Mantis Versus

"You can observe a lot by watching." -Yogi Berra

Tag: The Real China (Page 3 of 5)

The Real China: The Chinese Classroom

November 13, 2015 / / 1 Comment

As a foreign teacher in China, I was only expected to teach oral English. Grammar and reading were the domain of the Chinese English teachers. My expertise, coming from an English-speaking country, was speaking and teaching Chinese students how to speak. My native English ability made me valuable to the university- enough that they would pay for a good portion of my flight costs and provide me an apartment for the 11-month term of my contract- because I could not only model proper pronunciation, but take this language that students had been studying in grammar books and speak it. Yes, grammar and language knowledge (and especially knowing how to teach) are important for teaching English as a Second Language, but if you can form new sentences in English, at will (this is the test for language fluency), then you are an expert. Growing up in English-speaking culture and speaking this language from childhood will alert you, naturally, when a Chinese student asks, “Where are you come from?” and grant you the authority to correct him, “It’s ‘Where do you come from?’” No grammar credentials needed.

But I had studied English in college and taken an English language teaching course, so I had some ideas about how best to get students to work through the language. The zeal of naivety is a powerful substitute for real experience.

I had a real problem though that every language must face: no one can learn to speak by watching a native; they must be guided to attempt speaking for themselves.

I had gathered from Chinese students and from their English teachers, both foreign and Chinese, that the oral English classes followed a regular pattern where the teacher would give a topic at the end of one class (e.g. “Where would you like to live in the future?”), and during the next class the students would speak (i.e. read or recite) what they had prepared. I could see the benefit in that: the Chinese classroom is all about following precedent, and speaking extemporaneously terrified most pupils with the dread of embarrassment in front of their peers. I might not know what word to use and then I’ll be standing in front of everyone like a fool, without anything to say!

Also, if the right topic were chosen, the students would be eager to share (in my experiences, an eager class response did occur a few times, but it was rare. The dead look on students’ faces usually said, “You expect me to talk about what?”). So if I chose to follow this method, the students wouldn’t balk at something new, a good portion of the class could pretend that they were really speaking English, and a few bold adventurers might actually wade into new conversational waters.

I decided not to do that though. Speaking is its own language skill, and real speech and conversations follow conventions and patterns that occur in real time. Speech has many forms, and even though public speaking on prepared topics is one of those forms, I wanted my students to practice speaking spontaneously in real life scenarios. So, for my lesson structure, I would introduce and explain the speaking topic of the day (e.g. “Asking for Information”), then demonstrate an exercise for the first scenario (“You are trying to find the school library, so you ask a professor for directions.”). After that, I would tell the students to role-play this with a partner, and after about five minutes- more or less- I would call for everyone’s attention and have a couple sets of partners repeat their role-play conversation for everyone so that we could review the exercise as a class. A sensible plan, perhaps, but there were some inherent problems of the Chinese classroom I could not overcome.

I mentioned that Chinese students follow precedent and avoid speaking up to prevent loss of face. This is not just a natural temperament shared by many. It is a near-universal disposition, a product of the culture that has been built in by all the small things that shape the students’ everyday experience. In contrast, American students are expected to speak up and they are rewarded for it. When I was a high school student I dreaded having to raise my hand to earn my “Participation” grade. Shyness and reserve are either mildly disdained or avoided. Many American classrooms today are shaped by expectations for open discussions. The theory is that student and teacher interaction is best facilitated through a circular or U-shaped seating arrangement where everyone can see each other’s face and the teacher is about equidistant from every desk (lecture halls are different, of course, and not every classroom is set up this way).

In China, every classroom I taught in was a large, long room with a chalkboard and podium in the front, facing rows of long, narrow desks and benches- bolted to each other and bolted into the floor. I saw no exceptions to this. Some classrooms had better furnishings- that is, they had a computer and a projector or a better chalkboard or a podium that was sturdy and didn’t fall apart when you set your bag on it.

A typical classroom at my university. The back chalkboard was always painted on with writing and pictures, usually some kind of slogan. In this case, the large characters say "Teacher's Day," Which is celebrated on September 10th in China.

A typical classroom at my university. The back chalkboard was always painted on with writing and pictures, usually some kind of slogan. In this case, the large characters say “Teacher’s Day,” which is celebrated on September 10th in China.

From my teacher’s vantage point, it looked like Venetian blinds laid out, with 30 to 50 students crammed in between the slats. The desks were only a bench top with (maybe) some cubbyhole space beneath to hold pens and a couple books. And the seating was very narrow and uncomfortable; there wasn’t enough room to stretch out, so most students would hunch forward and lean into the desks with their chests. Try sitting side-by-side with someone on a constricting bench and carrying on a conversation with them. This, and being asleep, is why people don’t speak up in church. And it is why Chinese students, having spent their young lives this way, will not speak in class. Goad or coax them as I would, they would not. They would not speak up in my class, they would not speak up for a pass, they would not speak up here or there, they would not speak up anywhere.

Add to the seating arrangement the Chinese reverence for the teacher, who usually lectures, and phones and other various distractions, and you have the ingredients that prevent interaction. Seating might seem like a small, surmountable thing, able to be overcome by planning and will, but its dominant effect is subtle and psychological, shaping the teachers’ and students’ ideas on classroom learning. It physically inhibits social interaction between students sitting in the desks by directing their eyes forward, and without an environment conducive to social interaction there is no conversation. Students believe the teacher doesn’t notice them individually, they disappear into the block of seats. No one wants to speak up and break the anonymous silence. That would put everyone’s eyes on them.

This is the Chinese classroom, and sitting in this environment for the large majority of their day, for most of their life, has shaped those students to the degree that I could ask them if 600 RMB ($100 U.S.) was the typical monthly rent for an apartment and repeat myself, rephrase the question, ask loudly, “Yes? No?” and still not get an answer from anyone. It was infuriating. Over and over I experienced that you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. When lesson planning, if I came to a part where the students had to give their input, I would ask myself, “Can they be creative? Can I trust them to participate and move the flow of the lesson?” Having learned quickly from classroom experience, I knew whenever I asked myself this question that the answer was no. I would either start my lesson plan over or work out an alternative for when the students would sit in stupefied silence.

I met four students who lived in this UNFINISHED off-campus apartment.

I met four students who lived in this UNFINISHED off-campus apartment.

This is their kitchen. I hope they weren't paying $100 a month for this.

This is their kitchen. I hope they weren’t paying $100 a month for this.

Really, the way things worked out, I learned that during the role-play time a small number of students would do the exercise I asked them to do, most might mumble to whoever was sitting next to them and kept an eye out for me, keeping their voices so low that I couldn’t hear them no matter what they were saying in whichever language they were saying it in, and a good number made little effort to conceal themselves doing math homework, reading for another class, taking my picture on their cell phone, sleeping, or text messaging. I had to accept the bad and work with it. Discipline is tough to maintain period; across languages and cultures a novice like myself stood no chance.

In my teacher training prior to China, I was taught to walk around, listen in, and offer correction or answer questions as needed. But when the students are huddled together in a block of long, narrow desks, I could only look on from the outside (that’s not a bad metaphor for China: a mass of humanity crowded together, indecipherable and impenetrable from the outside). So I would pace up the aisles and shimmy sideways, banging my knees, as I passed through the last row of desks, making a pretense of listening in and observing the students’ faces and behaviors.

I noticed all the little details that they had in common. How they would twirl their pens compulsively, each one fluidly repeating their favorite motion and passing the pen around their fingers. As a student, I was a compulsive doodler, but I never noticed any artists in China, only dexterous pen acrobats. And when they wrote, they all used their right hand- no exceptions. I asked a Chinese teacher if I observed that correctly, and she said yes, all students are taught to write with their right hand. I had to infer that this was because of the complexity of the Chinese writing system, where each word has a precise way to be written and the stroke order must be memorized.

When I watch Americans write, I sometimes notice people who invert or reverse the stroke orders I learned in school. That is, they might write the letter “e” starting clockwise from the tail and spiraling in, opposite the way that I do. But handwriting is sloppy in America. It’s very common and trite to hear people joke that they can’t even read their own writing. I always questioned what the purpose of handwriting was if it was illegible, even to the hand that scribbled it. Why not scratch whatever symbols come to mind if the writing doesn’t even look like English script? But that’s America, where anything goes, and being casual and nonjudgmental are unimpeachable virtues.

Not so in China, where students are still expected to meet a standard other than being diverse or tolerant. With Chinese characters, if a writer painted with the ink brush in the left hand, it would look slightly different; every stroke would be off because the hand would have to push the brush instead of pull. Plus, every Chinese word must be memorized. There are no phonics to make learning new words easier, the mnemonics are not at all intuitive, and everyone is expected to learn to write the characters the same way. Repetition is the only way. When each word must be memorized, and universal literacy is on the line, that demands that everyone studies hard, using the same method.

Strangely related to my classroom handwriting observations, I recoiled at the sight of the long fingernails that some of the girls and a lot of the young men grew out on their little finger. I never learned the real reason for this style. One friend told me it was convenient to have one long nail to scratch things and handle things and whatnot. Perhaps. As an observer, I can say that it was effective in raising the hair on the back of my neck in mild disgust.

Not the best picture, but it's the only one I have where you can see the long pinky nail. Look closely at my stylist's right hand.

Not the best picture, but it’s the only one I have where you can see the long pinky nail. Look closely at my stylist’s right hand.

I would scan the students’ shirts and smirk in confusion if I saw English words misspelled or words arranged randomly. If the clothing companies wanted to use English, I thought, why don’t they just copy and paste text they find online? These companies copy everything else. Occasionally, one student might have had on an American college sweatshirt or a sweater that read “Nebraska.” I would always ask those students, “Have you been to Nebraska? Do you know what that means?” Of course, they had no idea, and I usually had to point at their shirt and tug at mine to indicate to them that I was asking about their shirt.

I became used to seeing variations of the same five basic hairstyles for girls (four of which had bangs that stopped even with the brow line) and the same three styles for boys (buzzed short, combed across, and the popular “poof”- a tangled mess of hair that stuck up as if they woke up and never combed it). When I saw a male university student with long strands down to his shoulder blades, it shocked me. I’m sure it was the same reaction middle America had to the first longhairs of the 60’s. So, bored by the interchangeable bobs, I differentiated the students by character traits and fashion choices; things like brightly colored eyeglass frames, over-sized frames on some girls, or even frames worn without lenses. I thought that it was foolish, if not pretentious to wear frames without needing vision correction, but those who wore them defended the fashionable practice for its “cool” style.

Most of my female students' hairstyles conformed to this.

Most of my female students’ hairstyles conformed to this.

Every so often I would see some sort of English reading material on a student’s desk space. I would ask her if she was reading the book for class or pleasure, and maybe try and milk some questions out of it if I thought the student was friendly and able to handle a bit of small talk. Some students, though, I knew to just walk by. Either they would clam up with embarrassment and fail to respond audibly, or I had learned from past experience that there was no way they were going to put together a complete English sentence. One student, when I asked her a question related to the class exercise, looked me right in the eye and quietly but coldly told me, “Please, leave me alone.” And that I did, for the rest of the year.

In the middle school I taught at, more so than at the university, I noticed a lot of calligraphy practice books and pens with special writing nibs. Throughout China, I observed brushwork and fanciful writing fonts far more often than images and icons. The Chinese writing system is what the people grew up learning, what they practiced, and hence, what they loved. It is always on the Chinese mind. I even acquired the Chinese habit of breaking down the characters I saw into brush strokes and practicing their stroke order with my finger on my palm or thigh.

And speaking of writing, I have to note the absence of pencils and erasers. The Chinese didn’t write with them (not that, in America, pencils are preferred over pens for writing purposes, but they are more common in my observation). So whenever the students made a mistake, they would pull out a thin wheel of tape, run it over the section they wanted to remove, and peel away a thin layer of paper from their sheet. This mandatory school supply could be spotted on most desks, and during a written test the tape wheels would be passed back and forth as students nervously tore away at their paper.

These weren't for white correction tape. They had clear tape meant to pull off the top layers of ink and paper.

These weren’t for white correction tape. They had clear tape meant to pull off the top layers of ink and paper.

One unsightly thing I could not help but notice was the soft black hairs on a few girls’ upper lip, and my occasional glimpses of coarse leg hairs and underarm hair. I hesitate to mention it, I don’t mean to shame any of the young women, but body hair was a not uncommon part of real life in China. Most of the Chinese I saw grew hardly any body hair, but when it did sprout up, it was obvious against their light skin. I don’t know how the Chinese view it, but it always startled me whenever I saw girls with leg and armpit hair. Please note, this was not the norm I saw, and on average I would say that most had fair features and smooth skin.

But the truly disgusting thing I observed among my students, the feature that both sickened and infuriated me, was the sight of red, purplish, puffy hands. I’m sensitive to the shape of hands, and by that I mean that I notice the look and character of individuals’ hands, which probably began from my love of drawing, so when I first saw a girl with fat, square fingers instead of slender curves, I passed it off as a physical anomaly that I would not want to hold hands with. But then I saw it again, and then again on another girl: the skin was past red and now had the deep purple color of a contusion. What was wrong with these girls’ hands? I had never seen this before. Skinny girls with fat, square hands.

The question had an obvious answer. Just as my face was sore and red from constant exposure to the cold, these girls had chilblains on their hands from sitting in unheated classrooms throughout the winter, taking notes with un-gloved hands. Yes, because we were south of the Huaihe River (the geographic dividing line), the Chinese government did not allow central heating in buildings, except for department stores and some hotels and restaurants. Because we were right on the southern edge of the Huaihe River, that meant our city was as far north as one could get in China and still not have central heating. So, all winter long, from dormitory to dining hall (or “canteen”), from the classroom to the library or anywhere else, everyone had to wear layers of winter clothing, but either finding it superfluous or an unnecessary expense, most students went without hats and gloves. Perhaps the circumstances could not be helped, but seeing how inflamed those girls hands became, and seeing how normal they thought it, how overlooked it was, how assumed it was, was a small detail that swelled my indignation.

We're wearing coats because there was no heat in our classroom. Side note: my student, John, in the purple coat in the upper left, wore glasses just for show. They either had no lenses or non-corrective lenses

We’re wearing coats because there was no heat in our classroom. Side note: my student, John, in the purple coat in the upper left, wore glasses just for show. They either had no lenses or non-corrective lenses

The Real China: “No! This is not a potato!”

November 10, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Either to make conversation or as a language quiz, Uncle Jiang would often ask me, “Dustin, what is this?” He was not the only one.

Usually, he asked it when we sat down for dinner. He would pick something up with his chopsticks and ask for its English name. I didn’t know who was supposed to be “the grasshopper” and who the old sage in this situation. Many times, my answer was simple. “Porridge. This is porridge.” In America, we would probably call it Chinese porridge or just use the Chinese name, as we do for Kung Bao chicken and all the other mainstays on a Chinese menu, but the basic vocabulary word Uncle Jiang was looking for was porridge.

Other times, I was surprised when he asked me for an English word and then disagreed (!) with my answer. I held a piece of sweet potato in my chopsticks once, and Uncle Jiang asked me, pointing at the purple tuber, “Dustin, what are you eating?”

“This is a sweet potato,” I replied without thinking twice.

“No!” he said, “This is not a potato!”

He looked indignant, even shocked. I had no idea what to tell him. Maybe appease him by calling it a yam? I stumbled, trying to explain in simple English that a potato is a potato and a sweet potato is a sweet potato, two different things. I supposed he thought I meant it was a sweet-tasting (normal) potato, and I had to infer that the two vegetables do not have similar names in Chinese or occupy similar categories in Chinese thought. Well, why not? I cannot imagine any object more similar to a potato than a sweet potato.

The source of the controversy. I don't know what else to call it besides "purple sweet potato."

The source of the controversy. I don’t know what else to call it besides “purple sweet potato.”

When I brought one of the boiled purple sweet potatoes to have as my breakfast before class, it was the same routine. My students were surprised by my breakfast, a vegetable grown in their own soil, and asked me, “What is that?”

“A sweet potato,” I told them.

“No! It is not a potato!” they argued, as adamant as Uncle Jiang.

Then why did you ask me? I wanted to counter. Or Fine. You tell me what it is. It’s your vegetable. I have never seen a purple sweet potato like that in my neighborhood of the US.

I was befuddled that they could disagree with me on a term from my native language. How was that possible? I was considered the expert, so they would ask me questions about English vocabulary and acceptable grammar, but they wouldn’t accept my answer if it conflicted with their understanding of what a “sweet potato” should be in Chinese terms.

At the dining hall (or “canteen”, as the students called it) I had a plate of silver noodles once. Or so I thought they were called from reading labels at Chinese buffets. Once again, my students asked me for the name of the mystery item I was eating.

I took a breath. “These are noodles.”

“No! It is not noodles!”

This time I vigorously tried explaining myself. I told them that anything that fits the shape- long, stringy, and noodle-like – is a noodle. If it looks like a noodle, if it tastes like a noodle, it is a noodle. I think they disagreed because this noodle was made from a different flour than the noodles they knew as “noodles.”

Even the rainbow-colored Funnoodle is a member of the noodle family. (Sorry, no silver.)

Even the rainbow-colored Funnoodle is a member of the noodle family. (Sorry, no silver.)

“It may be a rice noodle,” I bargained, “But this is a carbohydrate in a long, thin shape. IT IS a noodle.” I don’t think I had them convinced. Really, the English language did not have appropriately nuanced food categories to satisfy them.

Besides noodles, Chinese cuisine is big on dumplings, each type with its own name, and so they were crestfallen when, one after one, I would answer my questioners, “Dumpling. Dumpling. That is also a dumpling. Yes, this is a dumpling, too.”

Their furrowed brow seemed to say, “But this one is sweet and is made by rolling a ball of rice flour! That one is pork inside a boiled wrapper. This one has shrimp and is fried in oil. They are different!”

One time, Uncle Jiang changed the game on me. He wasn’t going to wait for me to give him a none-too-specific vocabulary word, he would supply it himself. Over breakfast, he called the golden sweetener “bee honey.” I gave him a doubtful look. He held out for a second, then asked, “Bee honey, or honey?” As I told him it was the latter, I wondered what kind of honey these Chinese had been keeping secret from the outside world that they would need to specify “bee” honey. Surely, Marco Polo would have reported on a non-bee creature also capable of producing honey. And, if this mystical being could do it without regurgitating nectar, it would outsell the “bee honey” tenfold.

I guessed that the Chinese word for honey was a typical Chinese compound word, probably combining “bee” plus a word to indicate the fluid product of honey. (Yes, the Chinese word for honey is a compound word that translates literally “bee honey.”) China did have a multitude of honey varieties (hardly any peanut butter on their shelves but ample honey sections in every grocery store), and canvas roadside tents where a vendor would hang out all day napping and apparently selling jars of honey he had supposedly harvested himself, from bees.

(Here’s an interesting link from a beekeeper with insight into Chinese honey and an encounter with a street beekeeper… er, a beekeeper selling honey on the streets.)

The most egregious battle over appellation came after dinner at my friend Ma Chao’s house. (Ma Chao’s family name means “horse.” I would like to meet an American named Tom Horse or Tom Yellow, two common Chinese surnames, instead of Tom Butler or Tom Cooper.) At the dinner were Ma Chao, Aunt Fong, a kung fu teacher, an English-speaking Director of Foreign Relations at a local university who went by Mike for his English name, one of Aunt Fong’s friends, and me. We made it through dinner without arguing over potatoes, dumplings, or noodles. Then, after dinner, when everyone was all liquored up (as Chinese dinner guests are wont to be), Ma Chao brought out his weapons (as a few of my Chinese friends were wont to do).

Like many kung fu enthusiasts, Ma Chao was a collector of swords and polearms. Ma Chao, Mike, and Aunt Fong’s friend, Lily all wanted to handle them and pose for pictures. I thought that the inebriated swinging blades at each other was a stupid idea, but as the saying goes, when in Rome, disregard personal safety. At their urging, I came over to the living room to take some pictures with them.

Ma Chao and me, handling his weapons.

Ma Chao and me, handling his weapons.

Ma Chao handed me his sword, and Mike, as my translator, informed me, “That is a knife.The Chinese name is dao.”

The sword I held required both hands on the hilt, and the blade was around three feet long.

“No,” I told him flatly, “this is a sword.”

“No!” Mike riposted, “It is a knife.” He pointed to the cutting edge and said, “See? It is only sharp on one side.”

I explained, “It doesn’t matter if the other side is dull, that only means it is a single-edged sword. But it is a sword!” In my flustered state, I rushed my words, not caring if I lost my listeners over technical details.

“No,” Mike insisted, “sword is for a different word. This is a dao, it is a knife.”

“A knife?” I exclaimed, “Look how long it is!”

That sword could have severed limbs in one stroke. “If it uses two hands and the blade is longer than my forearm, it is a sword!”

I wanted to ask him how he would classify a pointed rapier without a cutting edge. Or, hand him a dictionary and have him look up broadsword. I’m sure it would have been of no use.

Lily pretends to behead me with a Chinese "knife."

Lily pretends to behead me with a Chinese “knife.”

His stance, like that of all my vocabulary quiz masters, was fixed and intractable. I had experienced the same stubborn reaction by enough people that I could tell it was a phenomenon of culture and language, not a personal idiosyncrasy. Somehow, a people that had been raised in rigid classrooms, taught to copy and repeat everything they heard, became skeptical and as combative as a wild donkey when my foreign authority told them what was what in English.

I was left to question what kind of argument would persuade them of a vocabulary word’s legitimacy. What I wouldn’t give to see Uncle Jiang and Mike on a Webster’s usage panel. “No! It is not a transitive verb! It is a noun.”

Mike's opinion would carry a lot of weight at Webster's so long as he was carrying this Chinese pole weapon (guandao) with him.

Mike’s opinion would carry a lot of weight at Webster’s so long as he was carrying this Chinese pole weapon (guandao) with him.

The Real China: Jobs, James, and Chinese Names

November 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

It is customary for Chinese students to choose an English name. Not every student does so, but many use their English name as a nickname among friends or as a profile name online, and, of course, for use in English class. There are two major factors involved in this name selection that collide and, while not quite forming a perfect storm, do spread a spattering of bizarre and comical English names.

First, there are the inner workings of Chinese culture that guide students’ thinking and, when it comes to selecting a name from a foreign source, quite often lead them wrong. It is not as easy as an American using Juan for John in Spanish class. Chinese as a language has no common ground with English, so translations between the two cannot maintain the spirit and sound of the original language. (There are a few exceptions to this, like using the English name Lee for the Chinese family name Li).

Added to that, Chinese names follow an old rubric of traditional conventions that are embedded in their culture and family. Unlike Americans, Chinese parents cannot simply flip through a book of baby names and choose Ethan because that name is fashionable now and they like the way it sounds. A Chinese baby will have a family name followed by (traditionally) a generation name and a given name. (A “generation name” means that a brother and sister might both have the second name Ming or “Bright,” followed by their unique given name.)

Once, I had a student ask me to help her choose an English name that was related to water and meant calm. With the vast collection of meaningless names in English-speaking culture, that was not an easy task. Lacking an encyclopedic knowledge of names, I focused on “calm” and suggested she use what came to mind: Serena, but she sifted through some possibilities and settled on Delphine. An unusual name; when I looked it up I found one site that said it was associated with dolphins and one site that said the name meant “calmness,” so this girl got what she was looking for. Now, I think Delphine is a pretty name and her choice worked out, but she vetted quite a few candidates first and asked a native speaker about the soundness of each.

Now, imagine the pitfalls awaiting those who would strike out independently to choose their own name. If the shoe were on the other foot, imagine you tried choosing your own Chinese name. My guess is that it would be some variant of a famous Chinese actor’s name, or you might just tack “Lee” onto the end of your real name. And by the way, did you know that Bruce Lee’s full Chinese name translates to Lee (Li) Little Dragon? I knew his nickname was “The Dragon,” but I found that in Chinese culture, not only are children named after objects, but with dragons being as popular as they are, children can be named Little Dragon. American parents anymore seem to go for an even ratio of traditional to made-up/nonsense names, but Little Dragon Hansen would still make the “News of the Weird” section of the newspaper.

My first Chinese name was given to me by my friend and Chinese tutor, Caili Ma. She asked what my name meant, then listened to the pronunciation of my surname, and came up with Li Da-Sen (李大森). I think the written characters are beautiful and the name has a good sound, but my Aunt Fong told me it was no good based on Tai Chi naming principles (e.g. Make sure the written name has a good number of horizontal strokes), plus it was the name of an evil character in some kind of story or myth. I insisted that I wanted to keep the name to honor my friend, Caili, but Aunt Fong insisted that Caili would be fine with the change, and her friends all echoed that it had an unpleasant meaning and persuaded me to go with Le Da-Sheng (乐达声), which means “joy” and “to pass on.” In my opinion, the name looks ugly on paper and doesn’t sound much better, but it’s not my language, so I had to defer to Aunt Fong on this one.

At my house with Caili. She probably considered calling me "White Giant."

At my house with Caili. She probably considered calling me “White Giant.”

This brings me to the second factor in poor English name selection: the naïve or ignorant preference for favorite words and names heard in English language popular culture. Chinese students often like to watch foreign television shows and films online. Many like the serials from South Korea and Thailand, the anime from Japan, and popular dramas and comedies from America (I mentioned this before, but I was told on multiple first meetings that I looked like the Michael Scofield character from Prison Break). Even though Friends was big in China, I never met any Ross or Rachel’s. So while the English language media has its influence, I don’t mean to suggest that young Chinese students made a custom out of naming themselves for their favorite fictional character. Although this does happen a fair amount and “Elizabeth” was a very popular name for girls due to the popularity of Pride and Prejudice in its film and novel forms. And one girl, a very good student actually, had chosen Wasabe as her “English” name (go figure) because it was the name of a character in one of her favorite movies.

So what were the names chosen for English class and online profiles, both popular and ridiculous? Well, the most popular names were the most sensible: Leo and Lily. This was a simple switch from the Chinese surnames Li, Le, and Liu (pronounced “Lee”, “Luh”, and “Lyo”). There were also quite a few traditional names like James, John, and Amanda. In one class, a couple students even added English surnames, so I had the very plain John Smith and the Batman villain-inspired James Riddler. James was an odd duck, and yes, I made a point of calling these students by their full names in class because I got a kick out of calling Chinese students John Smith and James Riddler.

Speaking of ducks and other animals, in that same class I had a student who went by Monkey, another who went by Koala, and of course following Koala there was a student named Bear. These guys didn’t have much explanation for their names (“Because I’m a monkey! He, he!”), but I remember Bear said his was a nickname donned him for his temper. Bear was really pleasant in class; the first day I thought he was a member of the faculty or somebody’s parent because he had a dark, strong complexion that made him look 20 years older than everyone else. I would have believed him if he told me, “I’m Koala’s dad, and that’s why my name is Bear.”

From l-r their names (used in English class) are Maxwell, Sun Xue Tao, Monkey, Bear, Li Wei Ying, and Goofy

From l-r their names (used in English class) are Maxwell, Sun Xue Tao, Monkey, Bear, Li Wei Ying, and Goofy

I had a student with the name of Jobs, and I asked him, “You mean like Steve Jobs? Why not go by Steve?” Well, I had several classes do an exercise where they thought up interview questions for famous people like Steve Jobs. To a person, every student began their question, “Jobs, may I ask you such and such?” And I kept correcting them, “You can’t just call him ‘Jobs.’ If you’re speaking to him, you should call him Mr. Jobs.” This surname convention confused me when students would ask me about the ever popular NBA and if I liked James. “Do I like James? James who?”

Then they would ask, “Do you like James or Kobe?”

And it would dawn on me, “Oh, you mean LeBron James. Everyone just calls him LeBron.” Well, not in China they don’t.

One student went by Jet, after Jet Li, which I thought was pretty cool but not very practical or respectable if he ever found himself living or doing business internationally. Respectability, though, was not usually a consideration for Chinese English names.

As for other movie and television characters, one girl went by Sherry (this name was used quite a bit because it is not too distant from the sound of several Chinese names) who wanted to change her name because another of her classmates also went by Sherry. So she opted for Conan, her favorite anime character. I tried to convince her otherwise, but she loved the name so much she didn’t care that it was for boys. See what I mean about the absurdities of choosing a pet name or word?

I pleaded with Conan to go by a different name, so she eventually went back to Sherry. Also, China: not always bad

I pleaded with Conan to go by a different name, so she eventually went back to Sherry. Also, China: not always bad

Disasters could still happen when sticking close to the original Chinese name and trying to adapt it. Although I had a student with a Chinese name that meant “Little Moon” who aptly went by Luna in English, I also had a student who went by Goofy because it sounded like his Chinese name, Gao Fei, and he readily admitted that he was a goofy person. Goofy was a fluent English speaker with a broad knowledge of English speaking culture, he just liked using a strange name because it was a suitable nickname for him and that’s how friends knew him online.

And there were real names that were just awkward or antiquated, like Queena and Hyacinth, which I find to both be lovely names, but do strike me as peculiar. As a side note, I do wish I could have met a Tim, Gary, or Al (I did meet a Bill and a Rick), with a run-of-the-mill American name.

The most shameful, unknowingly stupid names, though, came when Chinese speakers chose objects- words with literal meanings- and declared them to be their English name. Now, for women this can work. There were Lily’s, like I mentioned, and other plant names like Daisy and Ivy. Nature names like Summer also work to an extent. I met a girl named Spring and I told her, “Summer, Autumn, and Winter are all women’s names, but I’ve never heard of Spring as a name, and I can’t explain why.” I still don’t understand why not.

One girl covered every base by going with Season (at least I think that was her intent, she may have been a big fan of nutmeg). I also met a Snowy and a Rainbow, who was a sweet girl, so I had to stifle myself from blurting out to her, “Rainbow is not a name!”

One male student went by Sky. Not short for Skyler, simply Sky. He was probably the most entertaining student I had; whenever I called on him (and believe me, I made sure to “randomly” call on him at least once per class) the whole class would react with anticipation and start cracking up as he formed sentences through convulsions of laughter. He was responsible for the third funniest moment I had in the classroom, which went like this: I was leading a discussion about Chinese perceptions of America and American perceptions of China, and the students were quiet and unresponsive as usual, so I was repeating myself, “What’s famous in China? Come on, what’s famous in China?” A murmur started to build and I asked, “What?”

The class responded, “You!”

I said, “Well, maybe I’m famous here in this town” (a small city where I was the only white foreigner). Then Sky, with a big, sideways grin across his face, spoke up and said, “You are famous in my heart!” Everyone lost it for a moment and I had to wipe the tears away from my eyes and laugh it all out before I could regain my composure.

On the last day of class, I insisted on taking a picture with Sky. I should have insisted on using a tripod.

On the last day of class, I insisted on taking a picture with Sky. I should have insisted on using a tripod.

Other odd literal names included Key, and pet names like Cookie and Cherry. One student was called Loose, and that sounded too stupid to be true- surely I misheard that- so I called him Lewis until I saw Loose written down on the attendance sheet. Loose himself never corrected me because A) he never showed up to class, and B) he couldn’t understand a word of spoken English. The mixed bag of nonsense was filled with names like Effil, Vienen, Disie (Disie was a middle school English teacher and ought to have known better), and Songsux (“My Chinese name is Song, so my English name is Songsux. It has no meaning!” I didn’t have the heart to burst his bubble).

All of these bizarre names are neither the exception nor the rule, but a farcical phenomenon when meeting Chinese English speakers of any ability. This sampling does not deny that there were plenty of good choices like Amy, Emily, Peter, Paul, Jenny, and the (sigh) Twilight-inspired Bella. I think my favorite of all was Milton, the name chosen, fittingly, by the head of the university’s English department.

I have saved my favorite stupid name for last, a run-off between two outlandish competitors. The first was from a middle school boy who came up to me and shouted in that Chinese way of speaking, “My English name Beyond.”

“Beyond?!” I said, and I didn’t know whether to guffaw or bridle so I did both. “That’s not even a noun, it’s an adverb.” It is a preposition, too. I think the kid was excited with his choice, and I didn’t mean to crush him by being far less than impressed, but that name was just too much.

The other unforgettable, infamous name shocked me when I was out to lunch with a group of other foreign English teachers and a few Chinese students and teachers. One Chinese owner of a small English school, a little pudgy and maybe a couple years older than I was, came up to me and shook my hand with a look on his face and such conviction in his grip that I felt like I were a national hero who had just returned from a rocket trip to the moon. “Hello, I am Hamburger,” he said, “I really like to make a friend with you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Hamburger, I really like your name.” Hamburger was one of those who became a little obsessive of me and wanted to be possessive of my time. I met a lot of “really like to make a friend with you’s” in China.

One last thing I’ll mention on names. My Aunt Fong had chosen the name Rose for herself, and her husband, my “Uncle” Jiang, asked me for assistance in selecting an English name and told me he liked the name Jack. That is what he ended up choosing, so it was Jack and Rose. It was unplanned, and it inspired a few sweet giggles, but it was romantic nonetheless.

The Real China: 20 Questions

November 4, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Teaching English class in China got stale quickly, not unlike steamed rice. (I promise, that is the only bad joke in this post.) So, I had to find ways to fill the classroom silence besides answering my own questions. Too many times I opened class by asking, “How was your weekend?” or “How was your holiday?” and then watching every face turn away and pretend I wasn’t talking to them. In that crushing void of interaction, which could last up to a few minutes depending on how foolhardy I was in pursuing my goal of English small talk, I would sigh and lower my gaze to the chalk dust-covered podium before me, muttering to myself, “This is going to be a long two hours.”

Even games excited no enthusiasm- they were just another silly burden in my students’ eyes- but I gave them a try in hopes of building classroom chemistry and, let’s be honest, to fill dead class time.

20 Questions should get the students talking, I thought, because they would be forced to form yes-or-no questions and think of clever ways to narrow down the secret person or object. I drew a simple diagram on the chalkboard to make the game’s rules explicitly clear, then gave my first-year college students an example using “Kobe Bryant” as my mystery person.

I asked myself questions like “Are you Chinese?” No.

“Are you American?” Yes.

“Are you a famous basketball player?” Yes.

I spent a few rounds thinking up straightforward mystery objects and fielding student questions, which came ever so slowly as I pulled them out of my inert pupils and fed them new lines to quiz me with. Once I felt that the students were bored of me and themselves approaching lukewarm on the classroom chemistry meter (and lukewarm was about as hot as that class ever got) I boldly raised my voice and called for a student volunteer.

Hesitantly, my student, whose English name was “Bear,” really, came forward and whispered in my ear, “I am a bear.” I nodded, smiled, and stepped aside.

Question 1 from his classmates: “Are you a man?”

“No.”

Question 2: “Are you a bear?”

“AARRGH!” Bear ground his teeth and shuffled back to his seat in shame. His classmates were roaring with laughter. It was the fastest game of 20 Questions I’d ever witnessed.

In another class, with around 45 female students and 5 males, I had an equally brief game that I had to cut short myself. I had finished the main lesson with a little less than 5 minutes of class time left over. College classes don’t let out early in China, and the one time I accidentally ended a class early a couple students objected that there were however many minutes left.

So, since my fourth-year class of mostly female students was pretty sharp and I could tell they comprehended most of my English, I quickly explained the rules of 20 Questions and said, “Okay, now ask me a yes-or-no question.”

Probably just one game, I figured, and then I can let them go.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” one girl instantly called out.

“No,” I said, confused. What does that matter in a game of 20 Quest-

“DO YOU WANT A CHINESE GIRLFRIEND!” someone else blurted. The rest of the class practically erupted.

“Wh-?” I stammered. “All right!” I said, flustered, “No more 20 Questions!” I hid my red face by turning my back to the class as I swiftly erased the chalkboard. “Class is over.” I heard a lot of giggling as they gathered their books and scurried out the doors.

This class was usually my best class of the week. I had them on Friday mornings, they were always in a good mood, and they were always active. Plus, it wasn’t so bad to feel like Professor Indiana Jones with a class of cute admirers.

This class was usually my best class of the week. I had them on Friday mornings, they were always in a good mood, and always active. Plus, it wasn’t so bad to feel like Professor Indiana Jones with a class of cute admirers.

The Real China: Pretend Culture

November 4, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Walking through a country, as opposed to skimming over it in a textbook or magazine, will reveal the little things- the things you had always assumed and never noticed in your home culture. The magazine version is great for a broad overview listing the distinctive parts that make China China, but the man-on-the-street view shows you the real points that locals would never give notice to in print, and even points that they are not even able to notice themselves.

Some things are just too embarrassing, or taken too much for granted.

The boasted value of China, the one they paraded before the world in Beijing’s international debut at its 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, is harmony. This is supposed to be the cement that holds the Confucian society together, and the highest ideal that people everywhere were supposed to maintain and strive for.

"Harmony" at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

“Harmony” at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

But how observable is harmony? Could a foreign guest, like me, detect it? Would Chinese people typically show more politeness or deference to others than I would normally expect elsewhere? Would public order amaze me in China as it so often amazes outside visitors to Japan? Would the famous collectivist mindset wordlessly cue everyone in on how to fit into Confucius’ hierarchy and give their attention to the group welfare? When they sang in that howling cat voice along with their one-stringed guitar, would it be multi-part or just one melody?

Would China, chief among all preachers of harmony, stand out to me as the epitome of harmony?

In my experience, just the opposite.

Public order in China is about the worst I have ever seen. Even contrasting the grimiest places within American shores- say, a smelly, trash-lined New York City subway station- with an equivalent in China- a stop on the Shanghai metro, which looks so much whiter and more modern in its architecture- China comes out the obvious loser in the chaos contest. (Or would that be the dishonorable champion of the chaos contest?)

As wild as the crowds are on a given New York subway train, everyone is still expected to follow the flow of unwritten rules. When it is time to board, people stand to the side as the people exiting the train shuffle off first. And, crowded as it can be, riders are still expected to keep their own personal space as much as possible- no fully-opened newspapers, for example- and conspicuous things like cooked food and music speakers were frowned upon, though of course anyone with experience publicly commuting through New York knows how loudly, madly, and sometimes entertainingly these mores are violated. But, in the middle of all the madness, blocking the way or bumbling over the local manners would bring down a quick scolding in that bossy New Yawk! accent.

In Shanghai, while the modern fire doors prevent passengers from contemptuously throwing their garbage onto rat-infested tracks Big Apple style, I once shared a car with a man who had taken a giant bag of garbage onto the train itself. I reflexively pulled away in my posture to give him all the space he needed around the center pole in front of the car’s double doors. He was wearing drab-colored pants and a jacket, typical for all kinds of Chinese factory workers or laborers, only his outfit was blotted with dark stains, and his hands were covered from fingernail to wrist in brownish grease. With one hand he held onto the neck of his sagging plastic bag, and with the other he held onto the circular pole overhead. I leaned into a corner of the car and pitied anyone who would hang onto that pole next- they would retract their hand and find it covered in smelly garbage grease- but then again from the look of the dirty film-covered floors and surroundings, and from the sparse cleaning crews I had encountered in China, with their soggy, old, denim-colored mops that they would listlessly drag over the pitted concrete-colored flooring, anyone holding onto the rails in a crowded Chinese subway car should be pitied.

And, I think that this is not news to anyone familiar with scenes from a slum country, but when the subway car’s doors open, the people inside and out immediately stream into each other like two opposing fire hoses. The same goes for elevators in China. Every time I tried to get off an in-demand elevator, some old woman with flat, curly hair and a dusty cotton jacket would walk straight into my chest, without flinching, unless I circled around her like a slippery matador. Now, I don’t think it was the same bossy woman walking into me every time, but this is hard to confirm because I never got a good look at her face. She always had a downcast brow and avoided eye contact as if she were a dim-eyed beetle furiously crossing the sidewalk. Plus, I stand over six feet tall and the elevator raider barely cleared five feet, and as soon as the doors opened she was palm-first into my sternum, so the angle did not allow for a good view of her face.

Even though in every subway station there are helpful floor stickers reminding people to stand to the side to clear the lane so passengers getting off the train can file through quickly first, which opens up the space for incoming passengers, and even though in it is in a land dominated by iconography when you consider Chinese written symbols, no one cares about the obvious floor signs.

What we in the West call "arrows" is Chinese for "EVERYONE AT ONCE."

What we in the West call “arrows” is Chinese for “EVERYONE AT ONCE.”

In the passenger trains, where long-riding passengers had a chance to take their shoes off and kick their feet up, they did so. They would sprawl out on each other’s laps, across rows of seats, on the bags and buckets and blankets they brought in, and if the train was crowded enough then people would spend the ride standing or squatting in the space connecting the cars, in between the bathrooms and luggage racks. Consistently, from the cheapest, slowest, most crowded train I rode in China all the way up to the high-speed G Train, people would dump their trash and spit their seeds and leftover food out all over the floor- leaving a poor, wearied cleaning lady to walk through and collect the piles as she lagged behind the accumulating mess. Alternatively, a berserk woman would stomp through and screech at people to hand over their plastic wrappers and paper bins.

Also, more obnoxious than the trash on the train, it was universal for people to play their portable TVs, radios, computers, DVD players, and speakers at full volume. Few saw the necessity of using headphones when there was no concept of keeping one’s music to oneself. Or one’s voice- loud talking and boisterous behavior pervaded the moving cavern on rails, just as it did in every other public gathering place in China.

Which brings me to my point: harmony is not a real Chinese value. It is an imagined ideal. The real values that stood out in my eyes are those that scoffed at manners like keeping quiet in public, keeping one’s hands to oneself, and all the other things supposedly learned in kindergarten. While harmony is not observable, or only obliquely so, the constant boisterousness is definitely apparent.

Cute motivational posters, while possibly made in China, are not sold there.

Cute motivational posters, while possibly made in China, are not sold there.

Boisterousness is a value of the real China, as are the (actually expressed) saying “To get rich is glorious,” and the idea that self and self’s inner circle are all that matter. The true ethic underlying all the little things in China is “every man for himself and push the strangers out of the way.”

I started to see it everywhere, in details as small as the little tissue packets everyone carried with them.

In America, practically every restaurant has napkins on the table, either in a holder or wrapped around the silverware, and public bathrooms have toilet paper and an electronic hand dryer or paper towels, so living my whole life with these conveniences made me notice the glaring absence of napkins and even toilet paper. In China, you bring your own.

In restaurants and cafeterias, the tabletops were bare. Only in the nicest restaurants- those connected to a hotel- were there napkin holders. Even then, the napkins were thin squares folded up into a triangle, and the table is so large that diners have to wait for the napkins to make their way around the lazy Susan every few minutes. Thankfully, these hotel restaurants would provide a plastic-wrapped wet cloth napkin that was thick enough to last throughout a whole dinner. Having that made me feel like I was living in luxury compared to other napkin-free homes and businesses.

If you were lucky, a small café selling noodles or dumplings might have a roll of paper streamer sitting on the table (the kind of party streamers that are used to decorate a high school gym) for you to wipe your fingers with. Other restaurants might occasionally have napkins, too- it wasn’t forbidden- but customers were generally expected to bring their own.

It took me quite a while to catch on and plan for this; many of my meals were eaten with greasy hands. Often, I was spared from learning my lesson the hard way (that is, going without tissues). Friendly students would do the polite thing and offer me one of their own.

Eventually, I tired of being offered tissues or having to ask someone for assistance every time I had messy hands or a runny nose, so I went into the store on campus and picked up my own pack of tissues. A big pack held a dozen small pouches- the convenient size that are kept in purses or pockets. I would have liked to have set an example and defied their cultural norms if I could have found a large cardboard box of tissues to bring into the classroom, but no store had them for sale. The small pouches were all that was available for personal napkin and tissue needs; they were stocked in every department store and convenience shop.

These bulk-size packs go fast when you consider that they are your sole napkin, tissue, and toilet paper supply away from home.

These bulk-size packs go fast when you consider that they are your sole napkin, tissue, and toilet paper supply away from home.

People wanted the small tissue pouches because they knew they needed them. If they were stuck out and about and they had to use a public restroom, the communal paper dispenser at the bathroom entrance would likely be empty, and it would be left to them to provide their own tissues to use in the stall.

Bringing one’s own tissues to every situation, needing it daily like a billfold, phone, and keys, was, I believe, a small indicator of the cultural mindset. I heard Chinese people lament how selfish everyone was, how people in China only wanted to make money for themselves and didn’t care about the condition of anyone outside their family, and while bringing one’s own tissues was not a direct reflection of epidemic selfishness of callous proportions, it was a result of a culture where every individual was left to fend for himself.

In the land of the free and independent-minded, by contrast, Americans have a big reputation for generosity. Americans will give freely to relief efforts half a world away, and that is in addition to their charitable giving to local churches, clubs, and benefits. There is still much thought for the self, obviously, and America is just as famous for being a land of competition and pursuit of wealth. Like any country, those on the outskirts of society have a very difficult time finding employment and sustenance for themselves, and more than ever, this generation of Americans fear for their jobs and worry how they will provide for their families.

Still, before the growth of the American welfare state, before the widespread breakdown in society and public morality, the Protestant American ethic, while expecting everyone to pull their own weight, had very generous and charitable habits. There were and are, in a far-fetched sense, napkins on the table. Public bathrooms were, and are, expected to have toilet paper, hand soap, and hand towels, and there is a reasonable expectation that a fair number will be fairly clean, depending on the location (gas stations not included). When they are not clean it is accepted as a common fact of life, but not as an unchangeable rule of life, as it seemed in my experience in China.

America is a real country, with real problems, and I do not argue that it is a model of virtue or a utopia. No, while seeing Chinese society has predictably made me more thankful for the blessings of American life, it has more so made me perceptive to the problems of my home country. It is well known in America that public trust and consciousness can be pretty dismal depending on what part of the country you live in. Living in dog-eat-dog New York City for a short time was a shock to my easygoing Midwestern sensibilities. My point though is that the prevailing beliefs and practices in America are still very empathetic toward neighbors and strangers. I would argue this is because many in today’s generation have been trained by cultural precedent and the familiar words “Do unto others” and “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

These exemplary American attitudes I speak of were starkly different from the popular thinking I encountered in China. The Chinese believe in receiving good fortune and luck, and working with indefatigable diligence to earn a high salary for your family. Their precedent was: if you don’t work for it, if you don’t cultivate the rice crop, your family will starve. The fears and selfish drive for survival have carried over from the generations living under famine. Chinese people of the past didn’t expect others to feed them or provide for them. They didn’t expect public charity to provide for their food or housing (what charity is there when everyone is starving in communes?), and they didn’t and still don’t expect access to timely, quality medical treatment and government services unless they know the right people.

The positive side of China’s harrowing history is that an industrious, self-achieving work ethic has become practically universal. People take individual responsibility because they have to. Every area of life depends on personal diligence. They scrupulously watch their health, meaning they scrutinize their diet and get daily exercise. Every food ingredient is chosen for its health benefits (if you trust the folk wisdom). Many rely on diet, daily tai chi, and Traditional Chinese Medicine shops as their health care plan. They know they can’t fall back on the government’s system.

Trying out Traditional Chinese Medicine. I seriously recommend cupping for muscle aches.

Trying out Traditional Chinese Medicine. I seriously recommend cupping for muscle aches.

Aunt Fong's father-in-law leads me through his daily tai chi routine.

Aunt Fong’s father-in-law leads me through his daily tai chi routine.

The great downside of China’s universal work ethic is that managers, companies, and institutions often expect employees and underlings to live, eat, and even sleep on the job site, going all week without a day off. Also, the part that most often disgusted me about China’s selfish, starved-animal mindset: unruly crowds and near-sighted drivers and pedestrians. Whenever they encountered another person or a group, everyone had to be first. They had tunnel vision, and as a matter of course they would run into people and push them if they got in their way. No looking over the shoulder, no checking one’s blind spot. No yielding way, no stepping around. No “sorry’s” or “excuse me’s.” If this sounds like a trivial thing to live with, I challenge the reader to swap the manners of home for the law of the street in China.

In Communist China, right of way drives YOU!

In Communist China, right of way drives YOU!

Other examples of the selfish culture would be the bartering merchants who attempted to cheat people as their business model (not that this is rare among marketers elsewhere), and also the widespread littering. Roadside ditches and creek beds became reservoirs for stray trash, and any vacant or run-down property became a de facto dumping ground. The unspoken shrug was “Why worry about it? Trash is someone else’s problem, so drop your wrapper and let ‘someone’ clean it up.”

The culture of B.Y.O.N. (Bring Your Own Napkins)- and culture-wide ugly behavior are admittedly only tenuously connected. After experiencing life in China though, I started to connect the two, like a small twig connected to a branch of the selfishness tree. The twig itself is not significant, only a distant extension of the root, and if examined in isolation it would not attract special attention. However, if the root and trunk are known, then a trained eye can recognize any twig and identify its genus and species.

The question I am asking then: why do some countries provide public conveniences that are unavailable in other countries or which must be provided by the individual? I believe it is more than a case of developed versus developing countries. France is developed, but I was surprised to run into pay toilets there, and I heard of snippy store clerks getting snippy and telling foreign visitors that providing bathrooms is not their responsibility. Japan is developed, but their restaurants don’t give away the freebies of American restaurants like soda fountains and ketchup pumps (expect only one ketchup packet at a Tokyo McDonald’s).

My takeaway lesson from life in China: unlike the Confucian cultural value on everyone’s mind- harmony- B.Y.O.N. and “every man for himself” were real, actual cultural practices. Confucian harmony- the smooth, peaceful interworking of society- was an unrealized, imaginary ideal. Each individual person was on his own, and public behavior was anything but harmonious. Likewise, Mao and the communists of the 20th century said their revolutionary state was for the people, yet they could not teach the people to look out for each other, to love their neighbors as themselves.

How many other ideals, in China and elsewhere, are merely imagined? What real practices, like B.Y.O.N., are taken for granted and largely ignored? The ignored practice, and not the imagined, is what is most indicative of a culture.

No, they didn't have a tree planted by either Gallagher or his brother (whom he sold his comedy act to). I checked.

The Real China: Chinglish

October 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Asia is famous, at least on the internet, for garbled translations of English (or should I say the Orient is famous since nobody knows about Kyrgyzstan). T-shirts and street signs mash up text that is ostensibly English, but grammar, word order, and especially coherency are completely off. The result of Chinese people using English in conversation and signage- Chinglish- is often bizarrely meaningless or outrageously vulgar.

Aunt Fong is here. Where are you?

Aunt Fong is here. Where are you?

I did see a fair share of pathway markers with Chinglish cautions in Chinese tourist sports. Next to a scenic stream, visitors were warned “Water depth! don’t near.” In a wooded area a sign minded onlookers “Experienced vicissitudes. No ravages undergone,” which I tried to follow, but failed. I got stuck halfway experiencing things when I realized I didn’t know what a vicissitude was.

These signs were good for a chuckle, as were the t-shirts I saw on young people that had everything from random words strung together, to letters mashed from a keyboard, to outright curse words that made my jaw drop. The kids wearing these clothes had no idea what they said; they only liked the “cool” style of English words. I was there to witness one college student’s embarrassment when my Foreign Affairs Officer at the university where I taught, Amy Hu, told the girl that the English text on her shirt was a description of breast feeding. Sometimes the naïve students’ t-shirts left me mortified, other times I just laughed, but I couldn’t really fault them since I come from a nation of gullible tattoo freaks who willingly and illiterately ink awkward Chinese characters onto their skin.

More common than the phenomenon of Chinglish text, sometimes more interesting but often only frustrating, were the spoken English sentences made by Chinese who were trying to transliterate typical Chinese phrases using English words.

Here are the most common Chinese-to-English phrases I heard during my stay:

“No, thank you.” (Instead of “You’re welcome.”)
In Chinese, it is standard to reply to thanks by saying bie keqi (sounds like “bee-yeh kutch”), which means roughly “Don’t be polite,” or bu yong xie (boo yowng shee-ay): “No need to thank me,” equivalent to “You’re welcome.” So a polite Chinese person, after hearing me say “Thank you,” was tripped up by the similarity of the Chinese phrases and would tell me “No, thank you,” sometimes being corrected by a classmate: “It’s ‘You’re welcome!’”

Pronounced, by Chinese speakers unused to that tricky th- sound, as “Sank you.”

IMG_1865

“He/She” Confusion
In China, the men are men and the women are women, but you could never trust who was which if you heard them spoken of by another person. For example, someone might begin talking about his mother, but then he would make a switch and say, “He lived in the south as a girl.” If the contradiction were ever as glaring as that, I would give my friend an obvious hint. “He lived?” They would pick up on my playful disbelief right away: “I mean she!” But I learned to be skeptical and expect conflation between “he” and “she.” In Chinese, “he” and “she” are pronounced the same (“ta” for both) and written not all that differently. It amazed me that these simple pronouns could be a stumbling stone for so many errors. That is, until I noticed myself switching pronouns when I tried to rush out a sentence in their language.

IMG_2043

“My brother/My sister”
These terms weren’t confused with each other; they were often substituted for “my cousin” or “my friend.” I heard quite a few young people mention their brother or sister and I started to become suspicious. “Don’t you all have a One-Child Policy?”

Many of the young people I met in my semi-rural province did have siblings because- I assumed- they were out of the government’s iron grip, probably because they lived in the country where enforcement was lax and it was an open secret that there were ways around the One-Child Policy. Some had parents who must have been wealthy enough to pay the fines and exorbitant extra costs of raising and educating a second child.

Once, I asked a young lady why she called her cousin her “brother.” She told me there wasn’t a good word for “cousin” in Chinese. Moreover, she grew up as an only child and so did her cousin, and because they were frequently around each other at every family gathering, they felt close like siblings and naturally called each other “brother” and “sister.”

One thing to note: having China’s One-Child Policy in mind will confuse you if you ever meet the people in China. There were many single-child households, sure, but there were also many young people with a (real) brother or sister. I would ask them, “What about the One-Child Policy? Are your parents in trouble with the government? Is your little brother a secret?” I never got a satisfactory response to my question. It was either a flat yes or no, or a “Yes, but we do” or “No, we can.” They had a hard time explaining it. Actually, none elected to give me a worthy explanation. Probably not unlike explaining the allowances granted by Freedom of Speech laws to a man from a state-controlled culture, or American gun laws and the Right to Bear Arms to a novice foreign visitor.

China's version of the Fountain of Youth.

China’s version of the Fountain of Youth, the Immortal Bed.

“I very like it.”
Grammatically, the sentence could be “I really like it,” or “I like it very much,” or even “I very much like it.” This is a fine distinction, easily unknown or forgotten by my congenial Chinese friends. It is easy to understand how someone learning English would say “I very like it” after they learned that “very” is an intensifying adverb to turn a word like “good” into the superlative “very good.”

“I know.”
I was not so charitable toward this phrase. No, I almost lost my temper and made a classroom outburst the first time I heard a middle school student say, “We know.” It was when I went to the chalkboard to make a distinction about two similar phrases. Maybe I was explaining the difference between replying, “I’m sorry?” and “Say again” to the Chinese students who thought that the latter was the preferred way to ask someone to repeat themselves. I don’t remember for sure. But as I was writing and explaining myself, a student said, “We know.” I immediately snapped over my shoulder and eyed the students to try and identify who said it. It sounded like an openly condescending remark, made by a student rolling their eyes at the redundant teacher. Being very green and lacking confidence in my authority as a foreign teacher, I held my peace and went on with the lesson. I wanted to scold them, “You know? Then why did you make the mistake?! Don’t stop me when I’m teaching you, you little smart alecks!”

When I saw this sign, I thought there had better be monkeys.

When I saw this sign, I thought there had better be wild monkeys.

I heard “I know” or “We know” replies a few other times, in class and in conversation, and it started to make me suspicious. It was spoken with a flat tone at times, not with a sarcastic edge, and it was spoken politely in friendly conversation with a smiling student. Something was amiss. Finally, after learning enough Chinese to become familiar with everyday phrases, I learned that a common response used to indicate understanding is, literally translated, “I know.” In English, if someone tells me news and I tell them, “I know,” of course it usually means “I already knew that.” In Chinese, “I know” (“Wo zhidao”, said “Wuh jih-dao”) means the English equivalent of “I see.” Or, the difference between telling someone you understand them and telling them they’re behind the curve because you understood that already.

Sure enough, the sign delivered.

The sign delivered as promised.

“Read. Follow me.”
It was either this or “Look. Follow me.” Or “Watch me.” Chinese is a language of simple commands, having no use for spare words to make a sentence flow or sound more polite. Chinese speakers, steeped in this straightforward grammar structure, naturally adapted it to English sentences.

The robotic commands I heard in China sounded very abrupt to my ears, conditioned to catch the subtle differences in tone between English words. A Chinese speaker with beginning or intermediate English skills might use Tarzan talk or baby talk, but I always gave them credit. I knew what they meant and I knew they had put forth a lot of effort to learn to speak English. Also, I knew firsthand how difficult and time-consuming it was to acquire a foreign language, and English was such a foreign language compared to Chinese.

Besides, once the students of English had worked with the language for a few years and been exposed to enough American movies, they started to phrase things naturally.

Sound advice.

Sound advice.

“Good, good study. Day, day up.”
This is a literal translation, I understood, from a motto of Chairman Mao. The very first time I heard someone use this cheer, the group of Chinese friends I was with laughed at the “Chinglish,” but I understood it perfectly, immediately. It seemed like a clever way to use English; the simplicity streamlined the words’ meaning. I heard this phrase fairly often, usually as a rallying cry after group exercise or spoken by students in discussions on difficult homework assignments.

Perhaps this is the finest example for English speakers, using the building blocks of our own language, of how Chinese works. Super simple, with no inflection or function words in between the main thoughts.

This one almost makes sense.

This one almost makes sense.

“Have a good sleep.”
Whenever I went out to lunch with someone (usually students I met in the cafeteria) they would bid me farewell by wishing me a good sleep. Naptime was assumed, a part of the culture built into work and school schedules. So it was expected that after our lunch was over, I would go back to my apartment and sleep. My friends were only being polite. This phrase is fine grammatically; it stood out to me only because I have never heard an American wish me a good nap and in China I heard it every time I went off to my after lunch rest.

“Wish you happy every day.”
My friendly well-wishers would also end conversations, text messages, greeting cards, and online chats with “Wish you happy every day.” I’ve never heard an American say this, either, and I doubt it was part of the Chinese English language textbooks. I had to assume that people were transliterating a standard Chinese phrase.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Speaking of English textbooks, in China (and all over eastern Asia) the students are taught to respond to the basic greeting, “Hello. How are you?” with “I’m fine, thank you.” It sounds as wooden and forced as you might imagine an uncomfortable Chinese student would sound when reciting strange, foreign sounds.

My fellow foreign English teacher, Grant (the Australian), and I would always tell students on the campus, “You don’t have to say, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ You can say, ‘I’m good. How are you?’ or anything you want.” Grant would add a “mate” in there. It would have been a sweet dream for me to see a Chinese student referring to his friends as “blokes” or “mates.”

IMG_1864

“What a pity.”
The other stock phrase that was over-used to perplexing effect was “What a pity.” I heard this one tossed out hundreds of times over every mild disappointment. In America, the standard reaction I’ve heard to bad news is “That’s too bad” or “I’m sorry (to hear that).” Among my peers, I’m sorry to report, the popular reply is “That sucks.” My generation is no longer aware that this phrase is vulgar, and the Chinese were unaware that “What a pity” is thought quaint by contemporary Americans.

It sounds, I don’t know, British? There is something overly refined about “What a pity” that strikes Americans as something that might be spoken by a Gibson girl or white-gloved old matron. Americans are far too proud of their middle class-ness and informality to casually say, “What a pity.”

In my mind, I thought of the James Bond arch-villain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and his more famous parody, Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers’ movies.

By the time I saw the sign, somebody or bodies hadn't obeyed the sign, since the smiling flower was gone and not saying hello to anybody.

By the time I saw the sign, somebody or bodies hadn’t obeyed the sign, since the smiling flower was gone and not saying hello to anybody.

One time, I missed a Chinese lesson with my very strict teacher, Uncle Jiang. Aunt Fong had taken me out on an errand and told me it would be all right to postpone the lesson, but soon her husband called her up and chattered some harsh vibrations over the cell phone. Then, Aunt Fong handed the phone to me, stupefied. My first phone conversation in China with someone whose English skills were quite limited. What was I supposed to say?

“Hello?” I said.

“What a pity…” Uncle Jiang slowly growled. His voice was low; angry emotion seethed inside but he restrained it, I imagined, through clenched teeth and flared nostrils.

It was the first time I had heard “What a pity” in this kind of a context. I didn’t pick up on his meaning, and I tried to relay the explanation that Aunt Fong had told me in the clearest bullet points. “I’m with Aunt Fong. We are near your home. She is taking me to dinner. We will eat dinner.”

Uncle Jiang wasn’t interested in listening. “What a pity…” he breathily said again. I was confused at first, then taken aback. I could feel his rage through the phone. He went on and lectured me that when we agree to a meeting time, we have to commit to it. This happened during week 2 or 3 of our Chinese-English study, and up till that point I thought we intended to work hard but had mutually agreed to meet together as friends. Uncle Jiang didn’t take a casual interpretation.

“Okay… Okay… Okay,” I replied to him. It was my first brush with Chinese temper tantrums. While in China, I would witness a few other occasions where a man would become moody as a little boy and expect everyone to cater to him. This behavior was contemptible when I saw it in husbands or young adults, but it was worst in government officials and media spokesmen. I figured that Confucian social structure and the pampering of male children resulted in self-centered men who abused the attention they were entitled. Let me qualify this statement though: I saw Chinese men in private life on limited occasions. Mostly, in public, I saw standard behavior that I would expect from men anywhere, but with Chinese characteristics: joviality, conviviality, excitability, boisterousness, slovenliness, loudness. I am not saying that temper tantrums were typical, only that there were more than a couple conspicuous instances where I was shocked to see a man acting babyish, and disgusted to see the people around him having to accommodate him. Of course, American men lose their tempers too, just not with the same pouting I saw in China.

In the media, Chinese government spokesmen act contemptuous and high-handed when dismissing U.S. claims of computer hacking, for example, and they are outright bullies when denying claims in South China Seas territorial disputes with their Asian neighbors. When I see it, I have to soothe my indignation by humorously imagining them delicately stroking a white cat and haughtily saying, “What a pity.”

This blog, like this "world" in China, is non-smoking.

This blog, like this “world” in China, is non-smoking.

“What are you doing?” “Where are you going?”
Moving on to a lighter topic, “What are you doing?” was a typical Chinese greeting. Another traditional greeting was “Have you eaten?” I was told that this became common in China’s impoverished past, when people were many and food was scarce. Asking your neighbor if he had eaten showed your concern and indicated you were willing to feed him if he were hungry.

In the same way, friends and acquaintances meant to show concern and polite interest by asking me “Where are you going?” whenever I left my campus apartment. It could feel very direct and intrusive, as if I were being interrogated over suspicious activity. After righting my balance, I was able to rattle off a casual answer. In a way, I had to admit that it was a better information-gathering question than “How are you?” If someone replies, “Good,” then what is there to work with? In my experience the reply to that reply is “That’s good” and the dialogue is over. But if someone tells you what they are up to, then that might be enough to open a small conversational door. At least it’s better than the dead-end of “How are you?” “I’m good.” “That’s good.”

For once the English is perfectly proper. A good minder, too.

For once the English is perfectly proper. A good minder, too.

“Eat medicine”
This one was minor, but instead of pairing “medicine” with the verb “take,” the Chinese transliterated their own verb-noun pairing and said, in English, “eat medicine.”

I mention this because “eat medicine” sounded odd to my ear (you don’t eat medicine- that would involve chewing- you swallow it or drink it), and because it serves as a representative example of the many minor discrepancies in language and conceptual thinking between Chinese and English. (These minor phrasal discrepancies can be found in any language compared with another.)

Think about this one: why do we say “take medicine” but the Chinese say “eat medicine”? It is essentially describing the same thing, but the words “take” and “eat” have different usages and associations. In one language, “eat” can mean the intake of something like medicine, in the other it involves food and insults, but not medicine, and chewing and swallowing.

“Where are you come from?”
This phrase was the main offender while I was in China. Other Chinglish transliterations or mistranslations could be funny, confusing, awkward, charming, strange, nonsensical, off-putting, or just plain incorrect, but “Where are you come from?” annoyed me harshly and persistently.

Whenever a curious stranger approached me and asked me this question, my spine shivered, my hair rose on the back of my neck, and my jaw stiffened. Its sound was as pleasant to me as the screeches of an engine run without oil.

Most times, when speaking with a Chinese friend, student, or new acquaintance, I was very gracious with them and appreciative that they were trying to speak English with me. It took courage. So I had patience and I tried to build them up, only seldom correcting a language error when they were having difficulty. With “Where are you come from?” though, I insisted on slipping in “It’s ‘Where do you come from?’” in the snippy tone of a grammar pedant. I could not let it pass. It I could have, I would have rounded up all the attempted English speakers in China and conducted a one-hour class to drill “Where do you come from?” until no one could forget it.

You may ask what was so bad about this grammar error in particular. Well, I would have to answer its prevalence- sprouting up everywhere like an invasive weed- and more so its ugliness. It takes the brain along one path: “Where are you…” and then startles it with the jarring contradiction “…come from.” Plus, it was often blurted out with a glib smile, as if an enemy were insulting my injury with a grin.

This sign definitely wasn't minded by native Chinese speakers, a few of whom I saw carving their name into the Great Wall with car keys.

Signs aren’t always worth much to native speakers anyways. I saw a few of them carving their names into the Great Wall with car keys.

There were other common confusions I tried to clarify when I could, when necessary. The most prevalent item was the difference between “What’s the matter?” and “What’s the matter with you?” a significant tonal distinction in English but a similar meaning if the words are analyzed by a Chinese student. In these cases I was calm and I picked my battles- an English class I would correct, but a casual acquaintance I would not. I knew my place.

Any grammar ire was reserved for “Where are you come from?” which I immediately corrected before giving them my answer. Perhaps I gave them the impression that most Americans are difficult and sharp. Maybe I should have told them “I am come from France.”

Translates fine, but I thought it was funny that this amusement park was called "China Dinosaurs Park" and not just "Dinosaurs' Park."

Translates fine, but I thought it was funny that this amusement park was called “China Dinosaurs Park” and not just “Dinosaurs’ Park.”

The Real China: Traffic

October 28, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Traffic in China does not follow the laws, conventions, or assumptions of American roadways, as might be expected. Remember, China is a collectivist society, which means that drivers from opposing traffic will share your lane with you.

Driving and walking are dangerous prospects in China (not that driving is especially safe anyplace else). Sidewalk and street blend into one here, and cars split the street with whatever wanders into it: bicycles, dogs, buses, motorcycles, electric scooters, livestock, domestic fowl, and plenty of pedestrians. I often wondered why so many people walked in the street, without seeming to care for their safety, when there were always sidewalks or walkways nearby. I always set out to use the sidewalk myself, but after weaving through too many food carts, tables, chicken cages, broken concrete slabs, construction leftovers, parked bicycles, trash, dung, and motorbikes, I ended up taking to the street myself.

American cities might be crowded and busy like China, but at least there is a division of space: sidewalk and street are not the same, nor do they serve the same functions. In China, if you could drive or park there, it was fair game. The same lawless rule applied to walking: if people wanted to trot along the highway with their wheelbarrow behind them, then they did so.

In China, as in most developing countries, the drivers honked non-stop. This, along with many other experiences, made me question whether “developing” was just a euphemism for the opposite of decency. Honking served a theoretical purpose- alerting other motorists and pedestrians of one’s approach- but the people in China were so jaded and dulled to the sound that they would not step aside unless they had to, and then only at the last possible moment. Drivers honked whenever they backed up, whenever they started going forward, whenever they entered a gate or narrow street, whenever they rounded a blind corner, whenever they changed lanes (although I never saw anyone check their blind spots or mirrors), whenever someone was in front of them traveling at a slower speed, whenever they were overtaking another vehicle or weaving in between opposing traffic, or for pretty much any other contingency.

Honking was constant, and it often came in the from of three-round bursts from angry truck and bus drivers. Drivers in China refuse to yield, even when turning left through opposing traffic, so they simply honk and wind their way through other vehicles like a herd of confused cows.

One of my honking taxi drivers almost ran down a university student, but I can’t really fault the driver in that case, because he had his headlights on, was driving under 5 miles per hour, and had honked steadily at the young man several times before he finally flinched and stepped aside. Chinese pedestrians, too, could be shockingly passive.

One November morning, my “Uncle” Jiang (Aunt Fong’s husband) and I were driving back from his hometown to our university, which normally took 30 minutes; we each had class at 8:00. The fog that morning was intense- you would have tripped over your toes if you didn’t know your heels were behind them. Almost as thick as the fog outside was the tension inside the car. I watched wordlessly as my honorary uncle slowly traversed the maze of the once-familiar city streets and grunted and sighed while trying to determine which streets we were on. Then, insanely, and I do not use those italics lightly, pedestrians would appear- on the highway, not on the city streets- would appear in front of us, walking the wrong way, into oncoming traffic, when a perfectly usable pathway (flat, smooth, and clear) lay on the other side of a separating barrier. We would honk and swerve around them, and after surviving our 80-minute odyssey of missed turns and drowsy detours, we eventually arrived at our campus gates.

I often muttered to myself about Chinese drivers’ lack of courtesy and safety in relation to other drivers and especially to pedestrians, but those people walking on the highway, in the fog, were out of their minds in any culture.

Back to the taxi drivers. Of course, they showed the same temerity as taxi drivers the world over. But in China, no one showed respect to the dashes and lines indicating whose lane was whose. So, when passing, the taxi drivers would honk several times and go left or right- whichever was most convenient, not necessarily a legal or safe driving space- to overtake whatever was in front of them.

Once, on a four-lane road, I was a passenger in a taxi and we were in the left lane of northbound traffic (note: China, like America, drives on the right- theoretically). We were blocked in front by a charter bus and on the right by a semi. So, in his impatience, my driver passed the bus in front by going left. We were driving north in a southbound lane.

Traffic1

Driving the wrong way was fairly common for taxi drivers though. So common, in fact, that there was another taxi in front of us, also in the midst of passing the bus by driving into opposing traffic. Apparently, this fellow scofflaw was too slow for my taxi driver, so he went left around him– we were driving in the far lane of opposite-direction traffic. I do not remember how long it took to pass the car and then the bus, or by how little we missed a head-on collision, but if I counted it in breaths, it would have been zero.

Traffic2

Chinese motorists pile them in, too, at least on the motorbikes. Every morning, I could count on seeing husband and wife, or daughter and child, doubled-up on a motorbike, and if it was raining, wearing a parka made to drape over the handlebars. If it was cold, they used mittens that were fastened to the handlebars. Motorcycles were not a fair weather pleasure vehicle in China. Such a thing did not really exist outside the very few rich young men in large cities driving sport bikes as playthings. Two-wheeled vehicles were used year round; they were often a person’s primary transportation. I saw, more times than I could count, father driving the motorbike, mother holding on in the back, a son or daughter standing in the foot rest, and maybe a small child in mother’s arms. I saw them carrying dogs and chickens on the back, or so many cases of beer that I do not think I could have fit them in the passenger side of my car.

A local Chinese tractor loaded up with cardboard.

A local Chinese tractor loaded up with cardboard.

The funniest, most outrageous, motorbike scene I ever saw was a woman on a scooter trailing a motorbike-truck (motorcycle front with a truck bed attached- Uncle Jiang asked me what the American word was for this and I had no word to tell him other than jalopy), and with her extended right leg she was pressing against a stack of plywood on the motorbike-truck, preventing the sheets from sliding during travel. I will repeat that: loose plywood on a truck bed was being held in place by a woman’s extended foot as she followed the truck on her scooter.

I also saw- twice, so it seemed like a regular thing- a mattress on back of a motorbike-truck, and like the plywood pile, it was loose and held down by a person instead of a rope. A man was lying down on the mattress to weigh it down, and holding onto the front of the truck bed as his friend drove. I guess that rope and bungee cord are Western luxuries.

Chinese labor has saturated the supply side so much that bungee cord is more expensive in comparison.

Chinese labor has saturated the supply side so much that bungee cord is more expensive in comparison.

It was scary and sadly funny, but too often tragic. You have probably read in the news about children being carelessly crushed by oblivious drivers, like the two-year-old, Yue Yue, who was struck and left in the street for hours as passersby took no notice of her unconscious body. Or the story of the over-packed van filled with elementary school students that was in a head-on crash. There have been multiple stories like that one, with many fatalities and serious injuries, so you may have read about these incidents more than once. I first heard about the school van crash from my mother, on a computer call from America, and I told her that awful as it was, I was not surprised. It was sadly sobering to say something like that.

On foot, a person had to expect drivers to ignore them or spitefully zoom past them. Possibly, you could even become knocked down and then run over several more times by the same car until the driver was sure that you were splattered and your family could not extract lifelong healthcare support for your dead body. When crossing the street, it was usually necessary to join up with a bold mob that was big enough to force traffic to yield. The streets were scene to daily, cavalier contempt for human life. In the Real China, that is the way of life.

A crippled man pushed himself on a wheeled cart into the middle of a major four-way intersection, cars careening past, as I craned my neck to watch from the back of a bus window. Almost as alarming as the dangerous sight on the street was noticing that no one else in my bus seemed to regard it. When my aunt noticed me staring in surprise, she laughed at it and basically communicated to me, again: “That’s China.”

Believe it or not, the comb is the tastiest part of the whole chicken.

The Real China: Bottoms Up! (Part 2)

October 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments

And here’s the most incredible thing: over the course of a two-hour dinner, bai jiu (a clear distilled spirit of 40-60% alcohol) would be the only beverage. No water; you had to wash everything down with hard liquor. And more: if you wanted to quench your thirst, you needed to be part of a toast. As Sue explained in her mother hen voice, “Don’t you dahyr bring that glass to your lips unless you’ve given somebody cheers! That’s why I always sit next to someone I know, so I can go, ‘Ahram, cheers!’ when I need a drink.”

Yes, that was the truth. The entire table would refrain from touching their glasses until the top social-tier had begun toasting each other, then everyone would join in and take turns raising their glasses to each other or walking over to an honoree and standing to have a drink with him while he remained seated. Standing up to show deference was an added honor when making a toast, as were lowering one’s glass below the honoree’s when clinking them, and downing the glass completely and tipping it upside down to show it was empty. To signal this impressive feat (basically it was taking a tall shot of sake, vodka, or a similar clear alcohol), the toaster would call out “Gan bei!” which meant “Bottoms up!”

Everyone loved Grant and Sue, they were usually the life of the party, so they would each receive a lot of toasts, and Sue would always decline the gan bei in a funny way. Standing with an excitable (i.e. Chinese) man toasting her, Sue would say in a booming, Australian voice, “You gan bei. Me meiyou gan bei!” All the Chinese speakers would smile because meiyou (pronounced “mayo”) meant “there is no” or “not have” and Sue was using it to try and say “no” or “will not.” So, in effect she was saying “There is no bottoms up!”

The way the toasting would work out, the men in the most prestigious seats would generally remain seated and let people come to them as the toasts worked their way like social order dominoes around the table. Dinner guests spaced their drinks out over the course of the meal by taking many turns raising their glasses or standing to drink with each of their friends at the table. Toasting served as a way for people to introduce themselves to the host and his friends- who had significant gwan-shee, and it also broke the ice between strangers of equal social standing. And, obviously it was a happy way for old friends to show affection to each other.

Although it was necessary to wait for the toasts to refresh oneself, once the toasting began there was a chain reaction of opportunities to have a drink. It was actually quite awkward as I made and attempted a succession of toasts because I had to either try and repetitively slide my stubborn chair backward or stand straight up and try to avoid buckling with the seat cushion pressing into the back of my knees. All the standing for toasts, in a way, nullified the need for the extra-long chopsticks. As long as we were up to drink we could have reached out to scoop some food into our bowls.

The most movement was for the highest honor-giving: making a pass around the table to make a toast with every seat. This did not happen often, but there were a couple times I went out for a dinner with a new group of people and Aunt Fong had me stand up to pay tribute to my hosts. She led me around to initiate the standing toasts and introduce myself to each guest; I was equipped with my tall glass in one hand and a bottle of bai jiu in the other, so I could refill my glass after each bottoms up. I knew the bai jiu was volatile, mind you, I refused to drink it unless strongly socially obligated, and I was sneaky about refilling my glass with very conservative pours (I held my fingers tightly together and gripped the bottom half of the glass in a sleight-of-hand attempt at blocking my hosts’ vision of my drink level), but their eyes were watching me and they made sure I emptied my glass with every drink.

Circling the table, I thought after my first drink Wow. That was a little much. I need to sit for a mome… after the second That’s enough. This was a bad i… After the third drink my mouth was numb to the burning sensation of the alcohol, after the fourth I forgot whether I was going clockwise or counterclockwise around the table, the fifth How many people are at this dinner? And who are they? Whatever number was after fifth What’s going on? Is this- is this China? I’m sitting down.

All right, I’ve embellished, but there were a few times when I had to sit down and turn away from the table to steady myself after drinking too tall a glass of bai jiu. I missed American culture, where I could choose my own beverage or, if out with friends, call it quits after a drink or two. The peer pressure in a Chinese business dinner was not very unlike the atmosphere in a college fraternity house party. I hated being socially forced to drink, especially when it was the sweet, vengeful bai jiu. One time, I saw Ahram successfully wave it off and I assumed she got away with having tea either because she was a lady or there was something forceful about the way she chuckled and said, “Actuarry, I don’t want dat.” (Not mocking, that’s how she actually spoke.) Whenever it was offered to me, I gladly accepted light beer as a compromise.

Something you may already know about the Chinese is that it is very common for their face to become flushed whenever they drink alcohol. I don’t understand the genetic reason for this, nor do I much care, but I find it a peculiar trait, like the way they have dry, crumbly earwax as opposed to the waxy, liquid substance in the ears of every white person (go ahead, look it up). Anyway, it was not uncommon to see a group of men walking in dress shirts and black slacks, two or three with rose pink or puce faces, one perhaps stumbling, at one in the afternoon.

I remember, one spring afternoon, seeing some young college students helping their friend who was dragging the tops of his feet against the sidewalk as he struggled to keep pace with his designated hoisters, carrying him with his arms spread across their shoulders. It was still the lunch hour, so I stood perplexed, thinking Did he get into a car crash or something? He was wailing and tears were streaming down his red face- maybe he got into a fight over a girl? Noticing my stare, my Chinese friends told me he was just having a hard time handling his alcohol, best to ignore him.

Ever naïve, it dawned on me that the culture of drinking is nearly universal, it only changes forms between societies. American binge drinking is an atrocious menace responsible for thousands of traffic fatalities and yearly freshmen deaths at university campuses, but of course ours is not the only nation with a drinking problem. The Chinese, while seemingly very cautious not to mix alcohol and cars, loved to get carried away with friends and colleagues as a standard practice. In my observation, drivers declined to have any drinks and no one would goad them “Just one…” I don’t have the drunken driving numbers on the national level to corroborate this; it was always plain who the driver was and his teetotal status was strictly kept.

One young man I met told me he was thinking about going back to school to change careers because he couldn’t abide all the drinking required of him as a businessman, where every deal was sealed over dinner by a show of alcohol tolerance. It crossed my mind that without the regular opportunity to get loaded at dinners and expel emotions in the KTV (karaoke) clubs, the overworked Chinese would reflect on their lives, trapped in a gray, decrepit communist state, and become either crack-brained or suicidal. Problem drinking there, as often here, was society’s pleasurable stress-relief valve.

That night, eating with Grant and Sue, the Korean teacher Ahram, and the collection of officials from the university, I was thankfully given a large bottle of beer to drink from as I sampled new foods during our dinner’s many rounds. I mentioned before that the food in China was strange, usually lying in a pool of oil and prepared either boiled or stir-fried. When the serving girl brought out vegetables, they were either limp greens on an oily platter (no one eats salad in China) or crispy or steamed vegetables like lotus root and corn on the cob. The lotus root was a new favorite of mine, but the flavorless corn was well below par for the tastes of a native Iowan. With the many meat dishes, there were a large variety of kinds and spices, but a sameness connected them all. Nearly every meat dish was served chopped up, bones and all, and served spiced, oily, and often served barely above room temperature.

A meal of steamed corn, bean soup, various and mysterious limp vegetables, some kind of oily meats, and sliced melon.

A meal of steamed corn, bean soup, various and mysterious limp vegetables, some kind of oily meats, and sliced melon.

Being an American, I have never been that interested in the path the animal takes from farmyard to table, nor have I ever been subjected to witness the work of the butcher. Looking at beef and chicken cuts, shrink-wrapped in plastic white trays in the grocer’s refrigerated, brightly lit display, I have had convenience in choosing my meat and ease of mind in divorcing it from any breathing, bleeding creature. However, it has seemed to me that the conventional cuts of meat must be fairly obvious to a trained butcher. For example, in every bucket of fried chicken are the main parts of the bird: breast, wings, thighs, and legs. The Chinese would also eat the feet and head (not the beak or skull, mind you), but the rest of the bird would be chopped into unrecognizable bits. Considering that Chinese consumers can choose to pick out their bird live, as we do with lobster, and watch it killed and maybe cleaned in front of them (as we don’t), I expected that they would all be expert in cleanly dividing the meat into its standard portions. But no, they took that naked hen and chopped it up, I imagined with two cleavers like the Muppets’ Swedish chef or a drummer on a snare solo. The meat was truly that messy. Every bite, and I mean that- no exaggeration, had bone and tendon in it.

The Chinese prized the nutrition in the bones, and so I learned to chew around the big bones and grind up and swallow the little ones. My aunt Fong would offer me a straw when we had beef bone soup so that I could follow her lead and suck out the marrow. Me: “What? Shen me? (‘shun-muh’)” Aunt Fong: “Mm! Very good!” Sluuuuurp.

On my aunt's adamant insistence, I tried sucking out some beef marrow for myself. I rate it two thumbs down.

On my aunt’s adamant insistence, I tried sucking out some beef marrow for myself. I rate it two thumbs down.

Speaking of soup, I cannot get through a discussion of the cockamamie cooking methods of Chinese cuisine without mentioning one unbelievable dish, one meat that I could manage to eat without bones in every bite. At a home-cooked meal, the main course we once had was chicken soup. That is, a whole cleaned chicken sitting in a weak, yellow broth. The broth we sipped with our spoons had less flavor than a single bouillon cube. I have never tasted thinner soup. I think it was only water and oil. And the chicken itself we comically tried to peel apart with our chopsticks. No one brought out a knife to slice cuts off for each guest; we twisted the flesh from the bone and often partnered to hold the meat and strip off strands like pigeons struggling with a large bread loaf. Besides the impractical hassle, it tasted bad, too. I thought I had traveled around the earth to visit another world, where the people didn’t have the sense to know how to prepare and eat chicken, or even realize that the way they were doing it lacked sense altogether. It was as if the natives had never prepared or eaten a chicken before, but I knew they were far more acquainted with the tasty creature than I was. Some of them had chicks in their house and pet roosters that would stalk the sidewalks. Small city residents saw live chickens every day.

Chickens strutting outside someone's house.

Chickens strutting outside someone’s house.

This is not to say that China was without tasty meat dishes- or protein dishes. China was a tofu lover’s paradise with bean curd in every shape, texture, flavor, and smell. Grant and Sue’s favorite meat dish at the restaurant, and an internationally famous dish, was the roast duck. This was a meat that was at least shaved thin by a cook and served mostly free of bone. We ate it wrapped in a thin pancake with scallions and dipped it in a sweet bean sauce. Quickly assembling a wrap and dipping it while the automatic lazy Susan rotated by was a test of timing and chopstick dexterity.

My favorite dish was the braised pork (hong shao rou/ 红烧肉), served hot in a round, black stew pot. China has not only different varieties of pork than America, but they also serve it in a way contrary to American expectations. Meat, fat, and skin were served in one three-layered, bite-sized piece. Stewing the meat this way made the pork succulent, sweet, and tender. I have complained about a lot of things in China, but without reservation I will say that their pork was far better than American pork, and I come from America’s largest pork-producing state.

Do yourself a favor and find a Chinese restaurant than can prepare this. Tell them you want "hoang shao ro."

Do yourself a favor and find a Chinese restaurant than can prepare this. Tell them you want “hoang shao ro.”

I fully realize that eating skin, fat, bones, feet, and chicken heads (cheeks, eyes, and brains) is repulsive, a near abomination, to Americans raised on diets of white meat chicken, ground beef, and thick steaks; really, raised on a diet of processed foods- foods processed far from view or thought. Well, tastes are individual, and I am a man with a big appetite and an adventurous palate, so take my word on this for its relative worth when I say the comb was the tastiest part of the chicken, the feet and knees were the best parts of the pig, and pickled chicken feet were not that bad. I eventually grew to like them. I avoided the blood sausage completely and I am fairly confident I avoided dog, but like I said, most meat dishes were chopped up into unrecognizable bits, so it is possible that the “beef” wasn’t always beef. I will move on so readers with weak stomachs won’t get sick.

After many rounds of new dishes and over an hour’s worth of toasting, as bellies swelled to capacity, the tempo slowed down and the feeling became very relaxed. Diners leaned back in their chairs, some might smoke (smoking was common in China, but not as much as I expected, though I once caught a little farm girl with a cigarette in her mouth), then the serving girl would clear away the empty platters and combine dwindling remainders together, and guests could even sip their drinks at will.

The last round was signaled by a dessert platter: watermelon, orange slices, dragon fruit, and sometimes a mildly sweet pastry. I think I ate a record amount of watermelon in China, or at least a personal best. Once springtime arrived, local farmers would drive trucks full of the round fruits (not oblong) into town every day, and a crowd of shoppers (not a queue- remember, this was China) would bring one home as a daily staple. After the meal, the group would polish off the thin slices of watermelon and lethargically pick at the dragon fruit, pausing to let the large meal settle and finish off the last remaining bits of the evening’s conversations.

Then, when the pause lasted for too long a moment, the group implicitly shared the understanding that the long affair was over. Grant or Sue said, “Well, all right then” and the whole table heaved themselves to their feet, using the chair backs and table top for support. Any contents remaining in the bottles were poured into glasses, and we all held our glasses high in the air and gave one final “Gan bei!”

After that, the real entertainment began. If it wasn’t clear who was footing the bill, if payment had not already been arranged and settled beforehand, then dinner guests would fight (push and shove, but not punch) for the check. It was at the same time alarming and charming to see them insist, “No! No! No!” and reach over their friend’s shoulder to snatch the check away. They each had honed techniques to get the winning end of this aggressive ritual and earn the prestige of paying for the meal. In American, I was used to “going Dutch” with friends, or seeing little scenes that might go back and forth for a few verbal rounds, each person saying, “No, you paid for it last time” or offering other pleas before the eventual payer holds his ground with something firm and the others graciously say, “If you insist.”

In China, they do not acquiesce. Whoever has the bill might hold it above his head or at an arm’s length away from his opponent, like a playground game of keep-away. Or, if trying to thrust cash on his friend, he would jam it into his friend’s pants’ pockets, or if his friend were playing defense with his hands already in his pockets, then the money would be dropped in the shirt or jacket pocket.

I once witnessed a great battle between Uncle Jiang (Aunt Fong’s husband) and his sister. Family honor was on the line. They knew each other’s tricks. From the dining room to the hallway, riding down the elevator, and out of the lobby and into the parking lot, she thrust cash at Uncle Jiang and he blocked or riposted every advance, opening her hand and stuffing the bills right back in. They chattered at each other like two squirrels fighting on a tree trunk, and I watched silently from the sidelines. Uncle Jiang’s sister made a brilliant strategic choice and gave the money to me, the stunned third party. Uncle Jiang wasn’t having it, so he snatched it right out of my frozen palms and stuck the money in his sister’s purse as she tried to walk away. As persistent as the widow in Jesus’ parable, she clung to the door of the taxi cab as Uncle Jiang and I tried to make our departure. I was sitting in the front passenger’s seat, and the window was open a crack. She made the winning move, dropping the wad of cash into my lap as the driver took off. There was nothing Uncle Jiang could do. He would have to wait to repay his sister another time.

Two odds and ends related to meals and restaurants: like the two English teachers in New York had suggested, I tried to find a local restaurant on the food streets which I knew and trusted. This seemingly simple task was made difficult by the unintelligible signs and haphazard set-ups of Chinese shops and street-side restaurants. If you were not literate in the written language and culture, you were not going to be able to approach a restaurant counter and sound out “taco” the way you might to a Spanish speaker at a Mexican restaurant (which, unlike the average unmarked restaurant in China, would have traditional Mexican architecture or a Mexican flag to help distinguish it to passersby). The dishes in China were many, strange, and puzzling, and even if you knew the name of a favorite, the locals probably wouldn’t grasp your pronunciation attempts. So what I did was scan the open-door restaurants and street vendors, looking for anything familiar I could recognize and use as a stepping stone to boldly request an order from a stranger in a foreign language. Relying on my very limited vocabulary, I spotted the characters for “beef noodles,” stopped into the four table small restaurant, and said the name of the dish in a very plain sentence with a voice that was quiet but nonetheless clear in pronunciation. They brought me out a big bowl of beef noodles (mostly noodles with a couple tidbits of beef) that cost only one American dollar, and I ended up returning to this same restaurant for the same meal several times.

Some places advertised "California" beef noodles. Most of the beef noodle shops I visited were run by Hui people, a Muslim minority, not the majority Han Chinese.

Some places advertised “California” beef noodles. Most of the beef noodle shops I visited were run by Hui people, a Muslim minority, not the majority Han Chinese.

The other thing: the Chinese, like healthy eating advocates in America, were always stressing the importance of breakfast. As a typical morning greeting, they would ask, “Have you had your breakfast?” Growing up and going through school in America, I heard classmates say countless times that they never ate breakfast. It was a common thing to skip, and people seemed to take pride in nonchalantly boasting that they never ate breakfast. In China, the attitude was the opposite; casually forgetting breakfast would have been a shock. They made sure to be up early to fill up on noodles, fried pastry sticks, potato and egg pancakes, hard-boiled eggs, soup, steamed buns, and congee (rice porridge).

My school's P.E. teacher once got me breakfast when I told him I hadn't eaten. An English teacher, Miss Liu, heard about it and said, "Small Black bought you breakfast!? Small Black is our leader."

My school’s P.E. teacher once got me breakfast when I told him I hadn’t eaten. An English teacher, Miss Liu, heard about it and said, “Small Black bought you breakfast!? Small Black is our leader.”

Lunch was likewise a big meal. The lunch “hour” was around two hours long, so people could enjoy a big meal with family or colleagues and take a mid-day nap. Dinner could be big, but it didn’t have to be. It was usually only a large affair if friends were gathering together at a restaurant or entertaining guests at home.

Perhaps it was all the strange food in China- its unsanitary preparation from farm to street market to kitchen to table- that caused me weekly stomach sickness. I made sure to always boil my water or drink from a water cooler, so I didn’t suspect that. Of course, the ever-present crowds of people and filthy environmental conditions could have been the main culprits or contributors. All the large meals, doused in oil and red chili sauce, and the unwanted glasses of alcohol certainly never allowed my stomach a moment’s peace. The dinners were at times tasty and fun, but no moment in China was ever pure bliss. Every intriguing bite concealed the potential for pain.

The answer to why I got sick so much in China: I never saw any health department grades in any restaurant windows, but I did see places thawing out their squid in a side alley.

The answer to why I got sick so much in China: I never saw any health department grades in any restaurant windows, but I did see places thawing out their squid in a side alley.

The Real China: Bottoms Up! (Part 1)

October 8, 2015 / / 1 Comment

As unappetizing as the food was in China, as dreary and dilapidated was the landscape, I have to say that my spirits were brightened whenever there was a big group dinner. I’ve never had such fun at an American dinner party.

If all the extraneous, all the vanity, is removed from life, the simple pleasure of enjoying a good meal with friends is the only sure form of happiness a man has. (Don’t believe me? Look it up in Ecclesiastes.) China, and much of life, hadn’t turned out to satisfy my expectations. English classes, city life, and new friendships were not playing out according to fantasy. My time was going to pass in China as quickly as it ever had; I was going to feel dejected and trapped in a foul country. That was my lot. But the dinners were something I could depend on to lift up my mood and remind me to be thankful for all the good I did have. They were the best occasions for sociability, and without them I probably would have lost 10 or 15 pounds like the two English teachers in New York had predicted.

Most of my dinners out were hosted by the university or it’s Department of Foreign Affairs. Any holiday or any event (e.g. the foreign teachers’ arrival on campus, the end of the semester), the school would host the other foreign teachers and me for dinner. Besides me, there were Grant and Sue, the retired Australian couple spending their third year in China, and Lee Ahram, the Korean teacher from Seoul. We were all brought in as language specialists of a sort, native speakers who could demonstrate to the pupils how the language they learned rote from chalkboard and textbook was supposed to be spoken by live people.

On our first dinner out together, at the hotel restaurant on campus (hotel restaurants were the best in China, and they are where I had most of my big, round table group dinners), Grant and Sue explained that I should not sit down before anyone else. It was best to follow the hosts’ lead in everything, and in the case of the seating arrangement, each seat was assigned certain prominence and would be allocated by the senior members in the group’s hierarchy.

So I followed behind our Chinese hosts as we walked through the lobby with its cold fish, meats, and vegetables on display in the glass-faced cooler, past the small group of undersized ladies dressed in matching fuchsia uniforms who wished us welcome in unison, up the worn, carpet steps to the second floor, turned right to walk down the narrow corridor, past the pungent odor emitting from the bathrooms- several yards away- and waited for the servants in the hallway to direct us into our room.

Me, in the red, at another dinner with teachers from a different school.

Me, in the red, at another dinner with teachers from a different school. Typical of a dinner out in a private dining room.

Each dining room was private, accessed by a single door from the hallway just like a typical large hotel’s floor plan. The dining rooms had enough space for a dozen or more people, and usually they were furnished with one very large, heavy round table on the far side, and cushioned chairs, couches, a coffee table (should that be called a tea table?), a tall air conditioner unit, a coat hook, and a card table on the near side. It was a large, private space where a party of extended family, friends, or business contacts could camp out for hours and smoke, sip tea, and eat and drink to their stomach’s content. Once the door was shut, a silent serving girl would be the only outside disturbance into the room, and there was often a small window that would slide open to reveal new dishes for her to serve so that she did not need to constantly interrupt the atmosphere by walking in and out.

Compared to America, I preferred the dining service in China. The serving girls never introduced themselves, they didn’t ask me how my first few bites were and how my meal was (“How’s that tastin’ for ya’?” “Can I get those plates attayer way?”), they stood by and waited for the group’s order, served it in silence or maybe announced the name of the dish, then stood aside to let people eat and converse. The only bad part was that in a Chinese restaurant without private rooms, with an open floor plan, or even in a private room if the serving girl were absent, diners who needed something would call out at the top of their voice, “Fuwuyuan!” (“Server!” This word looks like a mess of vowels on paper, like a bad Scrabble tray, and its pronunciation sounded just as sloppy.) The diners shouted like hungry infants, but their voices were the hoarse, throaty calls of men who had been smoking and drinking for decades. There was hardly a moment’s peace in China; a call for service, a merchant’s shout, a grandmother’s shrill minding, the buzz of talking from crowds, roosters’ crowing, car horns, and those terrible large truck and bus air horns that still haunt my memory- but nearly never the chattering of a squirrel, the melody of a song bird, or even the caw of a crow- would interrupt and invade the tranquility of the mind.

Something else to be thankful for in all service industries in China, not only in restaurants: no tipping. I left a couple small bills behind at a sandwich and coffee shop once, and the busboy chased me down outside the door, as I was zipping up my coat, and surprised me by speaking in intelligible English, “You forgot this” and handed me back my tip money. The price on the menu was assumed to include all expenses, including service labor. A tip, even given in generous appreciation for exceptional service, could not be received except at the breach of honor, and could even be taken as an insult that basically said, “Here, you need a little help to improve your business.”

Another time, I went in for my first haircut in China and wordlessly followed along as I was given a head and shoulders massage, a shampoo, and another massage before my haircut (pre-haircut massages were obligatory). Then my haircut. Then there was a final shampoo after the haircut. At least 60 minutes of service split between two hairdressers. Total charge: around six dollars U.S. I tried to insist on a tip. I couldn’t conceive how a business could stay afloat by charging so little, but the head hairdresser (I don’t know if that’s a pun, but I apologize if so) stiffly thrust out his palm and shook his head in adamant refusal. It would have been a serious violation of their code, their honor to dutifully serve, to accept a tip.

My aunt liked taking pictures of me all the time, even while I was getting this haircut.

My aunt liked taking pictures of me all the time, even while I was getting this haircut.

Back to the restaurants, I have to mention the numbers on the private room doors. They weren’t numbered according to floor level or distance left or right from the main stairs (well, they followed these conventions a little). The main determiner for door numbers was luck. I’ll spare a full discussion on Chinese lucky numbers and superstitions, which can be found in bland detail elsewhere, but I will say that the Chinese prefer even numbers, except for four, which is pronounced very similarly to “death” in their language. I read that tall buildings would skip floors four and fourteen in China, which I never actually encountered there, though I thought the rationale would have made a lot more sense than the way most American buildings omit the thirteenth floor. Any Chinese person could tell you, “We don’t like four and fourteen because they sound like ‘to die,’” but it would take an internet search by the common man to figure out the foggy details of why thriteen is unlucky in Western culture, or a Ph.D. in something like folklore or obscure history could explain offhand why that is so. And is it even that unlucky? It’s certainly not offensive like four is in China. If someone gave me thirteen of something, I wouldn’t mind (hey, a baker’s dozen!), but giving a gift of four items in China was considered a serious taboo, tacitly wishing for someone’s death.

Anyway, the room numbers were usually, needlessly, three or four digits long (there were probably never more than twenty or so rooms in a single restaurant), and the deluxe room was always “888” or “8888,” even if the rooms before it were “242” and “240.” This was because everyone loved eight because it meant something like “fortune” in Chinese, or at least it rhymed with a phrase that meant “to make a fortune.” (Note: “eight” in Chinese rhymes with the “to make” part of the phrase, not even the “fortune” part of “to make a fortune.”) I can’t quite explain it, it has something to do with the quality of auspiciousness too, but I know the Chinese mind equated being blessed with having obscene amounts of money and so they loved eight. I never actually got to eat in the 888 room, but it was always full of a lively crowed when I got a peek inside; probably it was always reserved for big occasions.

On the evening of my first big dinner in China, with Grant and Sue, Ahram, the two officials from the university’s Foreign Affairs Office: Miss “Amy” Hu and Mr. “Oliver” Zhang, and some assorted vice presidents from the university, I didn’t even know to check for the door number. My mind was being overwhelmed by all the subtle differences in the foreign surroundings and the shockingly strong bathroom odor wafting down the relatively nice, yet nonetheless dingy hallway. I kept my bearings by following Grant and Sue and listening to their commentary as we waited in the cushioned chairs around the coffee- no, tea- table. The serving girls spent about ten minutes filling the dining table up with about a half-dozen dishes when the senior members of the group, the vice presidents, decided it was time to begin. Sometimes the meats and vegetables would sit for twenty minutes before the meal began; lukewarm and cold meat dishes were common. As the group dined, the serving girls would bring more and more dishes until plates had to be removed, combined, or stacked on top of each other.

This restaurant was unique. A wood-burning stove underneath the table heated the soup in the center. We're all wearing coats because this restaurant, like most buildings, was unheated.

This restaurant was unique. A wood-burning stove underneath the table heated the soup in the center. We’re all wearing coats because this restaurant, like most buildings, was unheated.

Grant and Sue explained that the most prestigious seat was the one furthest away, facing the door. Grant inferred this was because the kings and officials from years past would be able to scan all approaching guests and look out for danger that way. Maybe he was onto something. Anyway, it always seemed like the most important-looking seat if I had to pick one. So the vice presidents on the second tier of the hierarchy insisted that the man with the highest status, the most guanxi (easier if I just write it “gwan-shee,” which means basically face/ social status/ reputation), sit there first. After that, the second-tier group members would fuss and jostle each other over seating arrangements, with guests energetically declining and then reluctantly accepting the honor (sometimes when being shoved into the seat by two of their lower-tiered friends) until the seats were filled up all the way around; the more important or higher status people sitting closer to the prestigious seat at the far side of the table.

I was seated next to Grant, a little past midway on the counterclockwise side of the descending hierarchy. I noticed that this table had an automatic lazy Susan (How classy! How convenient!) with a digital number displayed in front of every seat. I asked Amy Hu, who spoke flawless, refined English in a mixture of educated British and American accents that made her sound dignified and lovely, if not like a movie character from a period piece, why our seats were numbered. She said she thought the numbers corresponded to the seats’ position around the table, which was obvious enough, so I had to deduce my own answer that the numbers served no practical purpose. The serving girls would never call into their headset, “I need another bottle of beer for Seat 6!” They would either hand the person another drink directly, or if they were serving a new dish, they would make space for the platter on the lazy Susan wherever they could find it and let it slowly rotate around for every seat to grab a piece. The seat numbers, like those on the door, I figured, were just another arbitrary status marker to let people know how auspicious there seat was.

So as people remained in their seats and the large variety of dishes slowly made their laps around the table’s circumference, we reached out with our chopsticks to eat a bite directly from the communal dish or gathered a small portion into our small bowls. Almost no one in China had large dinner plates; only small bowls and small plates. Meals were eaten family style and diners gathered a little at a time with their chopsticks. Only in some soups was there a serving spoon, otherwise (prepare yourselves, germ-conscious Americans) people would take food from platters with the chopstick that had just touched their mouths. I read that the proper etiquette was to pass food from the communal plate with the blunt, untouched end of the chopsticks, but I never saw this rule followed. It never bothered me to eat from shared dishes. In fact, it was a relief to be in a culture where people weren’t watching for me to slip up so they could be the one to sound the social alarm and call out, “Double dipper!”

I knew from eating at Japanese, Korean, and Chinese restaurants that each culture used a different style of chopsticks. The Japanese use what I consider the standard: slender, square, or circular sticks of medium length made of wood or ceramic. They feel balanced and proportional in one’s hand. Koreans use thin, flat metal chopsticks that easily slipped and turned sideways in my hand so that I had to frequently reset my grip. They also set the table with a long-handled metal spoon (that I would call an ice cream spoon) instead of the short, deep spoon used by Chinese diners (the white, plastic spoon served with egg drop or miso soup in American Chinese restaurants). Chinese chopsticks were the longest and most difficult for me to wield. Cut three or four inches off the end and you would have the standard Japanese chopsticks. This aside information is redundant to anyone familiar with these cultures, but the difference and the extra length of the Chinese chopsticks puzzled me until I sat down to my first big dinner in China.

From l to r: standard-sized Japanese chopsticks, Korean chopsticks and spoon set, souvenir chopsticks of the larger Chinese size, barbecue tongs.

From l to r: standard-sized Japanese chopsticks, Korean chopsticks and spoon set, souvenir chopsticks of the larger Chinese size, barbecue tongs.

As the dishes rotated around for everyone to select a sample, your choice dish might be an arm’s length away. Keep in mind that these round tables had a large circumference that could fit ten or more people around them, and the lazy Susan would be filling up with rows of plates as the meal went on. To get that chicken leg without standing up and leaning over the table and the dishes in between, you would need an extra-long pair of chopsticks. Hence, Chinese chopsticks. It was like having extremely long, delicate fingers to take pinches of food, one small bowl full at a time.

And those plates would stack up. Because the meal was served family style, ten different mouths might try a little of every dish; a large group could easily finish off more than two dozen plates of food. I was at a wedding where the serving girls filled up the table as everyone watched the ceremony, so by the time my table started eating, the plates had piled up into a mound that was three deep in the middle, with turtle soup, shell and all, on top. The craziest example was when I went with Aunt Fong to meet one of her friends at a restaurant that served coffee and international foods. To the Chinese, Western food is KFC and McDonald’s, so I was used to people telling me no when I asked them if they liked Western food, or saying, “I love Kun-duh-ji” (“Kentucky” or KFC in Chinese). So I was skeptical about the international menu at this restaurant, but I had been griping for months about wanting pizza and Aunt Fong had promised me this place had it.

Sitting on the long couches in our private dining room, with the menu laid out on the long, rectangular tabletop (another Western touch of this café), I watched as Aunt Fong flipped back and forth through the menu’s twenty or so pages (Chinese menus are thick). She said “pizza” at one point and then she was looking at bowls of soup, so I said, “Okay.” A pizza and some soup seemed like enough to feed our party of three. But she continued browsing through the menu, looking at different entrees; I assumed she had changed her mind about the soup and pizza.

After our waitress brought out two large bowls of soup for Aunt Fong and me, followed by two other main dishes, I realized that what I thought were her audible suggestions were actually her selections. She had tabulated a huge order of food, uneatable even with my voracious appetite. I was already full and plates already covered the table when the medium-sized pizza was served. I didn’t have the stomach for it at that point, but I ate a sympathy piece just because Aunt Fong had ordered it just for me and I would have felt bad if a whole pizza went uneaten. The pizza itself was decent for a Chinese restaurant that didn’t specialize in pizza. Even after it was on the table, a few more dishes were brought out. I counted so I would be able to report it to my American friends, and at one point there were eleven dishes on the table, balanced on top of each other and nestled together. For three people. All were main dishes, like a Thai curry chicken and rice; it was not eleven side dishes holding dinner rolls or a small iceberg lettuce salad.

The copious spread for my birthday dinner.

The copious spread for my birthday dinner.

That was not atypical. I don’t know if it was a matter of the host’s prestige or a desire to make sure everyone got fed well, but the amount of food on the table was beyond abundant. Sometimes there were left-overs to take home, but usually the guests brought their appetites and would eat up most everything.

Each restaurant varied what Chinese staple foods it served, though every big restaurant had a menu over a hundred items deep. A small restaurant on a shopping street might specialize in a certain kind of dumpling or noodles, but a hotel restaurant had virtually whatever its guests could think off; they made all kinds of meats and regional favorites.

The drinks, though, were fairly standard. Each restaurant would set the table with a large bottle of Sprite and a Minute Maid orange drink that they don’t sell in the States. Then, for everyone who wasn’t a kid, a student, a person far younger than the median age of the group, or a lady who insisted on tea, there was light beer- possibly– and a clear rice liquor called bai jiu (“by jee-oh”) that translates to “white wine/liquor.” I would usually protest and ask for tea and only tea. By no means had China turned me into a tea connoisseur, but I dreaded having to drink the foul bai jiu and I was desperate for an alternative. Bottled water was not an option and there was no water cooler available to fill up a glass. Being a man, I was expected to have some kind of alcohol, so my only alternative was light beer, which I had only occasionally when the restaurant had bottles in stock and my hosts were passively content to let me drink it. I hated the bai jiu, I thought it should have been taken off the dinner tables and relegated to garages as a solvent to clean lawnmowers with. Then again, Chinese people don’t have private garages, and I didn’t hear or see a single lawnmower throughout China- no one had a yard.

But the men hosting the dinner always insisted I be given a glass of their hard liquor, and they outnumbered me, had way more gwan-shee than me, had the mandate of Chinese society, behaved a lot like boys who were used to bossing people around and getting their way, and they were the ones paying for dinner after all, so they lined up my glass next to all the others, smashed the top of the bai jiu bottle (no openers necessary) and drained a bottle or two, glug-glug-glug, among the row of glasses. Some of the men could drink a bottle or more by themselves in one sitting (maybe that should read, “in one sitting, one passing out, and one falling”). I would try to pull my glass away from the downpour, but they would always insist, “A little!” and continue the stream till my glass was filled far past my comfort zone.

Continued tomorrow in Part 2.

Cheers! with my friend Ma Cao.

Cheers! with my friend Ma Cao.

The Real China: Like a Child

October 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Living in China, and I am sure expatriates of all stripes would say the same, often made me feel like a child. Predominantly, this was because of my low language ability. Riding in the back of a taxi cab, watching the city streets scroll past the passenger window, unintelligible signs and store fronts would wash over me. In groups of people, I often had to sit without stirring and wait for the indecipherable conversation’s indeterminate end. Out shopping by myself, I could either point at what I wanted or go without it; good Samaritans did step in when the lady behind the counter became confused orstartled by me.

But not only my ignorance of the language sidelined me to watch the adults go about their business, every facet of life- social customs, city layouts, building aesthetics, manners of speaking, who was married to whom, everything– fit into a foreign grammar that I could not parse at first glance.

Understand- or actually, don’t understand- cousins would call each other “my brother” or “my sister,” friends might do the same, and any time I tried to ask questions to peel away the layers of whatever Chinese riddle was going on, I was met with an embarrassed giggle, or confused look, and maybe a jumbled answer about how Mei Mei was or wasn’t really Sho Sho’s brother, or they just called each other that, and no further explanation. With the question of who was married to whom, I suppose it was not always completely necessary to determine this, but Chinese married couples shared no common jewelry or beauty mark, and then I would see a svelte lady hanging around a sloppy-looking man and wonder why that would be, or see a pretty young lady and wonder if she could be single, so how could my curiosity not grow? I would be sitting among the same groups as certain pairs always seemed to be there together, so I kept a keen eye out to track which male and female pairs consistently came or went together. It really was not very transparent to tell.

I had to be shrewd to gather what clues I could. Wives in China keep their family name after marrying, so my aunt for instance, married to Uncle Jiang, was still Aunt Fong and not Jiang. During group chats, the couples almost never spoke my language and so they rarely introduced themselves to me directly. Sometimes they would arrive separately or sit apart according to the social rank of the whole mixed gathering. I merely absorbed the social scene from a silent distance.

The men and women there did not follow American modes of conspicuous “couplehood” like holding hands, sitting close together, or making inside jokes to try and look cute while grating on everyone else’s patience. People there had a habit of acting reserved, yet still jolly, in public and in private, which I did appreciate, but this clouded my social perception considerably. Eventually, it would dawn on me that a certain man and woman had been standing around each other in three different gatherings, and therefore there was no other explanation but that they had to be married.

The smoking gun that my friend, Ma Cao, was married to this cute lady: their mutual baby.

The smoking gun that my friend, Ma Cao, was married to this cute lady: their mutual baby.

Another example of the foreign cultural grammar I had to interpret: the basic arrangement of shopping spaces. To contrast, first consider America, the land of wide open space, where each commercial business often has its own rectangular building and parking lot. If combined, stores will form a mini-mall, still rectangular and with a much larger parking lot, and of course many stores can join up under the roof of a classic symbol of America, the very large, boxy shopping mall, with an encompassing parking lot or garage. Also do not forget the downtown districts, with specialty boutiques situated in a row of gentrified, old connected storefronts, separated by interior walls, with parking space on the streets.

In China, there are variations on these basic models, “with Chinese characteristics.” Commercial store giants like Carrefour and Wal-Mart often formed the core of the Chinese equivalent to a medium-sized mall (there were furniture malls and other grand shopping centers throughout the larger cities, too). They have an attached parking garage for the minority of customers who arrived by car, usually above or below the store, but most take public transportation or ride their electric scooters, so the most common parking is a long, cluttered line of scooters, with some charging up via extension cords and exterior building outlets. Inside the building, dozens of smaller shops line the way to the main store. The tactic is the same one your local supermarket uses in placing the milk and eggs in the back corner, past produce and aisles of impulse buys, only the Chinese line their corridors with so many clothing and gift shops that it was difficult to find the main interior entrance, usually requiring walking around corners, through corridors, and up or down escalator ramps- once I was unable to find the Carrefour altogether. I became frustrated and stranded like a gambler desperate to escape an ingeniously looping casino. And, like a cunning supermarket, immediately after the Wal-Mart check-outs are the tea and medicine shops, candy counters, cheap plastic trinkets, and arcade games. This much was easily understandable from an outsider’s view.

What I could not navigate were the shopping streets. In a big city, the shopping streets were major attractions with chain stores, popular food vendors, neon signs, and more people per square foot than I had seen in even Times Square or almost any other American equivalent.

Nanjing's Confucius Market, where filial piety and sales tax are included on every item.

Nanjing’s Confucius Market, where filial piety and sales tax are included on every item.

In streets like these, the super chains like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and the Nike and Adidas stores were easy to identify. But where I mostly stayed, in the real China (as opposed to the mega-cities which have every kind of commercial layout), shops were housed in rows of decaying architecture built centuries ago that stretched over several long city blocks. Each shop was recessed in the structure, as if cut out of a concrete cave, and there was no signage to signal what were the contents inside. Sure, there were names painted above the square openings, but always in a typical, sloppy or mechanical font of Chinese calligraphy. This was of no help to me or anyone accustomed to the marketing power of inviting icons. The hardware store did not post a picture of a wrench out front. The clothing stores did not have an icon of a fashion model or a simple graphic of a shirt, but if they were a big enough franchise then at least they had abundant sale posters hung up and a wide window view to the clothing racks inside. The fake Apple store, however, did use the trademarked white apple logo to try and fool the masses into buying a knock-off i-product. Or, maybe it was a real Apple store after all, but who was I, a foreigner, to tell?

The cumulative effect of these businesses in the row house style of an American downtown (note that Chinese cities do not have downtowns but urban centers with sprawling streets and cavernous back alleys) was an eyesore and a headache. The natives, who had spent their life getting acquainted with the language and the cityscape, could pick out the distinct business types by familiarity or by reading the writing scrawled above the doorway. Meanwhile, I was left scratching my head. I wondered what each shop contained, and I had to walk directly front and center to peek inside, like an audacious toddler, and scan with wide eyes all that the shop contained.

One city's not-so-inviting commercial street. The garage-door like openings were a dark mystery to me, but the chickens spoke, er, clucked for themselves.

One city’s not-so-inviting commercial street. The garage-door like openings were a dark mystery to me, but the chickens spoke, er, clucked for themselves.

A very Chinese feature of the multitude of small businesses was the overlap among neighboring shops with the same product line or service. Three hardware stores in a row might have slices of the same pie: one selling chain, cords, parts, and pieces of things; another, power appliances and generators; and the third, paint and bathroom fixtures. Or, there could be a whole street of nothing but small clothing shops, each selling a variation of the same shirts, purses, coats, scarves, and accessories. I walked down the streets of a small city where I saw four different bakeries in addition to the street snack vendors, each low in quality, not a threat to its competitors and not being threatened with lack of business. The Chinese economy, very unlike the American, makes tolerant allowance for small business owners to set up shop next to a near-duplicate line of competitors, sell little, and pay less in rent.

Go to any tourist area, any area that is could even conceivably attract a tourist in China, and you will soon be able to predict with great accuracy what booths and what gaudy junk will line the way to the attraction. Walkways led the way to every accessible part of the Great Wall- filled with tiny shops for folding fans, t-shirts, cheap jade amulets, and cheaper plastic toys- and it was the same at every other location. Permanent stores and booths might not be set up, but at the top of a mountain trail or outside the mouth of a cave an old woman might be waiting to show off wooden toy swords and bottled tea and fruit drinks to the only group of travelers she might see all day. How far had these vendors walked to set up shop, and how long were they sitting along this pathway? I always wondered. It seemed that, despite the saturation of identical souvenirs, the number of businesses in Chinese tourist sites and cities did not drive up the level of competition. I cannot imagine any greedy slumlords evicting tenants when I often stumbled upon shops in dark alleys after getting lost after several turns through rambling lanes, and to my surprise, saw an employee or owner lounging at the counter, watching TV. I peeked in my head for a moment out of sheer astonishment. Who would ever shop at this place? Who could even find it?

A typical line-up at a busy tourist attraction.

A typical line-up at a busy tourist attraction.

There were many times in China where, like a boy wandering away from his mother to explore the variety of aisles in a large store, I set off on my own to walk the streets of the city and chance to find new sights and adventures. This was my favorite thing to do when I visited the major cities. I would follow my street map and take a pedestrian tour through parts of Beijing, for instance, letting the streets take me where they would, stopping whenever I was hungry or something caught my eye. I spent the time mute, a stranger not only to the city-dwellers but to their language, culture, and society as well. Again, sights and sounds poured over me, like an infant hearing words for the first time, and to acquire an understanding of my surroundings I had to passively accept it.

In any new city or experience in China, having a friend to translate for me proved invaluable. On my own, I could gain a sense of my surroundings, but I often needed someone to confirm or correct my surmises. Occasionally, I would be blessed to meet a young man who had studied in America and, in addition to understanding the general differences between our cultures, spoke fluent English. Other times, some of my bolder female students would be willing to approach me, and eventually our conversation would turn to explanations of the Chinese way.

Mostly though, I was on my own in a country where a tall, white man is a strange novelty. When I bought vegetables or food at the campus food store, the check-out ladies would mostly refuse eye-contact, but sometimes they would laugh and I can only assume that they were exchanging in-jokes to each other like, “Hey! Here’s that big foreigner, and he’s buying peanuts again! Foreigners must love peanuts!”

And even though I knew how to count and speak a scant amount of phrases in Chinese, they would always hold up their fingers or their calculator display to show me how much I owed, which I recognize was a courtesy to me as a foreigner, even if it could feel a little patronizing. I shocked the cashier a few times by repeating the total in Chinese, or saying, “I know, four fifty” when they seemed skeptical that I could comprehend. Those rare times I spoke up, they would have a good-natured laugh. I was a surprise to them- precocious, even.

Walking the streets, children would see me and call out to everyone, “Laowai!” Foreigner! After living for months in a city as the only non-Chinese face, I too sat up in attention when I saw a bulbous, white body through a train or bus window- another foreign traveler or teacher. We were a special class, an odd and entertaining spectacle.

I will say that many people seemed delighted to have me in their country. In city life, strangers ignore each other as they walk past, and this happened to me for the most part, but there were still quite a few occasions where I perceived that the people in front of me were whispering about me or the group standing to my side was examining me as I walked by.

Thankfully, Aunt Fong or another volunteer would often accompany me into the city center or help me when I needed to do something important like go to the bank or doctor. This ensured that I got to where I wanted to go, my needs were communicated to the clerk, banker, or wait staff, and no sly vendors could cheat me out of my American dollars. After a while though, having someone escort me everywhere, order my food, and speak to store employees for me aggravated my American sense of independence. It ignited an urge to go see places and try things on my own, hence my solo excursions around Beijing and elsewhere. Still, I could not escape my dilemma. I either relied on an intermediary to help me and do most things for me, or I wandered on the outside of society, aloof to what was taking place before me.

Aunt Fong, literally taking me by the hand.

Aunt Fong, literally taking me by the hand.

It was not a very difficult burden to live with, but it was definitely humbling. The worst part about being a foreign guest was when people assumed I was stupid, or when they bossed me around like an ignorant beast. I held no ill feelings toward those who phrased things delicately or spoke to me simply, as if to a child. I knew from teaching English classes that expressing one’s meaning to speakers of other languages often required baby steps. The point wasn’t to demean but to convey. To do so subtly requires acute empathy of your listener’s perspective.

But not everyone took pains to explain things delicately to me. Oftentimes, with Uncle Jiang, I received rough orders that were his transliterations of Chinese grammar. “Look. Follow me.” Or: “Listen to me.” He would speak these commands with a stiff, stern face, and his tone and cadence were deep and slow, almost like Darth Vader, but without the booming sense of doom or space helmet.

This routine of listening to blunt statements got old quick, but I always reminded myself that Uncle Jiang was good enough to try and teach me Chinese and let me stay over at his and Aunt Fong’s apartment most weekends. I had to respond to his grace with patience. He and Aunt Fong also took me along on several weekend trips, which I have to credit him for, even if he tried to rush me through lines by pushing me in the back or tugging my wrist and chiding me “Quickly, quickly.”

My position in China was such that I could not change my treatment. In America, the fantasy of teenagers is to own a car and move away from their parents to drink and do whatever they want- right away at 18, if possible. In China, I was reverted to the childhood stage, unable to fend for myself. My travels and most of my commerce depended on someone else, not necessarily older, but culturally literate. I was relieved of certain responsibilities, cared for by others, often treated as the helpless outsider. I could not argue I was otherwise.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Mantis Versus

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑

Show Buttons
Hide Buttons