Last weekend I traveled with a fellow Sias teacher, Erica, to visit the hometown of one of her former students. The student met us at the university, traveled with us by bus for four hours to his hometown, and set the rule for the weekend when the first bus money collector stood by our seats with his hand outstretched: we pay for nothing. The student covered not only our travel expenses, but meals, snacks, hotel room – anything of cost whatsoever. The bus ride there was my first extended trip by public bus. The road we traveled on had somehow disappeared. For the first thirty minutes of our trip we jolted and sank through mud and potholes, inching along at the pace of a bicycle. A loud Chinese comedy blared from the speakers, and passengers shouted over the noise to talk to each other. Two or three sat in the aisle on stools, and at one point a woman was trying to walk to the front and had to scoot between my face and the boy sitting on a stool beside me. I leaned halfway into Erica’s seat and tried to brace myself while the bus bounced forward.
Upon our arrival, Erica’s student took us to his uncle’s beauty salon, where his uncle performed the traditional Chinese tea ceremony for us: he heated the kettle and our four tiny cups (they reminded me of the saucers I use to dip French fries into ketchup back home in Texas). He poured the first round.
“First,” the student explained, “my uncle will clean the cups.” And we watched as his uncle poured the boiling water in and around our cups, holding each cup by a pair of tongs while he poured. He poured the water straight onto the table. It was a special table, with two burners built into one side of it and a drain built into the far corner. After pouring the hot water over the cups, the uncle dumped the rest of the kettle out on the table; he kept pouring portions over a ceramic figurine – a half frog, half fish animal that holds a gold coin in its mouth. The frog is for luck. I’ve since noticed that most businesses have one on display.
“Second round,” said the student. “My uncle will pour the tea. And first we will just smell, and then take a little taste.”
The following steps, as far as I could tell, consisted of refilling the teacups until we finished the whole kettle.
Facials
During the tea, the student repeatedly mentioned that he had asked his uncle to find a way to improve Erica’s skin.
“They are freckles,” Erica would say whenever the student talked about her face.
He also mentioned that his uncle had been a barber for fifteen years, and could give Erica a good haircut. He told me that my hair was too short – I did not have enough hair to cut off.
I thought that he wasn’t serious about doing something for Erica’s face, but after the tea there were two Chinese girls standing behind our couch, and the student told us they would help our skin now. Who first?
I sat down in the chair, and one of the girls rubbed a white plastic nozzle into my face, slowly moving it across my skin to show me -- through a TV screen -- the underside of my skin.
“This area of your skin is clean,” the student translated as she moved the camera around. “And this area is dirty.”
“In English, we call those clogged pores,” Erica offered.
After the camera inspections, they told me that I needed to wash my face more, and they told Erica that she needed to use more lotion.
“Now you will rest,” said the student, and we followed him upstairs to a room with two beds. The Chinese girls gestured for us to lie down.
What followed was a forty-five minute facial session in which the girls rubbed all kinds of creams into our faces. They followed a simple pattern: rub cream into face, wipe face with wet cloth, and repeat. They massaged us as well – our shoulders, foreheads, scalps. The two salon girls spoke to each other in Chinese, and I imagined they were making comments about the differences between foreign and Chinese skin, and Erica and I talked to each other from our beds across the room about what was being rubbed on our faces and whether or not it would make us break out.
Ping Pong
In a dimly-lit metal building that evening, we played Ping Pong against China’s next greatest. When we entered the building, kids stood in lines at the tables, waiting to have their turn at a volley against the older men who coached them.
Our student and his uncles procured paddles for Erica and I and coaxed us to a table. I played the student for awhile, and then Erica. And then there were ten Chinese kids facing me from a line across my table. They took turns playing me while their parents stood by, watching. One of the coaches kept coming by my table to instruct me.
“This is attack,” he would say, and stretch my arm forward. He laughingly told me I could move my feet. I thought maybe I’d try to copy his protégé across the table, who bounced from side to side while he waited for the ball to come his way.
When the Ping Pong ended, the coaches gathered the kids into rows in the center of the room and told them to hold their paddles like badges on their chests. I felt out of place when I smiled and raised my peace sign.
The Mountains
On our last day with our student and his family, his uncles drove us to the mountains a full hour’s drive away, near the border of Shanxi Province. We drove a long way up the road of one mountain, but were turned away before we reached the peak. A man in camouflage told the uncles a landslide had occurred further up the mountain, and we heard multiple rumbles before we descended; we stopped first to pick Hawthorne berries from the trees along the road.
The uncles drove Erica and I to another mountain, again some distance away. This mountain was more treacherous-looking: it didn’t have slopes for sides, just walls. We drove up the sides of cliffs to get to the top. The student explained to us that his uncle had come here many times before. He was taking us to a small village where a famous Chinese film was made.
At the village, while we waited for our lunch, we walked into stone buildings that one of the locals told us were two thousand years old. It was quiet. Some of the villagers sat in chairs and watched us, one laid corn out to dry in the sun. A lady showed us the smoky fire pit she cooks over; the village didn’t have electricity. One of the women made lunch for us. She made us a chicken she had taken fresh from one of the many coops that we saw in the village.
When the Chinese cook a chicken, they boil it whole, pull it out, and chop it up. The village lady set ours on the table with head, heart, bones, skin, feet, and other unnamable pieces. I watched my hosts suck the skin off the feet, while I mostly ate the tasty egg and mushroom dish beside me. I kept trying to eat chicken, but I couldn't find any meat. I’d stick my chopsticks into broth and hope to pull out something white, but everything I saw looked like gristle or fat, or insides. When my Chinese companions pulled pieces out of the bowl, they never hesitated. What they picked up with their chopsticks went straight to their mouths, and a few seconds later they’d pull a bone out from between their lips. They were putting down parts I didn't know you could eat.
Our friends’ hospitality culminated with a free ride all the way back to our university. After our lunch at the village, the uncles drove us the four hours to home, and when we arrived late that night they left us with cakes, and fruit, and the entire bag of Hawthorne berries that we’d picked on the mountainside.
