Zhengzhou Sucks! ~ Jennifer Chong

After standing for fifteen minutes trying to catch a taxi I stop and think to myself, “Oh my God…! I can’t do this backwards-ass China thing again!” It’s my third day in Zhengzhou, Henan, People’s Republic of China. There is a thick layer of dirt making the marble-like street side gutter covers slippery. Scores of people fly by me on their electric bikes a scant few of them watching where they are going and at night they don’t bother to turn their headlights on. There oughtta be a law! I miss the excessively noisy gas powered scooters of Taiwan. There were times when I was living in Taiwan that I would be in my apartment thinking that there must be a drag-strip or racetrack somewhere nearby, but there wasn’t. So the reason I hate the goddamn electric scooters in China is because I want to know if I am going to get killed by some idiot who isn’t watching where s/he is going. The scooter drivers in Taiwan drive too fast to not watch where they are going unlike their mainland counterparts who putter along on those aluminum instruments of death instant-messaging on their phones, doing their nails, picking their noses.

I know that there is probably no way out of living in this hellhole for an entire year. My friend Heidi, whom I had worked with in Hunan Province, has assured the school that I can handle the place because I had lived in China for five years from 2010 to 2015. My only hope is that my colleagues will realize, from my demeanor, that I hate this fucking place and will suggest that I leave for the sake of my sanity.

With my hatred for Zhengzhou, I’m sure that I am not going to be able to be the same old, wild and crazy, laugh a minute, life of the party colleague that my friend Heidi and her husband Paul had known in Hunan.

After catching a taxi, I’m at a forced expatriate group dinner in a hot pot restaurant. I am hoping that the all telling scowl on my face will draw the attention of someone, like the principal of our school, Colin McQuain. I’m sitting directly across from him and thinking that he just has to see the pain that I am in and maybe he’ll tell Heidi, and maybe after our six week summer school session is over, they’ll tell me I need to go back where I came from.

Every day I have to talk myself out of doing a runner. Every time I have to go out to wait for the school van to pick me up, I just want to walk away from my pick up point, wander a ways, go for a little walk. Then go home, get my passport, throw a couple things in my backpack, take a taxi to the airport and leave. Go back to Taiwan.

Every time I have to go one of those damn expat dinners I have to listen to the same shit over and over again. Those motherfuckers need to find some entertainment. The lazy ass student, so-and-so in class number four, gossip about other foreigners in Zhengzhou. Or some teacher, is he sleeping with students? Or has he had female students over to his house? I don’t need expat friends. There is nothing wrong with them, they are a nice enough lot. But I don’t have this need that so many expats living abroad have which is the absolute necessity of hanging out with other foreigners. These expats constantly rag and rag and complain about China. There’s plenty to complain about in China, but I already went through the whole complaining thing when I was in Hunan for five years. If a place bugs you as much as China bugs most foreigners, then you just need to fucking leave.