Little Emperors (12 page)

“Yeah,” muses Amy, “we were thinking, like, ‘How will we tell her parents?' or ‘What will we tell the boss?' ”

“ ‘Hi, boss? JoAnn won't be able to teach Monday, but we have her head and arm here if that . . . uh . . . helps!' ” Kerry jokes.

We fall silent, enjoying the gurgle of the river, the touch of the sun, and, quite literally, being alive. We float past half-submerged water buffalo and children splashing naked near the opposite bank of the river.

“Y'know, this is really dumb,” Amy says at last. “Being in this river. It's pretty disgusting.” She runs her fingers through the browny-green water and stares at her palm. “Who knows what kinds of parasites we're picking up?”

“Don't pee in the river!” Kerry says. “There are microscopic fish that will swim up your pee trail and infect your urinary tract!”

“Oh-oh . . . too late!” Amy replies, looking somewhat worried.

“You realize,” I say, “that with the way we're sitting in these tubes, our most vulnerable parts are submerged in this water . . .”

“
Yeeaaaagh!
Let's get out!”

We paddle to the grassy bank, unfold ourselves from our tubes, and begin walking along the river toward the village of Fuli, where the boat will be waiting. The grass along the shore is short-cropped and springy like a putting green, and nearly fluorescent in colour. With each step, half a dozen tiny frogs pop out of the grass near our bare feet. A short brown snake crosses our path. We spy another snake, nearer the river, being beaten to death by a group of boys. We keep walking — up and over the green hills lining the river, across the rocky beds of smaller tributaries, under the solid stalks of fallen bamboo trees, and past small brick houses partially hidden by tall weeds.

We come to a concrete jetty sloping into the middle of the river. Sharp rocks on the other side of the jetty force us to stop walking. We plop our tubes down on the concrete slabs and sit watching the river, waiting for our boat to return. Next to the jetty, tied to a banyan tree by a rope flossed through its nose, a lazy water buffalo stares at us. Children come out of a small stone house on the bank behind us, hide behind a bamboo patch, and watch us. A woman comes out of the same house with a basket full of clothes resting on her hip. As she makes her way past us toward the water, she hisses and makes
scat!
motions with her hands, indicating we should leave —
now
. We can't. There is nowhere to go.

Suddenly, there it is, our little tour boat, struggling its way back upstream. We wave our arms, and the boat toots in reply. We gather our inner tubes and run past the woman slapping T-shirts on a rock to the end of the jetty. Waist-deep in water, we clamber onto the boat and head back upriver to Yangshuo.

We recline in our tubes on the boat's bow, quiet with fatigue and mild sunstroke. Amy, who has been in China more than ten months and understands quite a bit of Chinese, listens to the boat woman talking loudly to her husband and tries to catch pieces of their conversation.

“Oh! I think she just called you stupid!” Amy tells me. “For a moment, I thought she said what you did on your tube was ‘dangerous,' but I think what she really said was ‘stupid.' ”

“She'd be right on both counts,” I reply.

I pinch my arms again. I am still here. I am whole. I am alive. The candle is burnt right down now, only a flame floating in clear, hot liquid. The green bottle is empty. Kerry and Amy left this afternoon on the three o'clock bus to Guangzhou, and it is only now, alone, that I begin to think about what happened on the river today, the closeness of that call. Thoughts of
What if . . . ?
swirl through my head, tangle in river weeds, drown in murky water. I shudder. I'm not sure which is worse, the thought that I might have died or the thought of dying in such a ridiculous manner.

The next video tonight is the film
Seven
, but I think I'll go back to the hotel to try to get some sleep. I don't need to see a horror film. Not tonight. My own nightmares will be enough.

Suddenly, it is September. And with it comes more change.

I have two new roommates (the former ones having run away in the middle of the night back in July): Rhonda from Prince Edward Island and Celine from Washington, D.C. From our living-room window we watch as the tiny men at the construction site beyond the graveyard lay the foundations for the future building. Where there were once just muddy holes, concrete pillars now jut out of the earth. It seems the only constant in Guangzhou is constant change — or constant construction.

School is back at its regular schedule, the kids back in their green-and-white track suits. Everyone has moved up a grade and grown a couple of centimetres. The old Grade Sixes have moved on to middle school.

The playground at Number 1 School is again alive with squeals and shouts, lunch lines and Ping-Pong games. And now, much to my delight, when I enter the school gates, kids drop their jump ropes and basketballs and charge toward me screaming,
“Miiiiiiiiiisssssss Diiiiiiiiooooooooonnnnne!”
stopping just short of tackling me to the ground. I walk to my classroom, dragging Grade Twos and Grade Fives and Grade Fours and Grade Ones clinging to me in a massive group hug. It is absolutely the best way to start a day.

We are in a new classroom at the school. We've been moved from the science room down to the teachers' conference room on the ground floor. Echo and I push the long oak table to the back of the room, then put the new, adult-sized chairs, with manufacturer's plastic still covering the seats, into a semi-circle. I feel as if I am teaching in a garage in this new room — it is long and has a high ceiling but only one window. This solitary window has iron bars and looks out onto the courtyard. Any number of kids, curious teachers, and nosy grandparents can peek in and watch our class. And they do. I pull the flimsy green curtains over the window to hide us from prying eyes, but since it is still too hot to shut the glass,
hands reach in and immediately yank the curtains back. How I miss the stuffed birds, dust, and relative obscurity of the science room!

Construction is a spectator sport in Guangzhou
.

Children play a jump rope game in the schoolyard of Number 1 School
.

The past few weeks have seen a number of changes to the Guangzhou landscape as well. The store being renovated next to the McDonald's near my school has turned out to be a 7-Eleven, the first one in Guangzhou. I went in on opening day to investigate — and to get a Slurpee — and found that a Chinese 7-Eleven isn't terribly different from any other
7-Eleven. It is brightly lit and extremely air-conditioned. Neat rows of Japanese candy and British chocolate line the shelves. Coolers in the back hold all kinds of cold drinks. Packages of condoms and gum are kept at the front counter. The Slurpee machine is kept shining.

But there are some details that make it a 7-Eleven with Chinese characteristics. Instead of nachos or cheeseburgers in the take-away food section, you can pop a Styrofoam tray full of chicken's toes into the microwave for a quick snack. In lieu of hot dogs rotating in a steamer, you can bag a few pork-filled steamed buns for lunch. And, as one might expect in a communist country, the choice of Slurpee flavour doesn't change. Day in and day out, it is the same old green apple or orange.

Since this 7-Eleven opened, 7-Elevens have been breaking out like measles all over Guangzhou. Just when you think you've seen the last one, you find another in the oddest place. In fact, a 7-Eleven has just opened down the street from our apartment on Shui Yin Lu. Now we can have green apple or orange Slurpees anytime we want, twenty-four hours a day.

And the long-awaited Hard Rock Café has finally opened its guitar-shaped doors. Rumour had it opening in May, then June, then, no, July, and finally now — September. What a treat to dig into a plate of nachos with real melted cheddar cheese and sip at a real chocolate milkshake!

Had all these things already existed in Guangzhou when I arrived, I would have been disappointed. (“Where is my authentic China experience?” I would surely have whined.) Now, I am grateful.

“Hey! Look what the neighbours are doing!” Rhonda says one evening as she sits curled up in the chair closest to the window. Our neighbours' window is at a right angle to our living room, so we often peek over to see what's on their TV or to casually spy on them. Celine and I go to the window to take a look. We can see a man standing at a whiteboard. He is drawing circles in the form of a pyramid for a small group of people sitting on fold-out chairs in his living room.

We soon realize the people next door are odd. They keep strange schedules and come and go at irregular hours. Often, in the evenings, a string of visitors enters their apartment. Afterward, about once every fifteen minutes, we hear loud, enthusiastic cheering and clapping bursting from next door. From what we can see, their place isn't a normal apartment. With its whiteboard, folding chairs, conference
table, and video equipment, it seems more like an office of some sort. A travel agency, maybe?

I run into the neighbours a few times while waiting for the elevator. They are always friendly and eager to chat with me in English. I begin to wonder if they are part of a cult until, fumbling for my keys outside our door one night, I look up and see a new red, white, and blue sticker on their door. It says
AMWAY OF CHINA, LTD
.

Our neighbours are Amway salesmen? I push open our door and run to the window to take another look. It's true. There, on our neighbours' windowsill, sit the unmistakable blue-and-white bottles of Amway products.

Early on another evening I hear a knock at the door. Peering through the peephole, I spy three well-dressed people with earnest faces and sprayed hair. For a moment, I wonder if they might be Chinese Jehovah's Witnesses. Then I doubt it. So instead of tiptoeing away and pretending I'm not home, I open the door. “Yes?”

The two women and one man seem startled by my foreign face. “Is this the Amway party?” one of the women asks, noticeably changing linguistic gears.

I am standing in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, so unless Amway has become very casual as of late, obviously not. “No. The Amway office is next door,” I reply, pointing to the locked gate adjacent to ours. “But it doesn't look like anyone is there right now. Maybe you have the wrong time or day?”

“Oh. Yes. Thank you. Sorry to bother you at home.”

“No problem,” I reassure her as they retreat down the hallway. I shut our door and lean against it.

Amway? In Communist China? How can it be allowed? Isn't it like private enterprise in its rawest form?
Perhaps
, I think,
Amway is a secret underground movement that has quietly invaded China — a subversive force of direct-sales people hiding out in inconspicuous apartments waiting to make their move
 . . .

It soon becomes clear that Amway is anything but underground here. After we discover the truth about our neighbours, Amway seems to appear everywhere I go. Walking to the book centre one day, I notice a sign with an arrow that says
AMWAY
(
CHINA
)
CO. LTD
. I follow it and discover that the entire top floor of the book centre houses an Amway distribution centre. On another day, my taxi zips past yet another huge, fluorescently lit distribution centre near the China Hotel — this one on
ground level, people streaming in and out of its glass doors. As the taxi careens onto an overpass, I see a huge billboard proclaiming the virtues of Amway in Chinese characters, its products photographed in soft, romantic light. Middle-aged ladies carry the shiny red, white, and blue Amway plastic bags everywhere — in the markets, on the backs of motorcycles, walking down the streets. Some of my students even bring their
Yellow Book
s to class in Amway bags.

Not long after Amway begins haunting me at every turn, I find a full-page story in the
South China Morning Post
on people who have struck it rich in direct sales in Hong Kong and China. I learn that Amway came to Mainland China in 1992 through a joint venture with a Taiwan distributor. Since then, the company has grown exponentially here, earning US$63 million between 1995 and 1996 alone. Astonished, I glance out the window at our neighbours' apartment. They will need to get a new whiteboard over there soon. China is going to make one mighty pyramid someday.