Wang Lin Got Married

I hadn’t received any letters from Wang Lin in Japan for a long time. I wondered what was going on with him, especially since one night on the news, I saw that Tokyo had an earthquake and one person died. He told me that he was going to move but I never received his new address. I was worried about him. I didn’t have any faster way to find out how he was. So, I wrote to him c/o his professor at Tokyo University and asked whether he had a phone just for emergency (three minutes calling China cost me $20 at the time).
     The next letter I received from him was the shocking news that stopped everything. It was a short letter that said, “When you receive this letter, I am either on the plane returning home or am home already. I don’t know why I am going home, but one thing for sure is to solve a personal problem so I don’t have to worry about it any more. I could concentrate on my studies here in Japan after I return. I would appreciate a card from you to congratulate or bless me. It would be very important to my happiness. I am waiting so please send your blessing. I hope we could keep writing to each other and keep our friendship as always, and I am sure you will have a better life than I could ever give you.”
     It was like a time bomb exploded, even though I knew it was coming. But I was surprised that he would actually go home to get married. Marry the girl his father introduced to him. I would be more understanding if he fell in love with someone in Japan where they studied together, worked together, or had something in common. I cried for a long time in my room until I started to have a headache. Then, I took a little nap. I got up and walked to the university bookstore and tried to choose a wedding card. I didn’t find a proper one. I went to another card shop and others selling greeting cards. I walked back and forth until I found one that I thought was the best there was. I went home and I couldn’t find where I had put the letter and envelope. I thought that they were on my desk in my room but I just couldn’t find them. I saw Hua was in his room; I did not know when he had come home since I thought I was the only one home. I did not like the possibility he had heard my crying or he might have come to my room and took my letter and the envelope since we could not lock our doors. Finally, I wrote a short note on the card congratulating him and wished him the best.  I also told him we should not write to each other anymore since it would not be fair to her and me.

Research Began

The first year disappeared quickly. Summer was close and I had not yet gotten into any research project yet. I had been taking classes for a year. My professor’s proposal had not received any funding for the old growth study in the Adirondacks. I couldn’t wait indefinitely and he understood that. We had a discussion and he suggested that I join Porter’s and Mark’s project that they had started a year before. The Ash project was funded by the government since the wood of baseball bats was made by this kind of tree. You would think all the baseball owners should have funded our project (or get % of their earnings instead of being beggars forever). Porter and Mark were research assistants. Porter had found out that he could not do vegetation and tree rings at the same time after the first year. I agreed to take over the tree ring studies since I didn’t have time to wait. I started to prepare for my first summer field trip, started my literature search, familiarized myself with the research, and prepared my own research proposal at the same time a year behind them.
    My part of the research project was to study the tree rings in relation to climate especially drought, and in relation to a mycoplasma virus. We traveled within five states of the northeast including New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Hampshire during the course of three summers. My job was to extract part of the wood diagonal to the trunk of the trees by using an increment corer. It needed a lot of physical strength to operate by hand, especially hardwoods. Although I was a forest engineer in China for 4 years, I knew how this worked, but I had never done this work myself before. In China where we have so many people, we always had some young local helpers to do the physical work for us. We hired people to carry luggage for us, to cook, and drive for us, too. There was always a local forest station where we could stay. I never did any physical work except climb mountains and hiking.
     I didn’t have any idea about camping, just what I had seen in movies. Porter and Mark basically told me that I would need a sleeping bag, field clothes that didn’t matter if they got dirty and non-perishable food for when we would be in the field. So, I went to our local market and bought a few cans of beans and soda crackers because a real meal in a can was so expensive. I borrowed a sleeping bag from Mrs. Wang until I could get my own when I could get a ride from someone to a store. I started my first summer field trip.
     Porter usually did the driving and Mark read the county map to find the sites we had to visit. I did not know all the details for the field trip while they seemed to know what to do. I usually took my nap after the first 20 minutes of driving. Porter and Mark joked that I slept so much in the GMC truck. I tried to explain that somehow cars make Chinese people sleepy. If you take a long distance bus in China, you will see most people taking naps in their seats. But if I were driving, I would not feel sleepy. They laughed and said that they would not let me drive even when I got my driver’s license because I would fall asleep after five minutes of driving.
     After we parked our truck by the road, we carried all the necessary equipment and started to walk into the woods. Porter usually led the way with a compass. Mark and I followed. A flock of deer-flies and mosquitoes was all around and looked like they had not seen humans in all their lives. The flies and mosquitoes bit through the thick jeans that I wore. That was something I had not encountered in the sub-alpine mountains of China.
     When we reached our study area, Mark tried to help Porter set up his plot by pulling a measuring tape following Porter’s directions on his compass. Mark had to go through thick brush or over big rocks or whatever was in front of him to get a straight line. He was a big, heavy man so he had so much trouble keeping a straight line. It was like watching two big bears roaming through the woods. They shouted at each other since they just could not get the line straight. It looked so easy for me, so I volunteered for the job since I was small and had a lot of experience going through thick brush, setting plots in China. It was a “piece of cake” for me following Porter’s directions to go straight. I could help him finish the plot in less than half an hour. He was very pleased and told me that I was the best.

I am standing next to a giant ash tree in the field. I had stated to grow my hair since I could not afford to go to the hairdresser

     After I helped Porter set up his plot, I started my own work. First, I needed to drill cores into three trees that Mark had already sampled for roots and foliage for lab testing. Then, I randomly sampled seven to ten more dominant trees, maples, or other species. I did not realize how hard it was just to start coring a tree. I had to push the point into the bark first in order to start turning. It was so hard that I wished I had a hammer. I barely finished three trees when Porter and Mark were all finished with their sampling. Then they helped me finish mine before we moved on to the next plot. I felt very bad because I felt I owed them for helping me with my work. I cried to the trees for help since I could not even finish half of my work. I realized that my arms and back were not strong enough and I needed to master the skill of the drill by concentrating all my strength on the point of the increment corer. I tried and I cried to the trees as if I wanted the trees to know. I did get better after a while and the trees must helped me too; the second summer, I did not need Porter’s and Mark’s help any more.   

                                                  This is a pine tree, not a hardwood Ash
     When we finally got back to our campground, it was dark already. We started to eat our dinner. I started to eat my beans and crackers with some water. I could not eat much since I did not think the food was edible. I could not sleep on the cold ground; it was like “hell.”

     The next summer, our professor paid us to eat out instead of bringing food ourselves. That still didn’t change much for me. I had the hardest time adjusting to eating American meals especially when I was so exhausted. First, I did not know what to order. With Porter and Mark’s help, I did order something I didn’t like but I had to eat as much as I could for my sake. There was once though, I just couldn’t eat the food because it had very strong goat cheese on it. It made me nauseous. I had to order something else that made Porter and Mark not very happy to wait for me. They just could not understand why I was so picky about food, especially when they were hungry, assuming I was hungry too. I did try my best eating since I did not have any other choice. Finally, I found out that I liked American soup, but it often ran out because we went out to eat so late. In the morning when I woke for breakfast, I liked to have something light, no oil. A bowl of rice porridge and salted pickled vegetables or a boiled egg would do, but pancakes and syrup with oily eggs just made my head dizzy and sleepy.

     I did not understand why each local forest station did not have a guesthouse for visitors. Anything would be better than camping on the ground. Summer weather did not cooperate. It seemed like every time we were out in the field, it rained at night and poured on our tents. I just couldn’t sleep with all kinds of noises so close to me. When there was no rain, I always woke up cold and heard noises around my tent, maybe some animals but since I couldn’t see outside from inside the tent, I wondered what it was, maybe a big black bear or a big monster or a bad person. I was so scared inside that I could not even move. Sometimes, I heard Porter or Mark move while they slept and that gave me some reassurance because I knew that they were still around. I tried asking them to set up my tent as close to theirs as possible. There was once though that we had a lot of space in the campground. They tried to set up my tent far away. I said that I didn’t want to be too far way, but I didn’t want to admit that my fear was the main reason. They laughed and wanted me to admit that I was afraid. I did and I hated it.

     I was hoping that local foresters could offer more help. Once a local forester met us at a McDonald’s and gave us a local map and showed us where they thought we should go. Another time, a local forest station was exceptionally helpful in Gettysburg, PA. Three or four young men insisted on being our guides to find the patch forest since there were so many open fields from the American Civil War. It was very hot and we walked under the hot sun in the field. By 1 PM, we ended up with 3 groups and I was in the first group walking and talking. Then the local foresters changed their mind, and they told us that they had to go back to the office, and were not going to accompany us anymore. Later Porter told me that the local guys took us to the field hoping to make me cry since I was the only girl there and a Chinese girl, and that they were surprised that I kept up with their pace without any difficulty, so they gave up.

     Sometimes, our two professors joined our field trips. They treated me well since I was the only girl there. I did not like to sit by the campfire because it was either too bright looking at the fire or completely black looking around; I would rather stay inside the tent in the dark, not be watched in the open by whoever I could not see. I was listening to all the animals around making noises. A lot of chasing and mating of the animals was going on in the forests. I did not understand what they were talking and laughing about, but I got the idea it was something dirty. I wanted to fall asleep while they were still talking. Hoping I could sleep through the night, waking up in the middle of the night was never good because I could not ever go back to sleep.

   My mind was very alert when I was out on a field trip. One evening when we came out of a diner after finishing dinner, I saw a big black object on the hill close to where we parked. I just couldn’t help screaming, “Black bear, black bear.” It was a big fluffy, black dog. Porter and Mark laughed at me and made fun about it later on. I felt a little silly too. The hard labor on the field trips and extensive travel made me really nervous about the highway speed. Mark liked to follow so close to cars in front and even Porter complained that it was dangerous. Porter was a better driver. Mark was a very good map-reader. I was learning to drive at that time. After my field trips started, I did not like to drive any more. I was making very good progress before, but now I was tired of even being in the car.

    After each trip home, I was so exhausted. I basically slept day and night to prepare for the next trip. Hua in our house showed his concern, he was very worried. He worked on the computer all the time. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to work in the field and to camp outside with two American guys. He somehow made his way home on Friday afternoon right after I came home from my field trips, and saw me lying on the porch lifeless. I was trying to dry my long hair. I hardly had energy to talk and I could not explain my fieldwork to an indoor computer guy. He was more concerned what those two American guys did to me or whether they had taken advantage of me. He wanted me to change my major or just give it up all together as if he was in charge of my life. I protested to him that I wanted to get my degree.

     This made the girl who loved him very jealous since he was not supposed to be at home around that time (he went to work on the computer at noon and came back after midnight). She went to her lab from 8 am to 6 p.m. One day, I noticed that she was crying after she came home and found the two of us at home alone talking. I didn’t know how much was going on between them since I was hardly ever home. She did send me a clear message. Also, I felt that Hua on one hand was trying to impress me, and on the other hand, was trying to hide something. He was not so nice to her.

Back to a Chinese House Again

I did find an apartment house with Chinese students again. This place was an ideal place for me because I could walk to my school office in four to five minutes. You couldn’t find a place closer than that with that price. I was tired of slipping on the ice in the winter when I had to walk far from school, and I was afraid of walking home after dark, and I had to move out from the American woman’s house.
     The only thing that I was not sure about was the boy named Hua, who gave me a ride to go shopping when I just arrived lived there. He was still a postdoc and still single. From what I knew, he was chasing another girl who had just arrived.  Without much choice, I moved into the house. There were four students including me. We actually got along quite well at first. Hua treated me nicely. He told me that I could eat whatever food of his in the refrigerator even though I never did. He told me that we could watch his color TV, and we could use his front porch, and so on. There was another girl who was few years older than I was. We were good friends at first. We often watched TV in Hua’s room since he was the only one in our house with a TV. He and the other guy had a car. They usually took us shopping when they went. Hua was a night person like most computer programmers, working at night till 5 am, then sleeping until 12 noon. The rest of us had regular working hours. So, we hardly saw him. Then, I noticed that the other girl liked him. Of course, he expressed no interest in her in front of me. But we all knew that there was something going on. I was not very comfortable between them, but I knew he was not for me. I did try to avoid being present whenever I could, except to watch the news after dinner.

Giving a Ride to a Stranger

My student life was about the same the following spring. Spring really gave me a sense of renewal. All kinds of spring flowers appeared in yards. Occasionally it snowed too; it became warmer and warmer. One Friday night after my work at the restaurant, Mr. and Mrs. Huang drove me back to my apartment. It was about 12:30 at night, and light snow was falling. While we were driving along, we noticed a young woman with very long loose hair and a very thin dress standing on the road waving to us. Her pale white dress and her light hair were blowing with the chilly wind and light snow. With dim streetlights in the background as we approached, she looked like a ghost from the movies.
     She tried to stop us, so we stopped. She looked very pale and thin. Her hair was long and messy. She wanted us to give her a ride. Mr. and Mrs. Huang then let her in the car, and asked her where her home was. Instead of going forward, she asked us to turn around the other way. We were wondering why she didn’t stop cars going in the other direction. Mr. Huang turned around the car. Instead of telling us where her home was, she asked us whether we were Chinese or Japanese and whether we smoked or not. She was trying to show us some kind of cigarettes. We told her that we didn’t smoke but she still persisted asking if we noticed any difference between our cigarettes and hers. I smelled alcohol and smoke from her breath; she kept talking. I said, “we are not interested in your cigarettes. None of us smokes. If you don’t tell us where you live, we will stop and let you out.” Then she said, “a few more blocks.” I said, “you don’t have a car?” She said, “no, but my boyfriend has one; he usually gives me a ride.” I said, “you don’t look old, but you look very pale and thin. You really should take better care of yourself.” She said, “Yes, I am trying. You are all so nice, why don’t you drop me off in front of the bar that is coming up.” I was shocked. “A bar? Where is your home? You are not going home? It is so late already.” She said, “I will go home later with my friend there. Thank you very much.” And she kept saying, “you are so nice. Thank you. Thank you” until she finally got out of the car and went into the bar.
     The next day, I told the story to my office mate Porter. He was so shocked that we picked her up and gave her a ride. He didn’t explain much. He said very seriously, “you could have ended up in big trouble. Never, never give a ride to a stranger, especially that late at night.” I think she was about my age, her lonely appearance on the street still in my mind every now and then. There was sadness in her eyes that I will never forget. I wish there were places for people to go, places to cover basic needs so confused or lost people could stay there without any questions until they were ready to be productive or self-sufficient again.

Moving into an American Home

Soon came early spring, and my English still had not improved to my satisfaction. Ding Hua and I decided to look for an American family that rented to Chinese students. Soon we found an older woman who wanted to rent out two of her rooms. The rent was really cheap, plus we needed to do some housework. So we went to the house and talked with the woman. She was very nice and agreed to rent to us right away although our rooms were not yet prepared for renting. She told us that she would empty two rooms for us before we moved in.
     Although nothing had moved by the time we moved in, I didn’t mind since I didn’t have much stuff (only two suitcases). I didn’t realize that place was going to be a disaster, and I would have to move out in the first month.
     The first problem was that she had five cats and a German shepherd. My bed was a bed for one or more of the cats. So, a cat tried to come into my room every night by scratching and screaming at my door. The woman tried to tell me that it was not too bad to have cats in bed because she had one. But I firmly told her “no.” Very soon, fleas started to attack me. I got bit all over. The woman said that she never get any bites implying that I might have been allergic to something else. She told me that she would make sure that the cats didn’t go into my room while I was not home, so I wouldn’t get any more flea bites after I washed all my bedding.
    It did not take long for me to get close to her German shepherd. I bought some pig’s ear that I cooked for myself with the dog in mind. Compared to eating that dry dog food, you know how the dog appreciated the pig’s ear. He became so friendly to me, which made the owner very upset. “He is my guard dog; why is he greeting you every time you come home and not me?”

He was such good dog that I wished he were mine

     Our landlady loved to talk and had more to say than we could listen to — how she married and divorced twice, how she fought with her husbands, and how proudly she owned her own house. She told us that we were bookworms and too pure. She would teach us some dirty words to start.
     She had two daughters and one son. One of her sons-in-law was in jail for drug trafficking; and I did notice in the closet that there were a lot of loose maps. She talked about how hard jail life was. She went to visit him once a month. She said that we could go to see what a jail looked like in America if we wanted to go with her the next time. That made me a little nervous; I never knew or was around anyone who had someone close in jail. I didn’t think that I wanted to go with her.
     Then one day, she told us that she was going to hold a party. Her kids would come and she waned us to join them for dinner. It was fine until she said, “well, after dinner, my kids might decide to smoke marijuana. I really don’t smoke that, but I like the sweet smell when they smoke. I just wanted you to know first, so you wouldn’t be surprised. You girls should know how an average American family lives,” she said with that kind of smile again, like she knew so much. That really scared me.
    We didn’t know what to do. Ding Hua decided to go to Kansas to see her ex-boyfriend and left me with nowhere to go and I was scared even more. I heard about people who did drugs but never saw any. I certainly didn’t want to be alone with them when that was going to happen. So, I talked to another friend of mine and she let me stay at her house overnight since I didn’t want to go home that night. That afternoon, I called the landlady and I explained that I had to be on the computer and write my program which was due the next day. I also explained that I might need to spend the whole night at school and apologized that I couldn’t make it to her party. She was very disappointed. In the meantime, I started to look for another place to live.
     Ding Hua came back after that weekend very sad. She knew for sure that she didn’t have anything to miss or think of anymore. She cried again; I was with her to try to comfort her. She started to think about her husband and her future. I told her she should concentrate on her husband since he was a good man and really loved her. She agreed, then she was worried that she might not be able to have a child and her husband would leave her too. She was only 27, but she already had a mastectomy because of cancer. She tried to have a child with her husband a year before without any success. So, she was afraid that she would end up lonely all by herself. She was not sure that she should stay for a higher degree or go back and concentrate on her family after a year. I told her that it all depended on what she wanted to do in her life. Finally, she chose her marriage. She said that her husband was really a nice man and deserved her true love. She went back to China. A year later, I received a letter from her with a picture. She was holding her son. From the picture, she wasn’t the same person I knew. She was a new person with a new life, and she was happy. Later on, she also sent me a copy of the papers that she had published in the newspaper on her life in America and a scientific paper in the Material Science Journal in China. She became an assistant professor.

Din Hua and I in Syracuse before she returned to China

First Big Snow

The first snow was a heavy one. It was the first time in my whole life that I saw that much snow. The whole city looked so clean and white and I felt like I was in a dreamland. Someone gave us a ride to a store to buy my first boots. I never wore boots before. I brought a winter coat from China but I was not able to buy winter boots in my city because there weren’t any for sale in the south.
    The next day, Ding Hua and I went to the park to take some pictures. I was so excited walking in the deep snow and looking back over my footprints. We climbed up the adjacent small hill and looked down. The whole city was covered with snow. I ran up and down in the snow and forgot all of my problems for a whole day. After we walked back home, I felt like building a snowman. It was the first time for me to build a snowman. With Ding Hua’s help, since she was from northern China where there was more snow in the winter, we built a snowman and took a few pictures with the snowman.

The first heavy snow I had ever seen -- I was in a pure white wonderland

 

 

 

     Everyone in the apartment house was a newcomer except one, Mrs. Zhang (张). She had been here for three years. Naturally, she had the most stuff and her room wasn’t big enough, so she had a big chest in the living room and a lot of stuff in the kitchen. She was much more “Americanized” than we were. On the weekends or sometimes in the evenings, we liked to sit around and watch television and talk about our personal lives. Mrs. Zhang told us for some reason she was paralyzed for about eight years in her childhood. Then she was able to walk again. She passed the national entry exams with very high scores that allowed her to go to the famous Tsinghua University (清华大学) of Architectural Design. Then she got married but she was unable to carry a child. In the end, she and her husband got divorced. She was pursuing her master’s degree in civil engineering here and working for an architectural company at the same time.
     Mrs. Wang (王) was of middle age, with two children. She came here as a visiting scholar for two years from Nanjing University of Science & Technology (南京理工大学). It was a small world, she and my boyfriend Wang Lin in Japan happened to be neighbors in Nanjing (南京). She seemed to know more about his family than I did. She wished me good luck. She also lent me her sleeping bag when I started my fieldwork later.
     Ding Hua was married to a man she really hadn’t fallen in love with yet, but she knew he was a good man. Her former boyfriend, who she still loved, was a graduate student in the Midwest now; they met in college back in China. She suspected the end of their relationship because he fell in love with his English teacher. The teacher was married and had kids back at home in the U.S. She knew they wouldn’t consider any marriage because of their age difference. While she was in the U.S., she really wanted chances to meet him to see whether there was still something between them, to see whether he still cared about her.

Mismatching

Things had not changed much in the Chinese student community. It wasn’t long after I had arrived in college. There was an older Chinese graduate student, his name was Zhang (张), in my department. He was married and had 10 year old son. He told me that his friend would give him a ride to go grocery shopping on the weekend. I could join him since there was still room in the car; I was glad since I did not have a car. So, we went grocery shopping that night. A week later, he asked me how I would think of his friend Hua as a boyfriend. I was shocked that he did not talk to me first and did not even ask me whether I had a boyfriend or not. Now, I knew they were talking about me behind my back. He told me that Hua was an excellent guy, a post-doc in computer engineering. But I just don’t like boys coming around picking me up like that. I told him that I wasn’t ready for any other relationship yet. I had a boyfriend in Japan. He wanted me to give up the friend in Japan from an older brother point-of-view. He wanted me to be more realistic. I told him that even if I was ready, I didn’t need any men like him introducing me to a boyfriend. I would find one myself. I met his friend already and if he wanted to let me know something then he could see me himself.
     He told me how he got married. He and his wife were college mates. They fell in love in college after they were introduced. After they graduated, they wanted to get married. So, he asked permission of her parents. Her parents wanted all the gifts and one hundred Yuan from him. One hundred Yuan was two months salary at that time. He just started to work and hadn’t saved any money yet. Finally, he had to borrow money from his friends to send to her parents before he received the “Okay” to marry their daughter. I told him, “so, I guess your wife was worth one hundred Yuan plus those gifts you sent to her parents.” I told him that only my grandparents were married that way. My parents married each other without anything but love. My grandma didn’t ask anything from her son-in-law. She just hoped they would love each forever. I was surprised how such a thing could happen to him. I had never heard such a story in our generation. He must have come from the really rural country, Shanxi (山西).
     Later on I met his wife, she was a very good wife helping her husband and taking care of their son. She complained to me that her husband loved drinking; he would go out drinking with his friends every Saturday night. He came home drunk at midnight, and could not stop talking; their son was sound asleep already. Sometime she had to beat him with the ruler next to their bed to quiet him down so he would not wake up their son. He had no clue why he had marks on his body the next day.
     One day, I was working in the campus computer lab when Li (李), who came to college with me on the plane, stopped by. He told me that Yale man whom we met on the plane; he had been looking for me. I asked him how did he know the Yale man was looking for me. Li told me he had been looking for me for months through the computer. I was amazed by what they could do on the computer and I was impressed by the Yale man’s effort. He called me a few times. I told him I was not ready for any other relationships yet since I was hoping Wang Lin could come to US. He got the message and we stopped communicating.
     Not sure because this Yale man’s efforts moved Li, but he got his courage to ask me out one day, I went out with him but not as a date; we had a good talk. He was one of 21 genius kids in China who went to The University of Science and Technology of China in 1978. The average age of his class was 14 and the youngest was 11 years old. He was much younger than I was. I was almost 17 at 1978. I treated him like a little brother although he did help me a lot on the way to college and with computers since that was his major. He thought he was big enough for me; he did take well care of me since we met. I told him he needed to find someone closer to his age. I laughed at him for being silly, and he thought it was silly too. Later on, he did find a girl of his age and eventually married.
     Another boy Liu very honestly told me he had a girlfriend back in China; he was not sure to take her out and marry her. He said that I would be his better choice if I agreed. I told him that I was not ready to have a relationship yet. He then went back to marry the girl and took her back to the US. They had a daughter together. His wife and I became good friends; she did ask me once if her husband had ever chased me and I told her no. She was happy to hear.
     Wang went to University of Tokyo, we still wrote to each other. But I felt that I needed to get more letters from him than he needed from me. I found myself looking for his letter everyday. It seemed that I received fewer and fewer letters as time went on, while I wrote more and more letters to him. I told him about all the difficulties with languages and trying to follow up on classes. At one point, I was almost ready to give up and fly to Japan.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Tokyo