On Your Toes

In my last entry, I lightly touched on the changing face of China from a very global or academic perspective. Today I want to bring the ever-shifting face of China into sharp relief through the microscopic lens of the foreign teachers’ cafeteria. When I first arrived, our cafeteria consisted of a large rectangle room with four large square columns stationed at the corners of an imaginary square on the floor in the middle of the room. Huge round tables occupied one side of the room, with a long table for serving food along the wall. The other side of the room remained bare. The lighting was so completely conventional that I cannot recall the fixtures. This arrangement was completely satisfactory until the returning teachers began to arrive for the official start of the school year: there were not enough chairs to sit even 50% of us. And unlike school cafeterias in the States, here food is put out at noon and runs out about twenty-five minutes later—so to stagger waves of people to fit the number seats meant the last wave got rice and whatever two dishes were the least popular. Fortunately, about four days later six more tables appeared (literally) on the other side of the room.

So that was that, I thought. But no, about two days later those six tables again disappeared. Twenty-fours after this discouraging disappearance, I walk in for lunch and discover several new developments: first, lining every inch of free wall are shiny champagne-colored couches with decorative floral pillows more befitting a karaoke bar than a cafeteria; second, on each side of the cafeteria are suspended golden and crystal chandeliers; third, between the columns in the middle of the room (following three sides of the imaginary square) are metal, very professional-appearing buffet bars; fourth, on the side of the room that was still bereft of our much-needed tables were two new windows in the wall through which cooks could directly serve us. (Now whether these windows had always been there, but simply bricked up or whether they were newly cut, I doubt I will ever discover.) So many of us teachers sat with plates on our laps on our new impressive but impractical furniture. I thought *Wow! They certainly like to keep us on our toes here!* And the fun still was not done. A few dinners later our cafeteria became a literal maze of tables: the vanishing tables reappeared along with quite a few small square tables, making maneuvering around chairs, tables, and people with plates of food quite a spectacle. Now our story is coming to a close (or maybe I should simply say, it is catching up with the present for who knows what may happen tomorrow). The following day, all the round tables disappeared, and the couches and square tables became logical booths or open tables, resulting in an authentic “restaurant” feel.

While photos would have greatly enriched this narrative, I hope you can picture the fun of the foreign teachers’ cafeteria. While hilarious, this progression is by no means an isolated event in China. In fact buildings pop up so fast, that it is common to suddenly discover an oft-used back road or footpath is now a construction zone, if not already the skeleton of a building. Or ask a local child what a specific building is only to realize that they know as little as a visitor because that building is almost brand new (while looking years old). When I lived in Dalian, the expats had a saying for such a time as this: “oinc (the sound a pig makes)”—only in China. 

The Marble Façade

China presents an interesting juxtaposition of opulence and poverty—an increasingly prevalent occurrence in rapidly developing countries. I walk outside my apartment building on campus, and I see long rows of marble blocks waiting to be laid as sidewalks right next to a heap of rotting rubbish. I walk into our cafeteria where newly installed white marble walls and golden chandeliers greet the eye only to look into the next room to see Chinese workers without masks and often without electric equipment cutting into concrete to lay some forgotten wire. Much like a young gangly boy who in one summer gains 10 inches but whose coordination and inner maturity has not yet caught up with his body, the Chinese people want so much to claim China’s adulthood in the world of global power and prestige that it is growing faster than its own capacity. How long such growth can last I leave up to the experts to theorize.

While on the topic of façades, I will indulge in a brief description of the Sias University campus. If I were to pick one descriptor of the campus it would be eclectic. Sias embraced its international focus by trying to combine the sites and architecture of the world on one campus. We have our colonnaded Roman Plaza right off our German street of faux timber-framed white houses. The “Computer Krankenhaus” never fails to make me grin. Then I could take a jaunt over to the Russian Plaza reminiscent of Moscow. Or if Greece is on my list, then I can enjoy a stroll through a small garden loaded with Grecian statues of very wise- and just-looking men and women. Oh, and I can’t forget the central administration building. Positioned on one edge of campus, this building has two faces: on the campus side, I see a miniature replica of the white house, but if I walk through the building to the public street side, I am surprised by a miniature version of the Forbidden City as seen from Tiananmen Square.  The final touch is to liberally sprinkle campus with willow trees, add a few fountains and waterfalls, two rows of fake palm trees, and little signs to keep off the grass—my favorite of which reads, “Love the grass in return for green." 

Living in a culture where thousands of years of tradition reinforce the concept of keeping or saving face, the fact that the face of China is steadily, if not rapidly, changing is both exciting and frightening. The world (and probably China itself) awaits to see what face China will eventually adopt and defend.

A Single Grain of Rice Can Tip the Scale

When I was ten, I had my first introduction to China through the Disney movie Mulan. Fast forward thirteen years and I have studied in China, written my deeply-researched senior thesis on China's "soft power" (a nation's appeal to other nations and peoples), and now stand on the edge of returning to China for one more year as a teacher of English and a student of experience. Since I have begun to study Chinese culture, I have observed how the Chinese value the art of embedding multiple levels of meaning in the most simple of phrases; hence the title of this blog also has several layers of meaning. At the top, it is simply a quote from the Emperor in Mulan: "A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man may be the difference between victory and defeat." Applied to modern times, China is at such a place politically, economically, and domestically that a single event or action could drastically change their situation...and ours. On a personal level, this blog will contain my "single grains of rice" selected from bowls full of experiences and lessons. Perhaps you will see another level yourself...

So join me as I labor, learn, and live in XinZheng, China.