or since. It was a frozen mist. As the sun rose we found the whole air glittering with brilliant particles sparkling in the rays of the sun—and the mist had encrusted everything, all the trunks of the trees and all the delicate tracery of their outlines, with a coating like hoar frost. The earth, the trees, and everything in the scene was glistening white, and the whole air was sparkling in the sunlight. It lasted but a short time, for as the sun rose the mist melted away, but while it could be seen we seemed to be in a very fairyland.”
A century later the description held.
The bus passed a building site for an apartment complex named Warm City. In English, its billboard said: IF WHITE AMERICA TOLD THE TRUTH ONE DAY ITS WORLD WOULD FALL APART . That’s the title of a song by the Welsh rock group the Manic Street Preachers. How did it end up here? And why would anyone buy an apartment near the shiny, steaming spires of Jilin Ethanol? Its billboard promised CLEAN ENERGY FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT. Which ad told the lie?
Next came a Purina feed factory, then a Wahaha brand mineral water plant. At a village named Lower Frog, the bus, sagging on its axles, climbed over the new high-speed railroad tracks, and then the view showed open fields. We had crossed the line from industry to agriculture, from urban to rural. The bus passengers visibly relaxed as after take-off, when an airplane levels and the FASTEN SEATBELT sign chimes off with a ding!
An old man sitting beside his grandson, said, “Tell Teacher Plumblossom all the English words you know.”
“Banana!” the plump boy yelled. “Apple!”
“If he can eat it, he knows how to say it,” the grandfather said proudly.
“Hamburger!” the boy yelled. “Pizza! KFC!”
The other passengers laughed. The grandfather recognized me, but some of the other riders did not. The grandfather explained to them: “He married a woman from here, but she left for work.” Passengers whom I had never met nodded empathetically. We were like many rural households, they said: one spouse became a migrant worker, leaving the other behind.
An old saying holds that if you go three miles from home, you are in another land, but the distance was shorter for a foreigner. Outside Wasteland, people stared at me with friendly, cautious curiosity, the way you might if a kangaroo joined your commute.
I read that the comedian Steve Martin used to hand autograph seekers a signed name card that confirmed the person had met Steve Martin and found him to be “warm, polite, intelligent and funny.” At times—like on this bus—I wished I had a similar card to present that would answer the usual questions strangers asked of me, in this order:
I am an American .
I have been in China a long time .
I was born in the Year of the Rat . I am 1 . 86 meters tall.
I do not have a salary. I am a writer and volunteer teacher .
Chinese is not hard . It is easier to learn than English .
Yes, I can use chopsticks. We eat Chinese food in
America, too. But often it is expensive and orange .
On rare occasions someone started me off with a curveball: a gruff construction worker, hard hat in hand, once asked if anyone had ever told me that my beard was beautiful; a gentleman in a business suit standing on a country lane wondered if morality was more important than wisdom.
Saying that I was American always brought a smile; regardless of political ups and downs, that reaction had not changed since I first arrived in China in 1995 . Though sometimes—when interrupted mid-slurp over noodles, or facing a drunkard—I tired of giving honest replies that would only lead to more questions. I am from Mars, I would say. What are chopsticks? I just started learning Chinese yesterday—what a breeze! Kids caught on faster than adults; sarcasm, via movies and the Internet, was a recent American import.
Ms. Guan pulled a child onto her lap. She asked me to guess his age, and I—forgetting the Inverse
A century later the description held.
The bus passed a building site for an apartment complex named Warm City. In English, its billboard said: IF WHITE AMERICA TOLD THE TRUTH ONE DAY ITS WORLD WOULD FALL APART . That’s the title of a song by the Welsh rock group the Manic Street Preachers. How did it end up here? And why would anyone buy an apartment near the shiny, steaming spires of Jilin Ethanol? Its billboard promised CLEAN ENERGY FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT. Which ad told the lie?
Next came a Purina feed factory, then a Wahaha brand mineral water plant. At a village named Lower Frog, the bus, sagging on its axles, climbed over the new high-speed railroad tracks, and then the view showed open fields. We had crossed the line from industry to agriculture, from urban to rural. The bus passengers visibly relaxed as after take-off, when an airplane levels and the FASTEN SEATBELT sign chimes off with a ding!
An old man sitting beside his grandson, said, “Tell Teacher Plumblossom all the English words you know.”
“Banana!” the plump boy yelled. “Apple!”
“If he can eat it, he knows how to say it,” the grandfather said proudly.
“Hamburger!” the boy yelled. “Pizza! KFC!”
The other passengers laughed. The grandfather recognized me, but some of the other riders did not. The grandfather explained to them: “He married a woman from here, but she left for work.” Passengers whom I had never met nodded empathetically. We were like many rural households, they said: one spouse became a migrant worker, leaving the other behind.
An old saying holds that if you go three miles from home, you are in another land, but the distance was shorter for a foreigner. Outside Wasteland, people stared at me with friendly, cautious curiosity, the way you might if a kangaroo joined your commute.
I read that the comedian Steve Martin used to hand autograph seekers a signed name card that confirmed the person had met Steve Martin and found him to be “warm, polite, intelligent and funny.” At times—like on this bus—I wished I had a similar card to present that would answer the usual questions strangers asked of me, in this order:
I am an American .
I have been in China a long time .
I was born in the Year of the Rat . I am 1 . 86 meters tall.
I do not have a salary. I am a writer and volunteer teacher .
Chinese is not hard . It is easier to learn than English .
Yes, I can use chopsticks. We eat Chinese food in
America, too. But often it is expensive and orange .
On rare occasions someone started me off with a curveball: a gruff construction worker, hard hat in hand, once asked if anyone had ever told me that my beard was beautiful; a gentleman in a business suit standing on a country lane wondered if morality was more important than wisdom.
Saying that I was American always brought a smile; regardless of political ups and downs, that reaction had not changed since I first arrived in China in 1995 . Though sometimes—when interrupted mid-slurp over noodles, or facing a drunkard—I tired of giving honest replies that would only lead to more questions. I am from Mars, I would say. What are chopsticks? I just started learning Chinese yesterday—what a breeze! Kids caught on faster than adults; sarcasm, via movies and the Internet, was a recent American import.
Ms. Guan pulled a child onto her lap. She asked me to guess his age, and I—forgetting the Inverse
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