by Jenny N. Smith
On flight HU 7244, I flipped through the pages of the airline magazine and came across a column entitled “生命里就需要一座山”, which roughly translates into “Everyone should have a mountain in their life”. The headline lingered with me and I pondered its philosophical implications throughout the flight but by the time the plane lowered its landing gear over Guangzhou, I disagreed: it wasn’t a mountain that everyone should have in their life, but an ocean.
I was just returning from my ocean, or more my two oceans, the Bohai and the Yellow Sea that embrace my Chinese hometown on the Liaodong Peninsula in the country’s Northeast (‘Dongbei’).
Dalian was gray and cold. It had taken on its typical winter hibernation impression: sleepy, empty and bleak. At nine PM sharp, the downtown department stores close and everyone goes home unless they decide to pick up a late snack at McDonald’s where they talk and sit until it closes early, too. After that, the streets fall quiet…and the faint memory of the South’s busy night markets sweeps in with the chilly wind. I have lived in Dalian, I know its seasons all too well; all those DVDs it takes before the last fogs lift to reveal a new but short spring, how it comes alive in the summer when the chubby tourists and the empty bottles line the scruffy, stony beaches and the invigorating autumn when the trees bear rainbow leaves and Trust Mart plastic bags.>
This time, I didn’t join the crowds to the bus stations after the stores closed for the day to take the 406 home; I walked to my hotel room. Being a guest in what once was home; it was an estranging new feeling for me. However there was solace in the fact that Dalian had developed at a slower pace than the Big Cities; of course new buildings were on the rise and it was furthering its reputation as ‘Bangalore of China’, a global IT hub, but it was still the same Dalian. Surprisingly, the part of town that had undergone the greatest change was the one I had roamed, the once charmingly shabby Heishijiao. ‘Stinky Street’ with its unruly array of shops and street vendors had disappeared. It was the place where you could either pick up a quick scorpion or silkworm skewer on a brave day or sit for hours at a hot pot meal on a free day. That was the street where we bought our DVDs, where the university students and foreign English teachers strolled along on the way to and from the campuses. Where the motorcycle taxis waited decorated with fake fur, flashing strings of light bulbs and blaring loudspeakers. All that is gone now. But our favorite pizza place, the one that you don’t know about until a long-term expat initiates you into its secret location, that is still there, and business has finally picked up for them.
Everything else blended perfectly into my memories: the fresh air that invites you to walk for hours, the friendly taxi drivers who were my first Mandarin teachers, the ignorant shop keepers shouting out to you in Russian, the pretty female police officers in their tight leather suits successfully bringing the rush hour traffic to a halt, the man with the big grin selling the city map on the roadside, the famous “I-55” café with their rich chocolate cake, the grey bantam donkey pulling the cart with his sleeping master along Huangpu Lu, the women in stylish clothes and the tall handsome men with their briefcases, reasonable prices and foreigner-friendly sizes, fresh shrimp, the sculptures of dancers and little houses with character that the Japanese had left behind on Qiqi street, the old men in blue uniforms showing off their songbirds in narrow wicker cages on Erqi Guangchang, and the Zhongshan temple where everyone greets you with “Amituofo!”.
p> And then there were the familiar names including the odd-sounding “Zhoushuizi” airport. Sun Yang as always picked me up with his father’s car, which had turned from a little white Toyota into a huge black Buick. Wang Xiaoping ordered too many dishes of delicious Dongbei food for the two of us, my former landlord and his wife forgot to bring along the baby that I was eager to finally meet as it was born after I had left, my former General Manager Christina was in her usual mad rush so I visited her at work, many of my old Chinese colleagues were still at the Company and the Russian anatomists Eduard and Volodja were cracking jokes at my expense just like in good old times. I enjoyed a relaxed beer at the Tinwhistle Pub with my Kirgese friend Nurlan and shared some tears with Yin Cong during a heartfelt talk over spaghetti. Wang He and his girlfriend invited me to the restaurant that is always filled with its neighbor’s coal smoke, and Lu Zhanbin and I debated the least traumatizing way to raise a child trilingually. Ruth can still always be found at Starbucks, where we sipped on free samples as she got me updated on the city’s growing expat scene. I watched the Friday movie with Liu Zhiyang, stopped by to see our favorite tailor Mr. Yin, and when I slipped onto the back seat of a taxi I discovered, “Mr. Zhang, it’s you!” – “Jenny! Ni hui lai le! (You’re back!)
Throughout the entire week, I never really saw the ocean. A heavy wall of fog guarded us from the waveless sea. But I knew it was there. And that was all that I needed to know. In my mind I often stood at the pier, holding out the return ticket into the white void and then letting it go. I watched it lift off and drift, accompanied by the seagulls (which, I could swear, spoke Russian, too), into the rough hands of a Dongbei fisherman who would decide to try his luck in a Houjie factory.
But I knew I couldn’t stay;
I had a column to write. Jenny N. Smith, 29 years old, was born and raised in Germany by a German mother and an American dad. She studied in the US, was shaped in China("for the better or worse I'm not quite sure ;-").
Now she works as journalist and graphic designer in China's 'Dodge City' Dongguan, which she nicknamed "Doggone". She wants to return to Dalian!
curiousgirl
