(Guiyang, Guizhou 1986-90) The “peasant” children, as they were called, won my heart. Waist high in stature and clod in floppy unlaced shoes, they paraded around campus, prancing about in their rolled up army fatigues with sleeves that drooped to their knees. Although uneducated, they showed all the signs of ingenuity—prodigies of the American “Spanky and his gang!”With the advent of every new day, they came up with a striking new invention: tops spun to the crack of a whip, metal rings wheeled with iron rods, playing cards flipped by a smack of the hand on the ground after sealing a bet.
The barrier between us seemed insuperable. From a distance, the kids gustily shouted: “Kallo” (presumably to be interpreted as ‘hello’) and “Lo!” for ‘No’. One time, a red-blooded toddler breezed by me. Faking a limp, he happily shouted, “Bye-bye! Bye-bye!”[1] Onlooking students split with laughter.
I went to all lengths in striking up a conversation with the lads. With nervous giggles, they just prodded one another with their elbows, which was their cue to “cut and run.” After all, they had never seen a foreigner before!
But the bottom line was that hostilities had put an irreparable rift between peasants and teachers. An ever-expanding economy favored the social mobility of farmers, who vaunted their accumulated wealth in newly constructed homes that were heralded by thousands of firecrackers set off round-the-clock. Locked into the same low salary, teachers were behoved to dwell in outdated blocks of apartment complexes for life.Consciously swimming against the tide, I did all I knew in showing as little partiality as possible to anyone and as much interest as possible in everyone, willing to take the risk that, in socializing with the “outcasts,” I would be classified among them.
Whatever the cost, I unabashedly set out to touch shoulders with the so-called “peasants.” My first hurdle in assimilating to their lifestyle was to grasp the local dialect, which got me an instant “in” with the “commoners” even when I butchered it. Since no school taught the local vernacular, I had to find an authentic classroom somewhere nearby.
Creatively wallpapered with crinkled newspapers and carpeted with nature’s dirt floor, “mamma’s” noodle house was my favorite greasy spoon. She was a heavyset peasant woman whose menu featured one speciality of the day—noodle soup with a heaping glob of pork fat, spiked with red hot pepper of the highest degree.Her family and friends took a liking to me right off the bat. Mamma’s soup house was neutral ground for unhampered intercourse with society. Plus, the food shacks that mamma and others ran had an alluring affect on me. Oh! And with their help, I did master the dialect!
[1] The phrase “băi băi” in Chinese means ‘to walk with a limp’!
Photos Copyright Men's Fashion by Francesco.
