Man! It feels great to beat the Great Firewall of China, even if it takes blood, sweat and tears to do it. (I have this legitimate excuse for not posting in so long...)
Some enterprising journalist should do an investigation into how the Internet police in China actually operate. I get the feeling that there are probably few deliberate spies out there keeping a physical eye on what you are doing; it's more like a software or a worm that they send out to cripple with intolerably slow speeds and mysteriously vanishing pages...
More to come on this, but for now, I want to see if this post actually makes it up on the web.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Thank God - or Buddha - for Thailand
Thank God - or Buddha - for Thailand.
I couldn't imagine a better antidote to Beijing than this place. Koh Pha Ngan, the small island in the Gulf of Thailand famous for the Full Moon Party, continues to draw more people. Neither sun nor rain nor coup d'etat will deter the farangs, as the Thai refer to foreigners, from flocking here.
Heading out tomorrow for three days to a remote island national park, Ang Thong, for trekking, snorkeling, and generally shedding the vestiges of civilization.
But already, after just a week, experiences here have produced many a notable anecdote-in-the-making...more to come soon...
I couldn't imagine a better antidote to Beijing than this place. Koh Pha Ngan, the small island in the Gulf of Thailand famous for the Full Moon Party, continues to draw more people. Neither sun nor rain nor coup d'etat will deter the farangs, as the Thai refer to foreigners, from flocking here.
Heading out tomorrow for three days to a remote island national park, Ang Thong, for trekking, snorkeling, and generally shedding the vestiges of civilization.
But already, after just a week, experiences here have produced many a notable anecdote-in-the-making...more to come soon...
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Nightlife
It was bar number four. She was tired, and had a quizzical look on her face, "Did you ever think -why are we here right now- in this place? Is it fun?" I was impressed she was having this thought at 24. Ten years older, here I was in a cramped, smoky space in the small hours of the morning. I looked around at the drunken, dancing crowd. A Radiohead song set to a techno beat was unexpectedly brilliant. But fun or not, it was too late. Especially for the rapidly-approaching-middle age crowd.
We came down the stairs into the nightime cold. The street, an alley behind Sanlitun's main bar street, was the hub of passable nightlife in Beijing. It was filled with the drunken, the begging and the drug-dealing. We found ourselves in front of a vendor's cart and peeked over. The cook slapped a battered mixture against a sizzling grill. Jian bing guozi, something between a fajita, a crepe and an omlette. How much for one? she asked. One point five yuan, came the answer. Between 17 and 18 U.S. cents. Okay, two, she said.
I looked at her as we waited. She'd been here for two weeks now, and her presence was like a candle in the darkness. If all went well, we'd leave the following week for a month in Thailand. But then I'd come back alone to Number 2 Village of Happiness, with it's stagnant elevator and scarred and filthy walls, and spend another four months in the dark, waiting...
A man with a cane and an enormous grin approached us at a bracing hobble. The grin revealed just one tooth. In near perfect English he said, "How are you?" and said something in garbled Chinese. She teased him: "Oh my God, your English is so good, where did you learn?" But it was all he knew. He repeated his garbled message and pointed. "He wants bing, not money?" I asked. Actually, I knew I knew what he wanted, but couldn't believe it; I'd never seen a beggar here actually want anything other than cold hard cash.
When it comes to begging, I fall to the right of Rush Limbaugh jacked up on pain killers. I am a total Nazi. If you are walking and talking, you can do something other than beg, even if it is put on some kind of performance to try and earn money. The last time I gave money to a beggar in China was in 2003, when a homeless female child begged her way into a few kuai. As I took out the money and handed it over, out of nowhere a swarm of 10 to 15 beggars swarmed and pulled and prodded and wouldn't let me leave. It was the last time I ever took out my wallet.
But the old man wasn't interested in money. He wanted food. It was different. Let's order another one I said. Yeah, okay, she said. The first one was ready; in a little plastice bag, folded over and over again, heavy in its own grease. I handed it over. He tucked in immediately, but somehow the big grin was still obvious as he shuffled off.
I thought over where we'd been. We'd started the night at Bed, our constant hangout, with its traditional Chinese beds on which you sat and drank, always reminding me of a slightly more cavelike and dark Roman banquet. On to the Stone Boat, a tiny little place in Ritan park, by the lake. It'd been packed, which I thought was great, but the Chinese students I'd invited, professionals working in the city, hung awkwardly in the corner and left early. The rest of us, five or so, decided upon venturing into the infamous Maggie's on our way out, where middle-aged foreign men engaged in "cultural exchange" with local and Mongolian women half their age, as one of the local magazines put it.
Maggie's was worse than I'd imagined. Prostitutes dripped off high-backed chairs, alone or in groups of three. Bloated white men in their 50s stumbled around, looking to put their hands somewhere. On the dance floor, what looked like a group of American college freshmen in matching t-shirts whooped it up. We didn't stay long.
We'd made one more stop, at a new club called China Doll, with huge paneled pictures of Chinese models, semi-nude in flowing poses underwater. Now out on the street and waiting for a three am snack, I rubbed my hand over my face and wondered when I would stop having nights like this.
Just as the next bing was coming ready, an elderly woman with a clearly mentally disabled and partially blind son appeared. She said she wanted something to eat. One more, we said to the man cooking. She thanked us and handed the food to her son.
A few minutes later ours come ready. But the price has changed- now 2.5, not 1.5 kuai. She looks ready to argue, and I say forget it babe, it doesn't matter. There must be something in the air tonight, I never let things go this easily. We dodge the waiting taxis and young drunks, scarfing the smoking bing as we walk. I'm glad I've not made a fuss over the extra money; altogether four people were fed. It cost one-and-a-quarter U.S. dollars.
As we leave, the old, one-toothed old man hobbles back toward us. Great, I think, this is where he hits us up for more. But instead he grins at us, and rubs his stomach, and says with the uniquely Chinese repetition of three: thanks, thanks, thanks.
We came down the stairs into the nightime cold. The street, an alley behind Sanlitun's main bar street, was the hub of passable nightlife in Beijing. It was filled with the drunken, the begging and the drug-dealing. We found ourselves in front of a vendor's cart and peeked over. The cook slapped a battered mixture against a sizzling grill. Jian bing guozi, something between a fajita, a crepe and an omlette. How much for one? she asked. One point five yuan, came the answer. Between 17 and 18 U.S. cents. Okay, two, she said.
I looked at her as we waited. She'd been here for two weeks now, and her presence was like a candle in the darkness. If all went well, we'd leave the following week for a month in Thailand. But then I'd come back alone to Number 2 Village of Happiness, with it's stagnant elevator and scarred and filthy walls, and spend another four months in the dark, waiting...
A man with a cane and an enormous grin approached us at a bracing hobble. The grin revealed just one tooth. In near perfect English he said, "How are you?" and said something in garbled Chinese. She teased him: "Oh my God, your English is so good, where did you learn?" But it was all he knew. He repeated his garbled message and pointed. "He wants bing, not money?" I asked. Actually, I knew I knew what he wanted, but couldn't believe it; I'd never seen a beggar here actually want anything other than cold hard cash.
When it comes to begging, I fall to the right of Rush Limbaugh jacked up on pain killers. I am a total Nazi. If you are walking and talking, you can do something other than beg, even if it is put on some kind of performance to try and earn money. The last time I gave money to a beggar in China was in 2003, when a homeless female child begged her way into a few kuai. As I took out the money and handed it over, out of nowhere a swarm of 10 to 15 beggars swarmed and pulled and prodded and wouldn't let me leave. It was the last time I ever took out my wallet.
But the old man wasn't interested in money. He wanted food. It was different. Let's order another one I said. Yeah, okay, she said. The first one was ready; in a little plastice bag, folded over and over again, heavy in its own grease. I handed it over. He tucked in immediately, but somehow the big grin was still obvious as he shuffled off.
I thought over where we'd been. We'd started the night at Bed, our constant hangout, with its traditional Chinese beds on which you sat and drank, always reminding me of a slightly more cavelike and dark Roman banquet. On to the Stone Boat, a tiny little place in Ritan park, by the lake. It'd been packed, which I thought was great, but the Chinese students I'd invited, professionals working in the city, hung awkwardly in the corner and left early. The rest of us, five or so, decided upon venturing into the infamous Maggie's on our way out, where middle-aged foreign men engaged in "cultural exchange" with local and Mongolian women half their age, as one of the local magazines put it.
Maggie's was worse than I'd imagined. Prostitutes dripped off high-backed chairs, alone or in groups of three. Bloated white men in their 50s stumbled around, looking to put their hands somewhere. On the dance floor, what looked like a group of American college freshmen in matching t-shirts whooped it up. We didn't stay long.
We'd made one more stop, at a new club called China Doll, with huge paneled pictures of Chinese models, semi-nude in flowing poses underwater. Now out on the street and waiting for a three am snack, I rubbed my hand over my face and wondered when I would stop having nights like this.
Just as the next bing was coming ready, an elderly woman with a clearly mentally disabled and partially blind son appeared. She said she wanted something to eat. One more, we said to the man cooking. She thanked us and handed the food to her son.
A few minutes later ours come ready. But the price has changed- now 2.5, not 1.5 kuai. She looks ready to argue, and I say forget it babe, it doesn't matter. There must be something in the air tonight, I never let things go this easily. We dodge the waiting taxis and young drunks, scarfing the smoking bing as we walk. I'm glad I've not made a fuss over the extra money; altogether four people were fed. It cost one-and-a-quarter U.S. dollars.
As we leave, the old, one-toothed old man hobbles back toward us. Great, I think, this is where he hits us up for more. But instead he grins at us, and rubs his stomach, and says with the uniquely Chinese repetition of three: thanks, thanks, thanks.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Global Voices Online
Just discovered an incredible website - I'm sure I'm behind on this one. Global Voices Online links to blogs worldwide and provides current events updates, from mostly non-mainstream media, about what's going on on this old blue marble.
Of particular interest to me is the focus on "bridge bloggers," those blogging in a non-native language, usually English. Hoping some of our journalism students here can use blogging as an outlet for their writing - it sure cuts out the middle man.
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/
Of particular interest to me is the focus on "bridge bloggers," those blogging in a non-native language, usually English. Hoping some of our journalism students here can use blogging as an outlet for their writing - it sure cuts out the middle man.
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Foreign Policy Discomfort and Saddam Hussein, Chinese Hero
In one hand, he held a machine gun which blazed at an American Blackhawk helicopter overhead. With the other, he reached for a grenade at his waist. His eyes were piercing, and there was a cigar clutched coolly in his lips. Despite the fact that his head was about two sizes too big for his body, Saddam Hussein had never looked as good as he did painted on the front of that bar in the southern Chinese town of Yangshuo.
I gaped in disbelief and shot photo after photo. As opposed as I was to the invasion of Iraq, I couldn't begin to comprehend the near deification of the man that I was seeing here. It was a moment in late 2003 when anger over the invasion was still fresh. I sensed there was also anger and fear among the Chinese populace at how easily the man seemed to have been deposed and the U.S. victorious...as I said, that was 2003...
But anger or none, how could you admire the man? At that time, I'd only been in China about four months. Now I understand much better the way of thinking here, and it doesn't seem...well...so...foreign to me: not that I approve, just that I really feel I understand why many Chinese admired Hussein.
To digress and hopefully return and reconnect to the main point, let me say this: As a foreigner living in China, you get treated really well. Despite the extent to which foreigners complain – myself included – in reality, there is a certain status that comes with being a foreigner here that still mystifies me. People are curious and want to know about you. For the most part, they are courteous and kind. They tend to be interested in your perceptions of their country. I never feel quite at home here, but there’s a lot about China that makes expatriate life fairly comfortable.
One place, however, that I've noticed that the historic...enmity? No, that's too strong a word...but something close to enmity... Anyway, one place where the differences between East and West, between China and the U.S. come uncomfortably to light is in discussions of foreign policy. In these discussions, it's always clear to me the downright hostility many people have to the U.S. It's weird, because I'm also hostile to the current U.S. foreign policy, and yet I always find myself on the defensive, and trying to explain it. Perhaps it's because I feel most people here fail to understand the ideas that motivate the U.S. And the ideas are important; they’re the core of what the United States is, even the bad ones...
I teach a class for professional Chinese journalists and business people. It meets at the offices of Xin Zhou Kan, New Weekly Magazine. The office is on the 39th floor, a great loft-style open space with couches. Every week, we sit against the backdrop of a giant window, where we look out on the construction cranes, Beijing's unofficial city emblem, and discuss the issues of the day.
The week after the execution of Hussein, Sandy, our bright young news editor, gave a presentation on his death, and the larger issue of Iraq. It was a tough presentation to give, involving a lot of vocabulary that wasn't even English: “Sunni” and “Shiite” and so on. Sandy was extremely knowledgeable about the issue; part of her job at the paper was to scan the foreign wires and translate news into Chinese.
In general among the class there was great sympathy for Hussein. The manner and recording of his execution was abhorrent, they said, which I agreed with. When I mentioned that there was evidence that the American government had petitioned the Iraqi to not execute Hussein, no one believed me.
“I think the trial was a farce from the United States,” Sandy said, and once the word “farce" was explained, the rest of the students nodded in agreement. “And they could stop the execution if they wanted to.”
One of the more interesting moments in the presentation came when Sandy arrived at the fact that Hussein was on trial for reprisals against separatist Kurds and Shiites.
“But if Tibet or Taiwan tried to declare independence, what would China do?” she asked. The implication, later said openly in the discussion, was that Hussein was only doing what a leader trying to maintain his country's integrity had to do. To many Chinese, Hussein's iron-fisted rule prevented chaos, fractiousness, sectarianism and civil war, and therefore was a good thing. China, from the Opium Wars until the moment Mao stood up on the ramparts of the Forbidden City and declared the People's Republic, had been exactly in that situation of utter chaos and infighting. Anything that unified was preferable.
We went from there to a discussion of Taiwan, back to Iraq, and the horrifically growing number of dead Iraqis. Sandy ended her presentation with her view that Hussein had done good things for Iraq - building up infrastructure, creating education and health care systems. At a certain point, we all just looked down at our tea cups and fiddled with the handles. There wasn't a lot left to say.
“I understand what you're saying Sandy,” I said. “I agree with some of it, and disagree with some of it. But one important thing to realize is: A Western person, I think, could never look at it like that. To Americans, to Westerners, a leader can't be someone who builds roads and schools, and gasses and executes whole villages and towns of people. The Western mind just can't accept that.”
The students looked at me and nodded, but it was a look I knew well; it meant I understand your words, but not what you mean. And there we were, back at the place where East and West would never meet.
I gaped in disbelief and shot photo after photo. As opposed as I was to the invasion of Iraq, I couldn't begin to comprehend the near deification of the man that I was seeing here. It was a moment in late 2003 when anger over the invasion was still fresh. I sensed there was also anger and fear among the Chinese populace at how easily the man seemed to have been deposed and the U.S. victorious...as I said, that was 2003...
But anger or none, how could you admire the man? At that time, I'd only been in China about four months. Now I understand much better the way of thinking here, and it doesn't seem...well...so...foreign to me: not that I approve, just that I really feel I understand why many Chinese admired Hussein.
To digress and hopefully return and reconnect to the main point, let me say this: As a foreigner living in China, you get treated really well. Despite the extent to which foreigners complain – myself included – in reality, there is a certain status that comes with being a foreigner here that still mystifies me. People are curious and want to know about you. For the most part, they are courteous and kind. They tend to be interested in your perceptions of their country. I never feel quite at home here, but there’s a lot about China that makes expatriate life fairly comfortable.
One place, however, that I've noticed that the historic...enmity? No, that's too strong a word...but something close to enmity... Anyway, one place where the differences between East and West, between China and the U.S. come uncomfortably to light is in discussions of foreign policy. In these discussions, it's always clear to me the downright hostility many people have to the U.S. It's weird, because I'm also hostile to the current U.S. foreign policy, and yet I always find myself on the defensive, and trying to explain it. Perhaps it's because I feel most people here fail to understand the ideas that motivate the U.S. And the ideas are important; they’re the core of what the United States is, even the bad ones...
I teach a class for professional Chinese journalists and business people. It meets at the offices of Xin Zhou Kan, New Weekly Magazine. The office is on the 39th floor, a great loft-style open space with couches. Every week, we sit against the backdrop of a giant window, where we look out on the construction cranes, Beijing's unofficial city emblem, and discuss the issues of the day.
The week after the execution of Hussein, Sandy, our bright young news editor, gave a presentation on his death, and the larger issue of Iraq. It was a tough presentation to give, involving a lot of vocabulary that wasn't even English: “Sunni” and “Shiite” and so on. Sandy was extremely knowledgeable about the issue; part of her job at the paper was to scan the foreign wires and translate news into Chinese.
In general among the class there was great sympathy for Hussein. The manner and recording of his execution was abhorrent, they said, which I agreed with. When I mentioned that there was evidence that the American government had petitioned the Iraqi to not execute Hussein, no one believed me.
“I think the trial was a farce from the United States,” Sandy said, and once the word “farce" was explained, the rest of the students nodded in agreement. “And they could stop the execution if they wanted to.”
One of the more interesting moments in the presentation came when Sandy arrived at the fact that Hussein was on trial for reprisals against separatist Kurds and Shiites.
“But if Tibet or Taiwan tried to declare independence, what would China do?” she asked. The implication, later said openly in the discussion, was that Hussein was only doing what a leader trying to maintain his country's integrity had to do. To many Chinese, Hussein's iron-fisted rule prevented chaos, fractiousness, sectarianism and civil war, and therefore was a good thing. China, from the Opium Wars until the moment Mao stood up on the ramparts of the Forbidden City and declared the People's Republic, had been exactly in that situation of utter chaos and infighting. Anything that unified was preferable.
We went from there to a discussion of Taiwan, back to Iraq, and the horrifically growing number of dead Iraqis. Sandy ended her presentation with her view that Hussein had done good things for Iraq - building up infrastructure, creating education and health care systems. At a certain point, we all just looked down at our tea cups and fiddled with the handles. There wasn't a lot left to say.
“I understand what you're saying Sandy,” I said. “I agree with some of it, and disagree with some of it. But one important thing to realize is: A Western person, I think, could never look at it like that. To Americans, to Westerners, a leader can't be someone who builds roads and schools, and gasses and executes whole villages and towns of people. The Western mind just can't accept that.”
The students looked at me and nodded, but it was a look I knew well; it meant I understand your words, but not what you mean. And there we were, back at the place where East and West would never meet.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
What's ripe in the Middle Kingdom
A few items of interest in China news over the last few days. The AFP reports that a study commissioned by a variety of American businesses found that the States may make a ton of money off China - despite the trade deficit, the study projects something like a 67 billion dollar surplus over the next ten years, mostly from service industry business. A nice division of labor...you guys make the plastic Christmas trees, we'll handle making good Applebee's waitresses...you gotta love capitalism...
In other news, Joe Kahn from the Times writes about the Chinese blasting one of their own weather satellites out of space with a ballistic missle, much to the consternation of...well, just about everyone. One thing intriguing in the story: a paragraph which raises questions over whether this was authorized by Hu Jintao, the Chinese leader, or an independent action by the military. Hmmm...speculation? Intrepid, I-got-an-inside-man reporting? Capitalist bourgesie trying to foster internal divisions in the great and harmonious Chinese nation? You be the judge...
Elsewhere: China re-affirms the one-child policy, despite the growing gender imbalance in society. Hmmm...apparently no one told my restaurant-owner friend on Nan'ao island, with his six lovely children. And the G threatens "legal action" against anyone (mostly bloggers) making fun of the Fuwa, the mascots of the Beijing Olympics, which have been the target of great ridicule here. What's worse about this news is that the G's statements seem aimed at stopping the spread of the growing and hilarious Internet trend of parody of "approved culture" ...guys, go buy a sense of humor.
In other news, Joe Kahn from the Times writes about the Chinese blasting one of their own weather satellites out of space with a ballistic missle, much to the consternation of...well, just about everyone. One thing intriguing in the story: a paragraph which raises questions over whether this was authorized by Hu Jintao, the Chinese leader, or an independent action by the military. Hmmm...speculation? Intrepid, I-got-an-inside-man reporting? Capitalist bourgesie trying to foster internal divisions in the great and harmonious Chinese nation? You be the judge...
Elsewhere: China re-affirms the one-child policy, despite the growing gender imbalance in society. Hmmm...apparently no one told my restaurant-owner friend on Nan'ao island, with his six lovely children. And the G threatens "legal action" against anyone (mostly bloggers) making fun of the Fuwa, the mascots of the Beijing Olympics, which have been the target of great ridicule here. What's worse about this news is that the G's statements seem aimed at stopping the spread of the growing and hilarious Internet trend of parody of "approved culture" ...guys, go buy a sense of humor.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Joys and Sorrows of Bitter Melon
I was in Tuopu with Suyi, a couple of other graduating seniors and Professor Hu. We were sitting outside along a little street packed with shops and restaurants, eating hot pot and enjoying the end of the semester. We'd finished and were sitting back contentedly, when Suyi suggested I try some kushui. I had no idea what it was.
“It's a drink that's very good for your health," she said, and laughed. She was one of the brightest students I'd taught thus far, after a year in China. Her mind was always moving, on to the next slightly ironic observation; she struck me as rare among Chinese students in that way. I concurred to trying the kushui, and took a big swig of the teak-brown liquid the waitress brought. I nodded and looked at Suyi who was looking at me with a broadening grin as the drink went down.
Nothing special at first. A mildly unpleasant tea-ish taste. But after the drink went down, it really hit. Gradually, not fast but at a rate that startled, your entire mouth and throat were overcome with an incredible dryness. Then the poisonous taste worked its way in, as if you had just chugged the Grim Reaper's regurgitated mouthwash. I gagged and choked; tears appeared in my eyes. I tried to speak but I couldn't. Suyi and the rest burst into laughter. Thus began my introduction to the word, ku, 苦，bitter, and my interest in that unseemly fruit, the bitter melon.
The Chinese kugua, 苦瓜，bitter melon seems unique to China, but it's not: light research on bitter melon turns up its other monikers (balsam pear, balsam apple, bitter gourd) and the fact that it's used widely in tropical places. Brazil, India, Thailand, and many other nations where the Equator runs, have a long history using bitter melon. Its medicinal properties have been widely researched and investigated; Raintree Nutrition, a company dedicated to sustainable imports from the Amazon, has exhaustive explanations and research on a wide variety of plants, bitter melon among them. Traditionally in Amazon regions, according to Raintree, the gourd has been used for everything from a natural insulin-like effect on diabetes, to a topical treatment for leprosy. More recently, a chemical analog of bitter melon proteins, MAP-30, was shown to have some possibility of inhibiting HIV. Despite these positive attributes, bitter melon and its relatives, such as kushui, bitter water, still taste like death on your plate, or in your glass.
The Chinese character ku seems to reflect this in its uses in the language. Besides kugua, there are a variety of words that utilize the character ku. None of them is very positive. A common one is kunan 苦难，which I'd translate as “great difficulty” and which my dictionary defines as “suffering; misery; distress.” Then there are the rarer and somewhat more poetic combinations; kuzhong, 苦衷,“difficulties which one is reluctant to bring to the notice of others,” kuchai, 苦差,“a hard and unprofitable job,” and my favorite, kuhai, 苦海, "a sea of distress; abyss of misery.”
Still, there is something funny about bitter melon itself; it's a funny-looking thing at the least, long, pale-green, wrinkled and bumpy. And cooked the right way, with the right combination of flavors and spices, it can be pretty good. It's not logical, but somehow the word “bittersweet” occurs to me when I think of bitter melon. This journal aspires to capturing that bittersweet nature of things, the humor, the sorrow, the absurdity, and the outrage, and the strangeness of living in a place as foreign as China still remains to me.
For I am still a fan of the fruit itself, despite it's awful taste; I think it's the underdog of the melon world. If all the fruits, vegetables, and gourds got together and had a big kickball game, bitter melon would be the kid standing there at the end, looking at his shoes, picked last; but then when he got up to the plate, he'd boot the ball over the outfielders' heads, and round the bases toward home, perhaps with a kuxiao, 苦笑, “a wry smile,” on his face.
“It's a drink that's very good for your health," she said, and laughed. She was one of the brightest students I'd taught thus far, after a year in China. Her mind was always moving, on to the next slightly ironic observation; she struck me as rare among Chinese students in that way. I concurred to trying the kushui, and took a big swig of the teak-brown liquid the waitress brought. I nodded and looked at Suyi who was looking at me with a broadening grin as the drink went down.
Nothing special at first. A mildly unpleasant tea-ish taste. But after the drink went down, it really hit. Gradually, not fast but at a rate that startled, your entire mouth and throat were overcome with an incredible dryness. Then the poisonous taste worked its way in, as if you had just chugged the Grim Reaper's regurgitated mouthwash. I gagged and choked; tears appeared in my eyes. I tried to speak but I couldn't. Suyi and the rest burst into laughter. Thus began my introduction to the word, ku, 苦，bitter, and my interest in that unseemly fruit, the bitter melon.
The Chinese kugua, 苦瓜，bitter melon seems unique to China, but it's not: light research on bitter melon turns up its other monikers (balsam pear, balsam apple, bitter gourd) and the fact that it's used widely in tropical places. Brazil, India, Thailand, and many other nations where the Equator runs, have a long history using bitter melon. Its medicinal properties have been widely researched and investigated; Raintree Nutrition, a company dedicated to sustainable imports from the Amazon, has exhaustive explanations and research on a wide variety of plants, bitter melon among them. Traditionally in Amazon regions, according to Raintree, the gourd has been used for everything from a natural insulin-like effect on diabetes, to a topical treatment for leprosy. More recently, a chemical analog of bitter melon proteins, MAP-30, was shown to have some possibility of inhibiting HIV. Despite these positive attributes, bitter melon and its relatives, such as kushui, bitter water, still taste like death on your plate, or in your glass.
The Chinese character ku seems to reflect this in its uses in the language. Besides kugua, there are a variety of words that utilize the character ku. None of them is very positive. A common one is kunan 苦难，which I'd translate as “great difficulty” and which my dictionary defines as “suffering; misery; distress.” Then there are the rarer and somewhat more poetic combinations; kuzhong, 苦衷,“difficulties which one is reluctant to bring to the notice of others,” kuchai, 苦差,“a hard and unprofitable job,” and my favorite, kuhai, 苦海, "a sea of distress; abyss of misery.”
Still, there is something funny about bitter melon itself; it's a funny-looking thing at the least, long, pale-green, wrinkled and bumpy. And cooked the right way, with the right combination of flavors and spices, it can be pretty good. It's not logical, but somehow the word “bittersweet” occurs to me when I think of bitter melon. This journal aspires to capturing that bittersweet nature of things, the humor, the sorrow, the absurdity, and the outrage, and the strangeness of living in a place as foreign as China still remains to me.
For I am still a fan of the fruit itself, despite it's awful taste; I think it's the underdog of the melon world. If all the fruits, vegetables, and gourds got together and had a big kickball game, bitter melon would be the kid standing there at the end, looking at his shoes, picked last; but then when he got up to the plate, he'd boot the ball over the outfielders' heads, and round the bases toward home, perhaps with a kuxiao, 苦笑, “a wry smile,” on his face.
Wages and Migrant Labor
A few more stories on the minimum wage issue, including the main news item that I'd mentioned:
http://english.people.com.cn/200701/20/eng20070120_343182.html
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Oct/185735.htm
It's incredible the number of migrant laborers in this country: somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million. That's half the population of the United States. The situation of these laborers is similar to that of undocumented workers in the U.S. - low wages, few rights. Chinese migrant laborers, for those unfamiliar with the system, also have document troubles. The Chinese system puts heavy weight on the hukou, or registered permanent residence identity cards, that legally bind laborers to their home provinces. Migrant laborers coming from poor inland provinces to places like Guangdong, a wealthier province, are in a very murky area legally, adding to their woes. (For example, children of migrant laborers often cannot get into local schools since they have no legal status.)
The Peking Duck, a long-standing China blog, has an interesting entry on migrant labor and workplace rights:
http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/000928.php
http://english.people.com.cn/200701/20/eng20070120_343182.html
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Oct/185735.htm
It's incredible the number of migrant laborers in this country: somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million. That's half the population of the United States. The situation of these laborers is similar to that of undocumented workers in the U.S. - low wages, few rights. Chinese migrant laborers, for those unfamiliar with the system, also have document troubles. The Chinese system puts heavy weight on the hukou, or registered permanent residence identity cards, that legally bind laborers to their home provinces. Migrant laborers coming from poor inland provinces to places like Guangdong, a wealthier province, are in a very murky area legally, adding to their woes. (For example, children of migrant laborers often cannot get into local schools since they have no legal status.)
The Peking Duck, a long-standing China blog, has an interesting entry on migrant labor and workplace rights:
http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/000928.php
Saturday, January 20, 2007
The Chinese Minimum Wage
A brief news item on CCTV news this morning that several Chinese provinces are raising minimum wage standards. Somehow, this story intrigues me because it seems a perfect example of the gap between what the law aspires to and what happens in reality; as low as the minimum wage must be (I've heard that it's somewhere between 3.5-4.5 RMB an hour, 40-60 cents an hour) in reality I'm sure that many people are paid less...more to come on this...a few links I found:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2DD123CF930A1575AC0A965958260
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102501456.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2DD123CF930A1575AC0A965958260
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102501456.html
Friday, January 19, 2007
Chaoshan Days
This is my largely defunct and on-and-off blocked (not me specifically, but Typepad in general) blog of time in Shantou. Of particular interest may be photos of trips in 2005 to Xinjiang and Afghanistan - scroll to the bottom of the page to find links to photos
http://daxingxing.typepad.com/
http://daxingxing.typepad.com/
I Hate You Very Much and I Can't See You Forever
I can't remember when it was exactly that I met Cindy, but Id been forewarned about her by my friend Mike. “I think she's kind of psycho" he'd said. After meeting her myself, I'd protest, saying how enthusiastic she was about learning English, how sweet she seemed; but Mike would be proven right in no short time. I guess when you move to a city, and someone's friendly to you, you tend to see what you want to see. Especially when that city is the cold alienation of a 15-million-resident monster like Beijing.
Mike, his wife Dune and I were living in a modern building in an ancient neighborhood of Beijing. The neighborhood was mostly hutong, the narrow alley lanes that linked together old four-walled courtyard houses of China’s past. Some were as old as the early Qing dynasty, 300 or so years old. But the things that made the neighborhood really old were the Drum and Bell Towers, built in the 13th century, and a few-minute walk down the main street.
In other areas of Beijing, four-walled homes and the narrow hutongs had been destroyed for modern apartment complexes. But, in our neighborhood, along Old Drum Tower Road, they were mostly intact. When you looked out the sixth-floor window of the apartment where we were living, the curving low roofs of the hutong stretched out in the distance, glowing in the permanent dust of Beijing.
The jiaozi guan, the Chinese dumpling restaurant, where Cindy worked was a four-minute walk down our hutong street to Old Drum Tower Road. The restaurant was on this main road, not far from the base of the Second Ring Road, a major highway that completely encircled downtown Beijing. What was now this city highway had been the old city wall of Beijing, torn down after the Communist takeover. The highway replaced it. It seemed fitting that a former wall had become a major highway. China in 2006 was not about keeping the Mongols and other barbarians out, but being on the move. The dumpling restaurant was close to the subway station, convenient for getting a taxi to jump on the ring road, and the dumplings were fantastic.
Coming from the south of China where I'd lived for several years, I'd been informed disparagingly by southerners how bad the food was in the north. I'd found the opposite to be true. All along Old Drum Tower Road and in the hutongs, there were cart vendors of diminutive and delicious fare. There was an old guy on the corner who made something that was in between an omlette and a pancake, filled with green onions, and lightly covered with chili. There was the sour-faced woman down the road who sold kao bing, thick biscuit-type things filled with meat and cabbage, the ultimate hangover cure. And there were the dumplings.
They came out steaming, dough glistening. Inside was any combo of meat and vegetable you could imagine. Pork with Chinese cabbage, mutton with square green bean, chicken with ground carrot, on and on. Each one was somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a baseball. Ten would stuff you, and cost less than a dollar. Picking them up deftly with your chopsticks, you’d swirl a concoction of vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and chili, dip it in and bite as much as you could stand the hot. It was a simple, heavenly meal.
And it was a home away from home. The jiaozi guan was run by people from a regional city in nearby Hebei province; it seemed they were fulfilling the increasingly worldwide and particularly Chinese dream of moving to the city and making a better life. The boss was a tall, 40-something guy with a square jaw, who wouldn't have looked out of place in a Chinese film playing a mafia lord or an emperor. His younger sister ran the cash register and was an earnest, friendly young woman in her late 20s who once asked me to explain the entirety of American Christianity to her. We quickly got to know the wait staff and the dumpling cooks that worked there.
Mike and Dune met Cindy long before I did. Cindy was one of the waitresses in the restaurant, intrigued by Chinese-speaking foreigners such as Mike's wife Dune, and desperate to study English. She had latched on to Mike when she'd heard that he was a teacher. She could understand simple English questions and respond in a simple fashion. She could write more than she could say, and often when in a jam would stop speaking, grab a pen and paper, and write a note in English. I met her several weeks after I'd heard about her from Mike and Dune. I was sitting outside one day in the middle of fall at a time when the restaurant wasn't busy.
Gradually, the entire staff of the restaurant had gathered around when they'd realized I could speak some Chinese. Where was I from? Where did I live? What was my job? The questions followed an established pattern, and were easy to answer, up to a point. At some juncture in conversations like this in China, there would be a weird tangent. The normal-conversation-with-weird-tangent would go something like this:
Chinese person: Where are you from?
Me: America
Chinese person: Are you a teacher here?
Me: Yes.
Chinese: Oh. Can you sing, “Hotel California?”
Me: Excuse me…what?
Chinese: You know, “Hotel California”
Me: Oh, uhm…like right now?
And so on. People latched on to holders of white skin with certain passports as representatives of everything they thought or thought they knew about a country. It reminded me of the old Onion headline: “President Bush Disappointed that Chinese Leader Doesn't Know Karate." Things like this added up and took their toll; I'd come back from a summer visit to the States with a serious case of China fatigue. I wanted to be in a place where I wasn’t different, where people looked like me, and where I could understand what people were thinking and why they thought it.
I also didn't want to become what I feared I was becoming: a complaining foreigner. China was filled with these. It was a habit among certain expatriates, a conversation point and all-encompassing viewpoint that I thought bordered on racism sometimes. In the U.S., if you ran into a problem with a rental car, a shady mechanic, a dubious landlord, or anything else, you wouldn't say: “F&cking mechanic. I hate the United States!” In China, however, the two thoughts often became inextricably linked; the mechanic, landlord, or fruit vendor was jacking you because you were foreign; he was Chinese and therefore a representative of the country as a whole; you conflated the two and blamed the nation for the individual's sin.
The day I met the jiaozi guan staff, however, was the opposite kind of experience. No bizarre questions, no shady business. Just friendly interaction, and eventually the dumpling cooks, all teenage boys around 16 and 17, sat down and I gave them all English names. I'd stare at them in mock serious consideration until they’d burst out laughing, then with great fanfare, I'd write a name down on a napkin. They ended up becoming the Irish mafia of Old Drum Tower Road: Doug was the heavyset roustabout, the kid with the perpetual grin became Frankie, Sean was the handsome, sensitive one. Eventually the boys got called back to work, and Cindy came over to talk. She was much more serious than the boys, but often her face would light up if she understood something in English that I'd said, or if I said something funny. Cindy was probably 19, short and dumpy, with thick glasses. She’d only been in Beijing a few months. She was ambitious.
“It seems you're always studying English. Why are you so interested in it?" I'd asked her.
“If I can speak English, I can find a better job. I don't like it here. I want to leave here. I'm sure if my English is good, I can find a better job," she answered. She was staring off toward the ring road when she said it, as if she already imagined herself in a better place.
The weather quickly got colder, and we started eating inside. The staff was less comfortable chatting with us inside. Cindy took to waiting by the bathrooms which were down the road toward my apartment to chat with me. (Since hutong neighborhoods didn't have indoor plumbing, public restrooms were abundant.) It was the smallest of small talk; I'd ask her how the job search was going, how things were at the restaurant. She'd ask me similar questions every time; whether I liked China, what I was doing at work.
I'd quickly smile and say in Chinese the sentence for leaving someone's company, which I still don't really understand to this day: “Okay, I'll go first.” I'd do the short walk back to the apartment.
Meanwhile, my life was disintegrating. The job I'd loved so much, teaching journalism to Chinese university students, had turned into a nightmare in Beijing. I was used to living on an idyllic college campus, wrapped up in the bosom of a small community. Now I was in the monster of Beijing. Everyday, I went to a cubicle, “the gray cage” as my sister calls it, and wrote emails that people didn't respond to. I'd left a beautiful girl behind in my sleepy southern city, only to realize that I didn't want to be with anyone else, and that the one thing a city like Beijing could offer me, a dating scene, was of no interest to me.
I'd also moved several times in a month or so. Apartment hunting in Beijing was a film of absurdity and horror, something in between Brazil and The Exorcist. For the pitiful housing stipend I'd been given, the apartments available were of the crack-den variety. I'd seen places where the sink pipes were broken off, and the runoff just hit a hole in the ground. One place looked as though someone had taken a headless torso and whipped it against the wall, until a Jackson-Pollock-spatter of dried blood had formed a grim mosaic. One place's bathroom was out the door and down the hall. I'd moved in with Mike and Dune, thinking – perhaps wishfully – that the space would be big enough for all of us to share. But it was clear after a month or so that it wouldn't work. Every day after leaving the cubicle's gray cage, I'd trek across the city looking at these horrible places, and then return, exhausted and dispirited, to the lively and warm Old Drum Tower Road neighborhood. Before collapsing in exhaustion, I'd often have dumplings for dinner, and chat with Cindy and the other staff of the restaurant. It was a small pick-me-up, a candle in the darkness.
One evening Mike, Dune and I all went to the dumpling restaurant together. We joked as we walked through the hutong at how excited the staff would be – we rarely had time to go there all together, and it seemed seeing us all together there would be good entertainment for them. It was true. The dumpling restaurant was renao, hot and noisy, as they say in Chinese, or bumpin’, we might say in colloquial English. Frank, Doug and Sean all poked their heads out of the kitchen to say hello. Everyone was friendly. Everyone except for Cindy. She stood in a corner looking out blankly. Eventually, toward the end of the meal, I caught her eye and waved her over.
“Cindy, Ni hao. How are you?” I asked.
Cindy didn't respond and stood at our table looking down at it. I asked again, and we all looked up at her as an awkward silence passed. I'd thought it was a big act, until I saw tears welling up in her eyes. She began to cry silently. Dune and I switched to Chinese and tried to ask her what was wrong.
“I want to leave here. I don't like it here,” she said. She meant the dumpling restaurant. She said the people there didn't treat her well; I was immediately worried, thinking that the whole thing was a front for prostitution or some kind of forced labor. Still, if it was, it was a convincing front; the people all seemed friendly, and clearly they were really cooking and selling food.
We kept talking with Cindy until she calmed down. We eventually got her smiling again. Then as we were about to leave, she asked Dune for her phone number. “So I can get in contact with you," she said. It was an awkward moment. We liked Cindy, but the idea of getting a frantic phone call from her in tears was disturbing; none of us felt like we'd achieved that level of closeness with her. Dune hesitated with the paper and the pen. “Give her the home number,” Mike said. We all mainly used cell phones, so a home phone number seemed like a compromise. How do you tell someone who you have a friendly relationship with that you just haven't reached the point where you exchange phone numbers yet?
I was nervous the next time I went to the dumpling restaurant, by myself, several days later. What kind of state would Cindy be in? But Cindy seemed ebullient, laughing and joking with her co-workers. As I was leaving, we got to chatting. I asked her how her English studies were going. She said she didn't have a good way to study. We got on to the topic of books and stories, and Cindy began telling me an old Chinese legend; I couldn't follow all the details, but it was your basic fairy tale: a handsome prince, a beautiful princess, an evil king. But unlike ones that we were familiar with, it ended in tragedy, more Greek than Grimm's. Still, she was laughing as she told it, and it got me thinking.
"I think your English textbook isn't very good. But sometimes there are these kinds of books, these kinds of stories in English – they'll be easier for you to read. I'll try to find one for you,” I said. Her face lit up. Thank you, thank you, thank you, she said.
The next time I was in the restaurant, I barely had time to say hello to Cindy. Friends from out of town were supposed to meet me and Shelly, an attractive Chinese graduate student who was a friend of mine, there and couldn't find the place. I was running back and forth between the restaurant and the nearby subway station to find them. We ate quickly and hustled off to the next social engagement. I waved and said bye to Cindy as I left.
A week passed before I was back in the dumpling house. My search for an apartment had taken on a frantic quality, and every day I'd be trekking to some corner of Beijing to look at depressing apartments. On that particular Tuesday night, I'd met up with a comical and sly agent by the name of Coco, a barely-5-foot tall, spitfire-speaking Henan native who worked for a local real estate company. She'd told me that she had apartments for me to see in the central business district area where I worked; in fact, they were at the end of a subway line and then a twenty minute walk from there. All for moderately awful housing. I worked my way across the subway lines back to Old Drum Tower road, exhausted and depressed, and headed straight for the dumpling restaurant.
It was a subdued night. I sat in a corner and just rubbed my eyes and drank kai shui, hot boiled water, the Chinese cure-all for cold and ill-feeling. Cindy and the other staff were there, but stood off in the corner talking. I ate my dumplings, delicious as usual, and asked for the bill. I spotted Cindy in the corner and waved and said hello. In response, she marched over, put a piece of paper in front of me, and walked away. Hmm, I thought. Cindy's notes were always entertaining; they usually expressed some very simple but deliberate idea, and what they lacked in grammar and naturalness they made up for in strength of sentiment. This one was no exception. I looked down at the yellow-green notepad paper, written in script that looked like a six-year old, and read:
I hate you,
Why do you come
here on that day,
You,
You have eat your
word the second time
I can’t see you forever.
I hate you ver
much.
Cindy
I was stunned. I burst out laughing. “Cindy, what is this?” I looked up and asked. She was standing in front of the cash register, arms folded. All the waitresses were staring at me expectantly, clearly with knowledge of what was in the note. I switched to Chinese. “What does it mean?” I asked Cindy, waving her over to my table. She came over, and proceeded to write a Chinese translation of her note. “No, no, no,” I said. “I know what it means, but why do you hate me? Can you explain?” In response, Cindy began to crumple up the note, but I took it back from her and uncrumpled it. For several hours, it remained extremely funny to me. But then it began to sink in; even the waitress at the restaurant hated me. It seemed the icing on the cake, the blood-spatter on the wall of my Beijing experience thus far. I woke up the next morning to a gray-brown day, and the awful feeling of waking up into a reality that was increasingly nightmarish. I would do the same thing day after day; the gray cage, the depressing housing search, the lifeless subway. But now there would be no friendly respite at my little dumpling house.
We saw Cindy just a couple of more times after that. I went there with Mike, who was only half-joking when he imagined Cindy appearing with a giant butcher's knife in the apartment, there to murder us all. She studiously avoided me, as she pressed Mike for answers to questions in her English book. She put everything on the table directly in front of him, pretending I wasn't there. But eventually, toward the end of all this, she had a rather complicated problem, and she listened to my answer in Chinese, and managed a thank you as we left. There was hope, we joked, I wasn't shut out forever.
A week or so after that I finally found a place to live, several subway stops from Old Drum Tower Road. I don't frequent the dumpling house so much. Things in Beijing are looking up: I'm getting used to urban life, I've got a place of my own. But there is a kind of overall weariness to life, perhaps a natural one when you are a foreigner and live in a place like China for four years.
I don't know how or when I will leave China, but on the bad days I fear it will be like this: I'll simply pack a bag, write an email resignation to the boss, and buy an expensive plane ticket to get out quick. I'll break a beautiful young girl's heart, and mine too, and feel like the ultimate cad. But I'll be happy, because I'll be going home. I'll get a job mowing the lawn on my suburban Florida golf course, marry a waitress from Hooter's, and go bowling on the weekends.
But before I do, perhaps in the airport, against the window where the planes come and go in real-time movie fashion, or up against the tiny window of the plane, looking down on the smog-ridden brown of the city, I'll paste a note in broken Chinese. It will be filled with all the Cindy-ish vitriol I can muster. It'll read like this:
Dear China,
I hate you. Why I spend
years of life living in you?
Never know
the language, never understand
the culture? Why I waste my time?.
I can’t see you forever
I hate you
I hate you ver
much
John
-30-
Mike, his wife Dune and I were living in a modern building in an ancient neighborhood of Beijing. The neighborhood was mostly hutong, the narrow alley lanes that linked together old four-walled courtyard houses of China’s past. Some were as old as the early Qing dynasty, 300 or so years old. But the things that made the neighborhood really old were the Drum and Bell Towers, built in the 13th century, and a few-minute walk down the main street.
In other areas of Beijing, four-walled homes and the narrow hutongs had been destroyed for modern apartment complexes. But, in our neighborhood, along Old Drum Tower Road, they were mostly intact. When you looked out the sixth-floor window of the apartment where we were living, the curving low roofs of the hutong stretched out in the distance, glowing in the permanent dust of Beijing.
The jiaozi guan, the Chinese dumpling restaurant, where Cindy worked was a four-minute walk down our hutong street to Old Drum Tower Road. The restaurant was on this main road, not far from the base of the Second Ring Road, a major highway that completely encircled downtown Beijing. What was now this city highway had been the old city wall of Beijing, torn down after the Communist takeover. The highway replaced it. It seemed fitting that a former wall had become a major highway. China in 2006 was not about keeping the Mongols and other barbarians out, but being on the move. The dumpling restaurant was close to the subway station, convenient for getting a taxi to jump on the ring road, and the dumplings were fantastic.
Coming from the south of China where I'd lived for several years, I'd been informed disparagingly by southerners how bad the food was in the north. I'd found the opposite to be true. All along Old Drum Tower Road and in the hutongs, there were cart vendors of diminutive and delicious fare. There was an old guy on the corner who made something that was in between an omlette and a pancake, filled with green onions, and lightly covered with chili. There was the sour-faced woman down the road who sold kao bing, thick biscuit-type things filled with meat and cabbage, the ultimate hangover cure. And there were the dumplings.
They came out steaming, dough glistening. Inside was any combo of meat and vegetable you could imagine. Pork with Chinese cabbage, mutton with square green bean, chicken with ground carrot, on and on. Each one was somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a baseball. Ten would stuff you, and cost less than a dollar. Picking them up deftly with your chopsticks, you’d swirl a concoction of vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and chili, dip it in and bite as much as you could stand the hot. It was a simple, heavenly meal.
And it was a home away from home. The jiaozi guan was run by people from a regional city in nearby Hebei province; it seemed they were fulfilling the increasingly worldwide and particularly Chinese dream of moving to the city and making a better life. The boss was a tall, 40-something guy with a square jaw, who wouldn't have looked out of place in a Chinese film playing a mafia lord or an emperor. His younger sister ran the cash register and was an earnest, friendly young woman in her late 20s who once asked me to explain the entirety of American Christianity to her. We quickly got to know the wait staff and the dumpling cooks that worked there.
Mike and Dune met Cindy long before I did. Cindy was one of the waitresses in the restaurant, intrigued by Chinese-speaking foreigners such as Mike's wife Dune, and desperate to study English. She had latched on to Mike when she'd heard that he was a teacher. She could understand simple English questions and respond in a simple fashion. She could write more than she could say, and often when in a jam would stop speaking, grab a pen and paper, and write a note in English. I met her several weeks after I'd heard about her from Mike and Dune. I was sitting outside one day in the middle of fall at a time when the restaurant wasn't busy.
Gradually, the entire staff of the restaurant had gathered around when they'd realized I could speak some Chinese. Where was I from? Where did I live? What was my job? The questions followed an established pattern, and were easy to answer, up to a point. At some juncture in conversations like this in China, there would be a weird tangent. The normal-conversation-with-weird-tangent would go something like this:
Chinese person: Where are you from?
Me: America
Chinese person: Are you a teacher here?
Me: Yes.
Chinese: Oh. Can you sing, “Hotel California?”
Me: Excuse me…what?
Chinese: You know, “Hotel California”
Me: Oh, uhm…like right now?
And so on. People latched on to holders of white skin with certain passports as representatives of everything they thought or thought they knew about a country. It reminded me of the old Onion headline: “President Bush Disappointed that Chinese Leader Doesn't Know Karate." Things like this added up and took their toll; I'd come back from a summer visit to the States with a serious case of China fatigue. I wanted to be in a place where I wasn’t different, where people looked like me, and where I could understand what people were thinking and why they thought it.
I also didn't want to become what I feared I was becoming: a complaining foreigner. China was filled with these. It was a habit among certain expatriates, a conversation point and all-encompassing viewpoint that I thought bordered on racism sometimes. In the U.S., if you ran into a problem with a rental car, a shady mechanic, a dubious landlord, or anything else, you wouldn't say: “F&cking mechanic. I hate the United States!” In China, however, the two thoughts often became inextricably linked; the mechanic, landlord, or fruit vendor was jacking you because you were foreign; he was Chinese and therefore a representative of the country as a whole; you conflated the two and blamed the nation for the individual's sin.
The day I met the jiaozi guan staff, however, was the opposite kind of experience. No bizarre questions, no shady business. Just friendly interaction, and eventually the dumpling cooks, all teenage boys around 16 and 17, sat down and I gave them all English names. I'd stare at them in mock serious consideration until they’d burst out laughing, then with great fanfare, I'd write a name down on a napkin. They ended up becoming the Irish mafia of Old Drum Tower Road: Doug was the heavyset roustabout, the kid with the perpetual grin became Frankie, Sean was the handsome, sensitive one. Eventually the boys got called back to work, and Cindy came over to talk. She was much more serious than the boys, but often her face would light up if she understood something in English that I'd said, or if I said something funny. Cindy was probably 19, short and dumpy, with thick glasses. She’d only been in Beijing a few months. She was ambitious.
“It seems you're always studying English. Why are you so interested in it?" I'd asked her.
“If I can speak English, I can find a better job. I don't like it here. I want to leave here. I'm sure if my English is good, I can find a better job," she answered. She was staring off toward the ring road when she said it, as if she already imagined herself in a better place.
The weather quickly got colder, and we started eating inside. The staff was less comfortable chatting with us inside. Cindy took to waiting by the bathrooms which were down the road toward my apartment to chat with me. (Since hutong neighborhoods didn't have indoor plumbing, public restrooms were abundant.) It was the smallest of small talk; I'd ask her how the job search was going, how things were at the restaurant. She'd ask me similar questions every time; whether I liked China, what I was doing at work.
I'd quickly smile and say in Chinese the sentence for leaving someone's company, which I still don't really understand to this day: “Okay, I'll go first.” I'd do the short walk back to the apartment.
Meanwhile, my life was disintegrating. The job I'd loved so much, teaching journalism to Chinese university students, had turned into a nightmare in Beijing. I was used to living on an idyllic college campus, wrapped up in the bosom of a small community. Now I was in the monster of Beijing. Everyday, I went to a cubicle, “the gray cage” as my sister calls it, and wrote emails that people didn't respond to. I'd left a beautiful girl behind in my sleepy southern city, only to realize that I didn't want to be with anyone else, and that the one thing a city like Beijing could offer me, a dating scene, was of no interest to me.
I'd also moved several times in a month or so. Apartment hunting in Beijing was a film of absurdity and horror, something in between Brazil and The Exorcist. For the pitiful housing stipend I'd been given, the apartments available were of the crack-den variety. I'd seen places where the sink pipes were broken off, and the runoff just hit a hole in the ground. One place looked as though someone had taken a headless torso and whipped it against the wall, until a Jackson-Pollock-spatter of dried blood had formed a grim mosaic. One place's bathroom was out the door and down the hall. I'd moved in with Mike and Dune, thinking – perhaps wishfully – that the space would be big enough for all of us to share. But it was clear after a month or so that it wouldn't work. Every day after leaving the cubicle's gray cage, I'd trek across the city looking at these horrible places, and then return, exhausted and dispirited, to the lively and warm Old Drum Tower Road neighborhood. Before collapsing in exhaustion, I'd often have dumplings for dinner, and chat with Cindy and the other staff of the restaurant. It was a small pick-me-up, a candle in the darkness.
One evening Mike, Dune and I all went to the dumpling restaurant together. We joked as we walked through the hutong at how excited the staff would be – we rarely had time to go there all together, and it seemed seeing us all together there would be good entertainment for them. It was true. The dumpling restaurant was renao, hot and noisy, as they say in Chinese, or bumpin’, we might say in colloquial English. Frank, Doug and Sean all poked their heads out of the kitchen to say hello. Everyone was friendly. Everyone except for Cindy. She stood in a corner looking out blankly. Eventually, toward the end of the meal, I caught her eye and waved her over.
“Cindy, Ni hao. How are you?” I asked.
Cindy didn't respond and stood at our table looking down at it. I asked again, and we all looked up at her as an awkward silence passed. I'd thought it was a big act, until I saw tears welling up in her eyes. She began to cry silently. Dune and I switched to Chinese and tried to ask her what was wrong.
“I want to leave here. I don't like it here,” she said. She meant the dumpling restaurant. She said the people there didn't treat her well; I was immediately worried, thinking that the whole thing was a front for prostitution or some kind of forced labor. Still, if it was, it was a convincing front; the people all seemed friendly, and clearly they were really cooking and selling food.
We kept talking with Cindy until she calmed down. We eventually got her smiling again. Then as we were about to leave, she asked Dune for her phone number. “So I can get in contact with you," she said. It was an awkward moment. We liked Cindy, but the idea of getting a frantic phone call from her in tears was disturbing; none of us felt like we'd achieved that level of closeness with her. Dune hesitated with the paper and the pen. “Give her the home number,” Mike said. We all mainly used cell phones, so a home phone number seemed like a compromise. How do you tell someone who you have a friendly relationship with that you just haven't reached the point where you exchange phone numbers yet?
I was nervous the next time I went to the dumpling restaurant, by myself, several days later. What kind of state would Cindy be in? But Cindy seemed ebullient, laughing and joking with her co-workers. As I was leaving, we got to chatting. I asked her how her English studies were going. She said she didn't have a good way to study. We got on to the topic of books and stories, and Cindy began telling me an old Chinese legend; I couldn't follow all the details, but it was your basic fairy tale: a handsome prince, a beautiful princess, an evil king. But unlike ones that we were familiar with, it ended in tragedy, more Greek than Grimm's. Still, she was laughing as she told it, and it got me thinking.
"I think your English textbook isn't very good. But sometimes there are these kinds of books, these kinds of stories in English – they'll be easier for you to read. I'll try to find one for you,” I said. Her face lit up. Thank you, thank you, thank you, she said.
The next time I was in the restaurant, I barely had time to say hello to Cindy. Friends from out of town were supposed to meet me and Shelly, an attractive Chinese graduate student who was a friend of mine, there and couldn't find the place. I was running back and forth between the restaurant and the nearby subway station to find them. We ate quickly and hustled off to the next social engagement. I waved and said bye to Cindy as I left.
A week passed before I was back in the dumpling house. My search for an apartment had taken on a frantic quality, and every day I'd be trekking to some corner of Beijing to look at depressing apartments. On that particular Tuesday night, I'd met up with a comical and sly agent by the name of Coco, a barely-5-foot tall, spitfire-speaking Henan native who worked for a local real estate company. She'd told me that she had apartments for me to see in the central business district area where I worked; in fact, they were at the end of a subway line and then a twenty minute walk from there. All for moderately awful housing. I worked my way across the subway lines back to Old Drum Tower road, exhausted and depressed, and headed straight for the dumpling restaurant.
It was a subdued night. I sat in a corner and just rubbed my eyes and drank kai shui, hot boiled water, the Chinese cure-all for cold and ill-feeling. Cindy and the other staff were there, but stood off in the corner talking. I ate my dumplings, delicious as usual, and asked for the bill. I spotted Cindy in the corner and waved and said hello. In response, she marched over, put a piece of paper in front of me, and walked away. Hmm, I thought. Cindy's notes were always entertaining; they usually expressed some very simple but deliberate idea, and what they lacked in grammar and naturalness they made up for in strength of sentiment. This one was no exception. I looked down at the yellow-green notepad paper, written in script that looked like a six-year old, and read:
I hate you,
Why do you come
here on that day,
You,
You have eat your
word the second time
I can’t see you forever.
I hate you ver
much.
Cindy
I was stunned. I burst out laughing. “Cindy, what is this?” I looked up and asked. She was standing in front of the cash register, arms folded. All the waitresses were staring at me expectantly, clearly with knowledge of what was in the note. I switched to Chinese. “What does it mean?” I asked Cindy, waving her over to my table. She came over, and proceeded to write a Chinese translation of her note. “No, no, no,” I said. “I know what it means, but why do you hate me? Can you explain?” In response, Cindy began to crumple up the note, but I took it back from her and uncrumpled it. For several hours, it remained extremely funny to me. But then it began to sink in; even the waitress at the restaurant hated me. It seemed the icing on the cake, the blood-spatter on the wall of my Beijing experience thus far. I woke up the next morning to a gray-brown day, and the awful feeling of waking up into a reality that was increasingly nightmarish. I would do the same thing day after day; the gray cage, the depressing housing search, the lifeless subway. But now there would be no friendly respite at my little dumpling house.
We saw Cindy just a couple of more times after that. I went there with Mike, who was only half-joking when he imagined Cindy appearing with a giant butcher's knife in the apartment, there to murder us all. She studiously avoided me, as she pressed Mike for answers to questions in her English book. She put everything on the table directly in front of him, pretending I wasn't there. But eventually, toward the end of all this, she had a rather complicated problem, and she listened to my answer in Chinese, and managed a thank you as we left. There was hope, we joked, I wasn't shut out forever.
A week or so after that I finally found a place to live, several subway stops from Old Drum Tower Road. I don't frequent the dumpling house so much. Things in Beijing are looking up: I'm getting used to urban life, I've got a place of my own. But there is a kind of overall weariness to life, perhaps a natural one when you are a foreigner and live in a place like China for four years.
I don't know how or when I will leave China, but on the bad days I fear it will be like this: I'll simply pack a bag, write an email resignation to the boss, and buy an expensive plane ticket to get out quick. I'll break a beautiful young girl's heart, and mine too, and feel like the ultimate cad. But I'll be happy, because I'll be going home. I'll get a job mowing the lawn on my suburban Florida golf course, marry a waitress from Hooter's, and go bowling on the weekends.
But before I do, perhaps in the airport, against the window where the planes come and go in real-time movie fashion, or up against the tiny window of the plane, looking down on the smog-ridden brown of the city, I'll paste a note in broken Chinese. It will be filled with all the Cindy-ish vitriol I can muster. It'll read like this:
Dear China,
I hate you. Why I spend
years of life living in you?
Never know
the language, never understand
the culture? Why I waste my time?.
I can’t see you forever
I hate you
I hate you ver
much
John
-30-
Photos of Afghanistan...
Philippines, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Florida, and New York City.
I highly recommend the slideshow function on Flickr, with some good music.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waywarder/
I highly recommend the slideshow function on Flickr, with some good music.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waywarder/
The Last Day of Class
It's the last day of class today. The class, English media studies for professional Chinese journalists and business people, has been an eye opener. Until a few months ago, I'd only taught wide-eyed young university students, whose enthusiasm and innocence were large and of equal measure. This group is older, smarter, sarcastically funny and very plugged into what's happening in the world and Beijing at the moment.
Our first class began with an article on the richest people in China. From there, we had a meandering syallbus of current events, ethics, and hot topics that took us from American politics to sex education for prostitutes in the northern city of Harbin.
For our last class, we'll be discussing an Onion article I gave them, on 800, 000 privileged youth volunteering to go to Iraq...would that it were so. I'm really curious whether they're going to get it, and how they're going to answer the question that I gave them: What or whom is this article trying to criticize?
Our first class began with an article on the richest people in China. From there, we had a meandering syallbus of current events, ethics, and hot topics that took us from American politics to sex education for prostitutes in the northern city of Harbin.
For our last class, we'll be discussing an Onion article I gave them, on 800, 000 privileged youth volunteering to go to Iraq...would that it were so. I'm really curious whether they're going to get it, and how they're going to answer the question that I gave them: What or whom is this article trying to criticize?
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