Traffic cops swelter in full uniform--hat, gloves, the whole bit--sweating even under the huge intersection umbrellas on each corner.

People, mostly Chinese men, still smoke inside--elevators in hotels, convenience stores; there are cigarette brands with names like Double Happiness; there are still a few men with long nails (cab drivers showing off the fact that they don't have to do hard labor like farming); on the street in on the subway platform, men and women both still hawk and spit, although much less frequently than 25 years ago in Golmud--you hear it only 3 or 4 times a day now.

You can't fight this.

Fighting takes more energy, and that is energy you need to survive--to dodge the car that follows you up onto the curb--to avoid tripping over a cart or flipped brick--to keep moving without passing out--to eat enough without risking illness.

Before being a street fighter, you have to stop fighting the street.

Yuyuan Gardens 25 July 2013

Misters?  Really?  We need MORE humidity in the air?!

I was at Yu Gardens (a.k.a. Yuyuan Gardens), and I had just approached the algae-green pond.  It was absolutely gorgeous:  The lotus leaves were bigger than dinner plates.  The pond was full of carp--deep orange, silver, white, orange and white.  There were even turtles.  Just seeing all the greenery--a couple of kinds of magnolia trees, quince (reminding me of home), and of course bamboo--made me feel refreshed.  I swear the air was cleaner here.

However, I'd just walked two miles in 100-degree-heat.  I'd thought, ridiculously, that the middle of the day was a great time for a trek like this.  It's easy to think things like that when your A/C unit is pumping away at 25 degrees Celsius!  I was sweating so much that sweat was stinging my eyes.  I'd learned to carry an umbrella, though--many Shanghai girls and even some men do this, and it's the smartest thing ever, as a small bottle of sunscreen costs $10!

Under the zig-zagging bridge across the pond to the teahouse was a series of misters, spraying away, adding an air of mystery to the place.  I wanted to laugh or shake my head, but I didn't.  Instead, I proceeded over the bridge, pausing among groups of Korean, Chinese, French, American, and Brazilian tourists to take pictures and wait for others doing the same.

When I got to the Huxinting ("Mid-lake Pavilion") Teahouse, I saw a glass case with a three blue and white porcelain jars of tea inside.  A cash register rested on top.  There were a few tables here, but I didn't see anyone drinking tea.  Then an employee made eye contact with me.  "Tea upstairs," she said.  She was not smiling.

I'd caught onto this.  Americans smile too much.  At least, I do.  I'd found myself smiling like a monkey on more than one occasion--it wasn't necessary.  I nodded and made my way up the red lacquer stairs--there were quite a few of them, narrow and high, so I proceeded with caution and held the handrail. 

The owner shouted at his son (texting madly) to get a menu (probably) and show me to my seat.  The menu was the cleanest, most beautiful menu I'd held since arriving in Shanghai, with names of tea in a light blue script (in both Chinese and English).  I momentarily felt bad for all the non-English speaking tourists down below. 

I asked him what kind of tea he liked.

"Dragonwell." 

I ordered that. 

There were ashtrays on each table in the tea house (yes, smoking inside public spaces was still permitted in China); thankfully, no one was smoking here.

There were two older Chinese women sitting at a table to my right, and a Chinese lady at the table behind me.  There was another foreigner I'd seen prattling on her cell phone about her students--she was about 50 and didn't notice me.  There were no men up here, other than the owner and the waiter.  One of the Chinese women on the right kept taking photos; the woman behind me kept coughing and mumbling--I didn't want to turn around, and I assumed she was on her cell phone.

Tea was over $10, but it arrived with a big thermos of kai shui (boiled water) to add as I wished to the already steaming cup full of leaves; three small eggs (quail?) hard boiled in soy sauce; three pieces of plain, warm tofu (the firm kind), and two pre-packaged sweets--one like a Japanese mochi, and a tart, candied fruit no bigger than my thumb with a rather large seed inside.  It was an interesting snack.  Along with the treats was a sealed packet containing a fresh-smelling moist towelette, with which I gratefully scrubbed my hands and sweaty face.

At one point I'd noticed that the woman behind me wasn't on her cell phone--she was mumbling to herself.  It was as if she were having a conversation with someone I couldn't see; once in a while she'd look at a tourist down below, giggle, comment, and then cough and hawk and nearly spit. 

I pushed the tea leaves out of the way with the tea cup's lid the way the waiter had shown me--I'd seen people strain their tea this way in Golmud, too, back in 1988--and sipped.  Really hot, but a great green tea flavor.  Not sweet, not bitter or grassy.

You may have thought me insane to be drinking hot tea on a day like this, but according to NPR, it actually makes some scientific sense.  Here's a link to the article:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/07/11/156378713/cool-down-with-a-hot-drink-its-not-as-crazy-as-you-think.  I'd actually had my share of hot tea in the Peace Corps, and I have to admit, it did cool me down somewhat. 

The tea was making me sweat, but in a way that felt purifying.  As I took in the corners of the tiled rooftops swooping up like bird wings, I could imagine the essence of a dragon being released from the leaves by the hot water.  I felt it move into my body like Gatorade--dragonwell.  I honestly felt healed.

The Bridge of Nine Turnings must've worked--it supposedly deflected evil spirits--because it felt very peaceful in the middle of the pond.  The air wasn't arctic, but there must've been A/C somewhere, because I was no longer sweating profusely, and the windows were closed.

Mumble, mumble.  Cough, hack!  Giggle.  The lady behind me flapped her towel for the umpteenth time at an invisible fly or spirit or whatever.

I made my decision.  My tea was finished, and the gardens closed at 5 pm.  I couldn't take The Mumbler any longer.  There are crazies no matter where you go.

Feeling recharged after my tea, I wandered through the maze-like gardens.  After picking up a packet of post cards, I paid the entrance fee (30 yuan, or about 5 bucks).  After fighting through masses of tourists and gift shops with overpriced knick-knacks (wood carvings, fans, chopsticks, "silk" clothing, jade jewelry), I was finally seeing roped-off rooms where people had done calligraphy or performed on stage, There were high-end shops with fabulous paintings by local artists.  And of course, there were the trees.

Everywhere were ecstatically healthy-looking trees:  a towering gingko, Korean boxwood, Siberian elm, lacebark pine, Japanese camellia, and Kaido crabapple.  (No, I am not a botanist:  the Latin names had been on display, and I'd had to Google them). 

After seeing so much "green gold" (trees providing shade), I was more than a little saddened to see a few scrawny banana trees clinging to life with their yellow leaves, looking like a Micronesian version of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.  It may have felt like Micronesia today, in terms of weather, but these banana trees weren't half as lush as the ones I'd seen as a Peace Corps Volunteer on the isle of Pohnpei.

The patterns on the ground were intricate puzzles, bricks and stones shoved up by tree roots and buckling with humidity.  Some of the larger, older stones that made stairs were worn shiny and smooth by millions of touristy feet, reminding me of the Great Wall--it would not be safe to walk here after a rainstorm.

The carp in the various ponds and streams were quite fat and used to being fed.  You'd think that fact and the heat would've made them lazy, but it didn't.  Some young adult tourists were sprinkling what looked like gray-green fish flakes onto the water's surface, and a hundred carp were suddenly sitting/floating on top of one another--begging.  They begged like baby birds, open carp mouths gulping air and water and sometimes food.  There was a lot of thrashing about, and the feeders--probably college students, the girls in skirts and holding umbrellas--laughed along with me.

One of my concerns about living in a big city was noise.  For the last six years, I'd been living in quiet old Spokane, Washington; before that, I'd spent three years in New York City, and no place was ever totally quiet there.  Would there be anywhere in Shanghai I could escape to, even for a few minutes, to hear twittering birds, falling water, and God's breath sighing in the trees? 

The answer was yes, as long as I added babbling tourists to the list!  Here at Yu Gardens there was peace, even amid the racket and chaos that is Shanghai.

 

Check out more of my photos on my Facebook page!

It's been too long since I've blogged--9 months now.

I'm hoping to publish some of my writing, maybe even a book about my Peace Corps adventures.  Any advice would be much appreciated.

Here's an excerpt from something I've been working on about sakau (this passage is about the singing on one particular night):

Imagine a black Baptist choir doing a rousing rendition of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” on a beautiful Sunday morning.  Then change it.  Remove all of the congregation, all of the women, and most of the choir.  Make all of the men over 40, shirtless, and only partially employed.  Imagine they’d imbibed a bottle of whiskey and were in that mellow, quiet, bluesy stage of drunkenness.  Make it dark outside, with starlight, moonlight, and a single fluorescent bulb the only illuminations.  The men are sitting at a table under a guava tree.  The linoleum-covered wooden table has been chewed by termites and mold.  It is crawling with tiny sugar ants.  The men’s 88-cent flip-flops are all that’s between the dirt and their gnarled toes.  One of the men is strumming a guitar with long dirty fingernails.  A couple are chewing beetelnut; one is smoking a cigarette.  All have plastic cups of sakau in front of them.  The beauty of the notes, the soulfulness of a Baptist choir is still there… but quieter, subdued.