My life in China, Part 4- A bit about Baoding

I will continue with my adventure after leaving the airport in Beijing shortly, but I just wanted to take a moment and give some context to the place I will call home for the remainder of this multi-part story.

Baoding city in Hebei Province is no Beijing or Shanghai. I doubt many outside of China have heard of this industrial metropolis. It is a smaller city by Chinese standards (not even the top 50). Still, it boasts a core population of about 1 million, with a total metropolitan area of 11 million, so it is rather enormous compared to most cities in the US. Hebei Province is a dry place, the victim of desertification. It’s relatively cold and windy in the winter (average temperature in the mid-thirties) and blazing in the summer (average summer temperature is 89). The only time it rains is really in July and August, making these months very humid and, in the usually dusty city, very muddy. There are mountains in Hebei Province, but directly around Baoding, it is generally flat. Those two shiny metal balls that you juggle in your hand and tinkle with a springy ring are called Baoding Balls and likely originated here. Baoding is also home to Great Wall Motors (yes, a portion of the Great Wall runs by the city), the largest producer of domestic SUVs, and Pick-up trucks in China. China Lucky Film, China’s largest magnetic recording and photosensitive material producer (China’s Kodak), is also found here. Recently, Baoding has become a center for blades and wind turbine generator production, but this industry started in 2008, and after I left the city.

My guess is that if you have heard of Baoding, it is likely because of its darker side. Baoding is home to the 38th Mechanized Group of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) charged with protecting the capital. Why is this dark? They were the tanks that famously rumbled through Tiananmen Square during that particularly dark time in Chinese history. Chatting with close Baoding-native friends, you will hear stories of that day.

Baoding has also made the news in the west. It has the distinction of being the most polluted city in China. I can attest that for the two years I lived there, seeing the blue sky was incredibly rare, the sun was often a dull orange disk, and it almost always smelt of coal or burning corn stalks (especially in the winter). After I left, I fought a nasty sinus infection for years. The Baoding river was solid with trash and seeing that the city processed only 25% of its sewage, other nasties. It stunk. It is much better now, the results of a clean-up project that began just as we left. Needless to say, like much of China, the tap water was un-drinkable. Us foreigners tested the water with a kit for a laugh. The results were not funny. The heavy metal levels alone verged on poison, so drinking even boiled tap water (which was quite common) was incredibly dangerous. A drop of un-boiled water would leave you worshiping the porcelain bowl, so you had to be very careful with cold dishes and salads.

As a tall red-headed and blue-eyed foreigner in a city that is 99.99% Han Chinese, I stood out everywhere (remember this is 2005). Walking down a back street was like being the master of a parade. Some would laugh, some would smile, children would cry, and some would look at you with the most obvious face of complete disgust you can imagine as they lined the street watching the strange oddity pass. For many, it was the first time seeing a Wàiguórén or Lǎowài in the flesh, and you would hear these words often as whispers spread that an outsider was in the midst. When you stepped into a restaurant, everyone looked up. When you ordered food, everyone wanted to see what the foreigner was eating. Drunk men wanted to toast with you. People would take pictures of you without asking. It was like being a celebrity. Sometimes it was fun, but sometimes you longed to blend in, even for just a moment.

Why Baoding then? Other than the before-mentioned connections between my undergrad school and Hebei University, the city was the real China. If you live in Beijing, for example, it is like living in any other major metropolis. English is prevalent, every major chain store and restaurant is available, and foreigners are everywhere (and compared to the rest of China, treated pretty poorly actually). You go to a grocery store in Beijing, and it is just like home with all the familiar products. I could have moved to New York and got a similar experience. And Beijing is expensive. The Ministry of Education sets the salary for ‘Foreign Experts’ centrally, and the amount changed only slightly depending on the location. If you teach English in Beijing, you were likely scraping by and had to take a lot of side jobs. In Baoding, you lived like a king (although I would find that with my school loans, I still needed to take side jobs). Lastly, living just 2 hours outside Beijing, if you needed a bit of a break and a taste of western food, you could hop a train for a day trip.

Baoding did have its charm, and the positives far outweighed the negatives. The local specialty food is donkey burgers, which are fantastic (think tender roast beef in a warm crispy bun), and when I was there, you could get a 24 oz bottle of crisp Blue Star beer for 1 RMB (like 12 cents). In general, Baoding’s food was the best I had in all my travels in China, which is saying a lot! Northern Chinese cuisine resonates with my pallet- steamed stuffed buns, dumplings, noodles, and all sorts of meat. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Pirated DVDs cost only 8 RMB (basically $1), and in general, everything from clothing to food was incredibly cheap. There was a Mcdonald’s and a KFC for emergency western food rations (and coffee), although they were probably some of the most expensive Baoding restaurants. The city was easy to get around by foot or bike, and it cost about 3-4 RMB to get to most major hot spots by rickshaw (until the government banned them towards the end of my time there). Lastly, I had so much free time. Even with my teaching load at the university and my part-time jobs, I only worked about 20 hours a week. I spent days exploring the city and all it had to offer, and at night I would write. When my wife and I left, I knew every nook and cranny, something I can’t say of any other place I’ve lived outside my hometown, including Boston. Most importantly, I met my wife of 15 years there. Honestly, I loved living in Baoding. It was some of the best years of my life.

For my first six months, my physical home was in Hebei University’s foreigner building that everyone called Dàbáilóu, directly translated as ‘big white building.’ It was mainly a university-run hotel, but it also housed all the foreign experts and the university’s international students (they liked to keep an eye on us, and that was easily done with all of us housed together). For a second-tier university in the virtually unknown industrial city of Baoding, Hebei University had quite an assortment of international representatives. There were students and language teachers from Korea, Mongolia, Japan, Russia, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, France, and the US. Dàbáilóu’s restaurant was also fantastic, so if you didn’t feel like venturing out, a fabulous meal was just downstairs. If you didn’t feel like socializing, you could take it to your room with a bottle of ice-cold beer. After the first six months, the university renovated the building next door, making it into more legitimate apartments, which only improved the situation.

A few years ago, my wife and I traveled back to Baoding and decided to stay in Dàbáilóu. It had been ten years since we left, and we were eager for a trip down memory lane. It was a complete disappointment. Almost everyone we knew had moved on, and the city had grown up. All the restaurants we loved were gone, and it just felt different. We will likely not return. I miss that dirty, sleepy city with great food. It always reminds me that you should cherish every moment and take nothing for granted because sometimes you can only experience something once.

For the next installment, I will continue with my arrival at Dàbáilóu in the van full of Japanese teachers. We arrived in Baoding at about 9 pm. It had been a very long journey, and I was exhausted and starving. The restaurant’s chefs were eager to go home, so the staff quickly led us into the dining hall for my first meal in the country. Little did I know that it would be my last bit of food for the next three days 🙂

Cheers!