"The Coal Trap"

September 20, 1996.
 
Dear Tim and Mary,
      I have pretty much settled into this new setting. We have been teaching for two weeks, are beginning to know our students, have found essential food/stationary supplies, and are getting on well. We are both quiet and independent people. I have come to like this city, or rather, this microcosm of Chinese life in this part of Taiyuan. I like listening to the sound of steam locomotives very early in the morning, quite some time before dawn. Somewhere out there in the yards, a train’s drive wheels lose traction and race until the driver closes the steam valve and tries to “engage the clutch” again. I wish I could ride in the cab some day, like Casey Jones.
      I am studying Chinese characters and I like it. Slow, but very interesting. Imagine if I had used each hour of wasted time to learn but one character!
      I love being in this country. I wish I could live here as a foreigner indefinitely.
 
 
September 21, 1996.
 
Dear Brian,
      A long time has gone by since I received your letter in May. I hope you are still at the same address.
      I am now teaching English In Taiyuan, and hope to be here for one year. I left Tianjin in late June or early July, and returned to America for two months. There, I saw my father and lived at home. He was happy to see me again. We worked in his garden sometimes; on occasion I went with him to his work place and helped out there. I also visited family and friends, and went to the cinema to see some films. Sometimes watching films is a good way for me to learn more about my culture. I also looked at my hometown and the people, the shops, cities and society. They have not changed much on the outside, but maybe I have changed. Sometimes when I came home from some other place, I feel like a foreigner in my own country. In many ways, that is what I am. My home is in a town in America, but my home for this year is in Taiyuan. . . a “second home.”
      Now I am back in China. I have been in Taiyuan for about three weeks and like it here. The university campus has a wall around it and is sheltered from the business of the city: however, it has a busyness of its own. There are about 8,000 students here. I like the morning quietness of the campus. Most mornings I walk under the quietness of the trees, past a few students playing badminton, past children hurrying on their way to primary school, out to the west gate, and onto the street to eat breakfast. Do you remember the place near your college where we ate noodles a few times? I buy tian bing and xian bing (sweet or salty cakes) from a vendor, then go to the same small restaurant to eat some xiao mi xi fan (millet porridge). I feel a stranger there, since I am a quiet foreigner, but I like to return to this small corner of Taiyuan. Last year, when I was working in Tianjin, I liked to travel a lot. This year, I want to stay on the campus during the weekends.
      The other American teacher and I are getting to know our English students a little better. They are in their 20’s and 30’s, and are either teachers from the university or workers and professionals from Taiyuan work units. I like working with students like this. Most or all of them want to learn. However, I like the simplicity of life here a great deal. I like to show films to the students — they improve their English and I can see films which I like, or some new films which I have not yet seen.
      This National Day weekend, the foreign teachers at this university are planning to visit Xi’An. The Foreign Affairs Office will be taking us. I have not been to Xi’An before, but I would like to see the historical sights, especially the Terra-cotta Soldiers and the city wall. I hear the Hui noodles are famous.
      Please write if you have time.
 
 
September 27, 1996.
 
Dear Samuel,
      I realize it has been a long time since I received your last letter. . . .
      Although we were together in Suzhou five months ago, it seems like another time, another period in life. So much has changed. Taiyuan is different from Tianjin, the students are different (more grown up), I used to want to travel over the weekend but now I prefer to spend my weekends in Taiyuan at the university.
      My teammate Gary and I continue to teach conversational English. It is fairly quiet here, which I like. Right now, it is the beginning of the Mid-Autumn Festival/National Day holiday. Some small shops and restaurants which used to be busy and full of people are boarded up and deserted. Maybe people are inside, resting with their families.
      I like autumn, and the sounds of autumn. The air is now cooler. Leaves fall off the trees and hit the ground with a light scrape. When I wake up in the morning it is almost dark, and outside, the workers are sweeping the leaves. I walk outside the campus most mornings to eat breakfast, and like being a little part of the daily life here. Small children go off to school in ones or twos, or on the back of their parent’s bicycle. It will be interesting to see how the neighborhood changes, as the autumn becomes winter, and people hide inside many layers of thick clothing.
 
 
October 3, 1996.
 
Dear Susan,
      I got your card yesterday. Thank you for sending the shaving brush off; perhaps it will arrive in a few weeks.
      As I write this, I can hear pan-flute like music and one of the student’s voices over the campus-wide P/A system. If I listen, I can hear people talking as they walk past below my window, four levels down. Many of the children are full of energy and run around. Since I cannot see them, I imagine what they are like, wearing bright clothes, carrying backpacks looking like stuffed dog dolls, with some of the girls sprouting side braids. I think of bright lilies growing among the bases of the new hills surrounding Newcastle. Somehow the combination makes them the more beautiful.
      Yesterday, I returned to Taiyuan after a four-day trip to Xi’An, one of the ancient capitals of China. The Foreign Affairs Office invited the foreign teachers to see the city. We saw the Terra-cotta Soldiers and other well known sights. I liked visiting the history museum and looking at the old pottery and bronze ware from the early days. The bronze cauldron-like wine holders made me think of Asterix and Obelix!
      The days are starting to become colder. I think the skirmishes with nighttime mosquitoes will end soon. The leaves fall daily and the workers sweep them early each morning. While it is still dim in my bedroom their besom-like brooms are some of the first things I hear each day. As I walk to the west gate and an outside restaurant for breakfast most mornings, I find myself buttoning up more. In a few weeks, frost will appear. The restaurant sells tofu the consistency of yogurt, deep-fried dough sticks (oily!), salted cabbage, other things, and millet gruel, with bits of pumpkin in it. I like to buy bread-like griddle cakes at another place, and then the millet gruel. The staff know I like the millet, so they dredge it out for me from the bottom of the pot. Sometimes people talk to me, but often about me; perhaps in another year my Chinese will be much better to catch more! I have to admit, I am very quiet each day. The staff in the restaurant are kind. I hope I can build something of a small friendship with some of the people I do business with — we only meet each day, or less frequently, for mere fragments of time. Every so often, the staff and other people selling food call out into the busy street as many people pass by. I wonder if Sherlock’s Billingsgate was like this, on busy and on quiet days. Now there is a good supply of fall fruit, which may change.
      There is always some noise during the day and into the night. . . the gurgling of the water coming on in the morning, the P/A, cars, and people doing something. Almost always people in action. I have become used to it, perhaps even like it as a background wash of sound to tune into on occasion. In some symbolic way it is the pulse of life and living going on around me.
      Susan, there are ups and downs in life here, as anywhere, but if it is possible, I would like to live and work here in China for a long time. Who knows what will happen? For me, many of the lilies of Newcastle are the people. . . at times, at least.
      Suppertime is coming, so I will stop here. The evening P/A announcer has come on again — voice and background music.
 
 

 
October, 1996.
Summary letter.
 
      There is so much about a city one can discover by just listening. I spend many hours at my desk writing, reading, or studying Chinese, but the sounds of Taiyuan and its people come in and tell their own story. Four floors down, unseen people walk by, joke, or call to each other. Before six each morning, the street sweepers rasp up the day’s harvest of fallen leaves, somewhere out there in the dimness. Earlier still one September night, I heard the force and slip of a steam locomotive’s wheels trying to gain startup traction in an unknown siding. At various times between six and seven the water gurgles on. At first while shaving, the air pressure would cause the faucets to spit at me, until I realized that, like the Flame Spurts in The Princess Bride, they were predictable. After reading, I try to listen to the radio, then go out for breakfast.
      Outside the west gate are many small restaurants. After picking up griddle cakes I like to stop off at one hole-in-the-wall because they sell millet gruel. The experience reveals a cut of daily life in Shanxi Province. The customers — often older men and university students — are usually quiet. Many like to eat you tiao, strips of dough which are puffed up from deep frying. Another popular food is hot tofu custard, which looks like vanilla yogurt. Condiments include ground red pepper in oil, a salty mixture, and vinegar. Breakfast each day costs about fifteen cents.
      Classes run from eight until noon. The students are either educators from the university, or professionals on language leave from their work units. They are mostly in their thirties. (We have worked together for two months now, and friendships are sprouting up. A few weeks ago, one of the classes took me to see a film and have dinner afterwards at a restaurant specializing in Chinese dumplings.) Classes center around conversational English, the same as last year in Tianjin City, but the program is more intensive. In the early afternoon most days, students come to my apartment to practice conversational English.
      There have been opportunities for travel. During the National Day holiday weekend, the Foreign Affairs Office invited the foreign teachers to Xi’An. At another time, I went with an American friend to the Qiao family mansion near Taiyuan. This country home with its six courtyards was the setting for the film Raise The Red Lantern. This film left one of the many impressions which have drawn me towards living and working in China.
      My teaching team relationship with Gary has been going well. This is one necessary ingredient for successful cross-cultural work. As I write this, Gary is in Shanghai helping out at another school and I am here alone. It reminds me of practicum time.
 
 
 
 
 
 
November 19, 1996.
 
Dear Natania,
      Thank you for your card. I received it in the mail recently, and was very glad to hear from you. It is a time of nostalgia — the picture of the sailing boats reminded me of Winslow Homer, and another friend’s letter contained some fall leaves. Massachusetts is my home (and always will be), but I must admit I feel like I have found a home here in China. Although I am a foreigner and will always be an outsider here, I like this place so much there are many times when I think I would be happy to live here indefinitely (China that is, not necessarily Taiyuan). A number of aspects of life seem to work here.
      This city is the capital of Shanxi Province. The closest equivalent I can imagine is Pittsburgh or one of the valley mining towns in the time of the great steel mills. The city is mostly surrounded by mountains (not too big) and coal mines. Most days you can hear and almost feel the sound of coal being blasted. A few weeks ago, as it was getting colder, dozens of coal trucks came to the university campus and the drivers shoveled out small mountains of coal outside the boiler houses. Sometimes I walk through the boiler house next to the building I live in. Pleasantly warm, the sound of the conveyor belt fills the room, and occasionally ash is brought up from somewhere below to be shoveled up and taken outside by the attendant. Leaf piles smolder outside. W. H. Auden wrote about the yellow fog rubbing its back on the window panes (of London?). Here, brightly dressed and backpacked students and children follow their business like roving flowers in a gray powdered forest.
      I like being with the students. Of course, there are “down” days, but it has been a wonder and a privilege to be here. Last week I had a holiday and I wandered the distant places by myself (which I need and still like to do). I hope that when all the lessons and free talks are over, the students will have a better grasp of English. Sometimes I feel burned out, but I do not want to leave this work. Perhaps for the first time in a long time (or the first time at all), I have begun to live more fully. One can also be so much the outsider, yet be at home. I like the comparative simplicity here, although I admit that when I was visiting Beijing last week I went into the Baskin-Robbins store when I was near it!
      This evening I wanted to talk to a friend on the phone, so I left the campus and walked over to a small store which has a public phone in it. These phone are very common in China. The street outside the gate has many roadside vendors selling meat, vegetables, fast food, fruit, and now winter clothing.
      I hope to see you, perhaps next summer.
 
 
November 18, 1996.
 
Dear Tim and Mary,
      This morning I returned to the teaching routine after being away for ten days. Instead of going to Beijing to meet with the other English teachers for the fall conference, I decided to head west by myself, then visit Tianjin again.
      First, some background. My teammate Gary was asked to help out in Shanghai for three weeks. He went, and I taught both classes in Taiyuan. This time reminded me of the teaching practicum in Beverly, during the early part of 1991. I am glad it was over, because it was tiring. However, I have made some good friendships with the students. Some have taken me out on a number of occasions, and are very kind. They are also my contemporaries, and so far, I think I have been able to be their friend, as well as their teacher. They epitomize some of the best in China.
      After the last class, on November 8, I left Taiyuan on the train for Baoji, in Shaanxi Province. The journey took about seventeen hours. A few hours after that I got on a bus for Pingliang, Gansu Province. The bus climbed its way out of the industrial valley and onto the yellow loess plateau. Higher up one could see the famous terraced fields of Shaanxi Province, reminding me of slowly spreading and solidifying mud pies dropped onto each other and carefully smoothed out. Many coal trucks use this road, and I deliberately chose to look out the side window and not ahead at the oncoming traffic. Horns were used a lot to warn someone around the corner that we were overtaking a slower vehicle and were on the left side of the road. At the top of valleys I would look back over the looping hairpin bends, and out over the darkening countryside.
      Dusk came and went, and it was not until true darkness came that the driver turned on his lights. Out in the distance, the few lights of some village shone dimly. Now more rolling, with side gullies gouging the sides of the loess landscape we were traveling, this part of Gansu was very beautiful. In Pingliang, I found a hotel room. Near the hotel I ate a lamb and bread stew at a Hui restaurant. This part of China has many Hui.
      The next morning, I got on the bus again. As we entered Ning Xia there was a heavy fog and it was still dark. In time the fog dispersed and we broke out of the hill country around Guyuan and onto a plain. This part of Ning Xia runs north-south, and is flanked by mountains. Water from the Yellow River is brought here to irrigate the fields; this has improved the lives of the farmers a great deal, because in the past this land was dry and often not productive. The southern part of Ning Xia is very strongly Hui. Although I was only passing through I felt at home here. Corn cobs were stacked or hung everywhere, and long clusters of dried red chili peppers hung next to doorways. They were some of the only color in a land of many browns. Poplar tree windbreaks were very common. I was happy to glimpse thousands of pieces of life in the Hui region that day, for the bus ride to Yinchuan took about twelve or thirteen hours that day.
      I spent the night in a hotel in Yinchuan, and ate some meals with a man who had shared the bus ride with me. He introduced me to a famous mutton dish. I was unable to see another local friend because he was busy, so the next day I took the train from Yinchuan to Beijing, passing through Inner Mongolia. Up to Baotou I sat by the window and watched the miles and miles of sagebrush-like semi desert pass by. The railway often passed by the Yellow River, and occasionally some sand dunes. The real desert lay to the north. This was a time when I wanted to be alone and stare at miles and miles of desert. I like my students, but in these days I wanted to be alone. After 25 hours the train reached Beijing, and after the long open spaces I went straight for Baskin-Robbins! Yum.
      In Beijing and Tianjin I visited old friends. (Today, I received your letter, and I read with a smile your line, “Have you really been able to stick ‘closer to home’?” You know me too well! After a period of wanting to curl up and withdraw, I am ready to go and visit places. . . and Xin Jiang.)
      Here in Taiyuan, relations with the students have been good, and I survived the three weeks teaching alone. I now have no excuse for boredom, for I now have a huge pile of useful things to do (quite apart from teaching). Teaching here is usually good, but preparation for classes is usually a drag. I need to kick that. I tend to lead a split-level life — showing love and effort to the students here, while my eyes and mind roam the deserts of Xin Jiang. I am glad my partner came back, and he was glad to see me: it is quite a bit of work to handle both classes at the same time.
 
 
November 20, 1996.
 
Dear Rebecca,
      Thank you for your letter. I received it a few days ago. I think that you, like many of your classmates, are busy with your teaching. Most of the people I have spoken with find their classes large, their students naughty and the work difficult.
      I am writing this letter late at night. It is quiet in the hotel and the only sound is that of the leaking water pipes. Very few or no people are outside, but during the day there are many and I can hear them laughing and talking. Many people have written to me in the past week, and I want to try to answer their letters.
      It is now the day after (the 21st) and the day’s teaching is over. The loudspeaker outside is broadcasting information to the students. In a few minutes I will go downstairs for dinner. The cafeteria serves many dishes but I almost always have noodles and a vegetable dish. Sometimes I go out for a meal by myself or with the students in one of the local restaurants. Red sorghum/wheat noodles with tomato sauce is one of my favorites.
      Teaching does not keep me too busy, but I have many things to do outside of class. I have done some language study and written letters. I try to keep busy because if I do not, I think too much and end up doing very little useful work. I have many free talks with the students. Their English has improved, but I have still not shared my deep thoughts with them. However, I have been able to talk with my American teammate.
      I like my life here as a foreigner, but I do not see how I can belong here, other than as an outsider teaching English. However, I am glad to have seen your country and made new friends.
 
 
 
 
November 22, 1996.
 
Dear Beth,
      I returned to Taiyuan last Sunday, after a night sleeping on the train. Taiyuan, like Tianjin and Bengbu before it, has become home for me — I felt like I had come home. This week’s teaching was much easier, because now my teammate is back from Shanghai and I do not have to teach by myself.
      Every day here there are new reminders of winter. I feel cold as I walk to a restaurant outside the campus to have breakfast. The roadside puddles have frozen over. Outside one of the campus boiler houses quite a large amount of coal has already been burned. In a few weeks they will deliver more coal.
      Many of the students here like to come for free talks in the afternoon. We are now talking about more serious topics, such as “What things make Americans angry?” I am happy these subjects are being talked about, because I am tired of talking about food, travel, why I like this or that, and other simple topics. Sometimes I like being an observer, the “outsider” in this country (actually, many times), but there are also many times when I would like to be more than an observer — I would like to be more a part of what is happening here. Do you know what I mean by this?
      I will stop here. I hope you are well.
 
 
November 24, 1996.
 
Dear Natalie,
      So what have you been doing? I have been in Taiyuan about three months now. My new teammate and I are both very independent people and spend a lot of time by ourselves (reading, writing letters, or studying), but we work well as a teaching team. In addition to the standard curriculum we have also showed a number of films to the students (The Old Man and the Sea, etc.) However, many of them find the English too difficult to understand, so in the future I think I will try other activities. Those films which were successful were children’s cartoon films — in particular, Balto — because the story was interesting and the language simpler. If I return to China again to teach, I will try and bring more such films. In some ways, life here is similar to that in Tianjin. I like to eat at the small local restaurants, but I order noodles, not jiao zi (dumplings). In Tianjin there was Da Gu Road, with its narrow width choked with traffic, traffic so thick you could not cross the road easily. Outside the west gate here, there are many small shops and streetside vendors. Around mealtime many people come to eat noodles or other food. Outside the south gate is Yin Zi Street, which is very wide and carries fast traffic. I think that place has no heart, and I like the west gate area better: there is always something happening. You can see workers making keys on a grinding machine, vegetables and meat for sale, a large tub with live fish inside waiting to be sold. At one place around lunch some people sell cai bao zi (steamed buns with a vegetable filling). Somewhere out back they steam the buns, and every so often one of the workers carries a large steaming tray to the streetside stall to his work mates.
      The west gate market is busy at most hours. People are walking everywhere, looking at something, buying something, talking to someone or passing through quietly. Last night when I was in a small shop with a public telephone in it, there were many people inside. They were watching me, and listening to me speak English on the phone. Usually I am used to people looking at me — I often walk around looking at the ground so I don’t see the other people, and I am typically used to being different from the people around me. Many of my social contacts with people (outside of teaching English) have to do with shopping or visiting restaurants. The west gate market is a small world unto itself, just as Da Gu Road was last year.
      I was studying Chinese character writing a while ago, but stopped a few weeks ago. I need to start up again, even if at a slower pace, so that I can write very simple letters to people in Chinese if I need to. In summary, my life here is a lot of teaching, talking, writing, some studying, thinking and traveling. I often stay inside a lot, but now that winter is here, I stay indoors most of the time. The mornings here are now cold. Winter here is a time of coughs and colds for me, as with most people.
 
 
December 24, 1996.
 
Dear Judith,
      Your letter made it to my mailbox at home, then came to me here. That means your letter has traveled about once around the world.
      It is now late at night. Outside my window it is very quiet. The only constant noise is that of running water through pipes somewhere above, and the sound of my hand moving over this paper. Like you, I also like to write late at night when it is quiet. Sometimes I write, in part because I am frustrated that I didn’t get enough done during the day, so I want to make up during the night.
      Taiyuan is more industrialized and bigger, much bigger, than the city we met in. Although midwinter has passed and the days will become longer, it is still gray and dim in the mornings when I get up and leave my hotel to have breakfast in the street. People walk their child to school. Many people practice tai qi (slow motion martial arts exercises) on a side street. Outside the campus west gate much of the street is dim, the few open shops illuminated by light bulbs. For four months now I have been buying breakfast bread from the same stall, then walked to a small restaurant to eat xiao mi xi fan (millet porridge) — the same order almost every day. I like the regularity.
      Across from me in the small, three table restaurant sits an old man. We have known each other for over three months, eaten similar food, and say very little. Somewhere many years ago, he learned a little English. He likes to joke, so on occasion he has spoken to the service person in English. However, the service does not understand.
      I have led a very enclosed life here this year in China. However, it is possible to note the passing of life and the seasons by listening to what is going on outside my window, or looking at the small yet revealing details of daily life. During the autumn one could hear the rasp of the sweepers’ brooms cleaning up the streets at dawn. Now, the early morning ways are quiet. In the restaurant, the xiao mi xi fan was flavored with chopped pumpkin, than beans, and also pieces of sweet potato. Now there is no added flavoring. Oftentimes the small restaurant is quiet — I wonder if it is because the other people know I can understand some of what they are saying.
      The students are mostly in their thirties — either instructors from the university or professionals from companies in Taiyuan. Most are very keen to improve their English, and we have had many “free talks” and meals together. I like to be with them, but I wish I could be stronger in saying “no” to all the food they offer me. I am happier with one or two dishes.
 
 
January, 1997.
Summary Letter
 
      In a few weeks, Christmas and the New Year will have come and gone. In a few days I will be on my way to Hong Kong and various places in China for the winter vacation. More about this later.
      First, life in Taiyuan. Gary went to Shanghai for three weeks to teach, while I was in Taiyuan. I am glad that I survived, he is back, and we are continuing the teaching and “free talks” (English conversations) with our students. There are some differences however. Many students are hungry to practice their English conversational skills with us. . . I mean, really hungry. They want to talk and listen as much as they can — during the afternoons, and at lunch. These days I have been eating with students at various local restaurants and “hole-in-the-walls”, acquiring a greater exposure to the local dishes. Every day, talk, talk, talk. As long as we don’t run out of grist I am happy. However, this cannot go on forever, and I feel like I have been burning out, so there is a need to cut back. It was after the three week “practicum” and a busy time that I felt the need to get away and be alone, so I visited Ning Xia and other points west and north for about a week.
      Winter is here. The last leaves were swept off the streets quite a while ago, and the second, very large pile of coal dumped outside one of the campus boiler houses. The first has mostly been burned and the ashes taken away. The city now lives with coal to an even greater degree. Each morning on the way to hole-in-the-wall #1, I walk through the dim monochrome landscape, over 7 by 7-inch cement sidewalk squares. Coarse coal powder has fallen into and filled the cracks, or the night’s wind has blown it into swirls and other patterns. I am often one of the first to eat at the “Millet Porridge Cafe.” The staff warm their hands over the coals or stand near the pot of oil, waiting for it to become hot so they can begin deep frying dough sticks. On the way back home, I pass a gargoyle-like growth sticking out of the side of a tree trunk. It makes me think of something out of Tolkien.
      The fight against cold continues night and day. Street vendors sit near open braziers. People balloon out overnight, wrapped under layers of cotton felt and long green greatcoats. Wearing a scarf is like wearing neck armor because if you don’t, the cold will get you. Hole-in-the-wall #3 is a pleasant oasis of heat and friendly service. (#2 has awesome red sorghum/wheat noodles.) The walk home takes me through the closing down street market — empty sidewalk space like missing teeth, and the carnage of outer cabbage leaves, orange peels, and small plastic bags underfoot, waiting to be swept up. This monochrome landscape is full of color. It is in many of the people — in their kindness, in their faces, in their hearts.
      Around the middle of January, after leaving Hong Kong, I hope to return to Xin Jiang for about three weeks to travel. If I can, I would like to teach English there.
 
January 26, 1997.
 
Dear Susan,
      I am writing from Guangzhou (Canton) airport. I had planned to be at the airport in time, and had written a “be there” time in my notes. However, I forgot this and compensated again. I am now here five or six hours before departure. Mum would smile. . . . This is a good time to write letters.
      I am looking forward to this visit to Xin Jiang. I am glad to be traveling there after so many years of putting it off, and have worried about things that might prevent the visit. However, I have decided that I will not be put off. All of my travel experience is being used here — I have all the clothes I need. You mentioned that visiting Xin Jiang was like visiting Dartmoor. One difference however is that I will not be hiking, but will be traveling on the main roads (and by train, sometimes). Any hiking is not an option. That can wait until the summer in New England.
      I remember our talk (when I called you from Los Angeles in 1995) when we talked about doing what was important in our lives. At this point, I am happy to be teaching and living here — although I must admit it is lonely. In spite of the loneliness, I am not willing to compromise working in Xin Jiang.
      This morning I ate breakfast in one of the airport restaurants. Now, I am not one to promote airport food, but the dim sung here is pretty good! I do not want to scour the streets of Canton for the creme de la creme — the demi creme will do. In the large, busy restaurant are a few servers walking around with trolleys carrying small bamboo steamers, each with some delightful morsel inside. (Delightful, not gross. You can go somewhere else for that! And I have, and love it. . . .)
      About a week ago I left Taiyuan and took the train down to Canton, and then the Shenzhen/Hong Kong border crossing. It took about 45 hours to travel from Taiyuan to the place where I met my friends. I had contemplated not going, but now that I have I think the visit was worth it. Hong Kong is like an enormous shopping mall in many places, with neon and board signs by the thousand. Yet there is much here we are familiar with.
 
 
January 31, 1997.
 
Dear Marcus,
      How right you were in that letter! I am back in Xin Jiang during my winter break, but this time I plan to have a better look. Of course I want to see the mountains and deserts, travel the long roads, and try the local food, but I also want to see where I might teach English. I do not know what is over the horizon in my life, but I want to and must use the opportunities that I have right now.
      First, some background. I have been teaching English in Taiyuan for one semester. The students are either instructors from the university, or professionals on language leave from their companies. By now I am mostly comfortable with the mainstream Han Chinese culture, except when it comes to banquets (I prefer the quiet, backwater scenes). I think the proof of the pudding is this — when traveling in Xin Jiang I have had culture shock, and I have sought out the familiar Han culture. I hope in time that I will get used to some of the new cultures here. So far, I like the Uighur culture, am wary of the Kazakh, and am afraid of the Russian expatriates. I need to work on this!
      The second year of teaching is different. I know more about the curriculum and the ways of my work unit. I have been using videos frequently in my “free talks” and culture lectures, and the students have enjoyed them. However, my mind has often been distracted, and I need to focus it on my teaching (although I can do a lot on “auto pilot”), and on language study. I also need to work harder!
      Here is a running outline of some of the things I have seen in Xin Jiang:
      January 28th — I have been in Xin Jiang for a few days now. I arrived somewhat late at Urumqi airport, so the first night was spent at a hotel. You can find tasty lamb shish kebabs on the street, even at midnight in some places.
      The next morning (27th) I caught a bus going north. (You might want to find a map of Xin Jiang at this point. Above Urumqi is a road which goes around the Junggar Desert. Below is the Tarim Basin/Taklimakan Desert. Right now, I am in the Burqin/Altai area, at a small city called Bei Tun.) Once the bus had left Urumqi, the land opened up, with dune-like hills to the left and the Tian Shan (Heavenly Mountains) to the right. Everything was covered with powdery snow, which gives the desert landscape an unfamiliar, beautiful appearance. The temperature was low, so I used a piece of stiff plastic to scrape the frozen condensation off the window next to me. In Xin Jiang, the exhaust pipes are run through the inside of the bus to act as heaters. On this bus, the pipes were thick-walled, almost like water pipes (4” diameter). They became so hot that the ice shavings from the window disappeared instantly with no sizzle and no steam. From time to time, as we worked our way up the eastern side of the Junggar Desert, we could see occasional deer (they looked a bit like antelope), two-humped camels in their wintering grounds wearing padded cotton jackets (can you imagine Highland cows wearing these?!), and groups of horses with long, shaggy hair. The local people (Kazakhs?) have large hats which are lined with long, shaggy fur and which have wide ear and neck flaps. However, it was the desert itself which caught my attention. Although most of the landscape is snow-covered, I think parts of the Junggar Desert are rocky. At many points during the first day’s travel the hills were bare, black and covered in small, sharp scree. There was scree all over the small hills, so perhaps the rock surface was shattered by the freezing and thawing. At many points there was no plant life; in other places very small scrub brush or tufts of dry grass survived.
      After two days on the road I am at Bei Tun (almost at the top of Xin Jiang). I could not buy a ticket for Karamay today, so I decided to continue tomorrow and get a feel for this place. So far, I like the people, but until I make new friends I think living here would be difficult — but not impossible. I stick out like a sore thumb — although most people think I am Russian. This town is an oasis of gray concrete buildings in an ocean of snow-covered rock fragments. I find myself seeking out whatever is familiar from Taiyuan, which for me means small restaurants selling typical Chinese food (water dumplings and meat buns, or noodles).
     January 29th — Until now, the desert scenery was O.K. to good. Today it became magnificent. From Burqin to Karamay there are many kinds of land formations. The mountains were high, and the foothills looked like the dumpings of tens of thousands of immense dump trucks. In fact, the whole Junggar area has hills with this characteristic shape. Later on towards Karamay, we passed an area the Chinese call feng cheng (“wind town”). Stubby pillars or larger formations of rock rose out of the ground, sculpted into different shapes by the wind. It reminded me of similar rock formations in the American southwest. (To see this area, you need to take two bus rides up the west side of the Junggar Desert — Urumqi to Karamay and Karamay to Burqin, because the roads on the eastern side are better, and are therefore used by the Urumqi to Burqin busses.)
      January 30th — I wanted to see Tacheng, near the border with Kazakhstan. It was a long ride of 8 1/2 hours, and on this round trip between Karamay and Tacheng I saw three wrecks — two of them busses. The road was icy in places and I found it better to look out the side window and enjoy the scenery, rather than look ahead and worry. The scenery was some of the best I have seen — land reminiscent of the Dakota Badlands (?), more “molehill” landscape that covered large areas, and distant mountain ranges that seemed to reach up into the very heavens. The “sea of molehills” reminded me of pictures of the Taklimakan Desert, which I hope to see next week. Here and there were Kazakh settlements — low, rectangular buildings sitting on the open countryside with absolutely nothing to shelter them from the wind. In much of Central Asia, the geographical features are written big, the animals have long shaggy hair, and the people are tough and strong. And yet they are gentle. The day after, on the road back to Karamay, I sat behind a Uighur couple and their baby girl, watching them love their daughter over the long hours. Listening to her sing Uighur lullabies, while looking out at the tough land with its sparse population of livestock was pure culture. For the moment though I am only an observer and a complete stranger. I hardly speak, just look and listen. They must think I am strange, very strange. However, I may be one of the first Americans to travel these parts in a long time.  I wish I could live with these people, and will try — where, and for how long I don’t yet know.
      February 24th — Many miles have come and gone since my last entry. I went back to Urumqi, around and through the Taklimakan Desert, visited a small part of Qinghai Province, and am now back in Taiyuan beginning the second semester. I am unsure about next year — perhaps I will return to Xin Jiang to teach English for another year, while getting a better idea of where to go.
      I hope you are well. Take care.
 
 
February 22, 1997.
 
Dear Carmen,
      I arrived back in Taiyuan after about a month on the open road. I was happy to get your letter and read it before the others. It is now 8:00 p.m. — the hot water will be coming on soon, but I want to write now, and maybe after the shower. Put this letter down, get a cup of something, and curl up in your chair! The fictionalized version will have to wait for our next meeting — perhaps on the train to Xi’An? — but I think you will like the factual narrative.
      It was a journey of vast dimensions, over sweeping horizons of cold, open desert, over chains of mountains, and as far as the imagination can see. Xin Jiang in winter from the bumpy seats of old long-distance busses is definitely off the tourist trail (and sometimes off the Lonely Planet trail too. . .). I arrived in Urumqi on January 26th, to a city still under the siege of winter and perfumed with the smoke of a thousand lamb kebab stalls. (You know I cannot smell, but it sounds good. The lamb certainly tasted good.) My old standby hotel was full, so I had to go to another, more expensive one. Still, I find myself becoming a little more conservative in choosing a hotel — 200 yuan per night may be more expensive, but a room by oneself is safer. The next morning I got on a bus to Fuyun.
      Fuyun is in the north of Xin Jiang. The region is roughly divided into three drainage basin areas: Junggar (north), Tarim (south), and Turpan/Hami (east). At first, the buildings were grimy, but as the bus left Urumqi behind the snow whitened and the poplar lined landscape opened up into desert scenery. I do not know what this area is like in the summer, but in winter it was covered in snow, a snow so dry you could melt some on a hot exhaust pipe and see no steam. Much of the Junggar Desert is rocky. The formations and flat rocky areas have been broken up at the surface by frost and heat, so there are sharp pieces of gravel-like scree everywhere. In many places the ground was bared by the wind. Camels in cotton winter waistcoats and shaggy horses wandered about in various places. Every so often the bus would stop to pick somebody up — Kazakhs or another ethnic group — or drop off passengers in the middle of nowhere. One pair hauled part of an engine block off the bus: perhaps their home was just over the rise. Some of the men had great hats — embroidered on the outside, with wide neck and ear flaps lined in shaggy wolf fur. Now why didn’t they sell those in the stores?! The air inside the bus was cold and moist in spite of the two long exhaust pipes passing over the floor, so in order to see out of the window I scraped off the ice using an old Kinko’s card. (Once again, Target and Kinko’s contribute to life in Asia!) The bus was old and fairly slow, and the miles and hours droned by. There were many days when I could not get enough of the scenery.
      The bus station was quiet. I was probably the only foreigner for a hundred or more miles, although in these parts, many people thought I was Russian. I wandered into the cold, lamp-glared outside to look for a restaurant. Good luck! It was night time in winter, somewhere just west of the frontier with Outer Mongolia. However, out of one doorway poured a steady stream of steam, so I figured that place had food.
      I had to take off my glasses as I entered the restaurant, since they fogged up immediately and I would have fallen down the stairs to the main area. Everyone looked at me. (Sometimes I think of Indiana Jones entering Miriam’s tavern in the mountains and the instant silence.) The tea up north is milk tea, which is good. They served up tea and of course jiao zi. (Sometimes while traveling the people would laugh at me, which got tiresome at times: sometimes they just let me be or were kind and friendly.)
      This is how it was for a number of days as I went around the Junggar Desert: looking, allowing nothing to escape my eyes (or my taste buds, for that matter). Perhaps the earlier years in other places when preoccupied with thoughts and doing nothing, were useful after all — now I wanted it all. There were almost no restrictions.
      The road from Bei Tun to Karamay was beautiful in parts, with wind sculpted rock formations in particular. However, it was on the side road from Karamay to Toli that the area showed its greatest beauty: Dakota Badlands-like territory, the strange hill formations looking like thousands of molehills together, and the great mountains separating this part of China from Kazakhstan. This road was also more icy and dangerous, and we saw wrecks on the way. Some Kazakhs had their houses on the great open areas, and there they stood, with nothing to keep them from the winds.
      The road continued from Toli to Tacheng, where I spent the night. There are many Russians living here, and I must admit I felt afraid here. It wasn’t just being utterly alone. I had heard bad things about the lawlessness of life in the former Soviet Union, so my mind was full of thoughts. When some people inside a car motioned at me to come closer, I walked away quickly. As on other nights, I locked myself into the bathroom while showering. When disoriented in the new, unfamiliar minority cultures, I found myself turning to the familiar, mainstream Han Chinese culture (that was an interesting revelation). So you see, jiao zi are medicine after all! When I left Tacheng the next morning, I was happy to go. After Karamay, I returned to Urumqi.
      The journey was broken at Urumqi, where I met some American friends, talked about living in Xin Jiang, and walked about part of the city. This part I will spin out for you on the train Carmen, so let this whet your appetite.
      From Urumqi to Korla to Aksu to Kashgar I saw very little countryside, because I traveled at night. Have you ever been inside a sleeper bus? It is a coach with all the seats taken out (or never installed). Instead, there are three rows of two-level bunks. A typical coach might carry thirty or so sleeping passengers. However, the “beds” are short, since they are built for your typical Chinese passenger. They are a little too short for me: you would find them difficult. I took one of the lower beds towards the back. The bus crew also took on some extra passengers who sat in the aisles. They were some country folk from somewhere in Gansu Province, and had at least one baby in the party. One of the women tied a strap between two of the climbing ladders (to the upper bunks), and leaned back against it while sitting in the aisle. Even while squirming and trying to make the bed space hold more sleepers there wasn’t enough room for everybody. The darkened bus plunged and shook through the night, under a brilliantly clear, starry sky. The Milky Way was visible and it reminded me of Africa, in the bush. For the bedless passengers it was a sleepless night. The sitting woman squirmed against the strap, made way for some people passing through the aisle, and was not able to fall asleep. Finally, into the night, she broke down and cried, grief gushing out. It was one of the moments of the trip that I remember the most vividly.
      I visited Aksu, and bought a carpet. I wish, in hindsight, that I had used all those fragments of time along the journey to plunge into Tibet instead. Oh well! Next time. . . .
      I had to see Kashgar. It was much smaller than I imagined, but still took a while to walk around. In addition to the bazaar, I looked at the Sunday market. As L.P. says, people come in from the countryside to do business. There are sights and (I suppose) smells everywhere: donkey carts, horse-drawn taxis, lamb carcasses, bright cloth, riverbed gravel/stone streets, shish kebabs, old carpets, filth in the streets, children everywhere, animals. Old men with beards, long overcoats and long boots. Long, poplar-lined streets and avenues leading to new sights and new sounds. Suddenly quiet side streets leading somewhere I am too timid to explore, streets that have an almost medieval, other time quality to them. Small restaurants with sometimes suspicious patrons sizing me up. A few words in Uighur sometimes helps. I like their food. The Xin Jiang noodles — ban mian — are the best! (Your typical hand-pulled noodles, with a chopped lamb, celery and spice sauce to go on top.) Round flatbreads looking like pizzas without the topping. Rice pilaf with hunks of hold-it-in-your-fingers-and-tear mutton. Lamb vertebrae in broth for you to gnaw on. And of course, the shish kebabs. In many places they sell sheep heads, cooked. They actually have quite a bit of meat on them. I call these places the “keep your head in all situations” stalls. I have yet to try it. . . . At the right time of day, the square outside the mosque is jam packed full of people. I am really like a bee making its way through the combs. At one point in the day I was tired and needed water, so I sat inside a small restaurant — in a ways from the doorway — and looked out at the world passing by.
      I was only in Kashgar for a day and two nights. I picked up another carpet in Hotan, and saw a small workshop with four or five carpet looms in it. In all however, I am disappointed with many of the carpets I saw in Xin Jiang — the machine made ones are no match for the handmade ones, and there is a lot of tacky looking stuff in many stores. (I was looking for traditional designs on new, handmade carpets.) However, in fairness to the carpet establishment, I am an outsider and don’t have the contacts, and I came during the Spring Festival, when many stores in Hotan were closed.
      The distances from Kashgar to Hotan to Minfeng to Qiemo and beyond get long. Some hours east of Kashgar, in the middle of nowhere, the road to Tibet breaks off. It is still closed to foreigners, and is very dangerous (according to L.P.). There were long stretches of dreary desert, but in places the real Taklimakan Desert revealed itself — miles and miles of totally sterile gravel desert with not a bush in sight. In places, dry river beds etched the desert and then lost themselves out of sight from the road. From other vantage points I could see huge sand dunes, five hundred or more feet tall, with long, graceful crest lines being formed by the wind. Between Minfeng and Qiemo the bus blew two tires. The second one was the spare tire, and we were still about 80 km. from Qiemo. Darkness was falling in the immense desert. The driver decided to drive on to Qiemo on the remaining five tires, and asked the passengers in the back to stand forward to take the weight off the one good tire in the left-rear. Over the next three or four hours the bus limped over the desert road. The passengers anxiously counted the passing milestones, and one by one, forgot and fell into sleep’s twilight until we reached good pavement again and made it to the bus station.
      I had wanted to continue beyond Qiemo to Ruoqiang and Golmud (in Qinghai Province), but there was no regular bus service in places. The prospect of hitching did not please me. I wanted to get out of the desert! Even though I felt I should stay in Qiemo a day to look it over (for possible future teaching), I wanted to leave. Without planning to, I found a full bus going to Korla. . . and they let me on. The bed was expensive, but I wasn’t complaining. I was glad to leave. Qiemo is definitely an “end of the line” place, but I should have given it a better chance. As it was, my main impression of that town is of a bao zi seller who wasn’t very helpful.
      As the bus left Qiemo, I realized we were going west, clockwise around the desert. I thought we would have to retrace the road I had taken — all three or more days of it. However, to my delight, I found out the bus was going to take the desert road that passed through the Taklimakan Desert. This was an answer to one of the deep, and often unexpressed desires of the heart. This road was paved, and passed through landscape straight out of Lawrence Of Arabia. We passed enormous, one thousand foot high dunes, saw some of the “sea of molehills” (sand dunes) for which the Taklimakan is famous, as well as other desert scenery. I wish we could have entered the desert early in the morning and not late in the afternoon, as I would have sat transfixed by the almost endless scenery for hours and hours. At Tazhong, we stopped at a small cluster of roadside diners, connected with the outside world by nothing save the road. Once again, Uighur noodles and tea. I wonder if I was the first American to eat there — certainly one of the first. One day, I would like to return to the open desert, stand under the clear, starry heavens, and feel, drink in the silence.
      The rest will be fragments. The rest of the journey to Korla. Two killer days by hard seat on the train from Korla to Lanzhou (in Gansu Province). Then I side tracked into Qinghai Province to see Xining, which has a great food market — a snacker’s and lover of Hui food diner’s delight. Near Xining is the Ta’Er Lamasery, where many Tibetans go on pilgrimage. I wanted to taste Tibetan culture, and I couldn’t go to Tibet because my days were running out, so this was the place. Milk/salt tea, butter tea, barley flour “something” (think eggless cookie dough — yummy!), and jiao zi. The jiao zi won the prize for the “best steamed, meat and veggie jiao zi”.
      Now I am back in Taiyuan. From here it is eighteen weeks until June. I think I should refocus my attention on studying Chinese, which I have allowed to lapse. Gary and I are back in the weekly cycle of teaching classes, giving free talks and living life in Taiyuan. Sometimes we eat together, but usually I go off to a small restaurant I have come to like. (Noodles, and potato or carrot strips — I am very predictable.) We usually do a lot of things on our own — Gary likes to read and study, and I am off doing various things, such as visiting, writing or calling my friends.
      I will stop here. I hope you are well. Think of me, and barley meal and jiao zi the next time you are pinching cookie dough, which if I know you well enough, will be soon.
 
 
March 23, 1997.
(The following are narrative fragments written on the back of photographs.)
 
Dear Christina,
      I thought you would like a “picture letter”, so I am writing to you on the back of this photo, as well as some of the photos I took in Xin Jiang. Perhaps by the time you get this, we will have spoken on the phone.
      A while ago, I felt very unhappy. Now I feel better. I have been learning to write some simple Chinese characters. The act of tracing characters is very relaxing and I like doing it.
      I traveled around Xin Jiang by bus most of the time, as well as by train. North Xin Jiang was the only place that had snow. Camels and horses graze on this rough and beautiful landscape.
      The rocky landscape is evident everywhere. I think the effect of freezing water has broken the surface of the rock into millions of small pieces.
      More camels. Behind them, the desert continued to the horizon and beyond. I only saw the edge of it from the bus.
      After visiting Kashgar, I followed this road to Qiemo, on a variety of public busses (some of which had trouble starting, or blew tires), over miles and miles of desert, past trees that often looked dead in their struggle against the sands.
     It was a dry land, taunted by the wind, often partially sterilized by a dusty salt-like substance, and haunted by huge sand dunes in the distance. Sometimes there were the large dunes, but more often I saw smaller, dry brush-covered sand piles.
      Shelters were rare indeed between villages.
      After an hour or many more of bumpy travel across the sandy wasteland, we would come into a tiny village and, even as we were searching out its sights and people from the bus windows, would be thrown back into the land of desiccated trees.
      I wish I could live here a while, at least long enough to feel, to begin to understand it, and to know whether I loved or hated it. I would like to stare out at the hundreds of mounds and the open rise and fall of the waves in this miraculous sea of sand, while listening to the aging but faithful wind generator turn and turn, serving this outpost of desolation. At night, as I did at Tazhong, I would like to gaze up at the perfectly clear sky, set with the finest jewels of the universe, and sashed with the soft silk of the Milky Way. I remember that night, but it was only a visit by a foreigner in a foreign land, and I was afraid to venture far from the bus stop in the middle of nowhere.
      I remember the little boy sitting in the sand alone, waiting for his parents to pick him up. I do not know who or if anyone picked him up, because the bus left.
      Now I am back in the place I came from. Spring is coming, but the desert in winter — alone, with wide expanses of empty sand and scrub — was beautiful and etched into some of my deepest memories.
      My soul is in winter now. In some ways, the emptiness I saw in the desert is but a reflection of the emptiness showing in me. I fear that many of the hopes and dreams I had concerning living in China are now blowing away like sand being stripped off the top of a sand dune. But then, the wind makes new sand dunes out of the wreckage of the old ones. These two years have been some of the best of my life.
      My best wishes of friendship to you.
 
 
April 9, 1997.
 
Dear Nicholas,
       I hope you are getting settled in well, and that you have found some local sources for food, supplies, etc. I do not wander much in Taiyuan, because most of the supplies I need are right outside the west gate of the university. In addition to the array of hole-in-the-wall restaurants, the road is lined with small food stands or parked freight tricycles. If I look too long at the fruit on the back of the “bike trucks” the vendor will call out to me. I am refining the art of shopping, using sideways or sweeping glances.
      I am glad spring is here, and not just because of the buds and flowers. The coal furnaces have largely shut down, and the street sweepers, paper pickers and hedge planters are regaining the ground lost last fall. However the fine dust is still here. Most mornings I take my tin cup and visit a vendor outside the west gate who sells millet porridge (“Please sir, can I have some more?”). I forgot to dust out the two-day collection of dust, so when I stirred in the honey at my apartment, the yellow porridge turned gray. Give me Wombo’s termites instead. . . .
      It is now some days later. I have since discovered that coal dust is not to blame — rather it is the honey, which causes a reaction or stains it gray. Still. . . .
      At this point I am working on next year’s choice of work. Some teaching opportunities have opened up in northern Xin Jiang and I am weighing them. They involve two schools in a small city on the west side of the Junggar Desert, in Karamay.
 
 
 
 
April 20, 1997.
 
Dear Malcolm,
      It is now Sunday evening and fairly quiet. This morning I was still tired so I slept a while. Taiyuan is looking a little bit more beautiful because of the flowering trees. In recent weeks it was one kind of flower, now it is another. It rained yesterday, so the air has a clean and fresher feel to it. Sometimes I have gone into the university gardens to talk with other people. The workers have been planting new shrubs to make the area look better. As a rule, this campus is much quieter than the one in Tianjin. In last year’s campus it was noisy, because the road outside was being widened, and many of the roadside shops were being torn down. What a pity! One of the small hole-in-the-wall restaurants, which I think made very good jiao zi, had to be torn down.
      It was a small room with three tables fitted in, and an even smaller kitchen out back. It had a name which I always forgot, but since the door and window trim were painted blue I called it the “Blue Door Restaurant.” This place would definitely be shut down back home for health reasons, but out of their pots came the best water boiled vegetable jiao zi in China. This is the sort of place which makes China famous in my eyes, because after the taste of good jiao zi ambiance is everything.
 
 
April 23, 1997.
 
Dear Rachel,
      It has been a long time since I wrote to you. I hope you are well. I think I am doing fairly well here in Taiyuan: the winter blues and the “what shall I do next year” crisis is over — for the moment. Spring has certainly helped to make the campus here more beautiful. The maintenance workers have also been planting shrubs and digging up flower beds.
      As I write this, I can hear one of those popping tractors going by in the twilight. (Some look like mini farm tractors, but the three-wheelers I like to call “flying bricks.”) These tractors are for me one of the essences of China (the rider with dangling cigarette is also a trademark sight). Many of the small restaurants which cluster around the university west gate are being torn down. Although this area, with its hole-in-the-wall restaurants, street vendors and traveling salesmen has a shanty town sort of appearance, it has an endearing atmosphere that I like and have grown fond of. There is usually someone out there calling out something to sell. The fruit sellers cluster in one part of the street, shoe or sock sellers are somewhere else. The street is log jammed frequently during the day, and taxis and trucks pass through like boards and beer barrels making their difficult way down a sapling-laced stream in springtime. As you know (and I heard somewhere) traffic in China is like water — going where it can, however it can. I like the “flying bricks”, loaded with a mound of farm produce, with the farmer’s wife or brother balanced on top of the cabbages, and coughing out riverboat-like diesel smoke puffs. Sure, it is dirty, crowded and sometimes inconvenient, but it has a life and feeling all its own.
      Maybe Huck Finn would approve. At night, people drift from small light to small light, looking at the wares. Late at night the battlefield is comparatively empty; refuse, dirty chopsticks, fish scales and cabbage leaves litter the ground, and coal stoves are plugged with coal dust “cement” to keep them quiet until the following day’s round of commerce. Next morning (when I venture out to get my millet porridge) they are at it again, steam rising from the throats of volcanic porridge pots and bun steamers. At lunch time it is noodles everywhere: pulled noodles twirled, stretched and slammed against the table, or eel-like strips of dough being whittled off a block of dough and leaping into the boiling water. I went into one restaurant that made the “whittled” noodles. It was filthy (and for me, that’s saying something). This restaurant is visited by the farmers and workers from the Shanxi countryside: I was doubly the stranger here, but I liked it. This place, and this “river snag” of a street market will be torn down and swept away by the changing of the times. Even as the surrounding business were closing and the very tin roof was beginning to come down, people ate lunch. O.K., so the noodles were not the best, but the ambiance was pure culture and unforgettable.
 
 
June, 1997
Summary Letter
 
      As I write this I can hear the university band tuning up outside, perhaps for a sports meeting this afternoon. It could be happening right now at a college near you. As the end of the contract year approaches, one can look back and see a steady change in the commercial products which have become available or more widespread in Taiyuan — Oreos and many other western items. Spring has changed the face of the city too. Flowers and greenery and swallows are here, people deflated overnight as their winter clothing was stored away, and ice cream vendors are common again.
      Gary and I have a new set of students — we have already passed the halfway point with them. Like the first semester’s students, many of them are on language study leave from local companies, and some are teachers or students from the university. Twice a week, we meet for informal conversations with small groups. We have shown some films (Bambi was a hit) and hope to visit a few local sights. By now, we have become quite familiar with parts of the teaching curriculum. My Chinese conversational ability has improved quite a bit, and listening a little bit, but there is still a long way to go. The end of the year beckons to us and my mind thinks about next year.
      At this point, I hope and plan to teach English in China again this coming academic year in Xin Jiang Autonomous Region. Over the winter break I traveled around Xin Jiang to see the dream land for real — and it is a dream come alive. The roads are long, the deserts huge, and the people endearing. The living conditions are somewhat rough, one is a stranger there, but I think it is a promising place to live and teach English in.
      Until the next time.