"Patience and Perseverance"
This Friday, I had a nervous breakdown, maybe not one by my usual standards in the States, but I’m in China. The title of this entry was found during the height of my meltdown – when I checked my horoscope online – just to make sure nothing serious was going on…like a moon in the wrong house or something. So, my horoscope told me to fear not during this “troubling time” and to remember, “patience and perseverance were my good friends”. You have no idea how RELIEVED I was.
Friday, I went up to Christina’s apartment to make plans for the following morning, and she chose to accompany me to the supermarket and to get my dinner. We walked outside and saw the jiade DVD sellers from a few nights before. We stopped this time. I purchased Pirates of the Caribbean and Capote. We walked to the supermarket and had a discussion filled with Christina’s favorite expletive, “Plubbbbbttttt” (a childish farting sound made with the bottom teeth and her tongue poking out of her mouth). After the store, I stopped at an interesting looking little restaurant across the street from our apt. building and tried to ask if I could order something to go. The waitress, a very young girl, first ran to the kitchen to hide from us and then when the chef shoved her from her hiding place she said, “Don’t have” to EVERYTHING I said, including, “Are you open?” and, “I don’t speak very good Chinese” (obviously) and, “They are eating delicious looking food”. So, we left. We walked to the next small restaurant where a customer decided to help because she “spoke English”. I said, “I’d like to order something to go” and she replied, “There are many delicious hot pot options at this restaurant” and I said, “But hot pot can’t be taken to go, right?” and she said, “Yes, you order raw fish and vegetables and you cook them yourself, in the hot pot” and I said, “So I can get hot pot to go” and she responded, “Yes you can order meat as well.” So we left this restaurant as well. Then, to a restaurant that looked very promising. I asked for rice and was told they didn’t have it. Then, I said, “I want food. Do you have food?” to which they responded quite condescendingly, “Of COURSE we have food” so I said, “one food please, to go”. I got noodle soup with beef on top.
Yesterday, I met Christina in the lobby at 9am. We walked to the metro and took it to Renmin Square. We went to the Shanghai Museum, known for its ancient bronzes and other cultural relics from centuries past. As we walked from the subway to the museum, I felt like I was made of tar and the heat was pulling me apart into an ever-widening puddle of goop. My feet and legs weren’t working properly, but nor was my tongue or mouth or brain for that matter. The heat was stifling and I was just about to give up, curl up into a small, sweaty ball on the sidewalk and cry for an arctic blast when we started to feel the air conditioning from the museum several yards away from the entrance. Christina and I ran for the door. Once inside, we paid our entrance fee and walked through the first exhibit: a visiting show on Assyria and cuneiform-inscribed stones.
After strolling through this very dimly lit and poorly planned space, I was still feeling like my head was full of straw so we looked for a water fountain or a cart selling beverages. We were told the restaurant was the only place where we could purchase beverages and that it wouldn’t be open for another half hour. So, we found the museum store and perused the products for sale until the door opened to the restaurant. I ordered a piece of chocolate cake and a cup of coffee for 30 kuai. For the same price, I could order two entrees and two beers at Yuan Yuan Canting. But I was desperate for some vittles and these were the cheapest items on the menu. A bottle of water, of course, was more expensive than the coffee.
After our snack, I felt 100% refreshed. We found brochures on the rest of the galleries in the museum and started at the fourth floor. We made our way through ancient bronzes, ancient sculpture, costumes of all the different acknowledged minorities of China, ancient jade (one dated back to the 51st century BC), seals (little stone stamps usually stamped with a bright, rich orange or red ink), ceramics, calligraphy, and painting. We spent six hours in the museum and I took over one hundred photos.
Christina and I parted ways after the museum and I took the metro to the Jing’an temple so that I could buy lunch at Yuan Yuan. I walked up and my first clue should have been that almost everyone was lounging under a large plastic umbrella. Everyone said hello and I asked if I could buy lunch and have it to go. Much was said that I didn’t understand and one chef directed me inside the restaurant where all the power was off and Laoban’s right=hand man was reading a newspaper. I said, “Oh, not open?” and he responded in English, “Stove taking nap”. I went back outside where I had a quick conversation with Taitai who told me that they were only open on the weekdays. I went home hungry.
In fact, most of the restaurants I passed when walking home were closed. Even the big ones.
All day, I had been getting text messages from Angelene about a certain karaoke binge-fest that was going to occur at midnight that night. Before this binge-fest, however, several of my classmates were planning to go to an “all you can eat and drink” Japanese restaurant to get drunk before karaoke. I had plans for dinner and was also planning on not showing up for the binge-fest. At some point after our first week, the novelty of going out to foreign bars with children lost its “shine”. Angelene didn’t come to class on Friday because she was leaving the bar at 9am. Artur has stopped coming to class altogether and Oliver mostly manages to arrive for the first part of class only to “beg apologies” and hop along after anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour of reeling in class.
Things might change this week, though, since Bart has finished his time with us and the first book and section of class will finish with the final examination this coming Friday. Marco is still here, but he will be finished after Friday and then, I will get a new class and a new teacher. I wish I could overcome the frustrations my classmates pose, but for some reason, I found myself extremely perturbed this Friday (part of my breakdown) and know that karaoke would have been fun had it been with other people.
I went out to dinner with classmates of my friend Tabitha’s last night and it was most excellent. Three of my dinner partners are from China and the fourth is from Burma. Victor and Alice currently work in Shanghai, while Yan Cei has an internship and will be going back to school after the summer and Min is still in Nanjing but hopes to find a job here in Shanghai. It was refreshing to be with people who slipped in and out of Chinese quickly and who spoke in English because I couldn’t understand them. I am greatly indebted to Tabitha for introducing me to so many good people in this city.
Even though the effects of my breakdown didn’t begin until last night, I still think it was Friday that set it off. I’m having a hard time being understood in restaurants and it has become difficult to eat. I’d buy food and prepare it at home except I don’t have anything to cook with and only have a microwave. So, eating has become an adventure that sometimes isn’t so fun. The places where I’d be understood or where I could order from pictures usually aren’t very good and the food is high-priced. Then, the only people I can be social with are my classmates and I’m really not interested. I’d walk the streets alone, but that isn’t such fun or safe at night. On the whole, people aren’t so friendly here and I’ve been pushed and squished and bumped and mashed by people in a hurry to not see me so much in the past couple of days that I prefer sticking to my room. I’ve been reading a lot this weekend, but I have to admit, I’ve been sleeping a lot too. I don’t think I’m depressed as much as shell-shocked. Everything moved so fast at first and now I’ve settled in to life and I’m a little freaked out. I tried to not be too hard on myself today, thinking I needed this time alone, and that’s when I checked my horoscope…at which point I got dressed and forced myself outside into the world to try and get some oxygen back to my brain.
And when I left my apt. for the first time today, it was as if the stagnant balloon Shanghai has been stuck in had been popped. It was cooler outside my apt. than in! This is a complete first. It rained buckets all night last night and through the morning and the rain finally made a difference. The humidity was low, and there was coolness in the air. Breezes actually brought goose bumps up on my flesh. I breathed in the cool, crisp summer night air and felt all the tension and fear leave my body.
With renewed confidence I marched to the restaurant with the noodles and asked again if they sold rice. No. I went to a restaurant further down the block where I was laughed at immediately – before I even pulled my book out to start speaking phonetically – and that’s when I marched right back to the noodle house and sheepishly ordered beef noodle soup again. However, I’ve vowed not to go hungry in this city. I’ll buy three or four entrees tomorrow at Yuan Yuan and have them around for another rainy day.
This whole time, I’ve been typing while the television was on. Currently a diving program is on. I am trying to remember if diving programs in the US are as patriotic as this one. The commentators talk noisily over divers from other countries, and even shrink the screen so that you can only see the divers on one half of the screen while you watch the commentators on the other half. Then, when the Chinese divers come up, the commentators become deathly silent and strange symphony music plays in the background. At the commercial breaks, they replay all of the dives previously performed by the Chinese divers. Before I started typing, the Chinese team doing the 300m synchronized board had won first place with the US in 2nd and Germany in 3rd. I can’t see the screen right now, but every once in a while; it gets very quiet until I hear the crash of bodies into water. It is a very bizarre soundtrack, but I feel my life is very bizarre right now.
At lunch the other day, an Italian woman came and handed her card out to everyone at the table offering part time jobs in event hospitality. I’m thinking of sending her my resume so that I can have a little less free time here in Shanghai. I don’t study when I’m alone and so I might as well do something to see more of the city. The heat has prevented me from doing any major sightseeing expeditions but maybe that has changed with this weather snap.
Sorry to be away, but I had some major dreaming and recovering to do. Zai jian!
