There are stories sometimes in various dunadain blogs of people who really make a difference, changing China, or have given many years of their lives to her, or just having brilliant business ideas that promote chinese culture. Me, I can only read in admiration. The only act of significance I ever done in China was on a much smaller scale.
Not long ago, someone who has been here for a while, gathering all kinds of crazy tales, asked me: “What was your most hard-core Chinese experience”?
There’s an easy one: the Oscar will have to go to that day when Bendi cleaned a toilet in a village school. Will not trouble you with the gory details of what that toilet was like. If you’ve had the good fortune of traveling in rural China, you’d know what I’m talking about. If not, then better not to know.
Old School
As Bendi was supposed to stay and work in that school for at least few weeks (ended up staying there for a year), She realized she’ll just have to do something about the situation. It took a week to gather enough confidence and Chinese vocabulary to address the issue. The headmaster heard Bendi’s carefully prepared speech, with words like 卫生危险 well rehearsed beforehand, nodded in approval, agreed completely that something should be done, and went back to scratching his toes. Another week passed.
The beginning of the third week, Bendi took her pretty little arse (it was still small then…), her carefully kept hands and a deep breath, grabbed a shovel and plunged in. Well, not literally, but begun extracting, ammm, things, from the pit. It took about five minutes before one student saw what the laowai was doing and alarmed everyone else. You would not believe what a commotion the vision of a 老外 doing 劳动 can stir: teachers rushed in, begged me to stop and swore on a stack of Confucius analects the toilet will be clean by the end of the day.
Sure enough, that afternoon all classes were canceled, all students recruited to the mission of cleaning the stables. And what a mission it was, man. Drainage canals were dug, water brought from the well, earth turned and floor scratched. By nightfall, we had a fairly clean facility, a special dinner and a big bonfire to commemorate victory over crap.
My former colleagues reminded me of this episode earlier this month, when I finally found the time to visit my old school in Baoshan. In neck breaking pace China, it was soothing to see that barely anything has changed there. There is now an electric bell to announce classes, a computer with no Internet connection, and, as He Laoshi proudly showed me, a new toilet building with partitions(!) and actual drainage system, built with money donated by a Chinese-American visitor. Amazingly, the facility is being reasonably maintained, and is almost clean – a student duty that is sometimes still called there 繁老师负责, after yours truly. At a risk of sounding preposterous I’d say that I’ve never been prouder in anything in my life. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure cleaning that slimy toilet was the most important thing I’ve ever done.
No, wait, I’ll have to take this last one back. It was the ONLY important thing I’ve ever done.