Working Man

I woke up really late yesterday. Combing my hair and shaving my face, I gathered my things for the day in my typical hurricane-like fashion. Dumping them in my bag and hopping to pull my sandals over my ankles, I hurried for the elevator. The elevators in our building are entirely inefficient. If you’ve never noticed in the US—and you may not have if you’ve never lived in a building with an elevator; I learned a lot my freshmen year in the dorms—most buildings with elevators in the US have a “holding floor” about half-way up the building where the elevator waits. In my building here in Shanghai, the elevators sit on floor one.

I’ve timed it a few times and if the elevator goes directly from the ground level to my floor, it is 40 seconds (just a little over one floor/second.) Yesterday, as I was in a hurry, it came up without stopping. Going down, we stopped on every other floor.

I was practically jogging out the front of the building as I pulled my mask on over my mouth and nose. Bobbing and weaving through the foot traffic and dodging the motorcycles, I walked as quickly as I could without making a scene. By the time I reached the subway station (which is the halfway mark on my walk) I knew I was going to be late. I texted John to let him know.

I walked into the office about 10 minutes late. John was working from home this morning, but Vivi and Yang Renjeng greeted me as I came in. The other full time teacher was also back (she’d been on vacation during my first week.) She stood as I walked in.

“This is our new intern,” Vivi said.

The teacher stuck out her hand. She had long kind of wavy black hair and wore little red framed glasses.

“I’m Zach,” I said shaking her hand.

I didn’t completely understand what she said in response, but it sounded like “what” so I repeated my name.

“No,” she said. “That is my name, Wute.” The way she emphasized it sounded more like Woo-Tay. I tried a few times before Vivi told me it was okay.

I sat down and started working. I didn’t eat anything! I thought, knowing I’d be hungry soon. I never skip breakfast in the US. Occasionally I work through lunch, but I need food in the morning.

Wute opened her bag and handed a small white package to Vivi. She then placed a similar one at Yang Renjeng’s seat and on John’s desk, before handing one to me.

“Is rose cake,” she said. “I brought them back from Yunnan.”

“Thank you,” I said as I took the pastry. I opened the package and a flaky little tart came popping out. It was in a small plastic tray—kind of like a Little Debbie—with a small package of silica for freshness. I took a bite. It was really good. It did smell like roses. The filling was sort of the consistency of raisins, but the after taste was bitter like wine.

“Did you eat breakfast, Zach?” Wute asked.

I laughed. “No I didn’t.”

“Here,” she said. “You can have mine.” She brought over a plastic bag that looked like it had a greasy tortilla inside.”

“Oh that is okay,” I said.

“You do not like this?” she said.

“I’ve never had it before,” I said.

“It is a bing,” she said. “They are my favorite. I give it to you to welcome you to China.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I pulled back the plastic bag and took a bite. It was amazing! It was like a breakfast burrito almost—except wadded up instead of rolled—with egg and onion inside. It was warm and buttery and exactly what my stomach needed.

Vivi helped me with my pronunciation practice, which did not go particularly well. Some of the tones are easy with some of the sounds but hard with others. My voice was all over the place.

When John came in, Vivi, Yang Renjeng, and Wute left to go fuss over something. John explained that Wute had brought back some ham from Yunnan. “It’s very cultural when you travel to bring back some of the local food for your family and friends to try,” he explained. “She brought some to all of us and we’ve all prepared some dishes to try. But you and I are going to go to a meeting, so you can just taste them and they can enjoy the potluck.”

I did try each of the dishes and they were all very good. Since there were leftovers, we ate some of them again today, so I’ll describe in more detail below.

Vivi, Yang Renjeng, and Wute are all very surprised I want to travel while not speaking Chinese. “You will get very taken advantage of,” Wute told me.

“You need to know a few phrases,” John said. He wrote two on the board.

“This one,” he said pointing at one (duo shao qian). I attempted to say it. “It means, ‘How much is it?’”

I repeated it again.

“Then no matter what they say,” he said pointing at the other one (tai gui le), “you say this one.”

I repeated it and everyone laughed.

“It means ‘Too expensive!’” he said.

In general it was a very busy day, but a very rewarding day. I finished the rough draft of a big project I’d been working on and it felt really good walking home knowing I’d accomplished something. In some ways—and I know this sounds a little bipolar given how down my last post was but—all of a sudden, it feels like I’m running out of time! There is still so much I want to do.

Nate and I went to dinner at the noodle house and then sat up talking for a while. It is nice having an English speaker to come home to, although his internship has been a very different experience from mine.

This morning, I woke up earlier and left my building on time. Vivi was going to help me buy some train tickets today so I needed to stop at the ATM to get some money. By the time I left the bank, I was running late again.

Before I left my apartment, I caught another glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was wearing the same blue shirt and beige shorts I'd worn on the flight over here. The dress shirt is one of my favorites and I wear it often back home. I've had these cargo shorts for at least a year and they are still in great shape. But now, as I looked in the mirror, I looked like a little boy wearing a grown-ups clothes. I couldn't even cinch my belt tight enough to hold my shorts to my hips.

When I walked in, everyone was sitting around enjoying a bowl of bay berries again (the same little fruits that killed my stomach.)

“You want to try again?” Vivi asked.

“No thank you,” I said. They all laughed.

John commented on how baggy my clothes looked. "Most guys who come to China lose about 20 pounds," he said. "WIth your commute on foot, you're walking almost two hours each day. Most of the food is pretty light in calories, and a lot of what you're eating, your body doesn't know how to digest. It definitely happened to me."

He also mentioned how wrinkled my clothes looked, a side effect of being laid out to dry on the couch.

My pronunciation practice went much better. Vivi even told me that I got a couple of words perfectly. John and a friend of his taught me the phrase “Jiao” which means “Keep fighting.” Idiomatically, it is used to encourage people to “keep going.”

John was in meetings most of the day, and Yang Renjeng was out in the morning. Wute and Vivi and I talked quite a bit while we worked.

“I think Justin Bieber is my favorite American singer,” Vivi said.

“In fairness,” I said, “he is Canadian.”

“His song ‘Baby’ is famous everywhere,” she said. “And Taylor Swift. Do you like her?”

“I do like Taylor Swift,” I admitted.

“She was in Shanghai last week for a concert,” Vivi said.

As I was working on my project, I realized I do know a number of useful phrases, I just don’t remember them in a way where my brain can access them readily. I decided it was time to make flashcards.

When we left for lunch, Vivi and Wute took me to buy note cards. At the stationary store, the cards were sold individually, but pro-rated off a price of 100 cards for 15RMB. I decided to make it easy and just buy 100 cards. The lady at the shop immediately rolled her eyes and said something. She begrudgingly started counting cards.

When she had a handful, she set it down and started eyeballing approximate handfuls of the same quantity. Vivi and Wute began arguing with her, but she refused to keep counting. I was laughing a bit a in my head, but then I noticed a mural of a waterfall in the corner of the shop and decided to let them sort it out. In the end, she refused to count out the full 100, so Wute told her to give me a few extra. Back at the office I counted and I wound up with 104.

On our way back, Wute told me that we should stop at one of her favorite street vendors to buy one of her favorite Yunaan dishes. The idea of street food made me a bit nervous, but when I say it, I realized it was just bread.

“Okay,” she said, “John taught you how to ask how much it is. You get to practice.”

“How much should it be?” I asked.

“Four qui,” Wute said.

The boy working the cart came over to us. I swallowed a little. “Duo shoa qian?” I said, really focusing on the movements of my tongue.

He held up four fingers. I smiled and held up two fingers.

He bagged them and handed them to me. I handed over my money and said “Xiexie” (thank you.)

Walking back to the office, I am sure I had a giddy smile on my face. Vivi and Wute both commented on it. When we got back, they pulled out the leftovers from the day before, along with their lunches from today. I through in the loafs of bread (which Wute taught me are also referred to as “bing”) and we shared all the food family style—while listening to Taylor Swift on Vivi’s phone.

“Westerner’s do not eat family style do they?” Vivi asked.

“Not usually,” I said.

“They find it dirty? Or unclean?”

“No,” I said, “I just don’t think it is traditional for westerners. I like it because I like to try lots of different foods.”

“Yes,” Vivi said. “I think this is why it is good.”

One dish was made by John’s mother-in-law. It was Chinese bacon and roasted bamboo. The thinly sliced ham was chewy, but tasted amazing! And bamboo might be one of the best things I’ve eaten here. It is the consistency of something like an artichoke heart or heart of palm, but not quite as salty as either of them.

Another dish was sausage made with little pieces of almond that were crunchy and tasted awesome. It was served with lima beans in meat drippings. The sausage was fantastic, but the beans also tasted really fresh. I’m starting to have major league vegetable cravings.

The next dish (which we ran out of quickly) was Yang Renjeng’s home made sausage. I have no idea what was in it, but it was super spicy and very tasty!

Today, Vivi brought potatoes and green beans cooked with cumin. The flavor was awesome. I decided this one was definitely my favorite. “Hen hao shi,” I said, which means “very delicious.”

She smiled, “Thank you.”

Wute had brought a tomato dish that was kind of soup like with scrambled egg in it. It was good and both the girls scraffed it down, but I was having trouble figuring out how to eat soup with chopsticks.

We ate, laughed, and talked through the entire lunch hour. When the sound track shifted to Frozen’s them of “Let it Go” we all sang along! I’m sure if you were working in the building it was either annoying or entertaining, but all three of us—from the US and China—knew all the words.

When I set down my chopsticks and said, “I’m full,” Wute shook her head.

“Jiao,” she said. We laughed! (The encouraging phrase for “keep going.”)

After lunch, Vivi tried to help me buy tickets for me and my friend Luke to go to XI’an. Unfortunately, we discovered that most of the seats were either sold out, or only available in the deluxe first class. Not prepared to spend more than an airline ticket on the train ride, we decided to try again after work. In the meantime, I got ahold of Luke and we decided we might try going somewhere a little less touristy that weekend, and we’ll try Xi’an again later in the summer.

In the afternoon, I went over to a tea shop that Vivi had pointed out to me. They were advertising their special of the day as “Strawberry Smooth Drink” so I ordered it. The ingredients appeared to be strawberries (fruit), yogurt (bacteria), and tap water (liquid death.)

This will either be great or it’ll kill me, I thought. But I have to admit, after one sip, I almost didn’t care. It was so refreshing I drank the entire thing before crossing the street back to the office. Fruit is another craving I’m having a hard time satisfying here.

After work, Nate made rice again for dinner. We also found out that our washing machine has been fixed so I’ve been doing laundry for the past hour. Drying the clothes is still not a real efficient system (we are mostly spreading them out across the furniture) but they smell way better coming out of our machine than they did when we washed them at any of the other intern’s rooms.

I can honestly say, I think I’ve punch through this round of homesickness. There have been some hard things and some frustrating things, but I’m so glad I’m here. I’d love to see some people from back home, but I’m not ready to leave. In a lot of ways, to echo the great philosopher Tom Hanks, “The hard is what makes it great” and every night when I get back to my apartment, I feel like I’ve packed ten years of life into each and every day. It is all so exhilarating and it really is a blast.

So when my laundry finishes, I’m off to bed. It’s almost Friday for me and then I’m off to Suzhou for the weekend!