Rural China @ MindSay 
The House in XinChengPu
Written on August 11, 2006
My mind was elsewhere. Too many random events had worked together in quick succession to slam me onto the ground with such force that I wondered when I’d be able to move again, but I’d told RongJun that I’d be up and ready to go by nine o’clock, so I attempted to push the immediacy of my thoughts towards the back of my mind and wait for her to knock on the door.
The Company seemed to be very close to furnishing apartments, but after four months, I found the idea of saying goodbye made my head ache. I wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t want to be cast out into the desert again, not when I’d just barely begun to allow myself to admit that these people were as much of a family to me as any form I’d experienced previously. I didn’t want to leave them and they could smell it.
We had discussed the issue until there was nothing left to say on the subject. It seemed to me that options were not only limited, they were nonexistent. This was it. We were going to be forced out of the Hotel as readily as we had been forced into it.
Then, one evening, RongJun piped up.
Somewhere, on a main road in XinChengPu, rested a nearly vacant, four-bedroom house whose three uninhabited rooms, if we were interested, would be made available for us to rent. The fourth room housed her Mother-In-Law, who, she promised me, would give us our privacy.
I had been warned that this place was unsafe. We would be a target for robbers, kidnappers, and Lord only knew what else, but RongJun assured me that such threats were merely the elaborate fears of over-protective souls who didn’t want to see any harm befall us. She felt the neighborhood was a good one, and seemed confident that we would not run into such troubles.
Either way, I saw no harm in looking and she agreed to take me there the first Tuesday of May.
Initially, I was extremely excited about the idea. Perhaps the opportunity to spend some time with RongJun out from under a microscope presented a welcome change, or perhaps the relief of having an option, however unexpected, had triggered an endorphin rush, I don’t know, but now that Tuesday had arrived, I didn’t feel particularly up to the trip.
My body was still aching from the miscarriage of two days previously; my spirit hadn’t yet begun its recovery. The prospect of bouncing along a dirt road while clinging to the back of a bicycle didn’t especially thrill me, but I hadn’t wanted to cancel. Something in my heart kept insisting that RongJun and I needed this time together.
In any case, when, at nine-o-two I heard her drum her fingers against to door of Room 205, I should have been ready to go.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Rod asked as I looked at him quizzically. “You can’t just leave her standing in the hall.”
“Right, right…” I muttered feeling as though I were still on some other planet, but the sight of RongJun’s ear to ear smile helped to momentarily clear the fog from my brain.
After a brief hello to the family, a short jaunt down a flight of stairs, and a quick goodbye to the smiling faces of those on duty in the Lobby, we took off along the main road on which the airport, a couple of hotels, and various other businesses where located. It was wide and rather unappealing at first glance, but soon narrowed into a tree-lined, shady stretch on which the cottonwood seedlings would swirl about in the air like snow and it was quite lovely in the morning light.
We passed many Instructors en route to the Academy. Some smiled, some scowled, some just stared at us, unsure of what to think, but they all noticed us. They all recognized RongJun and they had all heard about me. Whether they approved or not, I knew we were giving them something to talk about…
For reasons I don’t entirely understand, I found the fact that many of the Instructors would sit around for hours, clucking like old hens as they gossiped about various subjects, extremely hilarious, but I had become very protective of RongJun. She wasn’t used to being stared at and I could feel the tension in her muscles steadily tighten as we drew nearer to the campus grounds.
“Please, God, don’t let any of these people do anything stupid.” I prayed as we wheeled by the school.
She visibly relaxed the instant our backs were to the Academy and, sprawled out in the distance, rested XinChengPu.
To either side of us were fields of newly sprouted grain. The pumps were humming and the water was flowing through the irrigation ditches as dragon flies and swallows darted about the travelers on this narrow dirt road leading to the outskirts of the community.
I half hopped half fell off of the bike as RongJun slowed to a halt. Apparently she too felt that to transverse this terrain might be a bit much for a novice bicycle passenger to cope with.
She began to walk towards the village as I struggled to regain the feeling in my legs which had been lost to my poor positioning on that wire-framed cargo-rack seat of mine.
As I limped along behind her devoting much of my attention to the convincing of my uncooperative appendages that they ought not to fail in their support of my weight, I found myself really seeing RongJun for the first time.
She wasn’t looking at her feet, nor did she appear uncomfortable or awkward in any manner of movement. The stoop was absent from her posture and her stride seemed almost confident. The sunlight caught her black hair in a remarkable reddish sheen which, when combined with the shadows the morning light was creating, sharpened her features to a very lovely contrast with the softer shades of white and salmon colored clothing she had wrapped herself in to ward off the nippy morning air. Her eyes, though drawn into an extreme almond shape, were very expressive. Her face was round, her lips full and her nose was shaped much more along the lines of your average person of European descent than that of your average Chinese. She stood at about five feet in height, and had a graceful figure which she didn’t seem to be terribly aware of and, though the image of this person before me painted an endearing picture, it saddened me.
In her eyes I still saw traces of the discomfort which had been readily apparent in her behavior as we rode past the Flight School and as she glanced back in my direction, I found myself wondering what she truly thought of herself.
“You look very pretty today.” I attempted to say as soon as I caught up with her.
She paused for a moment, looked at me as though to confirm that I had actually meant to say those words and not something entirely unrelated, before shifting her focus to the road ahead of us. A beat later, she began moving forward again, shaking her head as she muttered, “Me? Pretty?”
“Yes.” I said in English, “You.” She again stopped to turn an appraising eye upon me, but, after a few seconds, the corners of her mouth curled up into a dazzling smile.
“There you are!” I thought, “There’s the RongJun I know and love.”
Within a matter of minutes we had reached the concrete paved streets of XinChengPu. I again mounted the contraption fixed above the rear wheel of her bicycle and she began peddling her way through a maze of houses, past a small shop, and a group of old women who RongJun greeted as we rolled by.
Finally, we arrived outside of a large, rust-colored door set into a brick wall which ran the length of the block. Torn and flaking paper banners left from the New Year’s festivities still clung to the tiles around the entrance, which stood slightly ajar.
The sun had not yet lost the golden glow of morning and swirls of dust danced lazily in the shafts of light filtering through the tree branches and awnings of various structures placed strategically along the interior walls of the courtyard.
In the midst of these rays, sitting on a flat yellow cushion, fiddling with a brick’s relation to a drain she was trying to block rested a tiny, hunched, toothless woman rich in years.
Her hair was a mass of salt and pepper colored frizz, she donned very traditional, yet tattered clothes of dark blue and she seemed, at once, to be both set in her ways and, perhaps, a little lonely.
RongJun smiled profusely as she mimed an introduction of sorts, but her Mother-In-Law never looked up from her work or acknowledged my presence in any form aside from a short huff, which could just as easily have been intended for the uncooperative brick in her hand.
Though her smile remained steadfast, RongJun’s eyes darted towards mine apologetically before she decided the time was ripe to enter the interior of the house.
At first all I could see was dust, everywhere, but after a few minutes, I began to notice the home under the grimy layer vacancy had left undisturbed.
All of the areas of the house were connected through a series of doorways leading off of the room which the front doors opened up into. One bedroom and a small store room to the left, a kitchen, dining room and two further bedrooms to the right, both of which held large brick beds built over fire-places.
This very traditional style of architecture, the situation of the windows, even the cracks in the walls and the dirt on the floor quickly wound its way into my heart. The place felt right, for me, but I knew that, barring an act of God, Rod would not be able to cope with this level of culture shock in tandem with the pressures of his job and the decision was not mine to make alone. He’d have to see the house with his own eyes.
“This is a good place,” I thought, “A solid structure, a benevolent atmosphere…” I liked it. In fact, I felt much of the same attachment to the house as I did to the owner and her fingerprints covered every square inch of the dwelling. While standing beneath its roof, I seemed to be finally able to relate to that which had drawn me to RongJun in the first place.
How all of this translated into Chinese, I don’t know, but faces seem to be multilingual when voices find themselves utterly useless and RongJun had long since proved she possessed the uncanny ability to know exactly what was going through my mind before my thoughts had aligned themselves in English, let alone my frighteningly minimal Mandarin. Something as obvious as delight could not escape her powers of deduction and my expression was practically screaming, “I love it!”
We stood in relative silence for an untold number of minutes. Any thoughts requiring words could be handled through our mutual friend and occasional translator at a later date, but, for the time being, we understood one another.
Soon enough though, her Mother-In-Law broke this strange little bubble of ours with a needle which required threading.
The ride home contrasted sharply with the morning’s expedition. We bumped over the stones and potholes scattered along the dirt road between the village and the airport’s cluster of businesses, giggling about the fact that, when on the several occasions I did come very close to flying of the back of her bike, I’d clench my arms around her and call out, “Man yi dianr!” rather than tensing up with fear.
When we again found ourselves met by the confused stares of transient Instructors, we greeted them with the impish laughter of two friends who knew the joke was on everyone else.
Man yi dianr - Can mean "Slow down a little!" or "Be careful!" depending on the context. Sometimes both meanings are employed at once
Journey to DongPingLe
Written on August 7, 2006
I stood there for a moment staring at the metal contraption attached to the back of JunE’s bicycle. It resembled something akin to a miniature luggage rack and didn’t appear to be built to support the weight of anything much heaver than a bag full of groceries, certainly not a fully grown adult, but I had seen men twice my size cruise by seated on one of these inventions and I figured, they hadn’t died yet, so what the heck.
The sky was winter white, the air was crisp, we had fifteen minutes of wind-chill ahead of us and, though I trusted JunE, I could easily imagine myself falling off of her bike and being promptly squashed under the tires of a passing car…
“Don’t be silly!” I told myself as she maneuvered her Giant around a row of parked motorcycles to a more suitable launching site.
“This would be easier” I muttered to no one in particular, “if there weren’t so many people watching us.”
I hadn’t thought much of it when I accepted the offer to learn how to sew. I was extremely excited by the prospect of getting to spend time with JunE outside of the hotel’s microcosm of human nature, but I hadn’t placed a great deal of importance on the fact that I’d not seen anyone else from the Academy’s side of the wall being peddled around on the back of a local’s bike, or on the possibility that I could be one of the first foreigners invited to any of the homes in the area. However, as JunE beamed at me, patting her “jump seat” encouragingly, and as the row of onlookers began to giggle and wave their goodbyes, I began to feel nervous.
Pausing momentarily to make one last inspection of this extremely uncomfortable looking apparatus, I sighed, turned, backed onto the skeletal like frame, grasped anything I could lace my fingers through and held on for dear life as JunE, the bicycle and I began to gain momentum.
We were accompanied by the tiny little woman who came to the hotel every morning to wash dishes and, though my hands had instinctively found JunE’s sides when we bounced over the first of several bumps, the fact that I had not balanced my weight well and had been actively praying that I wouldn’t fly off the vehicle bringing serious injury, possibly death, to our little trio of travelers must have been readily apparent in the expression I was wearing because the tiny woman chuckled as she shouted something at a high enough volume to cause me to open my eyes for the moment necessary to see her gesturing for me to tighten up my grip.
Thankful that someone had given me permission to do so, I wrapped my right arm about JunE’s waist and placed my other hand on her left side to steady myself. She laughed a bit, looked over her shoulder, said, “Mei shi, mei shi.” then continued to pump away towards our destination.
I didn’t know where we were going. She lived in a village adjacent to XinChengPu and there seemed to be several of those. Still, the simple shift in my positioning and the gentle nudging of JunE’s thigh against my arm each time the peddle would swing her leg upward helped me to settle into the rhythm of the bicycle comfortably enough that, after a further two or three minutes, I found myself able to look around at my surroundings.
The fields were yellowed and dampened by the misty air. The trees, though often silhouetted reminded me of those which had surrounded the little community Rod and I had lived in as newlyweds. Everything seemed to be a bit saddened by the weather; all of the colors were less vibrant than one would expect and every person we passed was dressed in black, brown, burgundy or dark blue, yet, always in the immediacy of my peripheral vision was JunE.
I’d only seen her out of uniform once prior to this. She strode across the Lobby so quickly though, that memory barely served me with a vague impression of her as such. When I’d picture JunE, I’d also picture the long-sleeved turquoise jacket which stood as a mark of her employment, but her coat of choice, the one she was wearing at present, was the color of dried roses.
It felt warm and safe up against the washed out tones of the countryside and seemed to fit perfectly with the demeanor of its owner.
She too stood out from the others around her. Her hair had a bit more of a copper hue to it, her cheeks held more blush, though I knew she wasn’t wearing make-up, and her eyes were an ever-so-slightly lighter shade of brown than average. She was breathtakingly beautiful and she wore her approximately fifty years with such remarkable grace that I found it difficult to believe I hadn’t noticed these things before, but she looked different in this environment.
The hotel seemed to drain something from her. She didn’t smile as often there, nor did she look up much from her work. She seemed shy and a little unhappy when filtered through the screen of that heartless Lobby, but out here, her features shone with benevolence. She appeared contented. She appeared strong…
We had been traveling along two-lane, fairly active roads for the better half of ten minutes, but, soon enough, we made a right turn onto a single-lane paved, but narrow street framed on either side by fallow fields and the occasional brick structure whose purposes I could not have guessed.
JunE pointed straight ahead at a small jumble of houses huddled together in the mist and I realized that this must be DongPingLe.
Everything about the place intrigued me. It was so different from anywhere I’d been before, but it felt familiar in the way which China itself had felt like home. I loved it and knew that I would come to cherish the memory of any time spent there.
We parted ways with our traveling companion at the first cross-street. A few moments later, JunE steered us onto a narrow little road tracing a path in the opposite direction of the wider street to our right which seemed to lead towards whatever form of down town this community called its own.
After passing a few doors I felt our momentum begin to slow to a halt. There before me, positioned a bit further from the road than the other houses and set into a cement wall, stood a huge iron gate. On either side of the gate were two enormous tiles on which were painted murals in the traditional Chinese style. All of these details were framed in Chestnut colored woodwork and, cut into the iron gate, was a smaller door which stood open. It was through this door JunE pushed her bike, beckoning me to follow.
Upon entering the courtyard, I stopped dead in my tracks and stood in silent awe of my surroundings. The buildings were tiled, but trimmed in burgundy. All of the outer windows were of an almost pale cobalt hue and the front entrance was painted a beautiful shade of deep red. There was a secondary building to my right which, at present, appeared to be serving as a place of storage though I doubted that was its primary function. Some large vases, flower pots etcetera were stacked in the narrow space between this building and the living quarters. To my left I observed a large mound of coal piled opposite of a structure in the far corner of the courtyard. This, I concluded, was the restroom.
I followed JunE through the front doors and again found myself momentarily unable to move as the beauty of my surroundings overwhelmed me.
To either side of us ran a long, white-washed hallway. Parallel to the front doors stood a secondary entrance almost identical in design to its predecessor. These opened up into the Living Room.
On the far wall hung a giant photograph of a waterfront whose location was I was unfamiliar with. The wall to my right was bare, but spanning the breadth of the wall to my left was a mirror around which had been draped a garland of silken sunflowers.
The furniture was a dark mahogany in color as was the door leading off to the more functional areas of the dwelling.
Her house was one of the loveliest homes I’d ever been in and, before I knew it, I found myself ushered into a chair and fetched a glass of something hot to drink.
Directly across from me, sitting next to JunE was an extremely handsome middle-aged man who she had pointed to, smiled at, and then pointed towards herself in indication that this was her husband.
He didn’t look particularly Asian to me for some reason, but they complimented each other well, and I found it very easy to believe they’d spent the past twenty-five years together. They fit. Everything fit and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t speak to them, because, somehow, I also fit into this picture.
JunE had told me that her neighbor would be the one to demonstrate how to cut the cloth, since she didn’t have the patterns memorized.
I had tried not to build any expectations, but when this short, round little woman with a wide smile, dark eyes and deep laugh lines etched around the contours of her face entered the Cui home, I couldn’t have stopped myself from smiling if I’d wanted to.
She wore a grey vest over a black and white striped sweater which had come slightly untucked from the waistband of her brown floral embroidered slacks. Her shoes were made of canvas and everything about her seemed to be characteristic of the Chinese culture I’d been taught about in elementary school.
She seemed as amused with my presence as I was with hers, but I sensed no hostility tangled with her curiosity. In fact, her nature appeared to be that of one with a very kind heart and I liked her.
She pulled a stool from the corner and sat down across the living room at a slight angle from me. The three of them buzzed in and out of conversation for a while, but, eventually, the lesson began.
A manually powered sewing machine was lugged out from somewhere in the depths of the house and placed, facing the court yard, at the far left corner of the front hall. Fabric was laid on the bed in the room where the lesson was to be held. I was given a stool, a good view of JunE’s neighbor as she showed me, one step at a time, how to fold the material, how to mark it, and what shapes to cut from it.
When she was finished with the scissor work, she checked my notes, corrected a few things, but grinned as she said something to JunE which, in turn, caused a broad smile to stretch across her features.
I was shown how to stitch the pieces together and how to quilt the legs of the outfit in an almost invisible, yet effective way. Those two women taught me an amazingly vast amount of techniques in a staggeringly short period of time and it was all accomplished without the use of words. Everything was demonstrated.
Occasionally JunE would reach out in much the same way as a parent teaching a small child how to write and guide my hands through the proper procedure, but mostly I sat there on my stool completing one stitch to her twenty, trying not to stab myself with the needle.
When six o’clock snuck up on us, she invited me to dinner, but I’d promised Rod I’d be home in time to help him put the kids in bed, so I declined.
Our tiny traveling companion, I soon learned, was supposed to give me a lift home, but, try as she might, she couldn’t balance with me on her bike.
JunE fetched her sienna toned overcoat, motioned for me to tuck in my scarf, patted the miniature luggage rack on the back of her bike as if to say, “Hop on” then peddled her way out of DongPingLe with me in tow.
Throughout the duration of our return trip, I couldn’t stop smiling. The evening sun had burnt off some of the mist and the golden rivulets of light which were steadily fading into burgundy again filled the landscape with beauty. I sat there with my arms around JunE’s waist, steadying myself, but no longer afraid, wondering if this span of a few hours would, in time, prove to be a pivotal moment in my life. I felt different; I felt changed somehow...
I wanted to thank her, but knew I didn’t have the words. I wanted to tell her I thought her house was beautiful and that her being brave enough to open her door to me meant more to me than I could possibly describe. There was so much I wanted to say, but we had spent an entire afternoon proving that words were grossly overrated and it seemed inappropriate to encroach upon such an experience, so, as we turned the corner of the main road which led to the airport, I tightened my arms around her a little more and allowed the side my head to rest against her back for a moment.
She chuckled a bit, reached down, gave my arm a loving pat, and we rolled through the remainder of the journey in a warm, astoundingly eloquent silence.
Mei shi - In this case, "Don't worry about it" or "That's alright"