Reflections on a China Sojourn

Fifteen students and six faculty members traveled to China for a 15-day study tour in May. Highlights of the trip included a visit to the Summer Palace, the largest and best-preserved royal garden in China. Photo courtesy of Andrea Lopez

Beijing, where our Susquehanna tour group of 15 students and six faculty land, lies on the same latitude as Pennsylvania, yet the temperature on May 16 is in the low 90s. A strong wind carries a steady torrent of grit. The smog is similar to what you'd expect while sitting in traffic inside the Lincoln Tunnel. "Be glad you weren't here yesterday," the guide says. "There was a gale that brought in sand from the desert."

I squint to keep the dust out of my eyes and wonder what wind speed qualifies as a gale. "The Gobi Desert?" I say.

"Yes," the guide says. "We are not far from it."

We are standing in Tian'anmen Square, an open space so large the stone expanse seems to be a man-made desert. I try to imagine tanks and soldiers and tens of thousands of political protestors standing where perhaps a thousand foreign tourists and an equal number of Chinese "vendors" scurry around.

"Hello?" at least 20 vendors have already greeted me. "Postcards?"

Felecia Wellington '04 gets advice from the group's tour guide in a pedestrian shopping area in downtown Shanghai. Photo by Laura deAbruņa

They swarm around all of us. "Hello? You Like?" They hold up stuffed pandas, plastic Buddhas, and cigarette lighters featuring a picture of Mao.

"A million trees," the guide says. "We are planting a million trees each year to stop the erosion and improve the air." The Gobi desert is hundreds of miles away. He raises a powder blue pennant above his head and begins to stride across the square. All 21 of us follow. Twenty-six hours after we boarded a bus at Susquehanna University, our two weeks in China has begun.

That first hour, fortunately, is the low point for me and the rest of the group. The following day we tour The Forbidden City, learn that all the enormous open space inside the walls was constructed to discourage assassins. Our guide discovers I write poetry and takes me aside to say, "We are honored to have you visit our country." When I tell him most people in the United States feel differently about poetry, he thinks I am being modest.

On the 18th, we leave the extraordinary traffic jams of Beijing behind and travel north to the Great Wall. We're accosted by a host of down-on-their-luck farmers who pair up with each of us to act as guides. The old woman who follows me repeats the word "careful" each time the ancient steps turn treacherous. After nearly two hours, she offers picture books, postcards, and scarves ("You like?"), all of which I refuse. I'm supposed to bargain and then buy, and finally I relent, choosing a "Great Wall" cap, paying her 50 yuan (about $6) instead of her 60-yuan asking price. Nearly everyone in our group is accumulating such bargained-for souvenirs.

A Buddha stands in Hong Kong's Repulse Park.

Nearly two hours further north, after our bus driver has terrorized all of us by passing repeatedly into oncoming traffic, trusting, apparently, his horn to drive approaching cars onto the shoulder to give us room, we come to Chengde, which feels like the last outpost before the wilderness takes over. The map confirms it. It's the place where my resolve to try every kind of food placed before me falters. When I spit out something so chewy it seems inedible, George Wei informs me I'm refusing duck's feet. Webbing, I think, and try to carry on. When thick cubes of meat with the fat and consistency of boiled bacon arrive, they become the one thing unanimously refused.

But the food seems irrelevant here. We watch a paper artist create extraordinary designs with a pair of tiny scissors. Three days, it takes her, to cut a replica of the Buddha with 43 arms we've just seen in an active temple, and I pay her the equivalent of $18 for her labor.

The students buy more than the faculty. More important, many of them try to engage the people in conversation. A kind of sign language develops-pointing to things, smiling. "USA" is understood by everyone, and without exception the people greet our identification warmly.

Mt. Tai, known as the gateway to heaven, was among the most memorable stops on the Susquehanna study group's 15-day tour of China. Photograph by Laura deAbruna, dean of Susquehanna's School of Arts, Humanities and Communications

Only on the train, two days later, do I encounter suspicion. One of the students and I are housed in a sleeping compartment with an old Chinese couple. They point to our shoes and then to slippers on the floor, letting Kyle and I know we should exchange one for the other. But when Kyle and I swing our slipper-clad feet onto the bunks, they gesture and chatter.

We slide off the slippers, but moments later, the conductor listens to their complaints, returns with a uniformed man who's joined, shortly after, by another uniformed man and George, who's arguing in Chinese. Everything settles down, but George tells Kyle and me we're on a "very Communist train," that the first uniformed man said, in reference to us, "They sent the spy plane."

A few hours after that mild confrontation, we reach the base of Mt. Tai and the cable cars that will dangle us a thousand feet in the air while they haul us more than a mile up to the summit. I'm astonished one of the students is more afraid of heights than I am. She survives and so do the rest of us, and the group applauds her. On the way down, she even glances out the window, a small triumph.

Mt. Tai is thought of as the gateway to heaven, and I can't argue. It's one of those places where you don't want to go to sleep because you'll waste some of the hours you have there. We rise and walk to an overlook to watch the sunrise at 4:50 a.m. None of the students complain. All of us wear the Red Army overcoats supplied by the hotel against the only cold weather we encounter. The monks in the Daoist temples chant nonstop from 6 to 10 a.m. "It's like an Indiana Jones movie here," a student says, and I agree.

Gary Fincke, director of the University Writers' Institute, shared his China experiences in prose.

In the railroad station, before we reboard for an overnight trip, George leads the students in Tai Chi. It's part of what they are doing for credit, and though for the most part they are awkward and self-conscious, they're game. They listen and learn, discovering, perhaps, what might come of acquiring the rhythm and grace that George demonstrates. This time the train is packed with Chinese passengers who pay us no mind. When I wander away from the group and shoot pool for an hour in Zhouzhuang, every ball I pocket is cheered by the crowd that gathers to watch.

We visit Shanghai University, which is brand new. All of it. Every building for 30,000 students has been erected-for two billion dollars, according to an official--in the past five years. The students are seduced. Word-of-mouth for an exchange program here or in Suzhou, visited two days earlier, will be positive. The administrators we meet at both schools seem open and receptive. The students, when they're paired with their Chinese counterparts, take to the task of conversing for an hour or more.

That night, in a bar a block from our hotel, a woman slides into a booth beside me. She's overdressed and seems fascinated that I am a teacher. I know, after a few minutes, I'm in the company of what our guide calls "a lady of pleasantry," and I haven't been this socially awkward since my last eighth grade dance. The dean of my school, sitting nearby, keeps track of my embarrassment until I rescue myself by slapping down a tip and heading for the door.

A Suzhou University official, center, welcomed Susquehanna faculty for a tour of his campus and discussions of possible future academic exchange programs. The SU contingent is, from left to right: Associate Professor of History George Wei, Professor Emeritus of Management Ken Fladmark, Dean of Arts, Humanities and Communications Laura deAbruņa, Assistant Professor of Political Science Andrea Lopez, Associate Professor of Economics Olugbenga Onafowora and Professor of English and Writers' Institute Director Gary Fincke.Photo courtesy of Laura deAbruņa.

Which is what this trip has been all about-seeing the world new. A student has taken her first plane ride, soaring to China. A student has had her luggage mistakenly shipped to Manchuria and managed to recover. All of us have struggled with strange language, sanitation, customs, and food, yet we have managed, for the most part, to communicate and keep our health. This is education.

A dragon greets visitors in Repulse Park, Hong Kong.

A sign post near the Summer Palace outside Beijing. Photos by Laura deAbruņa.