China Tale

the kindness of strangers

I have a charming picture in my mind, placed there by my middle son. He is twenty-two years old, a university graduate, and living in China at present, teaching English for the British Council at a secondary school in Hunan province.

The school is currently on an extended break for some weeks due to Chinese New Year. However, my son spent quite a lot of money on a guided trip to North Korea within the first couple of weeks of the vacation, and so further travel is beyond his means at the moment. Instead, he has spent the remainder of the break in his little school apartment, writing his novel and training for his fallback career option as a professional wrestler.

(My son is six feet four inches tall but as slim as you like, so about a million miles from the muscle-bound hulks on WWE that my three boys all used to watch as youngsters. He is gentle-natured, a reader and a writer. He’s happy living in China because, among other reasons, he can spend as much time on his own as he likes, without being thought weird for not wanting to be out socialising. I can’t quite reconcile all of this with pro wrestling, but accept his assurances that he is serious. He is perplexed as to why he can’t find more cities in England which have both a university that runs a Creative Writing MA and a decent pro wrestling school. “It’s almost as if the two don’t naturally go hand in hand,” he says.)

Air quality in Hengyang City has been very poor recently and so he has avoided spending much time outside. Although he usually likes to get out and walk for an hour or two every day, the resulting chest and throat problems have outweighed his stir-craziness.

However, a couple of days ago his phone app told him air quality was much better and he could see buildings again rather than just smog. He decided in the early evening to take a jog around the school’s running track. Members of the public are permitted to use it, and when he got outside there were a few clusters of people enjoying a walk in the clearer air. My son was in shorts and a hoodie — his preferred choice of attire being shorts all year round, if he can get away with it — while the local people were buttoned up in coats or jackets.

He passed one tiny party, a little girl of about seven and her grandfather. To be polite — and to practise his Chinese — he said “ni hao” to them. On his next lap, the little girl called “hello” and skipped around, but my son said it was difficult to tell who was more excited at this encounter with the tall skinny white dude, the girl or her grandfather. Being a nice guy, he slowed down to be friendly, and the little girl was soon using her best English words on him. Meanwhile, grandfather questioned him in Chinese — my son managed to say either “I have little Chinese” or “I have little China” (he wasn’t sure which) but the old guy seemed to get the gist.

While the little girl chatted excitedly to this pale giant of a stranger, her grandfather got busy texting on his phone. Minutes later a younger man turned up on a small bicycle — here was the girl’s father. Eager to talk to my son, he leapt off his bicycle, and for the rest of the time they were together, the grandfather and the little girl took it in turns to cycle, so that the father could chat while they walked.

Speaking little English, the father’s method of communication was to speak into his phone in Chinese. An app translated his words into English text which he then showed to my son.

“How long are you here?”

“Are your legs cold?”

“Do you wear shorts all winter?”

“What size are your shoes?”

“Do you like China?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Would you like to have a Chinese girlfriend?”

My son said that the app’s translations generally made sense, and there were no limits to the searching questions this guy wanted to put to him. Meanwhile, my son was kept so busy reading this guy’s screen that he was worried he would accidentally knock over the little girl, determined to be just an inch or two from his long legs. He was gradually edged further and further off the running track, crowded out by the bicycling grandfather, the eager father with his demanding phone screen, and the very excited tiny girl.

Eventually, as it was around nine in the evening by now, the oldest generation and the youngest had to take their leave, but the father continued on with my son for some time, keen to make the most of the encounter.

A while later, after further questioning, the guy left and my son did get to run again. But he clearly got much more of a kick out of his encounter with these three generations than he did from his exercise. I’m sure that family has told many friends and neighbours about the affable young English guy. And how tall he was. (“And how big were those feet!?!”)

My son recounted all this to me via WeChat — we communicate via return of voice messages — and I could hear the delight and warmth in his voice. I am left with an image of my boy, out there in the world, being the kind of young man who both makes time for gentle interactions with enthusiastic people, and enjoys them.

Our planet feels like a smaller, warmer place when I hold this in my mind.