occupiedelsewhere

The nine months I spent in China after college were punctuated by disastrous teaching jobs. By March, month seven, I was at my fourth school, a college south of Xi’an.
I didn't like the stark new campus, so I’d walk to the dirt road outside the school gates where food cart vendors cooked on woks and mixed noodles with spicy sauce. Here, local people had pitched tents and put up tables, creating restaurants where they served spicy eggplant, Japanese-style tofu, and many other foods I could not name. The last cart, where a woman sold tofu-pudding, marked the border of my world. Beyond it, the road continued into the countryside, uncharted and unpredictable.
But one day I stepped beyond the last cart, shaking my head as the woman offered me tofu, and turned up a road that led into the newly-green fields. I walked until the road dead-ended at a footpath. As I stood, wondering which way to turn, four women came over a knoll. They were wearing bright jackets and pants, puffy from the layers underneath. “Can I go there?” I asked, pointing left. They gestured no emphatically and asked if I had eaten yet. I hadn’t.
We spoke in a mix of broken English, broken Chinese, and hand gestures as the women led me deeper into the fields. After a while we came to a cluster of houses built in the traditional style, all attached, with awnings that sloped upwards and red Lunar New Year decorations peeling off the doors. By now, my euphoria had waned into dehydration. We walked through a labyrinth of stone walls. The woman named Yuan, who had a broad, open face, assured me that we were almost there, a promise which becomes difficult to believe after the fifth repetition.
Then, without warning, the houses opened. We were in a giant green courtyard where, on a stage at the center, a Chinese opera was being performed, in full costume. Across the courtyard, vendors busily sold food and many people sat at tables eating lunch.
I stood with Yuan, watching characters in giant masks move across the stage in time with the music. People milled about, watching the opera and chatting. We walked to the tables where Yuan bought me a bowl of noodles I could not finish, my stomach too dry to churn.
I had failed at almost everything in China—teaching, learning Chinese, understanding most of what happened around me. I’d spent the winter in my cold room, reading, the cheap white wall paint rubbing off onto my clothes. Then ten seconds of openness had led to perhaps the best surprise of my life.