The Beginning of the End Times

A couple of weeks ago, I awoke on a Sunday morning to what I thought was the sound of artillery shells raining down on the roof above. Irritated, I lay in bed and thought to myself. More of the mandatory military training that all freshmen go through? A few well-armed cops with no accountability and too much time on their hands? The first strike in China’s full-scale war against foreigners? I went into the bathroom and pulled up the shade.

What I found was a cloud of smoke and fireworks that more closely resembled a hail of anti-aircraft fire than anything you’d see on the fourth of July. Just a bunch of guys hanging out on the adjacent rooftop, setting these things off pretty regularly for at least a good half hour. That’s cool, I didn’t want to sleep in or anything. After so much time in China, I’m used to the sound of fireworks going off in the distance at really random intervals, but this was practically happening in my bedroom on the morning of an utterly insignificant Sunday. And then, like a belated air-raid siren signaling the attack, this really awful rhythmic dance music began to blare outside. Where it came from I’ll never know—it just seemed to be everywhere at once. Weird stuff like this happens here sometimes, but it’s usually more off-putting than it is infuriating.

Not long after that, it snowed in Wuhan. This must be the beginning of the end times, because it rarely snows here, and never in November. Nonetheless, it was awesome. It didn’t pile up like it does in the Midwest, but it stuck enough to blanket the campus and bewilder the locals. You’ll be glad to know that the Chinese handled it the same way they do most meteorological phenomena—they pulled out their umbrellas. Rain would obviously elicit that response, but so, too, does sunshine, since they desperately want to keep from getting tan. And now, apparently, snow is reason enough to duck and cover. I don’t mean to sound smarmy, though, since it’s understandable that, living in a climate such as this, you wouldn’t necessarily prepare yourself for snow. Seeing everything nicely frosted for the first time, I went ahead and took a few pictures.

There have been other days like that over the past month or two, days when small, random things come along and break up the work week. Like anywhere, it’s easy to fall into routines in China. When you find a good restaurant with dishes you know (and know how to order), you want to go back. When you find a grocery store with things like bacon and cheddar, you’re pretty willing to make the trip. We sometimes have to remind ourselves that we should be trying new things. And we do. But it can be difficult going from one place to another, trying to find familiar characters on a Chinese menu, and occasionally repeating to a puzzled waitress, “bu yao hua sheng” (“no peanuts”). Anything within walking distance is preferable, what with all the gridlock. I swear, rush hour lasts from the morning commute to dinnertime. Luckily, there’s a small village of street vendors near my apartment that are both cheap and very easy to deal with. It’s a great go-to food option, especially in the winter months.

Things I’ve managed to do off-campus recently: all-night karaoke, a Halloween costume contest, a three-course Thanksgiving dinner, a few games of urban bowling, a free hole of golf at a posh, Western-style villa, a trip to the Provincial Museum, and the occasional late-night McDonald’s run. I’ll try to elaborate on at least a couple of these in future posts. For now, I just want to give you a better sense of daily life. At the moment, I’m cleaning and waiting for laundry to dry, which is thrilling, I know. This morning, we made pancakes, and tomorrow I probably won’t do much after I teach class. I have a lot of free time after classes. But I end up wasting it somehow and wishing I had longer weekends instead. It’s harder to travel when you work five days a week. I’m not complaining here, just saying I might rather have only two or three really long days of teaching, as many of the others do. Traveling often makes for a good blog entry, so when I do find some time, you’ll definitely hear about it.