Bad China Month

While I have not been in China for six weeks now, the ghost of Chinese deniability is still haunting me with severe financial consequences (considering I’m now a poor student in one of the most expensive cities in the world).

First, the Agricultural Bank of China stole nearly 400USD from my bank account. I meticulously check my bank accounts online and double check that every line item is something that I actually spent money on even if I regretted it later. Some of those rash purchases at the fabric market fall in that category.

When suddenly three withdraws on the same day appeared, I noticed, and complained, but I made no progress at the Chinese Bank. The Chinese bank’s official line is, “You will have to talk to your home bank about the problem”

My American bank was appalled and tried twice to file a complaint with the Agricultural Bank of China, which is insistent that a glitch never occurred.

Four hundred dollars gone…

Second, I apprehensively awaited the arrival of the last box I sent from China. Its contents included my very last purchases from the fabric market, which I already dearly miss. It did not arrive until four days after I left for London…I should say that the box arrived with two large slashes in it and no contents except an old bag I sent home with sentimental value. A gorgeous white cashmere coat, a pink coat I bought my sister, a full suit, the altered pants to two other suits, a silk jewelry box, and souvenirs that I bought for my entire family were all stolen.

The US Postal Service is looking for the “missing” items, but they were already gone before USPS even received the package. I’m not going to see them again.

Another four hundred dollars gone…

So some devious person is walking around with four hundred U.S dollars in my white coat that I bought for the cold London winters. Needless to say, it caused a very, very bitter impression within my parting memories of China.

Am I Still a Smart Postgraduate Student If...

I had some time to kill between the hours of queing to enrol and my department orientation so I decided to take the time to wonder around the “campus”


The Strand Campus of King’s College London consists of an attached addition to the Summerset House with a hideously ugly attached front building and a dozen attached row houses on one side, AND the attached former Strand subway station. The outside of these buildings are the same, but the inside has been cubed off into professor offices as I am quick to learn.

After spending hours in the original buildings, I thought a foray into the clustered side buildings could be fun.


I crossed a frosted glass bridge into that wing and entered a claustrophobic maze instantly. I went up a baby fight of stairs and then down another, dimly noting that the hall were narrowing like Willy Wolka’s factory.





What followed was a series of sharp twists, winding staircases, and swinging fire doors all along halls so slender that I could fan my fingers out down at my sides and still brush both walls. Only the change in side molding helped me distinguish when I was leaving one building and entering the next.

I bumbled into finding the object of my mission, the waterfront bar overlooking River Thames.

The trip back proved trickier. I thought I mentally mapped my route, but when I reached a sweeping staircase, I had no idea where I needed to go.


Working off faulty memories, I pushed through one heavy fire door after another almost bursting into a professor’s office because pop-up intersections lined with doors disoriented me. When I passed the stairs that stopped directly into the ceiling, I knew I was on the right path. At the multi-mini-stair intersection, I took the narrow stairs that wind around an old cage elevator painted bright blue, which didn’t lessen its creepiness.


Picking up speed, I almost took out a young British professor. I somehow missed the turn to the greenhouse bridge and entered a completely round room. I took old wooden steps into a tiny courtyard and made it back into the ugly front building that suddenly became a lot prettier.

Roly-Poly

I landed at Gatwick Airport in London after an uncharacteristically uneventful flight and realized that I probably should have created a better plan for making it to the dorm after twenty hours traveling.

The largest problem was that Gatwick is located about thirty miles from the center of London, and I didn't want to spend 160 dollars on a taxi to reach the city. (I hate the weak dollar.)

I went up to a friendly train ticket officer and told him that I needed to go to Paddington so I wanted to buy a ticket to Victoria. This exchange shouldn't have been difficult because we were both speaking English except I couldn't understand half of what he said. I did decipher: "Victoria is not possible"..."Go to Farringdon and change"...

I looked at the tickets and couldn't make sense of the zones that seemed more suited for a locker combination than a London map key. I just went to the platform he told me and jumped on the same train as everyone else with suitcases. Minding the gap is very difficult with a fifty pound suitcase, a thirty pound suitcase, and a computer bag.

Forty minutes into the ride, the next station was announced as Victoria. Very confused, I dragged my suitcases off the train and decided it would be best to take a taxi.

The taxis are huge! They also don't have trunks. My driver, whose abilities are probably more suitable for a Mad Max remake, zipped around the corners with no regard to the fact that my suitcases have very well performing wheels. I felt like I was in a London cab washing machine as I tried to balance both suitcases and keep them from knocking me unconscious.

Within moments after beginning the ride, we passed a Rolls Royce with an old lady in a goofy hat. Instantly I thought, "The queen!"

Of course, the cabby entered a round-about at that moment, and I was flattered against the window. On closer inspection the woman wasn't the queen. I think her majesty rides in a carriage anyway

Goodbye China!

My year in China includes some of the funniest moments, greatest friends, and hardest-earned accomplishments (and I have a broken bone in my foot to prove it). Now it's time to move onto the next chapter of my life: London. The story continues...

Home Base

In some odd combination of purpose and accident, I have spent a lot of time wandering, yet I still always come back to the place I consider home base. When my time in China ended, I returned to the cornfields of Ohio.

My hometown is still a place where post office workers and grocery store clerks ask about my family in unexplainable southern accents considering how far we are from the Mason-Dixie Line. It’s a town where music simply stopped in 1986, and the Eagles and CCR are still kings of the radio. American flags are hung from lamp posts during every summer holiday and a giant Ohio flag is painted on the grain silos on the edge of town. Teenagers ride along winding country roads with sunroofs down, trying to catch fireflies and bridge jump along dusty and deserted gravel roads.

I came home in the heat of August when the humidity thickens to the point of practically requiring swimmies. Just at that point thunder rolls across the horizon bringing the green skies and rapid fire lighting of some of the fiercest thunderstorms that I’ve seen in the world. When the rain clears, a mist lingers within the meadows so that only the tops of the wild flowers and tall grass rise above the haze.

Summer in Ohio also brings every possible festival imaginable besides the county fair. The summer holds the Strawberry Festival, Strut Your Mutt, multitudes of car shows and races, the Street Carnival, and maybe the most famous in my personal history: Balloon Fest, the hot air balloon spectacular.

My trip home was only for a month of respite. I will move from a teacher to a student as I attend school in London this fall to obtain a Master’s degree. When the year is over, I will once again return to the drive-in theaters, old-time carousel, and football obsession of my hometown.

In the Name of Security

Many, many people ask me if I feel safe in China when in reality I do not think I have even lived, visited, or thought of visiting anyplace nearly as secure. In Shanghai I rarely saw People’s Liberation Army officers or police officers. Actually, the only times I see cops are when they hassle the street vendors for selling food without a license.

Xinjiang Province is different. I was stopped at a police checkpoint sometimes as often as every ten minutes along a straight desert road. Occasionally we were even treated to an overzealous young guard who inspected the engine and car for explosives. I’m not sure how accurate some of their tools are though since my bag set off one of the wands. I think only sudden panic of being buried under a mound of Western underwear drove the young cadet to stop me from opening my bag for a closer look.

Even some local Uyghur towns took up the security cause and set up make-shift check points with slender poplar trunk barriers counterweighed with hanging boulders, making them easily drawn.

Our protection was taken so seriously that the military manned the checkpoint as we traveled to Karakol Lake, thirty kilometers from the gateway to Afghanistan and Pakistan. We were even protected from our Uyghur guides and had to use a Han Chinese guide to take us up to near oxygen-needed altitudes on a little sibling to the nearby K2.

To continue with the theme of protection, Uyghur dominated Old Town Kashgar was scheduled for demolition. The government feels the two story stone and brick buildings that have stood for hundreds of years might not survive a massive earthquake so the entire population is being relocated to tall skyscrapers on the edge of town. The destruction was scheduled for one week after we left.

A labyrinth of narrow alleys opened to courtyards and mosques. The domain of laughing children, they ran passed us playing games with rules made up on the spot. The larger streets felt even smaller with vendors packed along each side selling their wares of everything from wool caps to raisins and loose tea. As a brilliant marketing tool, pedestrians were forced to walk close to the stands while donkey carts forged through the center of the road along with small flocks of herded sheep. All will be gone soon in the name of security.

Addendum: The struggles in Xinjiang are quite real and felt constantly. A week after I left the area a checkpoint outside Kashgar was attacked and sixteen police officers were killed. Most in the minority group are so fearful of retribution and wiretapping that they are too weary to say a word against the government to foreigners at least.

And of course, the large oil reserves in the province complicate matters…

Not in Kansas Anymore

After two weeks of hitting the places-I-couldn’t-live-in-China-and-not visit as well as some more unique and rustic corners of the Chinese map, I hopped on a plane to Xinjiang. Xinjiang is the largest Chinese province and the farthest west yet the ethnic group from the area, the Uyghur, has more in common with Turkey in culture, language, and religion than the Middle Kingdom. The difference became apparent the moment our flight landed.

Our smiling guide met my friend and I at the airport, and I was instantly praised for my German ancestry. (Later I found out that our guides nickname in “German” because he loves the German people so much.) Immediately after that unusual statement, our guide announced that he was Uyghur and Muslim and that we would be leaving Urumqi immediately because the city contained too many Han Chinese.

The cityscape gave way to desert on our drive to the oasis town of Turpan. Fields of trellised grapes only days away from harvesting flew by our car window. Dotted among the fields were patches of poplar trees shading sun-baked homes in no danger of melting in the hottest place in China, which received no real rain. Occasionally we passed a donkey cart filled with watermelon or carrying colorfully-clod woman and children catching a ride.

Before dinner I took a stroll through the local market that smelled significantly better than the markets of Shanghai. Instead of oil drum lid-fryers cooking stinky tofu, white dressed men pulled nan from ancient wood-burning stoves. Instead of hanging chickens next to butcher’s stall were giant racks of lamb.

My first dinner in Xinjiang can only be described as discombobulating. It started off innocently enough. Our large group of travelers settled down within a restaurant sheltered under hallways of grapevines. We were served in the familiar buffet style of too many dishes of odd food that none of us would ever order on our own.

Everything was going fine until the entertainment started. Somehow the traditional dancers twirling to traditional songs turned into Uyghur Disco with tiny lead dancers moving to the very not traditional “Gasolina” as strobe lights flashed. At about that time, the entire sheep (not lamb) on a spit was plopped on our table. Nothing associated with Silence of the Lambs could possibly be as terrifying as that cooked carcass. Prepared by the King of Lamb, the meat was supposed to be the best in town.

Whle our host was trying to figure out how to carve the massive entrée, the head tiny dancer managed drag me onto the dance floor to teach me their style of dancing, which the only part I understood was waving my arms in the air to what sounded like a Middle Eastern influenced song put to a techno beat. While spinning in a circle with dozens of local woman, the lights flashed so slowly that more than once I crashed into someone because I just couldn’t see.

As one of my fellow travelers put it, this scene might be one of the oddest of his life. I quickly had the realization that I was NOT in the China that I know.