How I met my wife - Episode 3

Shanghai – July, 1984

Our Education in China classes began at 8:00 every morning which was nice because it meant we had the entire afternoon to ourselves.  Sometimes, I’d even get up in time for breakfast.  Classrooms were located on the first floor of our residence.  The rooms were small, able to handle maybe 30 students in a pinch.  We sat on benches with small tables, the width of a book, in front of us.  The professors who were always men, knew little or no English.  They would sit at a desk as they lectured while Mr. Ye or Charles translated. 

Church, Tsingtao, 1984

The women preferred Charles who was young and good looking.  He would add his own editorials to pronouncements made by the lecturer.  One lecture concerned the prohibition of atheists in churches that had just been opened.  The reason for the prohibition was that the state didn’t want atheists being unduly pressured away from their non-belief which led to questions by the students wondering about the sudden popularity of the church.  Charles replied that the people had previously put their faith in communism.  It was their religion.  Now, that the government was opening certain regions to capitalism, the righteousness of Marxist doctrine was being questioned  Capitalism wasn’t a faith and so the people sought something to fill the vacuum. 

A non-secular system of education has existed in China longer than any other country in the world so there was lots to relate in our “Education in China” course.  National schools go back to 1500 B.C. in the Zhou Dynasty and have continued to the present.  Confucius made education particularly important with the introduction of the the first professional bureaucracy with an entrance exam.  Our lectures might have been more engaging if we weren’t sitting in a muggy, airless, classroom with a temperature that exceeded 30-degree centigrade.  As it was, we could barely stay awake.  Fortunately, we were able to convince our instructor to move our lectures to the air conditioned staffroom on the third and top floor of the residence.  There, we would sit around a large table and enjoy a far more relaxed learning environment. 

Occasionally, we would engage in unrelated discussions like the one introduced by Aaron.  He was a thinker who would share his theories about the Chinese and communism with me in our room at night.  On this one particular day, that, from he could observe, the Chinese don’t value life as much as we in the West.  Our Chinese hosts had little to say on the subject.  Perhaps because they were offended or they knew very little about life in the West and did not feel qualified to comment.  However, Honore, our supervising professor from the University of British Columbia, was outraged.  He accused Aaron of ignorance and cultural insensitivity. 

Honore standing, Brian seated

Honore had previously lived in Japan for a number of years.  Being tall and good-looking and had even acted in number of commercials.  He met and married a Japanese woman and together, they’d had a daughter.  The girl had been the subject for a paper he wrote on the benefits of learning two or more languages as a child.  When he told us that some of his data was based on a composite of observations made on other children, the ladies weren’t impressed.  Upon first meeting Honore, they had been very impressed.  However, this was not the first time they’d been unimpressed with the man. 

Having a bike and maybe having a little more in common with them than the rest of the group, I hung out with them quite a bit.  On a trip downtown on our bikes one day, Honore asked if I’d be interested in going to Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain as it’s known in English.  He told me that it was gorgeous and that we could easily see it on the weekend of July 20^th because we would get the Monday off.  Always game for an adventure, I said, sure.  Then Peggy from our group got wind of our adventure and thought the rest of the group should join us.  She even had postcards as proof of its beauty.  Most of the other students agreed and so, it was planned.  However, once the women had decided to join us, Honore bowed out.  The ladies were not impressed. 

On Friday, July 20^th, we took a train from Shanghai to the city of Hangzhou where we stayed overnight before boarding a bus for Huangshan.  Hangzhou is located on the picturesque on West Lake made even more beautiful by the outlines of the many temples that border its shores.  The Grand Canal begins here and ends in Beijing and was a route travelled by Marco Polo.  We’d visited these sites two weekends before.  Saturday night of that weekend, Nicola and I were the only ones to go for a swim in the hotel pool.  For some reason, Nicola challenged me to a swim race.  Really? I said.  Why not? she replied.  Cause we’re adults, I thought but didn’t say.  Outside of a swim meet, I hadn’t “raced” since elementary school.  Nevertheless, I agreed and was surprised how hard she swam and how hard I had to swim to keep up.  Did she really care about winning? I wondered. 

West Lake, Hanzhou

Because we’d already been to Hangzhou and Kim, our Chinese speaker was with, we were able to arrange accommodation in the city that night.  I’m embarrassed to say that we all took a rickshaw to dinner that night.  Honore would have been horrified.  We probably payed our runners two or three times the going rate but I felt like a pre-Mao white imperialist.  I couldn’t even feel like an ironic hipster because their existence was still a few decades in the future. 

The bus station was packed the next morning.  Long lines stretched behind every ticket window.  There’s no way we’re going to get Huangshan today, I thought.  Fortunately, queuing in ordered lines was not a strong cultural more practiced by mainland Chinese people at the time.  Jostling for position was common and even when you got to the ticket counter, the Chinese would still try to shove their money around or over you.  Often, the clerk would take their money and serve them ahead of you because you, not knowing Chinese, was just a headache to deal with.  The best technique for dealing with this barrage or appendages was to push yourself against the ticket counter and blinding swing your elbows behind you.  No one ever complained because it was all part of the communist, bureaucratic game. 

April, white haired and easily the eldest of our group, had attended the Chinese language course for six weeks prior to the one we were attending.  Perhaps because the Chinese respect the elderly or perhaps because she was white or they simply were taken aback by her shear audacity, April was able to push herself to the front of the line to purchase tickets for all eight of us.  To our surprise, people had already started boarding the busses for Huangshan.  Unfortunately, we were one seat short of all being able to get on the same bus so I volunteered to go alone on another that was leaving at the same time.  After all, I had my Walkman and a book.  I had only just found an empty seat at the front of the bus when Nicola climbed on to sit next to me.