This morning, I had to go to the little convenience store just outside the side gate of my university. It’s a typical little Mom & Pop place similar to the kind you can sometimes, although rarely now, see in the United States. It’s a relatively dark, narrow space with an open entrance that has a Coke fridge to the right, as you walk in, and a little cooking area for snacks (boiled eggs, kebabs, etc.) on the left. Inside, the shelves, stacked with everything from báijiŭ (Chinese white lightning) to instant noodles to potato chips to beer to Halls mentholated tablets, rise over the two aisles, creating a shadowy, claustrophobic effect and the vague but very real fear that you might send the whole place crashing down if you reach for the wrong roll of toilet paper. Mom is usually making snacks, and Dad is usually lingering near the cash register that sits on the tiny counter near the fridge. Their little boy is also there, probably about two years old. Whenever he sees me, he tries out some of his new vocabulary. Last time, it was “Lăowài!” I’ll attempt to say something witty and clever in reply, but this is not easy. Today, for instance, when he saw me, pointed, and exclaimed “Wàiguórén!” (Foreigner!), I pointed at him and said, “Zhōngguórén!” (Chinese person!) It was good for a polite laugh from his parents and another customer, but that’s about the best that I could do. Such are some of the pitfalls of living in a non-English speaking country while possessing deficient language skills. I am trying to learn some Pŭtōnghuà, and I’m more or less pleased with my progress and attitude, but it is slow going and, after all, daily life does happen on a daily basis. I am pretty good at picking up Chinese numbers, though. As anyone who has spent time (even a few days) in a foreign country will tell you, learning the numbers makes life a whole lot easier. They’re everywhere because cash transactions are everywhere. Not everyone will have a calculator at hand to type out how much something costs, and besides, the whole experience makes you feel like a powerless child: a dose, however small, of self-respect is lost in the process. If I was a tourist, I could laugh it off. But I’m not. And the numbers aren’t so hard to handle, so I learned them. Going to the front to pay for my goods, the boss lady went behind the counter and, asking the boss man for a price-check, tallied everything up in her head. “Shísì kuài wŭ qián.” (¥14.50) I handed over a ten and a five and she put it in the register. She gave me back a five máo coin, which I expected, and the five kuai bill that I’d just handed her, which I didn’t. I was puzzled…I mustn’t have heard her right. I stepped out to the street…I know I heard her right…she gave me too much change. I went back in and realized that I hadn’t yet learned the word for “give”. I wanted to tell her that I’d given her fifteen kuai, not twenty, but all I could tentatively put together was “Nĭ yŏu shíwŭ kuài.” (You have fifteen kuai.) as I pointed at the cash register. She said something as she pointed at the coin she’d given me, which I was still holding with the five kuai. I implicitly understood what she was saying. She thought that I was complaining about being shortchanged-what I was trying to tell her just mustn’t have registered. If you want to argue with a Chinese woman, especially a shopkeeper’s wife, about money, you may as well just save your breath because you’re going to lose every time. It doesn’t matter that you’re trying to give money back-all decisions are final. I took my things, and my unexpected change, and went back into the street. I kept telling myself that I must have heard her wrong. But I know that I heard her right. To me, here and now, that’s much more important than the money.

Nanjing is not a very cold city, at least not in absolute terms. It is called one of the “three ovens of China” and this title is deserved. Yet over the past month, I’ve been sick far more often than I’ve been well, and on many days have had some difficulty feeling my fingers and toes. The problem is both political and geographic. At some point, I don’t know when, it was decided that buildings constructed south of the Yangzi River would have no central heating systems. It just so happens that Nanjing lies entirely on the Chāng Jiāng’s southern banks. Although, at a guess, the average temperature here has to be at least ten degrees Fahrenheit higher than Boston’s, the cold is a low intensity sort of relentless when it comes. In Boston, during the winter months, people scurry for warmth: at home, in cars, or at work. It isn’t like that here. Although where I live isn’t that cold (my circuit breakers are close to maxed out on space heaters), it’s never really warm. And in the last house I visited, I kept my coat on at all times-as did the residents. In the university classrooms, it’s no different. If you’re from New England, the closest feeling that I can compare it to is standing around in your garage in late March-it’s not freezing, but it’s that same sort of finger-stiffening raw cold that stays with you long after you’ve begun to warm up. The only difference is that here, you don’t really warm up until the weather does. I’m not complaining about the weather, not at all. Such are the vagaries of the Almighty. But I am complaining about central planning. I teach at a university campus that is about five years old. Correspondingly, its buildings are all new. Yet recently, in the men’s restroom, I blinked several times as I saw my piss steam as it hit the water in the hole. I’m sorry, but that’s just not necessary. Everybody puts up with it remarkably well, wearing their parkas, mittens, and hats as they sit in class, eat, study, and watch TV. And each cold day, without fail, I have to ask some student who looks like he’s heading for the North Pole exactly why he felt compelled to open the window next to him as wide as he possibly could. I never get an answer, although I am genuinely curious. I think that it may be for the fresh air, although I can’t quite believe it. I thought that the worst had passed-last week was as pleasant as spring. But, for better or for worse, I’m finding that the weather here is proving to be much like Boston’s in its unpredictable behavior. Whether or not this will prove to be good or bad remains to be seen.

Lying in bed early on Sunday morning, I made the instantaneous decision to take the #13 bus over to Nanjing Railway Station and take a walk around Xuanwu Lake. I really wanted to have a close look at the famous city wall, a large section of which, I was told, could be seen here. A five minute walk and ten minute ride later I was standing in the welcome sunshine on the plaza in front of the station getting ready to begin my trip along the eastern side of the lake. I was wearing my overcoat and, in the warmth, I began to take it off but stopped, realizing that I was wearing a very comfortable, but very ratty pair of pants with holes in the seat. As a foreigner, I already stick out. As the foreigner with his ass hanging out of his pants, I could achieve some additional unwanted notoriety. I chose to sweat it out. On the side of the lake opposite the railway station, the wall begins. It is very high-at least thirty feet but probably closer to forty, and was in significant disrepair, with small trees sprouting from the tops of the ramparts and cavities in the wall’s side where stones had been dislodged. It was still impressive. As I stood and wondered how such an identifying aspect of the city could be allowed to slowly rot away without anything being done, I heard a light but firm tapping sound. I walked a little further and saw two men, workers, leaning through a turret, repositioning stones after scraping away a history’s worth of dirt with their trowels. Was this an effort at historic restoration by the Nanjing city government? I soon saw that it was-and a damned good one at that. As far as I could see around the curvature of the lake, the wall stood intact-and restored. It did look medieval, with its long row of turrets and imposing height. Looking at a map, the positioning of the wall along the south and west sides of the lake makes strategic sense. In order to enter the city where that portion of the wall protected it, attackers would have to cross the lake. In addition to this, Zijin Shan looms close by, providing another natural barrier. This was the way the Japanese came in 1937. Iris Chang wrote, in The Rape of Nanking, that the people of Nanjing could see the mountainside in flames as the invaders approached. According to some old prophecy, when Zijin Shan burned, Nanjing would fall. And so it did. There are three intact gates in this section of the walls. The first one is the most impressive, with its huge gate swung open for pedestrians and cars to pass through. I had long meant to come this way and was glad that I did. At one point, I came to a permanent looking set of metal stairs leading to a doorway opening halfway up the wall. “Cool!” I thought, “I’ll be able to take a look around from the top.” I slowly walked up the stairs and through. I could see nobody but could hear some sort of construction work going on. I saw a flight of stairs and was halfway up when I heard a woman yelling in Chinese. I turned around to see one of the ubiquitous turnip shaped ladies, sans wizening but steadily on her way to granny status, looking up at me with her hands on her hips. “Bu qu?” (Don’t go?) I said in a questioning way as I innocently came down the stairs. She mumbled something as I walked out. I said “Zaijian!” (Goodbye!) and headed back out and down. As I approached the railway station again, I stopped to sit on a bench, looking at the section of wall that I had just passed, with its two high watchtowers surveying everything before them. I would be back again.