First Days

When I landed in Beijing, the first thing I noticed is that you can taste the air.  The runway area tasted strongly of exhaust.  The gate area tasted of rubber cement.  And as soon as I went down to the baggage claim, I could taste the smog: acrid, gritty, and yet somehow silky on my tongue. And it wasn't even a bad pollution day.

I did my usual bargaining with whatever-god-is-listening while I waited for my bags to arrive ("if my black bag survived the trip intact, I PROMISE I'll buy a new one for the next trip!"), and tried to eavesdrop on conversations around me.  As usual in a foreign country, I couldn't.  Unusually, though, I couldn't even recognize basic words; not a single Latin or Greek root stood out to me.  I knew this was going to happen, obviously, but there's still a certain amount of terror that seizes hold of you when it becomes real for the first time and you see that you are functionally an infant in your new world. 


Fortunately, the leadership team from my school was waiting outside security with smiles, hugs and flowers.  They immediately drove me to the apartments where new staff is staying for the first two months, and in my apartment I was greeted by my cheerful new roommate; a gift basket full of chocolate, fruit and wine; and a fridge full of eggs, orange juice, and bacon (YES!).  

Our apartment complex is far from the center of the city.  During normal traffic, it takes an hour by car to get into the center of Beijing, and at least two hours by public transportation.  We're in a sort of Western bubble here: it's sparsely populated, everyone who's here is polite, groceries are expensive, and no one expects me to speak Mandarin.  Consequently, everything is difficult and terrifying.  To get anywhere that I can actually afford anything or that supplies more than very basic groceries, I would need to take a taxi or ride a public bus, but my language skills are so weak that I can't even do that.  Taxis either refuse to drive out to our neighborhood from the city center or they charge an obscene amount of money (even worse than going from Manhattan to the Far Rockaways), so the idea of going out at night is daunting -- how would I get back?

Nonetheless, the school's orientation for new staff is scaffolded such that every day, I feel a little more empowered.  Yesterday, I crossed a busy city street all by myself (twice, actually -- I got lost and had to backtrack) and bought things from a wet market (think the West Side Market in Cleveland, but more Chinese).  I feel ridiculous even THINKING that -- "I crossed a street by myself!  I'm almost grown up!" -- but it's a simple fact that because the tiniest of tasks can manage to terrify me, the tiniest of victories feels like a gold medal.  (The converse is also true: a small problem with my phone nearly ruined my whole day on Saturday.  Who knew I could be so fragile?)

Even as I'm absorbed by the miniscule parts of my life over which I actually have control, the school's orientation program is sheltering me, whisking me through the city and the school, and every now and then?  Bringing me breathtakingly, quiveringly, beautifully into contact with China. We get off a school bus, we go to a shopping mall for thirty minutes, we get back on the school bus, we get off the bus, we walk around the Lido area, we get back on the bus, we go to Tiananmen Square. 

The day we went to Tiananmen Square was the day I had trouble with my phone.  I was sullen and upset in the back of the bus because it seemed like the next day I was going to have to go to the phone company by myself and negotiate with the salesmen who had sold our guide the sim card, and I was scared and upset and, well, mostly scared.  We pulled into the middle of the city (literally the middle -- Tiananmen  is right at the center of Beijing), and had a brief walk to get to the square itself.  All of a sudden, we were surrounded by people.  I could see Mao's mausoleum, and the seat of government.  Mao's portrait loomed over the square.  And I realized, I'm in China.  And I live here now.

And my broken phone didn't matter as much.  Sure, I haven't been on public transportation by myself yet.  I haven't been out at night yet.  I haven't taken a taxi or gone grocery shopping on my own or even eaten in a restaurant without school people around me to help.  And I only have about ten words of Chinese that I can reliably remember.  I feel like I have to learn to be a human all over again.  It feels pathetic.

"Slow down," my Chinese teacher said to me today, "You've only been here five days."  And it's true.  Something I forgot is that infants learn fast.  The number of words I remember doubles every day.  Without a Mandarin-speaker, I and two others walked two blocks and found the pub at which we were supposed to meet school people.  I bought two apples and a box of Swiss Miss on my own.  And yesterday, I crossed a busy street by myself.  Twice.