I also only had a print camera then and it was failing. Anyway, here are some digitals of the prints showing a few of the memories of my SARS experience. I apologize for the quality.
This one is in front of a small hospital in a suburb of Beijing. Notice the white sterile suit and the garbage cans. I was scared to take photos! The bleach brigade ready to spray anything and everything to control the so called pandemic. Riding the subway. Medical grade mask from Spooksis! Damn my hair looked good!
Because I was so isolated from the media in China all I could do was directly observe what was happening. I started keeping a diary and sent a few excerpts to a friend who said I should contact CBC and maybe they would read some of it on air. Bravely I agreed and sent them an email. Well, they didn't want to read my submissions , they wanted to talk to me in person! So, there I was talking on my cell phone all the way across the world on some morning radio show. Well, it was scary but kind of fun. However they canceled the talks after three sessions because I didn't have anything sensational enough to tell them! Who wanted to hear a voice of sanity? I remember the interviewer pressing me for something, any kind of dirt. I had nothing really. I wasn't worried, I wasn't panicky. As far as I could see the Chinese authorities finally had things under control. Doesn't make for good news does it? Think about that will you?
In 2003 I was teaching in a high school in the suburbs of Beijing. One day I entered my classroom to find my students packing up and leaving. They told me there was a bad disease and their parents had ordered them to come home. A lot of my students came from other provinces. A lot of my students were came from very wealthy powerful families. They were always the first to know.
Later on that day we had a staff meeting. People were panicking. Some Canadian teachers wanted to go home. I wasn't sure what to do. I talked to my younger colleagues. They had decided to stay. If we stayed, we got paid, even if there were no students to teach. If we stayed we were safe in the school grounds. I decided to stay. About half of the teachers went back to Canada. I can't remember how many months it went on. Us living at the school, trying to teach our students online. We were required to keep a certain number of office hours after which we were free. Most of us, lived in the teachers apartments inside the school grounds, but some, like the Canadian principal lived in an apartment just outside. The Chinese teachers lived in the school grounds as well. By law, they were required to stay inside the school grounds. No one knew how this disease spreaded. Was it airborn?
One morning, early, I got a harsh knock on my door. Hurry up, everyone to the clinic for x-rays! What? I wasn't even sick, what did I need an xray for? They told us it was precautionary. I told them to fuck off, I wasn't sick and I wasn't getting an x-ray. I went back to bed. Cases of chinese medicine appeared at our doors. It apparently was very expensive and there was a limited supply. You see, the president of our school was a very wealthy influential Chinese Canadian with many connections. He was able to buy this special immune boosting medicine for us. Well, I took it. You had to heat it up. It tasted worse than mud. Actually , it tasted a lot like the typhoid vaccine. Have you had that? It was really hard to take. Like drinking poo. Seriously. But the Chinese believe that the worse the medicine tastes the better it is.
Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. Staying inside. I decided to go out with a friend. At first we only went across the street to the store for some ice cream. Of course we bought some for the Chinese teachers. They were very upset with us for going out, and endangering their lives. The thing is, I never felt afraid. But they were happy to have the ice cream. One time I went out, it was very hot day. The guard at the gate was instructed to take our temperature before we could come back in. A sign of SARS was a fever. Well, he had this temperature wand which he placed near my forehead. OF course it read high, I was sweating from the heat of the day! He wouldn't let me back in. I almost panicked. But I went to the store and bought and icecream and placed in on my forehead. Temperature down! (This technique proved to be very effective. I used it to make sure my temperature was low leaving the country. At the airport, you had to pass by temperature sensors. It was tense because it was July and the weather was very hot and humid.)
After a week. I got really bored. I decided to take the bus into downtown Beijing. Three of us went. We wore masks on the bus and tried to not touch anything. The streets of the usually bustling city were deserted. The markets very bare. The sellers so desperate to make a sale, we got some very good deals. All the cultural sites were very empty as well. It was actually very safe to be downtown as there was no one there!
And everywhere we went we saw were workers with containers on their backs, spraying, spritzing the sidewalks, the bushes, bicycles with a bleach mixture. Outside the hospitals and clinics, guards in astronaut type white suits. That was a little scary.
To contain the virus, they built temporary hospitals, clinics to quarantine the sick. The doctors and nurses wore the most incredible protective gear. I watched on tv one night, one of the doctors taking off his boots after work and pouring out the sweat that had accumulated in them. These medical workers were isolated in the hospital for at least a month, not allowed to go home to their families at night. After a month they were then sent to a quarantine area for over a week to make sure they were not sick before they went home to their families. Every doctor or nurse that went through this lived and none of their family members got ill. Too bad they didn't do this in Toronto!
Though the Chinese government knew of the virus a few months before the offricial announcement, I am still impressed with how they dealt with it once the truth came out. Can you imagine 1.4 billion people panicking? Well, it didn't happen. The Chinese grapevine is very efficient. Despite the government trying to keep things secret, it really doesn't work there very well. There are too many people there that are used to keeping quiet and finding ways to spread the word. And I was impressed with the media. If they had the media we have here things would've been crazy. They were able to keep everyone calm, to keep things in a positive light (We are Chinese we can conquer anything!) and so the so called pandemic was kept under control.
Toward the end of June, the students came back. They were happy to be back. Their parents had forced them to stay home that whole time. Was it three months? I can't remember.
Anyway. It seems that every year there is a flu scare. I'm not saying we shouldn't take care. But the media here is just so keen on jumping on any story, they appear to blow things out of proportion. Every year people die of the flu. These people are already unhealthy. Most of the people who have got this swine flu have recovered already. As for those who believe this is a conspiracy, whatever. These viruses start in countries where animals and humans live in densely populated areas. I've seen it first hand. Most flus have always started in Asia. And they start several months before we get them. Wash your hands people!
Three years ago today I made my first blog post on Opera when I found myself isolated in a large oceanside Chinese city. Teaching English to spoiled rich kids. Living in a dungeon of an apartment where spiders as big as a CD cover lived. Where I had to climb I can't remember how many steps to get to my room. 300? I did that at least 6 times a day. I was recovering from a broken foot . My students would bring me Chinese medicine to bring down the swelling from all that climbing. The best thing about the experience? Well, some of the students, but mostly the opportunity to become a hermit and isolate myself from the world I had left. I didn't want to face people who wanted to know what happened and why.
I had been to China three times previously and had enjoyed it immensely. This time I went back out of neccessity, to pay off some debts incurred and to escape someone who had imprisoned my mind and soul with a lie of love. When I tell people the details of the story they really can't believe it. But I can look back clearly at it now and I can see I had no choice, and this was the best solution I could come up with at the time. Sometimes non action is not enough. Sometimes there are problems so great you cannot talk through them to solve them. Sometimes direct action is needed. I didn't start my blog right away but waited a few months. At first I only posted some short paragraphs and uploaded some pictures. Actually, taking the pictures of this new city helped me get out of my head and to observe the world around me more closely. At first, I had no comments. I didn't really care, it was nice to be anonymous. And then slowly the comments came. I think it was Izzy, then JCL, Andy and Hungryghost. Then Louis and Aya. I started discovering the Opera community and reading other members' blogs. Some of us started a new club . Though I had never met any of these people in person they made me feel a little less lonely while I was shut away in my tower. There are times that I miss China. Every few months I teach a seminar to adults wanting to go abroad and teach ESL. I tell them of my crazy experiences there. I loved that there was always newness in every situation. Whatever you may think about China, honestly you don't know anything about it until you have lived there. It's a place that makes you appreciate life. There is no place like it.
But I came back with a new strength , determined to make a new life. I've rediscovered the beauty of where I was born, the clean air, forests, mountains , lakes. I've found a job that I'm really confident with. I've reconnected with family and friends and have made a few new ones. The only piece missing is a new love. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Honestly, the only real love I have ever had is from my family and my good friends and my cat. But it's real and I'm not sad about it. Is romantic love true anyway? It is so fickle and brings power struggles and grief. Don't tell me it doesn't! And only with the determined and the passage of time does it grow into anything true. Oh, that's for another post.
I keep imagining those poor people in the earthquake in China. I lived in China for almost four years , though not in this area. At times I wondered what would happen if there was an earthquake because I could see that many of the buildings were not very well built. Even in the small cities in China there are over a million people. Can you imagine? I just cannot fathom the way these people are living right now. Too frightened to go back into their homes, living under cardboard, the relentless rain pouring down. Millions of people living like this. One thing I know about Chinese people is that they are very strong and resilient. They taught me many life lessons. Sigh. Nothing I can do.
...in a letter three years ago, just before the SARS outbreak in China. Funny how these kinds of memories still make me want to go back sometimes. The absurdity of it all.
I just had one of those days where I just felt like getting the f*** out of here. One of those days when the taxi driver tries to rip you off and you get out of the f***ing taxi and think you'll take a bus, but the bus lady doesn't like the way you say Bai Yuan, and kicks you off the bus, and you think oh maybe I take it on the other side so you take it on the other side, get on and the bus lady doesn't like you either and points across the street, and so you get off and take the same f***ing bus on the other side of the street because you think maybe they didn't understand you the first time so you get on the bus again and it's the same, and this continues for 5 times, yes 5 times, and finally the bus man says 319 not 388, so he kicks you off, and you wait for the 319 but the 319 doesn't come but the 930 keeps going by and you know you can take that into Beijing so you walk miles and miles and you finally find a 930 stop and the bus comes and you get on and say Beijing, Ritanlu, and she shakes her head and points to across the road, so you get off at the next stop and cross the f***ing road for the millionth time, and wait for the 930 going the other way, by this time you put on your sunglasses because you are crying with frustration, and then the 930 comes you get on and say Beijing and the lady smiles and you pay your 2 yuan, which is like 40 cents Canadian, and you smile and think wow , 7 bus rides for 40 cents, incredible. So you buy some more clothes to cheer yourself up.
In an effort to clear my small living space I have being going through boxes of stuff. Much of it I haven't looked at for years. One thing is a shoebox full of computer disks filled with letters and writing from my first years in China. I read through some of them today and had a good laugh along with some sadness. I read the letters to and from people I may never see again and it brings me back to that very moment lost forever. Maybe I'll share a few with you...unedited.
The noise may as well be silence. It is garish, it is not grey like smog or car exhaust. It is black and stark as coal but not fine dust. It is bowling balls of coal striking you down from impossible angles. Ping pong balls of coal pinging inside you skull. Reverberating. The noise assaults, one rogue wave slamming you up against the white cliffs of Dover. Relentless driving of the hockey puck, slapshot, one after another at the goalie.
Sometimes you can hear them see them coming and can prepare for the onslaught. Get hit in the head enough and you become punch drunk. Do you feel it anymore, notice it anymore. So when you finally hear a beautiful sound beautiful music, any pleasing sound, the pollution becomes silent. The noise disappears, you don’t hear it or don’t allow yourself to hear it. It is like white noise, the humming of the computer fan, the fridge, the tick tick of the electric clock.It is white noise, yet blinding white. You are out in the sun too long and go inside your eyes cannot adjust.
A symphony, the pounding of the kettle drums the fury of the violin the blaring of the trumpets and then the composer inserts a small gentle sound. It breaks the noise cleaves it cleanly. A melodic line from the French horns, a trill from the flute, a ping from the triangle. Their voices are splashes of colour like a goldfinch amongst sparrows.
I am lying on my single bed. The blue sheets stamped in red, property of… The air conditioner a steady hum. I can hear teenage boys down the hall, slamming doors yelling in baritone. Competing for sound space. The sound marches down the long cavernous hallway and knocks on my door but I won’t let it in. So it seeps under the crack in the door like a poisonous gas seeking me out.
The TV is on but on mute. The antennae emits that high nervous system sound of your body. Below me the room below I can hear teenage girls gossiping, laughing, arranging furniture, laughing, squealing , slamming doors.
I open the drawer to my laminated white night table. The drawer sticks it is off center and just doesn’t open smoothly hangs down on an angle once open. The table that P stood on to change the light bulb in my bathroom. Wobbly, he cries out, “Hold me!” And I grab on to his wiry firm legs, not thinking for once that he means to hold the table. Opportunity knocks. That’s the closest I’ll ever get to him.
I take out my portable CD player, doesn’t work that well, my mom won it in a contest. I put the earphones in and adjust the cord below my chin. I adjust the volume and press play. Closing my eyes. Adjust the volume a bit louder.
I sing in a quiet shy voice, not really wanting to hear my real voice. Worried that someone may hear me. What foolishness that is. I sing a little louder, fuck it if anyone hears. Claiming my small space. My space my room, my sound. My voice washes over me, coats me in pepto bismal pink, which magically expands into a soft foam. I sing louder and this cushion swells. My body is a sound cushion, absorbing noise holding it, and shielding
I am safe from the poisonous gases from the daggers that pierce my eardrums. Safe. Sigh. The phone rings, and jolts me out my cocoon. I stumble to answer it. Pick it up.
H-ell-o. S-an-d-ee. Do you remember me? It’s...
Oh its my annoying little bank clerk, of course I remember you. But please go away. His voice is nasally , his whole personality one big nasal cavity, annoyingly dripping dripping, Chinese water torture. Please wipe that little drop from the tip of you nose. Irritating.
No I don’t want to see you . I’m very busy Oh busy, very busy, You must take care of you health. Yes I must. Good bye…slam.
Today I went to the Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown and I took around 200 pictures! So, I'll be busy tonight sorting through them. Here's a sneak preview of some of the colours of the day. Perhaps it's also a sign about where the LWU may be headed?
Seems like I'm feeling all nostalgic these past few days. Today I had this crazy yearning to go back to China. Resist resist I must resist this craving.
Karaoke in China is the best. I'm sorry my Japanese friends, I think its' better in China, because, frankly, most Chinese (like most Quebecois) can really sing well. Though, the first time I did it was at Christmas in Northern China. The highlight was my Russian friend singing, "I just called to say I love you". Let's say, it wasn't the prettiest version, but certainly memorable. Afterwards, the dean and I sang "Moon River", our voices mellowed by the baijiou.(chinese liquor) Then there was the time in Beijing when I ventured out with 4 of the other teachers to a small club near the school. We sang Bohemian Rhapsody that night. That was also the night I saw a naked homeless man crawling across the freeway. I stood there in the middle of the road stopping the cars from running him over. Yeah, that's China.
And every month in the school cafeteria, to celebrate the birthdays of the month we'd also have a round of singing. The Chinese teachers sang beautifully, the karoake tunes were pitched for their high voices. But when Heather and I got up to sing, well, we couldn't quite sing that high, so we had to sing an octave lower, and well, we couldn't sing an octave lower. They clapped for us anyway. Must save face.
Anyway, I was remembering today about the last karaoke session at Party World in Beijing. The Chinese teachers took some of us Anglos there. Party World is a chain of karaoke high rises...I mean like at least 10-15 stories of private music chambers. This is the great thing about it, it's all private. You have a soundproof chamber, with big screen t.v., karoake machine and your own waiter. The last time we went I remember singing "500 miles" by the Proclaimers with Lana, "Dancing Queen" with Zanny, and "The Littlest Birds" with Lana and Heather. Those were the highlights. I'm sure we were better than American Idol!
When I returned from China the first year, it was my 40th birthday, and I jokingly told my brother I wanted Karaoke at my party. Well, he delivered. Rented a machine. It was funny because at first, no one would sing. But after my brother, nephew and my nephew-in-law, were forced to sing YMCA, the party started and we couldn't get anyone to shut up! My mom and dad even sang.
Okay now, remember the past but don't dwell on it..don't make it a craving...don't live in the past. But is it such a bad addiction? Hmmm. Gotta get me some karaoke one of these days...
Sitting in the Qingdao airport, flight delayed. It's been pouring rain all day. What a day. My students did well on the exam I think, at least the ones who showed up for class the last 2 weeks, I think they did well. Funny, the school administrators were surprised that I was leaving today. What the hell were they thinking? As my boss says, "It's just that they were embarrassed; they didn't plan a going away party for you." He also said to them, "Do you really think one party will make up for how you've treated her?" Anyway, a real treat, they gave me a special lunch. Cafeteria food special lunch. By the time we arrived, the food was all cold. I could barely eat the rice, just did that to be semi-polite. They didn't even give us beer or baijiu. No toasts, no singing karaoke. Ah well, I feel kind of good for snubbing them. They don't deserve to save face. I hope they learn from their mistakes. Anyway, as I said before, I stayed a few more days for my students. They are the big reason I keep coming back to China. Waiting here in the airport I had time to read some of the cards and letters they wrote for me. Here is one:
Sandy, when C. said to me that after this exam, you will go back Canada. I'm so sad. I can't believe that. I thought you would live in Qingdao a long time. But I was wrong. Your hometown is Canada. It can't be changed. Since that time I know you will leave us soon. I always think about missing you. Even though you had asked me to not think about missing you, I can't do it. You know, I am a little sentimental girl (may be not a little ) I'm not the same kind of girl like V. I like V. She is very sunny, optimistic, she is happy everyday. Especially she can make the people around her be happy, she can bring happiness to everyone. How fantastic it is. But I can't. I always bring sadness to the friend. Oh bad B. I shouldn't write the sad thing on my face.
To be a sunny girl like V. is so difficult for me. You said you didn't like say goodbye. Yes, maybe. I think time can change everything, can make us forget the sad things, can forget most things. But except the people who is important in our life. Dear Sandy, you are the best teacher in my life. You have made a tremendous difference in my life. You are a good teacher, I became enlightened by you. I will never forget you and what you did for us.
When some students stumble, you will pick them up, dust them off and get them moving again. It's your philosophy. I like it.
You're a foreign teacher; maybe I can't understand all of your thoughts. But I can be sure you are a kind, friendly woman.
You leave us, but I'm happy for something. You leave the place; you can get a more live with your friends and family, and especially with your lovely cat!
If you will be more happy, I will be happy too!
In the end; I want to tell you: in the future, to be happy everyday. Health is the most important for everybody. Don't be so tired, remember to have more good rest. In life, there are enough times when we are disappointed, depressed and annoyed. We shouldn't have to go looking for them. We have wonderful life that is full of beauty, light and promise. Please see the wondrous things before us. God will give you luck. Your Chinese student I. I will never forget your voice and disappearance.
The last time we went I remember singing "500 miles" by the Proclaimers with Lana, "Dancing Queen" with Zanny, and "The Littlest Birds" with Lana and Heather. Those were the highlights. I'm sure we were better than American Idol! 
By the time we arrived, the food was all cold. I could barely eat the rice, just did that to be semi-polite. They didn't even give us beer or baijiu. No toasts, no singing karaoke. Ah well, I feel kind of good for snubbing them. They don't deserve to save face. I hope they learn from their mistakes. Anyway, as I said before, I stayed a few more days for my students. They are the big reason I keep coming back to China. Waiting here in the airport I had time to read some of the cards and letters they wrote for me. Here is one:
) I'm not the same kind of girl like V. I like V. She is very sunny, optimistic, she is happy everyday. Especially she can make the people around her be happy, she can bring happiness to everyone. How fantastic it is. But I can't. I always bring sadness to the friend. Oh bad B. I shouldn't write the sad thing on my face.
WIDGETIZE