Death Penalty for a Ghost in 中国 01-03

一

"What, no way this place was built on execution grounds! You're kidding, right?" Marco asked in a cynical tone, his eyes thinned. Then he hung his head back down to his plate, picked awkwardly with his chopsticks through a heap of oily sliced cabbages slathered in red chilis and chopped garlic.

"Nope, it's true, I heard it from Jim, the Chinese teacher who lives in our building. It makes sense, though. I mean, how do you think they got the land? Have you seen property prices in China?" I answered before I sipped on a metal bowl of egg drop soup.

I licked my lower lip, continued, "Property in China is like gold. The acres they got out here, this school, this near the city. We're talking 10 figures, probably, US Dollars."

"Dog, we're like an hour from downtown," Marco lamented and snorted loudly, his nostrils flaring. The spicy cabbages were loosening up his sinuses.

Man-bun Matty, the rosy-faced Londoner, chuckled at his naivete. Muttered something about "fresh off the plane."

"An hour is close for me. My last school was two and a half hours, to only the outskirts of the city center. This isn't too bad," the Man-bun posited, peering up from his phone.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, sniffled, and continued, "That school was shuttered because it was built over a toxic waste site. The worst of it was at the football pitch and running grounds. Students and teachers exercising there were having bloody noses, fainting spells, and one came down with leukemia before the word got out. Bloody hell, I'm lucky I don't take exercise. So, anyhow, after that, I'm okay with execution grounds."

Man-bun was dressed, as usual, in Hanfu, traditional Chinese clothing, today wearing a shiny gold emperor robe, images of dragons stitched along its sides.

Marco was having issues processing what he'd heard, blinked his bleary eyes, and said, nervously, "Not me. I'm not okay with it. Like, an execution ground? There has to be ghosts here. Evil, wicked ghosts... This might explain the nightmares I've been having since I got here."

I'd also been having terrible, menacing nightmares since I'd arrived in China, and visions too, things I couldn't explain, things I'd never seen before...

"I might have to call my mom back in Florida. She's into Santeria," said Marco, setting his chopsticks down on his tray.

"Is Santeria the same as Voodoo?" Man-bun Matty asked and snarled.

"Oh no, it's way better..." Marco said, his breathing turning stertorous, "I'm not a practitioner, but this place could turn me into a Babaloricha, alright."

"Santeria's more about syncretism than Voodoo, I think," I averred, checking my phone for no real reason, other than to lessen the weirdness of the moment.

"Do you think there's any poltergeists here? Evil dead that can suck you into your TV?" asked a snickering Man-bun.

"Nah," I said, sarcastically, "no one watches TV anymore. If there are poltergeists, they'd suck you into your phone.

"Hell, I think that's already happening to my students. Probably happening to us all. Must be poltergeists on Twitter, YouTube for sure, some of the comments I've seen there, almost makes me want to cancel my VPN..." I said, myself actually scrolling through Twitter.

While I was trying to lighten the mood some, Marco grew more uncomfortable, was genuinely unnerved.

Marco, the 40ish bodybuilder, Cuban American, was dressed today in his normal attire- an all-black Miami Heat tracksuit, and he rose to his feet, cried out, "The ghosts won't get me. NOT ME, DOG!" and he flung out his phone, started blasting Cypress Hill's "I Ain't Going Out Like That," sang along to the words, then slipped in his white earbuds and stalked off, still mouthing to the music, bobbing his head.

Man-bun shrugged his shoulders and we ate in silence, staring at our phones before heading off to our afternoon classes.

二

"What the hell are you doing in China?" my uncle asked me, belligerently, over Skype, soon after I'd arrived.

Well, I'd come to work, to teach at a university, in hopes of a better position back home...

The university I accepted a position at had only been open for 10 years, as a partnership with the Florida university system.

It was yet another American school hungry to cash in on the growing Chinese market.

Given the dismal state of most Chinese universities, and how desperate many parents in China were to send their kids to a Western school, having a Western school open in China made sense. And many such international schools had opened. From kindergarten through college, international schools were all the rage.

Which is where I came in. I'd been an adjunct professor, teaching cultural studies courses at Florida International University, in Miami, plus a few local Broward, Miami-Dade community colleges.

Life for an adjunct is no cakewalk. It used to be a college professor could score a tenure track position pretty easily, with the right credentials, of course, but these days, as even higher education has become part of the gig economy, tenured professorships are growing increasingly rare.

After scraping together a meager existence in my hometown of Miami, I decided to jump at the chance of a possible tenure track post that FIU was offering. However, the post wasn't in sunny Florida. Nope, it was far, far away from the land of swaying palm trees. Far as can be imagined. Far east.

In the industrial heartland of central China. In Nongzhou, Henan.

Not exactly my dream job. But, if I stuck with it for the entirety of the 3-year contract, I could, possibly, secure a tenured position in the International Studies Department back at FIU in Miami.

It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Plus, it allowed the once in a lifetime opportunity to travel in Asia.

So, I sold off most of my stuff, packed up only a few essentials, like clothes, my computer, an external drive stuffed with eBooks, and navigated a maze of bureaucracy to attain my Chinese visa.

Finally, on a cloudy September morning, I boarded a plane bound for China.

三

I landed in Shanghai, stayed my first couple days there, doing the tourist thing.

I was awed by the metropolis, its varied architecture, dazzling skyline, and endless cultural, historical attractions. It was like a larger, more crowded, more lit up, more neon, more exotic and more futuristic version of New York City.

However, my school and its surroundings were a far cry from Shanghai's towering, glass-plated buildings, Lamborghinis, and grandeur.

As I rode in the carriage of a bullet train, I was amazed at how fast the train traveled. It was as if it glided supersonically, flying over the tracks, was propelling like a bullet shot towards its destination.

However, gazing out the window, I was dismayed as the sky got darker and grayer the further we got from Shanghai, and noticed that the people looked poorer, darker and grayer, sullener too...

Henan province is widely ridiculed in China as a backwater, similar to how West Virginia is viewed by most of America. However, more recently Henan has also been known for its factories and pollution, its smoggy skies of gray. The air quality reaching its abysmal apex in the bleak days of fall and winter when the pollutants leave the air with a flavor like a mouthful of car exhaust.

Having done very little traveling outside Florida and the Caribbean, arriving in Henan in fall and not seeing the sun, at all, was tough to handle, and I was experiencing seasonal affective disorder lethargy almost immediately, the initial elation of being in China subsiding quickly...

Nongzhou, the city nearest my school, was dreary, almost as crowded as Shanghai, but lacking much in the way of culture, only having restaurants, KTVs, clothing stores, phone stores, grocery stores, and mostly vacant shopping malls. The buildings were drab, identical, rectangular, strangely empty edifices contrasting bizarrely to the place's overpopulation.

Driving out of the city, en route to the college, I looked out the taxi's windows, studied the barren environs, its farms, factories, square blocks of dead apartment buildings. Along the way I saw scattered clumps of withered old men, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, the men seated on plastic stools, selling fruit and vegetables from baskets alongside the road.

I saw several active and abandoned construction sites and occasional small hills, many of which appeared to have been mined; the hills had large chunks missing, open dirt wounds on their tops and sides. Alongside the mountains were winding rivers of the most curious shades of brown or green. The highways we drove on were in pristine condition, however, newer looking than I would think...

The college's campus was vast, had green trees, flower bushes everywhere, many state-of-the-art square, curvy glass buildings, but, like the city, the campus was also mostly empty, much of it still under construction. Along the campus's perimeter were active factories and empty, hollowed out buildings, half-built office buildings and a colossally large petrochemical plant, a dark metallic superstructure, with twin smokestacks billowing steady upward streams.

It was depressing, the surroundings. Looked like a bomb had hit it.

But the air, the polluted air was even worse and had lived up to its infamous reputation.

I swear, the air not only burned my lungs and throat, but also ate at my mind.

Since I'd arrived in China, even in Shanghai, even after the jet lag had worn off, I'd had cognitive issues, trouble thinking straight.

And once I got to the school, after hearing of the ghosts, my first night on campus, at that pickup basketball game by the cafeteria, ever since then, I'd been plagued by insomnia, and, what's worse, when I did manage to sleep, I started to have wild, weird and terrifying dreams. Nightmares like I'd never had before.