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I’ve been feeling a lot of nostalgia lately fr my time back in the central province of henan, when I lived in the smal twn of Xin Xiang (pop 700,00). I have mixed feelings about the place, I am more comfortable and like my job better here in hang Zhou and I don’t really want to go back.
But I just can’t stp a naggin feeling that my time in Xin Xiang was more Chinese. I went out to more banquets then, where I was frced to eat way to much and drink baijiu, I nver really liked these things usually because there would only be one person who could speak engliah there, usually a middle aged teacher and we could never really get beyond small talk. but for some reason i still find myself looking back on them foundly and wondering why we never have any of that here. I even wnder why we don’t have more contact with or school administrators, even though I hated that back in henan.
The way I probably got most immerssed in Chinese culture back in Henan was working at an english school that was located on the top of a cafe where all the ex pats hung out. It was such an immersin into chinese culture for two reasons; First I had t negotiate my pay in what ended up being a very painful way that left all parties feelin bad. That negotation was the start of my intense dissatisfaction with the school I was wrking at, (they tried to take money off f my already low pay, and the realisation never t mix business and pleasure, or at least drinking and pleasure. She would always come up to me in the middle of drinking with friends and try to gulit trip me into teaching more classes for her damn school. I hear that to this day she still badmouthes me to her back.
the other way that I got in touch to chinese culture was that i tauht a class of adults there. These people always wanted to take me out to eat, I must have ended up eating hotpot at least two times a week. the thing is these people where annoying as all fuck. But I still et a little nostalgic thinking about going out and sitting grumpily around a hot pot table pretending not to understand chinese will orging myself, and then astonishing everybody when i show them that I understand what lao wai means.
Maybe the real reason I am nostalgic is that i don’t o n enough crazy adventures any more. I used to have crazy shit happen t me all the time. Like when I met a couple f guys at the bar and i tried to get home, but i forot where I lived, or when I met this other guy and after he fucked something up with his boss he tried to get me a hooker, or when I asked my new found chinese friend to take me to met here friends and they just ended up being a bunch of whores palying majohg. i think i got into so many strange situations because i didn’t know anybdy, so i usually went out alone, and it is pretty easy for a lone laowai to attract crazy shit in china (groups of laowai tends to scare people away). This stuff wasn’t always fun, but it was intersting. I could take it or leave it now days.
I think the thing i really miss is the feeling of ownership i had toward Xin Xiang. part of it was that there wasn’t many other friegners there, but more important i think was that i had a real feel for the city. i knew the streets because i biked along them every day. hell sometimes i even took a the 5 minute walk from my place t downtown. i loved biking home late at night, when the pollution actually made the city a little magical. just me and the mirant workers eating baozi ant late night stands. riding through hazy streets, the smell is what comes back. A winter smell mixed with burnign coal. I really liked it.
Check out my archinves I fixed em and there are a few good things in there that stand the test of time pretty well.
Myself strolling through the archives I find this quote that I’d quite forgotten about, by the esteemed K C Rehm.
words to live by no doubt.
*the bloody “o” and “g” keys are sticking, pain in the ass