On September 11, 2001, I was in Wuhan, China teaching conversational English in an intensive short-term program at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. My students were all master’s level computer science students eager to improve their spoken English. They believed that better language skills would enhance their career prospects and would make it easier for them to connect to a larger world. They were a joy to teach and to know, and I was enjoying myself more than I thought was possible.
On that tragic morning, my teaching assistant Liao Feng Hua arrived early at my hotel room. He was there to accompany me to the first class of the day. I will never forget his first words to me.
Your country has been attacked.”
On that tragic morning, my teaching assistant Liao Feng Hua arrived early at my hotel room. He was there to accompany me to the first class of the day. I will never forget his first words to me.
Your country has been attacked.”
What?! I had no idea what he was talking about. Attacked? What did he mean by “attacked?” Who would attack the U.S.? And why? His words seemed so unlikely. Surely he had made a mistake.
As I tried to formulate some coherent questions, other American teachers appeared in the hallway and told me about the hijacked airplanes and the Twin Towers in New York City. I slipped into one teacher’s room where several teachers had congregated. We stared in horror at the television. We watched the Phoenix channel in Hong Kong with its reports in Chinese and English. Those terrifying photographic images of the second plane flying into one of the Towers said much more than words could ever say.
The days that followed were strange, almost surreal in a way.
We Americans teaching on the university campus found ourselves in a state of suspended animation permeated with anxiety. Airports on the U.S. mainland were closed, and no flights could enter or leave the U.S. That meant that we Americans could not return to the United States. Several of us wanted nothing more than to go home immediately, and the impossibility of that just added to the anxiety. Others, myself included, thought it better to wait and see how events would unfold.
We were cut off from normal media sources, and we came to rely on our students and for email from home for news. My students were particularly helpful to me. They read Chinese newspaper accounts and translated them for me. I received one especially chilling email from a friend in Hope, Arkansas. There, she said, residents of that small southern town filled up their vehicle tanks with gas, bought food supplies and bottled water at the grocery store, and then went home to wait – just as they always acted when tornado was coming. But what were they waiting for? No one knew. It was all too scary.
As I tried to formulate some coherent questions, other American teachers appeared in the hallway and told me about the hijacked airplanes and the Twin Towers in New York City. I slipped into one teacher’s room where several teachers had congregated. We stared in horror at the television. We watched the Phoenix channel in Hong Kong with its reports in Chinese and English. Those terrifying photographic images of the second plane flying into one of the Towers said much more than words could ever say.
The days that followed were strange, almost surreal in a way.
We Americans teaching on the university campus found ourselves in a state of suspended animation permeated with anxiety. Airports on the U.S. mainland were closed, and no flights could enter or leave the U.S. That meant that we Americans could not return to the United States. Several of us wanted nothing more than to go home immediately, and the impossibility of that just added to the anxiety. Others, myself included, thought it better to wait and see how events would unfold.
We were cut off from normal media sources, and we came to rely on our students and for email from home for news. My students were particularly helpful to me. They read Chinese newspaper accounts and translated them for me. I received one especially chilling email from a friend in Hope, Arkansas. There, she said, residents of that small southern town filled up their vehicle tanks with gas, bought food supplies and bottled water at the grocery store, and then went home to wait – just as they always acted when tornado was coming. But what were they waiting for? No one knew. It was all too scary.
In China, the event was a far-away disaster that grabbed many Chinese people’s attention. But that was true only for a brief time. Very quickly life on the university campus returned to normal. I saw grandparents fetching their children from the campus elementary school for lunch each day. Students played basketball in the evenings or rode quietly through the campus on their bicycles. The soft golden haze of autumn filled the air, and laughter and quiet chatter prevailed as people went about their daily lives.
We Americans called a meeting. After some discussion, we decided to return to our teaching. Remembering this several years later, I know now that we really had no other choice. Going back to the classroom provided each of us with some structure and a distraction from the anxiety of being away from home during such an important event in our nation’s history.
Later my students told me that our return to the classroom left them with a very positive impression of Americans. They knew we were distressed, and yet we continued to teach. They concluded from this that Americans could be counted on to do what we said we would do, even in hard times.
This passage is from the introduction to my book, Voices of New China.
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