Rebecca Henderson

I’ve just about caught up with sorting through photos and notes on scraps of paper and in my little spiral at this point on my second research trip for my work-in-progress, the nonfiction book West Texas Interlude. I spent most of last week at my grandparents’ place in Boonsville, before my aunt and I headed out on a two day trip to West Texas.

As happened on my first research trip in November 2011, many of my best recordings and notes were made while driving to doctor appointments for my grandfather or hovering behind my grandmother while she stirred something on the stove. I’ve done quite a bit of driving in the counties near where they live, as well as riding around on the Polaris Ranger or walking on their place. I haven’t seen as many deer as I did last fall, but a few are still hanging around. One morning I saw the largest jackrabbit I’ve ever seen, bouncing out of the brush near where I’d pulled over my truck on the gravel road. My grandmother and I spotted the red-tailed hawk that we’d seen a couple of times in November, and I couldn’t begin to count the cardinals that have flitted back and forth in front of me on the road or in the front yard, their vibrant feathers brightening up the dull browns of a January landscape in Texas.

Over the weekend, my aunt and I found ourselves in Stamford, Aspermont, Snyder, and Sweetwater. We were on a quest to find rent houses, an apartment, a motel, a couple of churches, an elementary school, and a roadside park where my grandfather played baseball on the Conoco team in 1950. We took photos all along the way, less for me to post online, more to show my grandparents (who would have come along for the ride if they could).

My favorite house that we found was this one in Aspermont (pop. 1021). A couple of ladies we talked to at the Pony Espresso cafe near the square in Aspermont surmised that this is the one where my grandparents rented an upstairs apartment as their first home after their wedding in 1950. Wouldn’t it make a perfect haunted house in a movie?

I love the dormers and the quirky diamond-shaped windows.

Alas, my grandmother took one look at the photos and announced that this was not the house where they lived. Our new friends at the Pony Espresso knew of no other house in town that was large enough to be divided into apartments that fit the bill, so we’re left to assume the house is gone.

Back to organizing photos and transcribing interviews…

As I was jotting down some ideas for this series, I realized that one of the topics I wanted to include was covered in a short essay I wrote a couple of years ago when the café first opened. I reread that blog entry and found that the way I expressed myself then is still the way I would express myself today. Rather than retread that ground with a separate essay, here are the salient paragraphs from July 7, 2008’s entry:

One of the lies of the enemy is that to be obedient to what God calls us to, we will end up living in one of the worst places we can imagine, doing work that we find distasteful or boring, basically trying to get by being someone we are not. We fear that whatever we most don’t want to do, that is what God will ask us to do.

The truth is, following Jesus is hard—it is the way of the cross. And He does want me to be someone I am not—someone holy and sanctified and loving and good. And He died and rose again so that I could trust Him to make me all those things.

But He doesn’t want to change the things that make me Rebecca, doesn’t expect me to give up the interests and abilities and talents that He Himself gave me before I ever drew a breath. He wants me to lay them at His feet, offering them up as a beautiful sacrifice, and trusting that He will use them and me for His good purposes. So whether I eat or drink, or make things for others to eat or drink, or learn a minority language or teach English, or whatever I do, I will do all to the glory of God.

Add to that “whether I live in Asia or America, whether I write children’s stories or travel essays.”

Here’s to the past few years of living and working in China, sometimes within my talents and giftings, and sometimes very much beyond them. And here’s to the next chapter—may it be full of the joy of knowing that it’s only by grace that I have any chapters at all.

Next in the “Finishing Well” series:  ”Reflecting on ‘If’“

I was sitting in the café today, sipping a drink and pecking away at my laptop, when the cook stuck her head into the front room and yelled (in Chinese) after one of the waitresses, “Hey, come back in the kitchen and wipe your butt.”

Surely I misunderstood.  I turned to another waitress nearby and asked, “Did she just tell her to go wipe her butt in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” she barely paused in what she was doing as she answered, before realizing that the confusion still lingered in the expression on my face.  “But that’s not what it means.”

The next time someone you know makes a mess and doesn’t clean it up, remind him gently (or more strongly, depending on your mood and relationship to the person in question) to wipe his butt.

This may be the most useful Chinese slang I’ve learned in quite a while.

The first person we came to with a pony after I made the decision for Mom to ride turned out to be a teenage boy.  He and I took turns carrying the backpacks, while Mom clung to the saddle as we made our way up, up, up.  I was having to sprint to keep up with him, but I had a blast—I enjoyed myself much more than when the going was slow with Mom walking behind me (sorry, Mom, if you’re reading this).

A ways down the trail, our guide confided in me that today was his first day at work and we were his first customers.  He had graduated junior high the week before and would be starting high school in the fall.  I have a soft spot in my heart for village students, having taught at an ethnic minority high school a few years ago, so I chatted with our young Naxi guide about classes and such, encouraging him to work hard at English if he wanted to go further in the tourism industry.

Most of the day we were trailing a group of tourists from Hong Kong, and I chatted with them during stops to catch our breath.  When they asked what I was doing in Yunnan, I told them about Mountain Café.  One guy from the group sighed wistfully, saying, “Yeah, I’ve thought about quitting the rat race and opening a café in Lijiang or Lhasa so I could just chill for a while.”  Buddy, there’s a difference between chilling in a café and running a café.

We made it to a guesthouse around 6pm, and I decided to call it a day, rather than pressing on for another couple of hours to the next one.  We said goodbye to our guide, wishing him well at his high school career.  Hot showers and a huge plate of kung pao chicken later, Mom and I felt quite refreshed and ready to enjoy the sublime scenery right outside our guesthouse door.

The next morning over breakfast of less-than-impressive pancakes and sufficiently potent Yunnan coffee, the owner of the guesthouse sat down next to me and asked, “Are you the girl from the café in JH?”

Yes, that’s me.  The Hong Kong group had been through the evening before and told her about the Chinese-speaking American girl from the coffee house down south.  She and I talked shop for a while about tourism in Yunnan, comparing names of people the other might know in various towns in the province.  Who would have thought that I would have mutual friends with a Naxi lady in a village I’ve never visited before?

Next in the “Shangri-La” series:  ”Tiger Leaping Gorge (part 3)“

A while back several of the girls at the café asked me to give them English names.  The smallest girl of the bunch I named Sandra, partly because her Chinese name begins with S, partly because I’ve been listening to Sandra McCracken a lot lately, and party because I knew Sandy (a.k.a. Sandra Lou) would be coming to visit soon.  And as expected, Sandy got a kick out of little Sandra, and quickly began referring to her as “my namesake.”

Chinese Sandra also enjoyed the fact that my visitor had the same name as her, and she made sure everyone at the café was aware of this fact.

Once we finally made it to JH, after all the delays, Sandy and Mom had a good visit, though rather quick.  Barely one week in all, with most of our time spent at Mountain Café chatting with the waitresses.

I had been concerned that my apartment might be a bit rough for them.  Having lived here as long as I have, I find it quite comfortable (on most days), but when newbies come from the States I suddenly remember that it has its inconveniences.  I don’t have air-con (except one broken unit in my bedroom, which I haven’t attempted to turn on in two years), and of course it didn’t rain the entire week of their visit during rainy season, so the temperature stayed in the upper 90s.  But Mom and Sandy were troopers about the heat—I think I complained about it more than they did.

My bathroom was also a concern.  No Western toilet and no shower stall.  Just a shower head over a squat toilet.  But again, no complaints from my houseguests.  Nor did they complain about how half the apartment doesn’t have overhead lights because the wiring of the fixtures burned out long ago.  Maybe they were waiting until they got back to Texas to discuss all the ways they didn’t enjoy my place.

Part of the time they were in town, I had my language class with Adam as usual, and we spent quite a bit of time practicing English with Lydia and Jenna at the café and visiting with other friends.  On Sunday night we had about 30 people over to my stuffy, hot little apartment to eat taco salad and celebrate Lydia’s graduation.  That truly gave Mom and Sandy an idea of what my life is like here—it took a full day plus to buy all the ingredients, wash and cut the vegetables, bake tortilla chips, clean my floors, and do everything else necessary to have guests over for dinner.  Nothing pre-packaged available here.

The rest of the time we did the other things visitors in JH like to do—go to the market, see the new temple and massive Buddha on the hill, shop on Burmese Street, eat Dai food, walk along the Mekong.  And talk until all hours of the night.

(continued from The Language Café)

All I’ve ever called this waitress at the café is her nickname, Xiao Yang, Little Yang.  Yang is a rather common surname in China.  I would need a bit more inspiration, so I asked her for her full given name.

“Yang Li Ping,” she replied.

One of the other waitresses overheard and rolled her eyes.  I was tempted to do the same.

“No, really,” I said with a straight look.  “What’s your name?”

“It’s Yang Li Ping.  Why does no one ever believe me?” she giggled.

“I know who Yang Li Ping is.  Is that really your name?”

Yang Li Ping is widely famous in Yunnan as an ethnic minority dancer and choreographer, best known for her “peacock dance.”  I can’t speak for her popularity in other parts of the country, but she’s quite the celebrity in this province.

Xiao Yang sighed.  “Yes.  Bu no one believes me, so I have them call me Xiao Yu.” Yu as in yu mao—feather.

I went home to think about it overnight.  Feather.  Not a normal name in English, but this Cup of Tea is open to unconventional names.  A problem, however, would be that the th sound is particularly tricky for most native Chinese speakers.

I read through some names online and decided on Jewel, partly because I had also just been browsing through my music library and saw Jewel’s Christmas album, which is one of my favorites.  (Stick with me…there really is a thought process being revealed.)

The next day in our language session, I asked Xiao Yang to try to say Jewel.  As I had feared, the word final l sound wasn’t going to work for her.  I just can’t give someone an English name she isn’t able to pronounce.

I remembered reading that the name Jemma also means jewel.  But I think Jemma sounds too UK.  So I settled on Jenna.  I had Xiao Yang try that one out.

She pronounced it perfectly.  That name, I decided, will stick.

Later in the day, two more waitresses asked for names.  The inspiration seeking process began again.

If nothing else, the café looks busy throughout each week day, with all of the language lessons going on under the big sun umbrellas at our sidewalk tables.  The kitchen manager teaches Chinese lessons at noon four days a week to an ex-pat couple.  Adam teaches me and two others his minority language—I love meeting for class under the dancing shadows of the leafy trees out front, partly because of the cool afternoon breeze and partly because of the distraction of people walking by on the sidewalk.

Everyone should learn a minority language if given a chance.  You can say whatever you want about pretty much anybody with little fear that you’ll be overheard by eavesdroppers.  At any given moment, there are probably less than ten people in JH who could understand us—and we’d give just about anything to know where the other six people are!

English lessons were officially added to the language menu this week when I began tutoring one of the waitresses.  She doesn’t have an English name, so of course that was one of the first things she wanted in our first lesson.  Luckily for her, I’m one of the more creative English-name-givers in Yunnan.  I once had to name 500 high school students in a one week period.  Seriously.  I made sure there were no typical Chinese-English names in my classes, no sir.  No Rose and Jack.  No Grace and Walter.  Those kids were all named after my friends and family members, favorite singers and actors, my team members.  There was one row in an 11th grade class named Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Joey, and Chandler.  Five hundred is a lot of names.

(to be continued…)

In all of the holiday frenzy last month, I didn’t write anything about the 10k race the café sponsored on Easter weekend.  We had more local participation than our previous two events, probably due to the fact that this time we offered prizes for the top three placers among men and women.  We’re still learning some of the details involved in planning races, but overall it was a successful event.

One of the problems we had was marking the race course in a way that would be obvious to all of the participants.  We clearly marked the four major turns on the route, but we failed to mark one place where you shouldn’t turn.  A few runners got slightly off course, but they recovered quickly enough not to affect their times too much.  One poor guy from out of town, though—he wasn’t so fortunate.  Somehow he missed a turn and ended up running halfway across town before he realized he was lost.

Another puzzling problem came up when one runner arrived late at the starting line, half an hour after the rest of us had begun running.  He went ahead and ran the course, and his actual running time would have put him in first place if he had started on time.  He was disappointed, however, when we didn’t give him the café gift certificate he thought he should have won.  Somehow he didn’t understand that everyone starts at the same time during a race.  Now, when that guy comes to the café, the staff refers to him as “Eight-thirty,” in honor of the time he showed up for our 8am race.

Lydia trained with me part of the time in the weeks leading up to the race, and she was able to finish the whole 10k, even though she had previously only run 3 1/2 miles as her longest distance.  Adam made a good showing by getting second place among the men, despite having shoe issues before the race.  He didn’t have shoes appropriate for running, so a teammate gave him a pair of his runners that were a couple of sizes too big.  Obviously, those weren’t ideal, so another teammate let him try a pair of hers that ended up being a half size too small.  I gave him a pair of mine to test out before the race, and Goldilocks/Adam decided that pair fit him just right.

On race day, I didn’t come close to finishing in the top three among the women, but my shoes placed second among the men.  (For the record, I wear a size 8, which is average for an American woman.  Apparently, it’s also average for village men in SE Asia.)

This morning I put Lydia on the nine hour bus back to college so she can turn in her senior paper, take final exams, and graduate next month.  She had with her one small suitcase and a bag full of fresh cinnamon rolls—those were her favorite food that I made while she stayed with me these two months, so I sent her back with one last batch for the road.

After her mom’s visit to check out JH and the café, Lydia’s parents told her that she could make her own choice about where she wants to work after graduation.  Previously, they were pressuring her to take the civil service exam and come back to her home county to work.  If she decides to do that, it would determine her career path from this point forward; once you’ve entered that system, it’s extremely difficult to get back out.  The thought of sitting in a government office the rest of her employed life doesn’t appeal to Lydia, and we could really use her help on the business side of the work we do.  The pressure to come home is still there for her, but at least outwardly her parents are now saying she can make her own decision.

So by the end of June, Lydia hopes to have moved all of her belongings out of the college dorm and down here to JH.  And I will once again have someone to cook for on a regular basis.