We said farewell to Huzhou on Sunday (8/21). During three weeks we had put down some roots, albeit shallow ones; it was tough to yank them out. The city may be typical of many in China, negotiating with remarkable grace the trajectory of explosive economic growth. Huzhou is a thoroughly modern city with reminders of traditional life around every corner.





Each day we walked from our hotel to the campus of Huzhou Teachers College for orientation classes. For the calorie-courageous, there was a place to buy freshly fried oil sticks, the Chinese answer to Dunkin’ Donuts.







By the time we ventured out into the steamy early morning, the intersection in front of the hotel was already clogged with carts (powered by bicycle and motorbike) waiting for hauling jobs. Salvage is a popular occupation everywhere we went in Zhejiang province. Along the major highways lie acres of used containers and building materials, neatly sorted and stacked.

In our neighborhood there was a used brick yard on one side of the street. One day my friend Karen and I stopped to let a sinewy old man pedal up the small incline into the yard on his bicycle, pulling a load of bricks that must have been five times his body weight. Across the street a couple worked long hours in their scrap metal yard. One day we saw them sifting through sacks and sacks of rusty nails; another day they patiently straightened out a consignment of coat hangers. Part of the yard itself was fenced with recovered stuff.

Not long after we arrived in Huzhou, a new family-run restaurant opened down the block. It quickly became a hangout for our group. By that time we had become accustomed to the presence of live chickens, ducks and rabbits, some free range, so to speak, others in cages. Their imminent fate was no mystery.

Still, nothing had prepared my friend Kendra and me for what occurred one weeknight as we sat in the restaurant. We had just ordered mian ji rou, noodles with chicken. As we waited for the meal, two women entered the dining room through the front door carrying three live chickens, grasped roughly and firmly by the wings. As they passed through and entered the kitchen, the room filled with the unmistakable odor of poultry terror. Before we could fully register our surprise, we heard a succession of three thumps and three squawks from behind the kitchen door, followed by silence. Our dinner arrived at the table a few minutes later, and we ate with it with studied nonchalance.

I miss the rhythm of life in Huzhou and my friends there. There were lazy non-verbal tea times with a woman around the corner who does gorgeous knitting while supervising her grandson. (Did you know that Chinese moms prompt their kids to urinate on cue by softly whistling? I need to find out more about how they do this !)

And there were hyper-verbal times with my Chinese tutor, Xiu Fei, “Connie,” who is a junior at Huzhou Teachers College. We spent an hour every day in the classroom, and countless hours out around the campus and the city while she patiently drilled the language into my thick head. It all went by too fast. On one of our last afternoons together, we went to McDonald’s, since Connie had never eaten there. (McDonald's was the only place I saw in Huzhou that was so busy, the cabs had form a queue!)

Now, here I am in Nanjing for three final days of orientation. We are ensconced in a luxury hotel where it is not lost on me that the tub baths I take will be my last for a long time to come. I leave for Lanzhou, at last, on Thursday (8/25).