My first week in China
The next few days are a blur of adjusting my body clock to China time. The first time I woke up in my unheated apartment, it was still dark. I still had my watch set to Colorado time and I could not focus enough to figure out the difference. I got up and to get warm, I started to unpack my suitcases and organize my possessions in the wonderful wall of cabinets and closets that lined my bedroom. This much space would normally be needed by an American at home, but I didn’t have enough belongs to start to fill it. I decided to take all the room I wanted to organize the things I had.
Yang had bought some food for me, including bananas, instant coffee and some packages of what she called “baby cookies.” It turned out that I usually liked foods the Chinese had for their babies or children. After a short time, I went back to sleep, getting up every few hours to use the bathroom, eat something and/or unpack more of my things. I never had in my entire life so few items to organize in so much space, so I took great care and pleasure in organizing things like I never had before.
I could tell that the daylight of my first day had passed and it was getting dark. I got dressed for a visit from Yang. I was very surprised when it wasn’t Yang knocking at my door, but the Director of the Foreign Language Teaching Section with a welcoming gift of famous Hangzhou tea. We had only spoken a few sentences when Yang arrived to take me out for dinner. I couldn’t believe that she took me to an open-air restaurant for a big bowl of noodles with small pieces of chicken and, I think, spinach. I thought that this was crazy to be sitting outside. Didn’t anyone like heat? Why would any person in their right mind sit outside and eat when it was so cold. I was freezing, but I appreciated having the warm food in my stomach. I was very confused. After we walked back to my apartment Yang was able to get the air-conditioner to produce a little heat. She tried to explain how it worked and what I needed to do. I didn’t care. I just wanted to return to my great escape— sleep. She was barely out the door and I went right to bed and to sleep. I hoped that I would wake up in a warm American home and be amazed at my nightmare of being so cold in China.
Also during that day I figured out the time difference between my watch and China. I made a chart for the times in the US because I had parents at Eastern Standard Time, a son at Mountain Time and my daughter at Pacific Time. I woke up around 1 AM and could not go back to sleep since it was daytime in the US. I decided to re-arrange the furniture in my two rooms. I wanted the bed closer to the heat source and chairs in the living room where people could sit and visit. I finally went back to sleep until two young teachers came in the morning to take me to the bank and post office.
The problem was that it was raining very hard and I was still so cold that I could not handle adding getting wet. I don’t think that I actually had proper rain-gear for such a downpour. Rain like this in Colorado would have caused flash flooding and no one would go outside. We waited for quite some time without a change in the rain and decided to cancel the trip. But, it was also their responsibility to get something for me to eat. They ordered Chinese fast-food delivery. That seemed pretty nice and so modern. As soon as they left, I had a nap until Yang arrived with dumplings for me for dinner. I appreciated it so much that I did not have to go out on such a cold and wet evening. I wondered how people ate in the rain in an open-air restaurant, but I did not want to find out.