Chris In China

On Channel 6, a young woman wearing a garish pink dress addresses a studio audience and the audience at home through wireless microphone she holds in her hand. On the screen, lines of small bright blue text scroll across the bottom, while large blocks of flashing yellow text suddenly appear covering the woman’s face with three exclamation points. Next to her is another host, a man in an all white suit and pink turtleneck waiting for his turn to speak into his own microphone. They are introducing the next singer on Super Star, the Chinese edition of American Idol.
Channel 8 shows a woman with pigtails tied with large blue bows holding the arm of a man in a suit and tie. They are speaking softly about the man’s imminent departure; he stops and turns to face her, and, as tears begin to moisten her heavily made-up cheek bones, the man says, “I must leave, I’m sorry.” The woman brushes passed his left shoulder crying loudly, “I love you!”
I’ve dubbed Channel 8 “The All-Army Channel” for its 24-hour bombardment of military-themed programs. From World War II dramas featuring heroic Chinese soldiers brazenly fighting evil Japanese “aggressors,” to “Monkey King,” an episodic drama depicting the life of a simian-man warrior who rules over a flock of other man-beast characters in 14th-century China, Channel 8 is an ideal stage for overdramatic battles that affirm Chinese dominance and pride.
While this may appear to be thinly veiled propaganda, there is more than one channel distributing its content with an unmistakable bias: state-owned CCTV.

China Central Television operates 15 different channels broadcasting throughout the country. Some run Chinese soap operas, others have cultural programming; there is one sports channel and three news stations.
In total, I can watch 19 television channels on my university-provided Changhong television set. For pure, unadulterated English-language Sino-centric propaganda, I turn to CCTV 9 (on Channel 4). The news on this channel is not as sensationalized as you would expect from a counterpart in the United States, like a Fox News or CNN, but the slant is undeniable. The difference is most Chinese view that slant as if it was parallel to the truth; there is no National Public Radio or New York Times to balance out the coverage.
With one side receiving all the coverage on Chinese news stations, and other channels broadcasting happy-go-lucky glorified karaoke and melodramatic gobbledygook, it is no wonder that dissent is conspicuously absent among the majority of the Chinese public.
This has made itself apparent on a number of occasions, but none so poignant as this past week and a half. Coverage of the protests-turned-riots in Lhasa, Tibet, started as a trickle of details coming from the official sources, CCTV and The People’s Daily newspaper. Comparatively, and despite foreign journalists being barred from entering Tibet (there was only one foreign correspondent in all of Lhasa during the events of last week), international media reports were gushing rivers of information, some based on unconfirmed reports and others substantiated. Where Chinese media called the event “unrest” that metastasized into “violent riots against innocent people,” the British Broadcasting Corporation (which I can find on Channel 19 because of foreign privilege, although the Web site is blocked), The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper from London painted a different picture, citing claims that 100 people died as a result of “violent clashes between China’s security forces and protestors.”
Western media outlets called the events in and around Tibet “peaceful protests” and described China’s response as a “violent crackdown on protestors.” China has not denied acting with a firm response, but there has been no mention on CCTV of the alleged deaths of 100 people, although it has confirmed that 22 people have died at the hands of the protestors, part of the story that I have yet to see mentioned by Western media.
I have the advantage of nearly unfettered Internet access (I have found a way to circumvent Internet censorship), and I receive the BBC World Service on television. I have been able to click between CCTV coverage and Western coverage to get many sides of this story. Only twice did the screen go black on the BBC channel when it reported on the events in and around Tibet, presumably instigated by Chinese censorship.
It seems, however, that both sides are offering an obvious bias. On one hand, China does not want to appear the aggressor, and on the other, the West is desperately trying to remain on top, seeking ways to make China appear evil.
So what, or where, rather, is the truth?
Does it even matter?
Even if both the Chinese and Western media have agendas to feed to the public, do people even care to know the whole story? Or would they rather just move on with their lives and laugh at cute girls in ugly dresses dance across the screen, satisfied and complacent that the “official” version tells them all they need to know?
This, perhaps, is the real question, which I find curiously familiar.
It was around the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003. I remember something about “weapons of mass destruction,” “Al Qaeda” and other bits of rhetoric. I eventually took that rhetoric for granted as the truth. Our so-called watchdog media never questioned it, and I had more important things to do, like laugh at Jessica Simpson’s “Chicken of the Sea” silliness.
But watching the television in my room in China has sent me back in time, and I see many parallels between what is broadcast here and what we saw on our television sets at home.
The game shows are the same, the soaps are the same, and I can even draw parallels between the “The All-Army Channel” and many of the programs on the History Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel. It seems the message is the same, too. It goes something like this: “Everything is OK, nothing to worry about, be entertained, stay blind to the atrocities our government is committing against our own people and people in faraway lands.”
The government shows little effort to hide its ruthless suppression of dissent, and there are very few accessible alternative sources of information. Besides, the breakneck growth China is experiencing and the quality entertainment showcased on CCTV’s 15 stations effectively squashes any need to complain anyway.
That sounds very much like home, although without the screaming yellow text.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He writes regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 11:31 AM | Permalink

I never expected to pay 70 cents for a straight-razor shave, including lotion, from an old Chinese man on the side of the street when I entered China seven months ago.
But last week, after a monthlong vacation, the scruff was beginning to become long and unattractive, I was out of razors, and I wanted an authentic barbershop experience, so I went to where the locals go: Da Fu Yuan Street.

Da Fu Yuan, better known as RT mart, is a modern marvel of commercialization, a small, underground shopping village with faux marble floors and short ceilings. On Sundays, it is packed with shoppers strolling past stores selling knock-off Ralph Lauren sweaters and cheap — and tacky — plastic jewelry. On the bottom floor is the sprawling grocery store where one can find baked beans in tomato sauce and just expired Land-o-Lakes sharp cheddar cheese. The shopping center is located underneath a park that hosts elderly folk bands, stinky-tofu vendors and kite flyers by the dozens.
In short, it’s an idyllic setting for a Chinese family to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Da Fu Yuan Street, a narrow strip of outdoor restaurants and grocers huddled on the banks of a sludgy, is located behind the park. A few meters to the north is where the elderly barbers set up shop, including a modified kitchen chair that leans backward with a pair of leather strops hanging off the back, and a three-wheeled bicycle fitted with a barrow bed to hold all the tools of the trade: scissors, hot water, razors and a few towels.
Nearby, old men play mahjong and Chinese chess, impromptu social events that attract large gawking crowds of other old men who stand around, watching and dissecting the players’ every move and strategies.
“Ahh, I would have moved the elephant two spaces to the right!”
“Old Zhao, you will lose your first chariot if you move there!”
Most of the time, the men are silent observers, but every once in a while, the chime of a collective “Ahh” will echo through the air.
When I arrive to scout out a barber’s chair, some of their attention shifts from the game to this bizarre waiguoren, foreigner.
“He’s going to get a haircut!” laughs one of the onlookers.
I decided an old man should give me the shave, thinking he would know a little more about the sensitivity of another man’s beard than one of his female counterparts. The man I picked was just finishing up with another client when I locked up my Flying Pigeon bicycle next to his. The customer, a large, nearly hairless man with deep wrinkles, sat motionless in the converted chair as the barber, with the concentration of a veteran sculptor, put the finishing touches on the man’s shiny melon, meticulously seeking and removing any fuzzy remnants, ensuring a smooth and consistent finished product.
He was good, I thought; the customer didn’t flinch once. This boded well for me, but I was nervous. Barbershops no longer perform this service in most American cities; it is too dangerous, a barber at A Man’s World barbershop in North Adams once told me — liability insurance would not cover damages. Now, halfway across the world, I was about to get a shave by a man using a technique that, back home, is considered archaic and risky.
But this was why I came to China. I wanted to see how people lived before lawyers and businesses exploited and changed the old way of doing things. A shave from a street-side barbershop presented a perfect opportunity to step back in time.
I hold quixotic images of neighborhood barbershops from 1940s Brooklyn, South Boston, and Marshall Street, North Adams, giving “dangerous” shaves and haircuts to old men on lazy afternoons while they waxed poetic about the latest Red Sox and Dodgers games. It is a shame this piece of American masculine culture has died.
Evidence suggests the practice won’t last much longer in China, either. The street-side barbers are never busy, and I was by far the youngest customer they had seen in a long time. It is a relic of the past, a part of the old days that is being squashed by modernization.
As I sat down in the chair, a feeling of nostalgia came over me. I had never been in that position before, but there was an odd familiarity with the process. The old barber put the bristly white lather brush to my face, and the tingle of hot, menthol-scented soap permeated my pores. When he set a warm, damp cloth on my chin, cheeks and mouth, softening up the long, patchy beard, I felt completely relaxed and comfortable.
But, when he brought the strop-sharpened razor to my face, all those pleasant idealistic thoughts vanished like the hair on my chin soon would. I clenched my teeth and squeezed the armrest as hard as I could. I could hear the scrape of cold metal against my face through my inner ear. It sounded like he was scraping a thick frost off the windshield of my old Crown Victoria during the small hours of a cold winter morning in New England. It was a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard type of feeling; I cringed during the entire process. But I did not tell him to stop. I heeded the example of the old customer who went before me and tried to remain expressionless, determined to enjoy the experience.
When it was all over I thanked the old barber, gave him his well-earned money and unlocked my bike. The lotion he rubbed into my face gave me a slight sting, but it felt cool and clean.
On my way back home I ran into a friend, who took one look at my face and exclaimed, “What happened to your face!?”
“Uh, what do you mean?” I said, as I rubbed my hairless, baby’s bottom chin.
“You’re bleeding everywhere!”
“Oh.” I looked at the red liquid on my hand.
I never expected that to happen. It’s too bad it might not happen again.

Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate who is spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He is writing regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.

Posted by Rebecca Dravis at 1:52 PM | Permalink