Footnotes

Rob went with us to the countryside, here are a couple of his reflections:

By way of introduction, I just returned from spending about three days in a village in the countryside, helping my friends Dave and Katie. They teach a class at the international school called Service and Society which focuses on getting students to think critically and personally about the role of service in our world. As the students are pretty uniformly foreign (Korean, mostly), wealthy, and pampered, the goal over the past few days in specific, and the course in general, was and is to get them involved with people who can teach them about life in a different sphere of existence. Our visit to the Hebei countryside was definitely that. I'm going to send out three E-mails. The first is the story of the family we visited, the second is an account of our trip, and the third is some thoughts I had. Read any and all as you wish!

Ge Yu and his wife Huang Jie are corn/date/peanut farmers with a very modest income. About four years ago they were on their way to the Qingxian market in a three-wheeled motorized cart loaded up with produce to sell when a bridge they were crossing collapsed beneath them, sending them over twenty feet into the dry river bed below. Ge Yu was badly injured, but not critically. Huang Jie, on the other hand, landed at an angle which snapped her spine and paralyzed her from the mid-chest down. Villagers ran down to help and to call for medical attention. The couple was in and out of hospitals for months afterwards, and it was said that Huang Jie needed an operation. However, none of the hospitals were willing to perform the operation, both because it was very serious and had a high possibility for failure, and because the couple was from the countryside and, quite frankly, were not worth the effort.

At this juncture a Christian relief and development organization based in Tianjin called Jian Hua got involved. They visited the injured couple in the hospital weekly, helped with expenses, and talked directly to doctors. It was eventually determined that no operation could restore Huang Jie's mobility, so the couple decided to head home. Jian Hua had a physical therapist on staff, a woman who actually discovered the couple's predicament, and she went to work with Huang Jie to enable her to sit up and get into a wheelchair, which Jian Hua bought for her.

The couple's daughter immediately came home from her job to help her parents. Ge Yu was not easily able to take care of his crops because of his own injuries. Their son, who was studying in another city, insisted on coming home, too, a decision which dismayed both Ge Yu and Huang Jie because, like most village parents, they wanted their son to succeed somewhere besides on the farm. Huang Jie also wanted her daughter to have the same opportunity, and told her to return to her job, but given that she couldn't even sit up on her own the daughter knew this wasn't an option. Knowing this, Huang Jie exerted immense effort in sitting up on her own, and eventually accomplished this one early morning and woke the family up to show them. She insisted that the daughter return to her job, saying that she would be fine, but the girl refused. The son eventually came back, but on his parents' insistence he began studying at a cooking school in the nearby city of Qingxian so that he could continue to study something but still be nearby.

During this time a journalist from a different province found out about the matter and encouraged Ge Yu and his wife to sue the government because the bridge was a public matter which had been neglected into disrepair. Jian Hua again came alongside the couple to encourage them and pray for them. After two years of hearings, the couple eventually won, and were awarded enough money to buy a new house and get other things they needed. Through this whole process, Jian Hua personnel were on-hand weekly to comfort Ge Yu and his wife, and because of this the two of them became Christians.

The Jian Hua person who first established contact with the couple also introduced them to Dave and Katie, who were setting up their Service and Society class. Since then, the international school has had a very interesting relationship with both the couple and their village. Last year for the first time a class went out to visit them and to see what life was like (albeit in a watered-down fashion) in the Chinese countryside. When they came back, they determined to give something back to Ge Yu and his wife. One of the students had some abilities in the guitar department, so he and his class put on a rock concert to raise money. They raised 8,000 RMB (about $1,000), an amount which enabled the family to cover some newly-acquired debts.

We arrived at the village this year with a group of students which were, how shall I say it, "challenging." Katie and I laughed once, while picking dates off the ground during an afternoon in the fields with Ge Yu, about how little the students had actually had to do in their lives. Whereas I at least had to mow the yard from time to time, wash dishes, clean my room (yes, I complained the whole time, but I still did it), these students have always had housekeepers to take care of the chores. Not only that, but six of the eight were guys. High school guys. I don't know if you're aware or not, but when you get six guys of nearly any age or nationality together in a room, the mature butterfly crawls right back into its moron cocoon and you get shoulder-punching, corn kernel-throwing, teacher-ignoring caterpillars. So to speak. I know this because despite my own personal growth the same thing happens to me when I don't have to be the authority figure. (Those who remember the past year or so can reflect for a bit on how Jodi fared whenever Steve, Dave, and I launched into another round of salt jokes.) It's ironic, in a way, but recognition of this latent irony didn't keep me from wanting to knock one of them (Enoch; I'll just go ahead and name names because those of you in the States will never know the students, and those of you here won't be remotely surprised) out of his chair for making low-pitched moaning noises during a pre-dinner singing of the Doxology, or from wanting to dunk another's (Wei Han's, among others') head in a vat of cold rice congee after he refused, for the third straight time, to even taste the soup we were served until we threatened him.

When we arrived it was wet, and we found out over the course of the next day that it had been raining, with only slight pauses, for ten straight days, a state of affairs which had ruined almost 70% of the family's date crop. Dave had originally requested from the village that the guys be allowed to sleep outside in sleeping bags and tents, a request which was roundly vetoed by the village because of the rain. Instead, most of the students and teachers slept in Ge Yu and Huang Jie's house, and I slept with four guys in Ge Yu's sister-in-law's house, which of course was vacated to make more room for us. Countryside homes don't generally have the small individual beds that Western homes have, opting instead for a very large platform that stretches from wall to wall and on which five or six people can sleep on blankets. Ge Yu's sister-in-law, after our first night there, was sure we had been uncomfortable (despite our protests to the contrary) and made a blanket specifically for us.

I did not, in fact, sleep very well, but this was not due to the kang, even though it was quite hard. Rather, it was due to the fact that two of the four students were absolutely epic snorers. It's been quite some time since I've heard anything like it. When we laid down (there were five of us together on the kang) we weren't very tired. The one directly to my right (Wei Han again) complained, along with the rest of them, that he would never get to sleep, then promptly did just that in under a minute, and proceeded to channel the battle for Omaha Beach through his nostrils. Those of us still awake (it would have been easier to fall asleep at a Motorhead concert) found great amusement at this for a while. And really, if you're forced awake by snoring you either laugh at it or smother the offender with a pillow and move on. Gradually they all dropped off, and a second student (David) joined in the nasal extravaganza, choosing as his particular motif the artillery at the battle of Waterloo. Both elevated the physical feat of snoring beyond sheer noise onto a higher, almost artistic, plane. I was the last one awake until sometime well after midnight, at which point, out of sheer exhaustion, I managed to fall asleep, too.

The next day we started off with a solid breakfast of you tiao (fried dough sticks), eggs, and rice congee, all of which I personally love. Dave and Katie had asked Ge Yu to set up some work for us to do, so that the students could experience service on a more physical level, and since the corn had already been harvested he took us out to pick peanuts. I've had some lawn care experience, so I knew how to pull plants out of the ground, but the rest of our students had no clue, and in the beginning stages of what can be called "service" only because we were all physically doing something for another person, proceeded to yank the plants out of the ground and leave the peanuts in the mud. Ge Yu patiently showed everyone how to slowly, firmly pull a handful of stalks out of the ground, and things improved marginally, though for every plant pulled well we still had at least six that weren't. Katie had our resident Chinese person, Andy, tell Ge Yu that we didn't want to ruin his crop and that perhaps we should do something else, but the farmer just smiled, waved his hand in refusal, and replied that the peanuts were only there to utilize the space in between the rows of corn. Perhaps this was true. It's also very possible that Ge Yu, being a very traditional host, wouldn't have told us we were causing him trouble if one of the students had burned his house down. "Oh, it's all right," he would say in such a circumstance, "the walls were getting old. And besides, it's to be expected from young boys." I say "young boys" because, well, if you've worked with high school boys you understand.

We had another solid meal for lunch, and then headed out to the date grove to pick dates. Chinese dates are quite different from the kind most of you are used to eating. They look more like tiny apples, and are crispy instead of soft, but have a very similar flavor. Harvesting them included taking a long pole to the tree branches to knock the dates to the ground, then gathering the good ones into baskets and bags. It also included either squatting or kneeling in the very damp soil, and only the teachers actually got down on their/our knees. In case you're wondering, we didn't pass out long bamboo poles to any of the guys. And it doesn't really matter where you are, you don't ever pass out long sticks to a group of six high school guys. You just don't. Guys can make small wads of paper dangerous. The students actually didn't do too badly in the fields, except that most of them dialed out with about 45 minutes left to go. One or two took upon themselves the arduous task of walking around with a basket to ferry people's dates to the cart. Others tried to get out of picking by sorting out the rotten dates on the cart. Katie, accustomed to such shirking from her experience growing up with brothers, managed to get some of them back into the dirt, and Dave and I policed some of the others back to their trees. Ge Yu's daughter, who was picking at another tree, asked me if I had done this before, which was a sort of compliment about my date-sorting skills. That's one more I can add to a resume.

We spent that evening singing, listening to Ge Yu and his family sing Chinese hymns, and hearing students share their impressions of the day. Nearly all of them noted just how hard the work was, and one even noticed that when we left the date grove Ge Yu stayed behind to finish the work we weren't able to, though of course it would never have occurred to him to complain. We listened to Ge Yu share more about his and his wife's spiritual journey, and also about a particular problem they were having with a person in their village. When he was done, Katie asked the students what they thought should be done, a move which wouldn't have occurred to me since I generally arrogate to myself the role of answer-giver. In this case, one of the students (Enoch) I wanted to knock out of his chair earlier in the day spoke up with a simple, very good suggestion, and we spent some time praying for them.

The following day we had to leave at 10:30, but spent the majority of the morning singing and praying with Ge Yu and his family. It was in our final prayer time that something occurred to me which for some reason had not in the days prior. The last time I had stayed in the countryside was in 2003 when I was living in Taian. I stayed in two different friends' villages, and in each one was treated, not like a foreigner, but like one of the family. People were warmer and more welcoming towards me than any other people I had met in China, but I simply couldn't talk with them because I hadn't studied Chinese with any seriousness yet. I resolved then and there to get serious about my studies because I couldn't face the idea of being welcomed by such people but have no ability to converse with them. This time, in Ge Yu's house, I was able to do precisely that, and spent time talking with the couple about things as diverse as village life and their favorite kind of Chinese opera. When I closed out our time in the village by praying for Ge Yu's household and the village in Chinese, it suddenly struck me that, though I'm far from being where I want to be with my Chinese ability, I had reached a point I had vowed to reach years ago. If you haven't experienced something like this yet, I can assure you that there are few feelings in the world better than being able to pray for someone in their language.

I'll just close here by saying there is no more overwhelming experience, socially, than staying with a Chinese family in the countryside. I have met people in the cities who were as hospitable, but none more. Ge Yu had lost, by his reckoning, 70% of his date crop to persistent rains, yet he and his family cheerfully fed twelve already overfed guests with the best they could possibly afford, the kind of food they probably saved for holidays. Not only this, but they insisted on giving us two large bags of dates, and added to the bounty about fifty of a neighbor's apples, the best I've eaten in years. We tracked mud all over their floors, but when I insisted on removing my shoes I was physically restrained from doing so. It was only by nearly pushing them out of the kitchen that we were able to do the dishes after meals. And every time we all met to talk and pray, both Ge Yu and his wife repeated over and over again how thankful they were that we had come. I'm not exactly the ideal host. I have my schedule, my plans, and I like my space. If more than two people come to stay with me, unless they're family or old friends, I generally count the hours until they leave. It's always humbling to be with people who are ten times as hospitable as you are, yet with about a fifth the resources.

I have some other comments in my third E-mail about this, but I'll stop this particular message here by saying if any of you have intentions to visit China sometime in the future, find a way to visit the countryside. If you don't, you haven't really experienced Chinese culture to its fullest.