|
From Magic City Morning Star R.P. BenDedek
Part Three in a series of articles about the experiences of an Australian Conversational English Teacher in Rural China. Re-Edited and republished from 2004. Hong Hu City
How does one describe Xin Di? Words alone fail to do justice. It is not the 'traditional' Chinese city of one's imagination nor is it a modern city either. It is somewhere in between and this photograph to the left does, I think, capture the real essence of what the town is like. Drab modern type buildings interspersed with much older brown brick (shacks) homes, and dwellings thrown together using wood, corrugated iron and tarpaulins.
Most dirt laneways (tracks) that intersected with the main road in the CBD have since my arrival been replaced with concrete roads, at the expense of the varieties of home businesses that were conducted out of makeshift dwellings. On every street, buildings are being torn down to be replaced with those that are more modern and aesthetically pleasing. With the completion of the new levee, the back end of town has been transformed from a waste land into a garden both literally in that vegetables are now grown in some stretches, and by the planting of tree plantations. Despite the constant mention by students of the Chinese concern for the environment, rubbish is more plentiful in Hong Hu than people, and dirt and dust more persistent than the IRS. When you combine these three elements with the amount of rain received on a regular basis, the city is awash with refuse. Hong Hu is a combination of both old and new in age and style. It will not be long I think, before it will be completely redeveloped. The dirt poor rub shoulders with the rich and the occasional beggar, and all walk on the cracked roads, the uneven tiled footpaths and the mud, and all dodge the trucks, buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and each other that race madly about the place paying no apparent heed to safety or traffic regulations. A foreigner finds road traffic chaotic and in a little country town, it would be correct to say, that it is down right dangerous. You do however get used to it. It is a shock to the system when arriving on the footpath of your desired destination, to realize that not once did you look out for traffic while crossing that busy Friday night intersection. It is then that you realize that you are finally acclimatized to life in China.
What is most disturbing is the number of students from rich families, who have no interest in school, no respect for anyone, and no self discipline. Before the new principal arrived there were numerous spontaneous and organized fights among students. One student during discussion in class was talking about his family. When it came to questions about his sister, he was positively embarrassed, for at 14 years of age, she does not go to school, because her parents cannot afford it.
I once worked out that it is possible for a beggar at the bus station to earn 4000 yuan a day, if each passenger on each bus for any given day, gave the usual one yuan donation. It can be a profitable life. Some of course are obviously genuine, but there is sufficient testimony of modern day miracles in that some crippled beggars have been known to 'rise up and run' when confronted by angry townsfolk. One little regular, a girl of about 6 years of age, gets about the place in rags begging the odd yuan or two. Her parents own a store on the Hong Hu side of the Chibi crossing. She accosted me at the dry cleaners one day, but I pretended not to understand her. The ladies at the store told her to go away, but she was persistent. Finally they told me to give her one yuan. I held up a 100 yuan note, the sight of which sent them into fits. No No No! they chorused in English. So in Chinese I said: Two hundred? then 'Three hundred? Finally I gave her one yuan. On Christmas day 2003 while waiting at the barge crossing I noticed this little girl smiling at me.
It constantly amazes me when I see young teenagers and those well past the retirement age, slaving away at dirty and laborious jobs, all the while smiling and seemingly enjoying themselves. I guess for the old folk, life is better now that it ever was, but I wonder about the 'poor' young ones. If big burly young men in the west had to pull or push carts as overburdened and weighty as some of the old men and women here do, the union would have them out on strike. My brother and I once helped an old guy get his cart out of a ditch, and believe me, we were surprised at how much that cart weighed. It's fine while it is moving, but starting and stopping are something else entirely. Some young people of course land on their feet either by good luck or 'knowing the right person'. Some have even adopted the American dream, and are making themselves rich by becoming Amway and similar product salesmen. Most of the unfortunates if not bound to the farm, become laborers. There are of course the apprentices who will one day have opportunity to work for themselves. The hairdressers are the most striking.
Of course in China, most people have no idea of what the concept entails, for most young people have no idea about sex at all. Most will be virgins when they marry, and most will marry after finishing university. Hong Hu like any Chinese city, contains areas in which the tourist might feel a little 'insecure'. It is not necessary. They are normal places, just tucked away out of sight, and which can be bypassed without realizing that they are there. It took me quite a while to notice the main entrance to one such place, and to my surprise it was like a rabbit’s warren of every imaginable piece of clothing you could buy. Long Ke duo supermarket at the top end of town is where I do most of my 'supermarket' shopping, and I even have a membership card that gets me a three percent discount on purchases. As for the rest of my shopping, I do it in the street behind the supermarket.
I once took Qin Chao my boarder with me, and he freaked. He kept saying 'We must leave this place, it is dangerous. These people are thieves and criminals.' Of course any unfamiliar place in which a Chinese person finds himself is automatically filled with such people. In this street I buy my eggs, meat, fruit and vegetables.
The street runs from behind 'People's Square' down to the markets off 'Ai Guo Lu' ('Love street' - but which I call Waiguo lu meaning Foreigner street). Intersecting midway is 'Peoples Street' (Ren Min Lu). Detouring a block up Ren Min Lu, I buy my freshly baked cookies, which I order in advance. People's square was, when I first arrived, a trash heap, but was quickly renovated. Like Lotus Square located one block away back toward the school, it is a focal point for a variety of activities. In an upcoming edition devoted to 'activities', I will give you a more in depth description. While Hong Hu backs onto the Yangtze River, it has another river running underneath Lotus Square. It is controlled by a 'loch' at the levee. During the winter months it is dry, but during the summer months it fills right up. I find it fascinating either way, and even more fascinating when I observed that after 5 months of containing no water, it was not until it began to fill, that a temporary retaining wall was built in the river to hold back the water while a proper retaining wall could be build on the bank. That made sense! It is normal! It doesn't matter! That is how things are done in China.
Additionally, there are numerous canals, each controlled by lochs. They are all very nice looking, but as the smell knocks you over if you get with 30 meters of them, they are not worth the 'look see'. One day while waiting for the bus up by that other place opposite the vegetable stands near the toilet on the canal, on the corner one block up from the new supermarket and in the same street as the other school not far from the temple, I decided to walk behind the hedge to have a 'look see'. Oh how I wished I hadn't! And it was only 30 meters from the public toilet as well!
Although such incidences are rare now, I do still occasionally run into someone who has never seen a 'white ghost' before, and who finds it necessary to stand and point and shout 'Foreigner! Foreigner!'. I sometimes think I would like to hand them a card written in Chinese which reads: Do you really think people here are so blind and stupid as not to realize that I am a foreigner? I remember the day a woman rushed out of a store, head down. She ran straight into me. She immediately commenced to apologize with the Chinese 'Dui buqi!'. As the words began to form on her lips she looked up, then screamed! Literally! She screamed, backed away and immediately went red as she realized the puerility of her behavior. I on the other hand just laughed.
It is common for people to 'pass the word along' that a foreigner is approaching. Heads turns, mouths fall open, and then disbelief follows when they hear in fluent local dialect: 'Ssshhhh! I'm not a foreigner, I'm Chinese!'. Occasionally they even apologize, although admittedly they usually laugh and say 'No you're not!'. I'm not sure what annoys me most; the people who run away, or the ones that grab their toddlers and push them in my face to make them say hello.
Empty stores will fill with 'browsers'; dead days at the 'massage' shop will suddenly do a roaring trade; and of course it is the pinnacle of prestige to be able to boast that the foreigner has given his 'royal warrant' to a particular business. When a shopkeeper is honest with you, you never bother to shop elsewhere for that particular item. In the markets I have a half dozen stalls from which I always buy the same products. The drawback for the locals is that my presence can stall traffic as throngs of people block footpaths and roadways, and once at the local theatre where the Shaolin Monks were giving a demonstration, I had to be asked at intermission to return to my seat because the crowd that had gathered around me was impeding free movement within the cinema. The drawback personally, is that every so often as I try to join in as a spectator at some public event, I get hounded for conversation by every adult and child that wants to speak to the foreigner. I have found it helpful to keep moving 'around and around' so as not to give anyone the time to pluck up their courage to approach me. More and more as I practice avoiding eye contact with people around me, I find myself becoming oblivious to their presence. If you don't look at them, they will not interrupt or impede your progress.
Quite a lot of people call out 'Hello!' as you pass by, but if you reply with 'hello' they burst into the giggles. These days I always make sure that I answer in some other fashion. A lot of people of course like to greet me with the Chinese greeting 'Ni Hao', which means 'hello'. I had noted for quite a long time the extreme pleasure it gives them to do this, before finally discovering that they were mimicking my accent. In fact for a whole year I was frequently saying 'green beans' instead of 'Hello!'. It's all in the way you accentuate the syllables. Every word in Chinese is different, but their sounds (less intonation) are shared with three others. In Ping Ying, (Chinese in roman letters but not phonetics), the words are identical, except that they each have a different accent designation. 'I come from Australia', is - Wo lai zhe Ao Da Li Ya!. Wo = I /me: Lai zhe can mean both - come from AND breasts. It took me a long time to say it correctly.
I once had a student whose name was Xiao Bi. The first time I said his name, everyone went into hysterics. Because I 'intoned' the words incorrectly, I had in fact used some extremely 'obscene' language in reference to the female anatomy. Despite all attempts to learn the 'exact' intonation, I failed, and so we agreed that in class I would call him Xiao Xiao. (Xiao = the 'ow' of 'how' with a 'sh' sound on the front and can mean small, little or young). I had another student whose name was Xiao Xiao, whom I loved to call 'Xiao Xiao Xiao'.
It took me six months to recognize one public convenience (which I shall never use) and a full year to spot the one that I was passing three or four times a week. In the larger cities they are not so difficult to find. You merely look for the English sign, or keep your eyes open for the 'man/woman' picture, but in the smaller places, toilets are only identified by Chinese characters. Inability to find a toilet meant that it was a year before I could leave my apartment for more than two or three hours at a time. My sheer delight at having used the (uptown) local convenience (loo - as we say in Australia) was only surpassed by the sheer excitement that spread to everyone in the street, as word was passed along that the 'waiguo' not only used it, but was able to ask in Chinese: 'how much?'. Of course, not everyone in town bothers or is able to pay the 50 jiao (half yuan) to use the public facility. Should you encounter them by the side of the road engaged in doing what comes naturally, it is impolite to show surprise or to stare, especially if they give you a nod or a wave. I have also learned to scan the background in potential photographs. Nothing is more disappointing than to have an otherwise perfect photograph reveal some 'unwanted' background event when displayed in large size on the computer screen.
In the final analysis, Hong Hu is a place to be experienced. All I have been able to do here is to give you by word and picture, some insight as to what you can expect. I'm sure as you have read this article, there were subjects about which you would like me to have written more, and I will. Just not today. R.P. BenDedek
Additional Photographs
R.P. BenDedek is the pseudonym of an Australian who has been teaching in China since 2003. In addition to contributing to Magic City Morning Star News as a columnist, he is also currently assisting the Editor of this Newspaper. Additionally, BenDedek is the author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' at www.kingscalendar.com © Copyright 2002-2008 by Magic City Morning Star |
