Still, by three-thirty, there I sit at my desk, haunted, trying to invent another sink and hoping that Woo Eubong won't come by and see me sitting there not doing anything. She never says anything, but she notices.
I do walls and ceilings. I have learned a lot by the time I do walls and ceilings, I have more ideas. But I do them faster and then there I sit. It is work a child could do. It is meaningless, a catalogue. Has she decided I cannot do the real engineering? Except for the one assignment in lighting, after three more weeks I haven't done anything even remotely resembling engineering. I wonder, does Woo Eubong keep count of the number I do? Does the system report the amount of time I sit motionless?
One Saturday night I sit down again and try to scribble. Four walls, light through ice, and then I think, what kind of windows? I remember doing all those windows and try to remember if there were any that I liked and-
16 seconds. Worse than when I first started.
After that I don't try again.
When I have been there nine weeks, Woo Eubong comes to me one day and tells me that I am needed on a project. They are building a complex (in the conventional way, no daoist engineering this time) and are involved in a competitive bid. So for four days I work with other engineers doing real engineering work. We discuss ideas, have the system construct analogs, modify and change them. By the time I join the team, they have already been working for over a week, and on Saturday night, at nine, we submit our rough plan for the competitive bid and then go into Wuxi and have a drink.
I feel as if I am one of these people, I have been working with them ten to twelve hours a day for four days and they accept me as a colleague. I realize, sipping my beer, that I am a colleague. I am an engineer. When I go back to New York, no matter what else, I will be an engineer, I will have my degree in Construction Engineering from Nanjing University, and I will be something of an expert in the use of systems. Not to mention particularly inventive with doors.
It is a comfort. Almost enough to make me forget the last 16 second scribble.
After the project I settle into days of reviewing jobs and creating variations on whatever themes Woo Eubong assigns me. Ten weeks, eleven weeks. The Wuxi Complex begins to matter less and less to me. It is late May. I will by in New York on July 1.
I pick out my final project. I must do a final project for Nanjing University based on my co-op experience. I chose to expand on the systems work I did with the project team. It is interesting, mildly diverting. But it is hard to care. My credit balance is blooming, my apartment is beautiful, but all I want to do is go home. I will eat fried chicken and biscuits, pasta smothered in cheese (cheese is not eaten very much in China.) Peter has promised to make me lasagna my first week home. Rice and beans my second week home, although I make better rice and beans than Peter.
Woo Eubong shows me the specs for her projects. A housing complex, an office building. A beach house.
A beach house sounds nice. I ask her about it. It will be on the island of Hainandao. Hainandao was one of the original special economic zones like Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Taiwan. It is still a freemarket zone, a place of virulent capitalism, mean to fuel the socialist system. The beach house is for one of the old mercantile families of Hainandao, built by the clan corporation.
She points out the setting. No specs, she says. 'The only reason they didn't give it to an architect is that Comrade Gao, the big man of Wuxi Engineering, is friends with Comrade Wang. Comrade Gao wants a number of designs. Engineer Li Jian-fen is submitting one.'
'And you,' I say.
She looks down.
'Humble administrators build gardens, too,' I say, referring to the
She glances up at me but doesn't answer and I wonder if I've offended her.
'You should try,' she says.
'I can't compete with organic engineering,' I say.
'Okay, then see what you can do with heating and cooling,' she says. It is an infuriating answer. Why did she suggest that I try?
Does she feel that I might be able to create an adequate building? She doesn't ever much comment on how I fulfill her assignments, I never know if I've met with her approval or not.
I fiddle with heating and cooling systems. Convection. Conduction. Old fashioned systems. Expensive systems. Efficient systems. This is a big area, I suspect I will do heating and cooling systems for awhile.
Hainandao. The name means South Sea Island. The first character, 'hai' means 'sea'. It is the same as the 'hai' in Haibao. Sea-wave. I think about heating and cooling systems. (On Hainandao they would only need a cooling system. There's a lot of sunlight.) I try to imagine a beach house in Hainandao, lots of wood. Maybe paper screens, like they use in Japan.
I scribble more heating and cooling systems. And eventually I stop thinking about Hainandao. And I do not think about Haibao's white clothes folded neatly by the shattered starburst of the window.
That evening I spend a long time making dinner, trying to concoct rice and beans from the local ingredients. The result is pretty close, although not what my mother would make. Not even what I would make under normal circumstances. I leave it on cycle; flash, stand, flash, stand. My mother cooks on a stove, but I have only a flash wok and an oven, it is hard to slow cook something.
Then while it is cooking I sit down and tap the system. I am not going to scribble anything, I just want to try to imagine a beach house. And so I try. I try to imagine something that looks as insubstantial as paper, maybe sliding walls.
23 seconds.
Disgusted I get up and go back to the beans and rice. But there's nothing to do but wait. I try the beach house again.
28 seconds.
Back to the rice and beans. And then again, the beach house.
19 seconds.
Woo Eubong taps in for twenty, thirty minutes at a time. She sits at the desk for three hours, working, answering questions, dropping back into her work. I have even tried to mimic her posture. I am so frustrated I could hit something. I force myself into the chair and decide I will keep doing it until I manage. I imagine the beach house.
Contact breaks.
I imagine the beach house.
Contact breaks.
I tap in.
Contact breaks.
The flimsies pile up by the printer and finally I override the system and tell it not to print unless I tell it to.
And finally, I give up, get up, put away my beans and rice uneaten and go to bed. I am not, am not, will never be, a daoist engineer.
I wake up. Some burden has been lifted. I have discovered that I am not capable, and now I no longer have to try. Or even if I am capable, it doesn't matter. Tonight I will come back, eat rice and beans, and work on my project for the University.
I work well this day. Woo Eubong told me that by the time I left I'd be able to review thirty, forty jobs a day, and she is correct. I have learned a great deal about engineering and however strange her teaching methods may be, I am grateful. Even for all those days of doing heating and cooling systems.
At the end of the day I am feeling pleased with myself. It doesn't bother me when Woo Eubong says, 'You have homework.'
I wait. I'd prefer to work on my project, but I have three weeks to do that and it is almost finished already.
'I want you to scribble again, the way you did when you first came.'
'How many?' I ask.
