Chris In China

Slowly, I’m beginning to expect the unexpected.
After a weekend of reveling in a newly discovered “Western”-style bar with a handful of new friends, my body became exhausted. The fact that rain had infiltrated our city along with cold damp air that turned summer into fall in a heartbeat made the situation worse.
I awoke Tuesday morning feeling like I hadn’t slept for days. My head pounded with a headache and a fever. There’s no calling in on my second week on the job, so I went to class with an extra bottle of water and a dose of ibuprofen. Class went well: We discussed editing shorthand marks, a few vocabulary words and transitive and intransitive verbs. But, during the lesson, I could feel my voice weakening, my throat throbbing and my body starting to ache.

After class, I returned to my small apartment on the other side of, climbed the five flights of stairs and crashed onto my extra firm mattress.
A few hours later, the phone rang. Two friends of mine who have become tennis partners and Chinese tutors were downstairs and wanted to see me. They were concerned because I was not at the courts that afternoon and they heard I was feeling ill. Soon they arrived at my door bearing gifts of a dozen freshly picked bananas, a bag of not-quite-ripe yellow apples and a handful of large fuzzy kiwis.
"You need to have a rest and lots of vitamins (sic) C," said Sunny, the taller of the two.
"I can’t take all this fruit," I pleaded. "It will go bad before I get a chance to eat it all."
They reluctantly took back nine bananas and all but three apples, but they left the kiwis because it’s got "lots of vitamins C." They also urged me to go see a doctor.
"He can give you an injunction (sic) that will make you feel better," said Sabrina with a nervous smile.
"No, thanks, I’ll be OK soon," I said in the manliest voice possible. I don’t like going to the doctor back home, and I can’t see how a doctor in China is going to be any different.
Like a good Westerner traveling to a foreign land, I learned the first two rules of self-preservation. Number one: Take what you need from home, including vitamins, ibuprofen and loperamidi tablets (for "traveler’s diarrhea"). I followed the first rule and took a few extra things along in case of emergencies.
The second rule for a Westerner traveling in a country where he or she does not know the language: Don’t get sick.
It’s only been a month into my adventure and I’ve already broken the second rule. By Thursday, my headache and sore throat were much worse. Three days of sleeping between classes was not having the desired effect. In fact, Thursday afternoon saw me in some of the worst pain I could imagine (not including childbirth). I could barely swallow a glass of water without jolts of sharp pain shooting through my skull. At this point, I was ready to try anything.
I found my neighbor Helenia, who has a constant supply of medical products, including Chinese herbal medicines, Western painkillers and even sterile needles for the occasional injection. I told her about my symptoms and she said I should see a doctor right away, and that by waiting so long, I was being too proud for my own good.
Helenia, a frank yet motherly young woman from the Philippines, accompanied me to the community health center located directly across the street from campus. Wedged between an electronics store and a copy shop, the clinic sits among a small strip of shops while nearby vendors hawk products and services from carts. This small community has everything one would need: a shoe repairman, knock-off Nikes and cheap medical service.
It was early evening when we arrived. Inside, florescent bulbs buzzed overhead, basking the room in a bright white light. A skinny young man dressed in a while lab coat invited us to sit down at a small desk. After spending all of four seconds peering into my mouth with a flashlight, he and Helenia discussed the diagnosis. After listening to 10 minutes of gibberish, I expected a long list of options. Instead, Helenia said simply, "You’ve got two choices: IV or injection."
"I’m sorry, say that again," I protested.
But she didn’t have to. My throat was infected and we all knew it. The only thing that would help was an antibiotic, but it seems like the young man in the lab coat did not think pills would work fast enough.
So there I was, in the back of a tiny Chinese medical office, pants around my ankles, mooning a scrawny med student in a white lab coat who didn’t look a day over 25. He held a (new) 2-inch needle with a syringe filled to the brim with a mixture containing God-knows-what from six different bottles, and he was ready to pierce my bottom. He wasn’t wearing gloves, but he did disinfect the target by rubbing a bit of alcohol around the area with a cotton ball.
Suddenly a vision of Hilary Clinton speaking about "Universal Health Care for all Americans" flashed through my head. But there were no Pfizer pens, no Viagra posters and no Lipitor stomach models. This is China, and, in China, pharmaceutical companies and insurance providers don’t line doctors’ pockets to push their brands or services. And here, the words "campaign finance reform" have no meaning. That needle was a refreshing reminder at how health care should be: cheap and accessible.
I don’t know what "just a little pinch" is in Chinese, but the injection was painful, and as he emptied the syringe, I could feel the burn of liquid oozing into my flesh.
After the procedure, I zipped up and limped to the front of the office. The man spoke a few more words to Helenia, and she turned to me and said, "It’ll be seven Yuan (the equivalent of $1), and you have to come back tomorrow at 8 a.m. for the second shot and at 5 for the third."
Third rule of self-preservation: Expect the unexpected.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate who is spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He will be writing regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 10:10 AM | Permalink

When dark stormy nights threaten little New England towns, residents prepare for the worst.
Grocery stores are packed with last-minute shoppers buying extra bottles of water, canned foods and batteries for their radios and flashlights. Candles are always within reach for when the power inevitably goes out; nobody wants to be caught in the dark. And while most black-outs occur infrequently and don’t usually last all that long, it is terribly inconvenient to be without email for a few hours, and the power company’s phone lines are jammed with customers calling to complain. Meanwhile the children are giddy because to them, having no power is a novelty, it’s like camping.
This is the world I’ve come to know back home, a world where the lights always turn on when I flick the switch, air conditioning is never more than five minutes away, and where I take this wonderful power of electricity for granted.
The reason for my recent light-bulb moment of realization is an experience I had here in China.

I’ve realized that other world, where everything I needed was at my fingertips, and I didn’t have to think about what might spoil in the fridge, was a luxury. But now I’m in China, and I have to deal with energy consumption limits, spotty air conditioning and, yes, frequent blackouts. One such blackout occurred during the height of a typical hot and muggy late August day. It was a "scheduled" blackout, with an announcement written in "funny" English and posted on the bulletin board near the entrance of our building: "Dear foreign teachers, Please may I have your attention? Your building will have power cut from 5 in the morning until 6 in the night. Sorry for inconveniences this may cause."
The energy consumption procedures in this developing nation are well-publicized, and its notorious pollution problems caused by coal-burning power plants has been the subject of many feature stories and columns throughout the world. As an insatiable consumer of energy, the Chinese population’s demand currently outpaces its supply, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report, and will triple, surpassing the United States' energy demand by 2020. As a result, frequent blackouts occur across the country, and people are used to it.
I, on the other hand, am not.
Throughout the night before the 5 a.m. cutoff time, I couldn’t sleep. I was worried that I would wake up in the dark and forget where I was, I was worried about the eggs in the fridge, and I was worried about not having e-mail for 13 hours!
But when I awoke, I knew where I was, I forgot about the eggs and I took a day off from the computer, and I never felt more relaxed. Sure, it was hot and I had no idea about what was going on in the rest of the world, but there was nothing I could do about it and nobody to file a complaint with. Somebody turned off the electricity, and I was dealing with it like a kid going camping.
The experience brought with it an entirely new perspective on guaranteed electricity, and the global warming debate. Being from a relatively liberal background in a relatively liberal part of the United States, I thought I was well-informed about "green issues" and "living green." And, like many others, I was doing my part in heeding the call for more sustainable living practices, like changing to those new "green" light bulbs, riding my bike and recycling. But I realized that I’m still a westerner and that there is a lot more to be done.
China is growing fast, but also suffering because of it. The country is experiencing the largest industrial revolution in history, but it’s following the old model, and who can blame them? The fact is that the United States, Britain and the West experienced the same revolution before pollution was known to be harming the environment.
We did most of the damage causing global warming, and now we’re asking China to curb its pollution while we continue to consume at or near the rates we always have. China is responding with ecological initiatives that are slow to take effect and difficult to implement. Culturally, the Chinese have long been stewards of their streets; the tradition of daily sweet sweeping has been around for centuries, and while this takes care of litter and trash, it does nothing to change the effects of fossil fuel consumption.
It is up to the informed to take action, to demand our government to lead by example, to change its energy policy, and to curb its own energy consumption. Changing a light bulb isn’t going to change the world. It’s going to take action, sacrifice and determination to attain sustainable living practices.
Living a day without electricity will certainly open one’s eyes to the possibilities, it did mine, but it’s not something that should be forced, we should want to do it for the greater good. So I’m asking you, turn off the computer, and sit down and write a letter to your representative demanding — not asking — for change, but make sure it’s on recycled paper. And I’ll do my part while I’m here by curbing my consumption, and helping the Chinese government educate its citizens to make change an inevitability.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 2:23 PM | Permalink

Exhausted, dazed and thoroughly confused is how I entered the Middle Kingdom on Aug. 14, 2007.
After 14 hours sitting, reading, and with a few scattered hours of uncomfortable, upright sleep on a flight that took me over the (now disputed territory) North Pole, Siberia and Mongolia, I was in the capital of the most populous nation on earth.
As we waited for our luggage at the claim carousel, I couldn’t help but notice all the signs were in Chinese. I guess I knew it would be like this, but I just did not fathom what it would actually look like. Thankfully, English translations were provided: “Please keep baggage careful,” and “Please pay attention and prudent of escalator,” what some people like to call “funny English.”
Funny as it may have been, I did not have time to ponder on word choice and pick out grammatical errors on Chinese signs; I had to embark on a new adventure.

I came to China from North Adams to teach English, learn Chinese, explore the world and grow up. As much as the northern Berkshires have become my home over these past two years, there was another place and new experiences calling my name. Right now, China is one of them.
History professor Kailai Huang, a longtime faculty member of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, is originally from China. He arrived in North Adams 14 years ago; since then, he has helped the college connect with his former home through an international relationship with Hebei University in Baoding City, China. Along with other MCLA faculty members, including President Mary Grant, Vice Presidents Steve Green and Monica Joslin, and others, Professor Huang has cultivated a valuable partnership with Hebei University that allows for international exchange and communication fostering the expansion of both student populations’ worldview. It has also given a number of graduating MCLA students the opportunity to come to teach and learn at a world-class institution.
After graduating, there were a number of opportunities that I could have taken advantage of. The education and experience at MCLA prepared me for an array of careers or graduate school, or both, but I felt like an experience like this could provide me with knowledge that neither of those could.
I am not alone. I’m one of five MCLA graduates who have taken advantage of the partnership this year, and who hope to have life-changing experiences. The others in the group are Natty Hussey, Katlyn Lorenz, Sarah Towle and Alexandra Woolner — some of the best and brightest MCLA has to offer.
We came here because it’s different, it’s ancient, it’s the largest country in the world, and it’s developing at a breakneck pace. I came here because I wanted to experience China and write about it. In America (many sentences start like this when talking with a Chinese person here), the news constantly reports the product recalls, the human rights issues, the politics and, of course, the upcoming Olympics with a detachment from the people of China. The stories we hear do not always come from the ground here in China; the stories demonstrate a larger picture concerned with markets and politics.
My first impression of this place, besides being awed by the amount of people and smog of Beijing, is that it is forever fascinating. The rapid development of the free market economy can be seen at every corner. Huge billboards hawk scores of products everywhere you look, the sidewalks are filled with vendors selling fruit, vegetables, shoes, clothes and everything in between, and trucks loaded with goods clog highways and roads at all hours of the day. There is a buzz in the air in China, and it’s not just the cicadas soaking up the heat.
The movement on the streets is of people shopping, working and economic progression. The Chinese are becoming consumers in the Western sense, and are living (monetarily) richer lives. However, I question the cost of progress. I can see the pollution in the air when I look out my window, I read about the rates of depression, eating disorders and anxiety, and I can sense the fragmentation of society as the gap between rich and poor widens. My first impression is that things are not as they seem, but time will tell.
For now, I am content to be one in a billion (1,321,851,888 to be exact). Classes start soon and I look forward to molding minds and learning a thing or two myself. I bought a bike (which has already broken) to explore the streets of Baoding and to fit in with everybody else. Getting from one place to another is not an easy task in a small city of a million, especially because I can’t read the street signs, but the bike lanes are large and convenient (something North Adams should consider building).
The buildings all look the same, as do the numerous cranes that dot the skyline, and apparently, things change fast in China, so it’s best not get too used everything. I guess I’ll just have to go about my days with a certain “careful” and stay “prudent of the escalator.”

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 2:14 PM | Permalink

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
graduate who is spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei
University. He will be writing regular columns for The Advocate
during his stay in China.

Readers can also read more about his experiences on his blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com. Or e-mail him at cg1480@mcla.edu

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 1:34 PM | Permalink