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I awoke to my new reality. From the alley three floors below, the morning baritone plea to exchange gloves for money drifted hypnotically into my consciousness, steadier than my heartbeat.  Padding to the kitchen, I threw matches at the gas burners while adjusting the propane flow with clamps and thumb valves.  Six in the A.M. and I needed coffee.  There was none.  And worse, I didn’t know how to get any.  I boiled water to keep busy. Outside, scores of future pharmacists crawled on their bellies across the soccer pitch in front of the building where I lived.  Military training.  Chords of “Que Sera Sera” bleated from the speakers attached to my apartment block’s wall.  Vancouver, Canada, never seemed so far away.  But here I was in Northeast China, Shenyang to be exact, twelve hours by rail from Beijing, six hours by bicycle as the joke goes. I signed on for a one-year hitch to teach English at Shenyang Pharmacy College, but mere hours after I dropped my luggage, I was told that I’d have one month free from lessons to get accustomed to my new surroundings.  Those who informed me vanished as quickly as they had come.  Normally, you wouldn’t catch me or anyone complaining about a job that starts with a four-week paid vacation, but this was different.  I was anxious to start working if only to have some direction.  Now, I’m not prone to panic-attacks, but there I was on the other side of the world with no idea where to eat, shop, or get around, and even if I did, I didn’t have the language skills to cope. I tackled this problem by sleeping roughly eighty-five percent of the time.  The remaining fifteen percent was spent losing weight.

. Larry Jer is of Chinese decent, but was born and raised in North America. He signed on for a one-year hitch to teach English at Shenyang Pharmacy College, China, but mere hours after he dropped his luggage, he was told he'd have a one month paid vacation, free from lessons, just to get accustomed to his new surroundings. Not a bad gig by any means, but lacking any language skills and foreign to the culture, panic set in. Larry relied on what skills he'd brought with him, and before the month was over, he called China home.  Larry enjoyed his time in Shenyang so much, he stayed an additional year.  He eventually returned to Canada to set up house with Jun, his lovely bride from China and credits his good fortune solely on his #35 haircut.   Additional Resources Living Overseas  Unique Lifestyles  Working Overseas  China Resources  Contact Larry Jer  . .

As I mulled over my problem, there came a knock on my door. It wasn’t pizza, but it was the next best thing.  A petite, bespectacled lady squinted at me and introduced herself as Miss Dai, a colleague in the English Department.  She wanted to improve her English and would I be interested in trading some conversation for Mandarin lessons? Miss Dai was a regular visitor those early days, cramming my head with basic Chinese—what I should say, what responses I might hear.  As we got became better acquainted, she confided that she was curious just how a person like me would get by.  A person like me?  Let me explain: There’s a magazine published from my hometown entitled “Banana,” which celebrates Asian-Canadian lifestyle. Those of you who have heard the term know it is a metaphor describing North American-Born Chinese ... yellow on the outside, white on the inside. That nails me near perfectly.  If I had a “Chiquita” tattoo ... well, you get the point.  I speak a smattering of Cantonese, but in Northeast China, Mandarin rules.  Like bringing a Q-Tip to a piñata festival, Cantonese just can’t get the job done.

Working on my first kilometer of noodles!

So, I studied.  I role-played.  I listened to pronunciation tapes Miss Dai had prepared for common scenarios ... grocery shopping, going to the barber’s, getting my fire-engine-red lady’s bike repaired ... errands most wouldn’t give a second thought. Instant illiteracy puts a shine on the mundane.  Miss Dai just wanted to observe, to be there as a lifeline when necessary.  I think my struggles amused her.  Off to market went the student and teacher. 

“Two pounds of sex, please,” I said, standing expectantly in front of the lady selling bananas.  I knew right away something was askew when those within earshot, a vendor lolling on a bed of watermelons woke from his torpor; the man fanning flies away from a porcine carcass stopped dead; my companion, Miss Dai, nearly burst into flames from blush-heat.

Miss Dai, whose perpetually pinched face belied her kind heart, gathered herself and ushered me out of the market before I got even a whiff of any bananas (or sex!) to lecture me on my pronunciation and to have a good belly laugh over the whole affair. Daily life, humble as it might be, fully immersed in another culture, offers an endless supply of challenges whose resolutions often surprised as well as satisfied. 

Next, a simple mission: my first trip to the barber’s.  I anxiously cycled to the bustling market area close to my flat and identified my target salon by the candycane-striped pole, shiny coversheets airing on a clothesline, and the unmistakable scent of hair tonics. The use of aerosols so strong in fact that I doubt any ozone layer exists over that shop anymore. 

I consulted my notes and felt secure I could communicate through stilted Mandarin and the international two-finger symbol for scissors that I required a trim. The stylist grasped my intention heroically and promptly fetched a chart that featured fifty images, same gentleman, forty-nine wigs of differing hairstyles.  I presume one was his own genuine hair.  I chose #35 which most closely resembled my own, just neater.  Off came my glasses, on went the cover over my shoulders, and out came the shiny bright shears and the comb missing more teeth than a hockey goon.

True enough what a friend told me: Once they know you’re a foreigner, they’ll treat your hair like it was royalty’s.  Yes indeed, my mop was treated like a king’s all right ... Don King’s.  As the artiste happily snipped away, a few casual onlookers grew in numbers. Being nearsighted, “blind faith” never rang more true. 

When the last of those tiny niggling hairs were brushed off my nape by a giant peanut-shaped sponge, my glasses were returned and lo, my hair upon close inspection resembled not at all #35 nor any other on “the chart.”  My new look was a kind of cross between Diana Ross (think Supremes, circa 1963) and Pebbles, last known address: Bedrock City. 

When the good-hearted stylist excitedly gave me a big grin and bigger thumbs up, I had to counter with “No Okay,” and point with renewed vigor to good ol’ #35, who now (was it my imagination?) seemed to be smiling smugly at me. 

Disheartened but ever the professional, the barber rinsed out his work and set to reshaping my hair, this time respecting the laws and confines of earthbound physics. The second pass was workable; though, I looked like I was losing a fight against gale-force winds. I paid my five yuan (a Canadian buck) foregoing the extras, one of these add-ons being an eyelid shaving with a straightrazor stropped on a whetstone by a squatting handyman, streetside.  Were my eyelids such a hirsute tragedy?
 

A fresh haircut is a terrible waste if you don’t sport it.  I brought with me from home a keen passion for basketball, and praise Nike, on campus there were four full-size courts.  In a city of four million, finding a few souls for half-court was a breeze.  I made some quick and steady friends the same way I did on every court I’d ever stepped foot ...  I brought the ball.  I spent some few hours on the pavement shooting the pumpkin.  As I became a familiar figure there, a handful of brave English students would shyly sidle up, and one by two, we’d get into tremendous games. Daylight often quit before we ever did.  There were introductions before each game, of course, Chinese people being just as polite as you might imagine.  As I had trouble remembering and/or pronouncing their names, a few faithful huddled and decided they would give themselves (and others) English names. Occasionally, we’d cycle over to the next college and play some challengers.  Our crew had some English at their disposal, and so they helped me keep track of the opposition by nicknaming our counterparts by some distinguishing feature.  At one point, I had to pause and savor the slightly surreal bend of the whole scene.  There we six stood.  My team: Lithium, Mars, and me (Mr. Larry) squaring off against Eyebrow, Tight Shorts, and Big.  Pharmacy students can trash talk it seems. Who knew?

My bike's in the shop, again.

Days turned into weeks, and before I knew it, the grace month was over and my teaching assignment was upon me.  Miss Dai escorted me to my classroom, and as we entered, the entire class stood as one and applauded, as is their custom.  I looked around the room and recognized some off the playground, many who waved greetings, others from around the campus, all of whom made me feel this was home.  I applauded them back.  It seemed fitting.
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