适应-ing
最好的适应新环境方法是什么？ 我什么时候得到放松住的感觉？
I moved to China with dreams of exploring a new city and a new country, walks down the street to try out a new coffee shop, train rides through the mountains, flights to places I’d only ever seen on the seat-back screens of airplanes going with short connections in Chinese cities, just passing through.
Since landing in Shanghai for quarantine in October of last year, I have had scarce opportunity to travel, and the big city life I was longing for also turned out to be an hour and a half subway ride away. I was stranded, it seemed, in remote suburb with more factories than anything else. For the better part of a year I lived in a building with factories on two sides, a factory dorm on the third, and a traffic police substation across the street.
I remember my first few days and weeks, the overwhelm and confusion, not knowing where to buy a bar of soap, a pillow, a blanket. WeChat messages sent back and forth to the other teachers just arriving at my agency I had met. One had slept on his clothes the first night with his curtains as a blanket. I remember sitting on the steps of a mall in Fuyong with an agency representative buying things on her Taobao account we couldn’t find in person, bedding, a yoga mat, a rug. A few weeks ago I sent her (she no longer works for the agency) a long message in Chinese thanking her, telling her I had just packed a bar of soap she helped me buy almost a year ago and thought of her.
I thought moving out of Fuyong would be a real step up. Bigger and better things. Moving to an area with, for example, trees. Everyone I talked to, Chinese and foreigners alike, told me so. Yet here I am, thinking about Fuyong, the square at night, the barbecue our apartment organized, the ayi and shushu at the convenience shop downstairs who always talked to me, the elementary school girl who asked for my WeChat and took me out to an arcade one night, the little parks and hills, the modi drivers who I could always chat with. I sit here now, in Nanshan, in the supposed good place, wondering when I will feel the sense of comfort and familiarity here that I felt there.
I’ve tried a few times to go and explore my new neighborhood. I have an errand to run and the map says I have to go a certain way, cutting through the side streets off the main road. Four times now I’ve been met with gated access points and turned away. The first day this happened, I could hear them saying “wai guo ren, wai guo ren” as I approached. I was blatantly turned away, hands waving and little being said, while dozens of people walked in and out around me. I truly didn’t know what to think, but could only assume it was anti-foreigner sentiment. Large swaths of my new neighborhood are suddenly off limits to me. That tailor shop the map says is in a community? Sorry, you can’t go there. You can walk the main roads and go to the big malls, parks, or go home. I walked home and felt my world shrinking, my heart falling with it.
It happened again today. This time the bao’an was more willing to engage in dialogue with me. He explained that due to the “epidemic situation” no one who doesn’t live in this community is allowed to enter. I asked him directly “is this because I am a foreigner?”. “No”, he said, “it has nothing to do with that, Chinese people who don’t live here can’t go in either”. I looked around and and saw the red plastic fencing lining the streets. This community really is under lockdown. “Hao de hao de”, I acquiesced, my hand up in a conciliatory wave, his hand mirroring mine as we both nodded in understanding.
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A few weeks ago, while I was traveling (posts on my social media about that abound) in Yunnan, I had another foreigner yell at me for trying to communicate with a Chinese person. We had been told to board a van as a part of a ticket we bought to an attraction, but a group of us wanted to walk to the next spot instead. It was far, about a half hour walk, but we wanted to stretch our legs. None of the other foreigners I was with spoke much if any Chinese, and a lot of screaming and pointing ensued. The other foreigners I was with threw up their hands and walked away, obviously angry. I walked up to the driver and explained the situation, where we were going, confirming the location, saying we just wanted to move a bit and not sit in a car. The conversation was calm, respectful. Voices were low.
“Don’t talk to them! This is your one privilege as a foreigner, pretend you don’t understand and walk right through, you can do whatever you want that way, they won’t bother with you. Talking to them only makes it worse!”, one of the foreigners yelled loudly in my direction as I worked my way through the conversation with the driver.
Fire burned in my chest. The way she said “them” reminded me of all the foreigners I’d talked to who won’t date Chinese people, who won’t eat Chinese food, who won’t learn any Chinese, who live and work (and have ayis) in a country but obviously have some sense of disdain for its culture and people. It hurts my heart. I hate receiving anti-foreigner animosity from Chinese people too (thinking of the man who pulled up his mask and tightened it firmly to his face when he saw me on the street, a daily occurrence for me and many foreigners) but there’s nothing I can really do about that. But I can decide how I will feel and behave. I can’t decide whether I am hated or not, but I can decide whether to hate or not.
I am choosing to learn this language because I love languages. Language is the world’s most beautiful tool for connection. It is a hand on each other’s chests and a breath into each other’s souls for when we cannot be physically present to do so. It spans the boundaries of life and death. I get goosebumps thinking about it. I don’t want to scream my raw emotions like a frustrated animal or child. I love that I am able to speak in a low, gentle voice. I love that I can go on a first date and laugh at their joke from across the table. I love that I can ask “is this just because I’m a foreigner, please, tell me the truth”.
Having moved here, though I am closer to the city, I feel adrift again in my life in China. The front desk makes me scan my health code and it won’t scan, ever, so I’ve taken to going through a side door and up the stairs to the fourth floor every day (quad gains amirite?). The other day the door was locked. There’s a little convenience store right across the street from me I want to buy water at but it’s inside the fenced area, and I won’t be allowed to enter, even though people are in an out all the time. I’ve taken to adding a few big bottles of water to my grocery delivery every few days.
Despite all this, I love my new apartment (though it’s over twice as expensive as my last one). I have a kitchen finally and a lovely clean space with wide window ledges for plants and my own little private hallway for shoes and umbrellas and such.
Work starts again in just a few short days and I am spiritually and mentally unprepared, but making efforts towards acceptance. I have found myself a reluctant teacher. In education because it allows me to travel and live here and learn this language, not in it because I have any real passion for the bright young minds of the future. And certainly not for teaching English to kindergarteners. I’m thinking of future plans, perhaps a teaching certificate, perhaps becoming a subject teacher and getting into an international school.
There’s time for that yet, though, today I am going to go out and explore my neighborhood again, venture further abroad and try, with each step forward, to massage away some of the tightness in my chest of this new and unfamiliar place.
P.S. The title of this piece, 适应, shi ying, means to adapt to a new environment. I am adapting.
