harbin was my teacher

A snippet of what I learned in Harbin the week before last.

Winter stays for a while

Per the advice of my instructors I’d begrudgingly dragged a winter coat and a scarf, some gloves and a hat on this trip. The bulk of it felt out of place in balmy Chengdu but turns out that in Harbin this kind of gear is still really necessary. One morning’s dismal rain even turned into big fluffy snow. My teacher and I paused our discussion to look out the window, both saying how much we love snow. Just not necessarily in April.

Central heating is not year-round

The radiator in my classroom was as cold as the curb outside. But I know from my time in Chengdu (which has zero central heating) that China’s air conditioners, often mounted high on the wall, are also heaters. The problem with my classroom’s unit was that the plug was too short to reach the outlet below. So I buried myself in my coat and scarf and took breaks from intensive Chinese immersion to wish the distance between the cord and plug might spontaneously shrink. When I didn't eat lunch (due to an unrelated stomach issue) and I wore a coat and scarf all day I think my teachers got worried. The next morning I walked into a toasty classroom to discover that a magical item had arrived overnight – an extension cord.

There’s bad air quality and there’s BAD air quality

Sometimes when it’s sunny in Chengdu the air glows, but in Harbin the air actually gets in your eyes. One morning I walked the half-hour to school and then spent a full day trying to rub particulate matter out of my head. It must have been 10pm before my eyeballs felt smooth again.

Just because it looks like a nuclear reactor doesn’t mean it is one

A few years ago when Shi-wen and I first visited Harbin we caught a glimpse of a cooling tower and thought that China had plopped a nuclear plant in the middle of a major metropolitan city. Better yet, on this most recent visit the view from my hotel room featured two of these beauties. An instructor told me that they’re part of a coal-burning plant and laughed at the idea that something so dangerous as a nuclear reactor might be used in the center of a major Chinese city. To avoid possible notes of irony, we did not discuss the effects of placing a coal-burning plant in the center of a major Chinese city.

Harbin is close to Shenyang

I knew Shenyang was up north but I became more familiar with the nuances of Chinese geography when our plane landed there instead of Harbin. We were diverted to Shenyang because our destination was in the throes of a sandstorm and happily no was was insisting we land in zero visibility conditions. Instead we spent four hours in the Shenyang airport killing time, but not before I got to count cooling towers as we came in for a landing. I think I got to nine before we touched down.

Harbin kind of knows its Russians

In Chengdu I’m regularly asked if I’m from Russia. But in Harbin where they have a historically and physically close relationship with Russia, and have actual Russians living there, there wasn’t this kind of confusion. Although waiting in line for security at the airport, there was a group of Chinese guys who asked where I was from. Before I said anything I asked if they thought I looked Russian. The guy closest to me said, “I don’t know, you all look alike.”

You will never win against a tiger

The tiger preserve in the shadows of this big city is one of the more surreal places I’ve visited. It’s grey, dismal, and teeming with tigers and their feline relations. But in a vibrant twist, visitors can buy live animals to feed to the inhabitants. It goes something like this: your bus drives out to the big open plain and stops. A large SUV with bars covering the windows and tires rolls up. The SUV’s driver rolls down the window just long enough to quickly shove a chicken onto the roof. Before you can look away a tiger is standing on the roof with the chicken in its mouth. If you're of the mindset that in the event of a tiger chase all you'd have to do is run faster than the slowest member of your group and you'd be just fine, it might be time for a re-think. 

 

Telephone Chinese is the hardest

My first night in the hotel I called the front desk to request a wake up call for the next morning. Because I didn’t know how to say "wake-up call" our Chinese conversation went something like this:

Me:  Hello, can you please call me tomorrow at 6am to wake me up?

Front Desk:  You want to make a phone call?

Me:  No, I would like you to call me.

Front Desk:  Why do you want me to call you?

Me:  So that I wake up.

Front Desk:  To make a phone call from your room, first you dial …

Me:  I don’t want to make a phone call.

Front Desk:  What do you want?

Me:  I want you to call me.

Front Desk:  Why do you want me to call you?

We went around like this for several minutes before she finally asked if I wanted a “morning” call? Using English felt like cheating but I said yes, go ahead and give me a morning call. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised when the phone rang at 6 the next morning.


“No smoking” means “take off your shirt before smoking”  

Based on signage, I was staying on a no smoking floor. However, each night when I’d return to my room, or leave it to head out for a bit, I’d have to pass a stretch of hallway that was thick and hazy with smoke. Several rooms would be loud and hopping, their doors propped open and their insides stuffed with topless Chinese men. The guys were milling around, or lounging on the beds, all drinking and smoking and wearing the slippers we all got with our rooms. I couldn’t decide if I was staying at a bar or at the beach but I clearly needed to buy some cigarettes.

The hotel is not a Bed, Bath and Beyond

The checkout process where I stayed was fairly standard except that before the front desk would let you leave they sent someone to your room to take inventory. As you waited, and as all the people behind you waited, there was someone scurrying around your room counting the towels. Except I don't think the person was doing any scurrying because it took a good 7-10 minutes for them to call the front desk with their report. Then when the woman at the front desk finally got off the phone she dead-seriously informed me that a cup and a spoon were missing from my room. I thought she was kidding but then I actually had to say: I do not have your cup and I do not have your spoon. What should we do about this? In the end she let me leave but I heard that later she’d demanded a classmate of mine explain a missing face towel. Whoever's using this hotel to stock up on basic household items had better quit it. You're ruining it for the rest of us.

Mahjong is never the same

Playing mahjong in Chengdu is hard enough but then I had to go and learn how to play it in Harbin. No one told me the rules would be completely different. Except they were, and the only record that I have of these new rules is a set of notes in Chinese scrawled across a chalkboard. Nothing like taking something hard and making it harder.

It’s the music, not the words

We were heading to Harbin’s airport when the cabbie plugged in his MP3 player. After some fiddling with the player the car was suddenly full of Celine Dion belting out that swelling Titanic song. Then a song by Bob Marley. He told me these were his favorites. Several more played and he chewed his cantaloupe gum and the outskirts of Harbin kept going past in a big grey blur. I recognized all of the songs and he recognized them too, just in a different way: he’d already asked me if one of them was in English.

on relaxing

Last Sunday we spent part of the afternoon in the courtyard of a teahouse close to home. The sky was blue, the air was clear, and we had a couple of half-birthdays to celebrate. It was all verging on perfect until we had to go and botch the simplest of tasks: we dribbled tea down our fronts and I hurt a finger trying to open sunflower seeds. Turns out that the famously relaxed Chengdu lifestyle isn’t as easy to live as you might think.

It’s my yoga troubles all over again. Other people in my yoga class used the quiet time to meditate and reflect, but I used it to draft long form to-do lists in my head. Instead of finding an inner calm, I was trying not to forget all of the things I needed to do as soon as they let me leave. Unable to appreciate the quiet, I was a yoga failure.

In Chengdu the stakes are higher. This is our town, at least for a few years, and we'd like to be able to fit in. In fact, we'd like to fit in so well that we get to keep our teacups at the teahouse just like the regulars do. Their collection of mismatched randoms is stored in a cabinet, each with the name of its owner taped to the bottom of the cup. Getting to keep a teacup in this cabinet would be the ultimate badge of Chengdu success.

But for now this city seems to doubt our relaxation credentials. So it dribbled tea down our shirts to point out that we'd neglected to appreciate the leaves inside before lifting our cups. It knew we'd forgotten to bring snacks so it paraded a girl with oranges and cotton candy past just to make us jealous. And it inflicted a sunflower seed injury so I'd remember that cracking open the seeds is a nuanced art and not blunt warfare. 

But I think it’s ok if our relaxation skills need some work. Our neighbors have been at this for a while and we'll need time to catch up. But I do suspect that the city at large would appreciate us trying just a little harder to get the tea into our mouths and not on our shirts. This could be a good first step.