Chris In China

Back in the U.S.A.

Mon, 18 May 2009 09:54:42 -0500

It took me a while, but I am back from China.
I landed a few weeks ago, just in time to watch the start of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. (By the way, I don't know if you heard, the Olympics are going on in China this year.) As I sat watching part of the opening ceremonies from a bar stool somewhere in the Berkshires, I finally started to decompress and think about the last year of my life.
I think it goes without saying that my year exploring and living in another part of the world was a great experience for me. I was tested and challenged, attacked and humiliated, lauded and admired. I learned more in one year living in China than I could have ever learned in four years in a classroom.
And I saw and experienced things that were far beyond anything I could have imagined.

Young and rich in China

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:04:49 -0500

Caraba Chen just had started placing the meal on the table when we walked into his sixth-floor apartment in Baoding, a city of 1 million people a few clicks south of China’s enormous capital city, Beijing. The apartment is a large two-bedroom located on the edge of the city in one of those unremarkable cookie-cutter apartment complexes one finds nearly everywhere in China.
But his place has class: overstuffed plush furniture, a large, white dining room table and a mud-brown shag rug inspired, no doubt, by a catalog selling authentic 1970s “style” carpets made by hand. The carpet softens the stark, white atmosphere enough for the room to feel comfortable. And sitting on the couch with my bare feet lost in the shag of the rug, I felt a sudden desire to discuss the implications of the Summer of Love and the war in Vietnam.
Instead, we just talked about the tragedy that is Chinese pop music.

A long trip to the Great Wall

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:06:13 -0500

Maybe it was the exhaust fumes spewing out of the countless coal carriers waiting, in both lanes, in a traffic jam that seemed to go on forever that was messing with my mind. More likely, it was being one of 18 people wedged into a minibus built for 16, like sardines packed into a tin box.
At one point, I was filled with delusional certainty that there would be a McDonald’s up the road so I could visit the little boys’ room and then order small fries off the dollar menu. But the only bathroom for miles was a concrete barrier preventing minibuses like ours from plunging over a cliff into a small creek below, and when we did reach a restaurant along the dusty road, somewhere around 2 a.m., there were no fries, and a bottle of Coke cost 8 yuan — highway robbery indeed.
And where were all those trucks going?

How far does patriotism go?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:52:35 -0500

There is nothing wrong with patriotism.
In the United States, most people are fervent supporters of the Constitution, and some are very proud to be U.S. citizens. When the country is attacked, physically or verbally, there is no lack of patriotic rhetoric defending and declaring the greatness of home.
But during the lead-up to the current war in Iraq, when the United States was attacked verbally by its allies across the globe, there was a wave of patriotism that perhaps went too far: How could one forget “freedom fries” and “freedom toast"?
When people in Europe and the United States began verbal attacks and protests against China and the Olympic torch during the aftermath of last month’s unrest in Tibet, the Chinese reacted in a similar manner.
As an American teaching at a university in China, I have been given a unique perspective of this response.

Spring scents bring homesickness

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:58:40 -0500

Last week, I made a surprising discovery.
I was cycling back to my apartment after a filling lunch of jiaozi (dumplings), and getting my hair cut, when my eyes and nose suddenly became aware of something I have not seen in a long time — a sight and smell that seems so foreign to this land of scripted urban landscapes, but so familiar in my own.
It was the unmistakable cone-shaped panicle of the Syringa vulgaris, better known as the purple lilac.

It's the boob tube in China, too

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:31:21 -0500

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.

A visit to a street-side barbershop

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:52:10 -0500

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.

Cambodia: A lesson in being content

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:27:20 -0500

I went to southeast Asia recently, on vacation from my post as an English teacher in China, and my perception of the relationship between happiness and prosperity was completely upended.
As I have noted in the past, one of the most important lessons that I have learned so far during my Asia adventure is to expect the unexpected, or rather, to not expect anything at all. This is hard to do.
There is always an idea in one’s mind about what it is like in one place or another; what the people, the land, the culture and climate are like. This undoubtedly stems from what people have read or heard about the place, and even when someone studies the history, politics, or anthropology of a particular region, there is no substitute for actually seeing it. When people hear about stories of poverty or oppression, glory or conquest, the view is always shaped by the subjective reporting of the storyteller (no journalist is completely objective).
Even though I try to live with an open mind, I could not help but hold preconceived notions about one of the places I planned to visit: Cambodia. I read brief histories, news articles and travelogues about Cambodia, so inevitably my mind assembled a few ideas.
For many Americans, knowledge of southeast Asia comes from news reports and history lessons about the Vietnam War era. We remember Nixon sending troops up the Mekong River and bombers over Cambodian skies to “root out the reds.” Many people are familiar with the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, a junta government — initially supported by the United States — that, according to the CIA, killed 1.5 million people, mostly innocent civilians.
All this pre-knowledge of a country I had never visited led me to believe the people who lived there would almost certainly be poor and unhappy. I had this grand confidence that, as an educated and compassionate Westerner, I had a lot to offer the people of Cambodia. After all, it was my country that helped lead this people into the abject despair and poverty in which I thought they all lived in, so therefore it was my obligation to help those who could not help themselves.
How arrogant I was.

Happy Chinese New Year

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:25:28 -0500

I'm sitting at computer number 045 at Sensation Internet.Club in Jinghong in China's southern Yunnan Province. A young woman with a red handbag and a white sweater sits to my right playing an Internet Dancing game and chatting with some friends online.
Computer number 046, to my left, is one of the few vacant stations in the place; the other hundred or so computers are occupied with young Chinese playing computer video games, drinking cans of Fanta and chain smoking Honghe brand cigarettes. The place is dark, hot and filled with smoke.
Jinghong is the last big city on the way to the Laotian and Burmese borders. Only 94,162 people live here, according to a 2007 census, small by China standards, but big enough to have an airport and three bus terminals. It also has a port on the Mekong river where once a day a speedboat whisks passengers to Chiang Saen in northern Thailand, a seven-hour journey for 800 Yuan.
I'm not prepared to spend that much on a boat ride, so later today, I will hop on a bus and eventually reach the Laotian border by land. I'm headed south, and will eventually end up in Cambodia, where rooms are $2 a night and cold beer is a quarter.

It's all about families

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:16:09 -0500

I have a friend who recently left Baoding after being here for two years. She did not leave for a job; she did not leave for another opportunity. In fact, she did not even want to leave, but she had to. Her father told her to come home.
She is 22 years old.
She cried when she left, saddened by the prospect of never seeing her Baoding friends again, upset by the stress of having to move and distraught by her lack of choice in the matter.
I asked her why she couldn’t stay.
"You’re an adult," I said. "Can’t you make your own decisions?"
"In China, family comes first," she said tearfully.

What friends are for

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:59:14 -0500

Any Westerner living in China can tell you about them, about their persistence, about how they can be slightly unnerving and about how they can sometimes be indispensable to a happy existence. And riding through the streets of any city — big or small — reveals a multitude of them making their presence known with a chorus of "helllooos" as you pass. Their accents are thick and their opening dialogues are predictable: "Nice-eh to meeet you! Do you know Yao Ming?"
Occasionally, you find a diamond in the rough.

Fitting in the danwei

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:20:01 -0500

I feel like I should offer a counterbalance to my last column, which highlighted some of the more nauseating incidents that happen around me. This column will strive to shed some light on some of the more pleasurable parts of my daily life.
I am well settled into a social network that extends beyond my coworkers and students, and I have fallen in step with the routine of cold coal dust mornings, back alley noodle-shop lunches and dazzling four o’clock sunsets. The sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of every day, although sometimes repulsive, are uniquely Chinese, and for that they are wonderful. Each day finds me learning from the experience of the day before, like a 24-hour cultural education that even infiltrates my dreams.
In short, I am no longer on a trip to China — I am living in China. The change has been gradual, but noticeable. Right now, this is what I am doing, and I like it.

Not trying to trash China, but ...

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:37:01 -0500

Warning: Strolling along the streets of Baoding often can be a stomach-churning activity.
A human can endure a great deal of sensory assault, but the constant barrage of repulsive smells, gooey substances, constant noise and thick layers of dust that turn green trees gray can be too much to bear. I try to ignore the depressing bushes and blaring car horns, but slipping on a slimy, sloppy mixture of phlegm and swill makes me sick.
This city is like many Chinese cities. During the average day, hundreds of thousands of people roam the streets breathing in the equivalent of more than three packs of cigarettes worth of bad air. Most of the pollution comes from coal-dust and car fumes. Sidewalk restaurant stoves are heated with coal, as are homes, and basic fuel emission standards do not exist.

Learning the Chinese way

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:39:48 -0500

It should not come as a surprise that I have found teaching a foreign language and learning a foreign language very difficult. People say learning through immersion is the most effective way to become fluent, which is probably true, but it still involves a lot of studying and hard work.
Sometimes I wish learning by immersion meant learning by osmosis.