Unusual humidity for this time of year had plagued Yantai for a week. "Why doesn't it just rain and get it over with?!" I wondered to myself on several of these sticky, sweaty days. Then, Monday came. Some rain sprinkled throughout the school day, then students went home, leaving the teachers to their never-ending planning and preparation. As I
click click clicked away on my keyboard, the skies became darker and darker. Then, around 3:45pm, the
real rain came. It pounded on the roof and on the sidewalk and on unsuspecting victims outside.
Hmm, I thought to myself as I continued my work. "Hopefully this will stop by the time we are ready to go home..."
It was quitting time, but rain had decided to work overtime. Zach and I waited in the school for a bit longer, hoping that the rain would stop, or at least let up a little. It did not. We decided to try to brave our way home through it on our bicycles, but after experiencing the sheer amount of water already on the ground and pelting down from the sky, decided once again to try to wait it out. Giving up, we rushed back into the school building, and joined the mishmash of students, parents, and fellow teachers looking viligently out from the foyer to the situation outside. "It has to stop soon!" we all seemed to be thinking. But it didn't. Some began to say that the street outside was flooding. Zach and I then knew that waiting it out was futile. The local sewer/storm drain system had been failing lately, flooding the bike path after only small amounts of rain. This water had nowhere to go.
We then resolved to fight our way home on our mighty bicycle steeds. Before we had reached the school's front gate, we were three quarters' drenched. After exiting the school gate, we saw the real challenge before us. Tianshan Road was completely flooded, including the adjacent bike path and raised sidewalk. Cars had stalled in the road after trying to ford the flood. Waves of water rushed over the sidewalk as if the tide was coming in all the way from the ocean. On the sidewalk, the water level was at about calf-height-- and rising. We mounted our bicycles, and pedaled our way through the flood. Water filled our shoes with every pedal forward, and the rain soaked everything else. Memories of watching floods on the news flashed into my head, which was followed with the bad feeling that this wasn't such a good idea.
But we had to make it.
And we did. We pushed our way down the sidewalk, made our way carefully across the traffic jam at the intersection, and got onto the relatively dry sidewalk on the other side. We splashed our way through the little village, pushed through the gate, and made it dripping from head to toe into our building. We were preceded by one of our neighbors and his little daughter. They were running in to the building carrying a bulging bag of Yantai apples. Soaked to the bone, and relieved to be out of the rain, we all tumbled into the elevator. But not before our neighbor opened his bag of apples and told us each to take one. The apples were big and beautiful, and smelled delicious. We protested, as we should according to custom, but he continued to urge us as
he should according to custom. But his kindness was genuine. We accepted his kind offer, remarked how delicious they looked, and each retreated to our safe and dry apartments.
I will always remember this day. The day we rode our bicycles through a flood, and also a day when apples became an extraordinary kindness.
