An American in Anshan

In gingham and tassels and the bright morning sun, I stood around a trio of Anshan locals dressed in denim with cigarettes propped behind their ears. We waited in front of my apartment building, and scanned ahead for the bridal caravan to come around the corner. The arrival was to be our cue to light the firecrackers and fireworks that we hovered around. There was a pair of long roped firecrackers laid in the symbol of a heart, and eight boxes of bundled Roman candles sat closely behind them. I observed my fellow part-time pyrotechnists, family of the bride- Dina- linger anxiously and spark and release and spark again their lighters.

Across the city, the groom -Don- lugged a heavy bag of noodles, matches, leeks, and pork ribs up six flights of steps to the door of the bride’s parents’ apartment. There, he needed to persuasively flatter the family in hopes they’d allow him entrance. ‘My beautiful mother, my clever father,’ Don crooned, ‘please let me in so I can propose to your wonderful daughter’. A translator repeated his request in Anshanese, losing a bit of the dramatic tone and, fortunately for Don, the subtle sarcasm as well. The parents played along, opening the door for their daughter’s suitor and his three best men, all foreigners, one of which was a woman. Then Don, dressed in a black suit and tie, needed to re-propose to Dina, who was dressed in a white, billowing wedding gown. Initially, as is custom, she declined the marriage, stating she could never leave her loving family, but after a persuasive argument by Don, she agreed on the condition that he find her shoes, which had been hidden somewhere within the apartment. Once the patent red leather heels were found, the couple shared a noodle a la Lady and the Tramp, and headed to the groom’s apartment for the bride’s family to inspect the premises. 

Back at the university’s apartments for foreign teachers, the sewer lids were covered in red paper to ward of unlucky spirits. In a flash of fire, the lighters flamed, cigarettes burned and fuses flared, as the bridal convoy pulled into the building’s roundabout. Six camouflaged bikers led the procession. They wore thick vests and SWAT team kneepads; some of their bikes had imitation missiles tacked above the rear fender. Following them, twenty rented black Audi A6’s snaked around the entrance, stopping in the haze of the blasted pyrotechnics. The bride and groom walked arm in arm in a colorful snow of confetti as filmers, photographers, and family filed in behind. About forty of Dina’s closest family members lined the hall to Don’s small apartment, each one being formally introduced to their new international family member. Inside the apartment, a child hung a wooden clock on the wall to ensure a happy future for the couple, and everyone was required to eat something to show respect for the couples’ new home. Don, now with a shimmer of sweat on his forehead, watched as Dina’s friends placed ceremonial red blankets on his bed then sprinkled these blankets with peanuts, candies, and coins. Through the doorway, he, with his old friends and new family behind him, watched his bride stand on their bridal bed and make two careful spins before sitting down upon the cloud of her gown. This custom was to ensure her fertility, a moot point since Dina is already pregnant. The couple then shared an apple hung from a red string and dangled between them by a young girl. They were each supposed to take a bite, the person with the biggest bite is said to be the controller of the relationship; Dina’s bite was impressive, Don’s teeth bounced the apple away so that he missed completely. Two portraits hung above the bed watching over the ceremony: a large color print of Don and Dina in a gilded frame, and a small faded, sepia photo of Don’s grandparents.

Since no objections were made to Don’s dwelling, the crowd continued to the bridal lunch. At a two-story building across town, its entrance double rainbowed by two inflatable arches, nearly fifty Audi’s lined the street. Another wedding lunch was being held on the bottom floor, and we watched the young newlyweds strut through their party. Upstairs, the party was partitioned into smaller rooms without doors. I sat around a circular table with nine foreigners from around the world, and we jokingly wondered whether this was the room for Don’s friends or the room for non-Chinese. The newlyweds made their rounds to each room, offering cheers and thanks to the guests.  In a particularly interesting custom, Don had to offer a cigarette that Dina would light for each of the adult guests. Having been forewarned, I took the cigarette and puffed enough to get it lit, sitting back and thinking about how this custom could never survive in smoke-scar(r)ed America. Food was shared, beers (room temperature – the norm in China) were swilled, and congratulations were given, as the party continued into the warm summer night. 

Mid-term exams were over. The spring rain pattered against the three large windows in the classroom’s right wall. The sunlight shining through the streaming droplets cast serpentine shadows that crawled across the chalkboard and towards the students’ desks. I checked the metronome on my wrist – still thirty minutes left in today’s Oral English class. It was the last thirty minutes I’d spend with these students before the weeklong holiday, ‘International Labor Day’ the Chinese government called it. The syncopated rhythm of the rain was quieting, and drowned out the steady ticking of the clock, lulling my students to dreams of an early vacation. This was not the time to prattle on about proper pronunciation and adjective endings. Instead, I opted to try a new activity with my class. A familiar game to some Americans who’ve spent long nights around a campfire, the activity is such that the participants will create a story, with each individual adding one sentence to the ongoing plot. I divided the class into three groups of nine to ten students, and wrote the opening sentence on the board: Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess and a dragon. After around fifteen minutes of story discussion (much of which was in Chinese, I’ll confess), my groups were ready to share their ideas with the class. The first two groups recited a Disneyesque storyline where the dragon and princess lived happily ever after, but the last group managed to surprise me with a tragic twist in ten sentences. Albeit fraught with minor plot holes and loose ends, I’ve recounted their tale below:

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess and a dragon. The dragon had lived for forever in the clouds, but had always wanted to be a part of the human world beneath him. He’d fallen in love with the princess while watching her in her castle below. The dragon, sure that the princess would only love him if he were human, found a witch who promised she could turn him into a human for one day. The princess fell in love with the dragon (now a human) at first sight. The princess was unhappily engaged to a prince from a far-off land, so she and the dragon decided to run away together. The dragon, feeling the effects of the spell wearing off, rushed away while the princess was sleeping to find the witch. The witch said she could give the dragon a drink that would turn him into a mortal if he paid her well enough. The dragon paid, drank the drink, and hurried back to his princess. But the drink was a poison, and the dragon died in his sleep lying next to his princess. In the morning, when the princess awoke to discover her lover was a dragon, she cried to him, ‘You didn’t know, but I too, am a dragon’. 

And in April, the sweet showers fall to wash away the drought of Winter. The just-forgotten snow has melted, but the blooming cherry blossoms give thanks with their branches; buds of soft white petals serve as the symbolic ascension of Winter’s sterility.  Then memory mixes with desire. The flowers, too, forget the snow and blaze to pink and thin-blood red all across the city.  The dripping flowers cling to their stems as the breeze bends their branches.

Liaoning’s cherry blossoms have a history rooted in blood soaked soil. The Battle of Mukden, in the chill of 1905’s Winter, laid 160,000 Russian and Japanese soldiers on the frozen earth forever. Less than three tumultuous decades later, northeastern China was again invaded on controversial pretenses by the Japanese government. To strengthen their control over the region, they created the puppet state of Manchukuo, and in this new colony they planted sakura trees (cherry blossoms) to tie their occupation to the natural rhythms of the Earth. For nearly eighty years the cherry blossoms have budded in April here in Anshan, unaware that each Spring their flowers symbolize the lost lives of fallen soldiers. Today, the people that walk beneath them are also unaware of this connection. They have forgotten the cherry blossoms painted on the steel sides of kamikaze fighters’ jets. They’ve forgotten, if only for a moment, the transience of time. But this blissful moment will soon be lost as well. The white-then-red petals will fall to the ground in a few short weeks, leaving turgid green leaves in their place.

Under the hazy blanket of the steely sky I pushed headfirst into the whistling wind. 219 Park was unusually empty on this wintry afternoon, and I skateboarded alone beneath the white marble, tilted arc that spans the park’s entrance. The ledges surrounding both ends of the arc are smooth, speckled-red marble, and I worked on grinds at the furthest right rise of the arc (depending on your perspective, you could also call it the furthest right fall). Below me, down a long double-set of dusty stairs, a mother and father watched their young son roller-skate around a raised block of wrought iron soldiers forever tangled in battle. With each of his falls, the mother would run to support, and the father would sternly clap and encourage him to return to his shaky skates.

A short time later, the father had taken the steps and kindly approached me while I rested and watched. “You are very good with that, sir,” he carefully said to me, “but it is very dangerous.” I laughed in agreement, and told him his son hadn’t chosen the safest recreation either. With that said, his son slipped again to his kneepads, the mother rushed to help him to his feet, and the father urged him to keep trying. Even in his native language, I could tell the father spoke decisively, rolling each word around his mouth to see how it feels before releasing it to the wind. He spoke even more thoughtfully in English. During our conversation, I watched him almost imperceptibly practice the pronunciation of difficult words before placing them into his sentences. His English was self-taught, learned within the three years of his post-graduate studies in communications engineering. He predicted that English would be the World’s language within his own lifetime, and was thusly compelled to learn it. His wife was once a classmate of his, though their romance didn’t begin until they became colleagues working for China Unicom, the state-owned telecommunications company that controls the market. As is typical in introductory conversations with local Chinese, salaries were plainly asked and stated. He was surprised to hear my monthly income, expecting it to be much higher. He made a fourth less than my salary, even with his Master’s, bilingualism, and experience. I silently questioned my worth in a country that values foreigners so highly.

We talked of history and culture. He was an avid amateur historian, specializing in the Qing Dynasty that ruled China from the mid-17^th century. He favored this period because of his own racial-makeup; unlike 91% of the 1.3 billion Chinese that are categorized as Han, this man was Manchurian, and proud of his heritage. The Qing Dynasty is famous for its Manchurian leadership in a Han-dominated country. During the Qing Dynasty, Manchus and Han Chinese worked together, not always without conflict, imposing their cultures on one another, inexorably changing the country’s identity. Now, Western culture has begun to infiltrate the ancient Chinese culture. The man asked me to look around the park. “Notice the clothing,” he said as I followed the three-stripes of his adidas hat down to his pointed face, “no one wears traditional dress anymore.” I scanned the people at the park. Besides us, there was only a small group of men practicing the whipping top, a 4,000-year-old sport where participants use a long chain and leather whip to spin a large top. In their stuffed and clearly branded nylon coats they’d whirl the whip over their head twice to gain momentum, on the third round they’d crack the whip at the teetering top, causing it to skip and spin smoothly before repeating the technique. Whoosh, whoosh, snap! Whoosh, whoosh, snap! These sounds became the rhythmic metronome to our conversation, punctuating every point. “Maybe, one day when you and I are gone, there will only be one culture in the world,” the man pondered, “a Western one.” I shuddered at the thought. Had the American aversion to cultural acceptance convinced the rest of the World of its own culture’s manifest destiny? And what is American culture if not a confluence of the various cultures that make up America?

I wondered this and worried, but as I watched those men engaged in the whipping top, I realized that the spinning top is emblematic of the continuance of China’s history - steadily spinning for over four-millennia. I responded to the father that though only time will tell, I’m confident that Western values will never overtake Chinese culture, but instead they will absorb into each other, as both have much to learn from one another. He mentioned that China had already begun to distance itself from its past, changing the written language into a simplified version. I asked if the traditional form was no longer taught. He answered that he was teaching his son, because if he didn’t then antiquity would be lost to him. “Time is like a river,” he said, “it only moves in one direction.” I thought that if time is a river that carries culture in its current, then the rivers must be tributaries, flowing into a vast body that is absorbed on distant shores.

The son had tired for the day and was taking his skates off. His father and I shook hands and thanked each other for the conversation. I pushed off with the wind at my back and put my headphones back in as Thom Yorke cried over the pulsating bass of Radiohead’s music:

‘There’s a gap in between,

There’s a gap where we meet,

Where I end and you begin.”

Thirty-two hours of flights and airport purgatory later, and I find myself pushed and pushing through the crowd at Shenyang International Airport. I had forgotten my urgency somewhere in the last fifteen time zones, but was forcefully reminded of its infectious existence in the arrivals area of airports. While waiting by the baggage claim, I watched my fellow travelers vie for a position by the circulating belt. The mob was pulsating – every spot opened was instantly taken by another anxious person hoping to be reconnected with their belongings. Having the height advantage, I spotted one of my bags and plucked it from over the heads of those in front of me. Sometime later, after the crowd had diminished to me and those tarrying behind to watch me with curiosity, I realized the bag I had checked in Atlanta wasn’t coming, and I was forced to leave the baggage claim with only a receipt of my loss.

In the lobby, I recognized my name scribbled on a scrap of paper held up by the man that I could only assume to be the driver my school had arranged for me, and him and I retreated into the cold China night toward the car. As I put my bag in the trunk, I noticed the license plate had a few of its identifying characters scratched free of their white paint, leaving only raised outlines of their former selves behind. Other cars in the parking lot were less subtle with their trickery; matte black spray paint was a favorite to conceal the plate from the watchful traffic cameras that had begun appearing over major highways throughout Liaoning. The driver was all smiles as he attempted to engage me in conversation. It had been over a month since I’d tried my Mandarin, but much to his and my surprise I was able to answer his simple questions. His gold-capped teeth glinted in the light of passing cars as he laughed and nodded with my responses. I’d exhausted my abilities and apologetically stated that I was tired, ‘tai lei le’, too tired to continue conversing. We picked up another couple from a nearby hotel, and the four of us rode in sleepy silence through the pocked streets. I rested my heavy head on the icy window and thought about the people I had met in the airports:

There was Les, who I’d met in the check-in line before departing Shenyang for Seoul. We were the only Westerners around, and he unabashedly spoke past the people separating us. We exchanged cards, mine labeled with the misnomer that I answer to. “So Christian, are you a Christian?” he plainly posed, clearly excited by the find. Knowing the type of person that asks such a question so boldly, I sheepishly lied with a hesitant yes, unwilling to damn myself to some theological debate for the next few hours. Over KFC coffee he told me about his evangelism in atheist China. He described to me the feeling of Hell as fleeing forever from a pack of vicious dogs in pitch-black. He told me about the dinners he would have with his Christian and non-Christian students; he used the phrase ‘sick ‘em!’ to describe how the Christian students would try and convert the non-believers by dessert. I wondered if the dogs that chase you through Hell are really just the missionaries you avoided so well in life. We departed and I watched the serpentine streets become the swirling fingerprint of the land, and, as we ascended higher, the tops of the clouds become the snow-covered mountains of Heaven, all illuminated by the fire-white alien orb of the burning up Sun.

Then there was Mary, the Southern belle from Savannah, Georgia who struck up a conversation with me while we waited for our flights in Atlanta. She casually slipped words like ‘yonder’ and ‘high-falutin’ into our short talk, and she questioned my Southern roots when I expressed Democratic sentiments. She told me about her life-changing accident. How she had been hit by a train while walking by some tracks in upstate New York. She hadn’t heard it coming, and the rushing force of it had sucked her in like a turbine and spat her out mangled and broken. She said that the doctors told her she made them believe in God by her recovery. When her plane was boarding she wished me luck and limped toward her gate, rotating her whole body across her right hip like a pivot pushing her towards her destination.

Then there was John, the American I’d overheard talking in the plane to Seoul. His ultimate destination was the Philippines, and he was making the trip with high hopes and an engagement ring tucked away in his pocket. He had never touched his wife-to-be. He had never left America, and she had never left the Philippines. Their only contact was virtual. They had met online four months ago, and Skyped each other for hours each night since their initial pairing. I wondered to myself what they could possibly talk about. I wondered about the nature of love, about culture, and about their connection. 4000 feet above the Earth I went to sleep sandwiched between two strangers.

I woke when our small taxi hit a larger than normal pot-hole in the frozen Anshan road. The steady hiccup of the sputtering engine must have lulled me to sleep. I listened to the sounds of a heated argument about the intended destination of my fellow-passengers. We passed familiar buildings and rubble that took an eerie glow in the night smog and frozen snow from last week’s flurries. I was dropped at the gate of my university and walked the quarter mile through my crystalized breath toward the light of my dorm.