Before I left
for China I made an effort to contact or hang out with most of my close
friends. Knowing that my friend Katie
worked long hours all week as a Kindergarten teacher in Chicago, I tried to get
a hold of her the weekend before I left and was quite unsuccessful at
first. You see, that Friday night Katie
had gone out with her teacher friends . . . and . . . partied;
something I had never considered my grade school teachers doing.
When I thought
about it for a while, it made a lot of sense.
Grade school teachers going out and imbibing on the weekend seems
like a fact of life. If I had to spend
eight hour days shepherding a flock of over-caffeinated and under-medicated 5-8
year olds thru a variety of activities meant to increase acumen, I would
probably utilize an IV drip of Jim Beam from Friday at 4:00 until Sunday at
9:00.
I guess the
reason why it is difficult for us to envision school teachers drinking a lot is
because for most of our young life the only image of teachers we have is the PG
version we see in the classroom. We
never really consider what their personal lives entail (unless it has something
to do with sexual orientation, then everybody seems to care far too much). It took me a while, therefore, to grasp that
my teachers throughout grade school, middle school, and high school probably
drank quite a bit on the weekends.
Because I
figured this out before I got to China, however, it did not come as much of a
surprise to me that some of the teachers at our school in Yanji drink a
lot. What did surprise me is the way in
which they drink, which I imagine is far different than what happens in
America.
***
At the end of
our second day of teaching, we were brought to a staff meeting so that we could
be introduced to the entire faculty of the school. The meeting began with the principal angrily
yelling at the staff in Chinese. I am
told that he is upset about the output of the students and that he wants the
teachers to do a better job. He is a
strong communist; I had been told a few days earlier, and every time he spoke
it sounded to me like he was angrily yelling.
After roughly
twenty minutes of angry yelling in Chinese, it was time for us to be introduced
to the faculty. Gavin and I went up to
the front of the room, introduced ourselves, and then returned to the back of
the room while the teachers debated whether they would stay at the teacher
picnic for one or two days. I didn’t
really know what the outcome of that discussion was, but we were told to make
sure that we go to the picnic on Friday.
The day before
the picnic we were told that we should spend the night at the picnic. When I asked what we should bring (you know,
like a change of clothes maybe), we were told that we didn’t need to bring
anything. Confused, I decided to bring a
backpack with a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a few other essentials to
school the next day.
To get to the
picnic we would be taking the teacher bus (the bus that drives all of the
teachers to the school in the morning) about an hour and a half into the
countryside. In order for everything to
run smoothly, the students were given Friday afternoon off so that the teachers
could get up to the picnic site in the early afternoon.
To repeat: THE
STUDENTS WERE GIVEN A HALF DAY SO THAT THE TEACHERS COULD GET DRUNK IN THE
COUNTRYSIDE!!
That afternoon
we boarded the bus, and I was shocked to see that none of the teachers seemed
to have overnight bags with them. Were
we not actually spending the night as this place? What exactly was going on? Just then, Brother Savio (a fellow English
teacher, and Korean Salesian) entered the bus with his arms full of several
hardened fish. Thinking it was a joke or
something I laughed a bit, until I was told that Koreans eat dried fish as a
snack.
Savio started
passing out these fish (which were about 20 inches long each) and people
started ripping off parts of them.
Before the bus even left the school it stank of fish that people were chomping
on like it was candy. I declined the fish
and leaned my head back so that I could get some sleep. We left.
***
About an hour
and a half later I awoke to discover that we were in the middle of a hilly
countryside and people were getting off the bus at a rather rustic looking
building. Following people into the
building, I saw everybody get to work doing various chores. People staked claim to bedrooms, which were
essentially dorm rooms that had nothing in them except about a quarter inch of
not-quite-padding on the floor (see right).
Savio is on the
floor of one of these rooms washing it down, and he tells Gavin, myself, and
Rhomel (a Philippine Salesian who teaches the same classes as Gavin and I) that
we should sleep in that room with him. I
take off my backpack and my coat and leave them on the floor in the corner so
that I can wander around this complex and try to figure out if we are all
actually sleeping on the floor.
Walking out
into the hallway, I see teachers everywhere moving desks and dressers all
around. The building is owned by the
school, I am told; and students and teachers come here sometimes in the summer
or winter. Confused about what exactly
is going on, I continue to walk around until I find myself in a large barn-like
structure that is attached to the bedroom building. There are several long tables set up in this
barn, which is apparently where we are going to be eating dinner.
I start to walk
around the outside of building so that I can fully grasp the situation.
***
An hour or so
later the dinner preparations had begun.
Fr. Paul, who is also the assistant principal of the school, is leading
the barbecue team. They have started
huge fires in semi-cylindrical metal vats that they then partially cover with
metal slates (see left). Soon enough
some people walk out of the barn with two huge buckets full of meat and they
begin to throw all of it on the metal and grill it up.
Meanwhile,
inside the barn, the tables have been set and people are putting out smaller
types of food and drinks. At 4:30 in the
afternoon it is almost time for dinner (of course) and the preparations have
almost been completed when I am summoned to sit down at a table and begin
drinking. Now when I was in college,
drinking at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon in the fall was a regular occurrence,
and while I was ready to start drinking, I was shocked that the ‘adults’ were
about to dive right in and start pounding beers with dinner.
In China, at
least in the area where we are, it is customary to drink out of small glasses
that are roughly equivalent to 3-4 shots.
You don’t just drink at your own pace or whenever you want, but
everybody drinks at the same time.
Whenever somebody feels like it they will walk around the table and fill
up everybody’s glass and then they will cheers the table and everybody will
drink at the same time. Oftentimes the
expectation will be that you go ‘bottoms up’ and finish your glass.
The most
important part of this custom, however, is not the drinking of the beer, but
the pouring of the beer from the bottle into glasses. Regardless of how much beer is in a person’s
glass, it will be topped off before every round of cheers. When glasses are being filled there is strict
protocol that must be followed. If you
are pouring beer into the glass of an elder, you must use two hands to
pour. Likewise, if you are accepting
beer from an elder, you must accept it with two hands. Then, if you clink glasses during the cheers
with somebody, the glass of the elder must be the higher of the two glasses as
a show of respect.
Once I figured
out all of the rules to drinking we were on our way.
As meat,
sauces, vegetables, rice, and more meat were brought out to the tables; people
kept pounding the small glasses of beer.
No sooner after one cheers had ended than another began, and between
each round of pounding beers everybody at the table continued to eat all the
food they could get onto their plate.
From my seat, I continuously piled beef and pork on my plate. I kept my chopsticks in one hand and my glass
of beer in the other as I alternated eating and drinking faster than I ever had
in my life
After an hour
or so, my stomach began to hurt. Filled to
the throat with slowly digesting meat, rice, and beer, I desperately needed to
take a break. I got up and walked
outside, where I discovered that the huge buckets of meat were still coming and
there seemed to be no end in sight to the cooking that was happening. I brought my glass outside with me, where I
was able to leisurely drink when I pleased (although it was still highly
unacceptable for me to pour my own beer).
***
For the next
several hours I moved back and forth between the barn and the grilling area
clutching my glass and drinking beer with people at every table I stopped
at. While most of the teachers at this picnic
could not speak English, all of them made sure to drink with me and Gavin. During parts of the night I found myself
talking in broken English about topics ranging from the requirements to become
an Eagles Scout to the drinking habits of American college students.
The most
outrageous of these conversations came when I was talking to a guy that told me
his English name was Tank (see right).
Tank worked in the dormitory of the school, so I didn’t really know him
very well at the time. He had coined the
names ‘Beer-Friend’ for Gavin and ‘Beer-Lover’ for me. I’m not quite sure where the name came from,
but he used it for the entirety of the night.
While Gavin was
talking to some other teachers nearby in Chinese, Tank and I started talking;
“Have you ever
been to Russia,” Tank asked me.
“No,” I said,
“Have you ever been to Russia?”
“Yea, in 1999 I
go to Russia with my gang.”
“Your gang?”
“In 1999, I go
to Russia—with my gang—and my gun,” he tells me as he waves his hand in a
gun-like motion as if he is in rap video or something.
Confused as to
whether or not he is actually in a gang, and if he actually has a gun, we talk
for a little while longer about me being ‘Beer-Lover’ and Gavin being
‘Beer-Friend’. Gavin and I decide that
we have to get Tank to take us to bars in the coming weeks, either with or
without his gang.
***
During other
parts of the night, however, I merely found myself trying to follow along as
people around me spoke in tongues that I could not understand. It was at one of these times when Gavin and I
were at a table with the principal of the school (the strong communist that he
apparently is). He speaks enough English
to be able to ask me how many people are in my family, and to understand when I
tell him that I have two younger brothers and a younger sister. As is the case with most people in China that
hear this, he is shocked when he hears that there are a full six people in my
family. That is HUGE!!
Anyways, at the
picnic I have been told that the principal likes to see other people get drunk,
but he doesn’t necessarily like to get very drunk himself [I wonder if I know
anybody from Northbrook like this?]. He fills Gavin and my glasses and begins
to talk very quickly in Chinese. After
two or three minutes of talking, Gavin turns to me and says, “that means
welcome to our school”.
“Bottoms up,”
the principal says, utilizing the only phrase that every teacher can apparently
say in English, and we all kill our beers.
Then, as if out
of nowhere, the principal and Gavin engage in an arm wrestling contest (see
left). The principal, it turns out, is
surprisingly strong (just not as strong as Gavin, who later determined that he
should have let the principal win).
After several
rounds of arm wrestling, and a couple more rounds of beer, I determined that my
time had come. I wandered upstairs to
the room that had nothing but a couple backpacks in it, took my shoes off at
the door (more on that later), and sprawled across the floor on my stomach
still wearing all of my clothes.
It was 8:30.
***
I woke up a
couple times throughout that night.
The first time
was when Gavin and another guy entered the room to go to sleep. The other guy threw a sheet on me, and I
rolled over and went back to sleep. I
wasn’t sure where the sheet came from, but I was still too drunk to care.
The second time
I awoke it was more permanent. It was
around 4:30 in the morning, and I had started to sober up. Normally this is a good thing, but when you
are sleeping on the cold, barely padded floor of a building that is essentially
a barn; being passed out was a much better proposition. As I was fully alert, I decided to utilize the
bathroom, but remembered the lack of western toilets and decided against it (I
have yet to use an Eastern toilet, and have no intention of doing so).
Looking around
the room, I realized that the Chinese guy had some sort of padding under
him. Assuming that it came from the same
place as the sheet did, I walked out to the hallway searching for padding. Two doors down from the room I had slept in I
found an entire room filled from floor to ceiling with sheets, blankets, and
padding. I grabbed myself some padding
and went back to my room.
I was able to
sleep again.
When I woke up
in the morning I found that the Chinese guy had put another blanket on top of
me while I was asleep. I guess I looked
cold or something, but this allowed me to sleep even longer while people were
bustling around in the hallway doing all sorts of things. Eventually I got up; still wearing the
clothes I had put on over 24 hours earlier, and walked down to the eating area
for breakfast.
***
Everybody has
their own way of dealing with hangovers.
For some people it is pizza, for other people it is bacon, for other
people it is cranberry juice, and for others it might even be gravy. For me, dealing with a hangover means not
eating for many hours. While I became
adept at making pancakes during my Senior year at Notre Dame, I rarely had more
than two of these pancakes. While I
loved to go to the Cedar House on other Sunday mornings, I almost always left
more food than I should have.
For me, the
best way to cure a hangover after a heavy night of drinking last year was to
get out of bed and curl up on the couch watching Definitely, Maybe. This not
only lets all of the alcohol get through my system, but the romantic comedy (or
old episodes of The OC) does a great
job to remind me of the girls that I didn’t hook up with the night before. Eventually (like around noon) I start by
eating a couple mini-bagels and work myself up to the point where I can eat
dinner around seven and be binge drinking by ten.
I couldn’t do
any of this in Chinese countryside that day, however. When I walked into the barn I was expected to
eat breakfast . . . but I didn’t. I was
sitting there drinking my water when one of the older teachers started pouring
glasses of vodka for all the people sitting near us. He poured me a glass which I politely refused
to drink as I thought to myself: what are
they doing, drinking vodka first thing in the morning after binge-drinking the
entire night before, this is a completely new level of crazy.
But it
wasn’t.
As overwhelmed
and confused as I was because some of these men started drinking straight vodka
first thing in the morning after pounding many, many beers the night before, I
realized that these men would have been doubly confused if I were to bring them
to The Backer on a Friday night to drink Long Islands until 3:00 in the morning
and then wake them up at 8 AM the next morning to start shotgunning beers in
preparation for a football game. As
crazy as I thought these men were, it wasn’t all that different from the
ridiculous things that my friends and I had done the previous four years (and
some of my friends were doing at that very moment on the other side of the
world).
What was crazy
about the whole situation was that these were 40 and 50 year old adults. It wasn’t a bunch of college students being
irresponsible, but a bus full of high school teachers that cancelled afternoon
classes so that they could go out to the countryside and drink beer all
afternoon before passing out on the floor.
That was crazy.
***
As we boarded
the bus to return to the school, the entire group looked like a complete
mess. Everybody was wearing the clothing
that they had put on the previous morning to go to school, nobody had showered
in a day, and the hangovers were evident.
We were fifty high school teachers that each had the look of an 18-year
old high school senior driving back from a weekend at the University of
Illinois.
I slept better on the hour and a half ride back to school than I did the
entire previous night knowing that when we got back to our apartment, there
would be plenty of bread waiting for me.
