OR HOW THE POOL IS MY TEMPLE AND I TRY TO WORSHIP REGULARLY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH
Hi, my name is Ray. I love eating exotic foods, listening to foreign music, and taking long walks on the beach. I am a swim instructor…WHAT?!?!
To anyone who has followed my illustrious swimming career, they would be quick point out that I retired from it, when I dropped swim team as a junior in
high school. Never much of a competitive swimmer, I have nevertheless swum most of my life, from YMCA classes, to elementary and middle school summer team, to join my high school’s winter team…where I promptly dropped out after two years to do more theatre. That’s me, for you. Ready to drop just about everything to perform more, to tech more, to create more.
And now I’m the unofficial, in-resident swim coach.
It all started with a conundrum of conundrums. How could someone who is taller than me and clearly has much more muscle power to spare than me – assets that should make them swim epically faster – swim slower? Taking a more global view, I saw an even stranger puzzle.
How is it that I am faster than everyone else in this pool?
Within the first few days of living in Taigu, I took up the Shansi tradition of swimming laps. With towel and co-fellows in hand, I took to the frigid water. I’d been sitting on too many planes, sleeping too many hours (or too few depending on the day). I just needed to do some serious swimming to make my confused body feel a bit more normal. And then I outsprinted my co-fellows. And their male, Chinese friends. And pretty much everyone in the pool.
(For those of you who do not know, males and females do not race together. The strongest swimmers of different sexes get such radically different times on the same race that racing together is totally absurd. Being an average height, female-bodied person should make me not all that fast in this situation.)
Swimming self-description: middle of the pack on a good day. My neighborhood summer swim team produced one of the fastest teams in the state. My high school had a pretty intense group of swimmers too. At my best, I was a recreational “competitive” swimmer in these situations. Sports were never my forte. And here I am, the best. Beating statistical odds, being out of shape, being overwhelmed by my lack of ability in almost every aspect of life. The best.
Being the pragmatic and helpful person I am, my first thought is “Let’s figure out why these people are sooooo slow! Let’s make them faster!” Never being a coach and never having taught swimming to anyone, I give stroke advice based on my own stroke, suggest different exercises and routines that I loved and/or painfully sweated through, and gently try to whip into shape my co-fellows and Chinese friends. And pretty much anyone who asks.
And through my swim teaching, I have developed a friendly affiliation to some of the key staff members at the pool, even though they only speak Chinese. Take the old Speedo-wearing, cigarette-smoking lifeguard. His stroke is beautiful and I frequently watch him coaching women in the women’s-only lane. Yesterday, breast stoke arm position was the day’s order of business. Or take the money-taker at the front door. A friendly, older lady, who dresses in bright patterns, bright for northern China at least (think of grey concrete and coal-filled skies as neither bright nor dull but mid-spectrum here). She smiles at me every time I come to the pool. Yesterday, she manages to tell me that my co-fellows have already left and are lifting weights by the track, with gesture, pointing, and shared knowledge. (I know where the track is. I know that my co-fellows wanted to go there.) When my Chinese friend turns to me to translate, I already know everything. While my Chinese skills are still in the raw, my people skills are refined and working on overdrive.
The pool does come with challenges. The water is so murky that watching someone’s strokes is nearly impossible. The other day when I was demonstrating butterfly, I only succeeded because the stroke exists so much above the water. (Apparently my butterfly is beautiful and powerful. Wouldn’t my many coaches be proud?) And do you remember the smoking lifeguard? Yes, at this indoor pool, the lifeguards DO chain-smoke. Welcome to China. Also sharing lanes is a logistical nightmare here.
Few people actually want to do laps, so most just stand around, like barriers in an obstacle course. And the few than want to do laps are either really slow or do not follow American lane-sharing rules, like keeping to one side, or allowing faster swimmers to easily pass, or swimming one by one (people like to swim in a line, taking up the whole width of the lane as they swim down the pool). Lastly, my favorite of the pool’s challenges, is the shower room. Every shower head is usually occupied, with 3-4 people sharing each one. It is nearly impossible to walk through without bumping into a few naked people. And the floor is usually flooded with clogged drains full of long and short black hair. (Side note: Some women in China have short, boyish haircuts and do not shave their armpits.) This is because there are no showers (or bathrooms at all) in the dorms and public showering is considered a better idea than private showers, even when you have your own personal shower at home. My Chinese friend Kathryn will take me to a proper Chinese shower later this week, which I assume is a slightly swankier version of the pool’s shower, with hours of scrubbing your body to remove thousands of dead skin cells. Sounds like a party, right?
Days outside the pool can be less fun. My language skills are in the gutter. Being surrounded by people who want to dedicate their lives and happiness to the Chinese language maybe makes these feelings worse. I have trouble finding my middle ground, which compared to others around me feels like my slacking-off ground. How do I learn enough language? How do I know when to lay off language study to peruse my other interests: ethnography-, music-, feminist theory-making? If any of you out there have some suggestions, lay them on me. And do try to catch me at the pool every once in awhile. I like being able to show what I’m made of.
OR VIEWING NONG DA UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, THROUGH THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERTISE OF YOURS TRULY
