Endings

And it's over. Yesterday was our exam, which I finished in record time (I was, as always, the first out of the room) and then went to get a haircut.

One thing that I will kind of miss is the exchange rate. In America, I would never get my hair cut in a place where they give you a beverage, but in China, I was able to enjoy my coffee and chat with the guy cutting my hair about Chinese and American standards of beauty and it was only about $15. When he had finished, he held up the mirror and I saw that, horror of horrors, I'd been mulletted.

"Um ... oh," I said. "Actually, could you go shorter in the back? The back should definitely not be longer than the front."

He was dubious, but complied, and the final result makes me very happy.

That afternoon was our graduation ceremony, where, among other things, the fourth year teachers described the students and people were supposed to guess who they were. Mine was "This student brilliantly rebutts others' arguments in debate class. Her dream is to discover a new logical proposition and go insane."

After the ceremony, the language pledge ended. My haircut was complimented and I was called "sassy" twice in an hour, which is a new record. We went to Paul and Anders' room and hung around for a bit before the big end-of-semester Beijing Roast Duck dinner, where my roommate and another last-semester student and I chatted quite easily. After dinner, we went back to Anders' room, where we talked for a very long time. It was especially nice to be able to make jokes effortlessly and to hear people's real voices - not to mention our real names. This was especially true because the boys, with the exception of Paul, all had rather odd names: Cedric, Anders, and Bennett.

At one point, a second-year guy I don't know came and proposed a drinking contest with Paul - not something I would recommend, as Paul is built like a linebacker. The other guy threw 3 kuai on the floor and said, "All right, that's 3 mao, 3 mao on the floor." Bennett, Cedric and I exchanged looks - this guy has been in China for two months and has yet to master the monetary system. I watched, fascinated and appalled, as they chugged enormous bottles of Yanjing beer. Paul won, of course, which is good since it was his beer anyway.

After awhile, we managed to get up and go to Houhai, where we bought more cheap beer and wandered around the lake. We found some other classmates, none of whom I knew, sitting on sofas outside a bar and decided to camp out for a bit.

(A person came around selling flowers and tried to get Bennett to buy some. He said no - "Unless you'd like one?" he added, turning to me. I said no thank you and my roommate and I did some possibly-not-too-subtle nudging.)

For everything I'm leaving, I'm getting something new.

Here are lists.

Lost or losing:
Cedric, Anders, Paul, Emily, Ben.
Wang Cheng, Luo Wei, Zao Zao, Namu, Xiaoxue.
Teachers: Xu, Zhu, Li, Li, Mao, Wang, Fan, etc.
Noodles for breakfast, the red hills of Sichuan, corn-flavored ice-cream, beautiful Chinese men, ginkgo trees, zongzi, ridiculous twee pop.

And getting back:
Kep, Jim, Jay, Jill, Kate, Katie Rose, Lisa.
My mum and dad, Caroline, Lillian, my grandparents, and cousins, and aunts and uncles.
Quaker meeting.
Peach pie on my grandparents' deck
Singing along with Lucinda Williams or Paolo Conte or West Side Story
My thesis
My cats
The gravity couch

For everything I lose, I gain something else, I know that. I keep telling myself that. I gave Ben my copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel to read on the plane; on the title page, I wrote one of my favorite parts of They Might Be Giants:

"What's wrong with being Sherlock Holmes? Why, I sometimes wish I were the Scarlet Pimpernel. A fop by day, but in the night, I ride. Is he in Heaven or is he in Hell, that damned elusive Pimpernel? What's that? You want to see the face behind the mask?

"... this is the face."

I no longer have my book, but I have something better - the knowledge that now he has something of mine.

This is the end of this story. On Monday I will go back to America, where I belong. It isn't easy, but it's right.

One Week

I realized last night that I may have become a formalist.

But you in all likelihood do not care about that, so let's move along. I'm running out of time here! (Oh God!)

We will move backwards in time (forward is going quickly enough) unless I forget things and have to skip around.

Lunch today at the Chinese Host Family's house. My Chinese brother Daxin came to the dorm to pick us up. I didn't recognize him, because last time he had hair like a member of an 80's hair band (the 80s are big here) and seemed about eight feet tall. Now, somehow, he's my height, and lovely. I will be frank: I do not know how I am going to readjust to life in a country where beautiful Chinese men are so scarce. Before college, I think I had only ever met three Chinese people, one of whom was my first ever crush, when I was eight (I told you we'd be going back in time).

Daxin got us a cab and we went to his house. The last time I was there was Chinese New Year, in February, but I knew we were close when we passed the enormous rainbow adorning their street.

Conversation was awkward, but it always is, and considering how dreadfully things could have gone, I'd say the afternoon was a success. My Chinese father did not talk about how bad my Chinese used to be; we had a nice lunch, I understood everything they said, and when the silence grew to awkward Daxin turned on the TV. We watched part of my favorite Chinese show, Family Has Children, which is basically the Chinese Brady Bunch, except that there are only three children. But this is China and that's SO MANY CHILDREN - the first time I watched it I was baffled at how they came to have so many children. I assumed they were Taiwanese until I saw the one where the ex-spouses come over for Chinese New Year and there's a mild-mannered custody battle.

Family Has Children is one of the things I'm going to miss.

Last night, one of our teachers, Zhu laoshi, invited all the 4th years over for dinner. Unfortunately only four of us could make it. As we entered her apartment building, I was amazed at how fancy it was - how could she afford a place like this on a teacher's salary, I wondered. We took the elevator up to the 14th floor and it became clear: Zhu laoshi lives in an office.

Their living room is full of cubicles. The dining room contains over thirty plastic-wrapped chairs and a whiteboard. "Where do you sleep?" I asked. "On the sofa," she replied.

The office belongs to her brother's company, and since they're "too busy" to find a house at the moment, they are living there: Zhu laoshi, her brother, and her brother's girlfriend. The latter two prepared a million dishes for us while Zhu laoshi showed us pictures of when she was younger. She is extremely beautiful, but doesn't quite fit the Chinese standard: she's got to be at least 5'10" and therefore often has to wear men's clothing.

She mentioned that when she was younger she always wished she were a boy (and who doesn't?) and showed us pictures of herself with a crew cut. She told us about her grandmother, who had bound feet, and how she met her husband through a matchmaker. Her brother told us about the first time they saw a foreigner, and how their grandmother had shielded her eyes. Could China have come any further in two generations?

We stayed at Zhu laoshi's until almost midnight, being pressed to eat things, and were finally sent home with peaches and sunflower seeds and, in my case, a new understanding of a teacher with whom I have had some issues.

To the orphanage on Friday (see an earlier post), where I was simultaneously delightened and saddened to see several familiar faces. In particular I remembered Wei Kangqin, a two-year old little girl. The last time I came, she had just had her cleft palate surgery, and now she can already sit and crawl by herself. "I remember you, yes I do," I told her softly, patting her back. "You are a very special girl!"

Visiting this particular orphanage is not as depressing as it might be, because these children will almost all be adopted eventually and are in the meantime receiving very good care, but it's certainly sobering.

And now it's only a week. Went to the Silk Market yesterday to get presents for people, and I'm glad to think that I'll never be ripped off there again.

And I'm a formalist! Damn it, how does this happen?

The Roach

The other day when I came into our room, my roommate greeted me and said, "We have a friend." I peeked into the bathroom and saw a roach about the size of a small mouse - I'd say over an inch long, easy. I screamed and jumped about a foot in the air.

"What are we going to do?" I cried, ashamed of myself for being so girly. Small roaches are one thing, but this was the biggest I'd ever seen.

"We could step on it," my roommate suggested feebly, and I gave her a pained look.

"But the scrunch," I said. "And we'd never be able to wear those shoes again. Plus I'm meeting B. and the others in a minute, and I have to go to the bathroom."

My roommate shrugged.

"Okay, I'm going to abandon you for a minute and go buy roach spray," I decided. Then I ran down to the first floor and knocked on B's door, looking as though I were being pursued by assassins.

"Can you help me?" I demanded when he opened the door.

"Of course," he said.

"Can I use your bathroom?"

B. has many faults, but manners are not among them. He didn't even ask why, just agreed. In the interest of returning his courtesy, I returned the to its original position - it is a boys' room, after all.

What a polite fellow: he didn't ask for an explanation, but I felt I owed him one, so I explained about the roach, at which point he offered to kill it for me. I turned him down, though - I have my pride. We went to Fabao and I picked up a Y17 can of Raid.

I went back to my room and stepped inside. I felt a scrunch and looked down.

I had stepped on the roach.

I screamed and ran to the other side of the room. After a moment, I mustered up my courage and sprayed it with Raid until it stopped moving. Then, after several aborted attempts, I managed to scoop it up with a piece of paper and flush it down the toilet. Then I washed my shoe.

Two more weeks.

Simultaneously the coolest and most horrifying thing that has happened to me EVER.

So I've mentioned our blockbuster hit movie, Wang Ba Dan ("If you see only one movie this year made by fourth-year Chinese students, make it this one!"), and how at one point B. and I throw cupfulls of small change on the ground in front of the bus stop to see what would happen. Well, yesterday I found out that this stunt made the papers. I haven't seen it yet myself, but our teachers inform us that it ran something like this: "Two foreigners and someone who looked Chinese threw money on the ground at a bus station. The Chinese citizens present were angry and confused."

We're notorious! I was somewhat horrified when I heard, but our teachers seemed to find it amusing, so I guess it's all right. And here I thought the high point of my film career would be being voted the best of the three films made by the class. We actually made the paper!

I think my work here is just about done.

Race Against Time

Three weeks left and the clock is ticking ... I am running out of deoderant. Lili left me a tube when she went back to the States. It is the brand which claims to be "So effective you could skip a day." I do not quite know how to take this. Are they telling me not to shower? I asked one of my teachers where I could buy deoderant and she said the grocery across the street would have it. She told me the brand name but it was long and I only remembered part of it. Still, I managed to find an object that had several of the characters she'd mentioned and bought it. I took it home and, after removing the foil seal, found an object more like a bright yellow flan than anything else. How to apply it? On my finger? Also, it smelled incredibly strong - it smelled up the whole room.

It was air-freshener.

So I tried again. I swallowed my pride and asked one of the women who work in the cosmetics department where I could find "the thing you put under your arms so you don't stink." She laughed and led me to the product I was after, assuring me that I would not stink at all, and it would be great. I bought it and brought it home. On the outside was a picture of a baby, and although babies don't use deoderant, this is China, where packaging does not necessarily relate to content. In this case, however, it did - it was baby powder. "Snake Gall" baby powder, no less - what does that mean? Is it made of snake gall or is that just the brand name? I do not know, but I worry.

It goes without saying that baby powder is not deoderant, but my options are slim. I use the baby powder, which, combined with my lavendar-scented moisturizer, makes me smell like an old lady. Moreover, everything I own and everything my roommate owns are now covered in baby powder forever, in much the same way that a well-timed glitter bomb could eliminate civilization as we know it.

So there is, as we say in Chinese, no banfa. I will simply have to make do with what I have. And anyway, I still have the air freshener.