I’d got the job at the university through a friend who knew someone at the embassy. It didn’t seem to bother anyone that I had no experience of teaching university students. They seemed pleased to get a real English teacher and in the first few weeks I was treated like a VIP. When the novelty wore off and winter began to set in I felt less excited and less keyed up to learn new things. What had at first been amusing curiosities and fascinating ways eventually became tedious routine. I got fed up with the way the cleaners bobbed around with their stinking mops, the way the cook, sweating even in the ice of November, hawked and spat on the kitchen floor, and the chore of shopping at the market where my fair hair and my height set me apart as a freak or a visiting Martian. If Martin had been there it would have been all right. I wouldn’t have felt so self conscious. He was even bigger than me. It annoyed me that I wasn’t managing well on my own. ‘You’ll never survive’ – his words echoed in my head as I contemplated my inability to stride out and enjoy myself.
I bought local clothes – an army jacket and some quilted shoes – in an attempt to melt in a little. The shoes were men’s: no woman in China wore a size seven. But it made me more of a freak as the girls were by then starting to wear what they thought were Western clothes – hideous shapeless Crimplene jackets with twinkly thread and plastic high-heeled shoes. The daring ones wore lipstick. I knew I’d got it wrong, but I also knew I could never get it right. Not here.
My ideas about the country had been gleaned from National Geographic and the paperback book of the travels of Marco Polo. Reality was a rudely different shock. Nothing had prepared me for the drabness and alienation which seemed to make people physically ill in the winter, the strange food and the smells. Everywhere there hung in the air an almost palpable veil of smells. They were always stale and sickening. From the overpowering stench of lavatories which supplied fertilizer for the vegetables we ate to the acrid smoke of the miserable little market food stalls and the sweetish sickly aroma of hand-rolled cigars smoked by old ladies.
I became aware that I would have to learn the language or I would continue to feel autistic, sealed off into a bubble, in this world but not of it, as if I was watching it on television. There were no other foreigners in my unit, so I was obliged to seek out the company of Chinese English speakers, and this was how I met Liang.
‘I wonder if you could arrange painting lessons for me?’ I asked, standing at Dr Chen’s desk in the Wai Ban, the office that was in charge of me as a foreigner.
I had always wanted to do Chinese watercolours, though I was not artistic. It looked simple, so I thought I’d be able to produce something that I could hang, framed, over the mantelpiece at home.
‘Please sit down. Can I offer you some tea?’ came his high-pitched voice from behind a newspaper.
‘I’d like to learn painting.’ I remained standing. Once I sat down it would take all day.
There was a silence while Dr Chen finished reading the article he was absorbed in. On the shelf behind him there was a photograph of his son looking like an all-American boy at the University of Southern Illinois, and next to it a bottle of Mao Tai and two glasses.
‘Of course, Miss Alison. We’ll send you a teacher whenever you like.’ This was the predictable response. The answer was always yes, but I was doubtful whether it would actually happen.
‘I’d like to learn on Wednesdays.’
‘I see. You have nothing to do on Wednesdays.’ He laughed, coughed on his cigarette and peered over his newspaper.
They always seemed to think we were without inner resources. There was talk of getting a television to entertain me, as they thought I’d wither away without one. But of course there was no sign of it yet.
I wanted to snatch the newspaper away and yell ‘Get on with it, then!’ but I would have been wasting my time.
‘Well, thank you, Dr Chen. Could you let me know how much the lessons will cost?’
‘No charge,’ he said. ‘The painting unit will send someone.’
I forgot my request for a week or two, not expecting anything to happen quickly.
One afternoon I was idly staring across the microcosm of the campus, watching people going about their business. Students strode around in army coats, their numb fingers clutching texts to be learned by heart, mumbling to themselves, grannies wheeled babies dressed in jewel colours in bamboo prams, old men tended plants in pots or spoke to their geese, and cadres cycled by, puffing on their rancid little cigarettes as their bikes clanked along. I was the only one doing nothing. I was getting together the courage to go out and shop but it was always an ordeal to venture forth, head and shoulders above the nimble locals, stared at and laughed at and, I suspected, cheated by the peasants with their crooked teeth and filthy hands. I must have seemed like a millionaire, and without a word of Chinese still I couldn’t do anything about rudeness or cheating except shout in English.
There was a tap at the door of the flat. I thought it would be the Wai Ban checking up on me again, coming on some pretext or other to see what I was getting up to. But when I opened the door I saw a small wiry man with a broad grin. His hair was longer than usual for a Chinese man, and he was wearing the height of fashion, a polo-neck sweater.
‘How do you do, Miss Hutchings. I’m Liang, your painting teacher.’
He was at least six inches shorter than me and peered up like a confident child hoping to please a teacher. I almost expected him to hand me an apple.
‘Hello, Mr Liang. Come in. Would you like some tea?’
‘No thanks, no thanks,’ he protested, waving a hand.
He sat on the hard plastic sofa. His shoes were covered in mud and I noticed with dismay that he’d left a trail across my mats that I would have to sponge off.
‘The Wai Ban told me to come and teach you painting,’ he announced.
‘Well, Mr Liang, I just mentioned it. I thought it would be nice to have something to do on Political Study afternoon.’ I was free on Wednesday afternoons as foreigners weren’t invited to Political Study, though it seemed they were often the subject of discussion. Sometimes we were in favour, sometimes we weren’t. You could tell by the way they kept at a polite distance, courteous but not friendly. They usually tried to provide things we asked for and didn’t want complaints or any kind of controversy.
Liang’s real job, he explained, was to churn out numerous identical ‘works of art’ for ‘dignitaries’ and foreigners. He made me laugh. On Wednesdays he was to show me the fundamentals of Chinese watercolour painting.
‘We’ll go to the artists’ store to get your paper and brushes and paints next week.’ He paused and lit up a Phoenix, settling into the uncomfortable sofa. He slurped his flower tea and I wondered whether to offer him a piece of Cadbury’s chocolate, but decided I didn’t know him well enough yet.
So that was how it began. He used to pedal across town to my flat, where I would set up a table with newspaper, jars of water and my selection of paints, ink stick and stone and a row of brushes he had chosen for me, from the one like a feather duster to the wispy tiger-hair one. Sometimes he would talk about his studio and I hoped to be invited there one day. I imagined it.