Our company is moving offices in a few weeks and our apartment lease is up at the end of the month, so we’re apartment hunting. I’ve lived in three, progressively better places since I first arrived here, but I’ve never been a part of the search process. I started in the Chinese projects (i.e. government owned and assigned) for about a month and a half, which looks and feels like a prison. Then I went to another set of projects, for about 5 months, this one a little bit better, and finally into a residential complex, which is okay. Now I’m gonna splurge….or at least I thought so.

Today we went to look at a place. It was in the projects. Two bedrooms. The guy starts to say we can fit three people in. I’m not sure why he is saying this, because we (two people) said that we are only looking for a place to house two people. Maybe he wants to charge each person less, but altogether more? But it is clearly, clearly a two bedroom apartment. But he wants someone to sleep in the area designed for the dining table. But it’s not enclosed or anything. There’s absolutely no privacy. So my flatmate is trying to say, without sounding too direct, that for younger folks (this guy was probably 40), privacy is a consideration in the decision making process. I just step in and say, with a smile on my face and a slap to his back: “It’s not convenient for nailing chicks”. That’s the rough translation. My flatmate cringed and said, “He’s joking”. The landlord replied, “oh, no, don’t worry, it would be me sleeping there”. He said he wouldn’t be sleeping there everyday, though. But he is married, so I’m not sure why he would need to sleep there? But I did see woman’s shoes and products there. Were we gonna get 2 for 1?

Worst of all is this…he doesn’t want to pay rent or utilities. He wants to sleep for free. This guy has got to be the worst hustler of all time. I’ve had something crazy landlords, but never one like this dude. And I never will. Pass.

One day I was sitting by myself in Starbucks studying Chinese. My seat and the condiment (?) counter was separated by a four foot high wall, so those standing at the counter could see me and vice versa. Being diligent as I am, I was consumed by my studies, not paying nan attention to the gentleman at the counter, until I heard him comment profoundly, “Chinese”.

“Yeah…Chinese”, I replied, going back to my studies. I’ve learned my lesson. No more talking to strangers. And no more being overly polite.

“Are you a student?”, he inquired. He didn’t get my signal. Our conversation was already longer than I’d desired. And this question, of all he could have asked, is the worst, though natural and quite common given the Chinese book and baby face. The problem is that when I answer, a whole series of questions relating to what I do follows. I had to nip this in the bud, but I couldn’t lie.”No, I work here, but I’m studying Chinese on my own”. Surprisingly, he nodded, extended his had, said it was nice to meet me, and left.

Since then, I’ve noticed this guy at Starbucks….everyday!!! Weekdays and weekends. He is seriously holding court in this place. Now I know business is done in the tea houses in Japan and China, but this dude is taking it to a new level. Now I’m curious what it is he does. He’s young, less than 35, wears the “boss” Buddha beads (I’ll tell you about those one day) on his wrist, Polo with a popped collar, board shorts and flip flops. Starbucks franchise owner?

UPDATE: “Eddie” came over an talked to me just now. Turns out those Buddha beads are the real thing. He is starting a child education center based on Buddhist teaching. They hold meetings here in Starbucks.

UPDATE2: Thought I’d offer a quick explanation of the “Buddha beads” while I had a moment. These beads are basically Buddhist prayer beads - a Buddhist rosary, if you will. But of course, like the kaffiyeh, or the Crucifix, the majority of those rocking them do so for style rather than belief. In China, the BBs are standard issue for all the big bosses.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the Chinese are pure. If there’s one thing we cannot all agree on, it’s what adjective to place after pure.

You may recall, about a year ago, I wrote a short entry about me and HJ buying peaches from two old women on the side of the road in a city about an hour away from Chengdu. The one lady, “so country”, I said, thought that I was from another province, not another country.

Well, it’s peach season again and the DJ was on the buy. Here is his story.

“4 RMB for half a kilo”, she said.

“That’s too expensive”, I (the DJ) said.

“But of course, you’re a foreigner”, she replied matter of factly.

I asked the DJ what he thought about it -

“I know that, but she’s not supposed to tell me that’s why I am being overcharged.”

“Were you mad?”, I asked him.

“Not mad, just astonished.”

“But not mad? Why not?”

“If you get mad, you play the game.”

“What game?”

“The China game.”

Spoken like a true Chinese veteran.

My thoughts -

If you can understand this story, you can basically understand the Chinese psyche. That woman was unquestionably pure in her beliefs and actions. She believed she possessed the right to overcharge him for the peaches and needn’t be discrete about it.

Where does this perceived right stem from? From the fact that he’s a foreigner? In part, but she also would have overcharged a Chinese with an accent from another region. So the perceived right stems from the fact that the party is different? That’s one way of looking at it, but it basically boils down to information asymmetry - she knows the buyer doesn’t know the local price. She overcharges not out of a personal dislike toward the buyer, but merely because she can get away with it.

Can you get with it?

I wrote a rough draft of this entry months back but never posted it. I was reminded of it today and, after some polishing, present it to you. Enjoy.

One thing I really miss are acts of random kindness. Random and kindness just don’t go together here. There is always a pretense. Always.

After two consecutive weeknights of post 3am partying, I anticipated last night to be much calmer. After work, I grabbed a quick dinner by myself and returned home to wash my clothes. A friend sent me a message. She was in the neighborhood and asked if I  wanted to have a cup of coffee nearby. I obliged and by 8:30 I was into my first sips of a vanilla latte. We chatted for an hour before I received a call from an old friend who’d I sent a message to the night before. He’s a young, smart, and handsome American guy who I’d like to set up with a new friend who asked for an introduction to a “foreign boyfriend”.

This girl is a little old, 28, by Chinese standards. I know that it doesn’t sound old, but there seems to be an over 22 need not apply rule. I can try to rationalize this to you, but it would just make me sound like an idiot. You would never understand unless you’ve lived here. I’ll just say that’s the way it is. mei banfa. Anyway, my point is that despite the age, she is really beautiful. A lot of girls peak in their early 20s, but this girl is going to become finer and finer with age. And she’s not as petite as most Chengdu girls. She has a thickness to her that an American guy can accept and appreciate. I digress. My American friend said he was game. I told him I’d set something up. As I finished off the latte, I messaged the girl and asked if she was free tomorrow. She said, “I’m drinking at a bar. Is he free tonight?”. Classic. Only in China. I said, “probably not”. She said, “well, are you coming?”. Okay.

Of course it was at the Japanese hater bar. I arrived and she met me at the entrance and her first words after my name out of her mouth were, “I’m drunk”. She grabbed me by the hand and lead me into the bar. It was, not surprisingly, packed. She was accompanied by two other girls, probably in their early thirties. The “positions” in the club were so close together that it wouldn’t be hard to find yourselves mixed up with the group next to you. We started with a toast of Jack Daniel’s mixed with sweetened red tea. This type of place is called a “slow shake bar”. It’s not a bar. It’s not a club. The music is loud, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. There is no dance floor. People stand around their tables drinking and, well, shaking slowly.

We were dancing, drinking, drinking, dancing for 45 minutes or so when my friend suddenly grabbed her glass and left the table. My back is to the direction that she was headed so I didn’t know where she was going, but with cup in hand, it was clearly to drink with someone. She stayed gone for a while, maybe 20 minutes, before one of my new acqauintinces caught my attention and pointed to the table about 6 feet to the back and left of me. It was occupied by my missing friend and three guys. She gestured for me to come over. I grabbed my cup and she introduced me one by one. The first guy was a tall (about 6 feet), handsome guy with a strong jaw line and white button down shirt. The second was a short, stocky dude in a t-shirt and hoody. A Korean, I was soon to find out, and a good drinker. The third was my height, slim, and non-interested. After drinking with the first guy, I realized he was clearly her friend, but despite his good drinking manner, he seemed a bit uncomfortable, with his arms crossed at the his stomach. A minute or so after I drank a glass with each guy, she leaned to her right and shouted over the music, “He’s my ex-boyfriend. Handsome, right?”. Indeed, he was. Strapping, actually. Pulling him down by the shirt, she shouted in his ear, “he said you’re really handsome”. Classic Chinese move - ask you to affirm something they believe and then pass it off as a compliment. It’s an artificial lubricant of sorts, but one that’s nice. He smiled. Back to me, “he thought you were my boyfriend”. This is not surprising. This is what she wanted him to think, after all. Well, I didn’t want to be her tool, but I thought I could use it/her for what it’s worth. But out of some sense of respect for him, I decided that I would be only a passive accomplice to her scheme, which was clearly aimed at making him jealous.

We went back to our table for more slow shaking. She pulled me over to her side of the table, so that we were positioned facing her ex. She’d occasionally lean over, her arm around my shoulder and say something insignificant. I’d nod, smile, or laugh, whichever was appropriate, and she’d peak to see if he was looking. The innocent faux flirting went on for the next hour or so, with my friend taking brief interludes at his table and him sending a liasion to our table for a drink and games. Some weird sort of diplomacy the two had going on. At one point, when she wasn’t at either table, and I assumed making a visit to the ladies room, a new group of party goers occupied the table to the back and right of me, a mere 4 feet away. I heard one say something about “foreigner” and I prepared myself for what I knew was the inevitable, classic passive aggressive (read: aggressive) style of Chinese looking for a chance to “touch” one of the world’s greatest.

My two companions were thoroughly drunk, incapable of even dancing. Seated with their chins firmly planted in their hands, they were done. I had started later than them and was standing, shaking, slowly. One guy came around on my left, ignoring me but going straight for the ladies, who were in no mood for his “friendliness”. The other peered his head around my side to see my reaction. None. He said something incomprehensible and I made the next step toward engagement by lifting my glass and telling him to drink. I realized then that these guys were interested in more than drinking. There was a distinct possibility things could escalate to an unpleasant level. But that is the case with about half of the people that approach me to drink, so I wasn’t in unchartered territory. I was experienced, clear headed, but I was outnumbered 3 to 1. We drank and his friend turned his attention to me, glass filled, speech slurring, eyes blurring. And then the third. All way past the limit. No manner: pouring drinks from our bottle, spilling drinks everywhere, etc.

One toast is never enough to satisfy the ego. These guys weren’t just trying to “touch” a foreigner, they were trying to test one. Always willing (maybe too much so) to engage, I kept drinking. This went on for 5 minutes or so - each taking their turn trying to speak English, alternating praise with threatening stares, and generally making fools of themselves - when I looked up and saw the ex-boyfriend, glass and bottle in hand, stepping toward our table. He poured himself a glass, walked to my side of the table, pushing two of the guys aside and giving a “don’t fuck with me” stare, and positioned himself by my side. He raised his glass to drink with me and said, “you don’t have to drink with these guys.” He then turned and said to two of them. “Enough. This is my foreign friend. You guys can go back to your table.” And the way he did it, which I can’t capture appropriately in words, was nothing short of classic. He was stoic, full of confidence, like a Chinese George Clooney.

Maybe it’s no big deal to you, but examine the context and you’ll certainly appreciate the gravity of his actions. One, we’re in China. Two, we just met. Three, I might be boinking his ex. Despite all this, he had something in himself (maybe he thought there was no way I could land a girl as fine as his ex…haha) that compelled him to act on my behalf. I was genuinely moved. It was one of the single most kind things anyone has done for me since I’ve been here. When she returned from the ladies room, I told her all about it and what a great guy I thought he was.
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And then I took her to a hotel and slept with her.
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Joking. I’m joking

The DJ and I went to eat at a nice restaurant tonight. At the end of the meal, the waitress asked us to fill out a survey about our experience. Tonight wasn’t the first time this has happened to us. Actually, it happens whenever we go to a nice place. For some reason, they seem to really value our opinion. The odd thing is not so much that they ask us to complete the survey and, seemingly, no one else. The odd thing is, precisely, that they (i.e. 2 or 3 people) stand over our shoulder while completing it and when finished, look immediately at what we wrote. Of course we all know, or I thought we all knew, that you can’t expect an honest answer without anonymity. Perhaps they think us being foreigners, we 1. have high dining standards and 2. are always direct with our opinions. Well, yes, this may be true, but our manner dictates that you never come to someone’s place and tell them to their face that the food or treatment is poor. Or, perhaps, and much more likely, they know this and the manager on duty that night is only looking to show the boss that two foreigners had a satisfying experience on his or her watch.

I know it seems lame for me to harp about the Chinese always calling myself and other visitors their version of “chink”, but I can’t help myself. Or should I say, they can’t help themselves. Today, for kicks, I wanted to see how many times I would be called “chink” in the span of 1 hour. My experiment was conducted on a Saturday morning, between 9 and 10am. I walked 15 minutes from my apartment to People’s Park, jogged for 30 minutes, and walked back home.

Before scrolling down, guess how many times I heard it roll of the tongue of people?
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36

And that doesn’t include the TWO year old kid who, when spotting me, shouted it, seriously, 10 times.

In the elevator.

“Up or down?”, I ask in Chinese.

“Up”, the middle aged man replies, also in Chinese. Unable to restrain himself: “Wow, you’re Chinese is amazing! You speak so well”.

I would have liked to reply with “disingenuous or ignorant?” because this guy, like the (literally) thousands of others who have offered me the same reply in similar situations can only be one of the two.

Disingenuous because of his over the top reaction to me saying three elementary words can only mean that he is making fun of me. Or…Ignorant because he cannot fathom that a non-Chinese could say, “up or down”.

Pay attention. Life here is about the details. It’s not how someone treats you when inviting you to their home. It’s how the stranger treats you in the elevator.

The fool, pictured above…是你！

One of the most unexpected, and perhaps guiltiest pleasure of living in China is….Korean girls, or KCC’s (Kim Chi Chicks) as I like to call them You’d never think that the land of Kim Jong il would produce such fine women, but it does. KCCs are a genetically modified hybrid of J and C girls. They have the fashion intelligence, though sometimes dark and boyish, of Js and the no non-sense of Cs. The empathy of Js and feistiness of Cs. The impeccable manners of Js and those sly social engineering skills of Cs. The cute coquettishness of Js and the drive of Cs. Could they be the perfect East Asian women? Let’s find out.

There’s WMY, WBY, LMY, and the one with the glasses that always wears the track suit and dances really well and speaks excellent Mandarin, whose “bap” I couldn’t manage to “bibim”…and then there’s Min Seon…Ah. Also known as “hao hao” (ok ok). Ah…Min Seon came to Chengdu to study Chinese for one year at Sichuan University. I can’t tell you how we met, but it had something to do with my love for both Korean pao cai (i.e. kimchi) and paoing mei mei. I think it really started around December of last year. I remember it was kinda cold…and I had a cold. And there was a lunch together. And then, somehow, we started text messaging…all the time. She seemed to always want to “da” (hit) me, not to be confused with wanting to “do” me. She made me Christmas card with Chinese and Korean text. And she was always saying something about AV….she watched her brother’s AV on accident. Right.

Anyway, Min Seon had studied Chinese for even less time than me, but her level was far superior, though her local dialect was not. One day Min Seon invited me to her “love house” for dinner. Of course she didn’t trust me, so two of our other friends also showed up. She can cook pretty well. After she saw I wasn’t the wolf I seem to be, she let her guard down and next thing I knew I was spending 4 or 5 nights a week watching bootleg DVDs at the “love house”. She wouldn’t watch the director’s cut of “Lust Caution” with me, though. Can you blame her? (note: The pronunciation of that movie in Chinese sounds like my name, backwards. How ironic). One night she cooked me kimchi pizza. She didn’t use bread for the crust, though. She used nian gao, which is glutinous rice. You can guess how that was. But aside from that, we always ate chips and those Japanese Pocky sticks. And xiao kao（street bbq), of course, but usually without MSG. A small sacrifice to make for a good friend. It tastes about the same, actually.

Min Seon uses words like “entropy” and “fucking damn”. She calls me “ma” and I call her “ba…bo”. She told me that all Korean actresses should be 48 kilos. She taught me that when eating Korean BBQ, you have to take it all in with one bite. Once she didn’t, and that hot sauce of theirs fell all over her shirt. ha! Her use of pinyin is second only to the King - yours truly. She taught me about the men in trench coats that expose themselves to schoolgirls (it’s like a right of passage or something). She would always walk me out of her apt under the pretense of politeness and making sure I find a cab home, but really she does it as an excuse to flirt with the security guys at the entrance to her building. She said that if I go to Korea, I’ll be able to take food into the public baths, especially yogurt, rub it on myself and then eat it. She taught me how to say “help!!!” and point to my back, so I can get old Korean men to rub yogurt on me and scrub my back with that brillo pad they use (she gave me one of those brillo pads). Once, she made me smell spoiled kimchi. She contemplates, deeply, questions like, “would you make your bf carry your purse?”. And then shows me a Korean movie about a guy who, conceding the purse, ended up walking in his gf’s high heels. And “kill kill kill” is Korean for “ha ha ha”.

Sometimes she would come out drinking. RS had told me to be careful of Korean women - they can drink any man under the table, she said. Ah…true indeed. She can drink and always appears to be just the same as when first sat down at the table. She also bought me a “cao mei beizi” (strawberry cup). She has a matching one. Anyway, as our friendship progressed, Mean Sun, as I sometimes like to call her, started to put new demands on me. Like going to IKEA for fun. She said we could get free coffee there and even food. Plus, there is a free bus that runs between the University and the store, so it would be convenient.

Hell no. She kept pushing, though. She knew IKEA was like world peace, so she settled for some other, more achievable “missions”. One was getting me to go to the Marco Polo bridge. Despite being only a 10 minute walk from her place, I never wanted to venture there. The other was to eat “banana cai”, basically fried bananas with syrup. And another was to watch a classic Chinese movie, “tian mi mi” (sweet secret). One day in April, anticipating that I’d be headed back to the States, I called up Min Seon and got down to business, fulfilling all of the missions except “IKEA travel”, as it translates to from Chinese. We documented it all, of course, but she has the pictures on her blog (see link below).

I added one mission of my own. In the most moving scene of the movie, there is a guy on is bicycle and a girl on the back and the theme song playing. This (the bike thing) is ubiquitous in China. It’s romantic, really. When I bought my bike, I had a China dream - put a mei nv on the back of my bike. Well, the first night I bought my bike I fulfilled that dream, but since Min Seon hadn’t, I figured she should be given the chance. That’s right, after doing all she asked of me, I thought it appropriate for MS to ride a bicycle with ME on the back. Oh yeah, and she had to sing the theme song from the movie.

She crashed the bike.

After the earthquake, MS went back to Korea. We never got a chance to say goodbye or go to IKEA….thankfully. She is busy protesting American beef imports, watching her brother’s AV stash while he’s away at his 2 year compulsory military duty, and updating her new blog, “mo dei wenti” (”no problem”, in local dialect).

Ever. I went to get my haircut yesterday. Salons in China are like assembly lines, or maybe accounting departments - there are segregation of duties. Wash, cut, wash, blow dry. The washer was a young guy, 20, nicknamed “Wei Wei”. I’m used to people becoming excited at the opportunity to interact with a foreigner, but this kid was exceptional in his enthusiasm. He scrubbed my head raw for 45 minutes.

If he can’t remix?

Yesterday, a few people started popping up on MSN with {heart}China{heart} as their MSN name. Today, even more had. I was afraid to ask, but I didn’t have to. Out of no where, XW sent me this link.

Here is a translation:

-Please copy this section to your MSN name: (L)China (L)
-Please put your name to the left
-Please use this case combination: China
-We recommend you use # 2 heart
-We also hope that you can mark your website, blog, or personal home page
-Let’s see an ocean of red!

Did the Ambassador change his MSN name? Damn right I did. I’m officially:

(L)China’s girls(L)

I was in Shanghai last weekend. A few highlights.

Shanghai is an international city in the sense that there are lots of people from all over the world traveling, working, and studying there, but it still doesn’t meet the likes of NYC, San Francisco, etc., where the influence of foreigners is pervasive. This is probably do to the fact that most people are just passing through - on a project or rotation for their company, studying Chinese, etc. - so they don’t have the time to put down roots in way that immigrants do. I’m not considering, of course, the overall impact of foreign enterprises, which is significant. The results are local businesses, plenty of them, that cater to a revolving door of foreigners. The energy in these small “international” pockets is really exciting and much different from that in NYC. At moments it felt more intense, albeit temporary.

If you happen to visit, I highly recommend taking the Maglev train from Pudong Intl. Airport into the city. It costs 50RMB ($7) and gets you into the city in just 7 minutes. Top speed is 301km/h. An amazing journey. The alternative is a taxi, which takes, without traffic, 8 times longer and is 3 times more expensive.

Foreign girls. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t seen any in so long, but I was really surprised by the amount of beautiful foreigners I saw in just a couple of days. Even some models. Chengdu girls are pretty, but the legs are short. When I see those long legs, it’s game over.

“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”.

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.”

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.

I meant to write about this earlier, but forgot and was only reminded of it yesterday.

I have a friend from Europe. He’s tall, muscular, and handsome. And when he works, he’s dead serious. He’s in charge of his company’s China operations, which includes a factory in a nearby city. One day, the assembly line went down, a technical malfunction of some sort. He was furious, but being culturally savvy as he is, he wanted to express his anger and resolve the problem entirely in Chinese. So he asked for a drawing of the technical specifications. In Chinese that would be “tu zhi” 图纸. But he’s local and knows that Sichuan people don’t pronounce the ‘h’, so he calls out “tu zi”.

“Tu zi! Tu zi!! wo yao tu zi!!!” （The specs! The specs!! I want the specs!!!)

But the problem is, when you take out that ‘h’, if your tones aren’t correct, the meaning altogether changes. What does it change to? In this case, 兔子, which means “rabbit”.

As the workers looked on dumb founded as my friend yelled for a rabbit, one found the courage to speak up and ask for clarification. A small girl, nearly half his size, with both hands forming “peace” signs, gave herself bunny ears and asked with a curious smile:

“兔子?”. (rabbit?)

Yesterday I sent a friend an email that said I try not to spend my time here missing anything. But the truth is, sometimes there is an unexpected and irresistible cue that provokes my senses. When I am sick, for example, I crave pizza. And last night, while out clubbing, it was the simplicity and directness of an American woman.

I was dancing and she walked by. Her parents, obviously, were some sort of Asian, but she was full on American. How did I know?

In order of discovery…

First, the breasts. She grew up on that 2% stuff. There’s a hang.
Second, the walk. Girls here do not, cannot walk like that.
Third, the style. I love skirts, but nothing gets me going like the simple style of an American woman. Hair, back and up. Jeans or cargo pants, a pair of sneakers, and a top from the Gap.
Fourth, the dance. The hips, the way they move.
Fifth, the way she drinks. In measured sips.
Sixth, the way she smiled at me…with her eyes.

And a woman like that makes me miss home.

Perhaps the most enriching part of living in China is being able to interact with the generation who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. Most who I can “touch” are established business people, say the owner of a small factory, real estate developer or construction contractor. None of them received a college education and many never graduated from High School. Self-made, they are newly wealthy but maintain the roughness that got them where they are today. A map of China’s modern history is written on their faces, hidden beneath their fingernails, stuffed in their pop bellies, and exposed in those charmingly imperfect grins. They are concerned with money, but not so pre-occupied by it that they neglect other issues like politics and “culture”. When they tell their rags to riches stories, they speak in terms of decades. You listen as hard as you can to catch their words before they are washed by any interpreter. They are funny and direct. Warm and open. Pure, but definitely not innocent. They are startling different from the generation that followed them.

Smoking while eating is like refilling a glass of water. Over the course of a 2-2.5 hour meal, it can easily happen 10 times.

Liu Zong and I

XW and I walked into KFC (not my idea. I haven’t eaten there since I arrived. And even for a long while back when I was in the States. It’s even nastier here than in the States. The meat, I mean. Sides aren’t half bad, though). It was packed. I saw a girl, clearly a foreigner, sitting alone. We made eye contact and I smiled at her. She smiled back.

We went to order. Ordered. Standing, waiting, a presence behind me. “Are you from Russia?”. Uh, no. I asked where she was from. One of the “stan” countries in Mid-Asia. Was it “kazakh” or “kurgi”? The accent was thick. She looked Russian to me. What are you doing in China? She works in a hotel. And then, literally no more than 20 seconds into the conversation…

I have a big problem. My boss won’t let me leave the hotel.

Click. Imported sex worker. Serious, this was my train of thought.

What do you mean? She means her luggage is there but she cannot leave. Her contract is expired. She has her passport. She wants to go to another city where her friends are. She “can’t live here”.

Okay, how can I help you? I had to be somewhere and she didn’t seem in immediate danger so I traded phone numbers and agreed to be in touch. I contacted her later that night via short message. She called me back. My phone is still broke. Cannot hear the other party. And I’m with other people, so I couldn’t talk at length anyway. Tell her to message. No response.

A few days pass. No contact. I send a message. Tell me your problem. An immediate response. I have no problem. Thank you.

Updated for clarity.

Here’s a conversation I had a while back. I’m just listening.

I can, to some degree, accept, or at least understand, ignorance toward other cultures, but not toward one’s own. I got into an argument with a girl who told me “Asian” people weren’t as sexual as “Westerners”. I said, “India has over 1 billion people. You guys (China) have even more”.

She smiled. And took off her clothes.

Now, part of this story is false.

That’s right, I never mentioned India.