lost in language and location

At a sushi lunch today with Kami at the nearby Garden City megamall, I conversed with her of the difference in educational learning between knowledge acquisition and analytic work; of Kami’s thesis work on collapsing specialized knowledge towards an interdisciplinary base, and of our preferences between Murakami, Mishra, and Borges. Then I shopped around at Walmart, where when challenged by a shop clerk’s sales pitch I appeared to have a mentally challenged IQ.

Earlier in the day, Kami and I had gone on a car ride around Shenzhen with my substitute-contact teacher Wan Laoshi and her daughter Stephanie, a senior girl fluent in English bound for college in Australia and who helps to translate my conversations with her mother when I need the help. My official contact teacher either isn’t back yet from his/her summer holiday or he/she hasn’t been picked at all, so for now, the school secretary Ms. Wan and her daughter have been helping to get me on my feet. I’ve been trying to divide my time between speaking to Stephanie in English (for her sake) and speaking to Ms. Wan in Chinese (for both my practice and her benefit), but more often than not everything defaults back to Stephanie. Everyone has been very nice to me about my Chinese speaking, but I am fairly certain that they are just trying to save me face. I do feel like I’ve made significant progress though – more on that in the next post, about cab drivers.

After showing us around Shenzhen as far northeast as Luohu District, Ms. Wan returned us to Nanshan District and dropped us off at the Walmart and Garden City complex where Kami and I later had lunch. That area is just a few blocks north of the Yucai School Group, and Hunter lives very close to it so we use it as a gathering spot and a place to gradually grab domestic items to make our abodes more livable. Our days have mostly been constituted by these events – outings and orientations with our friendly and helpful contact teachers, attempts to map where we are and figure out the bus routes to see each other, and multiple trips to Walmart. The multiple trips are necessary because we can’t carry everything on our walks back to our homes (especially me, as I live just a tad bit further away from the nearest retailer than Hunter, Kami, Murray, Emily, or even Alistair do), and while even progressive Seattle can’t figure out a 20 cent plastic bag tax, here in China, it is illegal to offer a shopping bag of any sort to a customer unless specially requested. I’ve learned to travel with a small backpack stuffed with two rolled-up reusable bags, in case I make purchases. As for today’s purchases, I got some home slippers, extra clothes hangers, a desk lamp and computer speakers, and hopped a cab back instead of bothering with the bus.

That flippancy was a result of my stubbornness yesterday after leaving Hunter’s apartment late at night. I was carrying with me a bag full of cleaning supplies and had a 4-foot long rolled up tatami mat, intended for the floor of my apartment, slung around my shoulder. I was also carrying a small clothes hanger pole (there are no driers in China, so everyone dries their clothes on their porches upon horizontal bars that are far beyond anyone’s reach). With all of this crap loading me down, I wandered out into Airong Lu (Rong Love Road – the rong is the tree of Shenzhen) intending to find a cab somewhere. Airong is a small street, though, and by the time I realized that no cab would come, I had already traveled all the way down and was halfway to my place. So I pressed on, looking to hang a left on Gongyeqi Dadao (Industrial Avenue 7).

Except I missed it, and wandered further south. I will note here that roads in Shenzhen, unless they are large boulevards, are unusually dark, and the distinctive rong trees that line them don’t help because they just cast more shadows. Also, the further south I went, the less metropolitan and Western the settings became, with more small stalls, roadside vendors, and less-polished looking locals popping up. None of them seemed too curious about me, even with half my apartment on my back. In fact, despite the lack of lighting through the area, I felt more or less safe; Nanshan District seems to be one of the wealthier and less congested districts in Shenzhen, and even its more Chinese-feeling areas like the one I stumbled into still don’t seem very threatening.

I eventually ended up at home though, and proceeded to scrub to my heart’s content and roll out my mat just so. I kind of wonder if I’m becoming more neurotic with my obsessive cleaning and ordering compulsions – I catch myself arranging things on desks and surfaces when guests are over. I guess it’ll at least make for conscientious surgeries, if I decide to do that.