Rockets, Bulls and Toddlers, I

They are like grade-schoolers who are forbidden from playing at recess because they misbehaved, instead having to sit knowing that other kids get to play.

My morning starts by trying to interview people for a different Web site I publish. The page is devoted to a particular American sports team, and it’s my job to contact people who may have anything interesting to say about said team. I know that is a vague description, but the site is subscription-based, and my subscribers may not take kindly to the fact that they are paying to read a site that is being published by proxy from China. That’s the reason why this blog is anonymous. (If you read my bio and did some Google sleuthing then you could certainly figure out who I am, but I hope to at least make it difficult.)

Thanks to the miracle of phone cards and cell phones, I can call people anywhere in America. It costs about three U.S. dollars – or 20 yuan – for 30 minutes of talking time. I burn through these cards, trying to find scoops or angles that (a) satisfy subscribers, (b) generate more subscribers and (c) cloak from my subscribers the fact that, you know, I’m in China. Thus far I think it’s working.

After about 15 different calls, I finally touch base with someone, talk with him for about 10 minutes and churn out an article. I publish it at about 9 a.m. Monday morning, which is 8 p.m. Sunday night back home.

I return home from a massage and there is a full-court game being played on one of the schoolyard courts; there is a row of spectators lining the sideline. I slow my gait to watch for a minute before going inside. I’m back out in a matter of moments, equipped with my sneakers, notepad and voice recorder, ready to head off to Shandong Normal University.

I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll have to take the cramped and crummy 123 bus to get there, but when I open the front door I see my friend Dave outside the apartment, saddling up on his motorcycle. Dave is an English guy who turned 26 last week. He has a hint of a receding hair line and spikes up the blonde locks that he does have. It looks like his hair is magnetized – pulled skyward by an invisible force. He is a good-looking guy with a sturdy build. He says he used to weigh 14 stones – stones are a British denomination of weight equaling about 18 pounds – which translates to about 250, 255 pounds. A daily ritual of pasting butter on Pop Tarts was the main culprit for him having gotten fat, he says, but having nixed that delicacy from the menu he’s down to a svelte 180, which is just about ideal for his height.

He fires up his bike and, over the sputter of his engine, I ask where he’s going. The culture market, he says, which means my destination, SNU, is on the way. He tells me to hop on. We are a whole lot of man for this bike. There is no real footrest for a second person and only a smidge of a second seat. Thus, we are pretty cozy: my chest pressed against his back, my legs jutting out on either side of his waist, my feet clinging to any part of the footrest I can reach.

I hop off at the intersection closest the university. The ride wasn’t cold, but there is a chill creeping into the air. The sun has become obscured, and I can’t decipher whether it the culprit is smog or clouds. You can still see the yellow sphere up there, but its rays have been reduced to a moon-like glow.

As I approach the courts, I see people perched like gargoyles on the fence lining the indoor courts, just like they were last week for the P.E. exams. There are concrete blocks every 10 feet, separating the green metal rods, and on each of these blocks stands a motionless Chinese dude. They are peering intensely into the hangar, trying to steal a glance of the goings-on, while whistles blow and balls bounce inside.

The outdoor courts beyond the hangar are eerily empty, filled with an unusual and annoying silence. The exams, once again, have taken precedence over all other forms of basketball. The entirety of the playground – the 22 outdoor courts that stretch nearly 200 yards south of the hangar – have again been sacrificed because…well, actually I have no idea why the outdoor courts are cordoned off. The exams are going on inside, the courts are out of earshot of the hangar, and some people obviously want to play. Sure, the guys on the fence seem to be relishing a chance to watch the exams, but there are many more people sitting on the steps of a nearby school building. They are like grade-schoolers who are forbidden from playing at recess because they misbehaved, instead having to sit knowing that other kids get to play.

Rockets, Bulls and Toddlers, II

Toddlers playing ball, stores marketing Battier and Artest, an old-timer with a Bulls hat. I didn’t play a lick of basketball today, but that’s not to say there was no basketball.

Annoyed that no one is playing basketball – or rather, that people are playing basketball but I can’t – I leave the campus and set out to find some blog fodder.After a few minutes’ walk, I spot posters of Ron Artest and Shane Battier, two players who achieved fame here because they played with Yao Ming in Houston; I decide to pop into the store boasting these posters. It’s a Peak sporting goods store, replete with balls and shoes and clothes. It’s like a Nike store, kind of, only instead of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant playing the role of company poster boys, it’s Ron Artest and Shane Battier. I see some Battier shoes and an entire rack of Artest hoodies. The hoodies simply say “Artest” in big, block, capital letters. There is nothing appealing about the shirts at all, but still they cost 269 yuan, or about 40 U.S. dollars. That’s not cheap here.

I mosey back onto the main road. A man is taking a piss to the right against a concrete wall; popping into an alley is apparently too much hassle. After a few minutes I take a right onto a narrow street lined with shops, mostly clothing stores, that would be too narrow for two cars to navigate side-by-side. About 30 strides down that street I see an alley to the right, and about 30 strides down that alley I see a little boy, maybe four years-old, dribbling a basketball.

I walk toward the boy and a small common area – hidden from the road – appears. It is dwarfed on all sides by apartments that rise high into the sky. Children are hanging out; the kid with the ball is far from the only one on hand. They are playing in a variety of ways – toys cars, running around aimlessly, swinging around on the various playground equipment, and of course that basketball. The ball is a regulation-sized one, making it bigger than the heads of any of these kids.

On the far side of the playground, two boys stand on either side of a tree. The tree is shaped like a Y: the trunk runs vertical, and about five feet up there is a clean split in either direction. A game has been concocted – one boy will toss the ball up and try to get it through the gap in the tree. Should it get through, the other one will try to match the feat. Remember, now, that the ball is huge compared to these kids. And the fork in the tree comes at a not insignificant height of five feet. Thus, it is a task to get the ball through the gap, akin in difficulty to a grown person hitting a three-pointer.

They chuck the ball up like this over and over, almost ritualistically. Sometimes the ball will clank off the trunk, never reaching the proper height. Sometimes is will hit one of the branches and bounce between the two like a pinball before being discarded back in the direction it came from. And sometimes, of course, the ball will fall neatly through the gap and land on the other side, at the other boy’s feet, where the process will be repeated.

While I am watching the kids play – as entertained with them as they are with their game – I hear a woman call my name. This is odd. I am a 20-minute bus ride plus a 10-minute walk away from my apartment, so I’m not close to home. Plus, you know, this is China, which owns an uncanny percentage of the world’s popular. Sure, Jinan is no Shanghai (17 million people) or Beijing (13 million) or Guangzou (12 million), but there are still a hell of a lot of people. The population estimate ranges anywhere from two to 6.5 million people, depending on what you take to be the actual boundaries of the city. It’s bigger than anything we have in Kansas, that’s for sure.

Know what? Forget the numbers. I’ll just tell you: it’s crowded. A couple days ago I went to an enormous supermarket and was dodging shoppers left and right, even though there’s enough space in there to play a football game. Sometimes buses are so crowded that people have to drop their money in the slot at the front and then double-back to the rear doors because it’s packed too tight to even get on. Basically, bumping into someone at random in a Chinese city is somewhat rare, especially when, like myself, you don’t know that many people.

But it sounds like that’s exactly what’s happened. I whirl around to my right, where the person said my name, and the mother of one of my students is standing over me. “Hello! I am Tyler’s mother.” I say hi and then turn back to the kids, trying to pick out any I recognize. I have something like 210 students spread over 11 classes, so I’ll forgive myself for not immediately spotting one of them. The mom eventually calls out for Tyler, first in English – which doesn’t evoke a response – and then in Chinese. After she says his Chinese name, Tyler looks over and sees us.

He is in a class called “Fingerprints,” which, depending on how you look at it, is either a money grab by my school or a chance for young kids to get a head start – a huge head start – at learning English. You could call it a money grab because the kids are too young to really retain anything; they hardly speak Chinese. We just wrapped up week four, and they still don’t have a firm grasp on the Q&A sequence of “Who are you?”…“I’m Tyler!” You could claim it’s good, though, because if kids this young are learning English, then by the time they’re teenagers – heck, by the time they’re eight – they will have had years of experience. For better or worse, the class exists, and I teach the eight kids who are enrolled.

The mom beckons Tyler and he scurries over holding a tiny car, one of the ones that you can propel forward by rolling it against the ground and winding up its internal gear. Separated from the other children, I recognize him immediately. He is one of my favorite students in that class. He behaves pretty well and is really cute, one of those little kids who you just want to squeeze sometimes. He has huge eyes that give a curious, inquisitive look, and his voice is gravely and rough. Not low-pitched – just gravely.

He wears a confused look when he reaches us. The mom cues him to say his name, and he spits it out: “I’m Tyler.” He immediately runs away to play, and I talk with his mom for a few minutes. She is about eight inches shorter than me, a pretty woman with long black hair whose only visible defect is the faint outline of black hair lining her upper lip. Her English is spotty, but we can hold a bit of a conversation; she studied in college, she says.

Eventually the conversation turns to my work schedule. This is, after all, Monday afternoon at about 4:00, a day and time when people are generally at work. I tell her that I actually only work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and her eyes pop open in surprise. With those wide eyes, she looks exactly like Tyler. Not wanting her to think I’m a bum, I tell then that I write on the rest of the days, a fact that seems to impress her.

“You like watching children?” she asks, not knowing the connotations of that statement in America. (At least I hope she doesn’t know.) I change the subject away from work and my affinity for small children and ask about Tyler.

“I want him to learn English,” she says in a labored but serviceable tongue, “and make many friends and go to another country. Like you,” she adds, smiling.

I nod and we both look at Tyler. “Well, Tyler is one of the best students in the class.” She whips her head back toward me and smiles with wide eyes. Whether it the language barrier or selective hearing, the only words she seems to up are “best student.”

“He’s the best student?” she asks proudly, happily.

“Um,” I say, not wanting to dig myself a hole, “he’s very good. Very good.”

We speak for a few more minutes. She looks at her watch and says that they have to go. I say bye to Tyler and they take off.

I immediately reach for my little notebook, which is in my left pocket, to note this conversation. My eyes follow the same path as my hand, shooting to the left as well. There, standing a few feet away, is an old man with what must be his grandson. The man is literally the first thing I see after waving goodbye to Tyler and his mom. His face is leathery, and his skin is blotched with orangish patches. Still, despite his aged and weathered face, he is a stately looking guy. He is wearing all black – black slippers, black pants, black coat and a black baseball hat. The hat has a loud red bill which is perfectly – and I mean perfectly – straight, and sitting atop the bill is the Chicago Bulls logo: a snarling, menacing bull staring back at you, his horns encasing the word “Bulls,” which is stacked just below the word “Chicago.” I make some notes about the chat with Tyler’s mom, but only after an internal chuckle about this dude’s hat.

Less than an hour ago, after I was spurned from playing at the university, I was convinced that this day would be devoid of basketball. But I was wrong. I immediately saw Battier and Artest adorning a store front, and immediately noticed those ugly, overpriced Artest sweatshirts. Then, a few minutes later, I see some little boys playing their own brand of basketball – playing basketball, basically, without actually playing basketball. And then this old man is donning a Chicago Bulls cap, the exact type of cap you could find all over America (save the plank-like bill).

Toddlers playing ball, stores marketing Battier and Artest, an old-timer with a Bulls hat. I didn’t play a lick of basketball today, but that’s not to say there was no basketball.

***

I talk with Wang later that night. Wang, if you don’t remember, is a guy I met at the tail end of February when I went over to Shandong Normal to play some ball. He spoke a little bit of English and said that he wanted to drink beer with me sometime. But I haven’t spoken with him since we first met and exchanged numbers; I thought I may as well give him a ring and take him up on those beers.

I send him a text message that says: hello! this is david. i played basketball with you last month. we should drink beer if you have free time!

He sent me a text message that simply said: D a v i d

I don’t know what to make of that, but a moment later he calls me.

“Hello,” I answer.

“David! Hello!”

“How are you, Wang?” I ask.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” There is a moment’s pause. “Um, you still watch Chinese people play basketball?”

“Yeah, all the time!” In fact, I was taking a break from writing this blog to call him.

“That’s not interesting! That’s boring!” I laughed. “I miss you. I wish you look at me and you write something funny! Maybe my English is very bad, but maybe I like you. I want to see you. I know your number. I will call you after, uh, 13 or 14 days, you know?” Why 13 or 14 days, I’ve no idea.

It’s funny the way Chinese people sometimes slip in phrases that, in English, carry some unintended meanings. Not to knock them; indeed, Tyler’s mom and Wang both speak English way better than I will ever speak Chinese. But think about some of the things they said today. You like watching little children?...I miss you…I like you. I want to see you. This happens both ways. For a while, I was conveying my lack of Chinese skills with the word sequence “My” + “spoken Chinese” + “is” + “bad.” After a few months of this, I was informed that saying “My Chinese is bad” is akin to saying “My Chinese is vulgar and dirty.” Oh well.

A New Court, I

I asked the class if they would be scared to fly in a plane with a woman pilot. The boys nodded zealously and laughed; the girls simply nodded.

Knowing that the P.E. exams are still going on at Shandong Normal, I set out to find another court. Word has it that there is a university near my apartment, so that’s my destination. It’s a beautiful afternoon – not a day to go without ball.

I walk two minutes to the gate of the apartment, where students, having recently been let out of school, are milling about. There is no bombardment of Halloo!s, just two girls who seem to have a particular interest in me. “Hello!” one of them says. “You look so cool!” I don’t know if she earnestly believes that or if it’s simply one of the limited number of English sentences she knows. I am, after all, wearing a decaying pair of 10-year-old corduroys and a dirty grey fleece jacket. It doesn’t strike me as particularly cool, but the girl persists. “How old are you?” she asks, to which I reply 24 in Chinese. She says that she’s 16. Her friend then asks for my phone number as I am walking away. I decline and proceed onward.

Girls aren’t usually so brazen here in Jinan. And not just the schoolgirls at the boarding school. No, girls in general are usually pretty quiet, pretty reserved. There seems a stark disparity regarding what is appropriate behavior for men and women.

Women, for instance, hardly ever smoke cigarettes, whereas men suck them down with zest. Women also aren’t much for drinking; men are. The other day there was a big banquet for all the employees of our school: foreign teachers, Chinese teachers, managers, everyone. Well, after the formalities were taken care of, the beer started flowing. Pretty much all the foreign teachers – men and women – imbibed, as did the Chinese men. But the women? Not a drop. Same thing happened two nights ago at a local restaurant. Two buddies and I went to get some grub, and we were summoned to a neighboring table by a quintet of Chinese people – three guys, two girls – who wanted to drink with us. Predictably, the guys were chain-smoking and going bottoms-up – or gan bei, as they say, which literally means “dry glass” – while the two girls sat to the side drinking tea. Not that you have to drink booze and smoke cigarettes to be social. I’m just saying that the cultural mores here are pretty unyielding about these things.

And it isn’t just the vices that differ between men and women. So, too, does the way they act. The girls at that restaurant – each of whom speak some English – were passive and let the guys do all the talking. Same goes for that banquet with my co-workers, who also all speak English. I had a female Chinese teacher approach me the next week at school and ask me my name. “I thought that was it,” she said. “I was going to talk to you at the dinner but I didn’t want to disturb you.”

My favorite “girls here are timid” moment came in one of my first weeks teaching last fall. An upper-level class – full of 12- to 14-year-olds – was grinding to a halt; it was so boring for them that it became boring for me. We were talking about different professions and, hoping to cause a stir, I just up and asked, “Are there any jobs that women shouldn’t have?” The class was half-full of girls. They froze like statues after I asked the question, whereas I saw a few of the boys’ heads bob in affirmation. “OK, like what?” I said, pointing to one of the smarter boys who was nodding.

“Um, doctor,” he said.

“Women shouldn’t be doctors!” I exclaimed, trying to incite some sort of emotion.

“No. I do not want a woman doctor if I am I sick.”

The class was divided along gender lines: the boys were to my left, the girls my right. I shot a glance to the right to see if this blatant sexism had evoked any emotions among the girls. Nope. Still statues.

“What else should women not do?”

“Pilot,” a different boy said. “Women should not fly plane because that would be dangerous.” I asked the class if they would be scared to fly in a plane with a woman pilot. The boys nodded zealously and laughed; the girls simply nodded.

Seemed like these kids didn’t want women to be in responsibility-bearing positions. Or maybe that’s not exactly true. Maybe it’s only boys who don’t want women to have these jobs, and the girls in class were simply too sheepish to say anything about it. Either way, it speaks to my point: either the girls believe they’re not equipped for these jobs, or they’re too scared to speak up. That’s why these schoolgirls’ forward attitude – “You look cool,” “What’s your number?” etc. – is kind of startling.

A New Court, II

Having stepped onto this court after months of suffering through the courts I’m used to, I feel like I’m biting into a steak after subsisting for months on gruel.

I proceed to walk east, along Jiefang Deng Lu – East Liberation Road (I think) – on the lookout for this college. At first it strikes me as odd that there would be a college within walking distance that I have never heard of or seen, but then again, Chinese cities have a way of hiding things, like a city in Grand Theft Auto. The combination of people and construction and traffic and sheer size endow some of these cities with a cloaking mechanism that will leave you scratching your head wondering, “Wait, how long has that been there?”

Word is that this university can be spotted by the bevy of construction taking place around the entrance. This is only so helpful, for there is seemingly construction everywhere. For someone in Jinan to say, “Look for the construction,” is equivalent to someone at a Kansas City Chiefs tailgate saying, “Look for the barbeque grill.”

I see plenty of construction, but no university. Having been told it’s a 15-minute walk, I turn around after 25 minutes, convinced I missed it, and plod back on the other side of the street. I still don’t see anything.

Through the thick cloud of noise – the honking, the construction, the groan of bus engines – I eventually hear the whack-whack of basketballs. It’s no university, but about 25 yards off to the right, appearing through a gap in the buildings, there is an apartment complex that forms a horseshoe around a basketball court. The open end of the horseshoe is blocked off by a narrow street. I tiptoe along that street and stop short of the court. I stick my hands in my pockets, lean my left shoulder against a brick pillar and survey the scene.

There are two men shooting and one watching. The two who are lofting the ball at the goal are probably 30, the onlooker probably 45. They spot me observing them and return the favor, eying me quizzically but without malice. I am torn on whether I should approach them. I haven’t, after all, ever played with these guys or on these courts, and I don’t want to be presumptuous. There is something to be said for simply watching, but still, it’s more or less habitual for me to want to play if I hear and see basketballs. And like I said, it’s beautiful today.

As I’m having this internal should-I-or-shouldn’t-I debate, a guy a few years my junior strolls past me and casually walks out onto the court. It’s like I was gawking at a pretty girl at a bar, trying to summon the gull to approach her, and a guy just walked right past me and asked her out. He grabs a rebound and proceeds to join them in tossing shots at the goal. Maybe he knew this girl before he approached her – maybe, that is, he lives in this cluster of apartments or works with one of these guys or whatever. At any rate, I feel a bit depantsed.

After a few more moments I join them. Before I even have to chase down a rebound, one of them passes me the rock – an invitation to shoot. I do and realize that the playing conditions are the best I’ve experienced in China. The court isn’t made of the usual slick, bald concrete, but instead some sort of composite, like a super-hard rubber. Now, it’s not the hardwood at Allen Fieldhouse or anything, but it’s not slick, bald concrete, either. There are no lumps or craters or cracks, and you can’t slide on it. What’s more, the ball is inflated too perfection. Ninety percent of the balls that I have played with have been more inflated than Pamela Anderson’s chest. If you hold one out in front of you and let it plummet to the ground, it will bounce back way higher than whatever height you dropped it from. They’re hard to dribble, they hurt to catch, and if you so much as graze the rim then the ball will swiftly bounce away, like a tennis ball off a racket. This ball, though, is quality, complete with a little bit of grip on the skin. And the backboard is glass. Glass! The rim is level and forgiving and – cherry on top – there is a net! Having stepped onto this court after months of suffering through the courts I’m used to, I feel like I’m biting into a steak after subsisting for months on gruel.

I have a spotty chat with the three guys, one of whom, the eldest one, knows a bit of English. They ask me a question that I don’t understand, and I shoot back, “I’m an English teacher.” A lot of times when someone spews a series of words that I don’t know, I just say, “I’m an English teacher.” I figure there are a lot of questions that “I’m an English teacher” could answer. Like, say, “What are you doing in China?” Or, “What is your job?” I’ve surely used this phrase at inappropriate moments, after being asked something like, “Do you like China?” Or, “Where are you from?”

This time, though, it seems to make sense. They nod knowingly and we continue to shoot around. Playing with this ball and shooting at this basketball is like steroids for my shot; it’s as though I’ve been playing with gloves since I got here. After warming up with some short jump shots, I scoot back to the three-point line, which is immaculately clear – a stark white against the algae-green court.

I launch a triple from the left wing. Swish. The older man – who seems more and more like the patriarch of the court, observing but not playing – says, “Hao qiu!” Good ball! The ball lands gently at one of their other guys’ feet, and I get my change, the first time that’s happened in China.

I dribble from the left wing to the top of the key and let fly with another three-pointer. Swish. Hao qiu! There is something about this goal, this ball, this beautiful afternoon – it feels so easy to shoot. I get my change again, not knowing if it’s because they are being nice or because they want to see me repeat the feat. I move to the right again, now on the opposite wing and right in front of the older man who is standing just out of bounds, observing with his hands behind his back, his shoulders and chest open in a dignified kind of way.

I shoot another one. Swish. I let out a little chuckle after the third one, not because I am impressed with myself, but because I am enjoying this more than they could imagine. Equal parts warmth and chill in the spring air; an uncannily healthy court; nice people who are lauding my shooting – and even giving me my change!

Not wanting them to get bored with this shooting exhibition, I move not to the right or left, but instead take a big step backward. I prepare for the incoming pass while the ball is in the air, taking the slightest of hops to set my feet, which touch the ground the instant the ball hits my fingertips. I shoot again. Swish.

I scoot back again and miss the fifth one. The ball bounces off the rim right back at me, but fearful that I am monopolizing the proceedings, I chuck a one-footed trick shot at the goal, a shot that has about a 1.43 percent chance of going in. Swish. Just kidding – it’s an airball.

Four of us shoot around for about 10 more minutes, under the watchful eye of the sage standing on the right sideline. I go over to the fence lining the adjacent street and peel off my fleece, slipping the neck of it over one of the iron rods. Then the sage comes over and asks for my number. He asks in Chinese, and I’ve absolutely no idea what he said. He then says, “Telephone,” in English and pulls out his cell. Now I get it. I tell him my digits and eagerly snag my phone from the coat hanging on the fence. He is calling me, and I slowly ask him his name. He understands the question and tells me. It’s Li. I store his number and put my phone away. He then tells me that they play on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that he will call me to play. I do everything I can to convey my eagerness.

Two more guys show up to play and we start a three-on-three game. I thoroughly enjoy myself even though my team loses more than we win. A seventh guy shows up and is appointed to our team by Li, who must have felt bad for us. It’s crazy, but I don’t care that we’re losing. And I don’t care that the legitimacy of our three-on-three game has been tainted by having an odd number. These are things that would usually drive me crazy. Now, though, I just can’t be bothered. Heck, I’m even oblivious to the score. Li is the scorekeeper, and when a game ends he announces as much. But I never know what’s going on until he declares a game over.

After one game, a guy goes over to check his phone. Li uses the timeout to introduce me to everyone. For the life of me I can’t remember their names. They were all quintessentially Chinese-sounding names, like Wang and Zhu and, for that matter, Li. I remember only one name: the shortest, chubbiest person on the court introduces himself as Tom.

Li eventually sheds his jacket and ditches his post along the sidelines. He is playing in dress shoes. He’s an alright player, the type of guy who you can tell was probably quite good when he was younger, the type of guy who knows what he should do on every single play but whose body doesn’t always allow it.

I end up playing for nearly two hours. I give a hardy round of goodbyes to everyone and walk out the same way I came, hoping to eventually get a call from Li.

Here, McGrady's Still Great, I

I'm preparing to record the unintelligible ramblings of Chinese people who I will interview by pointing to a series of characters and muttering pinyin that my girlfriend wrote out. Shudder.

My girlfriend, who is English, has prepared a series of questions with which I will interview people at the basketball courts. This is her way of being a doll and practicing Chinese at the same time. She translated some queries into Chinese characters as well as pinyin, which is a way of writing Chinese characters with English letters. Pinyin literally means “spelling sound” or “spelled sound” (according to Wikipedia), and it is the best way for Westerns like myself to see the phonetic pronunciation of Chinese words. (After all, Chinese characters still look more like doodles than words to me.)

Because I will have no idea what my interviewees are saying, I grab my digital voice recorder so I can simply record their answers. This, too, will be turned into a Chinese learning tool by my girlfriend: she’ll listen to the recording and, with her tutor, transcribe what’s being said. It’s a bastardized way to give an interview – little chance for follow-up questions because there is little chance that the interviewer will know what answers are being given. But it’s better than nothing.

This will be one of the first times I’ve used my voice recorder in China, and I decide to empty the memory bank. There are about a dozen different tracks, and I cull through them one by one and hit the ERASE button, compulsively listening to the opening moments of each interview to make sure it’s nothing of great import. Hearing the interviews on there is like traveling back in time to my freelancing-until-I-can-get-a-job days, writing anything the Kansas City Star would let me. There is an interview with a Kansas City area boxer; an interview with a local amateur female golfer; a post-game interview with an area high school basketball coach. It’s a bit depressing to listen to, thinking about how hard I worked, and how the payoff is this: preparing to record the unintelligible ramblings of Chinese people who I will interview by pointing to a series of characters and muttering pinyin that my girlfriend wrote out. Shudder.

Voice recorder in hand, I leave for SNU at about 2:15 and plod onto the 123 bus, forced to stand for all but the final few minutes of the ride. Only after I snag the seat of a departed Chinese guy do I have a chance to glance out the window and survey the day transpiring outside. It’s a gorgeous afternoon, one in a string of increasingly spring-like days. I see a plastic bag floating in the sky before realizing that it’s not a plastic bag at all, but instead the hook of a towering crane being lowered behind a building in the distance. Am I going crazy? Mistaking cranes for plastic bags, mistaking one form of pollution for another? OK, maybe it’s only gorgeous in the relative sense.

It’s been almost a week since I last played. That day, I rode by bike to Shandong Normal and left it locked near the entrance. The bike is a P.O.S. model with one semi-functioning break and a pair of pedals that jut inward at awkward angles, forcing my feet to slip off the over and over. I spent 150 RMB on the bike – about 20 U.S. dollars – and even that was too much for this heap of junk; within days it started to fall apart. After a particularly haggard ride to the university last week, there was no way I was riding it back. So I ditched it, locked, in a conspicuous location, knowing full well it might not be there when I went back next. Indeed, it’s gone.

I am unfazed by this revelation and proceed to walk to the courts. There are four lines of people – two rows of boys, two of girls – doing some sort of martial arts-style stretching in front of the Mao statue. The girls are wearing red karate-ish outfits, the boys black, and it reeks of China: some sort of kung fu warm-up in front of a statue of Mao Zedong. Even after eight months here I am not immune to thinking stuff like this is intriguing and a little bit funny.

Immediately after passing that scene, a guy emerges on the sidewalk to my right, zealously beating a basketball into the ground. He takes a few dribbles around an imaginary defender and then goes in for a layup on an imaginary goal, finger-rolling the ball into a basket that doesn’t exist. A moment later, another guy is pounding a ball on a nearby sidewalk. He is walking backwards and dribbling, carrying on a conversation with what appears to be his girlfriend. Then the third, fourth and fifth guys with basketballs appear. Basketball is in the air.

But as I approach the courts, there is no one is playing; each of the 22 courts are empty, the gate is clamped shut with a pair of bike locks. I pass five people on the way to the courts who were either dribbling or cradling balls, yet there is not a soul playing. I don’t get it.

After a moment, I here balls bouncing – but not on the outdoor courts. The thumping is coming from the four indoor courts at the north end of the facility. The indoor courts are housed in what can best be described as a hangar; a World War II prop plane could seemingly roll out at any time. The courts are protected from rain and, for the most part, wind. I have been inside the structure once. Each of the eight goals dotting the four courts has a net, and the ground isn’t quite as rustic as the outdoor courts. That’s not to say it’s some nicely polished wood, but it’s not straight concrete – a composite of some sort. The stares I got while I was in there hinted that I should stick to the outdoor courts, so I did.

Well, that hangar/fieldhouse thing is where people are playing today. Not on the myriad empty courts where we usually play. I am thoroughly baffled. I set down my backpack and sit on a ledge next to the outdoor entrance and look around. More and more people are walking around with basketballs, dribbling them and cradling them, but not playing with them. What gives?

I attempt to find out, turning to a group of guys who are probably about 30 years-old. “Why no people?” I ask in Chinese, gesturing to the barren courts. “Why no basketball?”

They look at each other in silence and then mumble some stuff I can’t decipher. About 10 seconds of dead time ensue before they say anything to me. One of them then proceeds to answer my question, and I silently flip on my voice recorder. The thing is incredibly sensitive, so I don’t need to hold it in front of the guy’s face while he talks. It’s down by my side, inconspicuous and unnoticed.

“Exam,” one of them says. There is no confidence in his voice when he says, “Exam.” He seems worried that he’s going to botch it; he doesn’t. I nod gratefully. “Exam,” I repeat.

The group again yaks it up amongst themselves before turning to me. “Are you from England,” one of them says in English, slowly and deliberately.

“America!” I shoot back in Chinese, inducing a chorus of laughs. Saying “America” in Chinese is essentially my go-to joke. It is good for a smile – if not out-and-out laughter – every time. Seeing that they know the “Are you from X?” sentence structure, I ask him if he is from China. More laughs.

Here, McGrady's Still Great, II

...whose favorite player is a guy who can’t net double figures for a floundering team, and who is on that floundering team because his old team had no use for him except as a bench-warmer? There is some history here.

A row of teenaged boys bursts through a south entrance onto the swath of outdoor courts, running in between the north-and-south sidelines. Every third or fourth guy has a ball. I am excited at the prospect of playing, but I quickly realize this doesn’t mean that the courts are open. The kids never break formation, staying in their line like an arrow floating across the concrete.

They make their way over to the court closest the hangar – the same one where I shot around with the old man the other day – and scatter into rows. There are probably 75 of them, now divvied up into eight columns. My excitement over getting to play fades, and my curiosity over what is going on swells.

I am trying to continue my spotty conversation with the Chinese guys when someone who I take to be a college student approaches me and says hello. He is wearing a Denver Nuggets jacket – the second bit of Denver Nuggets apparel I’ve seen recently – and I ask him if he likes the team.

“No,” he says. “I like Tracy McGrady.”

This is both a curious and obvious answer. Curious because, in American parlance, McGrady is what you might call “washed-up.” He is averaging less than 10 points per game this season. That ranks No. 175 in the NBA, behind a guy named Cartier Martin, whose basketball career includes stints with Antalya Büyükşehir Belediyesi (in Turkey), Benetton Treviso (Italy) and the Iowa Energy. What’s more, McGrady, 30, plays for the New York Knicks, a team that has no chance of making the playoffs even in the wide-open Eastern Conference, where you don’t need as much as a winning record to make the playoffs. And McGrady is in New York because he refused to accept his fate with the Houston Rockets, where he was relegated to being a bench player after career-altering knee problems. Indeed, you won’t find many people in the States who mention Tracy McGrady straight away as their favorite player. And that makes sense – whose favorite player is a guy who can’t net double figures for a floundering team, and who is on that floundering team because his old team had no use for him except as a bench-warmer?

Still, this Chinese teenager says that T-Mac is his favorite player. There is some history here.

To be fair to McGrady, he did have a reign one of the best players in the world. In fact, he had a years-long climax that ranks among the most statistically impressive stretches of any player in NBA history. After being sent from the Toronto Raptor to the Orlando Magic in 2000, McGrady embarked on this run from 2000-01 to 2003-04:

2000-01: 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.6 assists

2001-02: 25.6 points, 7.9 rebounds, 5.3 assists

2002-03: 32.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists while notching career-bests in field goal percentage (45.7 percent) three-point percentage (38.6) and steals (1.7 per game)

2003-04: 28.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.5 assists

Now, even though he was putting up these numbers, he famously never won a playoff series – a mark that stands to this day. But Chinese people are probably less concerned with his ability to march through the playoffs than they are with raw skills and aesthetic brilliance. And McGrady had those qualities in spades. To put his ‘00-‘04 numbers in perspective, LeBron James, who is roundly considered the best player in the world, is currently averaging 29.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 8.5 assists. So McGrady’s stretch – especially the 2002-03 season of 32.1-6.5-5.5 – is comparable to say the least. Heck, he once scored 13 points in the final 33 seconds of a game. Not a people in the history of the basketball could have done that. For a while, McGrady was indubitably one of the world’s best.

But he isn’t anymore, and, to be honest, hasn’t been for years. What gives, then, with him being so popular here – popular to the point of seeing posters and jerseys and having kids still say that he is their favorite player? Well, McGrady isn’t a star in modern-day China because of what he did back in the first half of the ‘00s with the Orlando Magic. Instead, McGrady achieved his popularity here for two main reasons: moving to the Houston Rockets, and signing a deal with adidas.

McGrady left Orlando for Houston in 2004. The Rockets, of course, had drafted Shanghai native Yao Ming in 2002, and when McGrady teamed up with Yao his star soared in China. Playing with Yao can do wonders for a player’s Chinese stock. Just look at another Houston Rocket, Shane Battier, a yeoman-like athlete who’s never had the statistics or athleticism or flare to become an NBA star in the States, but who is nonetheless an icon of sorts in China. Battier inked an eight million dollar deal in 2006 with the China-based Fujian Peak Group, which produces and markets sportswear. What happened in 2006 to suddenly make him such a marketable commodity in China? He was signed by the Houston Rockets. He has his own shoe line and you can see his face on posters all over the place. I would bet 50 yuan that there are more street-side posters of Shane Battier in Jinan alone than there are in all of America.

“I’m much more famous in China than I think I ever was in America, which is kind of cool,” Battier said in 2008, amid a sales explosion of his shoes over here.

(Here is a Peak-sponsored picture of a handful of Yao's teammates: Battier, Ron Artest, Luis Scola, Dikembe Mutombo.)

Well, if playing with Yao can make Battier a star, it can make McGrady a legend. Even today, which is interesting because, you know, McGrady isn’t really good anymore. Last season he averaged just 15.6 points and 4.4 rebounds while shooting a career-worst 38.8 percent from the floor. Oh, and he only played 35 games because of major knee surgery. But the Chinese still love him.

And this kid is but one of millions. In fact, there was a bit of an uproar earlier this year because McGrady was a leading vote-getter for the 2010 All-Star game. Part of being selected an All-Star is online voting, a way to engage fans around the world and let them vote for their favorite players. Here’s the catch about McGrady getting so many votes for the 2010 All-Star game: at the time, he had played all of six games because of his bum knee. And if only having played in six games isn’t enough to raise red flags about being an All-Star, then this should be: during those six games, McGrady was averaging 3.2 points and 7.7 minutes, the latter number prompting his demand to be traded from Houston.

He was a scrub, basically, but still got more than one million online votes from fans. No way a vast majority of those votes weren’t coming from China. An NBA Fanhouse article said, “It’s widely believed McGrady, who has been named to seven All-Star Games, is getting plenty of votes in China due to being the teammate of Rockets injured center Yao Ming.” It’s not hyperbole to say that’s the only logical explanation.

The same phenomenon played out with fellow Houston Rocket Aaron Brooks, a fine player, but not an All-Star. Brooks received the fifth-most votes of any Western Conference guard, behind only Kobe Bryant (one NBA MVP award), Steve Nash (two MVPs), Chris Paul (one of the leagues premier players) and, you guessed it, Tracy McGrady. So two of the top five vote-getting guards played for the Rockets, and neither of them were really All-Stars. Two more good-but-certainly-not-All-Star Houston Rockets were Trevor Ariza and Luis Scola, who finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in All-Star fan voting for Western Conference forwards. So yeah, being on Yao’s team makes you popular.

As does being inking a deal with adidas, which signed McGrady to a lifetime contract in 2002 and then proceeded to invest heavily in China. The sporting goods company spent an estimated $80 million to $100 million for the rights to clothe China’s athletes in the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics, which were held in Beijing. The company is zealously pursuing the Chinese market. From MSNBC: “A worldwide Adidas marketing campaign — ‘Impossible Is Nothing’ — was refashioned for China last year [2005] as ‘No Impossible Gold,’ to play to Chinese hopes that their athletes will top the medals table in 2008.

In 2005, adidas netted an estimated $300 million in China and even more in 2006. And according to the Web site “Fibre to Fashion,” the company’s sales went up by 45 percent from 2006 to 2007. Growth slowed in 2008 and 2009, what with the economy and all, but the company is still a giant in China. Here in Jinan there are multiple adidas outlet stores – I’ve bought two pairs of shoes there – and while on vacation in Shanghai, I saw one of the biggest billboards I’ve ever seen: an adidas ad that towered over a busy intersection featuring Dwight Howard and Derrick Rose, each of whom is signed with the company. (Howard, by the way, received the third-most online votes for the All-Star game. Coincidence? Nah, I don’t think so either.)

Basically, the company is doing its damndest to get a stronghold in China. And part of that campaign revolves – or at least used to revolve – around McGrady. In an apparent attempt to make McGrady as popular as possible in China, adidas brought him here in 2006 for a publicity tour. Also from MSNBC:

When Adidas brought NBA star Tracy McGrady to China last August for a well-funded publicity tour, all 800 pairs of a special edition basketball shoe sold out at stores in a single day. The sportswear maker hopes the enthusiasm that the young Chinese showed for those $170 shoes will spill over to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Heck, forget the numbers. Look at the logo adidas cooked up for McGrady when they inked a deal with him in 2002. It looks like a freaking Chinese character.

For these reasons, it’s a no-brainer that McGrady is popular in China. Alas, this season McGrady has looked crummy. After playing something like 1.5 million games, he’s all but cooked as a bona fide NBA force. He is currently averaging fewer point than he has since he was 19 years-old. But this kid still says, No, I don’t like the Nuggets. I like Tracy McGrady. The Houston Rockets-adidas combo must be to Chinese teens what the easy-intern combo was to Bill Clinton.

Here, McGrady's Still Great, III

Some of them...have literally climbed trees to catch what’s going on. They are perched like monkeys, peering through a gap below the rooftop and above the walls, all to see the mysterious basketball games inside.

This kids speaks a little English beyond just “Tracy McGrady,” so I throw on the voice recorder and start to ask him questions. The line of questions that my girlfriend mapped won’t work as well on a kid like this, so instead I ask why aren’t people playing basketball?

“There are exams,” he says. What exams? “P.E. exams.” What do you do for the P.E. exams? “Play basketball.”

Occasionally I look at the kids stretching over by the hangar, continuing to ask more about the exams. It turns out that middle schoolers from all over the province have descended upon the capital city of Jinan and upon this particular university. He ticks off different cities where kids are from, and the list stretches all across Shandong Province (although he himself is from Jinan). I never get a good answer for why everyone has to come to one spot to take these exams. Maybe, I wonder, this is a sort of meat market. Maybe it has something to do with China’s practice of plucking up elite athletes and funneling them into government-funded training academies. A 2008 article from the Telegraph in England focuses on one such academy, Shichahai School:

Sport is a serious business at the Shichahai School, which is one of more than 300 elite, and controversial, government-funded academies devoted to training the next generation of Chinese athletes….

Such intensity reflects the competitive role of sport in China. The vast majority of professional athletes emerge from the specialist schools, rather than from university or amateur clubs.

His English and my Chinese prohibit this line of questioning from unfolding. But nonetheless, kids from the entire province are here, and they are being scoped out while they play ball. I’m convinced there is a chance that they’re being scouted.

There are a few other things he mentions as part of the exam: running, long jump and – this one was non-verbal – shot-put. But basketball is the main event. The kids are stretching zealously – jumping up and down, dribbling between their legs, running in place. It looks, basically, like they’re getting ready to play in a big game. What’s more, there is a crowd of people gathered to watch them. The onlookers vary in age. Some of them are the same age as the kids stretching, but others, like the ones I had that initial “conversation” with, are much older, at least 30 or 35 years-old. People have lined the fence, standing shoulder-to-shoulder to watch these kids get loose.

And that’s nothing compared to the lengths people are going to to see what’s transpiring behind the concrete walls of the hangar. Some of them are balancing precariously on the half-inch-wide fence to try to steal a glance, and several more have literally climbed trees to catch what’s going on. They are perched like monkeys, peering through a gap below the rooftop and above the walls, all to see the mysterious basketball games inside. There is no such fanfare for the track and field events taking place on the far side of the court. Kids are jumping and running in anonymity. But basketball has seduced the masses, even simply watching the kids stretch.

I am resigned to the fact that I won’t be playing any ball at the university today. I say good-bye to the McGrady fan and head home. Kids are playing in the courtyard when I get back. I play with them for a little while, baffled by my day of basketball that included decidedly little actual basketball.

Schoolyard Ball, I

The basketball hoops almost redeem the fact that we live where we do – you know, with expletives carved in the building and fires out back.

I live in an apartment full of foreign teachers. There are four floors, four rooms per floor, two teachers per room. It is essentially a dorm, which is fine by me. I like the dorm setting. There is a certain vibe, a certain camaraderie to a dorm, even if the residents here are a little older than those residing in your average college dorm. (Most of us are about 24, with a trio of stray 45-plus-year-olds.)

Our apartment block is pretty standard for Jinan. It’s ugly from the outside, the windows are caked with the omnipresent dirt, and the views are nasty. My kitchen window, for instance, offers a lovely panoramic of a decrepit, vacant lot. And the view from my bedroom is of a nondescript, communist-style high-rise; it looks like countless others. Pretty drab, pretty boring, pretty normal.

What’s not normal about our locale is where the actual apartment is located: we are situated in a schoolyard. The school, as it was described to me, is a boarding school, and the students who go there live in an apartment building about 50 yards from ours. If you walk out our front door, the school itself is on the immediate right, and the kids’ living quarters are off to the left. The whole complex is shaped like a horseshoe: the north side is their school; our abode blocks of the east side; to the south is student housing; the west side is an open lot. That lot sprawls for a bit until it is traversed by a highway, which is a good football field from our apartment. A detestable stream lies just on our side of the highway, often emitting a smell that removes all doubt as to what flows through it.

We are constantly in close proximity to the children attending the boarding school. The best word I’ve heard to describe our relationship is “antagonistic.” Most of the kids are between 14 and 16, which, if memory serves, is a hellion age. At my middle school, the frequency with which kids were sent to the office for unruly behavior spiked at about age 14; that disobedience arc seems to transcend continents. And if I recall, 16 wasn’t all that much better – the major difference being we had licenses.

Immaturity reigns. The outside of our apartment was recently tagged with the word “Fuck,” which was carved deep into the plaster wall next to the front door. You can also find that word scribbled on a piece of paper that adorns the door. I’ve no proof that it was schoolchildren who are responsible for this, but I’ve no doubt either. In addition, the kids are prone to scurrying around and smoking cigarettes and engaging in other chicanery in the narrow alley immediately behind our building. About 10 days ago I stumbled outside at 8 p.m. to see a handful of teenage boys darting this way and that; that’s nothing unusual. What was unusual, however, was the faint orange glow I could see reflected off of an adjacent wall. Either they were holding some sort of séance, and the colors dancing on the wall were the spirits of relatives past, or there was a fire; the latter was true. For some reason, they thought it’d be fun to set a dresser on fire. Where they got a dresser – and why they wanted to set it on fire – is beyond me. All I know is that there was a healthy batch of flames before they got things under control (with fire extinguishers that I provided).

What’s more, with their three-story school building bumping up against our apartment, there is nary an instance when one of us teachers opens the door and doesn’t see a handful of them – usually more – milling about. There is a balcony attached to the school that faces the interior of our cohabited quad, and from that balcony the children often bark down at us as we walk past. “Halloo!!!” they’ll shout – never to our face, invariably behind our backs. Now, I’m a big fan of random hellos. Growing up in the big-on-hospitality Midwest programmed me to enjoy the I-don’t-know-but-I’ll-say-it-anyway “Hello!” It’s a kind, simple gesture that makes mundane everyday interactions more enjoyable. But believe me, these kids aren’t saying it to be hospitable. It’s a joke to them, the way someone at a zoo may yell at an animal, complete with post-yell snickering and laughing. We are all foreigners, and they are all at an awkward, disobedient age. It’s a crummy combination.

Stuff like this – carving swear words into our home, setting fires behind the apartment, mockingly yelling hello – has made us pretty bitter toward the boys and girls who attend this school. (To be fair, the girls seem to behave much better, but who knows, maybe that’s their penmanship on the door.) Most teachers resent these kids and most of us aren’t friendly to them, which in turn seems to perpetuate their dislike for us. It’s a cycle: they annoy us, we aren’t friendly, they are invigorated to do more annoying stuff, we’re even less friendly. This is perpetuated over and over for the duration of our six-month contracts, and then repeated with the next batch of teachers. We don’t get along. Having these kids around is indisputably the biggest pitfall of our dorm. (That, and there’s no hot water in the faucets. Lame.)

There is, however, one good thing about our shared occupancy: the four basketball courts resting in the middle of the horseshoe. Like any Chinese schoolyard – and I live, basically, within the boundaries of a Chinese schoolyard – there are basketball courts. You will be hard-pressed to find a schoolyard in China, or at least Jinan, that doesn’t have basketball goals sprouting through the concrete. And in our little quad, you will be hard-pressed to find a time of day when there aren’t kids shooting on those baskets.

The basketball hoops almost redeem the fact that we live where we do – you know, with expletives carved in the building and fires out back. The hoops are always there, always inviting. There were a few nights this winter when I took a ball out there late at night and shot by my lonesome. More often than not I wasn’t alone for very long, for the kids’ apartment spans the length of the courts. They can easily hear if there is a ball bouncing around, and a few of them would emerge from the apartment’s front door, like stray ants coming out of the ground. They would hesitantly approach me, and before long snag one of my rebounds and help themselves to a shot. Then several more.

On one particularly frigid night, thinking I’d certainly be by myself, I took a bottle of cheap, foul-tasting Chinese brandy down to the courts. I had everything I needed for a decent time: brandy, a ball and four layers of clothes. I took a long pull off the brandy before I stepped onto the court and set it down along the left sideline, there for me like a bottle of Gatorade should I need lubrication. I started shooting around, and in mere moments those ants – er, kids – came crawling out. First it was two, then two more. Before I knew it, I was playing in a three-on-three game under the dim glow of the streetlight-like lamps that surround the court. I realized a few minutes into the game that my big bottle of brandy lay easily within site of the court. The temperature continued to drop, but I was warmed up by the game-action and by the spirits. We played for a long while – these kids who us teachers by and large detest, and this teacher for whom these kids seem to have zero respect. It was fun, a reprieve from our normally animosity-soaked interactions.

The kids had a hiatus for about a month during the Chinese Spring Festival, which is in mid-February. But they came back a few weeks ago, at the outset of March, and our contentious relationship picked up where it left off.

Schoolyard Ball, II

Anymore Converse gets dominated on the basketball market by Nike and adidas, but there is still a contingent of Chinese teenagers rocking Converse basketball gear. Jimmy Chitwood would be proud.

I planned on going to go to the university today to interview refreshment man. I was able to fumble through a small conversation with him the other day, deducing that his name is Wang Sheng Heng and that he is 60 years-old. Wanting to continue the conversation – but being incapable of doing so by myself – I coaxed a bilingual Chinese coworker into translating for me. Alas, it’s really cold, and neither my coworker nor myself feel like making the trek over there. I won’t be able to build off that interview today, but I should be able to soon.

Still, though, I want to play basketball, and each of the four courts in the schoolyard boasts kids playing. So I layer up and stroll down there to get in the action.

When I arrive, one court houses a four-on-four game while the other three are home to simple shootarounds. I approach the nearest court, where three kids are shooting lazily, noncompetitively. One of them – the tallest and thickest one – is wearing baggy jeans with a back-pocket adorned with the Denver Nuggets logo, a baby-blue and yellow emblem set atop a background of the Rocky Mountains. The Nuggets were my favorite team in college – per proximity – and I get a chuckle out of his pants. The other two guys are wearing Converse brand sweatshirts. This, too, induces a smile because Converse is probably the oldest basketball-based brand in America, and by extension the world. (For me and for many basketball fans, Converse was immortalized in the 1986 film “Hoosiers,” starring Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper. The movie is about a small-town basketball team – the Hickory Hoosiers – and their run to an Indiana state title in 1954. The Converse connection is this: the team sported Converse basketball kicks, just like pretty much everyone did back in the 50s. Anymore Converse gets dominated on the basketball market by Nike and adidas, but there is still a contingent of Chinese teenagers rocking Converse basketball gear. Jimmy Chitwood would be proud.)

When I say that these kids are just shooting around, I mean it. They aren’t playing any American games like HORSE or 21 or Around the World. They are simply shooting for the hell of it. And unlike most Americans, they aren’t giving “change” to the person who makes a shot. The practice of change is a staple on American playgrounds and in American gyms. If you make a shot, you get to shoot again; you get your “change.” I couldn’t tell you the exact origin of the word. Maybe the idea is that hitting a shot is money, and if you give money then you get change in return. Don’t know. I just know that more often than not, if someone makes a shot in the U.S., they get a chance to make another. Well, that’s not how they roll here in China, and especially not on this particular court. These kids are shooting wild, outlandish shots: fadeaways and running hook shots and long three-pointers (you can still make out the faint sketch of the three-point line). The thinking seems to be, if there is no chance of getting the ball back anyway, then why not have a little fun?

Their flippant attitude is punctuated when one of them – the one wearing the Nuggets jeans, who is the apparent ringleader – busts out his cell phone and dials up some rap music. It’s an English-speaking song, and these kids surely have even less of an idea what the lyrics are than I do. But they still enjoy it. The Nuggets kid starts to dance, and everyone just laughs along. It’s a fun scene.

All the while, I just keep shooting whenever a ball bounces my way. I had a massage about an hour beforehand, so I am taking it easy, not wanting to undo any of the magic that was bestowed upon my back and shoulders.

I am the fourth person on this court, but eventually numbers five, six, seven and eight mosey over. Before long I am invited to play in a four-on-four game. I agree, and we circle up around the ball, ready to let inertia determine the teams. The kids seem to think that I don’t understand how this procedure works, but of course I have figured it out (after several baffling games). I nod knowingly, imploring them to carry on as usual. They start spinning the ball.

Teams are divvied up. We don’t keep score. I feel obliged to pass each time I touch the ball. I am grateful for the chance to play a little basketball, and I want to ingratiate myself with them. Plus, they are way younger than me, and I wouldn’t get much of a kick out of showing them up.

Eventually, though, one of the kids on the other team starts guarding me really tight. I instinctively feel obliged to do a little something, so I shoot some long, closely guarded jump shots. I do this a few times, hit a few threes, the other players applaud. “Good ball!” they yell in Chinese. I was wrong: I do get a kick out of showing them up.

After about 30 minutes, a ball misses everything and takes a wicked bounce off a crack in the concrete, jutting quickly off the court and toward our apartment. I chase it down, reach to grab it and toss it back onto the court, to no one in particular. I decide that this is as good a time as any for me leave, seeing as I’m growing weary of the cold even if they aren’t.

I yell “Bye bye!” to them, an expression that, like hello, most Chinese people know. They yell back, and I turn to walk wondering: maybe playing an amicable round of basketball with these kids is a good way to defuse the animosity between them and us foreign teachers. After all, this is the same group of scoundrels who yell at us and tagged our building (before nearly burning it down). Yet when we play basketball, there is no hostility, no bitterness. I don’t care about past transgressions, and because we’re playing together, the incentive for them to shout things at me is removed. We aren’t enemies. We’re teammates, friends, people who are simply enjoying a game. I say all of a dozen words to them, but no more are necessary. I would venture to say that that basketball game is the best that any foreign teachers has communicated with those punk students in a long, long time. At least since I played basketball with them last winter.

That night when I come back from dinner, I see kids playing basketball as I round the last corner before the apartment. Two kids are shooting lazily in the soft illumination emitted from the light lining the courts. They see me and shout. But it’s not the usual chorus of smart-ass “Halloo!!!”s. They shout, “Come here!” Those two words, coupled with the patter of the ball, are the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard come from the students. I will make a point to use this language, basketball, to talk with them some more.