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Mary Lucille Hays teaches writing at UIUC and at Zhejiang University in Haining, China.

Here I am on campus at last. It’s good to be home in China!

I’ve been running around trying to solve problems one at a time: how to use my bike card to rent a bike on campus, how to use the fancy washer/dryer and microwave in my apartment, how to get money onto my Alipay because the campus store no longer accepts cash. I’ve had my first in-person class meeting, and it was such a delight to finally meet the students in real life. They are not just postage stamp size faces on my screen anymore.

Now the campus is quiet because it is National Day, and we have the week off from classes. I will stay here and get caught up and re-acclimate myself to the campus life.

First, I wanted to take a bunch of stuff to my cross-campus office. It was heavy, so I thought I’d take a bike. They have baskets in front, and I can make the trip in five minutes instead of fifteen. I walked to the nearest bike parking lot.

We use our city cards to unlock the bike, and then we can ride for free for an hour. But the bike parking lot was almost completely empty—only a few motorbikes and private bikes. No worries, I’ll walk to the next one, but...same story. I made my way across campus with my heavy bags, zigzagging from one bike lot to the next.

Up ahead I see one, but... a student beat me to the last bike. What happened to all the bikes? Just yesterday, they were thick as cottage cheese, now nothing. Was someone playing a trick on me? Sadly, I had to walk all the way to my office with my heavy bag. Later I told my student about my plight. She said everybody rode the bikes to the train station to go home.

Next, I’m going to try to find the train station and ride one back here. The only problem is that once it’s back here, someone else will ride it away before I need it again.

Bit by bit, I’m remembering my campus routine. After breakfast in the canteen (I usually choose a tea egg—eggs boiled in a mixture of tea, broth, herbs, and salt, then cracked so the tea stains the eggs in a crackle pattern, lovely.

These eggs are flavored, so no need for salt.) a rice ball, and maybe a little bun. Then on to my office to grade essays if it’s not a teaching day. My walk (or bike ride, if I’m lucky) takes me to what I call “the flower quad.”

It begins with beds of roses—pink beds, yellow beds, red beds, and white beds. The heat releases the gentle perfume. Magpies in their black and white formalwear caw and hop comically on two feet as I pass, flying away when I get too close.

Next come the beds I modeled my new flower bed at home on. These are rounded mounds with a small tree (often a Japanese maple) and a shrub, surrounded by perennials and then skirted by annuals. Sometimes they have a standing stone too.

Then come more beds of fall flowers. In the spring, these were tulips, and I would see groups of gardeners squatting and chopping the weeds out, or digging in new bulbs. At the south end of the flower quad are a couple of little footbridges, and I like to walk over them even though it takes me a little out of the way.

Then back to the canteen or to get my Covid test if it’s a testing day. The whole campus gets a test every 72 hours because of a recent case on campus. On my first test, I was dubious. The line out the door seemed to be growing as I walked toward the clinic. People were walking with purpose from all directions.

But I needn’t have worried. They have it down to a science here. We pull our phones out and the clinician scans our code and hands us a test tube. I don’t think I was in line for more than five minutes. A quick swab of my mouth, and then I get my results in a few hours. It’s a lot of testing, but frankly, I worry much less about catching Covid while I’m here. And I think soon we will go back to normal life when the whole campus tests negative for a while.

Walking through this lovely space allows me to reflect on home. My students and friends keep me grounded here, and twice daily video chats with Michael keep me grounded at home, so I have a kind of double vision. My husband walks me around the yard in the mornings in Birdland, and I walk him through my mornings in his night.

Wander in Beauty; Roam in Peace; Blessed Be.

Mary Lucille Hays teaches writing at UIUC and at Zhejiang University in Haining, China. If you’re missing your weekly dose of Birdland Letters in the News Gazette, you can still read them every week in the Piatt County Journal Republican. Consider subscribing to support your small town newspaper. You can see photos of her travels on Instagram @BirdlandLetters. Mary can be reached at letterfrombirdland@gmail.com or via snail mail care of the Journal Republican, 118 E. Washington St., Monticello, IL 61856.