Careening Upon the Razor

blank

2006-06-07T04:32:00.000-07:00

Closing the China Shop

2006-04-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

As I prepare to leave China and reunite with my gal, I suppose I should come up with a few final words. Unfortunately, I cannot say that China surprised me as much as I thought it would. I know it sounds obnoxious, but really, much of what I've seen are stuff I read about long before coming here, and coming from a Chinese family, the culture wasn't unfamiliar to me, though it was in a far more concentrated dose. Besides, Chinese people aren't all restauranteurs, dry-cleaners, martial arts afficionados, bright-red commies, tragic freedom fighters, pointy straw hat-wearing villagers, or any of the steotypes used to categorize them into a safe and unthreatening mental corner. Rather, they're just regular folks like you and I, and they have their own share of kind-hearted, hopeful dreamers and curious, open-minded people, just as they have opportunistic, self-centered jerk-offs, bitter and constantly critical sourpusses, and impossible to reason with nationalists who have never been out of the country. It's simply that everything is done to a slightly different beat and backdrop, though admittedly, the odd, squeaky pop music and Beijing's constant dust storms can really make this place seem entirely unrecognizable from the West. Yet, pretty much everything from back home is available here, except they may not be packaged in a familiar way ( e.g., milk is sold in flat box-juice sized bags), or have the recognizable labels of comforting globalized brands...

...Ok, wait a minute. I believe I've had the part conscious, part subconscious agenda to use my blog to show the "real" China beyond all the preconceptions and all the misunderstandings I've encountered during my lively drunken conversations back home. Bah, to hell with that. Given all that's available here, people will come and find in China what they came looking for, should it be the magic of the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" experience, or the opportunity to plug themselves into the always expanding economy, or people to lecture to about the awe-inspiring greatness of democracy, or just a quickie post-college drunken binge in a cheap country far away from their parents. After all, it's their money and their gagillions of pictures and movie clips, so it's their entirely up to them-- not a disembodied, occasionally high-strung and critical blogger-- how best to experience China and what to take away from it and share with their friends and family back home.

What did I come to China for? I won't lie to you. I came to China with grandiose dreams of working in an environmental NGO to help poor villagers fight the pollution seeping in from vile, irresponsible industries, to come up with solutions for sustainable development that could potentially be applied to villages all over the country... and honestly, to eventually be accepted into the government as a major policy maker on conservation and development issues, to ultimately, y'know, change the world. Seriously. I abandonned two years of work into a doctorate for this, so you better believe I wasn't kidding around. Previous to my departure, I was even envisioning myself living in a remote village with no running water or electricity or any of the comforts a soft Westerner like myself had become accustomed to; and, in preparation, I had whittled all my wordly possessions down to two big ruck sacks and a suitcase, and sought to harden myself by sleeping on the floor and taking cold showers. The reality, of course, was much different. Not only was I promptly set up in a nice apartment only a week after I arrived, but I found myself working at a research institute as an academic editor and sometimes teacher, and also backed up by supportive and protective colleagues who showed me the ropes here and kept me from getting into trouble. Sure, it pretty much limited me to Beijing and its surroundings (plus a brief trip to Shanghai and Nanjing), but the trade-off was that it gave me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really live as a local, not as a tourist or an expat.

So again, what did I come to China for? What did I take from it? As much as I hate to admit it, this trip was one of those soul-searching "discover-thyself-as-you-travel-around-the-world" romps. For almost a decade, China and everything Chinese was something of an obsession of mine, where I had convinced myself that my future and my true purpose in life was to be in China. Hilarious now that I think back on it. However, I suppose that mine was merely one of the many expressions of the confusion that plague children of immigrants, who, like myself, grow up white on the inside, and clash with their tradition-minded parents, but because they don't appear white, they never fully manage to escape the immigrant stigma either. As trite and cheesy as it sounds, my trip effectively put to rest my doubts and my desperate desire for an identity, but most importantly, it put an end to all the angst and bitterness that derived from my confusion and that I would occasionally take out on my friends. I can then very happily say that my long China chapter is over. Certainly though, given that I am still in many ways Chinese, I will never fully depart from it, just as I will never stray very far from my Quebecois roots.

I am content and quite pleased to be Jack, j., 邓家扬, Veon, Jackson Tango, or any of the names my family, friends, my colleagues, and of course, most importantly, my lover decide to call me.

GO HABS GO!

2006-04-19T03:35:00.000-07:00

As I read the news of the Montreal Canadians (the Habs or les Habitants) squeaking into a playoff position by the skin of their teeth, I am transported to cloud nine… particularly as the points tally up and the very pleasant news sinks in that the goon squad that is the Toronto Leafs will NOT be making the playoffs this year, despite all their eleventh hour efforts. YEAAAAAH, BABY! YEAH! In your smirking, metrosexual FACE, Toronto!!!... all in good fun, of course. I'm actually not a fan of hockey at all, or of team sports in general; I never understood the purpose of repeatedly running from one end of field/rink/court to the other, especially when you're a scrawny geek like me and no one bothers passing to you. In the last few years though, I have learned to appreciate the game, to holler at unfair calls or uncalled underhanded checks, to nail-bittingly tense in anticipation as I see a perfect set up with beautiful click-click-click passes, and to leap up from my chair, sending my beer precariously spinning on the table, as I roar with joy when THE HABS SCORE!!!!

But, beyond a basic, functional knowledge of the game and its rules, I know nothing about the sport itself, its teams, and players, except when it comes to the Montreal Canadians-- though even then, I mainly know that Koivu is the team captain who a few years back successfully battled a bout of cancer, and Huet and Aebischer appear to be vying to be top goalie, after Théo was unceremoniously kicked out for having something of a bad patch. Frankly, although I do occasionally watch a game, I would only watch a Habs game, and in fact, I tend not to even watch the game at all, as I'm perfectly content with keeping track of the points in semi-real time on Radio-Canada's website. I really do not give a rat's ass about fanciful displays of skilful skating or heart-warming teamwork, nor do I give a damn about whether a team put in a "strong effort" or had "spirit." My relationship to hockey is strictly utilitarian, caring only if teams win or lose, specifically whether the Habs win or lose, and even more specifically, whether the Habs manage to crush the Leafs.

I'm aware, of course, that my own fleeting feelings of joy whenever the Habs win are entirely irrational. Clearly, I wasn't the one who scored, or the one who put in the training to reach that level of physical fitness. Besides, it's just a silly hockey game, and, unless the whole point is to hang out with my buddies and catch up over beer and nachos between the periods, I've really got better things to do and a life to live. Nevertheless, I always eagerly wait in anticipation for a game's results…because, just between you and me, each Habs win is, to me, a small victory for the continuing survival of French Canada in Anglo-Canada, and also to a certain extent, ongoing proof of Montreal's superiority over Toronto. Vive le Québec libre!

I imagine in 2008 many people will be rooting for their countries in a similar manner, not really caring or even understanding the various sports themselves, but rather to satisfy some other motive, such as wanting to feel the small tingle of vicarious success whenever one of their countrymen wins a medal or breaks a world record. This is very true for Chinese people, as one of the stated goals of the 2008 Olympics will be to not only have the most flamboyant and shockingly expensive Olympic smoke and mirror spectacle, but to at long last surpass the United States in the total number of medals won, even if they should be won in such "sports" as pistol shooting. Unfortunately, team sports are rarely about the physical activity themselves, but tend to be always have some political subtext, should it be to represent the honour and glory of the nation, or to simply channel the excess energy of overexcited testosterone-filled youth through a more benign conduit, relative to say, forming revolutionary cells to overthrow the system. Indeed, part of the reason the Olympics irk me is that by definition it imposes a political context onto sports that are really about individual achievement and have nothing at all to do with the "nation" or the "people." Yet, as annoying as it is, I understand the need to constantly want to brand obscure achievements as belonging to this or that nation, or to be feel pride in their countrymen's success, as it's simply symbolic of a "win" for their overall "team."

Precisely what team am I part of though? When asked about my nationality, I used to reply that I am Chinese first, Québécois second, and perhaps as an afterthought, Canadian. However, if there is anything that I have come to realize from my trip to China, it's that I am clearly not Chinese, even though given my upbringing I obviously share many of their values and habits. And, as much as I like to cheer for the Montreal Canadians and basically everything Montreal and Québécois, it's been some time since I've lived there, and also, my French has been deteriorating at an alarming pace. No, Québec is no longer my home or my team, though I will always support and keep posted on Québécois and French-Canadian causes (i.e. sovereignty). Hence, whenever I cheer for the Habs, I am not really cheering for them, but only paying homage to my roots, and to the most formative years of my life. Neither do I particularly feel close to that farcical concept of the multi-cultural Canadian, except, as the cliché goes, in opposition to Americans.

Naturally, I do somewhat fit within each of those labels that I used to proudly slap onto myself, but more often than not, their irritatingly stereotypical melting-pot confines are simply inaccurate and frequently offensive. But does it matter at all? Do I really need to be part of a nation, a culture? Do I need to have an idiotic specially-tailored label, like "Chinese Canadian," "CBC (Canadian Born Chinese)," "Chinois Québécois," or "Banana"? The whole point of all of that hoohah is only to provide a sense of belonging and identity. For that, I see no need to look beyond my community, that is, my gal, my family, my friends, and my acquaintances; I would much rather be defined by my responsibilities to my community, not to some convenient and entirely arbitrary national or cultural narrative.

Furthest Quick Observations, Unworthy of a Full Blog

2006-04-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

What, what? What did I do?:
It never fails. As soon as I find myself going to a shop or a restaurant often enough, the owners will eventually muster enough confidence to curiously ask me with an odd, confused expression on their face, "You're not Chinese, right? What country are you from?" But dammit, I am (genetically) Chinese! I must have explained several tens of times by now, that my mother was born in Nanjing, and my father was born in a city close to Shanghai, so really, my blood's Chinese through and through. And yet, with a single glance, most Chinese can tell that I'm not Chinese. Even back home, my sis and I are either mistaken for being Korean, Japanese, or some kind euro-asian mix, just not quite Chinese. I'm not sure what it is. My theory has always been that since my maternal grandfather was from Henan, an area which historically had a large population of Muslim horse traders who had settled there several centuries ago along with the Mongolian Dynasty, my mother's, my sister's, and my own slightly non-Asian nose and eyes must have come from some long-forgotten intermarriages there (My aunt's theory is that we have Jewish ancestry, while my father thinks we have some Jesuits hiding in our blood, but I find both hard to believe as geographically the first doesn't match up, and for the second, there were comparatively very few Jesuit missionaries and besides, most of them were priests who had probably taken vows of chastity.) However, China is not only composed of Chow Yunfat look-alikes, but has a number of rather distinct "races," some of which actually appear Caucasian, so my very mildly non-Asian physical features shouldn't be enough to mark me as being non-Chinese, and as it were, blow my cover. I also thought it might be my clothes, as many Chinese people still wear drab faded Mao-suits or Communist era military fatigues; but, in major cities like Beijing, typically only the labourers are dressed like that, and they are increasingly outshined by the many Chinese folk in the know, who wear sparkly thingamajiggers and sport bright highlights in their hair-- to whom in comparison, I certainly look drab and very much outmoded. It could also be the fact that I like to keep my head shaved, though until recently, after an intolerable three month wait, I had left my hair long, and admittedly, before I shaved my head again, if I didn't speak too much, I could sometimes get away with looking like a Chinese national. Still, even with a full head of hair and ordinary-looking clothes, I somehow couldn't fully blend in, and inevitably always end up sticking out as the funny foreigner. I suppose the only possibility is something about my mannerisms. But I'm telling you, for the life of me, I can't figure out what the hell I'm doing that's so different. What I am doing? Should I be shuffling more? Should I be horking and spitting everywhere I go? Is it my facial expressions? What? No idea.

Not the comfy chair!:
I have just about travelled the wide spectrum of Beijing's public transportation: the large variety of new, spacious, air-conditioned buses to the absurdly small semi-legal fume-filled ones; the aging subway system complemented by a new fancy-pants sky-train; and, the fleet of colour-coded taxis, with complicated billing systems I can't be bothered to figure out. Recently, I've also experienced the Chinese inter-city train system, travelling on the night-trains from Beijing to Shanghai in the cramped "hard seats" where six people are stuck in an aisle shuffling about to get some decent ass space to fall asleep, from Shanghai to Nanjing on the slightly better "soft seats" where this time four people comfortably share an aisle, and finally from Nanjing to Shanghai, in the luxurious "soft bed" compartments, where in front of each of the four beds there is a television with continual English and Chinese movies, and right around the corner there's a perfectly clean lavatory with even a bowl of pot-pourri in the corner. As many will no doubt cynically note, if you're willing to pay enough money, you can get pretty much get anything you please in the new China, where the gap between the rich and the poor is getting flagrantly bigger. While it is true that the wealth isn't spreading evenly, and many are milking their Party contacts for all their worth, it is important to note that the lowest class wasn't absolutely intolerable. I mean, it's not as if we were sitting on wooden planks with a huge rusty nail jutting out of it. They actually had relatively comfy seats, even though they were somewhat cramped. It's the same for those insane miniature buses that always have room for one more no matter how packed they are; they too have pretty comfortable seats-- if you're lucky enough to get one that is. My point is simply that the bar isn't just rising for those who can afford it, but it's also rising from below, as practically all the services in China are being rehauled and modernized from virtual third world standards. Sure, lots of things won't meet Western standards, but they're a pretty damned good improvement on what was there before. In that sense then, I have to say again that I simply do not think that there will be "revolution" or any serious backlash against the government any time soon. It's not that the people wouldn't have just cause for it, but it's simply that the important red flag of any collapsing government is not there, that is, a decreasing middle-class. In fact, the middle-class is growing, creating an ever larger portion of the people more invested in the status quo and unwilling to lose their comfy chair.

How hard core are you?:
I've mentioned this before, but Chinese people eat a whole lot of weird-ass shit. I consider myself pretty resilient when it comes to food, and I'll basically eat anything so long as I don't have to challenge it to single combat with my chopsticks along the way into my mouth; however, I've encountered a few things here that have made me balk and try really hard to suppress my gag reflex. After this trip, I'll be damned happy to indulge in far less… exotic foods. Anyhow, should you wish to test your mettle, here is a list of things (some of them quite tasty!) in order of increasing hard coredness.

Duck blood soup: This shouldn't be too strange or gross for those accustomed to the wonderful delicacy that is black pudding, otherwise known as blood sausages. Don't worry, the blood isn't just swimming around like a nose-bleed gone dreadfully wrong. Similar to pig's blood, the duck blood is first congealed and cut into cubes or long rectangular strips, before it is thrown into a soup along with some rice vermicelli and possibly a sprinkling of cilantro. The flavour is actually quite nice and subtle, as opposed to pig's blood which sometimes has an overpowering taste of liver. It's really not that bad at all. In fact, most times, it'll just look like dark jello, so unless you ask, you may never even know it's blood you're unwittingly slurping down.

Smelly tofu: Definitely an acquired taste that many Chinese won't even dare approach. I assure you though, that once you get past the horrible odours you will learn to love and seek out, you will be rewarded with several consecutive food orgasms that only the ripest and stinkiest cheeses can bring. The principle of smelly tofu is actually very much akin to making cheese, as it consists of allowing the tofu to ferment with a dark bluish mould… ah, the glories of fermentation, without which we would be left with a sad. uninebriated, cheeseless, breadless world. After the tofu is suitably fermented, it can be either deep-fried, which doesn't smell half as bad, or, to really enjoy the exquisite delights of smelly tofu, it can be steamed to perfection.

Sparrows on a stick: You can find all sorts of things as you're walking around the night market food stalls. Quails, squid legs, and strips of tofu are common enough fare, and all come with a dousing of soy and some hot sauce. Very nice as a midnight snack. One of the stranger things would have to be itty-bitty plucked sparrows, their heads sometimes cut off, or still dangling, with several skewered lengthwise on kebab-sticks, almost like miniature pigs with wings. Not that spectacular at all, though a little unnerving the first time you see it. However, once it goes through the miraculous process of deep-frying, it pretty much looks and tastes like anything that's been heavily cooked in oil. I have to say, though, it's a little crunchy on the inside, without a whole lot meat, and would have been quite bland and non-descript were it not for the generous slathering of hot sauce.

Duck heads: This is a very common snack for many Chinese people, though I still haven't gotten the hang of it. The trick is to figure out how to slowly and delicately pick off each of the slivers of edible skin, then the bits of flesh, then the tongue, and then you're supposed to dig in with your teeth, slurping out the soft, moist brains and eyes, while breaking apart the brain case and methodically spitting out perfectly clean pieces of bone… Yeah, when I saw that done, I was about to hurl too. The other thing is that the heads are usually not deep-fried into a relatively inoffensive piece curled flesh and bone you can close your eyes and toss in your mouth. These duck heads tend to be slowly red-braised in a pretty nice sauce consisting of dark soy, star anise, and wine, which unfortunately means that to properly eat it you have to go through the process I just described. In itself, that wouldn't be so bad, except that these duck heads tend to be served cold or lukewarm, and for your eating convenience, they're split in half to make the glistening brain within easily accessible.

Aborted chicken eggs: This is very much as foul and disturbing as it sounds. I ate it once, just to give it try, but the flavour isn't all that spectacularly different from a normal egg or a chicken to justify my eating that weird nightmare-inducing crap again. It's essentially a fertilized chicken egg, left to develop for twenty-one days, after which it's tossed into boiling water and served. I knew the principle of the thing and I knew that I'd be eating a half-formed chicken, but as I peeled away the shell, I wasn't prepared to find fully formed eye staring at me from within a skull covered with yellowish hairs. Still, I steeled myself, closed my eyes, and took a big munch out of the thing, and found that bits of it tasted surprisingly like a really rich egg yolk, while other bits tasted like an ordinary chicken-- though as I inadvisedly looked at what I was eating and saw the dangling guts, I had to struggle hard to swallow. All in all, it was pretty tasty, but a little on the dry side. The only problem was that later on, I was still picking out yellowish hair from my teeth. Pretty fucking hard core.

Standing Tall Over a Mound of Dust

2006-04-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

My colleagues, relatives, and other immigrant Chinese acquaintances have often mournfully sighed about the degeneration of Chinese culture in the last few decades, typically in the context of those unruly, strangely clothed Chinese youth, all shockingly ignorant of their history and disrespectful to their traditions. Since much of this is blamed on China's exposure to the West, I was curious to see this for myself in Shanghai, China's most Westernized city (excluding Hong Kong).

Though I clearly was not suddenly catapulted into a land of obnoxious gas-guzzling drivers migrating to and from their carefully contrived boho home or razor-wire gated communities, à-la-Toronto, Shanghai is indeed a highly cosmopolitan city, sparkling with a crown of new and ever-proliferating skyscrapers, a beautiful new opera house, and a sophisticated subway system that rivals anything back home or at least equals the best I've seen in Europe. In some places, you can almost forget that you're in China and think that you're in any affluent city in the West, as you're walking along Shanghai's immense and astonishingly clean dedicated pedestrian shopping-street, lined with every conceivable posh or tacky store, or as you're wandering about in the ridiculous ten-storied mall-complexes humming to the sound of cheesy ambient music and excited teenybopper giggling-- almost forget, that is, if it weren't for the inescapable crush of people characteristic of China's overpopulated coastal cities. Shanghai is still a Chinese city, despite all the familiar Western trappings, and as carefully masked as it was, the poverty was still evident, from the food stalls scraping a living off the random customer, to the legions of panhandlers and street vendors hovering around anyone who looks vaguely well-off, but constantly being chased away by the police determined to maintain the city's monopoly on the crap being sold to tourists.

But did I see any apocalyptic signs of China's collapsing culture? Well, it's hard to tell what people mean when they mention that, or even what they're referring to by "culture." Do they mean that their kids are just not being as respectful as they would like, kowtowing to their every whim and blindly listening to everything they say? Or, are they concerned about their kids' seemingly crazy, irresponsible behaviour, much like their own youthful indiscretions, so very long ago, when they too were teenagers without a care in the world (remember that, dad?)? Of course, there is an aspect of generational misunderstandings mixed up in this, but more often than not, even on the end of foreigners, the complaints usually refer to the effects of China's rampant commercialization that crassly slaps adverts everywhere, roughly discards historical relics because of ill-conceived modernization schemes, and restores temples and monuments so shoddily that they no longer look "authentic".

Frankly, what do they expect? Although it would be wonderful to preserve things precisely as they were, and for everyone to lead idyllic lives in pastoral villages tending to their sheep and weaving bamboo baskets, most Chinese now crave the comforts that only a prosperous city with a vibrant economy can provide… bringing with it all the potential ills and abuses of unconstrained development and intrusive advertising, and unfortunately making history a casualty to rushed paint jobs attempting to maintain the ooooo-aaaaa tourist effect. Another common complaint is how the old traditions and arts are gradually being forgotten as fewer and fewer young people are interested in practicing a time-consuming and impractical art that would only earn them a life as a curiosity. Sure, the kids ain't doin' or sayin' what the old folks are doin' and sayin' no more, but you get that complaint in every era; I'm sure as all the "verily"s and "thou"s shifted into anachronistic oblivion, there were a bunch of bitter old folk angrily chewing on the cud, muttering about those radical, incomprehensible kids using all that modern-speak.

Like all cultures, Chinese culture is not an unchanging monolith. In fact, the culture has greatly radically changed over the centuries, absorbing and integrating foreign influences, until it became what it is today, unrecognizable even to those a mere century ago. Whatever is worth maintaining will be kept alive and well in everyday practice, like say, fighting over the dinner bill, while others will be forgotten, perhaps to be rediscovered at later time, or purposefully rejected because it is no longer relevant and represent fundamental social inequalities. Maybe some things can be encouraged and nudged in the "right" direction by well-intentioned policies, but I'm not convinced anything about a culture can be forcibly preserved, short of killing it. What's happening in Shanghai and the rest of China is not a loss of any culture or any hogwash like that. It's merely a normal evolution, though accelerated by its recent exposure to the West.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to the basic preservation of historical artefacts and relics, I would have to say that Shanghai does a much better job than Beijing. By far, the Shanghai museum is several orders of magnitude better than Beijing's National museum. Not only were the exhibits organized in a much more intuitive and easy to follow manner, there was easily twice as many pieces on display, in an obviously superior condition. They even had English captions that made sense and had all the correct verb tenses! Incredible! The superiority of Shanghai's museums, though, has to do with something else entirely.

Shanghai is just rolling in cash. Even though Shanghai is relatively young at about 150-200 years or so, Shanghai rapidly became the epicentre of China's wealth, due in no small part to its strategic location at the mouth of the Yangtze River that allowed it to be not only one of the heaviest ports for international shipping, but also the ideal transit point for ships laden with goods bound for China's interior. As a result, everything about the city reeks of wealth, and nothing more so than its lavish and well-funded museums. All the exhibits were donated by private collectors. All of them. Added on to that, the huge cauldron-shaped building was dominantly built by private donations, not public funds. Indeed, Shanghai has the reputation of being a city filled with ceaseless go-getters and innovators-- though other less wealthy Chinese call them selfish opportunists-- producing the richest people in China and making the city at once the country's most envied and the most hated city, much like Toronto or New York. Again, much like the nouveau riche back home, the Shanghainese variety sought to buy their way to respectability (and tax breaks) by portraying themselves as great patrons of the arts and all-knowing scholarly connoisseurs straight out of the Confucian mould. Presumably, after stock-pilling a whole bunch of Chinese antiques, they got bored of seeing the same thing everyday, and eventually donated it in a grandiose gesture captured on film with big toothy smiles, only to move on to indulge in more fanciful and expensive pastimes.

Well, that's not entirely fair. The wealthy aren't the only ones who use "culture" as a shield, and claim to be champions of "values" and "tradition," in order to give themselves instant credibility and respect. (Sound familiar?) There has been an annoying trend lately trying to credit practically every invention or discovery on the face of the earth to Chinese people and by extension, its culture. Yes, I used to be one of those people, but now even I get annoyed and more than a little sceptical when yet another bright eyed Chinese person starts waxing nostalgic about how back in the day China was the one who first circumvented the globe, or China was the one who invented this or that. While some of it may be true and somewhat believable, chronologically at least, who the Hell cares? I'm sure if you dug deep enough, and massaged the data well enough, someone may "discover" that the ancient Pygmies were the first to create romantic comedies. And precisely why would that even matter to romantic comedies in general, except in an academic sense? I'm pretty sure writers of romantic comedies the world over won't start acknowledging Pygmies in all their works.

It's as if the longer history one's culture has and the more speckled it is with dubious achievements, the better it reflects on the speaker, personally that is, or on the government claiming to be its sole inheritor and protector. I imagine the logic is that by associating oneself to something that appears vast, nebulous, and grandiose, it automatically imbues the speaker with unquestionable authority and respect, effectively making cultural catch-phrase shields to avoid the trouble of having to demonstrate their own merits... much like name dropping during a conversation at a party, hoping to sound pretty damned clever, but also hoping very dearly the person doesn't know the name, and will instead be too awed and embarrassed to ask about it for fear of revealing their own ignorance.

All that to play an elaborate charade over the silly mounds of dust that are the decaying relics, monuments, and temples infesting China. And yet, these "defenders of culture" continue to stand proudly in their dust bins arguing away, even as people actually living the real thing zip by.

Wherefore My Liberal Guilt?

2006-04-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

I have never been comfortable with paying for massages. It's not that I dislike them. Not at all. In fact, I am always enormously grateful to anyone patient enough to attempt to undo the constantly recurring, painfully sensitive knots in my back. It's just that massages have always struck me as requiring a certain degree of trust, if not intimacy, as opposed to a doctor's cold, impersonal pokes and probes, so that forking over cash for a massage leaves in my mind the lingering and slightly seedy feeling I'm paying for physical intimacy-- ya dig? Yes, yes, massages can be therapeutic and very much necessary; I've been to a massage physio a couple of times, and hot damn, it certainly made the recovery from my climbing injuries a lot more tolerable. Of course, I know people go for massages all the time, they don't mean a thing, and they're entirely acceptable. Yet, the Spartan in me still decries this shocking luxury, this obvious show of weakness and inability to suffer a little pain that may be resolved by some disciplined stretching and some better sitting habits. However, in the last few months scrunched in front of my computer, trying to make sense of mind-boggling Chinglish and horrible sentence structures (even for academics!), my back has become more wound up than usual and has been desperately craving relief. On my roommate's advice, I decided to visit a parlour that he often goes to, and that, he assured me, was entirely legit, though apparently many massage parlours in China are fronts for brothels. The price too was a little hard to pass up, 60rmb (10$) for an hour, compared to anything between six to ten times that amount I would expect to pay back home.

…and, as I was brutally pounded and whacked by the "masseuse" (more on that later), I could not help but think about the cost of that massage, indeed the cost of everything here relative to the West, and how everything is so inexpensive that any Westerner could easily afford to live like royalty as they magnanimously scatter pennies to the ever-grateful commoners. I'm honestly not an airy-fairy unaware of the global economy or the many consequences of the currency market. But, am I exploiting these people? What I'm paying is fair relative to their salary and the living standards here, but why should I be paying so much less for something that, to me, is worth much more? Why should I be benefiting from the inequities in the global markets and development, which are themselves the result of a long history of exploitational economic practices and unfair subsidies? Sure, like any visitor, I can console myself in the knowledge that I'm helping their (tourist) economy by bringing in my precious foreign currency, but does that mean that they would be perpetually dependent on their third world status? Why should I have so many privileges, just because I'm a Westerner? Why should I get a higher salary than any of the people here, just because I speak lingua franca of the dominant superpower? Am I just another filthy foreign imperialist? …yeah, I know. I'm a slightly oversensitive liberal, saddled with the guilt and responsibility for all the hand-wringing sufferings of the planet.

As one of the many expats in China, I too have a higher salary than the average Chinese person, or most of my grad student colleagues for that matter. Fortunately, my salary isn't exorbitantly higher, but is the relatively reasonable wage of a Chinese post-doc-- much lower than minimum wage back home, though still more than enough to live on comfortably here. For many other expats though, particularly in specialized fields like finance or consulting, they're able to command the same salary they have back home, making more in a week than many Chinese make in several years. But why? I can understand the necessity of bringing in foreign workers (i.e., native-English speaking workers) to get businesses and institutions familiar with the lingo and with the many unwritten rules and practices that come with the territory, and to basically get them up to the par of international standards; these high salaries are simply necessary to attract them in the first place. On the practical side, I can also understand that bringing in those guys end up building pretty handy contacts and partnerships that may be useful for long-term ambitions. I can understand all of this, but still, the expat system bothers me. The main problem is that the system can be badly abused. Instead of getting a foreign "expert," the firm or institute may get some yahoo with all the right contacts and a well-doctored CV, but who's just looking for a little fun in a foreign country, and ends up spending more time jaunting around the country or partying in every expat pub, instead of contributing anything of value. Unsurprisingly, this causes quite a bit of resentment among their Chinese counterparts (or local counterparts anywhere in the world) doing practically the same job, and getting paid chump change in comparison. (For the record, in my own chest-beating attempt to retain some sense of integrity, I've tried to do my best to prove that the boss didn't hire a dud, working as hard as my colleagues and postponing my plans to visit Shanghai and Nanjing until this weekend, when my work load seems to have somewhat decreased.)

However, my impression is that the expat system is progressively changing, where the mad rush to get English-spouting whiteys of any kind into China has toned down, to be replaced with a calmer, more selective eye on who they would like to invite or not. A few decades ago though, shortly after it opened up its creaky communist doors, China had a wild period of being enamoured with the West and everything that had to do with it. All that was Western was good, and therefore, had to be emulated, from the food, the culture, the style, and of course, the conspicuous wealth. Having your very own authentic Westerner to learn from was the obvious way to go. As time progressed though, the reality of the Western world and the difficulties of the dream it offered gradually became apparent, as people realized the solutions it pandered were not all-purpose panaceas, or even accessible to most people, certainly not to most in the developing world. In particular, people heard stories of their compatriots who had fled China to claim their own share of the wealth in the West, and who were instead told that their university degrees, should they be engineering or medical ones, were worthless, and that they'd best open a restaurant or dépanneur like all the other immigrants. It's a good thing then, that soon after, the benefits of China's growing economy began to trickle down, improving people's lot and prompting many to seek the new opportunities in their own backyard instead of fleeing with Monty-Pythonesque cries of "Run away! Run away!" And so, instead of fawning over every foreigner to come their way, many Chinese came to view them with a little bit of a cynical detachment, seeing them less as tickets to freedom and windows into the promised land, but more as assets to be squeezed dry of anything useful, such that they and the country may also become as successful as the West.

A strong sense of nationalism does seem to be pervasive in China these days, that is, beyond the normal state propaganda. I do not think though that it is the particularly irritating (and potentially scary) brand of blind nationalism where all things Chinese are great and fantastic and infinitely better than the West. There is an element of that, of course, and I've encountered a few extreme cases who tend not to be particularly well-informed about the West anyway. But, although they may be annoyed with a government's foreign policies, specifically Japan's and the States', most people do not harbour any ill-will to the West (or Japan), or wish to compete with it in any way. In fact, many have a very favourable impression of it, admiring the culture and the people, and hope to one day visit places like Canada or the States, and try all the funny foods they heard about (What!?, cry my astonished colleagues. They eat a big chunk of meat that isn't cut up and stir-fried with vegetables?). I believe the nationalism in China is simply the strong desire of any people in any country to not be yet another starving, backward disaster-ridden country begging for handout, but instead be a country that is independent, self-sufficient, and treated as equally as any country (theoretically) should. China is still a developing country and far less affluent than the West, but it has no more and no less inequalities, corruption scandals, and human rights issues than most other Western countries. China is a just a regular country, not a place to be pitied or defended.

So, wherefore my liberal guilt? It may have been a little misguided along the flower-power path of hippie peace and love. Hell, China and Chinese people can fend for themselves. I'll bet you that whatever perceived injustice that my oversensitive liberal streak sensed was already widely known, and some enterprising Chinese found a way to gain from the deal, instead of suffering like some tragic martyr. Therefore, I have no guilt when I say that yesterday was one shitty massage, and I should have paid 10rmb not 60. I've been told that I received a medical massage, so it's normal for it be as painful and unrelaxing as it was, but if I wanted to be tossed and pulled about, I'd have enrolled in a judo class-- at least, I'd have learned something. Maybe it's a question of style. But what style involves roughly pinching and pulling my skin, while pressing into every one of my blasted pressure points without any warning? The only style I could think of would involve more leather and chains. Frankly, as much as I believe pain can be a good thing, yesterday was not a good thing. I mean for heaven's sake. He could have at least cut his goddamned nails.

Don't Waste (or The Inner Accountant in Every Chinese )

2006-04-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most formative experience a young Chinese lad or lass will have is over the dinner table. At one point or another-- rather, on numerous, uncountable occasions over every meal--, their parents, their siblings, or relatives would have pointed to a sadly languishing meal left half eaten, and angrily shrill in a horrified admonishing tone, "不要浪费！(bu yao lang fei)", or "Don't waste!", burning in their minds the fierce and unyielding cardinal rule to never ever waste food. Never. Ever. Well, as much as humanly possible, anyway. It is a lesson that is so conditioned into me that I still can't bring myself to waste anything, not even the decorative pieces of twirled cucumber slices or the soggy wilted lettuce leaves left as the last brave souls lying prone upon the battlefield of my plate. Not finish my plate? You must be kidding me. Hell, I'll even finish your plate if you're not careful! Many a time, I've found myself eying my dinner companion's cold leftover fries, their half-eaten burger or steak, their carefully whittled slivers of gristle and fat (yes, I'll go that far), or their little corner of pasta that may have been just a little too salty or peppery, or may have had a little too much butter or wine in an otherwise palatable white sauce, or may just have been left unfinished to leave room for desert… and as the conversation around me would continue, the food on their plate would beckon louder and louder to me, until I'd finally crack and ask my surprised companions whether I can finish their meal. I really can't help it. As long as the food isn't downright rotting or absolutely inedible, I will do my utmost to finish any meal, even though in the eyes of many of my repulsed Western friends, I appear to be a half-starved scavenging refugee.

Fortunately, here in China, I'm no longer the only wacko hard-wired to avoid wasting food. Just yesterday, Xiaopang was systematically picking out all the green peppers from his lunch, apparently because they were slightly overdone and no longer suited his always difficult taste buds. All at once, my colleagues practically fell over each other to rescue the poor discarded peppers, evenly dividing them among themselves, but also making sure that Xiaopang would not be left hungry, by replacing the peppers with another veggie that Xiaopang would eat. In the same vein, my figure-conscious female colleagues usually give me a huge chunk of their rice, claiming to be trying to slim down by going easy on carbs; however, if I or any of my male colleagues don't want the rice, they would still heroically force themselves to finish it, rather than see it thrown away. Quite simply, neither I, nor any Chinese person I've met, can bring themselves to waste food. The mere thought of consciously wasting food that could easily be given to someone else or saved for another day, just boggles the Chinese mind. It's food! You're throwing food away??! But…but… but… it's FOOD! And, if a Chinese person did ultimately have to toss something away, because this time, after several rounds of asking, no one has the room for it, or because the food really did go off, they'd drop it in the garbage in the same tragic, sorrowful way a captain would bid farewell to their sinking ship, and with a scornful twisted expression on their face, they'd mutter, "浪费 (lang fei)", or "What a waste."

Chinese people's obsession with making every scrap of food count is deeply rooted in China 's perpetual battle with limited resources. As large as China has been, the population has always somehow been slightly larger, constantly leaving the country on the brink of disastrous famines, frequently initiated by chronic flooding or droughts in the most important food producing areas. In fact, especially bad famines tended to trigger major social upheavals-- if not minor rebellions, then flat out civil wars and an entire dynasty changes--, leaving Chinese people with the strong association of food security to stability and peace. Not surprisingly, the importance of food and therefore the importance of never wasting it progressively became ingrained into Chinese culture. Eventually, this abhorrence of waste came to apply to not only food, but to all things, especially anything that involves money, should it be the itty-bittiest purchase of a cheapo ticket, or a major investment, like a house, a kid, or a university degree. In a very real sense, no Chinese person is complete without an ever-calculating accountant their head, constantly wondering if they're getting the best deal, if they're getting the most out of what they bought, and most especially if whatever that's theirs has not descended into the terrible, constantly to be avoided label, 浪费. But, again, as I've mentioned before, this is not to say that Chinese people aren't wasteful. If it ain't theirs or if don't come off the sweat of their backs, they'd never think twice about taking advantage of someone else's resources, and wasting anything with wild abandon. Anything, that is, except food. That's would be just plained wrong.

There is only one situation when not finishing the food on the dinner table is acceptable: when people are eating out or have been invited to someone's home. In that case, the host purposefully prepared or ordered one or two dishes too many to make sure that all the guests would not possibly leave hungry, and they would certainly have had their share. Actually, this raises another label to be avoided at all costs, 过分 (guo fen), that is, to exceed one's share. The concept of one's share and one's portion is extremely important to Chinese people, and intimately related to the avoiding waste. Again, I suspect that the importance of obtaining or giving the proper share also finds its origins in China's historic resource limitations, as the only way to maintain some degree of social harmony was to make sure that everyone would get their fair share rather than be gypped… which helps explain why my colleagues made a point of replacing whatever they took from Xiaopang with something of theirs. However, where浪费 is used to describe the potential waste of an object or of something that has been paid for with hard-earned cash, 过分 is used to describe someone's inappropriate behaviour. Often, you can hear it used to admonish overly petulant children, or, when in private company, you might hear it uttered through clenched teeth and lips curled in disgust to describe some vulgar boor. Indeed, for Chinese, it is probably one of the most insulting things to be called, as it implies not only that the person is ill-mannered, but that their family is so inept and irresponsible that they would raise an uncivilized spawn who barbarously tumbles through decent society like a rabid beast in heat.

Of course, making sure that one doesn't overstep their bounds or dips into someone else's territory is the basis of all politeness, but with Chinese folks, the practice of it can sometimes get a little baffling, where occasionally saying one thing may actually mean the opposite, or may require a well-rehearsed and established response. For instance, during dinner invitations or when hosting people in general, courtesy tends to be expressed by the host going to extreme lengths to offer the guest much much more than necessary, where the proper response is not to gorge yourself to your heart's content, but to politely refuse, and insist the opposite, leading to an oft-repeated see-sawing dance, which eventually settles and leaves all parties with what they're entitled to, and with the satisfaction that they went through all the proper motions. Then, as a properly behaved guest, you're supposed to eat enough to show that the meal is good, but not too much to avoid overstepping your bounds and taking advantage of the host's hospitality. Viewed in that light, leaving food unfinished is the polite way of saying that the host was more than generous, and that really, it's bloody high time the host stopped constantly trying to offer something else, when they don't really mean it. Well, yes, to certain extent they do want you to be full, but no, they clearly don't want you to eat them into the poor house. So really, when, at the end of a highly satisfying meal, the host keeps on saying, "Eat! Eat! Eat!" they're really saying, "Tell me you're full already, so we can stop this dance and chill out over some tea." Don't worry, it's not that complicated. Just never be the first to dig into anything, follow what everyone else does, and you should be fine.

Hence, every Chinese person's inner accountant tends to be busy pulling double-duties, not only constantly calculating how best to get the most bang out of their buck, by never wasting the bits of flesh clinging to the most pitiful of apple cores, or even the slimiest of left-over juices at the bottom of a dish that can be easily poured over their last rice, but also always updating a complicated balance book that keeps track of what they may owe to whom, or when it may be their turn to treat people to dinner. Maybe this is why many Asians are so good at math!

Further Quick Observations, Unworthy of a Full Blog

2006-03-30T03:29:00.000-08:00

Female Mullets (or Femlets):
O, the humanity! The horror… the horror… What dastardly evil hair stylist introduced the dreaded, the fearsome mullet in China (and Asia)? What mad raving lunatic would think that a head-full of hockey hair could possibly look good on an Asian person? And a gal, at that? Creating the unthinkable, ASIAN FEMLET??! The first few times I saw mullets here I had to make several double-takes, and consciously prevent myself from staring in utter fascination as my mind tried to process the conflicting information… Mullet, yes, that is a mullet. Trust me, as a Canadian, I know a mullet when I see one. There was definitely the unmistakable business-in-front short, neatly trimmed hair (no, those aren't just really odd bangs), and the party-in-back slightly above shoulder hair, all rigidly held together by scads of hair spray and gel. But wait. I'm not seeing a burly, sweaty person under that notorious coif. No, I'm seeing a slim Chinese woman, dressed quite stylishly, without any tomboyishness or butchiness, but rather with one hundred percent feminine allure and elegance. Actually, after you sort of get past the mental hairball that is the mullet, it doesn't look that bad at all-- even though it still is a mullet. In fact, it looks quite nice. Although I'm far from being an expert on style or anything to do with hair or fashion consciousness, I think one of the reasons mullets may work on Asian woman (and some men) is that their hair is not thick and voluminous like many Westerners, but is instead thin, fine, and somewhat limp, giving the mullet a far lighter and airy appearance, rather than the heavy, matty, i-can-block-a-puck-with-this that is all too familiar back home. Often too, they style it with some extra highlights and other shiny doo-dads, making it even more removed from the more frightening varieties of mullets found in the lil'barbershop of horrors. Really, the Asian femlet can be fairly attractive, even though the Canadian in me continues to scream, "Why, O, Why? Why? By all the hair gods above, WHY?!"

I'm pretty sure I can just eat one:
Clearly, all food companies must adapt to the local palette, but there are some chips here that I cannot stomach without having to suppress my gag reflex. I don't mean the utterly fantastic, highly addictive shrimp chips easily found in Chinatowns around the world. I mean, when you're looking for a tiny tiny bag of ordinary Lays and Pringles, just about when you have a pretty desperate craving for salt-n-vinegar or sour-cream-n-onion, and instead, you're faced with flavours like, green tea, grilled crab legs, Italian red meat, and chicken wing. I still don't know what Italian red meat is, and I have no intention of finding out. Some of them are not too bad, even though finding certain flavours in a chip format is a little non-intuitive, like green tea chips. Salty green tea, anyone? But there are some pretty horrible ones, and by far, the worst of the bunch has got to be grilled crab legs. It could be I just had a bad bag, as not only did it have a really chemically fishy flavour that I'm assuming is meant to approximate "crab," but it was also somewhat soggy and moist, as if they took the seafood aspect of crab a little too seriously. Most foul, and something never to be attempted ever again. Fortunately, it is still possible to find familiar flavours, as I figured out that "American Classic" means "Regular or Plain," and if I need to find a good Dorito, the "Swiss cheese" flavour is inexplicably a pretty good approximation.

No cheese for you!:
Speaking of cheese, I can pretty much guarantee that you will not find decent cheese in China . I don't mean the lumps of odourless, flavourless low-fat orangey hunks of plastic that passes for cheese in Anglo North America. You can find those horrific crimes against humanity here too. I mean real cheese. Real, naturally aged blues, camemberts, bries that are never thrown in the fridge, but allowed to sit outside in the gentle warmth of the room, so as to retain their perfect melt-in-your-mouth gooey tenderness, and their wonderful fragrance that will strip the paint off walls. But, strangely enough, given all the other weird crap they tend to eat with great gusto, most Chinese people are not at all fond of anything that is milk-derived, like say butter, cream, sour cream, and cream cheese. This is possibly because, like my mother, many Chinese people are extremely lactose intolerant, and drinking or eating anything milk-based would condemn them to a rather grim fate of leaving a tooting trail of inflammable odours everywhere they go. It's true that pizzas are very popular here, largely because they're a Western novelty, but they certainly won't taste like any of the ones back home, and you definitely won't get to find of the fantastic ones topped with dripping gorgonzola or freshly shaven slices of parmesan. What you'll get instead is a topping of leathery white gunk that tastes nothing like cheese or anything remotely milk-based (I suspect it's soy-based). The single exception that proves the rule is yoghurt. For some reason, yoghurt is hugely popular here, particular the kind that's not meant to be drunk. No idea why. Quite good though.

Things are much further than they seem:
Whenever possible, I will always use my own two feet to get anywhere. There is something about walking or biking from one end of the city to the other that gives you a more intimate understanding of the city, its people, and its rhythm. In Beijing though, I've found had to occasionally abandon my somewhat idealistic practice, as I don't have a bike, and damn, this city is real freaking big. A little rule of thumb: everything on the map, even though it may look like it's a few blocks a way, is much much further than it seems. Many a time I've said to myself that I could easily hit several places on foot in a single day, and instead, found myself walking for over an hour on the same dusty, smoky road, taxis and tuk-tuks storming by, with the temple, park, or monument I planned to see nowhere in sight. Much of this has to do with the shittiness of my guidebook. Curse "the Roughguide to Beijing" to all ten levels of Hell! Not only does the damn thing have crappy maps, it often lists the wrong opening hours and ticket prices! Blast! "Rough" shouldn't mean "inaccurate"! To be fair though, I shouldn't have been stupid enough to think that these guides are anything more than guides, not the unwavering truth. Also, I suspect that my edition is a little old, and given that everything in China changes so quickly, it's not surprising that prices and timetables should change too. So, let this be a lesson to you all! Don't be an imbecile like me when you come visit China. Get the most updated guide possible, and remember to assume that the damn thing will likely be wrong.

The formaldehyde gene:
One thing that you'll notice about many Chinese or Asian people is that it's incredibly difficult to estimate their age. Many, especially the women, look incredibly well preserved, as if they wake in the morning to take dips in a bath of formaldehyde. Take my cousin. She's in her early twenties, and still looks like she's fourteen. Or say, my sister. Frequently, people think she's younger than I, even though she's six years older. And then there's a whole host of other Asian people who look at least a decade younger than they really are. Obviously, there are old-looking Chinese people, but I just haven't figured out precisely when they start looking old. It's almost as if Chinese people's appearance follow a step function, where they seem to be ageless for a long period time, but after they hit a certain age, they suddenly start looking like a decrepit old coot at an accelerated pace. Some of it is genetic, I imagine, and some of it may also have to do with good eating habits. That last is what many of my colleagues claim, though I know for a fact that my cousin does not have anything resembling a good balanced diet. Chinese people do have some pretty good habits though, like drinking tea all the time, as I mentioned before, but they also strongly believe in balancing their meals, never eating too much fat or too much meat, and always trying to eat tons of veggies. Chinese people are epicurians, but they're not gluttons. If anything, they're health obsessed epicurians, and I imagine the diet does contribute to some genetic predisposition for apparently slower aging.

The Difference a Year Makes

2006-03-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

Xiaopang (小胖), or Little Fatso, is a short, squat, roundish fellow, working on his Master's thesis, which, like may grad students, consists of playing online computer games (in this case, an interesting knock-off of Diablo). Though not at all overweight by North American standards, compared to the average slender Chinese person, his mild chubbiness makes him seem positively obese, making him the target of much good-humoured teasing. I have to admit that his relative shortness, his seemingly stubbier limbs, and his ample baby fat framing his face and threatening to engulf his eyes, really does make him look like a life-sized laughing Buddha, albeit a much more youthful one, and one who tends to be fully clothed, and who'd probably be a little annoyed if you rubbed his belly for luck. We've often jokingly suggested that he should go study in the States, where he would be the poster-boy for health and fitness, an Adonis next to some of the more frightening (and thankfully exceptional) cases of morbidly layered Americans lurching their way from their couch to their car carrying their gallon cup of sugary soda and a ginormous bag of chips, with a greasy chicken wing wedged between their teeth. Joking aside though, Xiaopang would fit in a lot better in North America than he or my colleagues may think.

I always found there was something a little odd about Xiaopang, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It's not so much that he dresses differently, or that he uses different expressions that only the cool cats are using. It's not even that he does anything strangely, or that he has any bizarre nervous ticks or any of the odd mannerisms I mentioned before. Although he is slightly fidgety and twitchy, and he occasionally gets so excited he stumbles over his tongue, it's really nothing you wouldn't expect from a young twenty-odd overgrown kid. It's just that when compared to my other colleagues, he's just… he's just… well, for lack of a better word… he's just a little insolent. Now, as you many of you know, I'm certainly not a bright shining example of propriety and politeness, but I do know my limits, and I do occasionally know when to keep my trap shut, and especially when to backtrack when I've stepped on too many toes. Xiaopang, however, really doesn't seem to have these boundaries, except of course when the boss is around, or when people can't tolerate him anymore and tell him to quit yapping and whining, as he does about every damned thing. Ironically, the main thing he complains about is our box-lunches, specifically about how he can't eat this or that for some bizarre reason. Seriously, this is beyond your regular petulance... I mean, what kind of proper Chinese person refuses to eat pork??! Fortunately, he's not that annoying, and he is a rather pleasant source of amusement. Besides, I've always found him to have a rather healthy sense of individualism. But sometimes, he just goes far beyond decency, exhibiting not the independent and confident aspects of individualism, but rather the highly selfish and inconsiderate aspects of it, which are bred out of a sense of boundless entitlement and a rejection of any responsibilities except that to satisfy oneself. Sound familiar? Yeah, Xiaopang is your average spoiled brat.

Of course, this makes perfect sense. Xiaopang is a direct product of China's one child policy instituted in 1980, whose social effects are only now being felt, as the children born after the policy was implemented― specifically, after a few years when the policy started really being enforced― are coming of age. At the time, the severe famines of only a decade before were still fresh in people's memories, and there was a real fear that China would not be able to feed its people. So, although people hated the policy, and although there were widely-reported cases of abuses, of forced abortions, and of abandoned children, many people did grudgingly participate, and the population growth did come under control. A little bit too much under control. The population is now greying at such an alarming rate, that the government is trying to figure out how to loosen the rules again, but without causing people to suddenly start reproducing like rabbits. In hindsight, had they known the problems that it would incur, I'm not too sure that the government would still have gone ahead with the one child policy, as much as it is widely touted as the reason for China's recent economic success (the popular argument goes that the time and money saved in raising only one child allowed families to work more hours and save more money to be nice, obedient consumers). Beyond the major headache of figuring out how to adequately pay for people's welfare, there is also the progressive changes to Chinese society, due to the folks like Xiaopang, that's anybody's guess how they will be absorbed.

Xiaopang is not just an isolated case. We're talking about an entire generation of people, growing up as a single child, in families accustomed to juggling their attention on the multitude of children from the entire extended family, but who suddenly became focussed on a single child. Inevitably, these children get incessantly doted on and spoiled, especially by their grandparents who tend to the child in the absence of their working parents, and who cave to every little whim of the screaming brat, earning them the popular moniker "Little Emperors." Not surprisingly then, without the often beneficial balancing influence of siblings, they grow up with all the most negative mentalities of spoiled children, expecting to always get what they please, never thinking that they may need to actually work for anything, and assuming that the people around them are at their beck and call. This effectively means that many of the core beliefs of Chinese culture are either not fully adopted, or blatantly ignored― in particular, values such as the basic politeness to and respect for one's elders, or the willingness to tolerate temporary hardships, 忍. Of course, not all children born after the policy are like this, as their upbringing heavily depends on the parents. Spoiled brats have existed at any time and at any age. It's a question of proportions, and, as a result of the one-child policy, the proportion of spoiled brats in China is a lot larger than before.

Added on to that, many of these kids grew up during the time when Western culture was being introduced into a newly opened China through movies and the web. In contrast to my slightly older colleagues who are I about my age, they have no interest in any of China's history or culture, and instead only want to watch the crassest and most intellectually deprived shows, blatantly modelled on Western ones... Don't get me wrong. I very much enjoy pop culture (damn, I miss Battlestar Galactica! Hell, at this point, I'd even watch the Chinese version of the Simpsons or Family Guy!), and I'm not advocating that everyone watch long hours of Parliament discussions, or long arty foreign flicks with subtitles. There must be a balance. Unfortunately though, many of the up and coming generations in China are only seeing the sugar-coated heavily processed side of the West, instead of seeing the progressive and liberating sides; all they see is the bling bling, and end up crave it with the same no-strings attached, push-button mentality of the most self-enamoured Westerner. Similarly, instead of seeing the family responsibilities as a source of comfort and security, they see only the heavy and oppressive Chinese hierarchy from which they'll do anything to be freed. Naturally, a large part of that could be that they're young and impressionable, and that like all rebellious kids, nothing of their outdated parents' stuffy past hold any interest of them, while only the hyperactive plastic-coated world grabs their attention. So really, the marked difference that many Chinese people are wringing their hands about could just be the normal frictions between generations, but that are accentuated by the convergent influences of the 1980 one child policy and the introduction of Western influences.

Indeed, there is a familiar generation clash that is slowly building and becoming problematic, as the fundamental differences between the generations are drawn clearer in the sand. A problem, I might add, that was self-induced. Nevertheless, I see no need for any doom and gloom predictions. As difficult as China's social transition will be, I don't think that the changes will be as dramatic as having China's youth suddenly rising up and claiming to be Westerners. Some things will never change about Chinese people, no matter what the generation or how many foreign influences bombard them. Instead, I suspect that China's future lies in the scrying glass that is Hong Kong, and perhaps Taiwan, two places which have also been bitten by the bug of Western affluence, and have found it difficult to adjust, but have thus far managed to stay true to themselves without coming apart.

The Pecking Order

2006-03-25T20:19:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago, just about when everyone was busily polishing off the spicy oily goodness of our surprisingly good box-lunches, the head honcho prof supervising my grad student colleagues (and paying my bills) leaned back in his plush faux-leather chair, picked at his teeth a little, and, as he pensively tugged at the few strands of long hairs that he inexplicably keeps dangling over his lips, started waxing philosophical about history, then about a famous play, and then finally something about the heavy ponderous responsibilities of mankind, inevitably morphing into a thinly veiled lecture about how his grad students (and to a certain extent me) should be thinking about improving this or that about themselves, as they methodically strategize their way into becoming full profs in a famous American university. Naturally, his students tuned out, their eyes glazing over, as they fiddled with their chopsticks, and sighed as the ol'boss got into one of his "moments" again. Now, the prof is slightly atypical, as most Chinese employers generally won't take such an interest in their minions' moral fibre; however, it used to be much more common way back when, and in this day and age, it's largely restricted to old(er) Chinese men, specifically older more traditional Chinese family members. Back home, I've experienced a few of these sporadic talking-tos from my father, which unfortunately had the tendency of blowing up into indignant yelling matches (there were a few pretty memorable ones that almost lead to fisticuffs!). Indeed, while this kind of interference in one's private life (that is intolerable to me) also happens within western families, for Chinese people and many Asians, not only are you expected to listen, you're expected to listen silently as you try to nod at all the right moments and keep an eager and attentive expression on your face. Extraordinarily difficult, and as it were, entirely against the western influences of my upbringing. Much of that sermonning hulla-balloo though, has to do with the complicated rank and hierarchy of Chinese society.

One thing you may notice in China is that when people refer to their friends or their colleagues, instead of using the given name, they might use the family name and add a few words behind it, typically 姐 (jie), big sister, or 哥 (ge), big brother, or preceding it, typically 老 (lao), old, or 大(da), big, depending on the person's age and gender. The equivalent in English would be the rather goofy-sounding, Old Teng, Big Wang, Big Sister Jung, or Big Brother Lee. A close look at any language, reveals quite a bit about the morals and values of the people, and the Chinese language is no different, as it shows how seriously Chinese people take the family rank and position of each generation. For instance, general words for brother, sister, cousin, aunt, and uncle simply do not exist; instead, there are only specific words defining the generation and relative age of all family members, from words for older and younger brothers, older and younger sisters, and also words for the cousins, aunts, and uncles from the maternal or paternal side of the family. Making it even more complicated, there are different names for people who are senior to you, depending on whether they're older or younger than your parents. If they're roughly the same age, and if they're pretty chummy with your parents, you might call them 妈妈(mama), mum, or 爸爸 (baba), dad, while if they're older you'll be refer to them as 太太 (taitai), madam, or 伯伯 (bobo), big uncle. If they're really older than your parents though, you'll likely be calling them 婆婆 (popo), granny, or 爷爷 (yeye), granddad. Conversely, for younger generations, you can use the terms 妹 (mei), little sister, or 弟 (di), little brother, and if they're much younger than you, you can use小伙子(xiao huzi), which my own translation is "little upstart." Added on to that, you can sometimes refer to cabbies, stall owners, or cooks as 师傅(shifu), master, or 老板(laoban), boss/owner, as a show of respect or politeness, though it's entirely optional, and used mostly when you want the food or service to speed up a little.

Yeah, yeah, I know, boring and annoying shit. I never really liked that crap either as it was drilled into me as a kid. Don't worry though, as hierarchical and rank-obsessed as Chinese people may appear to be, the rules are still pretty flexible, and, especially in the last few years, they're not taken as seriously or as heavily enforced as before. Many times even, terms like 大哥 (big brother) or 小弟(little brother) are not so much used to indicate rank, but used as friendly terms of endearment. Chinese people recognize how damned complicated finding the right term can be, sometimes even within generations, so it's entirely acceptable to ask the other person how you should be calling them, to which they usually respond by telling you to call them what other people call them. When in doubt though, it's always a sure bet to use the more respectful and more polite term, and of course, instead of using the more familiar form of "you", 你 (ni), you should use the more deferential form, 您 (nin), very similar to the more polite "vous" as opposed to "tu," in French.

All this highly detailed hierarchy derives from the Confucian respect for one's ancestors and elders, which is why you find similar trends in other countries whose cultures have been influenced by China, such as Korea and Japan . Often derided as ancestor worship, Confucianism is based on the rather logical principle that all elders should be recognized as having greater experience and knowledge, and therefore should always be, at the very least, be paid a little respect and politeness-- though in practice (read: family settings), it may occasionally translate into demands for blind, unquestioning obedience. As oppressive and annoying as it can sometimes get, Confucianism is not merely meant to make younger generations obey their parents, as if it were a devious plan to nip teenagers' healthy rebelliousness in the bud, thus preventing the wanton destruction of the family rickshaw. There is in a fact a bi-directional responsibility between the elder and younger, where the elder has the heavy responsibility to care for the younger, and also to teach them how to become a better person, and eventually surpass the elder. Hence, the younger is deferential to the elder not because they may have been born a few decades or so earlier in some distant flower-power era, but because of their potential of being a teacher and a moral guide. This means that although the younger will have to sit through a few intolerable lectures, in return, they'll be very well taken of and continually supported the rest of their lives―in the best cases anyway. So, through the Confucianism lens, family relations are less blood-bonds per se, than teacher-student or master-apprentice relations. Indeed, a heavy emphasis is placed on respecting teachers of all kinds in Chinese culture, where even the lowliest elementary school teacher is highly regarded. By extension, having an education and just saying that you're a doctoral student, or even just a master's student, will gain you instant respect, as opposed to puzzled questions asking why you haven't found a real job yet.

As you may imagine though, successive Chinese dynasties and emperors encouraged the practice of kowtowing to elders and teachers, and quickly leapt on it to co-opt it for their own purposes by making "teachers" also encompass "authority" and "government," and gradually changing "respect" into "obedience." And, when coupled with the idea of 忍(ren) I spoke about two blogs ago, you end up with an incredibly powerful cultural mechanism to ensure the subservience of the people. (Once, over dinner, I suggested that, to avoid such blatant abuses of what is otherwise a very laudable and reasonable practice, instead of giving instant respect to anyone, respect must earned and proven to be well deserved, as I reasoned that the age=wisdom equation is not always correct and not always applicable to all situations, and that teachers are not necessarily old men wearing long silken robes and sporting sweeping white hair. My dad wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the idea.)

Nevertheless, I must admit that the pecking order in China does have its perks. Teaching here is certainly a lot more pleasant and easier than back home. Whenever I teach my academic writing class, instead of a bunch of bored, badly hung-over students I need to somehow get interested in a topic they'll likely promptly forget, I'm generally faced with a bunch of eager and attentive grad students (either that or they're really good at pretending to listen), who tolerate my horrible Chinese, who laugh at all my half-witted toilet-humour jokes, and who are extraordinarily polite and always refer to me as Teacher Deng or Doctoral student Deng, even though I told them many times the first is unnecessary and the second is somewhat inaccurate.

(Well… the respect and politeness doesn't always come that easily. I also do one-on-one editing jobs, and let me tell you, all grad students, regardless of whether they have a two millennia-long culture telling them to shut up and listen, fight to the death to avoid any more revisions or edits!)

Where the Spiritual Currency is Incense Sticks

2006-03-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

I think I finished my grand tour of Beijing’s temples over the weekend. There are still a number I haven’t seen, but to hell with them. Enough already. I’ve seen the two main temples of the old pathologically ritual-prone dynasties, the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Earth, three Buddhist temples, one Confucian temple, and one Taoist temple. They were wonderful, spectacular, magnificent, and I oooed and ahhhed at all the right times, as I snapped hundreds of pictures with my handy-dandy digital camera on loan from my brother-in-law. On the face of it, with all these centuries-old temples scattered about, nestled in groves of aged, twisting trees, against the backdrop of misty mountains, and set to the distant score of gurgling brooks and tinkling fountains, I can understand why the myth of China as the exotic mysterious land of spirituality persists so strongly in the West. There are, of course, spiritual elements in Chinese beliefs, much as there are in most religions, but as any Chinese will tell you (either of the real bonifed or banana varieties), Chinese people are not spiritual. All the things bougie hipsters cling to in a desperate search to find meaning in their maxed-out credit card lifestyle-- the disciplined stony-faced martial arts, the bamboo-bending movies, the inexplicably inaccurate Chinese tattoos, and the colourful ten-steps-to-Buddhism books-- do not represent Chinese people in any way. Chinese people do not have the I-Ching memorized off the top of their head, nor do they have a secret garden of peaceful serenity hidden somewhere in their house. At most, they may have a small altar to a few Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and other traditional “gods,” all mashed together for good measure, with a few sticks of incense smoking away and a small offering, like a bowl of fruit. Indeed, most Chinese people don’t understand the difference between Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and the other “isms.” They just pray to them out of habit and superstition, not due to any delicate sensitivity to spiritual matters or any extraordinary connection to nature.

Actually, that raises an excellent point. You know all those serene gardens, so typical of Chinese or Asian landscapes? All those meticulously manicured plants and trees, placed just so, to effect the illusion of a sagging, sleepy old man? All those swiss-cheese rocks, carefully chosen and stacked on top of one another to build artificial mountains? And finally, all those obediently snaking rivers, tightly leashed on both sides by tall granite walls? None are signs of an appreciation or respect for nature. In fact, the opposite is true. China has long fought a war with its environment, and a very successful one at that. Across the two or three millennia of its history, China has managed to tame its wilds, by systematically eradicating most of the large wildlife, cutting down huge expanses of its forests, and progressively choking its silt-filled rivers with dikes until today, nothing but sludgy muddied water flows. There used to be elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, and countless other now extinct wildlife that disappeared as their habitats were torn down to make way for rice paddies and wheat fields for China’s always hungry population. Similarly, lakes and marshes shrank until they disappeared, as peasants drained more and more land to take advantage of the fertile soil. Bear in mind though, that this battle was fought and won, several hundred years ago, so the environment we see today, is nothing more than an exhausted, overworked landscape, where perhaps only a few isolated pockets of real wilderness still persist. Hence, the “nature” that Chinese people came to appreciate, and that is constantly reflected in paintings and sculptures, is merely an artificial, highly domesticated and contrived garden, in which everything obediently follows the complicated rules and laws of Chinese rituals. Rather than the wonderfully synergistic relationship with nature that there may appear to be, Chinese people have an incredibly sophisticated and effective relationship of exploitation, that has become so well imprinted on their minds that they honestly believe that nature is there only to serve them.

This rather utilitarian approach to nature extends to Chinese people’s spiritual/religious lives as well. At the two active Chinese temples I visited, the Tibetan Buddhist and Taoist ones, I saw a huge amount of Chinese supplicants, all clutching large bundles of incense sticks, some of them the small thin pink ones that can be found at ten times the price in gimmicky naturopath stores back home, and some of them were huge honkers, easily a meter and half long and several centimetres thick, all shiny and golden with long verses painted on them. The really hard-core folks brought bowls of fruit, or (i kid you not) garbage bags full of golden paper, folded into the shape of traditional gold ingots, each with a different prayer written within. As they slowly make through to the back of the temple, they’ll stop at each altar, light a few incense sticks, burn some paper ingots, and bow in four directions. Of course, it’s not that strict; some people just pause a few seconds and then jettison a whole bunch of the sticks into the roaring fire of the altar and move on to the next one. But, if they’re within a building, they might just leave a few incense sticks in front of one of the statues, and then kowtow three times in front of each one. For a small (large) donation, some even get one of the monks to follow them around intoning prayers as they solemnly pay obeisance in front of the myriad of Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian gods, lingering a little while longer in front of a particular divinity that may be particularly suited for whatever purpose the supplicant came to pray for. And by Jove and Juno, there’s one hell of an absurd pandemonium of minor divinities, saints, gods, and spirits! Fortunately, to maximize the benefits of their prayers, there are pretty good labels in front of each one, describing precisely what they can do, should it be improving one’s health, one’s fertility (or that of a spouse), and, the single most important thing to Chinese people, one’s wealth.

Naturally, if you’re familiar with any of the theoretical aspects of any of the “religions,” you’ll know that worshiping all those gods is bullshit. If you want to be really technical about it, none of them are religions per se, as Buddha, Lao-tze, Chuang-tze, and Kong-tze (Confucius) were all educators and philosophers, advocating a way life to be at peace with oneself and with one’s community… and certainly, never mentioned anything about gods, magical powers, miracles, or any such mystical hogwash. As these things go though, as their teachings spread and were adopted by the bulk of the people, they blended into existing beliefs, and integrated many of the old animist rituals, morphing and making so many ideological back flips that they became the unrecognizable set of superstitious habits that they are today. You’ll never believe how many strange rituals and odd taboos there are. It’s as if there’s a superstition governing every single aspect of Chinese people’s lives. In about mid-February, I came in to work one day to find that a number of the guys had cut their hair. Turns out that the day before was the “Dragon Lifts His Head Day,” when farmers all beckon the start of a good season by cutting their hair. I still don’t get it. Wherever you are in the world, you may have noticed the customary practice of having live fish, or a portrait of one, somewhere in all Chinese restaurants; this is because the word “fish” sounds a lot like “wealth” in Chinese, and hence having fish around is deemed lucky. In the same sense, the number four is considered unlucky because in Chinese it sounds a lot like the word “death.” Before every building is built, or shortly after it is, a small feast has to be prepared and a few prayers said to satisfy the house gods. And, depending on the year, you’ll have people rushing to get married, or madly having sex to have children born in a specific year, like say the year of the dragon, when buggers are thought to be more intelligent and more likely to become wealthy. Anyway, the list goes on and on, largely consisting of habits that were unsuccessfully purged during China’s Cultural Revolution. Chinese people are, and will perhaps always be, superstitious to the core.

Indeed, it is only the very rare Chinese who has the luxury of caring about anything beyond the needs of the here and now. Many are too busy surviving and trying to make sure their family and children will be better off, and simply do not have the time to worry about whether their spirit is tune with Gaia, or how well their soul is jiving with the gods. Spirituality here has nothing to do with improving oneself, or gaining enlightenment. Rather, as a result of the nitty-gritty necessities and deprivations of the real world, its cousin, superstition, reigns here. Fortunately though, it can easily be appeased by bribing any and all of the gods with incense sticks.

Coolie, Coolie, Everywhere

2006-03-18T20:53:00.000-08:00

It utterly amazes me how much Chinese people are willing to work. I've read about it before coming here, about the cheap and complacent labour that has every Western company pounding on China's door, desperate for their share, but it's only after living here that I'm beginning to understand what it means. Every morning, when I stop by the market around my apartment, there's always the same set of people, regardless of whether it's a weekend or a holiday, selling steaming chewy buns, salty deep-fried dough cakes, or fresh, boiling hot soy-milk. Meanwhile, the other shop-keeps will be busily pulling the blankets off the fruits and veggies unsold from the day before, as they sort the fresh produce rolling in by bicycle-cart or donkey. Of course, "morning" means different things to different people, but typically, when I go for my breakfast, the sun would just be rising; meaning that the market people must wake up much earlier than I, especially those who are preparing the food. But these loonies don't take breaks! I've been there in the afternoon, and I've been there late in the evening, sometimes past 10 or 11, when my hungry belly growls for a quick evening snack of spicy noodles or candied dates to munch on, and still these guys are there. Sure, much like all markets or restaurants, they have to work wacky shifts to accommodate people going to work, or people coming off from work, but it is just madness that they just don't seem to take breaks or days off, and in these small, mainly family-run shops, they also don't appear to have any employees to stagger the work hours, or just pick up the slack one day or another. And this willingness to work long hours, doing boring, thankless jobs with little hope of upward mobility, is very much the norm here, from the countless security guards slouching over their chair, half asleep, still clutching their thermos of tea, to the many street cleaners prowling the streets in the beat-up carts for any piece of metal that can be sold as scrap, to the tenders of bicycle and car parking lots who sometimes have a cardboard tent set up to shelter from the notoriously cold North Beijing wind. It is only the very very few who have the good fortune of having a job that pays well enough, and that has enough job security, to let them afford to take breaks, and not miss even a single yuan (about 30 cents).

While China is nominally communist on paper and in practice, for most ordinary people, the country is Adam Smith's wet capitalist dream, a place where there are effectively no unions (even though in theory all workers are part of the communist party's glorious worker's union), no labour rights, no minimum wage, and certainly no mandatory lunch breaks. There are just too many people fighting for too few jobs, that there will always be someone willing to do the same job for longer and for less pay, and still with a happy smile on their face... even as their well connected employer fixes a bright red, sickle-and-hammer pin on his lapel. This is particularly true for construction workers, many of whom appear to be migrant peasants who came to the capital hoping for a decent job and wage to send to their families. Instead, these peasants are recruited by construction sites, given a pick-axe and shovel, and made to labour on either Beijing 's new subway system, Olympic buildings, or various other projects going on in the city. Hence, you'll notice a strange mix of high and low tech construction here, where you'll frequently find shiny new cranes digging ditches, alongside a chain gang of heavily tanned Chinese labourers in tattered generation-old clothes, steadily working away. In fact, everywhere you go, there will always be someone doing a job that could easily be done with less time and effort by a machine or some other fancy gizmo.

I'm guessing some of this heavy emphasis of human labour has to do with the old Communist policy of trying to provide a job for everyone, which would explain the many redundant cleaners, greeters, and security folks. But again, I think the wages are so low here that it must be more affordable for employers to hire more people on coolie wages rather than invest in new more efficient methods or technology. Yeah, as dramatic and ironic (and offensive) as it sounds, most Chinese people are coolies in their own country, with no other choice but to work and live in substandard conditions. Yet, they continue working, never asking for more pay or for more rights, except for whatever that is trickled down to them from high above. (Hell, even my grad student colleagues, as much as they have it far better than the average Chinese, all consistently work everyday until at least midnight (though many play computer games and watch pirated flicks, as all hard-working grads!), very rarely going out, mostly because they don't have the funds for it, and also because they're all unwilling to go back to their irregularly heated, cramped bunk-bed dorms.)

Chinese people have a word for this: "忍 (ren)" Translated, it is the quality that all immigrants and all people in difficult straits have, to work hard and to suffer in silence, never uttering a complaint or a pitiful moan, as they patiently wait for their lot to get better. What's curious about Chinese people, though, is not that they're tougher, or able to tolerate more than other peoples. Rather, it's the fact that the concept of忍 is so very deeply ingrained in Chinese culture and consciousness that they practically expect to have to go through a gauntlet of hardships before getting any degree of comfort― a far cry from the North American culture of entitlement. In fact, many of Chinese people's most popular aphorisms and stories extol the virtues of tolerating great bitterness, to not only ultimately achieve their goals, but also to become better people. There's one aphorism in particular that my grandmother used to repeat to me very often, "吃苦中苦，变人上人 (chi ku zhong ku, bian ren shang ren)," that is, the greater the suffering, the better of a person you will become. It's not that Chinese people are self-flagellating masochists. I believe it's just that Chinese culture itself indoctrinates a willingness to accept higher pain thresholds before they decide that enough is enough.

However, I honestly wonder how the concept was introduced into the culture, and if it was a cunningly Machiavellic plan by some emperor way back when, to make the people increasingly tolerant of his excesses and that of his overfed goons, as very interestingly, many of my colleagues have used the concept of忍 to explain why Chinese people are not as obsessed as Westerners with the all-powerful and mystical buzzwords "democracy" and "freedom". Democracy has indeed been the Tiananmen-sized paddled that the Western media has used to spank the ever backward and ever uncomprehending China. For most Chinese people though, it really isn't an issue, and they're somewhat mystified by Western journalists who come to China constantly searching for the whistleblower who'll confide, in whispered tones, how terribly unhappy they are and how much they wish the West could only just bring their precious enlightenment.

Chinese people do believe that, in theory, democracy is a good thing, a fundamental human right, and yadayada, but they will point out that, on the one hand, most Chinese are uneducated peasants for whom the concept of democracy and voting is alien, and to suddenly expect free and fair elections, is just absurd. On the other hand, even though there's still stories of people being arbitrarily locked away, and even though there's constantly news of some government bureaucrat being corrupt, they'll say Chinese people are just willing to patiently wait for the government to change at its own pace, as long as their lot slowly improves. And really, despite the West's unfair focus on all that's wrong in China, there are many things that have markedly improved in China. Yes, there is still censorship, but the media is much freer than it used to be, and frankly, I see no difference between a government-censored media like China's, and a self-censoring one like the West's. Yes, there is also no democracy, and there still remain a few restrictive communist-era laws that aren't really enforced any more, but people here enjoy the same basic freedoms as in the West, and even if they had them, they would likely not use them, again much like most people in the West.

As long as the state satisfies the unspoken pact to improve the welfare of the people, Chinese people will not begin to secretly plot protests, or to start planning for the next grand revolution, as some imbecilic Western writers, clearly unfamiliar with the culture, have suggested. This is not to say that Chinese people are all quiet, complacent little lambs. They do have a threshold, and when pushed beyond it, they will revolt, and in a very big way, as the last revolutions have shown (typically, the dynasty turn-over in China takes about two to three hundred years). Clearly, the Chinese will not tolerate being coolies forever.

Beyond the Wail of Chinese Opera

2006-03-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

Last week, I experienced the irritating high-pitched nasal wailing of Chinese opera... that, anyway, was how I thought I was going to start this blog, before I actually went to see the opera. Back home, I'd only experienced Chinese opera in little spurts and snipets, but since it was when I was somewhat younger, and between the many arguments my parents and I had over the remote, what little I saw had left a fairly strong impression on me of Chinese opera being a series of over-stylized whiney ranting and hand waving, largely meant for derelict old fogies, without the slightest hint of chop-suey action with fists of flaming fury. Instead, what I found was remarkably engaging and subtle theatre, at times quite hilarious and gripping, despite that it was sung in a particular dialect and style that even most Chinese people cannot understand without subtitles-- meaning, of course, that I could barely understand a thing. A fascinating experience, and one that gave me a few insights into why most Chinese people didn't like the utter brilliance and beauty of "Hero," or for that matter, most of the other big flashy fancy-pants Western flicks. I'll get to that in a bit.

Knowing full well that I was likely not going to understand what the actors were going to be singing or saying (much like Italian or German opera), I went with a colleague of mine, who happens to be a pretty big fan of Chinese opera, so he could at least tell me the general gist of the opera. The show was held at Beijing University's campus theatre, which, for future reference, is the place to go for cheap yet high quality theatre, musicals and even movies (Jet Li has a new flick out?!). We got there a few hours earlier, as the campus itself is worth a quick gander-- it being one of the emperor's former summer palaces and all. I've already seen more than a lifetime's worth of old Chinese buildings, taken millions of pictures of arch after grandiosely towering wood/brick/stone/marble arch, strolled in countless over-manicured gardens speckled with all manners of funky rocks, and frankly, I'm beginning to suffer repetitive Chinese-temple-and-garden stress syndrome. But, I have to admit Beijing University is cool. Maybe it just has to do with there being a huge lake right in the middle of campus, with a towering ten-story temple right beside it. (Apparently, in the winter, when the lake freezes over, it's opened to ice skaters.) Or, it may have to do with the fact that many classes are held in renovated imperial halls, where emperor used to cavort about with his cronies making mad plans for world domination. Or, more likely, I just like the fact that a pompous imperial whimsy is actually put to good use instead of becoming yet another tourist cash cow. And, much like many universities around the world, the on-campus entertainment is not only frequently a bit above average, but also very affordable as it tends to be subsidized by student unions or the university itself. Many Beijingers tend then to opt for the decent university shows, instead of being screwed over like most tourists at a hoighty-toighty joint downtown.

The theatre was nearly packed by the time we got there, but we fortunately managed to nab seats facing the middle of the stage. Curiously, instead of a hobbling geriatric crowd constantly eyeing the bathroom to soothe their bladders, the crowd had a large variety of age groups in it, with a pretty good representation of my age class, and also just about evenly mixed across the financial spectrum. All were eagerly thumbing and re-reading their well-creased program, and alternatively staring at the empty stage, then at the musicians tuning their instruments, and then back at the stage again. At last, someone came on stage. A nobody. Just some dude who used to be a performer way back when, who came to introduce the opera. The disappointment was palpable. An interminable description of the opera, its origins, its relation to other styles of Chinese opera, its desperate fight for survival ensued. But end it did, as soon enough, the lights darkened, and the two prompters on the either side of the stage flashed out the name of the opera. Without even bothering to lift the curtain, two stage hands clumsily clunked a few props on stage. Maybe it was a really low budget show. Anyway, quickly after, two elaborately dressed and made-up actors appeared on stage. Very impressive. I must say that their skill was damned amazing. It's not just the singing, which demans a ridiculous amount of lyrical stamina. It's also the incredibly precise movements, the carefully timed steps, and yes, finally, some pretty decent martial arts, with chicks wielding swords and red-faced dudes swinging about obviously heavy halberds. (Remember, both Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi studied Chinese opera before making it to the big screen.) However, all throughout, the opera was continually plagued by poor stage management and clumsy scene switches, which could have been easily resolved in any tortuous elementary school play. Nevertheless, the actors were greeted with enthusiastic applause, and when an actor did a particularly difficult move or sang a difficult piece, the whole crowd erupted into loud cries of "好! hao! (good!)" Lots of fun.

But still, I found the shoddy set and stage management a little puzzling. Sure, it was a cheap ticket, but it couldn't possibly be that cheap that they couldn't even raise the curtain, and get a little more space to move about. Maybe even get a decent backdrop or two. Bizarre. From the pamphlet, it even seemed like they were pretty well funded by the cultural heritage wing of the UN, so there should be no problem on that end. Part of the answer, I believe, lies in something which may sound a little odd and far-fetched, but bear with me. Chinese people are obsessed with soap operas. Now, I don't mean Days of Our Lives or any crap like that. I mean these year-long weekly or twice-weekly shows that follow the lives of huge extended families, typically living at various times in history, and that all involve complex and convoluted stories weaving the lives of each character into a complicated web of intrigue... I get to watch these as I'm spinning in the nearby gym. Also, for some reason, Korean soaps are all the rage in China now. I must have seen the same scene of chopsticks being thrown down angrily on the table followed by an indignant huff. Sheesh. At least finish the meal and then stomp off... I believe, and this confirmed by my continued interrogations of my colleagues, that Chinese people are singularly interested in stories that involve human relationships and all the intrigues that come about from them, the more complicated the better. I suspect it could be due to Chinese people's tendency to be always surrounded by people, should it be family, friends and colleagues, which (may) naturally create an affinity for those kinds of stories. Now, I know this doesn't explain the reason why Chinese people don't seem to care about cheap production values, but perhaps what does, is the origin (one of them, anyway) of Chinese people's obsession with human relationships: the good ol'tube.

Until recently, all the shows were strictly government controlled broadcasting. Much of it was, and still is, blatant state propaganda, but the rest of it was actually pretty decent programming, though by our standards, boring and laughable, as there was never had any violence, any swearing, or any overt sexuality. Instead, people had only access to boring heavily filtered news casts, cheesy variety shows, and shoddily made, but extremely popular, soap operas. People do need to be entertained after all, and as bad as the shows were, Chinese people learned to appreciate the stories inherent in the shows, ignoring the cheap production values, much as they ignored the shoddy stage management in at the opera… basically, magnifying or complementing Chinese people's inherent gossipy interest in human relationships. I suspect also that on the side of the artists and the actors, they simply made peace with the fact that they would never have access to any kind of budget at all, and compensated by making the stories more beautifully complex, with more and more detailed stories. Effectively then, the generations of people who grew up on Chinese state-run television ended up not giving a rat's ass about what the show looks like, looking past the rickety sets and laughable props, and seeing mainly the sophistication and artistry of the story. On the other hand, the opposite is true in the West, where people have come to expect bigger and flashier sets, but where artists have learned to make more and more intricate spectacles... However, I hesitate to use the word spectacle as it has a somewhat negative connotation, and that's not what I mean. Although some westerners are obsessed with the spectacle in a sort of bright-lights and look-at-the-pretty-spinning-colours kind of way, western artists are extremely adept at making art where the meaning and beauty lies in dominantly the spectacle itself (i.e. "artistic" movies, otherwise referred to as arty-farty movies). Indeed, westerners have learned to appreciate this, and seek this out, which is why "Hero" was so well received in the West, but not by most Chinese who are simply not used to appreciating the subtleties of the spectacle.

Ok, ok. It sounds a little far fetched even to me, as I re-read what I wrote. Though, it does explain, why many Chinese people when pressed on why they don't like "Hero," just answer, "It's just scenery. I don't get it. What am I going to do with scenery? I can go see that myself! Where's the story?" Now, don't get me wrong. I love "Hero" and I love the story. I simply don't think many Chinese people appreciated it, largely because they aren't used to watching movies in that manner. Instead, it seems they've trained themselves to ignore the stage, and in the case of operas, to only hear the complicated wail of Chinese opera.

Quick Observations, Unworthy of a Full Blog

2006-03-12T16:36:00.000-08:00

Phlem-Rattling:
As you may have read, the Chinese government is attempting to convince its citizens to stop spitting everywhere they go. Right, when pigs fly. But frankly, it isn't the spitting they should be trying to stop, but what comes before the spitting, that is, the horking, the coughing, the retching, and the phlem-rattling that ultimately leads to the upchuck. And yes, even for a guy who finds the occasional burp or fart (ok fine, numerous, but i've since desisted!) perfectly normal, the awful symphony that accompanies the loosening of phlem is just the most repulsive thing I've heard. I'm not sure it's something I'll ever get used to here. It's like hearing the agonizing sounds of death of someone saddled with a combination of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and cholera, only it's repeated constantly throughout the day, by the men of course, but also the women. And it's not even when they're biking or exercising. It's when they're just casually walking around, getting tea, going to the can, reading a book, watching television, plesantly conversing, and then arrrrraCHHHHTHT...pTHUI! Sometimes, it doesn't even have the spit at the end, almost as if they were doing it for the mere joy of shifting the phlem about into a more comfortable position.

Chinese pedestrians are from Montreal:
If you're going to survive as a pedestrian in Beijing, you're gonna have to learn how to be a Montrealer and jaywalk. While there are a number of new, remarkably effective pedestrian lights springing up around the city, they are few and far between, and getting to a cross-walk can be a pretty far and annoying walk from where you need to go. Naturally, I'm not saying you should do what hard-core Beijingers do, and fearlessly cross the street even when there's a two-meter high metal railing to leap over in the middle... in speeding traffic! No, I'm just suggesting a somewhat more reasonable form of jaywalking, where you cross the street wherever and whenever you please, given a relatively small street and assuming the traffic isn't too fast. Fortunately, rather than the lunatic (yet high skilled) speeding of Montrealers, you tend to be faced with the lucky fact that...

Chinese drivers are from Toronto:
Meaning that the drivers here troll around at catatonic, grandmotherly paces, which on the plus side, makes estimating their incoming speed and distance a piece of cake. So, do what all proper Montrealers and Beijingers learn at a tender age, and launch yourself into incoming traffic, exquisitely timing your entry to perfectly and gracefully swim cross-stream through traffic, narrowly avoiding cars, bikes, and once you're good enough, trucks... Unfortunately though, much like Torontonians, Beijing drivers are real fucking easy with the horn. However, as opposed to the neurotic frantic beeping at any non-anal jaywalker who may appear meters and meters away (I timed it, damn you!), Beijing drivers tend to honk mostly out of rountine, just to make sure you know they're coming and you should get out of the way. This is not because they're polite. It's mainly because the streets tend to be so littered with people, bikes, bike-carts and donkeys-carts that they have no choice but to ask for people to make way, or rundown half the neighborhood. No one uses the side-walks here, and although there are really good and wonderfully wide bike routes, bikers just go everywhere (as they should!).

Indestructible bikers:
Speaking of biking, Chinese bikers must be indestructible. Surely, they must be, or else they wouldn't be so absurdly cavalier about preserving their lives. It's not so much that their bikes are ricketty, rusty old death-traps, or that no one, absolutely no one, wears a helmet, but it's that the people all seem to bike along, completely oblivious to the world, as if they were on Sunday stroll, even as a massive truck slowly lumbers inches away from them, angrily honking and demanding that they get out of the way. Hell, it could be pitch dark, there could be no lights on the road besides from the traffic streaming all around them, and they'd still be there, without a bike-light or the tiniest piece of reflective material, happily and slowly spining along. Of course, many of the bikes here are simply not designed for speed, and besides, most people can't afford those that are, or any sort of basic protection we take for granted in the West.

Line? What line?:
With the exception of banks, a few western-styled stores, and other places where there is a clear security presence, there is no such thing as a "line" here, or any Chinatown, for that matter. It's always hilarious though, to see silly Westerners get progressively more and more confused as they attempt to wait for a line to form, or meekly try to get the attention of someone, anyone, for just a little service. Chinese people don't queue. They basically crowd around the booth or the person who's selling something, and start yelling out their orders. Think of it like going to the pub, only you'll be doing the same when buying everything, not just a pint of nice thick stout. Wait until the server catches your eye, yell out your order, and you should be rewarded with acknowledging "Uhn." Soon enough, whatever you ordered will appear according to the highly accurate priority list in the server's head. Besides, if you're looking for some good chow, as a rule of thumb, always head for the elbow-jabbing crowds. Obviously, if people are fighting for it, it's gotta be good, but on a more fundamental level, since the turnover of the food is quite fast, the odds of encountering anything spoiled or rotten is significantly lower.

Public private spaces:
Now this is interesting, and I'll come back to this in a later entry. Chinese people, modest? Ha! I've seen more couples have public displays of affection (PDA, in puritianical anglo lingo) than back in my beautiful Montreal! Well, not to the same degree it can sometimes get in Montreal or other European countries. Still though, the number of couples hugging, nuzzling, caressing, or just looking dreamily in each other's eyes far out stripped the amount I've seen anywhere. It's as if they were in their own little hermetic universe, ignoring the hot sweaty crush of people in the bus or the subway, or even the many people walking about doing their daily thing. I suspect that the public spaces IS the private spaces to them, as for financial reasons, people here still live with their parents well into their twenties or thirties, and if they don't and they're from out of town, they certainly can't afford the luxury of a private room to themselves. My own place for instance, could easily accomodate four people instead of just my roommate and I. So, given that their private spaces are in fact public spaces, the only place they could get any degree of privacy is in the public.

On Preserving the Past (or, "Look, Maw! Natives!")

2006-03-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

Almost all the guidebooks of China insist you visit the delightfully quaint old neighborhoods, the hutongs, still preserved as they were for the last centuries, though rapidly disappearing under the inexorable, emotionless, faceless crush of modernity... or some other romantic hogwash like that. Quick! say the tour operators, buzzing around the subways, the hotels, and anywhere foreigners may be. Follow me, and you shall see the Real China! I will show you secret alleyways no Westerner has laid eyes on before! You will see the Real McCoy, the Real Deal, and Real Authentic Chinese People doing Authentic Chinese things. In Beijing, the area that probably has the most intact hutongs, or at least the area most known by tourist operators, is Dazalan, a little district south of Tiananmen Square. Last weekend, I was in the area and decided to wander about the hutongs a little bit.

I'm not sure what people expect to find there. Perhaps, under the watchful eye of the crisp spring sun shedding shadowy tears that dance and play along your path, right just around that crumbling brick corner, past that steaming street-kitchen serving fresh noodles, below those sunken arches upon which a fossilized rain gutter hangs askew, a darkened passageway opens out into a peaceful courtyard with a mulberry tree waving gently in the breeze. Under the knarled branches of the tree, an old tattered woman, steadily working away at the stains soaking in the soapy water of a seemingly indestructible cast-iron bucket, suddenly sees you, and her leathered face creases into a big toothless smile, as she eagerly invites you to share a home-cooked meal. Completely absurd. Even if that did happen, the woman might end up fleecing a small fortune out of you for a few greasy ribs and a small watery bowl of rice, very likely as part of an elaborate show set up by the tour guides. Bah, that's a bit over the top too. More likely, if you do attempt to cross the dirty virtually uncleanable doors of a hutong, you'd likely be met by puzzled stares and the fragances of oily food, heavy body odours, and frequently broken plumbing. The reality of hutongs lies somewhere between the starry-eyed whiteys being led around by flag-waving guides, and the piles of broken bikes rusting away on top of garbage-filled gutters.

Yes, it was interesting to walk around those really narrow, cobbled-stoned, warren maze streets. And yes, it did feel as if I was seeing how Chinese people used to live, and still do-- in poverty. There is nothing quaint or delightful about seeing people living in broken-down houses, without proper running water or plumbing, and forced to use seldomly cleaned public bathrooms because their own no longer work, even as comfy apartment complexes, far beyond their their means, rise around them, complete with regular electricity and consistent heating. The people living there are not there by choice. If they could, they would definitely get the hell out of there. Damn straight, those hutongs should be torn down! It is disgusting and an affront to human dignity to want to preserve the place as it is, as if it were a zoo, so people can come in poking at the funny primitive objects, and tossing a few coins at the natives to see them do their "cute" thing... while they're at it, maybe tour guides should start selling package tours around refugee camps and slums.

Granted, hutongs are part of China's past, and it's how people used to live, but there is nothing fundamentally noble or good about them, and neither do they represent any real Chinese traditions that would vanish should they be bulldozed over. Quite the contrary. Hutongs are merely the result of social and economic disparities in imperial China that saw the emperor and his gals waltz around in a cavernous city-castle, as his subjects huddled in cramped, decrepit hovels. After I finally managed to find way out of the hutong district, I visited the place where they would have been the most appropriate, the museum. But there, I found the opposite problem to irk me.

I don't even know why I go to museums anymore. Sure, I've been to a few really good ones (e.g. Berlin's fantastic Pergammon comes to mind), but others... well, others, either offer pathetically limited explanations, or just explain things in a completely biased manner that practically has me storming out the doors to avoid having an anurism. I can forgive some of the older ones for having outdated, clearly inaccurate captions, but other more modern ones take such an infuriatingly condescending tone, when describing any non-western culture. Musuems are trully where a people biases and prejudices are not only preserved, but put on display. China's National Museums were no different. On the East side of Tiananmen Square, in a huge lumbering block of concrete with classic soviet architechture and gloriously towering collonades, lie two of China's state museums. Apparently, the museums are frequently closed for repairs and renovations to sort of touch up history so it stays in line with the current accepted version, but it seemed I was in luck. Not only were the museums open, but a few special exhibits were on display, one entirely avoidable propaganda exhibit extolling the greatness of the state, and another potentially interesting exhibit describing all the many varied traditions from all over China.

I've mentioned before that China is not just composed of people commonly recognized as "Chinese," but instead have many ethnic minorities, whose traditions and culture bear little to no resemblance to that of the dominant Han Chinese culture. The Chinese government makes a big show of pointing out how fair and nice they are to these minorities, widely advertising this out on state-run televesion in documentaries and frequent apperances on variety shows. And to a very real extent the minorities are very well treated; all ethnic groups (including the Tibetans) have access to a combination of government subsidies and preferrential access to jobs and universities. However, while these minorities are clearly taken care of, they are by no means integrated into society... much like our very own First Nations or more recent non-white arrivals. Instead-- and the variety shows are particularly offensive--, they are always portrayed as curiosities, as strange quirks in China. In essence, while they are lauded as part of China, and part of it's great and long history, they are merely spectacles.

Sure enough, at the museum there were a number of those ethnicities were on display, including a rather large booth filled with annorexic oddly western mannequins wearing traditional garb (why they didn't at least exchange the heads for asian ones, i have no idea). Beside the booth, was a small group of women dressed in colourful beaded traditional attire playing an instrument surprisingly similar in shape and sound to a banjo, as they danced around singing in high-pitched nasal voices. I could barely seem them, as a heavy throng of Chinese people, people I could only describe as Chinese yokels, crowded around them, laughing and jeering at the strangeness of their clothes, as they elbowed to aim their cellphone, their camera, or their video camera to get the best shot to send to their buds.

They must have liked the delightful quaintness of it all.

Remember: Chinese, not Dutch

2006-03-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

In my continuing food exploits, yesterday evening I tried Hunanese cuisine, or 湘菜, along with some colleagues of mine. Not terribly impressive. I was told that it was famous for being extremely spicy, and yes, it was at times incredibly bullet-sweatingly spicy. But I dunno, maybe I'm reaching the limit of culinary novelties here (did I mention how tender and delectable pig tongue is? or what fantastic flavours are to be found swimming in goat-gut soup?), or maybe the resto wasn't that great, but the food was just some pretty familiar-looking stir-fries, easily found in any standard Chinese restaurant in the West, only with loads and loads of angry, flaming red chillies, or tons of pepper. I'm actually a big fan of spicy food, and I'm more than willing to sweat it out with the best of them, but there's good spicy food, where the hotness exquisitely complements the flavours of the dish, and then there's really bad spicy food, where the hotness is all you taste, as if they were trying to mask the pungent odours of something gone bad. As my stomach will attest to, either there was something off in the food, or one too many chillies tried to make a touchdown, but I ended up bonding with the can a little longer than usual this morning. To be fair, there were a few very memorable dishes last night: one most excellent dish of ground preserved duck eggs mixed with a combination of raw ginger and garlic, and another dish of finely julienned bamboo shoots, stir-fried to perfection, though a little on the salty side.

Given that there were at last some drinkers at the dinner table, yesterday was also my chance to sample some of the beer here, beyond the flavourless Tsingtao readily available back home. I believe the beer we tried was something called "Yanjing", a popular brand in Beijing, but just as mild, flavourless and weak as Tsingtao, though fortunately more palatable than the diluted piss that passes for American beer. I think from now on, I'll stick to 白酒 (baijiu), or white wine, when I'm up for a little booze. But it ain't wine. It's hard liquor. The word "wine" here refers to all booze, as till recently there was no wheat-based beer or grape-based wine. Instead, the Chinese made baijiu, a really freaking hard-core liquor, that looks much like vodka, but it's made from sorghum and different varieties of rice (and sometimes peas or herbs), which impart a very distinct odour, not at all harsh like vodka, but quite soft and fragrant. If you manage to get past the high alchohol content (usually about 50-55%), there is a lovely aftertaste to it, much like a good Polish vodka or a high-quality pisco. For those of you have seen the excellent movie "Red Sorghum," you'll also know that beyond baijiu there's also a type of alcohol here that's red(ish), opaque, and also sorghum-based, but from what I understand, the darker coloured liquors tend to be more in the south of China. Fortunately, the evening didn't degenerate into a mad drinking fest where everybody gets up and cries, "干杯 (gan bei)!", or "dry the cup!", when you're supposed to stand up, and down your whole cup, irrespective of how much you have in it. We had to work the next day after all, so we mostly just quietly clinked our cups and randomly made toasts until the meal was over, and fought over who would get to pay the bill, as Chinese people do. Ahhhh.... But what is Chinese? What is China?

One of the great things about being a foreigner is that you get to ask all sorts of questions, which may not be entirely appropriate or acceptable, but if you do it with enough naive, wide-eyed innocent wonder, you'll be forgiven, and if you're lucky, you'll even get a pretty candid answer. Of course, I have the benefit of speaking of Chinese, and also colleagues who have gotten progressively used to my constant tactless questioning. And naturally, I used the most tactless way of all to raise the issue of Chinese identity, by asking them if they thought Taiwan should return to China. Scratch that, it's only tactless to ask Chinese people this when they're in the presence of a foreigner (me), as they know full well what the majority of Westeners think on the matter, and they wouldn't like to offend their guest by voicing an opinion that to them is quite obvious and straight-forward among Chinese people. Before I tell you what they thought, let me first tell you about the confusion and disagreement in the conversation that branched from my question, that is, What is China? Who is considered Chinese?

The most obvious answer, is that all who look like Chinese people are Chinese people. But, just as obviously, this is clearly wrong. Much like Canada, China is composed of a rather large number of ethnicities, most of which don't look Chinese at all, like the muslim Uighurs, who actually look more Turkish than Chinese. Unlike Canada though, these different ethnicities have been part of China for quite a long time, and therein lies another part of the problem. The history. Many of the different ethnicities in China are actually people who were forcibly integrated into China at various points Chinese history. The Uighurs for instance, in Xinjiang province, were only made "Chinese" during the Qing dynasty, a mere 300 years ago; which is why directly translated, "新疆, Xinjiang" means "New Territories." Added to that, it is highly questionable what territorial bounds China should really have. Should it be the ones according to the Qing dynasty, as they are based on today? But then, that raises the interesting question, whether the Qing dynasty should be considered Chinese at all, as they were in fact conquering Manchus from the North, not Chinese. So, then should truly "Chinese" people be considered those who had an independent state before any outside powers conquered them, like the Han dynasty or the Tang dynasty? If so, this ends up reducing China to a fraction of its size, and also excluding all those who don't look "Chinese," which is simply as unfair as saying that only those who look "Canadian" should be Canadian. However, as one of my colleagues pointed out, there is a difference between the state of China and Chinese culture, where citizens of the state of China could theoretically be just about anybody, while those who would be considered part of Chinese culture is a little different. And that may be the crux of the matter.

So how about this idea of Chinese culture then? What the hell is it? What indeed is Canadian culture? Or American culture? I think many of us would intuitively know what any of those are once we see it, or at least we know what it isn't. For instance, Canadian culture is definitely not American culture, and Quebecois culture should never ever ever, by any means, be mistaken for Anglo-Candian culture (Vive le Quebec libre!). What I suspect the concept of a national culture is then, is merely a stereotype that appears in our head, however unfair or non-egalitarian. In the case of China, although its constitution clearly states that all its ethnicities are equal and have the same rights, Chinese culture only encompasses one type of people: Han Chinese, that is, the people you typically associate to looking like a Chinese person, complete with the slit eyes and the slightly yellow complexion. Even simpler, when you think Chinese, it's probably easiest to think, Chow Yunfat, Zhang Ziyi, and Jackie Chan. I won't get too deeply into this, but in the same sense, a "Canadian" or an "American" or a "Quebecois" should be the first stereotype that pops into mind... and if you're wondering where I'm going with this, let me just say that the stereotype of a "Canadian" doesn't include immigrants, though the Canadian constitution, much like the Chinese consititution, includes everyone.

In that context then, it should not be surprising that many Chinese people believe that Taiwan should return to China. The culture of Taiwan is basically Chinese; the language, the shows, the movies, the books, the history, everything is the same. Only the states are different, and that's because of an unresolved civil war way back in 1949. And no, the written language is not all that different even though you may have heard of "simplified script," which tends to be used in China, and "traditional script," which tends to be used in Taiwan and Hong Kong; both scripts are in fact used by China, and both are typically easy to read for someone from either China or Taiwan. So, although Chinese people would be just as confused as Canadians are when asked what precisely is Chinese, they do know what is Chinese and what isn't. An interesting corollary of all this is that I believe that many Chinese people would conceed that Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia should not be part of China; but, there's no way in hell that they would think that Taiwan shouldn't be as well.

We ended our meal, doing one of the habits that is distinctly, though not uniquely, Chinese, fighting over who would get to pay the bill. Remember, that we are Chinese after all, not Dutch, and Chinese people simply do not split the dinner bill, except in extremely exceptional circumstances. The whole act of sitting down and eating a meal, sharing food from the same plate, laughing and getting soused is meant to be a communal and bonding experience, and to split the bill at the end, would just cheapen the whole act, as if to say that the sharing never happened, or worse, that it meant nothing. On the plus side, this effectively creates a virtuous cycle of treating and invites, as opposed to a simple open and shut case of having a dinner and saying toodle-loo. Since I was the one who invited people, I managed to snare the bill, even given the irony that, at the end of our conversation, I could only conclude that I am not Chinese (or Canadian).

The Shuffling, the Weird Facial Hair, and the Effeminate Behaviour

2006-03-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

You've all noticed it I'm sure, particularly if you live in a high-density Chinese immigrant area, or if you spent a little time on campus. Obviously, not all Chinese people do these really odd things, but enough of them do to leave an impression, even though it's apparently not politically correct to mention the obvious. Most of you though are familiar with my somewhat less than subtle or tactful disposition, so for this blog, I will indeed launch into the question that many of you may have secretly asked yourselves, or at least been slightly curious about. What the hell is up with Chinese people (and many other Asians) shuffling all the time? What's with those really really small steps that the girls take that make it a wonder that they ever get anywhere at all? At least, for heaven's sake, they could lift their bloody feet up instead of scuffing them around on the floor. And, I've even found that many of the guys here walk like that too! Speaking of the men, what the hell is up with their funky, uneven, teenage-like facial hair? Are they trying to channel the spirit of Fu Manchu? Really, a series of unlinked, long, wispy hairs does not a 'stache make, or beard for that matter. Finally, what is up with those really weird androgynous guys with, by Western standards anyway, really effeminate behaviour? …like say, the hand gestures and the girlish way of crossing their legs that doesn't seem to accommodate their plumbing? I'm exaggerating, of course, as many people here do take really long strides, shave regularly, and swagger about like they have the real shit going down.

Before I left for China, I told a number of people that the first thing that I was going to do was to finally perform a proper statistical analysis on the incidence of shuffling. This would be the definitive way to figure out whether or not Chinese people do shuffle in all parts of the world, of if it's just a mannerism they adopt once they arrive in another country (which was my initial hypothesis). I figured that one day I could hang about Tiananmen and simply do a count of the number of people shuffling, marking the number of and degree to which men and women who do so. Of course, the really proper way of doing this would be to get at least two Chinese people, and at least one other Westerner to make the counts as well, so that any cultural bias may be accounted for, AND also send these same people to a city square in the West to perform the same study. But, I'm sorry to say that I still have not managed to rustle money from the funding agencies yet, and so, my field study remains unperformed. However, I can at least remark on the rather small sample size I've been exposed to thus far, from observing the people around my work, my local market, and on the bus and the subway. Many Chinese people do shuffle. I'd say that about 20-30% of the people do, though the percent may be a little higher among the women.

But why? My initial theory was that it was a behaviour that was dominantly restricted to immigrants, as it may be an expression of their discomfort and their lack of confidence from not being able to fit in… but that theory was pretty much rendered moot when I met a couple of confident, well-adjusted people here who still shuffle. Could it be because they have shorter legs? No. Many shufflers are about my height (5'7-8, I think), or even taller than me, and yet still shuffle about. Could it be because they just have smaller step sizes? Well, there's an element of that, and most of the people I've walked with, walk infuriatingly slowly-- then again, not very many people walk like me, with a fire up their ass. Could it be something about being modest or shy? Maaaybe. Chinese people are certainly shy, but they are normal human beings after all, and there is no reason why an entire population would modify the way they walk just because they may be slightly more reserved than average. Like I said, I'd say the incidence rate of shuffling is about 20-30%, though I unfortunately don't have the confidence intervals, which I'd very much like to compare to the confidence intervals of Western shuffling, and see if they overlap, as I suspect they might. Honestly, I still don't know. Maybe it's a fad or something.

What about the facial hair? Many Chinese (for genetic reasons, I believe) simply do not have enough facial hair to ever make growing a moustache or a beard possible. In fact, Asians in general don't have that much bodily hair at all, which can be blessing, as some women (my sister, for instance) don't have to shave their legs. For men, the lack of general body hair, though it certainly makes the resistance lower in the pool, translates into strange, quilt-like facial hair patterns, where little tufts of hair sprout up unaccountably on different areas of the cheeks. And if you let it grow, as I have, you sort of look like an asian wolf-man, minus the fangs and claws. Regardless, many Chinese here still attempt to grow something, according to whatever mad mad plan they have in mind, and despite that it looks completely ridiculous. And yes, even by their standards it is wacky. From what I've observed by watching Chinese television, no one would grow a moustache or a beard, unless they were really able to. So why, when they clearly know they look absurd? Dunno. I suspect it could be just sheer laziness. That or they're conserving water, which is pretty ridiculous too.

And last, what about the strange effeminate behaviour some Chinese men have? Bear in mind, that Chinese girliness is to be distinguished from the metrosexual girliness of over-dressed, over-perfumed, over-primped (and highly sexually confused) North American males. The effeminiteness of (certain) Chinese men applies largely to their behaviour, such as the way they walk, the way they gesture at things, and the way they seem to be much more touchy-feely among their buddies. Frankly, that last really surprised me. While Chinese men are highly reserved and respectful to their female counterparts, they tend to be quite intimate with their male friends, often leaning on each other, randomly play wrestling on the street, or just having a lot physical contact in conversations like touching an arm or something. Having recently come from the super uptight and wildly homophobic Toronto (despite my brief three month purgatory in Vancouver), the physical intimacy really surprised me. Admittedly, I've always complained about the lack of any sort of physical intimacy in highly sexually-repressed, ram-rod up the ass, Anglo-Canada, but that mostly applied to the interactions I used to have with my French Canadian female friends back in my beloved Quebec. French Canadian culture is certainly far more relaxed and chill in that respect, where men and women greet each other with la bise, that is, two pecks on the cheek, and don't think twice about a little added friendly taps or touching that may happen in a conversation… despite that, French Canadian men are still fiercely homophobic, tending only to greet each other with manly bear-hugs or tough pain-threshold testing beanies.

So, it came as something of surprise to me when I realized that Chinese people tend to be quite physically close among men, and it also made me realize what lingering feelings of homophobia I had, likely indoctrinated into me from being in the West. Behaviour that would be hands-down considered gay back home is quite normal here, and for those of you who are thinking of being clever, I sincerely doubt that a clearly fertile population that comprises a sixth of humanity is filled to the brim with closet-gays. Actually, I honestly think that Chinese people are just really comfortable about their sexuality. Sure, they're embarrassed about it, and yes they don't like to raise the topic, as opposed to every second conversation in North America, but they're just polite about sex, not repressed about it, like say puritanical right-wing conservatives. This is not to say that homosexuality is widely accepted here. It isn't. It's still considered deviant behaviour. Instead, I think that the most Chinese men are comfortable enough with themselves and their sexuality to be able to casually express their affection with a buddy, without constantly thinking about whether or not it looks "gay."

(However, there is also the heavy impact of Hong Kongnese style, which in turn is always influenced by Japanese style. And, if you've been exposed to Japanese style, you know that it's a little eccentric to say the least, and in recent years there has been a rather odd style of androgynous-looking men. That though, is a topic for another time.)

So folks, I'm afraid I've proven myself unable to answer most of the mysteries of strange Chinese behaviour. I promise though that my investigation into the matter will not cease until I finally determine the reasons why Chinese people shuffle, and why the men persist on attempting the folly of facial hair.

Until then, the mysteries must continue.

Won't Somebody Think of the Children!?!

2006-03-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago, a news piece circulated in most major outlets describing the continuing o-so-tragic horror that is the Chinese orphanage system. In this particular instance, it was a sensational story about corrupt orphanage managers buying kidnapped kids to sell to golden-hearted hood-winked foreigners. (Don't worry, the bastards were caught and sentenced to a number of years in prison. If it would be up to me, I'd flay them alive, but given the medieval nature Chinese prisons, the punishment might be adequate.) This is a link to the article that appeared in the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060227.CHINA27/TPStory/TPInternational/

If you read the article carefully, there are a few things that are worth noticing. First, is the incredible fact that the highest number of children adopted in Canada come from China. Second, is the seemingly innoccuous remark about how the price of the child being bought by the orphanage manager would fluctuate according to demand. I'll get to both in a bit.

I've always wondered what Chinese people think of foreigners adopting Chinese children, as I myself have a number of thoughts on the matter, so the recent news piece was an excellent opportunity for me to ask my colleagues about it. Quite surprisingly (to me anyway), instead of the offended nationalistic response that I expected, my colleagues were very positive on the matter, sympathizing with the plight of the children, many of whom are abandoned at birth by parents too poor to raise them on their own, and hoping that they would have a better life in the foreign country. Of course, my colleagues were concerned that the children might grow up confused about their heritage, but to them that was a secondary issue, as they were more concerned about the welfare of the child and also about the social disparities which still make life in China's poverty-stricken countryside very much disconnected from the go-go prosperity of the urban areas. Indeed, they thought quite highly of the foreigners who would come and offer a better life to those children, knowing full well that the foreigners aren't necessarily that wealthy. If they did have any anger, it was instead directed at their fellow Chinese who would (in some cases) humiliatingly sell their own flesh and blood for money. To describe this, Chinese people use the expression, "贩卖入口 (fan mai ru kou)", meaning to sell people for money... sounds angrier in Chinese.

Far from being highly individualistic, self-obsessed capitalists who unhesitatingly step on the backs of the poor (though there are many of those fuckers here), many Chinese are moved by the galling inequality that has created two-tracked development in China, where on one track you find the glistening glass and steel encased Shanghai, and on the other you find peasants trying to survive on parched land, and climbing withered trees to break off branches for firewood. There has apparently been an increasingly popular charity that allows people to send money to peasants in the countryside; indeed, some of the grad students where I work donate part of their salary to a charity specifically meant for this-- despite having a fraction of the income grad students get back home. There are still problems with the charity, of course, as it appears to be still in its infancy, lacking a good regulatory system to make sure the money goes where it's supposed to.

There is one thing that Chinese people are mystified about though. Why the hell are foreigners adopting children all the way in China? Sure, they're happy the kids are getting homes, but don't foreign countries have their own orphanages? What is it that drove Canadians to adopt about a thousand Chinese children last year, when the children from Canadian slums still languish in substandard under-funded government institutions (which have also had the same appaling scandals as those in China)?

Part of the answer lies in the second curio I pointed out in the article, that is, the fluctuating price of the children depending on the demand. Where precisely does this "demand" come from? Much more interestingly, how does it fluctuate?

I've alluded to this before, but the Western media image of China is a ridiculous charicature of the truth, satisfying only Western prejudices and stereotypes. It's not that journalists lie or fabricate their articles. It's just that they certainly cherry-pick the stories they want to put out, choosing only those that satisfy the same old familiar narrative of China being a scary authoritarian state that crushes its people, that continually denies them any chance at having a voice, and that is run by a bunch of old commies who have no sympathy the poor, suffering peasants. Think a little about your first thoughts when the topic of China is raised. I'll bet that a few very specific thoughts will pop up, namely the Tiananmen "Massacre", Taiwan, and possibly Tibet. If you're more well-read, other thoughts may come to mind too, like say, how China is a land of opportunity and money, and how China is a scary economic power that may put everyone in the West out of a job. Where precisely do you think these thoughts come from? And why do you think that they are a proper representation of the truth, when you may have never visited China before?

No, I'm not suggesting that there's a media conspiracy that aims to distort people's views. It's probably only sheer laziness on the part of journalists, as it is far more easy to pander to simple, easy to understand good/bad rich/poor stereotypes than describe the far more complex and nuanced truth (this applies to everything else too, like Islam and Africa). Besides, knowing how people would react to specific catch phrases, and how to get people to have quick knee-jerk responses, can be pretty handy-- especially to marketers and advertisers.

But back to the adopted Chinese children, and back to their tragic stories. About 5-10 years ago, all you'd hear about was the horrific conditions of Chinese orphanages. Specifically, I remember a few exposes which showed a number of children strapped to their cruelly strapped to their chairs so as to make them more "manageable." This, and many other stories, certainly left a mark in my mind, and many other sympathetic Westerners... starting the adopt-your-very-own-Chinese-girl fad. Now, this all sounds very negative, but don't get me wrong. I'm happy the children are given a better life, even though in many cases, I know the adoptive parents have a skewed image of China. What really pisses me off is the fact that some of these people who are adopting Chinese children, could be going through the long and difficult adoption process, precisely because it's a fad, and that it's trendy to "do something good" in the world, and NOT because they give a rat's ass about China or human welfare in general. So, with their newly acquired Chinese kid in tow, they can go up to their yuppie friends and say, "Hey, check out my Chinese kid! Look how kind and loving I am!"... even as they cruise around their SUVs, buying shiny-doodads and pressing the gas pedal solidly down as they speed pass their neighborhood slums... obviously a flagrant exageration, but yes, I have met people like that, though for the most part, all the adopting parents genuinely wish to simply share the pleasure of being a family with a child and also enrich their lives by being a multi-cultural family.

Again, I think that offering those Chinese children a better life is very commendable. All I'm saying is that the origin of the adoptive parents' motives bear some scrutiny... and also, is it truly possible to satisfy your responsibilities as global citizen, when you are unable to satisfy those to your own community?

Condensing a Revolution into a Lighter

2006-03-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

I've claimed to be many things. In roughly chronological order, I used to thump my chest and proudly proclaim, to anyone who would bother listening, to be a communist, a marxist, a socialist, an anarchist, a nihilist, something called an aesthetic nihilist (don't ask), a totalitarian, an authoritarian, an elitist, a humanist, and then back to being a marxist. Quite frankly, I'm not particularly interested in labelling myself anything at all anymore, as not too long ago, I realized I spent more time talking the talk, than walking the walk. In all my ideological flip-flopping though, I was at some point a Maoist, and so it made perfect sense for me to close that chapter of my life by visiting Ol'Mao's mummified corpse last Saturday.

Unfortunately, I don't have an uplifting, tear-jerky story to tell about how I became Mao-obsessed. I was not inspired by any of Mao's words or ideology or supposed great deeds. Instead, it was a simple boyish fascination with military leaders, which fell under my general mandate at the time for all things "glorious" and "powerful," meaning lots of killing, lots of guns, and lots of explosions. But why Mao, and not Napoleon, Cesar, or Alexander? Well, that had to do with two things. On the one hand, I was one hell of a geek, and not being particularly good at anything related to physical activities, I needed my own way to stand out... and what better way than by making a big show of shunning the self-gratifying, decadent, and ideologically vapid world of the West, and adopting the materialism-shunning, highly-disciplined, self-sacrificing doctrines of Maoism/Communism? (In the same vein, I also got into the whole samurai/warrior thing.) But honestly though, I was never really that into the details of Communism or all that. Sure, I read the Manifesto, Das Kapital, and some other works by Marx and Engles, but I never really understood them beyond their general gist, and I could never really get into those absurd technical debates on marxist theory. Becoming a communist, was to me, merely a matter of convenience, not faith.

On the other hand, growing up as an visible minority in Canada, I never truly integrated, no matter how welcoming and open-minded whiteys are in theory (see my entry on the Head Tax issue). When people look different, they are different, no matter what language comes out of their mouth. And so, like many bananas, I was faced with a choice: either integrate completely and reject all your heritage; or, proudly cling to your old, backward habits and always be seen as a dirty immigrant. Now, I grew up in Montreal where Chinese people in the neighborhood were few and far between, not in the Chinese enclaves of Richmond or Markham, so integration and acceptance was never a matter of course. And, for those of you who think that Canada, or North America for that matter, is wonderfully tolerant in a we-are-the-children-of-the-world kind of way, ask yourselves why Chinatowns exist in the first place. It ain't because the government wanted to give Chinese people the choicest lands to start quaint recreations of their homelands; it's because they wanted to keep them out of the way and out of sight from the over-starched world of whites. If you think anything has changed-- and I suppose things have somewhat improved-- it is still important to wonder why it is that such Chinese enclaves like Richmond exist? Why do immigrants tend to seek that out? Is it simply a question of seeking the familiar? Or is it that they do not feel entirely welcome?

Pish posh on all of that, and let me save that debate for another time. Being confrontational by nature, I decided to do my best not to integrate at all by studying and promoting all things Chinese, and to thumb my nose at basically everything Western (of course, besides the language, the benefits, and the comforts). Maoism/Communism fit the bill perfectly. That is, until I moved on to other things.

As much as my marriage to Maoism and Communism was one of convenience, and as brief as that stage was in my life was (a few years, I believe), it still left its mark on me. And, besides leaving me with something of soft spot for soviet-era art, it was from communism that many of my beliefs grew, and as such, it was only proper for me to pay homage to my ideological roots by visiting Mao's Mausoleum.

An hour before the mausoleum was going to open (8:30am), there was easily a few hundred people already lined up and ready to go in. I knew that there was likely going to be a line-up, but the sheer number of people just blew me away. Interestingly, most of the Chinese people lining up were clearly poor peasants or migrant workers with strange, gutteral accents. There was even a little sprinkling of monks for good measure!

The crimson red-tinted glasses that were once my idealistic dreams of a Mao-inspired perfect world had long been shattered, but that day, whatever was left of them crumbled to dust. There is nothing left of Mao's hopes and dreams. It is little more now than another tourist infested spot, complete with hawkers trying to sell you all sorts of cheap trinkets to commemorate your visit. An old, toothless woman weaved in and out the line, trying to sell pamflets with fake jade necklaces of Mao. A hunkering man wearing a heavy fur hat with sadly drooping earflaps peered at people with his one good eye that wasn't blinded by cataracts, as he waved decks of cheap cards with pictures of China's famous monuments on them... All, money-lenders at the temple. This is the fate of those Mao had sought to raise from poverty and to give them dignity.

And the temple-minders were no better. After abruptly pushing the hobbling trinket sellers away, the heavy presence of security personel started waving people through the doors. In principle, the mausoleum is free, but as these things go, there is always a way to make a quick buck off the sacred. The long line of people moved incredibly quickly, and very shortly after going through the main gates, the crowd met a small stand selling exhorbitantly priced yellow tulip-like flowers to be placed before Mao-- I imagine they recycle them at the end of the day to sell them again. And as the line marched up the steps, now filled with bobbing yellow flowers held proudly in the air, cheap semi-glossy pamflets were sold, the type that you usually get for free when you go to any museum. Disgusting.

Upon entry, the line was split in two, one for each side of Mao's body. We first passed a huge statue of Mao, sitting in a Lincoln-like pose, before which people rushed out of the line and dutifully placed their flowers in neat rows. An eerie silence suddenly came over everybody as they approached the coffin. We passed a set of huge, imposing doors, and another. And then, framed by two serious-looking guards, was a pickled Mao, jarred in a glass coffin, a bright red flag with a golden sickle covering him up to his chest. Only his face was visible, but it was a illuminated by a strange sickeningly yellow light, making him look like a badly chiseled chunk of waxy plastic.

Although in his later years Mao proved to be something of a nutbar, and certainly his ridiculous mausoleum is entirely dispropotionate to what the man had really achieved, Mao (the idea, not the man) is a symbol of the revolutionary spirit. Yes, I still believe in that. And yes, I'm idealistic. But no, I don't think that the revolutionary spirit will lead to anything but more of the same. As much as I am aware of how revolutions can be perverted and that they can lead to disasters, a revolution is never truly about the end and the achievements. It is about the desire for change. Not only that, it is a desire for something better. The day I cease to have that desire, is the day I become like Mao's corpse, a dead vacuous shell of lost dreams of hopes.

The line finally ended in front of two huge booths selling Mao memorabilia. I elbowed my through, and picked the cheapest trinket I could find, a Mao-embossed shiny lighter that plays the "East is Red" every time it is opened. On its back, was an unevenly placed sticker of Mao's calligraphy of the words, "Remember the welfare of the people."

An excellent close to my life as Little-Red-Book-toting Mao-freak. But more importantly, an excellent reminder of what a revolution can degenerate into.

Big Dish, Little Dish

2006-02-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

One of the first things that you'll read about China and Chinese people is that they're obsessed with food. I've read many a book which claimed that Chinese people greet each other with "你吃饭了吗？(ni chi fan le ma?)", which effectively means "Did ya eat?" Now, I've always thought this was something of a myth, as I've almost never heard those words uttered by any of my relatives or Chinese friends. But hot damn, in China and among bona fide Chinese people, if isn't the first thing they say, it's certainly the second or third thing. However, it isn't so much the food itself that Chinese people are fixated on, but rather the act of dining-- with family, friends, or colleagues. Indeed, eating is so ingrained into the culture that no work/family/social/intimate relationship will truly begin until chopsticks are broken out in front of several hot steaming dishes of grub. And, being somewhat Chinese myself, this is also why I have always tried to make a point of treating my closer friends to a dinner out, or at least invite them over for a simple meal. In the same sense then, if an invitation to dinner is refused or cancelled, especially when the invitation comes from an elder or someone of higher social rank, it's practically a slap in the face. Though never fear, if you don't agree to go to for food, or if while eating you inevitably make some faux-pas, Chinese people will not chase you down, waving shiny cleavers in the air, as they curse you, your family, your bloodline, and your genepool. It is not a culture of food fanatics, simply a culture of food lovers

(...I'm actually writing this after having been treated to a fantastic meal consisting of donkey-- finely shredded donkey meat, pickled donkey skin, red-braised donkey lips, breaded and deep fried donkey strips, and donkey hot pot, which included the most essential bits like gooey cartilage, tender intestines and surprisingly good, thinly sliced donkey penis. It honestly never occured to me to eat a donkey, but I suppose it's not as strange as eating dog, or other most excellent things like pig face, pig feet and pig pancreas... I think that's what it was anyway. For those who are curious, donkey tastes quite a bit like beef, though much more tender, with a slight lamby after taste.)

I will certainly come back to the topic of food very frequently, as it intersects all aspects of Chinese life and psyche. For this blog though, I will focus on the dumpling dinner I hosted at my apartment a few days ago. Back at home, I've had one or two of them, though never, regretably, in Toronto. But now, I am proud to say that I have hosted my first dumpling dinner in my new home in China. I had a number of reasons for doing this. Clearly, I'm the new guy, and what better for the new guy to ingratiate himself to his colleagues but by inviting them to his house for dinner? Plus, it's been a number of months since I've been without a place to call my own (I've been mooching off my sister for the last 3 months before China), and now that I do, I'm damned sure going to make the best of it! More specifically though, I had very precise reasons for inviting them for dumplings, as opposed to making fish, beef, or anything else.

Bear in mind, that being invited for dumplings (usually, anyway) is not your typical dinner invite where people just come over and wait politely for the plates to plop before them. A dumpling dinner is an event. Not just any kind of event. It's an event that for most Chinese people, immediately evokes memories of spending long evenings rolling out dumpling skins and methodically wrapping hundreds and hundreds of dumplings, the tediousness of which is quite nicely balanced out by the laughter and fun they have kidding around with family members. At the heart of it then, a dumpling dinner is communal event, where everyone participates in some capacity, should it by being on dumpling-wrapping duty, as I've briefly described, or on filling-making duty, which can involve endless amounts of cutting, or if you're unable to do either, on cleaning duty when the meal is over. Much much fun.

And fortunately, the dumpling dinner I hosted was a great success! A few hours before my colleagues arrived, my roommate and I went out and bought a whole bunch of stuff for the dumplings, including a few cold side dishes, some fruit, and some booze to accompany the dumplings. For a dinner of a approximately 7 people, estimate about 30 dumplings per person, requiring maybe 2 kilos of ground meat (preferably pork, but beef or lamb is also ok), a big swarth of Chinese chives (or two small nappas), a whole leek, a chunk of ginger, and possibly some black fungus for texture. We were far too lazy to make the wrappers ourselves, so we just bought ready-made ones, though if you have the patience and the skill, home-made skins are a thing of beauty. Mix and stir the meat up alone very vigorously with a little bit of water until the meat attains a fine texture. At that point, the cutter (in this case, me) should have cut the veggies into small, fine pieces, so it can be combined with the meat, along with some soy, some sesame oil, and a some pepper for taste. Do NOT follow other recipies from fancy-schmancy so-called "chinese" cook books that claim you should add a whole bunch of other shit into the filling. Dumplings are supposed to be simple, and they are meant to be combined with other flavours (like my famous garlic-honey-soy dipping sauce!), not eaten alone.

With the filling done, my colleagues started to arrive right on time, and we set about making the dumplings. Lots of fun. As is customary practice, we all make fun of the person who makes the ugliest dumplings, while complimenting the one who makes the prettiest ones. Fortunately, from years of practice with my parents, I didn't have the worst dumplings. Rather, it was one of the more bumbling of my colleagues who made strange, amorphous, post-modern pieces that all unravelled when they were cooked. Of course, what the dumplings look like doesn't really matter, as the flavour will be effectively the same, and ultimately, they pass out the other end anyway; but, it is rather pleasant to dig into a huge plate of glistening, steaming, perfectly shaped dumplings. It always surprises me how fast dumpling wrapping can be, but soon enough, we finished wrapping a few hundred of them, and we immediately tossed them into a boiling pot of water. Make sure that you stir them gently right after they go in, or else they'll stick to the bottom. Put on the cover, and let the pot come to a boil again, after which you toss in a cup of cold water, and wait for the pot to boil again. Close the heat, and let the dumplings sit for five minutes. If the dumplings are bobbing up to the surface, it means there done. Serve and enjoy!

Interestingly though, most Chinese meals are in essence communal events. For those of you who have experienced Chinese dinners beyond the world of chicken balls and all-you-can-eat buffets, most large Chinese meals are served with the different dishes sitting in the middle of the table. There are no individual dishes, a-la-Western. Instead, you're all expected to share the food, picking away at larger dishes in front of you, and putting the food on your own much smaller dish or bowl in front of you. Of course, Westerners will also serve food in this communal way (and yes, I've been to meals like that too), but this is typical of mostly family dinners, not in restaurants.

Anyway, this is getting long. My point is simply that for Chinese people, like many other cultures, the community revolves arond eating food. There is nothing particularly exceptional about that in itself, except that it can be a potential mechanism to allow for community-building, which sadly, is no longer as readily available in the West.

When White Elephants Die

2006-02-23T04:48:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I satisfied whatever responsibilities I had to my Chinese ancestors and visited the Great Wall. Frankly, I wasn't terribly impressed with it even though it really was huge. Beyond making for a few impressive shots of reconstructed rubble pressing its heavy tentacles across the peaks of an otherwise beautiful hillside, the Great Wall really ain't all that. After walking a little on it through a frigid, razor-sharp wind, I came to the conclusion that after that next watchtower was probably another identical watchtower and then another. I suppose it would have been great fun for people who get a kick out of being on the stairmaster. Rapidly passing through the thickening hordes of tourists, I made my way down from the Wall and attempted to head out to my next destination, the Ming Tombs. I say "attempted" because contrary to what my blasted guidebook says, there is no bloody public transportation from the Great Wall to the Ming Tombs, even though there are pretty good routes going to and from them individually. Of course, I could have seen the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs by hopping on a tour bus, but there was no way in all in ten levels of hell that I would get on those things. Sure, it would have saved me time and my life easier, but I want visit China as a Chinese person would, not as a neatly packaged wide-eyed Westerner protected from the dirtiness that isn''t on the program of happy, sunshine-and-goodness story-book China. Besides, I'm a cheap bastard and I see no reason why I'd pay 20 bucks for something I can (literally) easily do on my own for 1. And so, instead of being cheated by tour-hawking opportunists, I got screwed by a guidebook that is clearly not student-oriented, and eventually got cheated by a taxi-driver. It was worth it though.

Just as I was getting increasingly annoyed with the surly and increadibly unhelpful ticket-booth operator, a taxi driver tapped me on the shoulder and offered to take me to the Ming Tombs. The price he was asking was simply exhorbitant. With that kind of money, I could have easily made three return trips to the Great Wall from the city if I had taken an ordinary cab. Naturally, being tourist cab, and clearly looking like a tourist, foreigner prices applied. I tried to haggle him down as best I could (I'm really shitty at this), but I eventually just settled on a price in exhasperation and hopped in his car. The experience was likely the most worthwhile of the day, and largely made up for the less than inspiring Great Wall and the rather boring, though relaxing, Ming Tombs put together. I suppose I should say a little about the Ming Tombs before I launch into the more interesting stuff. Just as Dr. Evil has a Mini-Me, so does the Forbidden City have a Mini-Forbidden City, that is the Ming Tombs. "Tombs" is sort of a misnomer. If anything, I would call it a City of the Dead, specifically, a city for a dead Emperor, one for each Tomb, 13 in all. It sounds a little morbid today, but the Emperors began constructing their Tombs at the ripe old age of 20... and like any self-respecting 20 year old, they threw wild parties in them once they were finished. Hell, I bet they brought their concubines up for the fun too, and threw wet silken dress parties, soaking with rivers of red sorghum wine. That's what I would do anyway. So anyhow, beyond being far away from the smoky, noisy city and deep in lovely pine-covered hills, the Ming Tombs were little more than Forbidden City Lite. The buildings, the style and the statues were basically the same, just smaller and more compact. Take my word for it. The Great Wall is probably worth it just to convince yourself that it's little more than hype, but the Ming Tombs are entirely avoidable.

Back to my cab ride. Like most cab drivers around the world, if given the chance, they'll surprise you with much stimulating conversation. In that respect, my cabbie was fantastic. Among the many interesting things we talked about, we not only Japan's lack of historical accountability, but also China's own historical white-washing, which to this day leave bitter feelings with many Asian countries, like Korea and Vietnam. We talked about how most Chinese are pissed at the American invasion of Iraq, and I listened to far more thoughtful comments than from the soft-lefties of convenience in the West. We discussed how China percieves Europe, and while they generally like Europeans (and Canadians) they're still pissed at the Brits, for having foisted the Opium Wars on them. Most interesting of all though, we talked about the 2008 Olympics.

Now, I'm quite happy this guy was a black-market cabbie and I now have no way of tracking him down, as I'm certain that if the powers-that-be in China knew what he thought of the Olympics, he'd be certainly thrown into a re-education camp. As many of you likely know, Beijing is busily being gussied up for the Olympics. Not only is it building huge new complexes all over the city, a new super-modern, waaay over budget national opera house is slated to open, and not one, not two, but THREE new subways are being added in time for the Olympics. The amount of money that is being plunged into constructing all that crap is simply mind-boggling. Frankly, I'm never quite sure why countries actually want to host the Olympics, as they end up leading to huge debts, and also leaving in their wake a series of extremely expensive buildings that are unused. For instance, my beloved Montreal is still paying for having hosted the Olympics back in the 70s, which included buidling of the metro system, and saw the appearance of that eye-sore Expo-globe. If anything, hosting the Olympics brings only a short-term fuzzy feeling in the chest, that quickly passes once the last athletes fly away to deposit their medals on some dusty mantle. Instead, the Olympics leaves a long-term bill that's up to the city-dwellers to slowly pay from their own pockets... and all for the "glory and prestige of the nation".

The cabbie agreed. In fact, I imagine that most Chinese people do as well, though on the face of it they'll say they're proud that China is hosting the Olympics. At the crux of the issue, is the fact that China is still a poor, developing country. Sure, it'll be signal to the world that China is up and coming, but people already know this. With all that money that's being spent, they surely could have invested it into social programs, a proper welfare system or improvements to the education system. But no, the image-conscious Politburo decided that China is Great, China is Powerful, China is Mighty, and the only way to show this, is by proving to the world that you can fleece your own citizens and build silly pointless buidlings that effectively benefit no one except a small sub-class of people. Ridiculous. Curiously though, and I have yet to understand this, when I tried to make a parallel to what I thought was also a collossal waste of money, China's space program, the cabbie thought that it was a good thing to have three people out of one billion circle the planet in a tin can.

To me though, both the Olympics and the space program are just damned white elephants that do nothing but gorge on the people's money. And, quite appropriately, as I was speaking with the cabbie, I was between two huge white elephants of their times, the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. Both were just a stupid waste of funds, labour, and life. On the one hand, the Great Wall never managed to prevent any invasion at all, and, despite being constantly mended and rebuilt, it was always easily breached. On the other hand, the Ming Tombs never served anyone else but the vanity of a single emperor after which they were closed off and no one was allowed to step foot in them on pain of death.

Now though, both the white elephants of the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs are dead, and they are now paying back their debt to society by being major tourist attractions.

I wonder if one day people will fork out money visit the remains of NASA or Russia, China, and Europe's space programs, and whisper in awe at how incredible the great achievements of those dead empires must have been.

Useful Chinese Habits (or Tips on Staying Run-free in China)

2006-02-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

When in China, do as the Chinese do-- unless you want to end up with a whole belly full, or more accurately, a whole bowel full of troubles. Thus far, I have had no major problems beyond a few unpleasant side-effects from encountering particularly high doses of MSG. I attribute my relative successful adjustment to having followed a few useful Chinese habits. Most of the habits will sound pretty familiar, especially to those inclined to anal, super-duper, i-can-perform-surgeries-on-my-kitchen-floor cleanliness; habits like, washing your hands regularly and not drinking tap water. But, there are a few little tricks that may not be as intuitive, or as interesting to try a little. China is, afterall, still a developing country, and in many areas, the hygeine is questionable. The Chinese all know this, of course, and they take a number of precautions against getting any nasty creepy-crawlies throwing hoe-downs in your stomach.

Always drink boiling water. One of the first things you'll notice, once you go beyond the tunnel-vision of the tourist circuit, is that nearly all Chinese will be carrying a bottle or thermos filled with either boiling water or tea-- actually, it's quite analogous to the North American mania of carrying nalgenes everywhere, much to the amusement of Europeans. As well, in most workplaces, there will always be huge industrial-sized boiling water machine on every floor, ready to dispense piping hot, sterile water. Of course, Chinese people don't trust the tap water here, and neither should you. In addition to only drinking boiled water though, many also insist on drinking some form of tea, believing that the tea has anti-bacterial or anti-viral properties. I'm sort of skeptical about that, but it is nevertheless a very very good idea to drink loads and loads of tea, simply because of the food here.

If you haven't already noticed it in your local Chinese resto, Chinese food is very greasy. Deliciously greasy and fatty, to be sure, but I'll gurantee that after that second peking duck that you'll scarf down, right behind those wonderful drippingly succulent pork ribs, you wil pay like never before in the morning, UNLESS you drink scads of tea (eating more fruit also helps a lot). I'm still not quite sure why drinking tea has that near-miraculous de-greasing effect, but it does work, at least for me and about a billion Chinese. One day I'll look into the biochemical reasons for it, but for now, I'm pretty content with accepting the benefits tea as word-of-mouth believe-it-or-else folk wisdom. Besides, drinking tea quite pleasant, and it should provide you with an excellent excuse to explore the world of tea beyond the familiar jasmine, darjeeling, or earl grey tea. For those who know me, I am indeed a tea fiend, and I cannot be happier here in the land where tea king, despite not having my beloved tea pot by my side.

Also, if you're cooking on your own, sterilize all your cutlery and plates with boiling water. Now, I'm usually not paranoid enough to do this, but if my Chinese colleagues do it, with their stomachs of steel, you better believe I will too. Simply take a little boiling water from a thermos and quickly soak everything you're about to use, but use the water sparingly, as water here is quite expensive.

This raises an interesting tangent: the Chinese are absurdly good at conserving water and energy. It was pretty surprising to see, but Chinese people can certainly put all but the most extreme grungy granolas to shame when it comes to saving water. All the water here is sparingly used, and even used several times for different purposes. For instance, water for brushing their teeth and washing their faces are retained to water plants or clean vegetables. Alternatively, the same water used to wash dishes or clothes is routinely used to flush the toilet. Incidentally, I remember a piece by Jan Wong which claimed that only China's budding environmentalists use dish water or dirty water to flush their toilets. Bullshit. Everyone I've met does that. Not only that, most Chinese I've met are obsessed with saving electricity, and routinely walk around buildings sporadically shutting off lights. Actually, what's really really cool here is that most lights in the hallways of buildings, even the ones in my rickety old complex, are sound-activated, and automatically switch off after a bit-- sometimes, after an annoyingly brief time.

However, don't mistake any of this water or energy conservation as any uplifting desire to preserve the environment. It's more like just a desperate desire to save every single penny. If given the opportunity, many Chinese (though not all) will spend hours and hours in the shower, instead of quickly giving themselves a rinse, shut the water, soap up, and then quickly turn the water on again to rinse off. Unfortunately, Chinese people are much like everyone else, in that when provided with wealth, they will inevitably descend on the path to excess.

On the plus side of all of this, given that I'm paying for my own water in my place, I'm having a great time learning what it is to conserve water as Chinese people (and people who are in places where water is scarce), and realizing in the process, how stupidly spoiled and water-fat most of us Westerners are. Sure, I'm not living Dune-like water-discipline right now, but conserving water as most Chinese do is still a fun and enlightening exercise.

Particle Physics, Public Transport, and the Rule of Law

2006-02-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

Using public transport in Beijing is a fun exercise in particle physics. Though a growing affluent class is putting more and more damnable cars on the streets, and though many still ride their bikes for most of their travelling, most Beijingers use some form of public transit. Many either hop on the fairly efficient subways, or if the subways don't pass along where they need to go, they can hop on to the many public buses that criss-cross all over the city. In the present modernization campaign leading up to the Olypics, many brand-spanking new buses (some of them even hybrid and fully electric ones!) are proudly circulating, though the derelict put-putting, westfalia-ish tincans are still picking up passengers in a haze of diesel fumes. In all the buses though, big or small, new or old, there is rountinely a mess of people squished in, their shoulders raised up in order to fit as many people as possible. At first, having been spoiled on Western public transport, I simply decided to wait for the next bus. But of course, China has a billion people, and consequently, it would be absurd to expect that buses would be decadently spacious, unless they're at the beginning of their route, or at the end of their evening shift.

And so, I stepped on a bus that seemed able to take no more, but which still took on more people at the next stop. Remarkably, people can actually circulate within the bus despite the insane human crush. People sitting waaaay in the back of the bus could somehow filter their way to the middle or front of the bus, to pop out at the next station. Not only that, everyone in the bus would shift their places, perfectly filling the recently vacated space with a new warm body, as the rest of the crowd fluidly adjusts itself like a uniform mass of playdoh. It was just like watching one of those really cool animations of particle physics, except this time I was one of the particles.

Now, there are a couple things you need to know about public transportation here. When you get on the bus, you don't pay the driver; you pay a bus "host" who asks you where you're going (damn, I'm happy I have functional Chinese), by which the host calculates your fare, rarely more than 30 cents. After payment, they give you a sliver of newspaper-quality paper that's your ticket, and that you're supposed to flash on your out. For the subway, you're handed something quite similar from the ticket booth, which you inexplicably hand over to a ticket reciever, not ten feet away. Why they don't just forgo the ticket giving step, I have no idea.

Interestingly, despite the relative ease by which the tickets can be faked, or recycled from trip to trip, no one seems to do it. This could have something to do with the price of the ticket, but bear in mind this is China, and you're dealing with Chinese people. Chinese will never pay for anything if there's an easy way around it, and they can easily haggle for over a few pennies.

The other thing is that given the crush of those ridiculously packed buses, it is amazing to me that people would still properly pay the bus host, when it would be an easy matter to simply pretend that you've paid, or to just hop off a stop early to avoid the host altogether.

What is the value of obeying the rules in this case? Why are they so obedient? Is it because they are so terrified of the authorities? Bullshit. I've been to pseudo-democratic Taiwan, and people still obey those easily avoidable rules. And of course, in desperatly-attempting-to-be-democratic Canada, we still obediently pay for tickets and quietly step on and off the bus in an orderly manner. Can it merely be a simple case of the prisoner's dilema? Are we all just obeying the rules because we've all been indoctrinated that the payoff matrix would be better if we did?

This then raises an interesting question: how much of a difference is there between relatively mild authoritarian regimes ( e.g. monarchies or even governments like China and Singapore) and supposedly democratic ones, when most people would obey the rules regardless of the severity of the punishment hanging over them?

On History (or the Costs of "Greatness")

2006-02-13T20:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, ok. Now I know how annoying I can be when I go on my ramblings on China, Chinese history, its politics, and all that. From now on, I promise to be more even handed in what I say, and certainly less didactic. What prompted this realization? Being on the recieving end of a particularly long and interminable China-rant. Sheesh. And given that my Chinese is only passable, I couldn't very well debate the finer points of what the guy was saying, so instead I could only struggle to understand what the hell he was saying, and nod politely. I was having dinner with some distant relatives to celebrate the last day of the two-week long New Year's/Spring festival, when the son of the family, a slightly pudgy and clearly spolied guy, started making grandiose statements about China this and China that, and how China is better at this or that. For those of you who have had a exposure to me over booze, you certainly know that I've been occasionally known to go on long tangents about precisely stuff like that. In all fairness though, I say those things largely to dispell Western misconceptions of China as a terrifying, backward authoritarian country, and yet strangely mystical and spirutual place populated by a slew of kung-fu monks with hands of flaming fury, set against a backdrop of misty mountains and spectacular temples. Unfortunately though, I end up sounding pro-China in all things, when really and honestly, I am merely trying to bring balance to people's perceptions of China. I now know that this sort of confrontational way is not terribly effective, and I promise to mend my ways from now on. What that guy was saying to me however, went very much beyond the pale, and requires some perspective.

It is funny when people talk about the "superiority" of a race or a culture. What precisely is superior about a culture that instills a back-breaking respect of hierarchy, or a culture that instills a chaotic sense of nihilistic individualism? What culture is more civil? One who encloses itself in gated communities, and tosses their elderly much out of the way into motel-8 prisons? Or one where the people routinely hork up huge chunks of spittle in public launching them onto the street, and where hygiene and cleanliness doesn't seem to be much of a public priority? In a similar vein, what exactly about having a long history makes a culture "better" or more "meaningful"? Doesn't having a long history merely give you more opportunity to make more mistakes? By what standard do you measure that one is better than the other? The obvious danger, of course, is simply that the standards by which you look at or criticize anything reflects one's own prejudices. Hence, a seemingly "objective" way of looking at something could be inherently designed to come up with a particular favourite. (A simple example: if the measure of betterness is based on length of continuous history, the East would win out, while if the measure is based on technological superiority, the West would win out.) Rather than looking at the awesome achievents of a culture then, it may be better to look at its short-comings, for indeed a people tend best to be understood from its lowest scumy realities, not from its lofty, theorectical ideals.

So let's examine China a bit closely. Let's begin by looking at its old imperial greatness. Specifically, let's take the many remaining, spectacular architechtural achievements, such as the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and many others. Last weekend, I visited the first three. Words and pictures do not do them any justice. One has to be there and walk it to properly understand their scale. Just walking from one end of Tiananmen Square to the next can easily take about 15 minutes (this is my neurotic walking speed), and walking the length of the Forbidden City can take twice that. You have to understand: the Forbidden City really is a city. A huge city. It's not just a little palace or castle. Ha! Most castles in Europe would just take up a small corner of it! And the gardens! And the temples! It's simply amazing. The Temple of Heaven is just awe-inspiring too. The temple itself is a massive, imposing edifice, but the park in which it's located, an incredible artificial forest with rows upon rows of neatly planted trees, is simply beautiful.

Now let's put this in context right now. The Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven were built about 5-6 hundred years ago. 5 hundred! Just imagine the COST of building such a thing in today's terms and try to imagine what mind-boggling amount would have to be paid to build it back then... and by extension, the power and the wealth that the Chinese Empire must have had. In relative terms, the British Empire or even the present Pax Americana would seem puny in comparison!

Don't get me wrong. This not a good thing.

Look at how much the British Empire had to do get where it was (read an excellent book on this, called "Late Victorian Holocosts" by Mike Davis), and flip on the news to see what Pax American costs today. So just imagine how much blood the Chinese Empire had to spill to get where it is in history... and for a much much longer time period than any "empire" today. Indeed, one of the first Chinese imperial conquests happened nearly 2 thousand years ago with the Han dynasty. During that time, the Korean peninsula was brought under Chinese influence, and also parts of Vietnam.

A great deal has been made about the surprising homogeneity of culture within East Asia (e.g. Huntington's hack of book, "Clash of Civilizations"), which is indeed more or less true. Not only do many Asian countries have traditional script which is derived in some way or another from Chinese, but their culture and values are also heavily influenced by Chinese culture. Though some of the Asian countries may have chosen to adopt Chinese values by choice, many did not have that luxury. Indeed, the massive cultural bulldozer that was imperial China made its way all across Asia, crushing compartively technologically weaker kingdoms, and integrating them into their sphere of influence. Eventually, many kingdoms didn't even fight this trend, as the economic opportunties that came from trading from China, and also the mafioso-like protection that was gained from being affiliated to China, outweighed the costs of having to fight the Chinese Empire. Sound familiar? If you think Canadian and American treatment of First Nations is bad, and you think that they are effectively making First Nation culture go extinct, imagine what China did to the myriad of little tribes, minor ethnicities, that used to exist, but are now vague memories and slowly crumbling bones. A great deal has also been made about the peace that China seemed to impose in its sphere of influence whenever it was in power. Horseshit. Though partly true (just Pax Americana does sometimes bring peace), China has always been in a state of perpetual war, mostly with "barbarians" coming from the north.

Yes, China was mighty and strong. It was damned powerful, and it was one of the most effective and ruthless imperialistic powers of world history. As a result, the Chinese Empire was also one of the greatest criminals of history, causing many forgotten deaths, holocausts, and tragedies, now papered over in the name of the glorious empire.

There are indeed many positive things that resulted from the long history of China. I do not mean to demean them at all. I am only underlying the importance of recognizing the price that had to be paid to bring China into being.

Eating Fido

2006-02-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

Yup, folks, I ate Fido last night. Or it might have been Ol'Yeller, I'm not sure. In any case, dog tastes good. Damned good. Given ethical issues though, I don't think I'll try dog anymore, however good, succulent, and wonderfully tender as it was. I've long been curious of what dog meat would taste like, long before I became an ethical vegetarian, so I'm sorry to say that my curiousity overpowered me this time. Just to set the record straight, whenever possible, I have a dominantly vegetarian diet, but I have no issues with eating meat, so long as I know that the animal wasn't killed in a cruel way, and it was raised in an ecological sustainable manner. In addition, I am strong believer that one must be willing to kill the animal that's to be eaten, such that there is a certain amount of respect and responsibility for the animal's life, and consequently, no wasting of any of the animal (...as opposed to the potentially desensitizing, guilt-free, responsibility-free act of purchasing a piece of mass-produced plasticized meat, which gives no indication that an animal lived and died to end up on that styrofoam tray, almost as if there was a magical tree that grew platters of prefectly cut flesh). For me though, I believe I can see myself (humanely) killing a variety of things from most sea invertebrates, to fish, to birds, to maybe lamb and pork-- cattle, if I'm famished--, but dog? As Jules Winnfield said, "A dog has personality. And personality goes a long way." I honestly don't think I can kill a dog, especially if at some point it's come up to me, looked me in the eyes, and wagged its tail. All that to say that, yesterday was the first and also the last time I've eaten dog meat... Unless of course, it's one of those really irritating, neurotic, yapping fur balls. I can definitely see myself eating one of those!

I meant for this particular blog to be about the food in China, so let me hop to it. First off, I am happy to announce that after one week of eating Chinese food, I haven't had the runs! My stomach seems to be adjusting to the sudden increase in MSG pretty well. Most meals here come with at least a sprinkling of MSG, as they use it here much as we use salt or pepper. Despite (or because of, I'm not sure yet) that, the Chinese food here in China is damned good. Every meal I've had thus far has been more flavourful and more tasty than any meal back home. And cheap too! I can easily have a huge dinner for four for less than 10$, or breakfast for less than 50 cents. Indeed, my first meal here, cost me less than 5$ and I could barely finish it.

I don't think I'll go into too many details about the actual dishes, as most of the dishes are effectively recognizable in one form or another in any Chinese restaurant wherever you go around the world. Of course, here, tripe and intestines come together with a meal without having to be asked for, but besides that bit of enlightenment, there's not much difference. Instead, I'll describe what ordinary Chinese tend to eat on a regular basis, like say breakfast. O... by all ye gods... do they make something goddamned fantastic here. It's something like a savoury crepe, but not quite. These things are usually sold in little stands along the street, waiting for people to emerge from the subway, or for people to walk out of their buildings, like mine. On a flat circular surface, the shop-keep quickly spreads out a thin layer batter. Just as the batter is cooking, three eggs are cracked right on top and spread out a bit. Then, in one deft movement, the crepe is flipped over to cook the eggs, as little bit of hot sauce, some soy paste, some scallions, and a sprinkling of preserved vegetables are thrown on. Finally, a piece of puffed wheat (I think) is placed on top, and the finished crepe is folded around it, forming a retangular piece of yummy goodness that's stuffed in a plastic bag, for your eating convenience. Soooo good. Alternatively, they have a number of different kinds of fried pieces of circular dough, that come in savoury or sweet varieties, both of which are gifts from heaven. To go with your breakfast, a fresh, pipping hot cup of soy milk can be had! And it really is fresh! And no, it's not flavoured with either chocolate, vanilla or any other horrible additions. It's just soy milk, plain and simple, and a thing of beauty.

As in most places around the world, the best places for food is rarely in restaurants, but rather in mom n' pop hole in the walls. I wasn't dissappointed when I was taken to restaurant serving food from Xinjiang province, the western-most province in China, populated mostly by muslim Uighurs. These guys make lamb like no other. We started with a delectable soup that huge lamb bones floating around that we could fish out and much on, and then on the side, along with a few other simple dishes, we had something resembling lamb ribs, but had much more meat attached to it, and all the wonderful, mouth watering pieces of glistening fat and tendons! And if you're STILL hungry, you can order a few of their grilled lamb kebas, sprinkled with a bit of hot spices and uncrushed cumin. Most excellent.

And finally, a description of the dog meat is in order. Eating dog is no longer that popular in China especially as many people now have dogs as pets. In fact, the people I was with all made funny faces when I expressed my desire to try dog meat, much like Jules Winnfield, so I decided to try it alone. I ended up finding a place around where I live that serves it, as they specialize in food from Jiachang, which is known for having dog meat. With a little trepidation, I walked in and, with the aid of the waitress, I muddled my way through the menu and ordered two meals: a veggie dish and a dog dish (or dish of dog, to be less ambiguous). The veggie dish was there because first, I like vegetables, and it was one I've never tried before, some sort of long, thin, purplely thing, and second, because dog meat is supposed to impart "hot" energy, so I was hoping that the vegetable would counter-balance its effects. For those of you who aren't familiar with Chinese medicine, food is loosely divided along the lines of having either heating effects or cooling effects, like chillies and mangoes for the former, and lotus root for the latter. In the hot summer days, or when you're feverish, you're supposed to eat "cold" foods, while in the cold winter days, you're supposed eat "hot" foods, like dog meat. The dog came somewhat anti-climactically as a simple stir-fry with green peppers. I'm not sure what I was expecting. Maybe barking or whining? Maybe a disembodied lick on the hand? All I saw was a plate of grub. The meat itself was previously red-braised (meaning cooked in soy, wine and spices until tender) and then cooked again, so in that, it looked very similar to cooked pieces of fatty pork, with lovely bits of fat still hanging from it. The look of it though, was of a much darker and redder meat than pork, looking almost like beef... And the flavour? Damn! It was like eating the most tender, most succulent piece of lamb I've ever had, except without that gamey after taste to it.

As I said though, it was my first and last time eating it. I just hope it was one of those ambulant fur balls I ate, and not Lassie.

Zhang Ziyi and the West's Eye for the Ladies

2006-02-09T00:14:00.000-08:00

Most of you are likely familiar with the uber-popular Zhang Ziyi, star of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "House of Flying Daggers", and if you're a dude, you've likely have had a few pleasant dreams with her. However, what you may be less aware of is that Zhang Ziyi is quite disliked, if not generally despised here in her native China. The reasons for this are quite fascinating, but first let me begin by telling you how I found out about this. Recently, a heavily circulated news piece has been popping up in all the Western news outlets, decrying in a great big bold letters, yet another example of China's nasty censorship and overbearing government, fitting quite nicely into the (fabricated) narrative that China is paradoxally both a backward authoritarian regime and a fearsome economic power to reckonned with very soon. The particular example of censorship this time was the banning of "Memoirs of a Geisha." Curious to know what the Chinese perspective of this is, I asked a few friends here what they thought of not being able to see the movie.

To my surprise, almost all of them had already seen it. That wasn't it. All of them agreed that it should be banned. The reasons are interesting too, but first thing's first: one shouldn't forget that Chinese people have access to the internet as well, and knowing their familarity with bootlegged CDs and movies, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that they routinely download recent movies and music from ftp servers or bittorrent servers-- much as we do. Clearly, the Chinese are not simply meek, obedient citizens whose rights are perpetually dictated to them from above. Again, like us, rules and laws here are meant less to be obeyed than to be navigated, and, having had many rules from the very first dynasty over 2000 years ago, the Chinese are very good at finding ways around them.

But back to the more intersting questions. Why did ordinary Chinese want the ban on "Memoirs of Geisha," putting aside its questionable artistic merits? The main reason revolves around the director and producer's inexplicable casting of Chinese actresses as Japanese. Well, the reasons why they cast Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh were pretty obvious: they're pretty much the only actresses that Westerners would recognize anyway, accuracy be damned. I'm aware that it is the actor's bread and butter to act and to pretend, but there's a very big red line that should not be crossed that would goes deeply into the misunderstandings and prejudices of black-face and yellow-face (for those unfamiliar with the terms, wikipedia has a few good entries on that. it's essentially when a white guy plasters his face with black or yellow paint and acts out the worst black and asian stereotypes). Casting Chinese actors for Japanese roles is not just a blatant grab for undiscerning Western viewers, but a highly cultural insensitive act that panders to the worst prejudices and misconceptions of asians. There was a fantastic piece on this from CBC touching on "Memoirs of a Geisha" and Gwen Stefani's Japanese Chorus-Girls:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/geisha.html

Many Chinese effectively share the opion of that CBC piece, and believe that the movie is little more than a series of insulting stereotypes that does justice to neither the Chinese nor the Japanese. They know very well that geishas are not the high-classed whores the movie portrays them to be, but highly cultured and sophisticated companions, conversationalists, and musicians. What really pisses Chinese people off though is that they used Chinese actresses to make that point. More precisely, it's the fact that a Chinese woman is a whore to a Japanese, and that still raises painful memories of Japanese aggression in Asia, unresolved to this day ( i.e. visits to the Yakusuni shrine, a lack of accountability, incomplete war reparations). So really, the Chinese want the ban due to the sheer insensitivity, if not stupidity, of the director and producers agreeing to have Chinese actresses in Japanese roles.

And so, it is easy to imagine then, that Chinese people are not only angry at the movie, but by affiliation, with Zhang Ziyi. Apparently, many of the blogs have been flaming with invectives about her and the movie. That's not it though, beyond the movie, there's also a fundamental dislike of Zhang Ziyi. On the one hand, it's because they find that she's a little too obnoxious in her pride of being the toast of the circuit in Hollywood, where the cultural preference in Asia is to be humble and quiet. But the most interesting and last reason that I managed to wheedle out of my Chinese friends was quite interesting, because it really underlines the fact that Chinese people are far more sophisticated and aware of the state of world affairs, than the West takes them for. They don't like Zhang Ziyi because according to Asian standards, she really isn't all that. In fact, she's quite plain and ordinary compared to other more popular actresses here. What Chinese people chafe the most at, is that the only reason that Zhang Ziyi is famous at all is that she satisfies the Western preconception of an Asian beauty is supposed to look like, very much in the tradition of the old Dragon ladies of the 30s and 40s.

Put it bluntly, the Chinese are just pissed that the West plucks a woman from their midst and then rams her back in their faces saying, "See, you silly Chinese? This is the kind of woman that you should be attracted to."

Fascinating, huh?

First Impressions

2006-02-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

So I'm in China. Freaky, huh? After all my obsessing about China, after all my readings into the history and politics of China for the last ten years, after all my desperate attempts to learn Chinese, and after always ending my sporadic speeches about China with "...but I haven't actually been to China," I am at last in China. For roughly the next 6 months. I think so anyway. I may cut the trip short. I have to admit that my first impression of China, or at least of Beijing, was of a grimy, gray, and dilapidated city. The skies were grey, the air was thick with smog, and my first sight of "grass" was spray-painted astro-turf along the freeway, apparently meant to make the city look lively and healthy for the Olympics. Fortunately, that was the last of the artificial grass that I saw, and all the other plant-life was the real McCoy, though it was all yellowed and brittle. Of course. It's winter here. Naturally, coming in from the perennially green Vancouver, this seemingly dried out husk of a city would come as a shock.

The next day greeted me much more favourably. Not being able to sleep, I decided to take a walk. Again, everything struck me as being dirty and grimy, though strangely there was barely any litter on the ground, and also there were no beggars to speak of-- it's easy to forget that the image of China's capital is strictly enforced, as much as possible. However, my somewhat pessimistic impression of the city, suddenly broke when snow began to fall. Soon enough, the entire city was drapped in lovely white attire. I knew then that Beijing, much like that other city that is oft the subject of my curses, Toronto, could be a city I can easily learn to appreciate.

So far, I cannot say that Beijing is any different from any other major city. Sure, there are loads of old buildings, there's Tiananmen square, there's a whole lot of security personnel every where I go, and there's a whole lot of gawdy adverts everywhere, but the people are not huddling in fear under an oppressive authoritarian regime, they are not busy trying to rat out their neighbor to avoid being sent to a gulag, and they are certainly not all desperately trying to get out of the country to reach the promised land that is the West. No, except for no longer being a visible minority (although that was technically the case in many areas in Vancouver) and the Chinese language center of my brain throbbing from the pain of trying remember all that I learned, Beijing is very much a city like any other... though with significantly better and cheaper food.

I know for a fact that many of my assumptions about my China will be exploded in the next few months (fortunately, I imagine my impressions of China are somewhat closer to those Westerners who buy make-your-own-Zen garden kits, or get tattoos of Chinese words they don't understand, or think Chinese food largely consist of chicken balls). I honestly welcome that, and I hope that, if anything, I will emerge with a full and complete impression of the real China.

At the Heart of the Head Tax Issue

2006-02-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

For those unfamiliar with the Chinese head tax issue, Wikipedia does an average job of summarizing it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Tax

It also has a sparse, but useful, entry on Canada's anti-Chinese legislations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_Canada

In a nut shell though, let me give you a quick run-down of the history of the Chinese head tax. In the 19th century, about the same time Canada came into being through its 1867 constitution unifying the provinces and stipulating the rights of its citizens, Canada started to welcome huge droves of Chinese immigrants. Much like the other imperialist powers of the time, Canada wished to have its own share of non-white coolie labour to exploit. Specifically, Canada was building its railway system, and wished to use Chinese slave-labour to complete it. Remember those touching "Canadian Moment" commercials, where an old Chinese railway builder was telling his grandkids about how he nearly got blasted to bits carrying nitro for his white masters? Well, that's about the period when Chinese immigrants were let into the country. However, when the railway was finished, the Canadian government was faced with something of a connundrum. The Chinese were still coming into the country, and because they were willing to work harder and for less than their white counterparts, they were taking jobs away from the white people. Predictably, the white people complained, resulting in a number of anti-Chinese legislations that were designed to prevent more Chinese from immigrating. The first legislation in 1885 levied a 50$ head tax on every Chinese immigrant coming into the country. But when increasing the head tax to 100$ in 1900 and then to 500$ in 1903, did nothing to stop Chinese people from coming into the country, they banned all Chinese from entering in 1923. No other ethnicity was affected by this ban, even other asians such as Japanese or Indians. Only after having served honourably in the Second World War did the Canadian government begin to repeal the anti-Chinese bans, in 1947, ending almost 60 years of racial discrimination. It was recently estimated that amount collected by the head tax in 1923 was equivalent to about 1 billion 2005 dollars.

Until recently, the Chinese community has remained silent on Canada's discriminatory immigration polices. This is partly because many of the older generations not wanting to draw attention to themselves, and thus make them potential targets for racial retaliations (as has been historically the case). The older generations typically just want to forget the whole issue ever happened, and simply settle into the relatively improved Canadian racial landscape. Interestingly, many second and third generation Canadian-Born-Chinese also want let bygones be bygones, partly because they feel that the discrimination is no longer present in Canadian society, and that besides, the wrong was committed on someone else, not them. Another reason, I found curious, is that they don't want Canada to apologize for their racists policies, because they think the Canadian government would be liable to pay reparations to the descendants of Chinese immigrants, and thus be "weakened." Presumably, this comes from being patriotic to a country who historically treated your kind as scum.

Till now, the Canadian government has not apologized for having enacted racist policies that came short of pogroms. Martin did apologize, but only in the capacity of a private citizen, not as the prime minister. Why? I suspect that it's because of the liability thing, and the fear of taking responsibility for their acts, as is typical of the current North American escapist culture of victimization.

However, the most active Chinese organization (Chinese Canadian National Council, CCNC) asking for redress with the head tax issue, are NOT asking for monetary payments-- at least, they're not asking for full compensation. What the CCNC is asking for is simply the recognition that a wrong was commited, and that the Canadian government won't do it again. In recent negotiatons with the bumbling Raymond Chan, there have been mention of monetary redress, but it's mostly a symbolic sum of money that would go directly to Chinese cultural center.

The point, of course, is not about money. It's about accountability and integrity. In the simplest sense, the apology would serve as a recognition that the Canadian government had once been racist, but that now, after having apologized, it would never happen again. However, to get at the heart of the matter, a comment made by my brother-in-law is worth thinking about. He said to me, "Why bother about an apology when most of the people, for whom the discrimination was the worst, don't even feel the need for an apology?" This seemed like an excellent point at the time, but upon further reflexion, it's completely absurd.

Whether a wrong, a crime, or an injustice has been committed, has absolutely nothing to do with the impressions of the victim, or the victim's magnanimity in forgiving the person or institution at fault. It has to ONLY to do with the rule of law. A simple example can be drawn in the case of man killing the wife of his neighbor. Now, because the neighbor is friends with the murderer of his wife, he decided to forgive him and let the matter drop. So, would that make the killer any less of a killer and crimminal? Clearly, the crimes was committed, and the killer should face justuce irrespective of what the husband of the victim feels. This may be a slightly extreme example to draw an analogy to, but I hope I made my point. However, bear in mind that the Canada's discriminatory policies lasted for almost two generations, divided families, and ostracized a whole group from effectively integretating into the community. Sure, it's great that many Chinese are quite big and generous in accepting that past-ills are under the bridge, happily waltzing away, fully trusting that discriminatory acts will never happen again. However, that's not the point.

The point is that, not too long ago, Canada was a racist institution. By our constitution, and all our laws, this is illegal. By hypothetical western values, it is also morally incorrect. Canada has not been held accountable for the wrongs it has commited against the Chinese.

Now if the government of Canada cannot be held accountable to the constitution and laws of its own land, what precisely is the value of those laws?

Precisely how patriotic would you be by cheapening the value of constitution by allowing crimes to be ignored?

NDP Minority

2006-01-25T20:27:00.000-08:00

Expect an NDP minority government next election. Either that, or a Conservative majority. It will all depend on two major things: whether the Conservative party will be able to keep it's more radical elements under control, and whether the Liberal party will get a new leader who will regain the trust of the people.

The Conservative party has till now managed to keep it's most backward and provincial (the perfect adjective in this case) members quiet. These guys effectively made an implicit deal with Harper: they'll stay quiet, and in exchange, they won't embarass Harper, and if he wins, they'll demand that their agenda be put forward. Problem is, though, that Harper will not be able to promote their agenda, as with his minority government, he will be forced to play in the center, leaving his more reactionary hopes and dreams ( e.g. redefining mariage to the disfavour of same-sex couples, and remaking our senate and justice system a-la-american) on the back-burner. A minor war is brewing in the Tory party then, and depending on how Harper plays it, his most radical roots will either come to heel, or force him to make a move he will regret. In this first case, the Conservative party will do pretty well, and actually manage the country fairly well. In the second case, the Conservative party will end up alienating all but his right-wing core. I'm inclined and strongly hope that the second case will happen, meaning that the Tories will collapse yet again, and there'll be elections sooner than we think. However, it is possible that being at the reins of power will make even the most backward yahoos get a little culture and tone down their bible-thumping mantras. Time will tell on that one.

Now for the Liberal party, a really critical moment is coming up. They are presently faced with the fantastic opportunity to entirely remake themselves. Sure, it's a chance to clean their act up, but it goes far beyond that. It's a time for them to refind their roots, to rediscover themselves, and most importantly, to refind their passion and fervour for politics that has been steadily eroded from being in power too long. Problem is, that they are likely too close in time to their last taste of power for them to truly realize the changes they have to undergo. Their next leader will effectively decide the path they choose. If they see the light, and decide to choose a young and dynamic leader, then the Liberals stand a pretty damned good chance of causing the Tory government to fall, and to win the next election. If not, and they choose some old war-horse from the old generation, then they're screwed. The people will automatically associate that leader to the old regime and they don't stand a chance in hell of winning the next election even though they'll likely make this government fall. My guess and hope is that the Liberals will not choose a truly reforming leader, and they will just attempt the old formula.

Finally, the other element to take note of is the Bloc. The Bloc got a pretty hard slap in the face this election. With less than the 50% of the popular vote they aimed for, they flat out realized that they cannot continue as they usually did, and also that the Conservatives really do strike a nerve with la Belle Province (unfortunately). So, they're faced with a horrible dilema. Co-operate with the Conservatives, effectively side-lining the Liberals, and get major concessions from the feds. The problem is, that this will necessarily make les Quebecois more content with the federal government, and make them forget the need to separate, meaning that the Bloc and the PQ will lose a ton of votes next election. Or, the Bloc can resist the Conservatives all the way through, but then the Tories will just shrug their shoulders and make the valid point that they did offer the Bloc a chance. The best option for the Bloc is to play a passive-aggressive role. Let the Conservatives screw up. Let them go nuts. Show minimal interest and effort in federal politics, and let them try to fuck Quebec up the ass as they usually do. THEN, point that out, emphasize it, and next election, we Quebecers will stand a damned good chance of seceding from this anglo-infested country.

Did I forget the NDP? No. As a result of all this ballyhoo, the NDP will simply pursue a steady-as-she-goes policy and effectively show that they, as the underdogs, are the most consistent and the most trustworthy of the bunch-- one of the benefits of never having been in power. The most they might think of doing is to absorb the Green party, but that may be a premature move.

I mentioned many possibilities previously, and many of them are pretty likely. What I'd really like to happen though, is that the Conservative party failing to control its rabble will implode, that the Liberal party will be unable to find itself a decent leader and no one will believe them, and that finally the NDP will come into its own. Since the Tories and the Liberals will be paralyzed by in-fighting, the NDP would squeak its way into a minority government... More likely though, is that the Tories will manage to control their more inbred elements, and run the country pretty decently. Canada is after all, not too difficult of a country to run, so long as you pursue a centrist platform. As a result, the Tories will gain the trust of the people, the party will mature, and in the next election they'll gain a comfortable majority. Madness.

In any case, the next few years will be interesting to watch.

I did not vote

2006-01-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

We are in a sham democracy. Were I to have voted, given that I am not in my native Belle Province and unable to vote for the Bloc, I would have simply voted for the Green Party or NDP, by my gut feeling.

And therein lies the problem.

Democracies are not about making gut decisions. They are about making informed decisions. And when the bulk of the population are unaware of the major policies of the parties they are voting for, and when the media and the parties themselves largely avoid the difficulty of explaining their stands by simply painting themselves in broad, catchy sound-bytes, no informed decisions can be expected. Instead, expect decisions that are made by people who would be entirely unable to explain their choices besides saying they had a fondness for one party leader or another (we have a parliamentary, not a presidential system, remember?). Expect a "voting" population that is easily swayed by the issue of the moment, and is unaware of most major issues or unwilling to be aware of them. Finally, expect people who feel more and more disenfranchised and disconnected to the state, and therefore become more and more apathetic.

This is not a democracy. I will not support a sham democracy in any way.

(Not voting is a valid form of protest. It is making the statement that the system is fundamentally flawed. If there are enough people who do not believe that the system is valid, including those who fit into narratives like "what's the point, they're all the same" or "my vote won't make a difference", the state will no longer have a mandate to rule, and therefore it will be forced to change in order to regain it.)