From Stranger to Hangzhou

简述 ：Just fifteen years ago, I lived in a very different
 place. It was a quiet little world of  barbed-wire fences, cows, pick-up trucks, 
cowboys with chewing tobacco, and tractors.

                                               From Stranger to Hangzhou

  I’ve been asked more than once if my GLV bio contains a typo. Did I really once live in a town of about ten people? Did somebody forget to type a couple of zeros? In a world that currently struggles to hold more than six billion people, this is an understandable question.  But no, there’s no typo. 

  Just fifteen years ago, I lived in a very different place. It was a quiet little world of  barbed-wire fences, cows, pick-up trucks, cowboys with chewing tobacco, and tractors. We lived in a big old house built in the late 1800s, complete with that era’s slanting ceilings, huge brick fireplaces, and a sun- burst design over the front door.

  I remember sitting out on our front porch at night as a kid and hearing the coyotes howl across the pasture. The stars were as bright as city lights. About a mile down the road lived my cousins. A mile down the road in the other direction lived another cousin. Everybody knew everybody in that tiny community and the small towns surrounding it. In fact, if two cars passed each other on the road, the drivers would lift their hands off their steering wheels to say ‘hi.’ If they didn’t happen to see each others’ faces, they recognized each other by their automobiles.

  I can’t imagine two places on this earth more different at first glance than Stranger and Hangzhou.

  I look out my window now and see hills covered with trees.

  Recently,I mentioned to another teacher that it’s strange for me to look straight ahead and see something big and solid, since Texas is as flat as a pancake in many parts. For that matter, it’s even strange to see trees at all.

  You’d think a self-described country girl would be used to trees, but the kind of countryside I’m used to is one of flat, grassy fields. Hills? What’s a hill?

  I realized with sudden surprise that there was no one else around. No footsteps, no mobile phones, no honking cars. And yet only a short ride away was the heart of the district of Xiao Shan, where I’d navigated my way through a two-story supermarket a few nights before. The contrast was stunning.

  Afew days later, I went for a run. When I run,I  ‘see without seeing,’ if that makes sense. I might run around a place for months and not recognize it later.

  On this particular run, I climbed up some steps, ran into a cool, dark, quiet place, and stopped for a sip of water. When I actually saw where I was, the bottle stopped half-way to my mouth. I’d run into a parking garage adjacent to a big hotel near the school. A parking garage—no big deal, right? But looking out a window of this parking garage, I saw mini-Venice. And when I walked a few more steps, I saw a group of big, colorful statues sitting in a recess, calmly surveying everything that happens in their parking garage. I had an exhilarating Dorothy-in-Oz moment, then. ‘Yep. Definitely not in Texas anymore.’

  Things are more comfortably spread-out here. While riding in a van on the highway with other teachers, I thought for a second that I could almost be in a suburb of Dallas if it weren’t for the Chinese characters on all the buildings, the vast architectural differences, and the abundance of flowers.

  And the bamboo. You can’t forget the bamboo, of course. That’s something else you don’t see in Stranger. 

编辑：洪秀娟

网络支持：高明媚