de pontibus
2020 November 14
By Caderyn Owen Jones, Xiuning High School 2019-2021
On July 7, the Zhenhai Bridge in Huangshan, which had stood for more than three hundred years, collapsed under heavy rains and flooding in the area. It was a time of great uncertainty in my life about whether I would be returning to China in the upcoming semester, and greater uncertainty still in how I ought to be occupying myself until that indeterminate point in time at which the borders and visas opened – a point we still have not reached. There was something peculiar about the images of the crumbled bridge, even more so than those of the flooded school that accompanied it, or of the already pressed gaosan students being ferried to-and-from the gaokao exam. To know that the bridge, on which we had wondered about distant Ferris-wheels, or crossed over from Tunxi into the recently renovated “water street”, or guided other fellows across in search of maodofu, would not be there to welcome us back, felt like a definitive turning post in my life, as if marking the end of our two year fellowship, only six months of which we even realised. The event prompted me to look for work in Turkey, and I started at a school in Istanbul as an English teacher the following month. On another level, however, it was a reminder, not of the positive aspects of bridges which are so often emphasized in metaphors – those of connections and secure passage – but of the very underlying reason for a bridge: the untraversable space beneath it and the latent danger, personified in European folklore by trolls.
As I write this now, I have spent more time in Turkey as a Yale-China fellow (February–Present) than I ever did in China (June – January). I sometimes wonder on whose bridge my flag flies. I still feel very much like a Fellow, attending (virtual) conference, watching Chinese TV, talking on WeChat to teachers, and I long to return to our little corner of the world. One way or another, I have continued Yale-China’s mission of teaching and “bridging” cultures, through my work and presence here in Turkey. But I am haunted by bridges, especially in Istanbul. I miss the profound metaphors of bridges, embodied in Yale-China’s raison d’être, but instead am confronted daily with the cheap literalism of three bridges that connect Europe and Asia. Perhaps one day I will cross them, not to return – heading instead back to a (dry) school in Xiuzhong and a (restored) bridge in Huangshan. Like our Chinese prefecture, I know Yale-China Association is trying to rebuild its own bridges, despite challenging conditions. I’m confident that our organisation – which survived the turbulence of 20th century China – has the materials to do so. Until that day, however, my unhappy bridge associations may yet continue. I can only hope that my Yale-China journey, which began during my time in “Bridges ESL” at Yale, has not collapsed together with the late Zhenhai bridge.