More on Chinese people

The good news is that I know enough Chinese now to be scammed in Chinese. But it's just not quite the same as back home, they just don't put the same effort into it.

I was approached by somebody yesterday claiming to come from Anhui, which is kind of far away from here. He showed my his drivers' license - they always do stuff like that, I don't know what that was supposed to prove - but I guess I had been thinking I could have looked to see if his story backed up. In any case, he said he needed to get to Hangzhou, so could I "lend" him 100 quai. He didn't think I'd ever been to Hanghzou; I told him it takes 20 quai to get to Hangzhou. Then he was like, he needs to eat dinner (another 5 quai) and all that. I gave him pocket change out of habit, though really he gets some points deducted for poor form...

Anyway, besides the obvious do-badders, as I've been getting to know more Chinese people I've been getting more accustomed to their sometimes Borat-level sensibilities on things. Like I was sitting at a visa office for foreigners with a girl from Nova, and we noticed some people practicing the Chinese tones. She made a comment about Americans learning Chinese, and I looked around the corner and saw that they were Asians, not Americans. As they walked past, she confirmed they were Japanese, and noted, out of the blue, "I hate Japanese people." I'm not quite sure what to say when people do that...

(As an aside, I'm still convinced Japan could brainwash the entire country with its little Doraemon and Monokuro boo cartoons that all the schoolkids here adore, if it really put its mind to it.)

Anyway, besides the Japanese issue, even relatively intelligent people just don't have any sense of personal values. I was with Julie, who I know from back in Haining, and she asked me if I had heard of the brand of her jeans, which was "Only." I told her I hadn't heard of that brand, so she told be she wouldn't buy it again. I asked her if they were good jeans, and she said they were, and I asked how much she paid for them, and she said, two, maybe three hundred. After all my times showing my friends Chinese friends the little doo-dads I had bought at the tourist market, and having them say "you paid how much for that?" this was my turn. I told her she could buy perfectly good pants at the Carrefour in Hangzhou for sixty. She told me, "Oh, yes, I didn't really pay much attention to that, I just found these and they fit pretty well, so I bought them." She was only concerned about whether it was an American brand name, didn't care about anything else.

But if you go a little bit deeper there does seem to be some nascent sense of political belief. We were talking about a mutual (American) friend who is thinking about joining the Air Force, and she said she hoped he didn't join any army. I told her the Air Force isn't really that dangerous, but she still instisted that he still shouldn't join, because armies "don't always make good decisions." So I guess we're somewhere inbetween there and individual rights...

...and back

I finally had to leave the Africans - though HK is supposed to be pretty safe, I didn't like leaving all my stuff there out of my sight. I ended up moving to the Garden Hostel (mentioned above,) which is actually a Kung-fu hostel, meaning that there was a school based there and there was all sorts of funny looking equipment lying around. They had lockers for my stuff, but it wasn't as nice. If I had stayed there again, I would have simply used their lockers (which weren't assigned and didn't come with locks) and moved back upstairs again.

In any case, having gotten my passport back without a hitch, it was time to move on to Shenzhen, back in China. I took the train - you can basically take the subway all the way there - and I ended up staying in a nice hostel near an art gallery, where I met a British guy who had also stayed in the Garden Hostel the night before. I guess the backpacker community is pretty small...

So my intention was to bring an African back with me; alas, I was unsuccessful. I met this Ugandan woman at the first hostel in Hong Kong who was looking for teaching work, and I mentioned there was an English First language school in Yuyao near me. I went over there yesterday to see if they would hire an African - I've met English teachers with worse English than her - but they told me that all positions were currently filled, which I knew was rubbish. They're always hiring good foreign teachers when they can find them. I ended up at the manager's office in what almost felt like a job interview, I think she was walking a fine line between all the African positions being filled and wanting some work for me. For the moment I'm mostly interested in meeting their foreign teachers, though I may want to make some extra money later. The lady said that there's a Halloween party coming up, which I expressed some interest in - she said she may find some sort of role for me. I need to figure out what I can use for a costume. And this time it won't be Osama again.

A short trip to Africa

So I made it to Hong Kong for my visa run, which even seems to be working so far, so I will pick my passport up on Friday. This was after a ride on the taxi, train, bus, plane, bus, bus, and a taxi, totalling about 14 hours. The whole thing almost never happened because, as it turns out, there are no taxis on National Day. I ended up having to run back to the security station at the school, ask them to call me a taxi - they weren't able to get through - and finally hook me up with a ride with someone who happened to have their car near the school - but then they only wanted to take me halfway, so then once downtown I had to keep searching for a taxi. I only made it to the station about five minutes before the train left.

Several hours and several miracles later, I arrived at my hostel. Of course, after booking it (the cheapest one I could find on the internet) I read what wikitravel had to say:

Chung King Mansions and Mirador Mansions on Nathan Road is home to some budget hotels and many budget hostels. Among those that have a long history are Travellers Hostel, Block A, 16 Fl in Chungking and Garden Hostel, 2Fl, Mirador Mansions. These, and others like them, have been popular with backpackers for decades; bookings are generally not needed, nor usually honoured! Instead, budget travellers are advised to start at the top of a popular building such as Mirador Mansions and work their way down until they find a hostel that suits them.

When I arrived there at 9:30 that night, I found out that my room had already been given away - they apparently thought I was getting there at 11 AM - so I did as the travel guide advised me and started looking around for vacancies. Mirador "Mansion" is a very strange place - I've never really been anyplace like it. It's a 16 story building, with a big courtyard in the middle where you can look all the way down. (Unfortunately, as soon as I tried to take a picture my camera decided that it had no batteries, and I forgot to bring the charger, so there will be no illustrations.) It kind of has the feel of an apartment building, I think there are some apartments, but it's really practically a city upon itself - right now I'm sitting in an internet lab on the 10th floor, I also saw some places that look like clothing factories, also some Indian clothing stores...

Anyway, another thing the guidebook warned about is hostels catering to illegal African workers...and there are a lot of Africans around here, though I think they more often fall into the category of entreprenuers than "workers." (Can't comment on their visa status.) These two big Kenyan ladies I shared a cab with said they were in the export business, and they travelled to Guangzhou to buy goods and ship them back to Africa. This was their third trip. So as I was looking for a hostel, I came upon one of these run by Africans, and they had a room available, so I ended up staying with them last night - and, again tonight, because I was in the visa office at 11 AM, which is apparently the time for hostel shopping. (Everything is stretched to capacity now for the holidays.) It's a little bit below international standards (I'm a bit worried about my stuff just sitting there in my room) but the people seem friendly enough.

This entire area is one of the more international places I've been. Stepping out the door, there is a store with a big South African flag, Indian, Korean, regional Chinese restaurants, financial services for residents of various south Asian countries...and of course Western fare. I spent the first hour or so, having spent the last three months in the Chinese boondocks, wandering around with my jaw on the floor. Almost everyone here speaks English, which is good because I can't understand the Chinese speaking or writing (though that takes a little bit of adjustment now to remember how to do that.)

Tommorow I will go shopping for things like cereal and dental floss.

Raining cats and dogs

Tuesday and Wednesday were apparently the biggest typhoon to hit Shanghai in ten years - nobody tells me about these things. Anyway, it mostly rained a lot...it was kind of a pain to get around, because nobody designs things with water drainage in mind. The local stream/garbage dump came very close to spilling its banks.

Normally this bridge is several feet above the water.

This one got totally submerged...

The Women's World Cup was apparently being held around here, and some of the games had to be postponed. One of the games in Hangzhou was pushed back to Thursday, only 24 hours before I found myself in Hangzhou. With much better planning, I could have watched it myself (I found out today that some people had some extra tickets.)

On another note, I learned something else new today. I had heard stories about these Muslim noodle shops that make their noodles out of dough. They start with a loaf, and then elongate it and fold it over itself several times, until their loaf is a long noodle. Then they give you this one noodle in the form of a noodle soup. Today I finally got a chance to try one. It's called lamian, or literally, "pull noodle," though (I learned) better known in its Japanese form, ramen. FTR, it's much better in person.

China and authoritarianism

The other day I wore my "Taxation Without Representation" shirt to class, and one of the Chinese English teachers asked me what it meant - and I was totally at a loss. Megan is actually my best teacher, and she speaks pretty good English. She understood the "taxation" part - but how the hell do you explain "representation" to a Chinese person? There's just nothing in Chinese history to tie it into. It's easy enough to explain that DC has the same special status as, say, Hong Kong, but just I couldn't get her to understand why people think that's bad.

On a related subject, I got to the end of my giant Chinese History book, (Fairbank and Goldman China: A New History) and the conclusions section had an interesting note on the lack of democracy in Chinese history. The author argues that the gratuitous violence of the Cultural Revolution reflects a paranoia that has been present for a long time in Chinese history:

Conspiracy was a continual part of Imperial Confucianism because the ruler's legitimacy was assured only when his proper conduct produced harmony between ruler and ruled. Dissent was disharmonious, and so a dissenter feigned loyalty to protect himself. Sensing this deceit, a ruler easily became suspicious if not actually paranoid. The system had little space for the open expression of opposition because policy was part of the ruler's moral conduct and so of his legitimacy. Opposition must therefore be secret. It might animate a secret society. It implicitly aimed at power. There could be no loyal opposition. In this light, for example, the pro-democacy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square on XXXX X, XXXX, since they wanted changes, seemed to the CCP elders to be their enemies. Those who expect conspiracy can always find it. (bolding mine)

I'm not sure it's quite so easy to write Maoism off as just another incarnation of Confucism though. Ever since Mao, with his internationalist way of thinking, China (with some help from India) has been the loyal opposition. In this model, their censorship and political repression actually has more of an overseas than a domestic audience in mind.

Also, thinking in terms of the global system helps answer my earlier question, about how you explain the concept of 'representation' to a Chinese person. The Chinese government 'represents' the Chinese people on the international stage, where many different forces are competing for attention, in order to get the most 'goodies' (like the Olympics.) There is even some loyalty involved here, as shown by China's recent move to dump Zimbabwe. Ever since the Sino-Soviet split really, they've made it clear that they can still antagonize the US even while maintaining some semblance of standards of their own. It is this role which has allowed them to ascend to global power status.

...I haven't yet tried explaining this concept to any actual Chinese people.

Signing on from Yuyao

...and with a new look to boot. (Now that I have pictures working, I will also get an actual picture of myself for my profile too. Then I will also need to work on getting this blog visible inside China, which will involve not quite hacking, but some technical capability, and that will be a whole new project.) Anyway, here is the entrance to the school where I work, all schools from primary on up are basically set up like college campuses.Here is my house

Believe it or not, here is the view out my back windowliterally steps from where I live, with a just broken-glass fence in between (poking in the bottom right of the photo). Apparently just a few years back this whole area looked like this (my school is just seven years old but) now the city is putting a whole lot of investment money into the area. Just a ten minute walk from school is UBC Coffee,

where they always greet you with a friendly "good morning," no matter what time of day. I wondered if I should correct them, but I finally decided they would probably take it the wrong way. Chances are whoever came up with this policy wouldn't even be the person I'd be talking to. I asked the waiter with the best English if she knew what that meant, and she said yes. Chances are that's actually a chainwide policy, since I first tried UBC in Hangzhou, and according to the back of their napkins they're in several other provinces as well.

My other haunts - an internet cafe the next block over, where I'm at now, which is a dirty place. Half the keys in most of the keyboards stick when you push them, and I think I've gotten myself addicted to nicotene from all the second hand smoke. A couple of restaurants know me well...one shop owner always says hi, even though I've never bought more than a bottle of water there. The first time I saw him he got really excited and asked where I was from, and he even managed to spit out the names of a few American cities. He doesn't speak more than a word ("hello") of English though, which limits our conversational options. Oh and these girls at a knick-knack shop downtown were amused when my brain shut down and I started saying the wrong things in Chinese...

Anyway, all things considered, I think I did fairly well on my assignment. I like the area, and the school doesn't even make me teach all of the hours that are in my contract. Some people I heard either complain a lot or didn't get quite so lucky.

Pictures are here

Okay, we'll start from the beginning...the streets of Shanghai ...where you could get some, shall we say, designer goods.





Here's Charlie...





Zenia posing with some random Asian tourist

The temple in Haining

Students from my first school

The view from the hotel at my second assignment (BTW, all these pictures can expand when you click on them)

Julie, our fearless assistant

And, finally, the Great Wall. Our tour bus is the one with the yellow and blue swirl.

Here's me

We were going to go up this other side, but from the ground you can't see that the side we went up is about 2-3 times taller.

Beijing in the distance

Scott, Matt, and Kent. You see them? Try zooming in a little closer. I think Scott's even waving at the camera.