Tea leaves garden

About a month ago I received a phone call from a graduate teacher of my school asking me to come to his son’s kindergarten Thanksgiving party. I told him Thanksgiving happened to fall on my birthday this year and that I would like nothing else than to see how Chinese kindergarteners celebrate Thanksgiving. I had never met him before but this type of invitation is not unusual. Last year I probably would have anxiously started to ask many questions in order to get a better idea of the stranger and then told him that I was too busy.

The Thanksgiving party ended up being postponed until mid-December and instead I went out with the graduate teacher Dan, his wife Melissa, and their son Gary for lunch yesterday afternoon. Whenever I am picked up in a car in Wuhan, I always feel like I am going on an adventure because for the most part, I walk or take a green shuttle bus with all the other university students to class in the morning, and during the weekend I will take a taxi or bus to farther destinations.

Gary was just as excited to leave the city for the afternoon, as he changed his seat position a few times during the car ride. When we reached the East lake, which I have been told is the largest enclosed lake within a Chinese city, Gary pointed to the lake and said, “太阳掉到水里了 (mandarin: tai yang diao dao shui li le!” which means “the sun fell into the water!” And he was right. The sun was so bright that afternoon that its reflection was glistening in the water.

His mother recently had read him a Chinese tale called “The Monkey and the moon,” which is a children’s tale about a monkey who mistakes the moon’s reflection for falling into the water. From then on, the day was filled with comparisons, which is what Gary had been learning to do in his classes. At the Chinese restaurant, Gary pointed out that his orange shoes matched the color of the fish in the pond, and the traveling keyboardist who went around performing for different guests reminded Dan of the strolling violinists on the river walk in San Antonio. Dan was very fond of America and his experience as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Missouri’s school of journalism.

After lunch Dan said he wanted to take me to a place his friend introduced him to when his wife was pregnant, a place that he was pretty sure I had never been to before. Dan turned off the main road onto a dirt road and rolled up the car’s tinted windows and told me that we were entering private property, but assured me that it was fine. Like most things in Wuhan, traffic rules are rarely followed. It is common for vehicles to go through red lights or drive on the wrong side of a 4-lane highway, so this was not out of the ordinary.

As we got farther away from the main road, fields of tea leaves started to appear and Gary exclaimed, “妈妈我在你的肚子里面 (ma ma wo zai ni de du zi li mian)!” or “Mom I am inside your stomach!” He had remembered a photograph of his mother pregnant with him, standing in front of the tea gardens. We got out of the car and walked along a dirt path as Gary went in and out of the rows of green tea leaves. Melissa pointed out a community of people. They were playing mahjong outside, farming the fields, and generally content in their peaceful environment. As we went out of the farmland, I told Dan that it was the most serene place I had been to in Wuhan and that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to find it again. My impression of the place reminded Dan of a Chinese idiom 世外逃源 (shi wai tao yuan) meaning an isolated ideal world. The idiom is derived from a story that is told here:

http://www.confuciusinstitute.net/resources/576

I had never had so much attention before coming to China. I was overwhelmed by the amount of invitations to judge English-speaking contests, by eager students wanting to practice their oral English with the new foreigner, and I felt it was odd when I had students from other universities knocking on my apartment door inviting me to take part in their beloved English corner events. I always thought of myself as a trustful person and at times too trustful with strangers. Towards the end of my first year, I had developed more trust in people and didn’t have to know all the information before getting myself involved. I came back to Wuhan for a second year and for the most part I only see the kindness and curiosity that Wuhan people have towards foreigners. I go into situations with an open-mind and I try and commit to as many invitations as I can handle. I had never met Dan and his family before yesterday, but it is invitations like these that I may have missed in the beginning of my stay in Wuhan.

As we returned into the city again, Dan reminisced about his life in Missouri and remarked that the people had the same friendly attitude as Wuhaners. As we were weaving in and out of a horrible traffic jam, he said, “You know a lot of Chinese people want to live in America but Wuhan is my home. Besides, I wasn’t able to pass my drivers test.”