I decided to leave the US and came back to China to teach English literature at a university west of Xi’an, 3-year old daughter in tow. I was also very fortunate in that a friend, ready for adventure, decided to join me to help me get settled in. We arrived at the airport in Xi’an to be greeted by a large delegation of university teachers and their spouses, all of whom looked askance at the luggage we brought, six bags in total. Apparently not everything was going to fit on the school van, and it was a long and bumpy ride over goat trails over the hills to our final destination, 100 kilometers west. So off we went, chatting merrily, disappointing our hosts with every word. Didn’t I speak Chinese? No? But I had lived in China before! Why couldn’t my daughter speak Chinese? She was half Chinese, she should speak Chinese! Why was my foreign friend’s nose so big? Why were her eyelids blue? My friend, a top Estée Lauder cosmetics salesperson, offered to give makeovers, which were declined with the most Chinese of No’s, the uber-polite “maybe.”
We finally arrived and were escorted up to the apartment, which was much as advertised. I hadn’t expected it to be Western standard but it had luxuries like hot water, a refrigerator and washing machine. What it didn’t have was drinking water, a kettle for boiling water or a gas cannister for cooking: despite the fact it was well past midnight, the head of the foreign affairs office ran to his own home and brought us a kettle and a half-filled cannister of gas. We were assured the Dean of the English department would be by no later than eight am to escort us to breakfast himself. Well, we were up at 7:30 am sharp, and no Dean arrived. Noon came. No one arrived. No food in the cupboards, just a glass pitcher and a lone chopstick. I boiled water to drink, and we took turns drinking from the pitcher after it cooled. My daughter, delighted by the adventure, dined from my emergency stash of cookies and jerky but as the day wore on it became clear no one was coming to show us around or feed us. I screwed up my courage and said the heck with it, let’s go out and find a restaurant. We turned left at the university gate (mistake: should have turned right) and after a long, long walk, found a noodle stand selling noodles and beer. We gratefully sucked down bowls of delicious Shaanxi noodles and drank Yanjing beer (my daughter had a Coke.) Exhaustion, dehydration and jet lag hit us like a ton of bricks and soon we were drunk as skunks and unable to walk home. A red car pulled up to the noodle stand and I realized it was a taxi, come to save us. A young girl got out of the passenger’s side and as soon as she slid out, I pushed my friend and daughter in and loudly proclaimed in very, very bad Chinese that I was a teacher at the university. The driver protested, but I was drunk enough to say my one Chinese sentence even louder and finally, he drove us to the university and dropped us off, refusing payment. As we hit the pavement and he drove off it hit me that he wasn’t a taxi driver – he was a man with a private car. Worse, when the Dean finally showed up, three days late, he informed me coldly that it was all over the news that a drunk foreigner was shouting that she was a rat at the boxing ring (yes, I missed every tone and a few words too) and that the only thing the driver could think to do was drop us off at the university before alerting the police. It’s a shame that the police didn’t show up, as I could have used a hand in figuring out how the hot water heater worked, but all’s well that ends well. We had a smashing good time, and I eventually learned to say I’m a teacher (wǒ shì yìmíng lǎoshī) instead of I’m a rat (wǒshì yìzhī lǎoshǔ). I’m still trying to figure out how I learned to say boxing ring, though.
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