Living in a Small Town in China

Andy Hill

When I was first being shuttled to Gaoqing County, Shandong Province, where I had accepted a position teaching English at an elementary school, I had little idea of what I was getting into.

The night before we were to fly to Hong Kong for our visas, my friend, who was also travelling there to work, and I searched online for information about the small hamlet where we would be living for the next several months.

The only thing that we could discover about Gaoqing was that there was a lake there, which was from time to time populated by a swan. Not swans plural, but one swan.

After we arrived, settled into our guesthouse and sorted out formalities over dinner with our employer from the teaching agency, we roamed the small town’s main road to explore our new home.

We went to the large supermarket down the street to buy beer and peanuts (I always like going to the grocery store in foreign countries- it is an interesting yardstick of local culture).

When we walked through the store’s entrance, it was as if we had been transformed into celebrities, except infamy followed us rather than adulation.

People stared. I mean, they really stared

Old men, babies, young couples, all of them watched us in rapt curiosity as we awkwardly reviewed the alcohol selection. Although we were both seasoned travelers, never before had we experienced such close, wide-eyed attention being paid to our every mannerism and verbal exchange.

However, the attention we attracted was in no way mean-spirited, just curious. We paid, bowed, thanked the cashier and politely left the store, leaving a crowd of seemingly dumb-struck locals in our wake.

This behavior would continue throughout the several months that we worked in Gaoqing County. I chalk it up to the fact that we were probably the first Westerners that they had ever seen in person.

But this was not the only kind of attention we received.

I have never experienced so much instinctive hospitality, kindness, warmth and generosity than when I was in Gaoqing. The school where we taught had six Chinese English teachers who worked with us. They, along with people from the local education bureau and random others, invited us over to their houses and out to dinner almost every night.

Time after time we were invited to our coworkers’ homes for unbelievable amounts of food (and alcohol and cigarettes) and treated with so many genuine attempts to make us feel at home that on several occasions, after too many glasses of that ever-present clear liquor that accompanies every meal, I would get teary-eyed.

It still warms my heart to think of how kind the people of Gaoqing were to us, even though it seemed that every time I bought bananas at the store it was as if everyone around me was watching the first man walk on the moon.

This sums up my experiences living in a small Chinese town, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.