Homeless in Shenzhen

I woke up this morning on a bench near Lianhua park feeling remarkably refreshed. There was no sunrise, merely a sudden shift from mild darkness to a grey morning haze. I sat up and looked around and saw there were two men on the benches near me. One was wearing nothing but a short pair of shorts. I envied him slightly as I pulled my only business casual skirt down my sweat dampened stomach.

As I took in my surroundings, the other man woke up and saw me. He did a double take and then said, “Good morning. 你好.”

We had a short and mildly awkward conversation in Chinese / English. Awkward mainly because he eventually (as they all do) began to ask me questions I could not hope to understand, let alone answer. I told him I needed to catch the first subway and said, “see you later!” before heading off to my Chinese lesson.

So how did I end up on that bench? It’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll try to shorten it. I went to a colleague’s for Poker night after work. I lost all of my cash (don’t worry, it was only about 8 USD) betting on a 35% chance to hit a flush. So, I decided to try to take a night bus home. Unfortunately, the only bus I managed to find stopped running a few stops after I got on! So I went back to my workplace and curled up on a bench, fully dressed in my most professional outfit, and sweat out the remaining hours of night.

I guess this was my second homeless night in a familiar city. The first (in San Francisco last November) was much worse. At least this night I was warm and got a few hours solid sleep.

I saw many interesting sights, including the street cooking many of the lower class (maybe even homeless) people do between midnight and 1am right in the middle of the swankiest neighborhood in SZ. And while I was trying out a patch of grass before I found the benches, a woman or girl carrying a large teddy bear walked past me weeping loudly. It reminded me strongly of the times I did the same thing around Lake Lag back at Stanford, and I was momentarily awed by the sameness of humanity even across such a strong cultural barrier. In the
wordlessness of her sobbing, I could almost forget that I did not have the ability to communicate with her.

This morning, Chinese lesson was rough, perhaps because of my lack of sleep. I nearly started crying from frustration (and I’m quite sure my teacher could tell I was distressed). She was speaking so slowly, but I could only understand about 30% of what she was saying! I’ve tried to keep the attitude that even if I can’t managed to gain any fluency in this language, I’m going to do my best to try. But the hopeless impossibility of the task is overwhelming.

Somewhat ironically, I have to teach an upper-advanced lesson on “helping people in stressful situations” that only one student has booked next hour. I think I’ll have my student counsel me in my current distress. 🙂