A Typical Day

Friends have asked me, “So, what’s China like?” Hard question to answer, but I thought that I would chronicle what I did yesterday by way of answering.

Out of a decades-old habit, my eyes flick open at 5:45 am. I am lying on a Chinese mattress, which is actually something more like a box spring with a thin, flexible sheet of cardboard fitted over the top and covered by the thinnest of padding. I head for the bathroom and relieve myself into what is essentially a ceramic pan set into the floor. Then I head for my kitchen and put two scoops of delicious Yunnan roast into my coffee maker and pump a carafe full of water from my large water bottle.

Once the coffee is brewing, I head back to the bedroom and fire up my Mac. I always read the news and try to catch up with friends first thing in the morning. The New York Times, Twitter, and Facebook are always blocked by the Great Firewall of China, and lately so are the South China Morning Post (a Hong Kong daily) and many of the stories on CNN. Google and YouTube are also inaccessible, but I can still connect to Skype to chat with my family back home. If I really want to use sites that are blocked, I can log into my VPN, which routes all my internet activity through a server in Cyprus.

Though my apartment is in a new building, it has neither central heat nor air conditioning. It’s a little chilly this morning, but a hot shower under the heat lamps warms me up. I pull the clothes off the rack by the open window where they have spent the night drying in the evening breeze. Dryers are rare here. I get dressed and get ready to run my morning errands.

The first order of business is to head over to the electric company. Last night, I came home to find my bill taped to my door. This is the usual way that bills are delivered in a country where there is no real residential mail service.

I take the elevator down from my 18th floor apartment and walk up Yuxi’s main street. Auto traffic is heavier in the morning, the usual mix of Chinese and Japanese makes plus Volkswagens, Citroens, Fords, Buicks, Chevrolets and BMWs. The electric company’s offices are on the ground floor of a 30-story office building. I walk in, hand one of the tellers my bill and my Chinese debit card, and in a few minutes I’m heading out again. The bill came to ¥50 this month, about $8.00. That’s high compared to what my colleagues here pay, but I have an electric water heater, while my coworkers have solar.

I pass by a three-story mall I call The Ameriplex, since it is anchored by Walmart and McDonald’s. A sign informs me that there are now 392 Walmart outlets in China. Temptation overcomes me and I stop in to McDonald’s for a McNugget brunch. I order by pointing to a picture menu kept beside the cash registers. This is not primarily for foreigners (since there are so few of us here), but is used mostly by Chinese people who cannot read. My McNuggets are just as bland as they are back in the States and the fries are just as good. Other stores in The Ameriplex sell American and British brands, but not on the products we are used to in the States. Here, Jeep is a line of clothing, Zippo is a brand of flasks and knives, and Dunlop makes shoes and backpacks.

A narrow street runs behind The Ameriplex, and I head down that to where it intersects with an alley. It’s there that my seamstress conducts her business, right on the sidewalk. She is an old woman with a weathered peasant face and a nice smile. Her sewing machine is an ancient foot-powered Singer knock-off mounted in a handsome wooden table, which she lugs out here every day. Somehow I managed to put two holes in the back of the legs of a pair of trousers. I’d dropped them off with her the day before, and now they are ready, skillfully patched on the inside and cross-stitched on the outside. The charge for that and for resewing the button (which was hanging by a thread) was ¥8 (about $1.28).

I stop next at a new supermarket that has opened up in my neighborhood. For the most part, it resembles a small American supermarket, but the butcher counter is different. It’s essentially a table with large slabs of uncovered raw meat on it. Other meat sits openly on the floor atop a sheet of brown paper. Customers indicate what they want and the butcher cuts it on the spot. I have learned to avoid beef here. I stock up on food and dry goods and go check out. I have brought my own reusable bag; had I not, I would have been charged ¥1.5 (about $0.25) for a new one.

After putting away my groceries and neatening up my apartment, I again log on to the internet to continue the MOOCs I am taking through Coursera. I initially tried taking courses through EdX as well, but since it uses YouTube to deliver its video lectures, that’s not a good option for me here. All of the courses I am taking include an interactive map that shows the locations of each of the hundreds of students in the class. China’s map is depressingly bereft of the little pins that indicate a student, but other nearby countries are studded with them.

After being a student for a while, it’s time to go be a teacher. I change into my nice slacks, collared shirt and leather shoes and ride my bike to the school where I work. People here drive very slowly, even on the main streets, and I can usually keep up with the cars without difficulty.

Shane English School is located in a Youth Palace, a multi-use complex of buildings all dedicated to extracurricular activities for young people. There is a playground and a little amusement park, buildings dedicated to musical instruction, a pool, and a couple of language schools. Ours is the only one to employ native speakers—and it charges accordingly. I greet my British colleagues (I am the token American) and sit down at my desk to grade a stack of exams. Standards here are very high; it is a cause of much concern and discussion among the staff whenever a kid gets less than a 92%. Fortunately, in my class of 14 students, only two fall into that category.

After a staff meeting, I go in to teach one of my kindergarten classes. These students have already had a full day of regular school, but are now here at 6:20 for 100 minutes of English. The kids are fairly well-behaved tonight, which is a relief; last week some collective switch went off in their heads and caused them to be nothing short of wild. We review colors then dive into a vocabulary unit centered around clothing. I drill the students with flashcards and then set up games for them to play. They run to tag the flashcards I have posted up around the room. They throw sticky balls at the cards I have mounted on the board. They play hotseat, where the odd man out has to identify a clothing article before the game can continue. My Chinese teaching assistant is wonderful and does a thousand little things to ensure that the class runs as smoothly as possible.

Class ends and I have to clear the room quickly, because a group of older students is waiting to use the classroom. These students will be in class at our school until 10:00 at night. Chinese students work very long and hard.

I ride back home and take the bike up in the elevator with me. After cooking myself an impromptu chicken fried rice on my single-burner stove, I sit down to eat, answer a few emails, and work on some writing projects.

I click the lights out at about 11:00 and fall asleep listening to a lecture on iTunes about the early middle ages.