May 8: Wednesday morning. I have no classes today, plan to spend the morning correcting midterm exams and the afternoon with Mary at Bai Ta Se, the White Pagoda high above the city. The telephone rings; it’s Sun Yue Rui asking me if I would like to go to Xi’An tomorrow and spend the next four days judging a speech competition. Of course! She instructs me to go to a downtown hotel for the “interview” at 11. I don my best skirt and blouse and hurry to the bus. In the hotel lobby, Sun joins me and she confers with several people in Chinese. I chat with a bubbly girl from the local broadcasting station who speaks fluent English. Sun relates that there is no speech competition, but we are to be “hosts” of the tour. Is that OK with me? Sure. Why not? Host? Meaning chaperone? Who knows? We also learn that there will be seventy “children” on the tour, and that we’ll leave at 6 in the morning. If Sun knows more, she isn’t saying. We’ve been in the lobby about fifteen minutes, and it’s time to leave. She tells me she’ll phone me later with more details, and we part.

I cancel my plans with Mary and spend the afternoon getting ready: clean the fridge, sort out clothes, put my passport out where I won’t forget it. All the while I reflect on a fact of life in China: information is rationed. Information is shared late, always truncated, incomplete, often deliberately misleading. This gives the few, the owners of the full story, tremendous power over everyone below them in the rigid hierarchy. In early evening I learn from Sun that the “producer” of the tour has withdrawn the invitation. We won’t go to Xi’An after all. No reason has been given, not that I expect it.

Countless times in China I have opened my Daily eMo from Barbara Crafton and found the very words I needed to salvage my day. This time was no exception:

Night Prayer

Lord,
it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.
The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.
The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and all who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys,
new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
-New Zealand Prayer Book, p.184