When I ask the young woman about her family, there is no mention of siblings. I've heard that the terms aunt and uncle are disappearing from the Chinese language due to the one child government policy. She tells me that her father is a retired engineer and that her mother has always stayed at home.
She tells me she will see her "friend" when she arrives in Beijing. When I ask if this friend is a "boyfriend, " she giggles and giggles, saying she has recently broken up with a boyfriend in Ohio. She continues to smile easily, as she eats the Oreo cookies she likes very much. After talking for a couple hours,we finally get around to exchanging names. She is Chi Hu. The all-politeness that breeds on airplane aisles has transformed into an exchange where our faces are only inches apart. The personal space bubble seems much smaller here, and I immediately adopt this closeness, savoring the intimacy this provides, even between strangers that have become new friends.
Everything transformed once we spoke our names. Chi is the last child in her family and she begins to talk about her siblings. She has 4 elder sisters and one elder brother, as the government's one-child policy began just after she was born. She feels sad for single children in China for they are lonely, spoiled by their parents, and don't learn cooperation in sharing.
When I ask her is she plans to have a child (I almost said children), she tells me, "Of course." many couples to to America to have a second child, she says. Chi has just left her boyfriend in Ohio because he wanted to stay in America and she wanted to return to China. She's lost weight and has had no appetite for food -- and her mother worries about her, long-distance, in her own way. Chi says her friendsat home find it very unusual that she has lost weight in America. "Everyone who goes to America gets fat, " she says -- and she puts her hands to her cheeks and puffs them outward, creating a bloated face from all the fats and sugars in American food.
Chi tells me that she is searching for her "Mr. Right", that she wants to marry at 27 and have a child at 29. She seems confident that she will be able to accomplish this time table. I show Chi my photo album, which I have compiled for my students in China. She asks to hold several pictures individually, holding them closer to her eyes. The black and white photo of Alicia, Audrey, Annelise, and Allegra draped on the couch, like dreaming angels, reminds her of a painting. She also likes the colorful picture of Annelise and Allegra running in the sunflower field. She tells me that they look like "little princesses - all in white".
We part company for different connecting flights from Tokyo. Mine is a two hour layover. I expected Narita to be crowded with fleet-footed humanity, but I was surprised by the subdued quiet of the place. The laughter and talking volume of me and my traveling companions seemed, as a result, rather loud and out of place.
We three teachers who are on the Detroit-Tokyo flight together (Pam, LouAnn, and I ) find a specialty store filled with origami art. A few of my 8th graders last year would occasionally make origami flowers for me out of their candy wrappers from lunch. This store, however, had whole villages made of origami designs -- from the flowers to the people to the fireworks. There was even a dinosaur scene, which my daughter Allegra would have loved.The toilets are especially fascinating to me and offer several options -- from those with bidets to squatters. All were immaculately clean, as my mother would say. There were buttons attached to the toilets that play music or flushing sounds. Not sure if these were meant to conceal bodily sounds, but the opportunities for potential bathroom entertainment seemed limited only by one's imagination.The waste receptacles are divided neatly into aluminum, plastics, paper, etc... Recycling seems to be a very natural and enforced part of life here.
It is very warm in the airport, as the air-conditioning is not kept at the indoor chill we are accustomed to in the States. We need refreshment to cool down, so we settle on mango juice on ice. I even stretch out the crunching on the ice to help maintain the coolness. The juice, however, soon makes my stomach cramp and rumble, and I am off to another bathroom adventure. Nancy, my teaching partner, who we have met up with at Narita, reminds me that we should avoid unbottled juices and water - as well as avoiding ice. Apparently the juice dispensers aren't necessarily cleaned daily and sometimes the bacteria builds up. Ice is sometimes made from untreated water.
And so it goes...
I've had my contact lenses in for over 24 hours now so my eyes are dry and in need of rest. More later from Shanghai...
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