The Last Days of Daguanghua

We had looked forward to leaving Daguanghua for a while; it seems like once we hit the 8 month point, the dorm room we'd been living in started to get smaller and smaller. Also, some of our "friends" at the school were becoming more ambivalent about our presence on campus. The tea was cold when we were leaving, indeed. We spent the last month and a half locked up in our room, taking advantage of 2 Chinese websites that allow us to stay up-to-date with all the popular movies and tv shows from back home. We sort of skated through our classes, counting down the days until we got to leave Daguanghua, to enter a bigger city with less of an opportunity to become bored.

We gave our "final exams"; no one was allowed a score lower than 80% even though some of the kids legitimately got zeroes. We cleaned out our desks and started packing. The school wanted us to leave Daguanghua on the same day that the other Chinese teachers were leaving campus, but it wouldn't have worked out logistically. They thought they could just pay us one morning and we could magically be on a plane out of town that afternoon. So ultimately we got to stick around a few more days, but the trade off was that the school couldn't guarantee us a van to take us to the airport.

The last week before we actually left was incredibly frustrating, as it seemed that all of those little things that can be really annoying about China and Chinese people culminated with trips to the post office, the bank and western union (with a little campus bullshit thrown in for good measure!). I don't think I've ever wasted more time standing around as I did that week. One day we were scheduled to have a meeting with the finance office woman at 3:00, and she didn't show up to the office until 4:15. Unfortunately, she's the only woman on campus who seems to be allowed to hand out money; the three other dudes in the office just collect money. Go figure.

The next day we spent two hours at the big post office mailing summer clothes and other random stuff up to Harbin so we wouldn't have to deal with it on the plane. If there's one thing to be learned about dealing with China Post, it's that you should always be persistent; these women went through all our crap, telling us "no, you can't send this" every time they fished something out of a bag or a box. They were perplexed by the deodorant and tampons, and luckily for us, all of the other patrons got to look at our "crazy foreigner stuff" on display. Yippee! They tried to tell Rory he couldn't mail his keyboard, and finally they got someone on the phone to speak to Rory in English. Rory had to explain what deodorant is and why he didn't care if his keyboard was insured or not. Then the big problem was that we didn't have our new address in Han zi (Chinese characters). So that was fun, too. Ultimately we mailed everything we walked in with, though. So there, China Post.

The next day it was back to the finance office, where we were told to meet the finance lady again; she also happens to be the wife of school's owner, and she's the sister of the evil, bitchy human resource woman. This time we waited for an hour and a half. An older man kept us company, though, and we were able to hold our own in conversation. Well, Rory was, anyway. My least favorite thing about being in China is the fact that no one listens to me. I have a hunch that it is because I'm a woman, but it makes me quite angry. I would say something and get absolutely no response from the old man. Two seconds later, Rory would repeat what I said, and the old man acted like it was the most intelligent thing he'd ever heard. And we were saying it the same way.

The exact same thing happened the next day at western union. I've sent money home every month that I've been here, and even though it's always a pain in the ass, things usually get communicated correctly, and magically the money gets wired back home. So I was talking to the woman and showing her my receipt for the month before, telling her that everything was the same except the dollar amount. She was a little thrown off by my dad's account number versus the bank's routing number. I told her that either would work fine, and even though she was completely competent, one of the other bank tellers came over to create a big problem. She grabbed the western union forms and started speaking Chinese really quickly, pointing at the two numbers, asking me "do you understand? Do you understand this?". I told her again that it didn't matter, but she was convinced that I didn't understand what she was saying. I showed her the previous two months' receipts (one using my dad's account number and the other the routing number). I kept telling her I understood and that it didn't matter. She started laughing at me and then looked over my shoulder to Rory, like he could magically fix everything. I told her--and this is all in Chinese, by the way--"don't look at him. I understand you when you speak. The numbers don't matter." Rory, fully aware that this is by far my biggest issue in China, went and sat down. The woman gave up, and I went back to dealing with the original teller. The upside of the whole experience, though, was the knowledge that that was the last time we would ever have to deal with western union in Weihai. Thank god.

Our final evening in Weihai was nothing special. We ate at a hotpot restaurant by the beach, and afterwards we walked down to look at the water one last time before leaving. As we were walking up the 225 stairs at Daguanghua, we rejoiced because we knew we'd never have to walk those stairs again. We spent an hour in Rebecca's room with her and her daughter, Rose. Rose is one of my favorite little people. We went and surprise visited her at her school, and she was so shy around her classmates. But in Rebecca's dorm room, Rose was quite the little ham, the complete opposite of Rebecca, who always seems shy and mild-mannered. I have some good videos and photos from that night.

Rebecca insisted that she see us off in the morning, even though we had arranged a van on our own to pick us up at 6:30. Everyone seemed shocked that we were able to do such a crucial task on our own, but after living out in the middle of nowhere for damn near a year, we can pretty much hold our own when it comes to things like that. Next morning, bright and early, we hopped in the van, loaded up with all our crap (that everyone seemed convinced would never make it on the plane), and headed out the campus gates, away from Zhangcun and down the Yanwei expressway. I didn't feel sad about leaving the school. Perhaps a little sad about leaving Weihai, but I knew that things were just going to be easier in Harbin, eight times larger than our little coastal town.