10.13.08
Glad to be back in America
As interesting as life can be in the Middle Kingdom, it’s scenes like this that remind me why I love the good ol’ US of A.
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08.28.08
Olympic Wrap-up and Post 8/08 China
Over the past three days, a cool has descended on the Chinese capital. In the span of just over two weeks, the Beijing Olympics have transformed from the most hotly anticipated event in the history of the People’s Republic of China, to the annals of modern Chinese history. Around Beijing, the hangover from the Olympics can still be felt. Olympic signage still dangles from bridges, buildings, storefronts and volunteers in blue shirts are still milling around on street corners, and the occasional wide-eyed foreigners with their credentials dangling from their necks are still walking around Wangfujing like they just landed on the moon. For locals however, it’s back to business as usual. The anticipation, the excitement, the vigor of the masses has all waxed and waned, as 12 million people recuperate from their 16 day party and settle back into their routines.
Even though Beijing appears to be returning to a semblance of normalcy, the rippling effects of the Olympics will be felt for generations. For my parents and their contemporaries, they all remember exactly where they were the moment Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the moon. Regardless of any practical effect it would have on Americans’ daily lives, the metaphorical significance of the first moon walk was immense. It presented Americans with reason to be proud to be American, and to be proud to be human. More importantly it catapulted us to a new age, where a feat previously reserved for science fiction novels had now become reality.
The PRC did not even begin competing in the Olympics until 1984. To ascend from those depths to become both the host nation, as well as the gold medal tally leader, is a deep source of pride and accomplishment for the entire Chinese nation. 50 years from now, Chinese retirees will all remember their exact location when Li Ning ran through the sky in the Bird’s Nest. For China, this moment, and the 16 days which followed it will shape the way the nation views itself for years to come. It was during the summer of 2008 that China realized dreams which only thirty years ago would have been unthinkable. The memories are not going to fade. What will gradually fade are the memories of pre-Olympic China.
What we just experienced in Beijing was no mere sporting event. It was bigger than that. China may not have sent a man to the moon, but the symbolic implications are there. The way in which 1.5 billion Chinese view their country and themselves will never be the same. For the Middle Kingdom, this is the beginning of a new era. Welcome to Post 8/08 China.
For me, my current China journey is about to wrap up as well. I am heading off to Shandong this afternoon for some exploring and independent travel. I should be back in Beijing by early next week, and will remain here until Sept 9, when I head off to Japan for a 4 day layover. On the 14th, I fly back to Chicago where it’s back to Italian Beef sandwiches and job hunting. At this point, it is uncertain when I will be back in the Middle Kingdom. I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to be in Beijing during these historic times, and am eagerly anticipating what this new era will bring. With that, I want to officially wrap-up my coverage of the Beijing Olympics. It’s been a wild ride, but it’s time to move on. Post 8/08 China is now embarking on new territory and will never be the same as it was during pre-Olympic times. Expect some posts from the Shandong in the days to come.
08.22.08
Picture of the Day: Olympic No-Smoking Propaganda
I saw this advertisement at the bus stop outside my apartment this morning.
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It reads:
Establish a non-smoking environment. Controlling smoking begins with me (you).
There are so many messages wrapped up into this advertisement it is difficult to know where to begin. Here’s what I see.
-You will be healthy if you don’t smoke.
-You will be happy if you don’t smoke.
-There is an inherent connection between quitting smoking and helping the environment.
-There is an inherent connection between the environment and the Olympics.
-A proper Chinese family should have only one kid.
-Having a girl child can make a family just as happy as having a boy.
The Chinese word for “propaganda” is 宣传 (xuan1 chuan2). However, unlike the English word, the Chinese term does not necessarily come with a negative connotation. 宣传 is more like a public service announcement, messages for the greater good of the masses. But like “propaganda,” 宣传 often specifically tells the reader what action he should take or how he should think, rather than just stating the facts.
A picture may be worth 1000 words, but a carefully procured picture, along with a working knowledge of Photoshop and an explicit slogan, is usually worth a whole lot more.
08.18.08
Picture of the Day: Chairman Shaq
There was a long period in Chinese history where most 50 foot statues were constructed in the image of one particular individual.
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Nope, that’s not the Great He1msman, but rather the Great Diesel, greeting beach volleyball fans to Chaoyang Park.
08.17.08
加油中国！ China Needs a New Cheer
Last night (on TV) I witnessed the most competitive match I have seen thus far in the Beijing Olympics. A vastly improved Chinese basketball team led by Yao Ming, jumped out to an early lead, and managed to fight off a late comeback by Dirk Nowitzki and the Germans. The teams both fought hard the entire way and the game infinitely more entertaining than the USA’s drubbing of Spain which followed. At the end of the first quarter though, I nearly turned the game off, or at least put it on mute. Why? The heavily partisan Chinese crowd had been yelling their jia you (加油) cheer on nearly every possession. After a week of the Olympics, I feel like my brain is rattling back and forth in my skull, to the rhythm of jia you.
Jia You is not a bad cheer. It’s simple, catchy, and easily customizable to any team, country, or individual. The literal meaning of jia you is “add oil.” It doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, but then again most good cheers don’t. It works like this. The leader shouts out the name of the team, for example “China” and then the others shout “jia you.” The leader then shouts “jia you” and the others reply with “China.” My beef with jia you is that it is the only cheer in China, and is cheered on auto-pilot at virtually every event where China is competing. In fact China has added so much oil this Olympics that it makes one wonder whether it is the impetus behind China’s rapidly rising gas prices.
Jia you is so prevalent, that cheering sections for other countries, (possibly ironically) have even been creating their own variations of it as well. At the soccer game Wednesday, on numerous occasions “Jia You, Argentina,” cheers could be heard echoing throughout Worker’s Stadium. When talking to China newbies this Olympics, one of the first questions I hear is “What is it they are all saying during the competitions?” I’ve even heard several spectators inquire whether jia you is the way to say “China” in Chinese.
Back when I taught English, my students would often ask me how to translate jia you into English. This was not an easy question to answer. If you are in Kansas, jia you could mean “Rock Chalk Jayhawk.” In Nebraska it’s “Go Big Red.” At Arrowhead Stadium, jia you is signified by waving your arm up and down like a tomahawk, and howling a war chant. But in China jia you is the be all end all for every single team, at every single event, and in every single sport. In almost four years in this country I have honestly never heard a different cheer. Maybe with the Olympics in town, Chinese fans come up with a new chant to put some variety into their cheering sections. Somehow though, I don’t see that happening over the next seven days.
08.14.08
Picture of the Day: National Anthem, Beijing Workers Stadium
Remember the old days when people would put their hands on their hearts to honor their country?
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Yeah, me neither. That tradition is long expired. In these technological times, the hand goes on the “record” button.
07.26.08
Back Down South…and Thinkin ’bout the North
For the past four days, I’ve been doing something I have honestly never done before in China—take a trip for completely social reasons, with little desire to sightsee, explore, or do anything remotely Chinese. I have been staying in Wenzhou, a coastal, wealthy city in Zhejiang province, where some of my old friends from Fuzhou are now teaching. My friends here are all American and British, and it has been a welcome break to take a short rest from China, even though I am technically still, in China.
Usually, whenever I arrive in a Chinese city for the first time, I spend at least a full day canvassing the city by foot and by bus, trying to take in and observe what I can of my new surroundings. What is unique about this particular city? In what ways is it exactly the same as every other Chinese city? How exposed/hospitable are the locals towards foreigners? What does the local dialect sound like? What is the most recent local street food rage? et cetera, et cetera. I had been to Wenzhou once before, but only for an afternoon, not long enough to gain any real feel for the city. Nonetheless, I decided that this stop on my China trip would be purely social. I had done enough site seeing and exploring in Dongbei last week, and could use a little time to relax with Western friends in a relatively insular environment.
Try as I might not to pay attention to my surroundings, as we were walking home from the laowai bar the other night, it hit me how strikingly similar Wenzhou was to Fuzhou. This is partly to be expected, as Fuzhou is only four hours away from my former Chinese home. But then something else dawned on me. Up until this week, I had spent my entire China trip in the North. Although I have traveled to the North on many occasions, I would estimate over 90% of my total time in China has been spent down South. My trip this summer, which has taken me to Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, has been the first time I have ever come to China, without stepping foot below the Yangtze (长江) River. I was now back down South, and suddenly my surroundings felt different, very different.
China, in its most rudimentary geographic regionalization is broken down between the “North” and the “South” with the Yangtze being the generally accepted dividing line. While this delineation is certainly an overgeneralization, and doesn’t speak much for the Western portion of the country, there is a considerable amount of accuracy to the North/South divide. Here are just a few of the differences which I have been reminded of now that I am back down South again.
The Weather: I thought it was hot in Beijing. I even thought it was humid in Beijing. Let me assure you of this. Once I return to the capital city, I will never, ever, complain about summer heat and humidity in the North again. I take one step out of the door in Wenzhou, and my clothes are instantly sticking to my body. The North may be hot, but if I stay down South any longer, I am afraid my internal organs will melt.
The Money: Wenzhou is certainly an extreme example in this category, but if I got a free baozi for every BMW I saw on the streets here, I would die one incredibly fat man. While there is affluence in the North these days as well, it isn’t nearly as opulent as it is in the South(east).
The Language: I never imagined I would say this, but it is refreshing to be surrounded by the kind of scraggly Putonghua I got used to in Fujian, once again. It’s also pleasant to hear dialects spoken in cities. Even though I can’t understand them, I’ve always appreciated the idea of a region having its own language, that outsiders could not comprehend. This is something you don’t see in Northern cities (but do occasionally hear in rural areas).
The Fashions: Beijing is full of hipsters wearing the latest fashions in everything from the latest out of Italy and France to Goth-punk. But, like most other Northern Cities, it also has an even larger contingent who are happy wearing bland, mono-chromatic clothing, which looks as if it was purchased just a few months after the Cu1tural Revo1ution. The average southerner is more likely to be wearing a more varied blend of semi-current foreign styles, and less formal gear. Take taxi drivers for example. Your average Beijing cabbie will be wearing a white button down shirt, black (or blue) slacks, and black shoes. Down South, you’re much more likely to be driven around by a guy wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and possibly flip-flops.
The Rice: I came to Fujian as a non-believer and left an addict. I remember my first few weeks eating at my university’s cafeteria. All of my students were afraid I would starve to death, because I was only eating meat and vegetables, no rice. It took a while to get used to, but after a month I was eating rice twice a day, every day, and sometimes 3 times if I had porridge for breakfast. If I didn’t get my rice, I was hungry half an hour later, and still am to this day if I eat Chinese food without those tiny grains of goodness. While Northerners thesedays eat rice too, it isn’t nearly as automatic as it is in the South. The folks up North will happily substitute noodles, dumplings or mantou (Chinese steamed bread) instead of rice as the staple food. Down South, this doesn’t fly so well. Eating a meal (吃饭) means eating rice, both literally and practically.
There are countless other South/North differences, and I am sure a Chinese would have an even deeper perspective on the matter than myself. In addition to the quantifiable ones I have listed above, the South just has a different vibe from the North. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what it is, but I am sure anybody who has spent time in both regions of China would feel the same way. The best analogy I can think of would be comparing New York and San Francisco, both excellent cities in their own right. It would be easy to write out a laundry list of differences between the two, but beyond that, there is still a different vibe, a different feeling you get walking down the street, that is difficult to put into words.
As for me, I will be leaving Wenzhou soon to spend a week back in Fuzhou, and then back up North to Beijing just in time for the Olympics. Until then, I will most likely be sweating like a panda, feeling financially inferior to many of my Chinese acquaintances, and consuming massive quantities of white rice.
07.10.08
To Bag or Not to Bag, That is the Olympic Question
I distinctly remember the first time I ever went shopping China. It was my second day in the country, and my students took me to the “Not Second Market” grocery store located near the university where I was teaching. I had only bought around 7 or 8 items, basic provisions such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet paper, shampoo, and junk food to snack on in my dorm.
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| Across China shoppers are looking for reusable, non-plastic alternatives to carry their groceries. |
As I paid for my groceries, somehow the clerk managed to use four plastic bags to wrap all eight of my items. The toothbrush and toothpaste were in their own bag. The snacks were separated into two bags. The 24-pack of toilet paper, which was already in plastic, was wrapped in another plastic bag. I began to notice a pattern. The plastic bag did not serve any necessary purpose. Groceries were to be wrapped in plastic, and that was the way things were done. I even recall several instances where I had bought individual items such as a can of soda or a pack of AA batteries, and they had been wrapped as well.
It isn’t hard to see how in a country with a population in excess 1.3 billion that this situation could easily create a global environmental hazard. And it did. Just across from my dormitory was a large dumpster where residents would dispose of their garbage. Every evening at 10 o’clock, the maintenance men would set the contents of the dumpster ablaze, invariably including hundreds of bags from the Not Second Market. Around 10:10 every night, the warm aroma of burning plastic would creep its way up to my fourth floor apartment en route to the stratosphere. This practice was common across China, especially in rural areas.
With China preparing for a “Green Olympics” clearly something needed to be done to curb the massive waste of plastic making its way into the atmosphere. Fortunately, action has been taken. Below is a sign posted in front of the shopping center near my Beijing apartment. Notices like these have been popping up all around China over the past month.
It reads:
Protecting the Environment Begins with Me
According to the country’s regulations, from June 1, 2008 onward, Beijing Hualian Market will no longer be able to provide free plastic bags. The (new) fee structure is shown below:
| small bags | 0.10 RMB | 4 kg |
| medium bags | 0.15 RMB | 6 kg |
| large bags | .20 RMB | 8 kg |
| extra large bags | .30 RMB | 10 kg |
| environmentally safe bags | 4.9 RMB | 15 kg |
| 100% cotton bags | 9 RMB | 15 kg |
Thanks to our customers for your support and cooperation. Please use the environmentally safe bags. Thanks for your support.
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Contrary to several reports, China has not banned plastic bags. Rather, they have banned the practice of giving them away free of charge. And from my observations around Beijing (and from reports across China) the new regulation is being strictly enforced. The beauty of the new regulation is that it is not an actual moratorium on plastic wrapping, which would be too radical for just about any society, let alone China. Instead, it shifts the decision of whether or not to use plastic on to the shopper. Along with carefully worded slogans (i.e. Protecting the Environment Begins with Me) the subtle message is that individuals have a responsibility to protect the environment. In reality, the fees for plastic bags are not expensive, even by Chinese standards. But with the decision to bag or not to bag now resting on the consumer, along with pro-environmental propaqanda, more and more Chinese are forgoing on the plastic, opting instead to either use reusable bags or carry their items by hand. The real question however, will be whether or not the policy will continue to be strictly enforced after the Olympics have passed.
01.16.08
Do You QQ?
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Do you have QQ? Chances are if you live in the People’s Republic of China, you have heard this sentence multiple times…in the past week. If you have never been to China, you probably have no idea what I am talking about. QQ is one of the world’s most widely used Internet chat clients, yet most people outside of China have never even heard of it.
QQ was originally known as OICQ, presumably as a ploy on ICQ. Since the name change, the letters “QQ” (a loose transliteration of 酷酷, a slang Chinese word which roughly means “cool”) have been popping up all over Chinese pop culture. Chery, a Chinese auto manufacturer now makes a low-end car called the QQ, and QQ奶茶 (QQ milk tea) has been popping up on the menus of Chinese restaurants and kiosks. Even more ubiquitous than the initials, may be the QQ penguin, who seems to appear on billboards, TV advertisements, and public events all over China.
The QQ software itself is garbage. It’s buggy, unstable, and contains a plethora of annoying flashy advertisements and bonus features which crowd the interface. From time to time, when logging in to QQ, users are greeted with a message that the server is overloaded and that they will have to login again later. To make matters even more complicated, QQ is not written with Unicode. This means that to get the Chinese version of QQ running on an English version of Windows, you have to switch the default non-Unicode program language on your computer to Chinese. (Originally I tried installing the English version, but removed it when I found it would not let me type Chinese characters, thus defeating the point of using QQ in the first place). Additionally, I have also heard numerous reports of spy ware and viruses being contracted through QQ. Yet QQ offers one distinct advantage over any other chat client, and that is everybody (I mean EVERYBODY) under the age of 30 in Mainland China has an account (if not 3). Walk into any Internet café in China, and you will likely notice that cute little penguin in the corner of the majority of the patrons’ desktops.
Because of its widespread usage in China, QQ is an integral tool for developing and maintaining a Chinese contact base. While older and more business savvy Chinese professionals are coming to prefer more “mature” chat clients such as MSN or Skype, it is still not uncommon for them to maintain QQ accounts as well, if not only for that same reason that everybody else in China seems to have one. My own personal QQ buddy list is chalked full of former students, friends, business contacts, and random folks I have met in crowded hard-seat cross-country trains, many of whom without QQ I would have lost contact with. Another advantage of QQ is that it is an excellent tool for obtaining and/or maintaining Chinese literacy. For me, I try to spend at least 15 minutes of my day on QQ, if nothing more than just for a quick Chinese character refreshment.
So it came to my dismay, but not to my surprise, that when I got my new computer I found the old version of QQ which I had been using (QQ 2006 Beta2) was not compatible with Windows Vista. I promptly went to qq.com and downloaded the new version (QQ 2007 II) which according to the website supports vista. I ran the install file, which installed halfway, then gave me an error message telling me the program I was running was not compatible with Windows Vista. Turns out, the new version of QQ is only compatible with the Chinese version of Windows Vista. I guess I should have seen that one coming.
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Update: I finally got QQ to work with Vista, but it wasn’t without the token roadblocks. I got the new English version to install properly, but as soon as I sent my first message I received an error which read “Your flash player version is too low, in order to display normally. Please click here to download the latest version.” Only when I clicked “here” it was a broken link. I updated my flash player manually, and it seems to be working properly…for now.
10.24.07
Impressions of America from Chinese Eyes
This past week I had the pleasure of acting as interpreter and cultural facilitator for a delegation of Chinese businessmen visiting Kansas City. For several of them, it was their first trip to the US, and for all of them it was their first time in Kansas City. For me it was a chance to begin reciprocating the Chinese people for all of the help and assistance I received from them during my time in the Middle Kingdom. Here are some memorable quotes from this week as my Chinese associates described their impressions of Kansas City, and the US as a whole.
When asking how their flight was…
“American airport security is such a pain. We had to wait in line for half an hour, and it seemed like they searched everything. In China, it’s much easier.”
While driving through a suburban office park…
“Nobody is on the streets. The street life here is so boring.”
Also while driving through a suburban office park…
“There are so many trees, and the sky is so clear. It is so beautiful.”
While walking in the front door of the company…
“Did you see that sign on the door which had a gun with a circle and a line through it? You would never see anything like that in China.”
At the steak house…
“These steaks are quite different from the ones we have in China. They aren’t served on a flaming skillet and there’s no egg.”
While discussing China with Americans who had never been…
“The impressions Americans get from reading about China are completely different from the impressions they would get from visiting China in person.”
At a strip center…
“All of these little shops look so unique. In China, the small shops are all the same, and none of them have colorful signs like the ones here.”
While shopping for men’s clothes…
“Man…these are expensive!”
Heard throughout the week…
“Americans are so fat. Everywhere there are fat people. Why are Americans so fat? Is it the food?”
(heard on several occasions, often with “fat” gestures made by arms)
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