August 30, 2005
Getting off on the Wrong Jiao
Katie and I got off the plane in Xi’an at 9:30 a.m., seventeen hours after we left Los Angeles, minus nine hours, plus one day. All very confusing.
I guess all our stamps were in the right place, because entering the country proved less a hassle than I had anticipated. Little did I know that getting from America to China would be a steamed-bun-walk compared to getting from the Xi’an airport to our university.
Predictably, no one was there to meet us at the gate. More unnerving, none of the phone numbers we had been given for our contacts in the foreign office seemed to work. Even after using our powers of mime to enlist the help of passing strangers in unraveling the mysteries of the Chinese telephone system, we couldn’t get through to anyone. With her fledgling Mandarin, Katie managed to pick out the ominous phrase, “it’s Sunday” from the possible explanations for the beeping sounds that resulted from these aborted dialings.
After waiting around the arrival terminal for two hours, we decided we’d try and get a taxi to the university. Once there, we reasoned, we could (theoretically) find the foreign office and (theoretically) find someone to help us (theoretically) check into our living space for a theoretical nap.
As uncertain as this plan was, it might well have succeeded if not for one critical error. We were so delighted when the cab driver understood Xibei Daxue (Northwestern University) that we didn’t bother to show him the address or consider the possibility that there might be two schools in Xi’an with remarkably similar names.
We unloaded our belongings at the gates of Northwestern University and took turns scouting the area for anyone expecting two new American teachers. After hours of fruitless searching and humiliating cultural exchanges, a student with a little bit of English approached us and offered his aid. He was very insistent that what we needed most was to get inside and drink iced tea (I wish I had known that this was what he meant when he said “I have solved your problem. You follow me”), but, after much dragging of luggage back and forth, it was he who finally deduced that we were to be employed by Northwestern Polytechnical University, not Northwestern University.
Jackie, as our sometimes misguided savior called himself, accompanied us into the taxi and to NPU (mere blocks away), helped us find the hotel where foreign teachers stayed and translated for us at the front desk. So now, less than 12 hours into our stay in China, we already find ourselves deeply indebted to a total stranger, a fact that may turn Jackie into a mixed blessing as time goes on.
When Ms. Xiang Dan, our supposed contact in the foreign office, came to see us in our hotel room (around 4:00 in the afternoon her time, around 2:00 in the morning ours), she was, to be fair, quite apologetic. Apparently, they’d gotten their a.m.’s and their p.m.’s mixed up or something. As for her telephone number, it changed years ago. Here’s a fresh one. Awesome.
On a brighter note, I hear Hu Jintao has really incredible hygiene. He sure is an amazing person. I wonder what he’s doing right now?