Chinese President Hu Jintao lights an industrial sized “zhong hua” brand cigarette, in Beijing Monday afternoon.

Creative Credit: MS啊

want this lwife

So there I am. Nothing new. The round table, drinking baijiu, new acquaintances. Older, very friendly guys. Warm and funny. Huge smiles all around. After a toast, the top guy refills my glass. Blurry eyed, he says, “We Chinese are friendly people”. It’s a statement, but a question. He’s seeking approval. I get this on almost a daily basis. Usually it’s asking me to approve of some adjective Chinese describe themselves with - usually “friendly”, “kind”, or “smart”. I’m drunk but even if I wasn’t I’d have to agree. Yes, Chinese are super friendly (kind and smart as well). I say yes and he announces to the rest of the table, “Did you hear that? He said Chinese people are friendly”. Everyone is happy and we down another shot.

Masturbatory thinking and classic mei banfa.

My point lay not in the adjective, but in the process. Even “westerners” know that it’s not good manner to praise yourself. That is, unless someone else is trying to degrade you. And even then it might be best to keep your mouth shut and let your record, or at least others speak for you.

“Yo, P, tell ‘em what cha life’s like”

Living in China, censorship will be a part of your daily life. Like the clouds keeping out harmful UV rays, you’ll be blessed with some dude deciding what you read when you roll in late to the office each morning. That means no wikipedia, no flickr, no blogspots, sometimes no wordpress, no typepad, no tumblr, SMS hackers*, no IHT, no NYT, no USA Today, and at times, no CNN or YouTube. Basically, all your lifelines to outside information and rational thinking. Your understanding of world events will be limited to headlines because when you click through, the page will not load. Good friends will begin copy/pasting articles into emails and msn chat windows. Books? Forget it. Your friend will ship some in, but they will be held up in customs until you provide a complete translation of them all. That, or some of those red bills.

If it weren’t bad enough that you won’t be able to access info, you’re gonna be victim of rampant dissemination of propaganda, not only from your peers but via various forms of media. During the riots in Lhasa or at other times of social unrest, that will include text messages and msn spams with warnings of Tibetans carrying bombs and machetes (ok, this will be true and two innocent bystanders will get hacked) to nearby big cities. Sometimes the information is so absurd that you’ll just censor yourself. You’ll all but stop watching TV, especially the one English language station, because the assault on common sense is too much to handle. As you understand more and more of the Chinese language, you’ll limit yourself to shows whose characters don’t start every other sentence with, “We Chinese people {insert self-praise here}.” But you’ll still wonder,’with only themselves as an audience, why are they telling themselves who they themselves are?’.

What will all this mean for your life? It means, basically, that you will be incapable of having an intelligent conversation on politics, history, and most social issues. People will say things that are absolutely incorrect but you won’t be able to argue; not because arguing over something that matters is essentially unacceptable (but sometimes it is), but because information asymmetry makes it logically impossible. To fill the void, you will have only a few options - work longer hours and try to make more money or find viceful hobbies like drinking, “soaking” mei meis, and eating unhealthy amounts of street BBQ.

But, while irked, you will be impressed. You will say to yourself, ‘the thing about propaganda is that it works’. You’ll remember Fidel’s quote: “Propaganda is the soul of every struggle” and nod your head in agreement. To control the thoughts of over 1 billion people; to have that many people, more or less, think the same thing. It will be impressive, if not scary.

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*You will have some friends from other Asian countries and they will tell you that the text messages sent back home - sometimes in their native language, sometimes in English - often arrive in altered form. “I love you” might turn to “I hate you” and someone might get called a “fool” instead of a “sweetheart”.

It’s been a while, but that doesn’t mean “mei banfa” experiences aren’t happening all around me. To the contrary, they are so common that patterns have started revealing themselves. It’s chaos theory over here. I’ll save the insights for another time and give you this overdo dose.

No matter how many degrees, how much money in your account, multinational your company, or big your Benz, Chinese people, all of them - your co-workers, business partners, friends, people on the streets and in the clubs - see you only as one thing: A resource*, and more specifically, an English teacher. It doesn’t matter if you are European and come from a country whose official language is not English.

I promise you, when I go back to the States, any Chinese I see in a suit - proper business people - I’m gonna approach them and say, “oh, have you thought of opening a restaurant? I’d eat lunch there”.

It’s so insulting, but so natural here. It is…mei banfa.

*expanded discussion to come when I have time

I know it’s the key to a happy life in a new country, but you can’t spell assimilate without “limits”. Here are the Assimilator’s top three ‘no-can-doos’.

1. Telling someone to “Japan your Mother” (the local version of MFer)
In my opinion, Japaning someone’s mother sounds like taking her for a nice dinner or to a hot spring. It might end at a love hotel, but I couldn’t be certain. What’s wrong with that?

2. Speaking Chinese during sex
She can say what she likes, but I’m sticking to what my tongue knows best;-)

3. The “brother fucker” syndrome (i.e. the girl I’m sleeping with calling me “big brother”)
No doubt, when you come here, you’re gonna meet some girl, fall for her, go out with her and her friends, whom she’ll proceed to introduce you to. One guy will be her “big brother”. You’ll remember the one child policy but think that her family is the exception (didn’t she say her dad is an official?) or that he’s just her cousin (they look alike, you think, but you haven’t been here long enough, so everyone looks alike). This is rational, and rationality takes precedent here, too…right? Then you’ll see them making out and get angry, drunken “western people” style angry and say, reaching for your best Chinese, but only finding English, “you….you….brother fucker!!”.

That’ll be a funny story to email your buddies back home about, telling them how you realized girls here call their boyfriends “big brother” and how you find it totally perverse. But then you’ll meet another girl, definitely prettier (you’re sure of it because now you can tell them apart), who takes you out and introduces you as her “big brother”. You’ll let her do that, and later the same night, much more. And you’ll be a victim like everyone else. Then you’ll think, ‘but my old American girl called me Daddy’, and wonder who the real perv is.

{All in Chinese}

“Introduce me to a foreign boyfriend”, my new acquaintance orders just two minutes into the conversation.

“Okay, what are your conditions?”, I inquired.

“He must be good looking, and speak Chinese, and…”

{I nod in agreement while she searches for more}

“Forget speaking Chinese, we can communicate with our bodies.”

A Chinese finally admitting they didn’t invent something and a Japanese accepting they finally didn’t perfect something.

Japanese: whats ktv?

Chinese: karaoke with girls

Chinese: ill say this…you invented it, but we perfected it. we definitely know how to do it better than u guys

Chinese: because here it is not about the song…

Chinese: it’s about the thong

Japanese: sou desu ne…

A quote from President bush on the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. For as bad a speaker as the President may be, he can have his moments. Check it out.

The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Bush’s position was that “this should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics.”

She said that Bush, in accepting the invitation last year from Hu to attend the Olympics, told him that the games would “shine a spotlight on all things Chinese.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Perino said.

Courtesy: IHT

It’s amazing how much the people here know about us. It’s even more amazing when I’m lectured on my own country immediately after I’m told I know nothing about their’s, their history, or culture. The most frequent and funniest history lesson I receive in China is on the English language - the one that says it’s only 200 years old. While I’m flattered to think that us innovative Americans could be given credit for creating and diffusing such a rich language in little more than 200 years, I’m always a bit disappointed by my counterparts who forget that what we’re talking about is, uh, Eng-lish.

“In China, adapting means living with the chaos. Succeeding means exploiting it”.

-Me

A: Well, we always perceive a culture from its package. especially americans

B: package? hehe

A: oh, hahaha. I meant “package” like commercial product

In a delicately veiled criticism of China’s sticking point, Howard French points to the alleged progress of their neighbor to the south. The article is worth reading, but from my own experience in Vietnam, I wouldn’t venture to say the people are particularly over the war, especially those in Hanoi and other northern cities. Maybe his trip offered some spectacular insights that mine didn’t, but I just can’t draw the same conclusion when, buying water or going to an internet cafe, it’s not uncommon for the merchants to look at you, look at the price posted on the wall, and then charge twice the amount. That, I have never experienced in China. But once a guy did try to charge me 2RMB for a pineapple that normally retails at 1RMB; and he did it with a warm smile

Mr. French must have come down with a case of the China blues. Expats contract it if they’ve stayed in the country for 3 consecutive months or more. The result - visiting any other country seems like a breathe of fresh air. Click the link above, or better yet, visit both countries and see for yourself.

P.S. Just to be fair, after I walked out of the Internet cafe in Hanoi, refusing to pay double everyone else, I stumbled upon another place. Confirmed the price, checked my email (none), and when I tried to pay, the woman refused to accept my money. You can never find that in China. But once I got a free lighter. But that was because my local dialect is slick!!!!

Long before rappers had beef, restaurant owners and patrons had MSG - a powerful punch of flavor that became and remains a taboo in American Chinese restaurants. Of course, I (think I) love it and consume large quantities on a daily basis.

The real story - one that started in Japan, made it’s way into American Chinese restaurants, was shunned thanks to the letter of an American Chinese Doctor, and later became ubiquitous throughout Asia and across the world (even back home, although you don’t know it) - is captivating. Read it here.

P.S. To be fair, I ate BBQ with a friend last week who refused to eat MSG. I couldn’t tell a difference.

The VC says, “I’m just not sure about this. It seems too cute to work. The industry is still in it’s infant stages…”

Having encountered this argument before, the entrepreneur has come prepared. Out of his chair, two hands on the table, leaping across the table, and in a raised voice, he cuts off the VC: “Too cute? Too infantile? Look, I’m like knut. Not a nut, but like knut. You know knut?”. He reaches into his brief case and pulls out a photo. “This is knut”, he says, holding the photo (seen below) inches from VC’s face. The VC leans back. “That’s right, lean back (editor’s note: curbs urge to reference Fat Joe’s hit) maybe it’ll give you some perspective”.

There’s a brief and awkward silence, and then his voice, this time much lower, resumes. “This is my business today. Cute and infantile, just like knut was a year ago”. Seated, he again reaches into the brief case and pulls out another photo (seen below). Sliding it across the table like an offer for a negotiation, he says calmly, “This is my business one year from now”.

I usually can’t write about the things that manage to surprise me, but yesterday I saw a long line of people - only the fourth proper queue I’ve seen since living here - and felt genuine intrigue.

From a young lady:

“Life should be spent wasting time on beautiful things, like cute boys and drinking coffee.”

Last night’s excursion made me think about writing a club post.

Last night was weird. We had a “customer manager” at our table the whole night. It wouldn’t been so strange to have someone you don’t know there making you drink and play games if it weren’t for the fact that it was, uh, a guy!!! And at a regular club. At KTV, it’s common to have a “DJ” - a girl in a pretty dress who keeps the music going, drinks some, pushes you to order more food & beverage, etc., or even a “hostess” who personally accompanies you, but at a normal club, with a guy, it felt out of place.

That aside, clubs in China are pretty great. Some will argue against me, but let me provide a few reasons why they rock:

-There is no waiting in long lines
-No fugly dude to decide who can(not) enter
-No dress code. *my favorite*
-You can come and go as you please
-No body search. No ID check. No stamp
-No cover charge, so you can hop from one to the next
-Because there are so many, they aren’t as packed as those in the States
-Even on weekdays, the clubs are jumping
-Water is free
-Fruit and snacks
-Games, games, games, tons of drinking games
-Fights are rare

The downsides:
-The person who keeps checking to see if bottles are empty to take them away, or keeps pouring you more, or opening all the bottles at once. That’s annoying. Leave us alone. Our empty bottles are like trophies. You’re taking away from the experience! (note: once, I hid all the alcohol from the wait staff to keep them from doing this. They were going crazy looking for it.)
-Paying for tissue
-Dance floor is small, sometimes non-existent, because club managers try to fill the place with tables. The upside to this is you don’t have any wallflowers or wanderers. Which means everyone is engaged, doing there own thing, which leads to less conflict. There is no posturing and mean muggin’ like in the US. The separate tables create an atmosphere that feels more divided than US clubs, however. That said, it is actually not difficult to engage other groups for drinking or dancing
-The music is not so great
-Bathrooms are only big enough to…use the bathroom
-Things start and end really early. You can “shut it down” by staying until 2am. Sometimes this is a good thing because you have to go to work the next morning.

It affects your judgment.

Everyone has been talking about this new club. So last night we went to check it out. Upon arrival, I realized we’d been to this club once before - about three months ago - but it was too packed to play. Last night, we got there early (9pm), but it was already too crowded - no tables available. We decided to look for another place. But before doing that, I needed to use the restroom. As we crossed the toilet threshold, my friend pointed to the sign - “No Japanese allowed”, written in Chinese. And while waiting, I noticed the walls decorated with loads of anti-Japanese posters, signs, pictures of Koizumi, etc. Maybe that is why the place is so popular?

If I had to make a list of things that surprised me when I first arrived in China, toward the top would be the level of hate and obsession Chinese have toward Japanese. We all know, understand, and acknowledge the root of this angst, but I don’t know why Chinese fail to comprehend that when they go on and on and on about the Japanese, it just makes them look weak and insecure. Not to themselves, of course, but to objective outsiders. Not even being able to let go in a place of relaxation and entertainment? It’s kinda pitiful in my view. Moreover, it distracts attention and energy away from the areas where China, Chinese people are strong and (need to be) making tremendous progress.

It sometimes feels as if I’m living in a society full of accountants - viewing the world on a purely historical basis. It’s incessant. Whenever I meet someone for the first time these are the standard ice breakers:

Where are you from?
How long have you been here?
Are you studying or working?
How much do you make?
You know we (Chinese) hate Japanese.

UPDATE: Thought I should provide a translation of the parts of the picture that aren’t in English. It says, “We have more than 10 times your population. No more sushi for you”.