Knee-how, is this pesticide gas safe to breathe?

Last Friday was my first day back at work after 春节. Over the weekend I went on a lovely adventure to Qingyuan, and on Monday the school gassed us.

Let me back up.

There are two stories here, to be told in reverse chronological order.

Story the First

Shenzhen has had some 新病例, and, like always with new cases, we’ve had ever evolving restrictions and regulations. So, while the teachers are back at school, local authorities have pushed back student return dates. What are we meant to do? When will our students start school?

There are, as always in China, more questions than answers. This is a universal experience amongst my foreign teacher friends and acquaintances, as well as countless accounts of foreign teachers online. There is very little communication, and what is communicated is often last minute and subject to change at any time with no warning.

On Friday our administrator came and told us (the two foreign teachers at our school) to make videos to review the contents of the book. We spent the entire day making videos and having to redo them over and over. The camera is too shaky. I can’t see the words. You didn’t read aloud the unit number. You need to film only from your torso up. You shouldn’t have an office chair in frame, only school chairs. Motivation to go above and beyond waned with each round of critiques and revisions. Finally, brow-beaten, I resigned myself to produce as exactly as possible what the administrator wanted, despite my own misgivings, and after that we were, for the most part, left alone to our work.

The Chinese teachers, on the other hand, were doing group excursions and team-building activities. Perhaps we aren’t included because we don’t speak Chinese as well (though my coworker is passably conversant), or because we are hired by an agency and not by the school directly, or because our work is of a different nature than theirs, or for some other cultural reason or a combination of reasons.

Nevertheless, come Monday, there were no teachers at the school at all. The bao’an didn’t seem surprised that we showed up at the gate, letting us in without so much as a word. We set to our work, commenting on how there is no one here and how they must be on an excursion.

Mid-morning, I ran downstairs to fill my water bottle from the warm water dispenser (warm and hot water are, to my absolute delight, the only options in China, with none of the brutality of the year round cold water consumption of the US). I noticed in passing that there were two men with some sprayer equipment in the courtyard, but didn’t think much of it. I figured they were there to take care of the plants growing in pots all around the playground and courtyard.

Moments later, I noticed a strange smell in the office. I remarked on it to my coworker, and he agreed that it did indeed smell weird. We shrugged it off and carried on.

A few moments later, I had to go to another classroom to borrow some materials. I opened the door and was met with a thick cloud of gas, filling the entire hallway. I immediately shut the door, turned on my heel and opened the window in our office and put my face to the safety wires, breathing in as much fresh air as possible.

Gripped by shock and the need to impress upon my coworker the urgency of the matter, I turned to him and said

“We need to get out of here right now. Put on your mask, we’re leaving.”

At first he didn’t take it too seriously. I told him to go look for himself. He did, and when he closed the door, I motioned him over to the window, where we could both see gas pouring out of the building and into the alley. I sent off a text to our administrator. “Hey”, I said, not stopping to consider a more polite opener to the conversation, “the gas that’s being sprayed into the building, is is it safe? Should we leave and come back later?”. A response came in a few minutes. “It is safe.”

I could feel my Jewish epigenetic memories vibrating in my bones as I read the message out loud, recounting all the times my father had argued with me as a child and teenager. “I’m not Jewish, I don’t believe in god”, I would say, to which he would retort, “it doesn’t matter what you believe, you’re Jewish, you look Jewish, and they would have put you in a concentration camp and burned you just the same.” So, rooms filling with gas are kind of non-negotiable for me.

“We’re going to lunch early”, I said. “I don’t care about the repercussions, I am not staying in a building that is being gassed.”

He nodded. Masks on, phones out, we left, videotaping the halls thick with white smokey gas for evidence as we walked out. Downstairs we saw the men operating the equipment and walked past them without a word. The bao’an let us out without question. We saw our administrator sitting in the bao’an’s office across the courtyard. She never looked up from her phone as we left.

Outside on the street, we both compared symptoms. My coworker had a headache. I had a raw throat. We both felt the heat of anger and the sting of injustice. The administrator knew we were there. She made sure to arrange this on a day when the other teachers weren’t there. It was lantern festival day, a holiday we didn’t even know about, that we maybe could have gotten off but didn’t. A topic for more thought and consideration for sure .She allowed them to gas the building with us in it. The complete disregard for our health and safety felt like a slap in the face, any trust that had been built totally fractured, crumbling at the foundation. I couldn’t get over it.

They gassed the building with us in it.

We went our separate ways for break. When we came back, the gas had dissipated, and we continued our work for the afternoon, though not without some bitterness. We had both ended up with headaches for a few hours, just from being in the gas for half an hour or so. What would have happened had we stayed longer? The absolute lack of communication and regard for us on a systemic, even cultural level, was truly eye opening, and it is something I will be sitting with for quite some time.

Story the Second

This past weekend I joined a tour group for an adventure. It was my first such outing and I was excited to get out of the city and see a bit of China. We met Saturday morning at 9am in Futian, which meant I had to leave by 7:30am from Fuyong to ride the metro.

I pride myself on being a light packer, though even with my one backpack I still ended up overheating standing on the crowded metro for an hour and a half. By the time we had arrived I was sweaty and tired, but ready to get going on some much needed adventure.

A small group had formed outside the subway. I approached cautiously, holding myself back a bit, getting a pulse. A couple of women in their forties or fifties stood on the sidewalk, bags strewn around them. I silently judged them for bringing so much on a two day trip, then scolded myself for judging.

I went into the nearby Starbucks to meet up with the rest of our group that was having coffee inside. A mostly British crew and our group leader, a slight Chinese man who spoke fluent English and beamed with energy.

Finally, our bus arrived, and climbed aboard. I was quick to make conversation with my across-the-aisle seat mate, wasting no time in shedding any pretense of shyness and blooming into my full talkative self. I found out that she was working for the public schools of Shenzhen, the same bureau I had interviewed with and accepted a position with before I made the move to my private agency, a decision I look back on with a mix of emotions.

I grilled her for information, checking into the logistics of my possible alternate reality, happily plunging my wand into the soapy waters of the what-ifs of life, each bubble an alternate universe with an alternate me, blown into existence with each question and answer.

I found she earns less than I do, but lives much closer to the city center (my position would have put me much further out). She does much less work and her off time is very much her off time, with no office hours to keep. She sounded very happy in her job, though the threats coming from the higher ups were similar to the ones I’ve received. “Don’t travel during breaks or you will lose your job” being the big one. It seems every time there’s a holiday in China, that’s when there are new cases found and new travel restrictions issued. Yet here we were, traveling, all of us taking the risk, none of us concerned with job loss. We all know how hard it is for them to get new people in to replace us, how hard it was for us to get here ourselves.

We drove for hours, winding our way north through smaller and smaller villages, rivers and mountains captivating my attention, calling me to travel more, see this big and mysterious place that is so much more than the only recently and hastily built city I currently live in.

Finally, we arrived our our treehouse hot springs resort, wooden huts connected by a tall wooden walkway through the trees, tucked deep in the forest, surrounded by mountains and hiking trails. A kind of heaven.

We were met with a shock of cold, damp air stepping off the bus. We wrapped our jackets around ourselves and headed to check in. The process would take a long time for unknown reasons. There’s a lot of “unknown reasons” in China. I was entirely unperturbed. Truly, you have to learn to go with the flow here. It has been a lesson for me.

We were told to go up to the resort restaurant for lunch, only to be told at the restaurant that they open at 5:30pm. So we did the China shuffle: shrug your shoulders, turn around, find a plan b. Plan b turned out to be the streetside 粤菜 restaurant just outside the resort. About half of us went, the others eating sandwiches they brought along.

We sat at the table still bundled in our coats, the inside of the restaurant as cold as the outside air, and I quickly found that though my 中文 is 不太好, and though everyone else had been in China for years to my three or four months now, I was the only one there who could speak enough to order food. I ended up being the entire table’s ambassador, ordering what I know of Cantonese cuisine.

One woman at the table stood out, and not for the last time during the trip. A middle aged woman from the US, blonde and robust, she arrived late and despite the customary family-style Chinese meal, ordered her own separate dish using her translator app, shouting a mispronounced “knee how” loudly to get the server’s attention.

At first I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. I figured she must have just arrived to China and I gave her some mental grace. After a few moments, I heard her talking to the waiter again. They went back and forth, her speaking English loudly and insistently, pointing to her phone. She was trying to order a beer, but didn’t know what it was called. “Tsingtao?” I asked her, trying to be helpful. “No, not that”, she said. I could hear the frustration in her voice.

Her beer came, and her dish, which she ate out of the serving dish rather than the small bowls we were all eating out of and which we had all washed with tea according to custom. I couldn’t help but gawk.

I met some really lovely people on this trip. Our host in particular, a true hiker at heart with a fast pace and an eye for scenic trails. A lesbian couple who proved to my heart’s satisfaction that there is in fact a queer scene in China and in Shenzhen, and who added me to a few WeChat groups (bless). A British couple who were both lovely company. And, most wonderfully, a British woman who I absolutely hit it off with in the best way possible. Hot tub talks and late night laughs, phone numbers exchanged and a place in my heart forever, wherever she goes.

So, with your heart at ease that I am not totally embittered with humanity, can I talk a bit more smack about Beer Lady? Okay, because I kind of have to.

I have never, in my life, met a person who is such an exquisitely toxic mix of entitlement and learned helplessness. Where do I begin?

How about we start with her unironically bemoaning the lack of ketchup at dinner. I couldn’t restrain myself from saying “this is, afterall, China”, to which she replied “I’ve been living abroad for 15 years honey”. In that case, I thought to myself, you’ve had plenty of time to learn a few things.

She followed that up with a long complaining session to our group leader about the “absolute hell” she went through the day prior to get her covid testing done for the trip, and how difficult life in in China for foreigners.

“And WeChat is now Weixin! When did that happen? Nobody told us!” I looked up from my barbecue at this and everyone was making eyes with each other, stunned faces, all of us thinking the same thought: should we tell her? I spoke up first. “Uh, Weixin is the Chinese name for WeChat. It’s always been Weixin. Nothing has changed, it’s the same app.” The message didn’t seem to land. She threw her hands up as if to say “whatever, I can’t be bothered to take in any new information or change my perspective, so I will go along believing the same incorrect beliefs I always have just so I can continue being outraged.”

She then went on a tirade about how the systems China is built on are not made for foreigners. Now, she’s not wrong about this. Every foreigner has had problems, but there are workarounds. This is not a multicultural society and it is not built for those who are not Chinese in mind.

But her complaints were, to everyone’s mind and not just mine, beyond the pale. Her chief example? She can’t scan a shake bike QR code to ride it.

Again I spoke up first (maybe I need to examine my impulse to do this). I explained how at the bottom of the Meituan screen there’s a small grey line of text you can select to input foreigner passport information and once it passes an extra review process which usually takes 1–3 days, you’ll get a text message and you should be able to use sharebikes. Otherwise, you can use Alipay bikes without this process straight away.

She nodded vigorously and pointed at me, as though I was confirming her point. “See?”, she said, “that’s what I mean! You can’t just scan the bike. Chinese people can just scan the bike.”

We all jumped in on this one. “No”, we said, “Chinese people have to register the first time they use it as well.” Again, this didn’t seem to register with her. Clearly she didn’t want her problems solved. She wanted to remain upset.

The rest of the trip went well and I tried my best to avoid Beer Lady at all costs. At a rest stop on the way back I heard her distinct voice in English, loudly shouting as she went through the health code check line to get into the rest area “don’t touch me!”, then, “you touched me! I said don’t touch me!”.

I sighed heavily. After fifteen years and three countries you would think she would learn a few words or at least understand that people likely do not speak or understand English, and that speaking it at a louder volume and refusing to adapt to any cultural conventions whatsoever only makes everyone’s life harder, including mine, because you are making us all look bad.

You’re the reason I get three waiters coming to my table all rushing to speak English so as to avoid embarrassing awkward difficult encounters with loud, demanding, entitled foreigners. You’re the reason my coworker got spit at on the street. You’re the reason people won’t rent an apartment to me. You’re the reason I can’t get a hotel room.

You’re the reason the foreign bubble exists — it takes both sides, pressure from the outside pushing us back in, pressure from the inside pushing back out to form the wall between us.

All I want here is to not live in the bubble, and here you are, shoring up the walls with every Knee How.

It doesn’t all fall on Beer Lady though. I can’t scapegoat this one person for all foreigner-Chinese relations issues. None of the foreigners on this trip with me or any that I’ve met like Chines food (other than my coworker, who is deeper into Chinese culture than any non-Chinese person I know). I’ve talked about this before, but it never ceases to stun and sadden me. I will be the first to say that Guandong food is a bit oily, but look at the fat content of any restaurant food around the world and you’ll see that restaurants all throw in extra fat to make food more palatable.

I made my position clear during the trip. I like Chinese food. I like the Chinese language. Sitting in the hot spring one night, the conversation turned to the Olympics. “You wouldn’t believe what they are feeding the athletes”, one of our group members remarked. “It’s just the usual slop. I don’t know, Anna, you would probably like it.”

Ouch.

I brushed it off in the moment, but that comment has sat heavy in my heart. Comments like these, such as “Chinese has no grammar, it’s just phrases”. “Gutter oil”, “dog meat”, and worse, are all deeply racist and painful to hear. And on the other side, the misunderstandings, fear and hatred of foreigners abound as well. My coworker being told to leave China, to go home, being spat on. Fears of us carrying the virus. Stories of foreigners I’ve met being kicked out of taxis for being foreign, being stared at, mocked, harassed. Especially if you’re Black. People lining up on the street to watch you walk home from work every day, people touching your body and hair without asking.

Every society has its darker corners and they exist here as well. For me, ultimately, it comes down to our attitude around stuckness and growth. Whether we believe we can evolve or whether we are what we are.

I believe we can grow. In our beliefs. In our strengths. In our understanding of ourselves and each other. I believe we can change so much, grow so much, that there is no limit but the lengths we ourselves are willing to go.

While I have a lot of anger towards her, my heart also hurts for Beer Lady, she seems so stuck in her victimhood. Things seem so hard for her because she doesn’t want to work for it. She doesn’t seem to see that the work itself is the growth. That the process is what changes you.

So many people tell me they’ve tried to learn Chinese and given up. That you can get by here with English. Who wants to just get by? I could be in the US getting by. What is the point of me being here with the gift of my one and only life to live and use if I settle, stagnate, if I get by?

Who I was and who I am and who I will be are all such different people, and I love them all. I cannot wait to meet all the future versions of myself, and I hope that they are better versions of me. That won’t happen if I stop growing and coast. So, here’s to the pain and the joy of growth.

(You know I will absolutely) talk more soon.