Jet Lag

May 9^th, 2011

I’m in Chongqing now, up earlier than expected, enjoying the chorus of birds outside my window, which grows in numbers with the brightening light. There is a certain ease that comes with the liminal haze of jet lag, a particular wandering of thought that is both aimless and exploratory within the ebb and flow of travel.

Why do birds sing with the onset of dawn? How did these winged creatures first learn their songs?

This is my first day typing two-handed, brace-free, since displacing a bone in my hand “figure skating” in the last days of winter. After some high-tech carpentry to repair the damage, I’m four weeks post-op and my fingers are ready to move. Writing is now therapy of a sort, stretching and strengthening the muscles and tendons that tightened and atrophied after weeks of casts and splints.

But the process is slow, as most things have been one-handed, and dawn has launched into morning since I typed that first paragraph, thinking of the birds. The grey light is now white, and the birds have nearly quieted, over-ridden by the music of humans issuing from loudspeakers lodged somewhere at the primary school beyond the walls of the university. “Unchained Melody” enters my world, shattering the haze, and though the tempo is languid the urgency of the words themselves, let alone the volume, are enough to awaken the entire campus: “oh my love my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch…”

I wince, thinking of a few home sick students, and I wonder how they will greet this invasion into their sleep-worlds—assuming most of them are still sleeping. They will likely bring humor to their processing of even this; in fact, all bets are they will crack me up. This is an adventurous and resilient crew and seems to be doing exceptionally well, despite Chongqing’s unseasonal heat upon our arrival (95 degrees Fahrenheit), the general disorientation of unfamiliar language and food, and the lingering jet lag.

We are starting our fifth day in China, having arrived first in Beijing, and today is our first full day in Chongqing. In Beijing we stayed at the North Garden Hotel in Wangfujing—a wealthy and developed shopping area within walking distance of Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. Our accommodations were comfortable in Beijing, but our days were packed. We had two full days to see what could of the city and we were selective in our activities.

Here are some high points from my time in Beijing:

Destination: Mutianyu, a more remote and wooded section of the Wall than the more popular Badaling. It’s about a two-hour drive to get there, but it’s worth the extra 30 minutes or so of road time. In addition to a lovely hike up the mountain before arriving at the Wall —traversing a corridor of gardens and then a wooded trail—this location has the additional appeal of 40 Yuan toboggan rides on the way down. Fun! (Even one-handed) I loved introducing our group to this place and watching them take it all in—their bodies and minds thoroughly engaged. I always worry about our Beijing experience being either too comfortable or too touristy, perhaps giving the students a warped sense of how many Chinese truly live. Yet I’m occasionally happily surprised at the genuine human interactions we manage to have interspersed with the more predictable commercial exchanges. One such encounter occurred when hiking along the top of the Wall when Paula (my dear friend and Dean of Social Work at Widener) and a handful of students and I stopped to buy water from a vendor camped out there. She was a woman who looked to be in her early 40s, though I suspect she was younger, but appeared more weathered by the circumstances of her life. She was selling Mao-styled green khaki visored hats with red stars on the fronts, and she herself was clothed in an ill-fitting PLA uniform. She lives in a small village down the hill—within sight of the spot we stood with her on the Wall, but still a good hour and a half walk each way. She makes this walk daily carrying her goods in a large pack on her back. Her livelihood depends on selling a hat or two or a pack of postcards or a bottle of water, and it was a slow day for tourists, yet there was no hard-sell at all involved in our brief exchange. Her focus and concern was on Paula’s and my splinted hands (Paula broke her wrist in a car accident two weeks before I broke my hand), and that we be careful not to injure ourselves further. She was also delighted with the fact that I could communicate with her in Chinese. We stood there for a while, chatting, before a few students and I bought some water from her and Paula and I both bought hats to shield our faces from the hot sun. Before we parted, we posed together for a picture.

I almost didn’t post this picture, vainly thinking it was an unflattering one of me: my hair disheveled, my tired smile a bit askew in my shadowed face. Yet something about this photo captures the tenderness of that brief encounter: two women (roughly the same age?), registering one another’s fatigue, expressing a mutual quiet concern, enjoying the brief connection we had found together.

Destination: Tiananmen Square. The group was well prepared for this outing, having taken a preparatory course on 20^th Century China with me prior to the trip (and having been very engaged with the material, which delighted me as their instructor). We had a lively discussion about the significance of Tiananmen as we circled up in the hotel lobby before walking a few long blocks to the Square itself. Little did I imagine (after our discussion of such weighty intellectual matters as the May Fourth Movement, the Cultural Revolution, Spring 1989 and Falungong) that the most memorable parts of this outing would be the wedding party we encountered en route to the Square, outside a lavish hotel (clearly hosted by a very wealthy and important family, the bride grandly emerged from a Rolls Royce). Well, that and chasing down and managing to enroll military guards for photos in the Square itself (I had no idea some of my Widener women students were this wild about men in uniform, or that these militarized security officers could turn to butter when confronted with friendly and fawning (and flirty?) students with cameras.)

Destination: Foot massage at Li Garden, 18 Jinyu Hutong (Goldfish Lane), Wangfujing. This was a recommendation from our hotel, when we asked for a reputable foot massage establishment in close proximity to our lodgings. The other faculty and I had the visited this venue the evening after our long walk at the Wall, and had been inspired to bring students back there after a long day of traversing Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. After introducing seven of my students to the basic principles of Chinese foot massage and the standard beliefs about its therapeutic value, the students and I had hour-long foot massages interspersed with lively conversations between the practitioners (who had been studying English with their manager—a graduate of Peking University) and the students. Many of the practitioners were from Henan Province, and the students had an opportunity to ask questions about the rural-to-urban migration experience. The practitioner who worked on me was a young woman who had migrated to the city, having left her one-year old son with her husband’s parents to be raised in the countryside. She and her husband both now live in the city and send money home to the family.

Despite these vast differences in background and privilege, the students found they shared a few things in common with these young people: a fascination with Lady Gaga (and the ability to sing her songs!), a respect for the Lakers, and a certain shyness about speaking in a foreign language that could be overcome with shared humor.

We’re laughing a lot, which is a wonderful thing to share with fellow travelers. And there is a certain clean edge that comes with humor: the ability to cut through one’s jet-lagged haze. I’m looking forward to hearing my students’ responses to this morning’s “Unchained Melody.”