02.11.08
Posted in Down in Chinatown, Festivals and Celebrations at 3:23 pm by Benjamin Ross
I just returned from the Chicago Chinatown Spring Festival Parade. Other than the sub-zero (that’s Farenheit sub-zero) temperatures, and the fact that everything was in Cantonese, the parade had the pretty much the same brewhaha one would expect from a New Years celebration in China. What was interesting, however, were the scores of Republic of China (Taiwan) flags, coupled with American flags, which were passed out to the entire audience…not sure how well this would have gone over back in the Mainland.
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12.22.07
Posted in Culture Clash, Down in Chinatown, Fujian at 7:21 pm by Benjamin Ross
Now is the time of year when the snow if falling, houses are decorated with holly and Christmas lights, and the radio waves are filled with Christmas music. Christmas is in the air in Chicago. In Fuzhou, a modestly-sized Chinese capital city with a tiny foreigner population, Christmas is in the air as well…well, everything except for the snow.
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Several Santa Clauses greet customers outside a Fuzhou storefront
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Christmas in Fuzhou is no longer a foreign festival that children read about in social studies books—it’s a local phenomenon as well. If Fuzhou, a 40 foot Christmas tree is erected every year in front of the (or I should say “one of the 3?”) KFCs in Dong Jie Kou, Fuzhou’s central shopping district. Storefronts are lined with holly, and novelty snow, and shoppers as well as store employees can be seen wearing red Santa hats. It’s now not uncommon for Fuzhou residents nowadays to purchase Christmas cards and Christmas gifts, and sign their e-mails and QQ greetings with “Merry Christmas.”
For me, Christmas in China was always an awkward time. As a Jew, I have never celebrated Christmas, and this came as quite a disappointment to many of my Chinese friends. Even when I would explain that the reason I do not celebrate Christmas is that I am not a Christian, this would do little to answer the curiosity. The general perception of Christmas in China is that it is a Western holiday, and not necessarily connected with religion. Based on the commercialization of Christmas in the US, it’s not surprising that many Chinese have drawn this conclusion.
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Trust Mart employees sport their special Christmas uniforms.
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The boom in Chinese Christmas celebration has coincided with the seemingly diminishing relevance of the Chinese Spring Festival. While Spring Festival is still the most prominent holiday on the Chinese calendar, it’s significance has been slowly diminishing, especially in the cities. Not so surprisingly, it is also in the cities where Christmas celebration is most common, especially among China’s youth. Will there come a day when the Spring Festival is supplanted by Christmas? My guess is probably not anytime soon. But with the speed of globalization, who knows what it will be like in another 100 years?
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11.03.07
Posted in Barbershop, Culture Clash, Down in Chinatown, Personal Anecdotes at 5:56 am by Benjamin Ross
After spending the majority of the past two months in my hometown of Kansas City, I am now in Chicago beginning the next phase of my re-entry into American life. One of the reasons I chose Chicago was because of its ethnic diversity. As are most larger American cities, Chicago is full of ethnic enclaves scattered around this city. One of which is the Chicago Chinatown, home of the much of Chicago’s Chinese population as well as numerous restaurants, groceries, boutiques, and small businesses.
After my experience working in a Fuzhou barbershop last May, I thought it would be only fitting for my first experience in Chicago Chinatown to be a haircut. There are actually several barbershops in the Chinatown, but I chose one called “Urban Roots,” because it most closely resembled a “middle class” Chinese barbershop, like the one where I had worked in Fuzhou.
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| “Urban Roots,” one of Chinatown Chicago’s finer haircutting establishments |
With its bright colors on the wall and the mellow sounds Chinese pop music, the interior of Urban Roots looked and felt nearly identical to a Chinese barbershop (Chinese in the sense of actually being in China). The entire staff was Chinese, as were all of the other customers, and by the subtle look of surprise from the boy behind the counter, I am guessing they do not get too much non-Chinese clientele. Walking through the door, there was one blaring difference. Rather than being greeted by a chorus of “Huan Ying Guang Lin!” from the entire staff, a young boy behind the counter casually asked me, in accented English, “How can I help you?”
After telling the boy I wanted a haircut, I was led to the back of the salon by a woman in her mid-thirties. She sat me in a padded chair and leaned my head back into an attached sink, and began washing my pre-cut hairwash, just as they do in China. Conveniently located on the wall, at a perfectly aligned angle from where my head was tilted back, was an LCD screen playing Chinese karaoke videos. As I sat there, I felt for a moment as if I had been teleported back to Fuzhou.
The hair wash woman didn’t speak much English, so we chatted in Mandarin, and she told me she was from Guangzhou and had lived in Chicago for around 7 years. I told her how I had lived in Fuzhou for 3 years, and we exchanged stories and feelings about our years living in each others’ respective countries.
Throughout our exchange, one thing stood out as a blatant difference from China. That was that a woman in her mid-thirties was washing my hair. In China, working in a barbershop is a position considered to be low on the totem pole of social status. Furthermore, the job of a hair washer (or little brother/sister) is even lower than that of a barber. Most little brothers and sisters in Chinese barbershops are fresh out of high school, (or sometimes middle school) and rarely, if ever, older than their early twenties. Additionally, hair washing and cutting in China is a field still dominated by men, as many Chinese women stay at home to fulfill domestic responsibilities, especially those past child bearing years. Seeing a woman in her mid-thirties washing hair in China would probably be even less likely than seeing a 6 foot gringo from Chicago doing the same job. It would simply involve too much loss of face.
In China, face is a factor which can often determine which jobs are acceptable and which are not. Working as a businessman in a large company, a teacher in a university, or a government official comes with it a high degree of face. Work as a commissary employee, construction worker, or hair washer does not. This is why virtually none of the thousands of barbershop employees in Fuzhou are actually from Fuzhou. Rather, they come from small townships and rural areas in Fujian and surrounding provinces. A Fuzhou city native might consider working in a barbershop in say, Shanghai, but doing such work in their own hometown would cause too much loss of face. It would not even be an option.
When Chinese go abroad however, all of these rules are thrown out the window. Once in America, working in a barbershop, a restaurant, or a laundry service does not bare the embarrassment it would cause if such jobs were worked in China.
A close Chinese friend of mine, who comes from a wealthy family in Fuzhou, explained it to me like this, “If I went to Hong Kong, or England, or the United States, I could work a part time job such as one in a barbershop. But I could never do such work in Fuzhou. It would bring too much embarrassment to my family.”
One component of this is financial. Wages in Western countries are many times higher than those in Mainland China, and blue collar work in the West can lead to a life of comfort and luxury in China. Would an upper-middle class American with a college degree feel comfortable working as a cashier at McDonald’s? Would it be a job that he would want his friends to know he was working? Not likely. Now, imagine if McDonald’s restaurants in Canada were paying $250/hour, but Canada’s borders were closed, and only 5,000 Americans per year could emigrate to Canada to work. Suddenly the job, and the status which comes along with it, becomes more appealing.
After my hair wash, I was lead over to the barber chair to meet my new barber, a Chinese man, also in his mid-thirties. I greeted him in Mandarin, to which he replied, in English, “I don’t understand Mandarin, only Cantonese and English. I’m from Hong Kong.” Like the situation with the woman who had washed my hair, you would never see a Hong Kong native working in a Chinese barbershop in mainland China. Hong Kongers in mainland China find themselves propelled to the top of the social ladder, and certainly would not be cutting hair in the mainland. (I can’t comment on how this would play out in Hong Kong itself, since I haven’t spent enough time there). However, in the US, this job is perfectly acceptable by Chinese social norms.
After my haircut was complete, the woman from Guangzhou gave my head another wash, thus completing a process which was nearly identical to that which I had received so many times in China. The only major difference of course was the cost…a walloping 26 dollars, not including the 4 dollar tip I gave the barber. In Fuzhou, the cost of a haircut at my barbershop was 30 RMB (aprox $4), and as is custom in China, there is no tip.
My experience at Urban Roots not only gave me a sentimental throw-back to China, but it served to reaffirm a good lesson for all those coming from China to the United States. Here in Chicago I can have an authentic dim sum lunch, watch CCTV, and get a Chinese haircut complete with 2 washes and karaoke videos, but life in the US is not the same as it is in China, and this applies for both Chinese and laowai (which by the way, we are also referred to as by Chinese in the US). Long-standing beliefs and traditions, such as the concept of face, can last for millennia when maintained within their native countries. However, when exported to foreign lands, they are often no match for the social and economic forces of life abroad. And who knows?…Maybe someday doctors and lawyers from Chicago will emigrate to Fuzhou to cut hair.
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