avatarRobert G. Longpré [he / him]

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NON-FICTION — AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Chapter 30 — A Second Year In China

Kintsugi: Making, Breaking, and Putting Pieces Back Together Again

Our son and his wife — photo by author

The summer of 2007 became a summer of constant movement as we tried to recapture the months of lost time with our children, grandchildren, friends, and extended family. The idea of relaxing vanished as the weeks raced past us.

Our youngest child got married at the beginning of August. Almost everyone in our extended family attended. With his marriage, all three of our children were now married. He was happy and that was all that was important.

Strangely, we began to think our return to China would give us the rest we never got back in Canada. By the time we needed to leave and return to China, I was again wound up tight. Without realising it, I had sacrificed too much needed alone time. As an introvert, alone and quiet time are vital to the regeneration of my energy.

And as in the past, I continued to place others before myself. There had been opportunities for me to take time-outs for solitude and silence, but I consistently passed on them. I believed that to take those timeouts was nothing but an act of selfishness.

There would be a cost to pay. One always pays a cost for not taking care of one’s psychological needs. Yet, this was the furthest thing from my mind. I was in a rush to recapture the peak experiences of our first year in China.

They were waiting for us at the Shanghai airport — photo by author

The second year began where the first had left off. If the first year saw us treated like V.I.P.s, the second year told us we had risen even higher in the university’s esteem. We had made the local newspapers on a number of occasions which led to all sorts of business opportunities and guest appearances for which we were paid exorbitant fees. We were celebrities.

We spent the autumn break taking a riverboat cruise tour of the Three Gorges Dam, along the Yangtze River. The tour exceeded our expectations which were based on online research. The breadth of the country and its diversity began to teach us just how little we really knew about other countries. Mass media had taught us so many falsehoods about China. What we thought we knew was often proven incorrect.

What else did we take as truths which would eventually be proven to be false?

Our guide in New Delhi — photo by author

The end of the first term arrived quickly. We chose to spend four weeks of the winter term break in India. We had already decided this would be our last year teaching in China. With that decision, it would be only sensible to visit India which was nearby rather than to risk never visiting it.

Our decision to make this the last year was based on us missing too much of our grandchildren’s lives by being a half-a-world away. We had been away for their birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and so many of their sporting and cultural activities. We were homesick.

The reality of India shocked us. There was nothing we had heard or experienced which could have prepared us for the chaotic, churning, and messy reality of India.

For the first time, I experienced real culture shock. New Delhi was an overwhelming nightmare of chaos. The nightmare continued into the next day when I looked out the hotel window at dawn to see people sitting on a massive garbage heap injecting drugs into their emaciated and grimy bodies.

Life on a heap of rubbish in New Delhi — photo by author

A few hours later, that first morning, we entered a different India, the India I had learned about over the years, the India of history and culture. It was as if the country had a split personality which gave it a Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. We saw the best and worst of what it was to be a human in India.

Along the seaside in Goa, India — photo by author

It was a relief when we flew to the southwest of India to spend the last twelve days of our break on the beaches of Goa. We found ourselves in another tropical paradise, at the edges of the Indian Ocean. The photos taken during these last days tell a beautiful story. However, it wasn’t the full story.

Something dark was once again stirring within me. It was like a cancer threatening to return to life. The return to teaching in Changzhou temporarily silenced that stirring.

My uncle surrounded by friendly young people — photo by author

A month into the second term, I went to Shanghai to see an uncle, my mother’s younger brother. It was a day where I took the time to show him around the city which had become quite familiar to me. Strangely, there was an undercurrent of tension between us.

It wasn’t long after he had left when I realised he had reminded me of my grandfather, the man who had sexually molested me when I was a teenager. It was an unfair response to my uncle as he had never showed the least indication of being like his father.

Our two oldest grandchildren in Shanghai — photo by author’s daughter

Our first child and her family came to spend two weeks with us in China. As when their neighbours had visited the spring before, we shared our life in Changzhou and at the university. Because of our greater knowledge and growing number of contacts within the expat and Chinese society, the experience was good for all of us. We took them to Shanghai, Suzhou, Xi’an, and Beijing with permission from the university, a permission granted as they knew we would make up any missed classes.

With their departure at the beginning of April, it was hard for both of us to get back into the routines of teaching. As the time for evaluation approached, especially since we had not signed contracts to come back to teach in Changzhou at the university, motivation was missing.

Our China adventure was ending. Without China to keep my ego centred, I worried, ‘What am I going to do now?’

As the term drew closer to the end, the pull of going home brought an end to the slight dip into depression I had experienced. Excitement took its place. Three of our grandchildren and their mother, would be waiting for us at the airport in Saskatoon. It had been a long nine months since we had last seen her and her children.

Previously

I want to thank the following people for reading this story:

Brian Lageose, Robert, Dennis Koluris • M.Sc., Bill Harris, Mariana Busarova, Alberto Ocando, Chase Dalton, Mr. Plan ₿, Harshil Mevasa, Author, D. Denise Dianaty, Loicrees, and Buddhi Ruparathna, Lady De Ville, Pete JJ, Tina Here, Patricia O’Neill, Domino Cat, Lisa Duffy-Korpics, Sai Ezra, and Trinity Ellis, Author

Autobiography
Non Fiction Story
China
India
Life Through A Lens
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