jamie doom

After one has taken a chicken’s life using only the crude instruments at hand: a tennis ball, a high powered air cannon, and deadly aim; the world changes. Soil and trees are suddenly real, solid things. The summer days, while blue on blue on blue, seem warmer and closer to the skin. One minute a chicken was alive, taunting me with nervous energy; then there was bright light, the blur of a yellow tennis ball, and it’s over.

Silence.

There is me standing proudly beside my tennis ball cannon at the Li/Miao Minority Cultural Village Park. There are the resentful stares of the six other Americans—all girls. I can’t high five anyone. All I have is the electricity of the moment and a fallen fowl. Soon some of those girls, getting over their initial shock, begin to form words with their mouths. “How…How could you,” the first and most annoying of them finally stammers.

Suddenly, I realize I am part of their culture shock. I have been in China for a year now, and they have been here less than a week. A chicken done in by a tennis ball seems almost natural to me at this point. It’s not my fault. It’s just something that happens here. I imagine last week they were carefully licking and sealing pre-addressed envelopes with donation enclosed to PETA.

“How could you?” They are now collectively whining, feeding off of each other. “What did that chicken do to you?” “What are you going to do with a dead chicken anyway?” “Grow up” “That is the most heartless, cruel things I have ever seen.” “I’m going to be sick.” “You are Satan.” “I’m going to cry.”

During their short time in China they have felt foggy, disoriented, and lost. Now they recognize a collective cause and feel themselves quickened by it. What’s more, they don’t have to worry about insulting the culture because this is me, Jamie Doom. I should know better. Things seem clear to them, and they are gleefully angry.

I, on the other hand am feeling the opposite of guilt at this moment. I feel quite pleased with myself. The chicken was moving when I shot it.

“It’s just one of those things,” I finally offer. “I’m walking around the Li/Miao Minority Cultural Village Park minding my own business, buying trinkets, watching traditional dances, drinking out of a coconut, and then I run into this.”

I make a broad motion at the scene in front of us, which is three cannons facing a small field where five soccer balls hang from ropes about two feet apart. About twenty feet away, in the corner of the field, a chicken lies motionless. New, curious chickens are now strutting in to check out the commotion. My trigger finger has a sudden familiar itch.

“Ask any man in the world what he would have done. The conditions were…well…too perfect. I paid my money for the target practice. One minute I’m shooting tennis balls at the old soccer balls hanging there. I’m pretty good too—I’m not missing; then the next moment, out of the corner of my eye, I see a chicken. And I was polite about it. I asked the Traditional Li/Miao Minority Cultural Village Park Tennis Ball Cannon Supervisor lady if I could kill the chicken with one of the tennis balls. I asked her in perfect Chinese. I even bargained with her. Oh she had moxy—all gold teeth and Hainanhua. And we settled on a fair price, more than fair—40 Yuan—which is like five bucks. And you were all standing right there through this whole negotiation, and you didn’t say a word in protest.”

Silence.

“Oh, what’s that? Well, maybe you should learn Chinese.”

One of them is crying now. They only met me for the first time the day earlier. They will be teaching English with me to the Li/Miao minorities for a month in Baisha. They think I am an animal. They are all from Alabama , where I would think the chicken population has little to no rights. This chicken died quickly, with minimal pain. It was clean shot—very clean. I defend myself out loud.

“It was a clean shot. Clean, I say.”

More eyes water.

Then, I try a different tactic. I shrug my shoulders.

“Hey, you say potato; I say…kill chickens with a tennis ball…?”

I realize my reasoning is weak here and keep talking. “I saved all of you from that chicken. It’s called bird flu, and it’s real. I was trying to be cool about it since you just got here, but that chicken looked crazy, ok? There it is. It seemed to be having bird flu symptoms, you ungrateful, ungrateful ingrates. Good thing I know how to use an air cannon with tennis ball modifications. Ever seen Old Yeller? Bird Flu is like that, except …well I don’t even want to talk about.”

Just then my new gold-toothed friend, the Traditional Li/Miao Minority Cultural Village Park Tennis Ball Cannon Supervisor lady, arrives at my side holding the dead chicken up to my face.

“Bu yao ,” I say and push the chicken back. I smile as I do this. I tell her it’s hers. She tells me they will cook it that evening and say lucky words about me while they eat it. I paid 40 Yuan—more than she paid for it—to kill one of her chickens so her family could eat it. It’s a sweet deal for her. If I feel bad, it’s only because I know I am perpetuating the stereotype of wasteful, rich foreigner. But at this moment if I stuck the dead chicken under my arm and whistled off to the van, my six new friends from Alabama would hate me much more than they did now.

Instead, I sigh and rock back on my heels. I notice two sturdy looking chickens hiding behind a log and feel the 80 Yuan burning a hole through my pocket. I turn quickly and run towards the trinket venders—my work here is done. But I do need some authentic Li/Miao Minority Cultural Village Park back scratchers and about 20 more fans.

I have always wanted to kick a chicken. That is well documented here. But this… well, this was better than I could have ever imagined. As I rode away from the Traditional Li/Miao Minority Cultural Village Park, muffled Alabama-tinged sobs were soon drowned out by the sound of the road and that crazy, mad hum in my brain.

Well, it’s nice to finally have landed softly in the bustling city of Hangzhou . I probably should apologize for not posting anything for a good month now, but traveling is one reason I am here in China . I can’t do both. Thanks for being patient. I know, I know, I know, I owe a ton of you E-mails. Now that I am moved in to Hangzhou and have a teaching routine, I promise I will slowly but surely get to all of that mail. So, before I forget everything let me give you some brief descriptions of my travels.

Anhui

I spent a bulk of the last month in Anhui . The only reason that anyone goes to Anhui is to see Huang Shan ( Yellow Mountain ), or because they want to see what nuclear winter will look like. I had a wonderful time visiting Anhui because I was with my good friend, Liang Bing, and his family in the little town of Wuhe . But if you don’t know anybody in Anhui and you aren’t headed straight to Huang Shan and straight back home, I fear for you. Most of the small villages I rode through in Anhui (and I many on my way to Bengbu and Hefei and a few other cities) have tons of papers and trash piled up around the village.

I did get to see the inner workings of Small Town China up close which was educational and enlightening. Along the way, I also discovered that I have a sick urge to kick chickens. Let me explain. Each day during my three week stay in Anhui , we would go visit Liang Bing’s family on the outskirts of town. They had several fat chickens running around. The chickens provided a two fold nutrional purpose—eggs and meat. But we ate a lot more meat than eggs; let’s just say I wasn’t stepping in as much chicken crap at the end of my stay as the beginning.

Anyway, if you are staying in a place that resembles post WWW III, it’s can be difficult to entertain yourself. So I started looking at the chickens as a source of entertainment. These chickens are fat and almost perfectly round—like a big fluffy soccer ball. Also chickens have two skinny built-in little tees, which makes launching them with your feet much easier.

Each day I would show up to the Liang’s house, smile, say the right things, and fend off baijiu attacks from all sides. However, the entire time I was really deep in contemplation about those chickens. The Liangs have a ten foot wall around their house/commune. I felt quite sure given the right weather conditions, soccer shoes, and chicken shape I could clear the wall with no problem.

But still I fought it this urge off. Sometimes, I would be hanging out outside alone watching the ozone overhead melt and the trash blow by; it would be just me and the chickens (by now they trusted me), and the urge would get almost overpowering. Once I even sized up a chicken, paced off three steps straight back and two over–John Kasey style–and took a deep breath; only to have Liang Bing’s mother come outside to call me in for another twelve course meal.

On my last day in Anhui , I asked Liang if his family would be offended if I kicked one of their chickens over their wall and then ran around like I had won the Superbowl. He said yes, so I dropped the subject, and we are still friends.

This past week in Hangzhou , I have seen some chickens that don’t look like they have a lot going for them clucking around in front of restaurants near this school. I’m waiting, biding my time. It’s gunna happen. One of the teachers here at the school, Russell, wants to have a chicken kickin’ intervention for me. He thinks it’s just plain wrong. Meanwhile, some of the other teachers have told me in confidence, that if I really need to kick a chicken (and I really do) they can make happen. I understand that some may construe this as a cruelty to animals. But if I were a chicken (a really overweight yellow one with skinny legs and thick feathers) it’s how I would want to go. Also, I understand it’s not like the eighties when people could go around kicking chickens all the time with no thought of Bird Flu or a lawsuit, so I’ll be picking my chickens carefully. (In a day or two I will have quick reviews of Nanjing , Suzhou and Shanghai that will be as equally informative)

This past weekend I went to the the small hamlet of Baoting. It’s in the southern part of the island, not too far outside of Sanya. Baoting is the name of the county and its chief town. Four of us, three Americans and one Chinese education official, went down that way to hold lectures for some Li Minority English teachers.

I have never really considered myself a small town person; Asheville, N.C., my hometown, is perfectly middle-sized. Here in Hainan, the small towns I’ve seen consist of a one main street slicing through the middle of town, several small narrow streets intersecting Main street and ending abruptly within five kilometers in any direction, and a square or park in front of the government building in the center of town. The design and simplicity of these towns give me heart. I imagine I could parachute into any small village in the world and feel my way out of town by locating the town square and walking down the main street.

Looking down on Baoting is Seven-Fairies Mountain. It’s a striking, many-peaked mountain that is visible from anywhere in the town. To me, it looks a bit like the many spiked back of some sort of dinosaur. It used to be named Seven-Fingers Mountain, but not too long ago, the powers that be decided that having a mountain named after a hand with too many digits didn’t reflect favorably the town’s many normal handed residents. Even this weekend, as I talked about hiking the mountain with the teachers half of them still referred to the mountain as Seven-Fingers Mountain. In Chinese folklore, a Chinese god had seven strikingly beautiful fairy daughters. I have been told telling a girl that she is as beautiful as Seven-Fairies is still a fairly common expression. I have yet to try this compliment out, but I’ve filed it way. Oh yes, I have.

As we drive up to the middle school and parked, we are met with dozens of students who want to get a look at the foreigners. Some of them had never seen a white person in real life. Sorry, I’ve ruined it for all of you. We are there to talk to the teachers, but they begin to beg Mr. Zhu, the education official, to let them sit in on the lectures. Thankfully, he relents. Students’ wanting to be taught is not an everyday occurrence even in Haikou. While we are comparing, Haikou has three KFCs, one McDonalds, and a TCBY. Baoting has a mountain named after beautiful fairies, freshly grown green tea, and water buffalos that wander drunkenly down the middle of Main Street. Where would you rather live? As I’m taking all this in, I’m wondering how I can move here. Even Mr. Zhu is struck by the beautiful simplicity of this town. “In the countryside, people live the pure life,” he says.

So we split up the teachers and students into three groups and begin to lecture them about English teaching methods and about the Christmas holidays. We have two hours, so I try to be as thorough as I can on the holiday’s part. I even explain Kwanza and Hanukah. Unfortunately people in Baoting now think the menorah is what goes on top of the Christmas tree last. Sorry!

I also talk about the commercialism that is plaguing the Christmas season lately. The idea of people stressing themselves out by shopping and buying too many presents for each other sounded strange to these teachers. How can you spend more money than you have? I can see the discussion veering into the nasty mine-field labeled “My Credit History,” so I begin to talk to them about teaching English.

Having taught 100 Li/Miao minority teachers in Baisha for a month this past summer, I understand what these teachers are up against. They have at least fifty students in each class. These students already have a dozen other subjects including two sciences and two maths. The teachers’ first job is to finish their textbooks. There is not enough time to cover all the material or practice oral English. Most students here in the countryside simply don’t see the value of English. If you spend most of your free time helping your parents hand-plant rice, you have never even seen a native English teacher in real life, and you are forced to spend all your class time writing difficult English words in a thick, daunting textbook; would you? I can’t change this. The teachers can’t change it.

I really think my job is to encourage them. So I give them a grand pep talk. I tell them that even in America teachers are overworked and underpaid too. Teaching is an investment. One child sees your passion for English. He or she learns it well, pursues it, goes to college, and makes Baoting proud. You can say it’s because you cared so much. I mean this, but it sounds cheesy as I say it. Any second now I’m going to tell them that “teach a man to fish” rubbish and then I’m going to have throw myself off the fourth story balcony. I stop abruptly and ask them to tell me about their lives as teachers. They do.

I let them complain. I shake my head at their stories. I have heard all this before. They have it rough. Their teaching material is geared towards passing tests and not really learning the material. Unlike this school in the middle of Baoting which has electricity, running water, new buildings, and shiny new basketball goals; many of them work in rustic settings far away from the central township. Some of these teachers teach in schools so remote you need a day to get there by foot after you’ve parked your car near a river and swam across. Many teachers live at these remote schools during the week. They grade papers by gas light, sleep on tiny wood bunks, and eat whatever the farmers bring them as tuition. It’s a big sacrifice. I nod as if I know what it’s like to be them. I don’t though. I can honestly only tell them I’m glad that somebody has the character to keep teaching against all these odds. I shake their hands and thank them for being good teachers. They blush and protest. They lower their heads and then try to thank me for giving up a couple days to talk to them.

Later about sixty teachers and twenty students are all singing The First Noel together. Outside, palm trees are swaying softly and tenderly in unison. Back inside, voices are echoing down those gray halls at the Baoting Number 1 Middle School. They all have copied the song down so they can teach it to their students later.

“They like to sing, but we usually don’t have time,” I’m told. I always found the song a little boring and stiff myself—until now. I am here in Hainan to write educational grant proposals and educational materials for the Li and Miao people. Sometimes, sitting in my office in Haikou, I forget what the teachers look like. They are more than just bleak numbers and poor statistics. They are these beautiful, conscientious teachers who worry because their students aren’t getting better at English. And they are earnestly and innocently singing a Christmas song because maybe their students will like it.

So I’m recharged and determined as we are later driving out of town and back to Haikou. The windows are cracked and the air is so fresh and cool that I want stick my head out like a dog. Maybe someday I’ll come back here and live and teach; maybe it will be the “simple, pure life.” Or maybe it will be the hardest, most challenging task I could ever attempt. Most likely, I will never find out. We drive towards Haikou, and the Seven Fairies fade away.

The only elevator on our entire college campus is located in the Administration Building. My office is on the eighth floor of this building. Here in Hainan everyone is required, nay forced, to take a two hour after lunch nap (something I will try to export to America). So, on the average I ride the elevator four times a day. If I forgot something in my room that figure surges up to six. Well you get the idea. I have become somewhat of an “elevator regular.”

In America, riding the elevator successfully requires nothing more than a rudimentary grasp of the concept of up and down and a cursory knowledge of counting numbers. In China, things are a bit more complicated. Please familiarize yourself with these five elements before embarking on the journey to eighth floor.

1. Don’t Kick the Elevator in Anger. Because this elevator is the only elevator on a campus full of large buildings, there are some who aren’t enthusiastic about it. These people are known as college students. They are not supposed to ride the elevator even though they do (more about that later). The elevator is reserved for the bourgeoisie, land-owning ruling class at the school—the administration. In the past, the students have shown their displeasure with this emblem of laziness and status by kicking the “up” button on the first floor. Evidently their kicks were accurate, repeated, and successful because they were able to render the elevator controls useless. The school administration never caught these elevator assailants; but after they repaired the elevator, they countered with a two bits elevator security to gain upper hand in the War of the Elevator: 1.) they installed a locked metal box that covers the “up” button after work and during the lunch siesta. 2.) they hired the Elevator Lady–which brings me to my next point.

2. Being the Elevator Lady Means You Get Your Own Office. I can see the employment ad in the newspaper: “Elevator person needed. Experience at pushing the “up” button on an elevator is a must. The claustrophobic need not apply.” The Elevator Lady has her own office on the first floor with a good view of the elevator. Her job, as far as I can tell, consists of pushing the “up” button, holding the elevator for people, making sure students don’t ride the elevator, keeping the air in the elevator fresh, and mopping the elevator. The Elevator Lady also happens to be one of the most fashionable people on campus. She is attractive in a superior, graceful way. She is always sporting new outfits, and complimenting others on their sense of style. She is also the constant source of campus gossip. Given her job, she has an intimate knowledge of campus ins and outs. She is quick to nudge then whisper to anyone who will listen. Here is a brief sample. “The young foreigner shaved his head. Two-words. Cue ball. What was he thinking? Wasn’t he getting stared at enough? I wish he would spill coffee in my elevator one more time. I wish he would; he’ll be walking to the eighth floor with the students.” Most importantly though, the Elevator Lady knows elevator status(who should get on and off first).

3. Know Your Elevator Status. Lowly English teacher? Sixth-floor janitor? Want to get off the elevator? Not so fast. You get off last. Chairman of the Board? Dean of Students? You always get on and off the elevator first. Because of the concept of giving and saving face, riding the elevator can cause ulcers here in China. Once in the elevator, everybody looks around trying to decide where they belong on the elevator food chain. They are thinking. Do I go after the math teacher but before the Copy Machine lady? But wait, the copy machine lady is the Chief of Security’s sister. I owe the Chief of Security a favor. It can get really, really complicated very quickly. I try to remedy this by always getting off the elevator last, but that’s not foolproof because I am the “foreign guest.” So they motion for me to go first. I motion back for them to go. We repeat our gestures. The Chairman of the Board gets impatient, so I say OK and start to get off the elevator, but it’s too late. The doors have closed, and now we have to ride all the way to the ninth floor in embarrassed silence. Once at the ninth floor, we start over. “Give me face. No, no please. Give me face.” To any administrators who might be reading this, I just want to get off the friggin’ elevator. I don’t care who gets off first. Why do these things have to be so hard?

4. Know How to make the “Elevator Noise.” The elevator noise is probably my favorite thing about riding our elevator. It happens almost every morning. Here’s how. A bunch of people need to get on the elevator, so the “door open” button is pushed to make sure everybody gets on without the elevator door closing on them (unlike most elevators, this one will close on you, and it hurts). So the “door open” button is politely pushed (usually by the Elevator Lady) about twenty times until everybody gets on and makes their floor selection. After this someone will push the “door close” button. Nothing happens. At this precise moment everybody on the elevator is required to make the exact same noise. It sounds something like “arooohua?” It starts low and has a high pitched questioning ending. Without fail everybody makes this noise when the door doesn’t close right away because somebody has pushed the “door open” button a bunch of times like it’s their job (which…it probably is). I don’t know why this is so hard to figure out, but I hope nobody figures it out. It’s fun. Finally after two or three seconds, the door closes; and everybody is momentarily relieved before they begin looking around trying to calculate their place in the ever changing elevator hierarchy.

5. Illegal Elevator Use is Implicitly Encouraged. Disgruntled student? Have something to prove? Late to your class on the fifth floor? Want to gain instant respect? Ride the elevator anyway. Despite the presence of the Elevator Lady this can be accomplished using one of three different methods. 1.) Pose as a teacher. If you look really young for your age this won’t work. But if you have a black nylon briefcase and walk erect, it’s easy. 2.) Catch the Elevator on the next floor. The Elevator Lady can’t be everywhere. She only can stop people from riding up from the first floor. But what about the next floor up? Plus all the administrators and teachers think it clever when students circumvent the Elevator Lady (this is actually true, I always expect to see angry stares when students get on the elevator, but the reverse is true. In China, the little guy getting it over on The Man is the funniest thing in the world.) 3.) Make a break for it. Wait near the elevator on first floor. Just as the elevator is closing, quickly squeeze past the Elevator Lady, her protests, and the closing doors. This will earn you the most respect with other elevator riders—high-fives all around. They will probably even motion you off first when you reach your floor.