Craft's Journal

Things I won't miss about China: Attention

2009-07-01T13:48:00.002-04:00

It's been one year since I left Mainland China. Despite the negative title, I actually enjoyed my time there (sort of), and I do generally like the Chinese people. I just think it's more fun to write my post in this way, though I do feel kind of bad because Western media is incredibly unfair and biased when it comes to China. I've included a (rather weak) counterpoint so you won't get depressed and hate on China.

The topic: one of the main reasons I wanted to leave the "Middle Kingdom": Extra Attention

That may sound a little odd to you extroverts (supposedly the majority of Americans), but I'll explain what this attention entails and why, for me, it's mostly a bad thing that makes me want to buy automatic weapons.

First, I'll tell you in more detail how I feel about attention. Getting attention for an accomplishment is just fine. I like it. When I do a good job at work or come up with a good idea, please let me know; I'll appreciate it. Unwarranted attention is something else entirely. In the U.S., I don't really get much of that, which is great, but in China a lot of attention would be directed at me for being a U.S. citizen, a native speaker of English, and white (more specifically, non-Asian). Needless to say, these are not among my proudest accomplishments as the reason for each has to do with where my parents happened to be living when I popped out. I tried not to broadcast that I was from the U.S., but any Chinese can at least tell that I'm Western just by looking, and then make a lot of immediate judgments based on that.

It's understandable: the population of China is ninety-something percent Han Chinese, and of the other less-than-ten percent, many are virtually indistinguishable from Han Chinese in both appearance and culture (Manchu) or at the very least look very much like Han Chinese. In that kind of environment, how can you not make judgments based on race when seeing someone who looks different? All the same, I didn't like it. I often found myself wishing people would just not notice me.

But it was not to be. The staring persisted. Some say the staring is not so bad in the city and that it's much worse in the countryside. That's true, but it still happens in the city. A lot.

We've heard about what gracious hosts the Chinese were during the Olympics, but even in very modern Beijing, which I have been to several times, foreigners are bound to get stared at occasionally. I've heard defenses for this from foreigners and Chinese alike: "They are just curious. No harm is meant." That may well be true, but often those who stare appear incredulous. This is especially the case for senior citizens, who will often look a foreigner up and down very slowly. Young people who stare are different. They'll tend to have what appears to be a look of derision on their face if they stare, and if any of their buddies are around, there may be some whispering followed by rude laughter.

Towards the end of my time in China, I rarely went out, not just because Tianjin is a boring city, but because I wanted to escape all the laughs, stares, hellos, and snide comments. No doubt this sounds oversensitive or even paranoid to some, but it's all very real. This is pressure that I'd feel every day, and I know I wasn't alone because other expats I knew expressed similar angst. Some were perfectly able to ignore or even bask in all the extra attention, but I was not. And due to aforementioned racial homogeneity, there's little chance that I'd totally "fit in" in China anytime soon. This is not so much an attack on China or the Chinese as it is just explaining one reason why, in the end, China wasn't for me.

Counterpoint: Privilege
All the extra attention does mean that foreigners can get away with not doing much work. For example, foreigners make much higher salaries than locals simply because they are foreign. At one of the schools I worked at, I made 3,600 RMB per month plus housing and utilities for working about 10 hours a week. Not only that, but no one really cared about the job I did, and there was next to no oversight. Many Chinese teachers working full-time made around 2000 RMB per month (maybe less) and probably a few benefits that don't add up to much. Not a bad deal for me, right? But get this: my salary was considered pretty low for a foreigner. I'm sure my replacement makes even more (and probably does a better job, as well). I felt pretty bad about the situation, but some would argue that it's justified because that's what it takes to lure Westerners away from their cozy homes to teach at Chinese schools.

Escape from Tianjin

2008-05-19T09:21:00.001-04:00

Well, Guangzhou is certainly better than Tianjin. I've been here for three days now, and I already wish I could spend my last month in China here rather than in Tianjin. The people are nicer; the weather is nicer; the food is nicer; it's just a nicer place. If anyone reading this wants to travel to China someday, I'd definitely recommend Guangzhou over Beijing. Not that Beijing is awful. Guangzhou just has a better feel to it. That's my first impression, anyway. I've got a few more days here, so we'll see if that changes.

Tomorrow, Liang Bin will have her visa interview at the consulate. Hopefully it will go well.

I'm OK

2008-05-13T00:40:00.001-04:00

Yes, there was a big earthquake in China yesterday, but it was pretty far from Tianjin, so I'm fine. I've already received a few phone calls and IM messages from people who probably figured I must be dead. Sorry to disappoint you all. Supposedly there was a slight rumble here, but I was napping at the time.

Huang Xiaoming's Masterpiece

2008-04-14T07:51:00.001-04:00

I simply must share this with you all. One of my coworkers recently asked me if I knew Huang Xiaoming, the sort-of-famous Chinese singer. I did know him and even saw him perform live at a shopping center in Tianjin a few months ago... outside in the freezing cold... to a crowd of maybe 100. I thought his music sounded like boring Chinese pop trash.

"But he has a new song," my coworker told me, "about the Olympics. With the song he has ruined the image of the Olympics." Sounds interesting, right? The song shares its name with the Olympic slogan "One World, One Dream." I personally wouldn't say it ruins anything. In fact, I love it. I have watched it 4 or 5 times now. The mangled English, Huang's baffling stage confidence, the bizarre falsetto in the chorus, I love all of it.

Without further ado, I present to you Huang Xiaoming's masterpiece, "One World, One Dream" courtesy of Youku, the Chinese Youtube clone.

[update]
Youtube version added in case Youku is slow and sucky for you Americans.

A Little Prejudice to Brighten Your Day

2008-02-21T07:17:00.001-05:00

Some Chinese like to think they are the least racist people on earth, and who knows, maybe they are. Recently, I collected some amusing quotes that I've heard from Chinese on the topic. A lot of it is just due to ignorance and hard to get too angry about, and not every Chinese shares all of these ideas.

The most disliked group in Tianjin (and all of China) is probably the Japanese:
"I hate the Japanese. They are a cruel people."

"Japanese people are all perverted."

I've heard variations on the above two quotes many, many times.

There are a lot of ethnic Koreans in Tianjin:
"We have 56 groups here in China, all living together, and there is no racism."
"No racism? What about the Japanese? Do you like them?"
"I like the Japanese. What about you?"
"Sure, we are all humans."
"Hmm, yeah, that's true. We are all humans... Oh, I don't like Koreans, though."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I just don't like them."

A common sentiment here. It generally falls just short of "hate." There may be some historical reason for this dislike, but nobody ever mentions it. It's Probably just because there are a lot of Koreans around. Some people will just dislike anything different that they don't quite understand. I got the feeling that if the guy who said this were to make a Korean friend or two, his minds could probably be changed easily.

"My friend is an Italian and her boyfriend is Korean."
"Oh my god! A Korean?"
"Yeah, so what?"
"But I think it's well known that Korean men are ugly."
"I've seen his picture. He looks fine."
"Well, maybe he had some work done."

"I like Japanese girls."
"Why?"
"Good at sex."
"What about Korean girls?"
"Korean? No, no no."
"Why not?"
"So ugly!" Smooshes his face with his hand to indicate that they have flat faces.

Because Chinese are so much more beautiful. Never mind that Chinese themselves can't even tell them apart from Chinese much of the time.

Some of the West's old prejudices have been exported through movies and TV:
"Why do black people commit all the crime in America?"

I hear this one fairly often from young people. Also, occasionally I hear things about how black people are "scary."

Xinjiang is a province in the northwest. The people look and are culturally quite different from Chinese:
"Be careful around Xinjiang people, most of them are thieves."

This may be true for all I know, but I've never personally had anything stolen by a Xinjiang person.

I'm certain there are many more examples that I've simply forgotten. Things about Germans being overly meticulous, arabs being terrorists, Japanese being every bad word in the dictionary, etc. I generally don't get to hear the dirt on Westerners because I am a Westerner. What a shame...

An End to the Cacophonous, Obnoxious Festivities

2008-02-13T11:22:00.001-05:00

Finally, the fireworks which have been drumming at my ears for over a week have subsided. The Chinese population has totally blown their festival load and we can all move on. Drunk Chinese have stopped shouting "Happy new year!" to me and resumed with whispering "Look, a whitey cracker," to their pals.

I managed to escape with just a visit to milady's parent's home. During that time, her father managed to open up my Wii and plug it directly into the wall despite the voltage difference, frying the adapter. This happened when I went out of the house for an hour or so. "You didn't pack the voltage adapter together with the Wii," he complained. Right, it's my fault. I never told him he could open it up and set it up, but I'm younger than him, so everything is my fault. Luckily, he's an electrical engineer or something so he was able to fix it.

"If you had come back earlier, I wouldn't have had to waste all this time fixing this adapter."

End of story.

bad smell

2008-01-03T08:58:00.001-05:00

A Chinese friend (female) told me that one time she was in the bathroom, and the woman in the stall next to her pinched a really foul smelling loaf. It was so bad that my friend could barely stand it, and she ended up throwing up.

Radio Interview

2007-12-08T04:18:00.001-05:00

I was right. Most of the questions they asked were pretty boring. First, it was all stuff about the magazine and then later on they asked about my life in Tianjin. I can speak Chinese OK, but it's really hard to speak well when nervous.

I'm pretty sure I didn't give the hosts the kind of answers they wanted to hear. Radio shows here are just supposed to be propaganda, and you aren't really allowed to say anything negative about anything, which I didn't, it's just that I also didn't say anything was good. Basically, I gave candid answers to their questions, and that's not what they are used to. Translated example:

Female Host: Do you have a lot of friends in Tianjin?
me: No. Most people don't want to be my friend. Most people just see that I'm white and think, "Oh, he definitely knows English." So they say, "Oh, can I practice English with you?"
Female host: Ah, they can practice spoken English. [laughs]
me: They don't really want to be my friend.
Male host: [suddenly changes to English] They don't want to really know something about it [sic - I think he meant "you"], they want to practice English.
me: [English] They don't care about me, just my white face.
Male host: Yeah, yeah.
Female host: [back to Chinese] Actually, you really want to find many real friends, right?
me: Huh?
Female host: Make many friends, real friends.
Male host: [English] You want to make some close friends. Maybe... maybe you want to know some close friend who is really care about you. [sic]
me: [English] I don't care. [Chinese] I don't care.
Both hosts: [nervous laughter]

Then they went to break and told me to try to say something positive after we went back on the air. Needless to say, I didn't really. Everything was lukewarm at best, cynical at worst. For those who know me, that's not very strange, but for them, I think it was odd to see a foreigner act like I did. They even said to me that I didn't seem to be like the other foreigners they'd had on before, who were much more excited, optimistic, and extroverted. My coworker, who came with me and was also on the show, said I should have just given them what they wanted and talked about how great Tianjin is. That turned out to be pretty hard for me to do. For some reason, I just couldn't go on and be fake and pretend I love everything. I hate crap like that. Perhaps it's just not in my nature.

My 15 minutes in China

2007-12-07T23:13:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, a radio station in the city (87.8) called the magazine to get an interview with me. I'm going to leave in a little while to go there. It seems that as the foreign editor of an English-language magazine, I'm somewhat high profile. I'm guessing that they'll do their best to make it oppressively boring, so I don't know how obnoxious I'll be able to be. I'll report back a little later.

Hello, jerk

2007-11-27T04:42:00.001-05:00

You may have heard about how some Chinese will shout "hello!" at any white person they see. It pisses some people off; Others have no problem with it and chalk it up to simple curiosity. I think both reactions are correct depending on the situation.

Sometimes, the person saying hello is a poor farmer, a migrant worker, or a little kid, and it really is just said out of curiosity and it's quite friendly. If you say hello back they smile and wave.

Other times, it is a man or teenage male from the city. Their hello is almost always completely insincere. If you respond, they laugh with their buddy or girlfriend and it is very clearly disrespectful.

Gatherings

2007-11-26T01:40:00.001-05:00

I generally don't like going to gatherings with mostly strangers. I feel compelled to talk a lot, and there's always at least one thing that comes out wrong or an odd reaction from someone. Then I'll start to wish I didn't go and feel bad for the rest of the event.

Chinese sugar art

2007-11-11T05:40:00.000-05:00

I wrote an article about this dude for the magazine. He uses melted sugar to draw pictures and make little figures. I'm not going to print the whole article here because it's long and boring. You can find it at jinmagazine.com.cn if you really want to. That site was made by a Chinese guy who knows almost no English, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of mistakes all over the place.

Golden Hans

2007-10-04T09:39:00.000-04:00

Tonight, some friends invited me to Golden Hans, a buffet-style restaurant. I must say, I don’t think the buffet suits China as it seems to bring out some of the worst traits of the people here: competitiveness over trivial things, failure to wait in orderly lines, and hoarding.

What I mean is if a new, tasty-looking dish comes out, people will flock to it and try to push through the crowd of people circling it. Then once they get to it they will create a fat mountain of food on their plate. They probably won’t/can’t eat it all so it’s kind of like a big “insult you” to everyone else who wants some. After several people get to it, the pan is already empty, and those few who waited patiently are left disappointed. Patience ain’t worth a darn here. It’s all about pushing through and grabbing what you want.

China TV

2007-10-04T09:38:00.000-04:00

You may have heard that Japanese TV is super crazy, colorful, and awesome. Well, that’s Japanese TV, and Chinese TV is nothing like it.

Here are the types of programs we get on Chinese TV: boring talk shows, low-budget kung-fu dramas, overacted melodramas, government-controlled news, Idol knockoffs and similar spinoffs, and foreign programs (mainly Korean soap operas) dubbed into Chinese. I’m sure there are other programs that are unique an innovative (finding new ways to bore people), but that covers most types. No game shows with insane hosts that physically harm the contestants. No super-violent animation. None of the stuff associated with crazy Japanese television. Just letting you know.

Oh, one more type of show I see a lot. Movie preview shows that summarize the ENTIRE MOVIE. I guess this is for Chinese to know the whole story before they watch it, just so there are no surprises. The hero dies at the end? Well, I’m not watching that. Or maybe it’s a way for people to catch the pivotal scenes from a movie without wasting 90 long minutes. Maybe there are a lot of people who always wanted to see the Back to the Future trilogy but only have 30 minutes to spare.

There you go, Chinese TV is worse than American TV so stop complaining.

Get Face

2007-10-04T09:37:00.000-04:00

The other day I was at some lame outdoor market where people sit on the ground and sell junk off of blankets. Some dude had a wooden chess set (international chess) on his blanket. He said he’d sell it for 10 RMB. When a Chinese seller tells a white person something is 10 RMB, that means it’s actually worth 5. My girlfriend wanted me to try to get it for 8 RMB.

I told the guy, “I’ll give you 8 RMB.”
“No, it costs 10 RMB.”
“I see.”
Then I put down the chess set and started to walk away. After a few moments, he ran after me, holding the set.
“OK! 8 RMB for the chess set.”

Actually, I don’t care about 2 RMB (equivalent to about 25 cents) and I usually won’t bother bargaining for that amount. A lot of Chinese people probably don’t even really care THAT much about such a small amount of money, but almost every Chinese will bargain for it. The reason (or at least one reason) is “face.”

You’ve probably all heard about how much the Chinese care about “face.” It’s sort of a way to measure people against one another. The seller is trying to get face by cheating me. Poor Chinese man cheats the white guy so he’s better, and he gets face. No one else really cares, but he would feel satisfied. In this case, him getting face means I would lose face. When I offer 8 RMB, he doesn’t want to go for that because although he would certainly still make a profit, he would lose face by being bargained down by a foreigner (we are notorious for not bargaining and being easy marks). When he sees the sale walking away, the reality of the situation kicks in: He has almost no chance to sell this chess set because Chinese rarely play chess, and 8 RMB is actually a generous offer because no Chinese would pay more than 5. Yet he was visibly disappointed when he made the sale. He made money off some secondhand junk, but he lost face so he feels like garbage.

I should have just given him the 10.

(Note: My girlfriend at first thought that this post was exaggerated. After some discussion, she said I might actually be right and the whole face thing is more pervasive than even she realized. It’s possible that she just didn’t want to talk about it anymore.)

New job

2007-10-04T09:36:00.000-04:00

I sort of fell into a new job a couple of weeks ago. I had heard from someone that a local magazine was looking for an English-speaking editor. I wrote them an email to ask if they were still looking and they were. They asked me to come to an interview the next day. So I rode my bike there this morning, and after a quick chat, the president of the company gave me the job.

I have no editing experience. The only thing I’ve done that sort of relates is the technical writing program at Umass. So how is this possible? It’s not that I’m extremely charming, it’s just that there’s just no competition for the job. There are a lot of foreigners in Tianjin, but most of them are businessmen (already busy), students (probably even less qualified than me and likely to leave after one or two semesters), or missionaries (don’t want to work on something unrelated to Jesus). It turns out that the person who told me about the job heard about the vacancy in April. So really, it seems not many people here were willing to take on the job, and certainly not for a local salary.

Seems like it could be turn into good job experience, right? And maybe I won’t need to teach anymore while I’m here. Right now, I’ll just be trying out the job for 3 months. It’s fewer hours and lower pay during that time. After that, if they like me I can become full time if I want to.

Americans good

2007-09-14T12:01:00.000-04:00

Today some lady was trying to get her bike out from behind a bunch of other bikes. I helped out by moving an electric bicycle that was causing her some trouble. An old man that was out for a stroll witnessed the act of kindness and asked me where I was from.
"America," I told him.
"Very good," he said and gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. Then he walked over to a work site and watched the laborers tear stuff apart for several minutes.

Blog time

2007-08-01T01:56:00.000-04:00

I didn't post much in the last year because I had two jobs (three at one point) and one of them kept me pretty busy. Now I'm on vacation in USA, and when I go back to PRC I'll only have one job. That means more time which will hopefully create more suitable conditions for writing.

Anyway, I'm happy about the Garnett trade which should make the Celtics a top team again. Too bad I won't be able to see a game at the Garden this year. I miss not being able to watch the games these past two seasons, but it probably would have just depressed me.

A-hole

2007-06-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

I saw some middle-aged, Chinese dude try to kick some birds that were perched on the curb as he rode by on his bicycle. There are a-holes everywhere.

Formidable leader

2006-10-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

Lots of people who live on the first floor of an apartment building like to build themselves these little "balconies" where they can store some stuff and hang their clothes to dry (presumably hanging them outside results in no clothes). I guess the landlords give them permission or just don't care because they are pretty widespread, or at least they were... It seems someone in the local government, probably the new disctrict head who is on a mission to recklessly clean up the area, decided that these balconies were ugly and ordered them all smashed to pieces. The resulting piles of brick are certainly much more attractive. But seriously, I'm sure those are to be cleaned up at some point which will leave a beautiful spotless piece of unused ground for someone's puppy to crap on.

This is the second time something like this has happened in my district that I know of. Nearby here, there used to be a group of food stands, a few of which I frequented. They were mostly very cheap and convenient. It seems some people complained about the noise their customers generated, and those complaints eventually reached the aforementioned new district head who decided this was the perfect opportunity to show how 利害 (li4 hai4 (translation: formidable)) he is. A group of uniformed government officers were sent in with a big truck. They offered no explanation to anyone, not a single word, and simply began tossing all things food stand related impetuously into their truck and smashing up the parts that were too big or fixed to something so that they could then be tossed in. No one gets their stuff back, not even the unsmashed stuff.

Mission accomplished, district head. There are no more unsightly balconies or noisy food stands, and everyone knows you are powerful. You might for a moment think it's a bad thing that so many people resent you now, but they are just jealous of your 利害(li4 hai4)-ness. And don't forget, you aren't even elected, so who cares! Anyway, you have more important things to do than be respectful to the people living in your district. I guess there's no private property here so its all your personal, life-sized Simcity, except it's not a simulation! The original Simcity, though, because in Simcity 2000 the citizens complained via newspaper and obviously the newspapers here wouldn't dare oppose you, your highness. What's that? Yes, lord, of course I would take a bullet for you. And afterwards I would tell everyone that you actually took the bullet in the heart and recovered in a matter of hours so that you don't lose face and instead have your 利害-ness reaffirmed.

Love,
Craft

RE: Wikipedia blocking

2006-09-12T02:41:00.000-04:00

It seems Wikipedia will not be next. A brief look on Mr. internet yielded an article from the Guardian. It seems Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder, continues to refuse to play by the Chinese government's rules. He even calls out Google and Yahoo! for caving in. Great. I applaud that, but I guess I won't be seeing Wikipedia without the aid of a proxy server anytime soon.

The article mentions the Tiananmen Square massacre as an example of an article that the government does not like. I remember after I showed a friend how to get around the filter, that was the first thing he looked up. He said, "I finally know all the details." He told me he felt like he had been living in an "information cage" his whole life.

Actually, a couple of Chinese people have asked me if I knew how to get around the internet filter. Lucky for them, it's surprisingly easy thanks to web proxies. I don't need to tell them how to connect to a proxy server in internet options because it's as simple as sending a link to Anonymouse or Proxify. The only problem is that proxies are often pretty slow. Take what you can get.

Blogspot Returns

2006-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00

When I got back here, there was a pleasant surprise waiting for me. Some higher up must have decided that blogspot is no longer a threat because I can now access it without the use of a proxy server. What arrogance in the government, no free speech, Beijing, internet, etc.
Anyway, I hope wikipedia is next.

Heading back

2006-08-16T00:45:00.000-04:00

I'll be on a plane to Beijing in a week. The plane trip should be about 13.5 hours. I hate riding the plane. I have never been on a plane for less than 13.5 hours straight. There was nothing to post during my vacation.
Excape for this: 痛

Watch "Craft's Journey"

2006-04-18T10:24:00.000-04:00

Craft's Journey, finally available to the public. Click here to watch it. No longer dependent on Matt Cheung's computer being on!
Thanks to OurMedia.org for their free media hosting. Check them out!

Maybe.

2006-04-02T12:42:00.000-04:00

I don't have any Chinese classes this week (but I still have to teach English) so maybe I will find the energy to post something soon. You can bet money on it being fascinating, but you might lose. Well, you'll probably lose.

It's been warm lately which means there have been more people outside saying "hello" to me for no reason.

New wave

2006-02-26T10:29:00.000-05:00

The new students are here and many of them are very enthusiastic and curious. I expect that will last for another week or two. After one class a couple of female students came up to me to talk and I saw that their hands were nervously shaking. Pretty amusing.

Many Chinese people like to take pictures of themselves standing in front of things. I really hate that and try my best to not participate. Occasionally I am forced.

Beijing Basketball

2006-02-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I played basketball in the big city at this court where the best players go. According to a friend's cousin's boyfriend, anyway. I was not impressed with the players there, though. Many better than me, for sure, but not too far from what I saw playing at Umass.

So, I was playing there and covering this kid pretty closely; giving him a hard time, like you're supposed to, and this jackass stops his dribble and quickly brings the ball up and right across my face... really effin' hard. My teeth felt all sore and my lip was bleeding. I walked off the court and spit out some blood all while constantly reassuring that kid that everything was OK.

"没事, it's nothing."

A pair of Beijing girls who were with that guy were watching from off the court and giggling about it. What the hell was wrong with those sluts? It did hurt a fair amount, and if in a similar situation, those little whores would probably be crying for their well-dressed, in-the-closet boyfriend to splatter their brains all over some wall just to stop the pain and embarrassment. I gave them a little Dikembe Mutombo finger wag and looked really angry. I think for a moment they thought I might attack them. Crazy foreigners are always flipping out and smashing stuff! Actually, I definitely should have attacked them. Given a nice karate chop to the throat (karate is Japanese; the Chinese hate Japan! Double chop!). It's China so if a man beats the hell out of a girl then no one cares. The police will just blame the girl for being "too stupid" and then they'll rough her up a bit, too and then drive her out to the countryside to be eaten by werewolves.

Chinese Milk

2006-02-06T04:07:00.000-05:00

The milk in China tastes just awful. Other foreigners that I've asked about it don't seem to notice/care, but there's no question that the milk here does not taste like the milk in USA and, in fact, tastes much worse. China is like the Osama bin Laden of milk producers, crashing sour, funky-tasting 747s into my taste buds.

The first one I got was this box full of these little packets of milk. These things can suposedly sit on the shelf for months unrefrigerated so I knew something was probably not right there. Sure enough, the milk tasted like someone had soaked their feet in it after a long day of working barefoot in recently fertilized fields.

Next I tried a normal-looking carton of milk, but that tasted like toilet water that was recently peed in by someone who just drank real milk. Then tried another brand and another with similar results. Finally, I tried skim milk which loses some of the milk flavor but retains all of the dog crap flavor.

They have Nesquik here so I tried to use that to cover the taste, but then the milk just tasted like chocolatey sewage. So I added way more Nesquik than is normally necessary and until it tasted kind of like dirt which is still better than the Chinese milk. The gritty Nesquik was all stinging in my cut lip that I got from that Beijing basketball kid, and the milk was basically still pretty awful. I got so mad that I tossed that carton of skim milk out the window (I live on the third floor). It landed on some woman's little doggy, right on his head! Lot's of people have little, annoying dogs; they don't have enough space for big, annoying dogs. That carton was like 3/4 full so it had some heft and the dog looked pretty out of it. I thought I got away from the window in time, but someone must have seen me because it wasn't long before the woman and apartment building staff were knocking on my door.

I probably should have pretended to not be there, but I don't know if they could have just busted in anyway. That would be incriminating. I opened the door and pretended to have been sleeping, but I still had my sneakers on. I couldn't follow all that Chinese, but there was some mention of police, money, etc. The woman was holding her dog. It looked alive but its head was all bloody; it must have been hit by the corner of the carton or something.

I just played dumb and pretended to not know any Chinese at all. This was very frustrating for the woman and everyone was happy when I gave her a little money (for doggy doctor?). Nobody bothered to get the police. They probably would have just laughed at the woman and then killed her dog for fun. That's how the police are here. The government likes to pretend that they have total control, but everything is out of their control. Stuff like this is happening constantly. Pretty much everything outside of my apartment is at least partial chaos. Get a grip, Chinese government! And make some decent milk.

Old ladies

2005-12-17T07:54:00.000-05:00

Tonight I saw a group of oldies doing tai chi near the TV tower. The song that was playing was "Macarena." They weren't doing the dance; they were just doing that dumb tai chi.

Those groups of grannies are always out in the evening in odd places doing tai chi to odd music. Good for them, but sometimes I want to park my bike where they are doing that crap.

Azumi

2005-12-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

Many, or perhaps most Chinese hate the Japanese furiously (reason). Don't tell those bastards that I watch Japanese movies or more of them will ask me why I came to China when I like Japan so much. That's right; you can't even like Japanese things without upsetting a good slice of the population pie (not delicious). Exceptions are anime (many young Chinese like it) and Japanese ghost-horror like The Ring and Ju-on (which I think is usually totally boring).

Uh, anyway, Azumi is one of those period pieces with samurais and ninjas, but it's got cult director Ryuhei Kitamura behind the camera. He has modernized and mainstreamed up the genre for the youngsters by creating this audiovisual orchestra of spraying blood and wailing, modern-rock guitars with the lead solo played by a cute popstar (Aya Ueto... by 'lead solo' I mean she plays the protagonist, Azumi; she doesn't play any wailing guitars).

So Azumi and her nine buddies (all guys) were raised by this old dude who swore to make a group of superior assassins to take out all the nasty warlords that are trying to stir things up. He tells these ten to pair up with their best pal, and then he says each person must fight their buddy to the death to prove they are truly heartless assassins. That leaves five young assassins plus that old dude to carry out the mission! Then there's another hour and a half of chopping people up, contrived (for the most part) sentimentality, and, from time to time, goofy, misplaced humor.

All the characters are clich茅s and some of the fighting was surprisingly unconvincing. No matter what body part got slashed or stabbed, the person always spit up copious amounts of blood. Seems a little silly. Do people just not notice that sort of thing? In between the chopping, Azumi feels increasingly disgusted by the things her assassin job requires her to do (chop people) and this leads to a brief and completely predictable moral dilemma that ends in her realizing she just can't escape all the violence. She was raised that way; it's in her nature, people! And you know what else? Revenge is pointless and violence just begets more violence. Zzzzzzzz.

Some of the scenery is ok, and the cinematography is, at times, excessively flashy so that can help hold interest. Oh, and it's also excessively violent which is fun. If you saw Kitamura's excessively violent and flashy Versus and liked it (I thought it sucked) then you'd probably like this because it's quite a bit better. Even better than this is Kitamura's Aragami, a movie in which he constrained himself to a single interior location and which at only an hour long is less than half the length of Azumi and manages to be a little better in almost every way.

I give Azumi a 'decent'... and also an 'excessive'

Pink Light District

2005-10-25T09:58:00.000-04:00

Whenever I walk along the street in the evening, there are several rooms at the ground level with odd pink lighting that have women in them reading or doing various other innocuous things; clearly waiting for something. The rooms seem to be set up sort of like they are salons with the swivel chairs and wall mirrors. I never thought much about the rooms until the other night when I noticed that a woman was just sitting at the window to one of the rooms looking out. Then she saw me and beckoned for me to go to the room. I just made a strange face and kept walking. She laughed and said something to the other women in the room. Probably "silly foreigner."

So I started thinking what that could have been about. Do I need a haircut that badly? Why are they open for business so late at night? Isn't that pink lighting not really ideal for cutting hair? The next day, I innocently asked my friend what those rooms with the women are for. He said, "If the lights are pink then they are prostitutes. The hairdressing stuff is just a front." It all makes sense, right? For some reason it never crossed my mind. Tonight, I looked more closely at one of the rooms (without actually entering) and noticed there was a weird poster on the wall of two people kissing and it had the words "love love love" on it. It might be strange for a salon; not as strange for a brothel. Well, I'm glad I didn't need a haircut before. That could have led to a pretty uncomfortable misunderstanding.

There are really a lot of these pink rooms near my apartment building. Seems I live on prostitute alley.

And1 China

2005-10-24T08:55:00.000-04:00

I played basketball yesterday and today. This was my first time playing in China, and it is surprisingly not so different from playing in the USA. Maybe this is because at Umass I often played in the gym near the Northeast dorm area that was usually full of Asian kids. Somehow I thought the Chinese would have a really team-oriented approach; even just for pickup games. I mean, with the communism and all it shouldn't be about the individual, right? Maybe that was the case at some point but not now. These big cities are almost totally capitalist and the kids play capitalist basketball. It's selfish, me-first basketball. Whoever touches the ball first on any posession is most likely going to drive to the basket and shoot it. A couple of them were pretty good, though.

Today there were three kids who were doing that freestyle, streetball stuff. Too bad because that really annoys me. It's so awful and boring to watch one person do fancy, trick dribbles for 2 minutes straight without actually making any move to the basket. I covered each of them on defense at one time or another and stole the ball from them pretty much every time. I would just stand in front of whoever I was covering and look bored as he fancy dribbled and then once he tried to do a silly trick I'd take the ball right away. The guy I covered the most got the ball stolen several times. After the first few times he said, "ahhh, diu lian," which means "I lost face." I told him, "Don't worry, you didn't lose face." Then he got the ball a few seconds later and I stole it from him immediately.

Yesterday I played one-on-one with a student that everyone calls Yao Ming because he is very tall (6'4") and really likes basketball. The other students heard I would play him and said "You will lose. He is so much taller and stronger." He agreed. Well, I beat him 11-6. Afterwards he said, "I lost face. Please don't tell the other students." It's too bad that the other students won't know because then I would get face. Maybe then a few more students would have respect in class but probably not.

No Yesu

2005-10-21T04:26:00.000-04:00

I got an email from a student. "Yesu" is Chinese for Jesus. "濂��" means strange. Here it is:

I feel you different other people ,I think American belive yesu and they pay attention to Christmas ,but you both no .
I feel very 濂��.

That movie with the guy...

2005-10-07T11:59:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a Chinese person will want to ask me if I saw some Hollywood movie he or she liked but won't know the English title. What usually follows is a ridiculously vague and sometimes incoherent attempt to describe the movie.

Say someone was trying to describe Titanic to me. It would probably go like this:
"It has these two people and they fall in love and it is very lovely. Hmm, and then maybe their love cannot work and some people are dying. You know it? Very famous. You don't know it? But it is so famous; every Chinese loves this movie."

Just today someone asked me, "Have you seen this American movie where the man is in the truck and there is the ghost or devil and he," then she started making a strange noise and gesturing some sort of two-handed stabbing motion.
"You know it?"

The Chinese think foreigners are stupid

2005-10-01T08:26:00.000-04:00

1. They were scared to give me a microwave because they thought I wouldn't use it correctly and start a fire. Nevermind that it is very difficult to start a fire with a microwave. Remember how you were warned not to put metal in the microwave? Maybe when you were little once you wanted to see some fireworks so you did it anyway and threw a bunch of silverware in there only to find out that nothing happens. Very small or thin pieces of metal will spark, but that's about it. It's a myth that metal in the microwave is super dangerous. I don't know if that's what they were worried about, but they were wrong no matter what.

2. They told me not to use the stove because maybe I'd start a fire. Sure, it's easy to start a fire with a stove, but only if you are very clumsy or are actually trying to start a fire.

3. In a fast food restaurant I was throwing away the wrappers, paper cup, etc. and some staff ran up to me to make sure I didn't throw the tray away. Yes, I'm American; we invented fast food, I know how to bus the tray.

4. In another restaurant some staff would not let me get my own ice cream from the soft serve machine like everyone else. His reason was, "because I know you don't know how to use the machine." Thanks, jerknut. Yeah, we don't have soft serve in the West and that machine certainly wasn't invented in the West. This strange Chinese soft serve machine is so foreign to me.

5. Chinese people always ask if I know how to ride a bike. Whenever I said I wanted to get a bike here the response was, "Are you sure you know how to ride a bike?" Now that I have a bike they ask, "Do you know how to ride it?" Sometimes I will ride my bike and upon arriving at my destination someone will ask "Can you ride that?" No, I walked it here. It's just a status symbol for me.

END

Fast Food in China

2005-09-29T07:04:00.000-04:00

Two American fast food chains are very popular here: KFC and McDonald's. I've been to each one two times. They are both different from what you get in America (not too different), and are surprisingly similar to one another here. Both have numbered meals that include a sandwich, soda, and fries, and the prices are basically the same. KFC has a few more chicken options and McDonalds has some hamburgers. It seems like KFC pretty much copied McDonald's for its China restaurants, yet KFC is actually more popular. Perhaps McDonald's suffers slightly due to it being a hated international symbol of American cultural imperialism.

There aren't a whole lot of foreigners in Tianjin (in the four times I visited these restaurants I only saw two whiteys) yet the McDonald's restaurants always have someone on their staff who can speak English fairly well. Going into McDonald's in China is just like being transported to some alternate America that is filled with Chinese people, but there is still one who can speak English! KFC on the other hand... When visiting KFC I had to try to speak Chinese. What jerks. All that ching chong BS. KFC can burn. Someone dig up the Colonel's bones and bury them upside down underneath a toilet.

This is the time to come to China. It still has its own distinct (and crappy) culture, but globalization makes sure that it will never have to be so foreign that you can't take it anymore. No homesickness for me! It's good. I like globalization. If you don't then you're dumb.

English Classes

2005-09-09T06:55:00.000-04:00

I've begun teaching the Chinese kids, though it feels wrong calling them kids because many of them are not much younger than me. I think their ages are mostly in the range of 17-21 but for all I know there could be a few even older than that.

The school is actually some sort of two-year junior college. Once they finish, they hopefully move on to the real thing. One of my Chinese friends told me Chinese students are very eager to learn, and some of them certainly are, but there are also a lot who just take a nap or pretty much refuse to participate. One hour and a half is a long time to be in class, so it's not surprising. It's probably obvious to some of them that I don't really want to be in those classes any more than they do. But that's not every class. There are one or two classes that have students who are very friendly and interested in learning something. Many of those students really want to be my pal and they act that way. It makes the classroom much more relaxed, and that makes everything much easier.

In Tianjin

2005-09-03T01:49:00.000-04:00

Ok, I've been here a few days. Apartment isn't bad; much bigger than expected. No internet yet. I have to 'borrow' internet from a neighbor who has unsecure wireless. Hopefully I get my own internet connection soon because I have to sit down on the floor near the door to my apartment to get a signal.

If I go outside to walk around I get to see a lot of adults pretending not to notice me, yet obviously noticing, and little kids who shamelessly point. Those are both prefereable to the teenagers who try to swear at me in English. Sometimes people seem to be talking about me when I walk by because I hear them say 'American' or 'foreigner' in Chinese. I don't understand the rest of what they say, but I can pick up on those key words.

Some of the Chinese food is not too tasty but most is fine. Particularly annoying is the fish that has tiny bones in it that threaten to rip up your insides if you accidentally swallow them. Also, you need to rip the heads off of shrimps and remove the shells yourself. Very troublesome foods.

There seem to be no traffic regulations here, or perhaps just no traffic cops. In any case, people drive like maniacs and people on bicycles take up much of the road which causes the car and bus drivers to honk at them out of frustration. During the day, the honking never stops. If anyoneplans on sleeping past 7 AM, they need to figure out how to drown out the car and bus horn assault that begins at that time.

Just 6 more months.

craft's analysis

2005-08-17T23:32:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of being esoteric, here is some stupid analysis of Craft's Journey I passed in for a class. I used the movie for my final project but had to pass in a brief explaination or some garbage. For full effect watch the movie at some point and then read the "explanation". The movie actually just makes no sense!
Here it is:

Craft��s ability to fly was taught to him by the Taoist master, Kent. Craft has mastered some Taoist magic and he plans to bring prosperity to his town by acquiring scriptures that are revered as a holy object. These scriptures are the impetus for his quest and this may seem like a very materialistic goal for a Taoist, but the object itself does not matter; it represents the eternal drive for adventure and self-fulfillment.

In any case, Craft��s quest for self-fulfillment was driven by desire and so he lost his way, the way, Tao. Kent warns him not to go on this quest because he may stray from the path. Craft is punished in the end for not living a pure life and respecting his family and friends.

There is no definite good and evil in Craft��s Journey, but the concept of honor is present. King may seem at first like a villain, but are his reasons for wanting the scriptures any more just than Craft��s? King shows that he is actually not so bad and does have some honor. When fate chooses Craft as the winner of the competition for the scriptures King recognizes Craft as the superior individual. Out of shame he commits suicide by bashing his head against a locust tree.

Craft at least thinks that he is doing the honorable thing by getting the scriptures. His problem is that he failed to think about the consequences of leaving his family and the people in his village. Craft let pride cloud his judgment to the point where even his mentor, Kent, could not deter him and he paid for it.

keys in the car

2005-08-06T16:35:00.000-04:00

Locked the keys in the car yesterday. It was classic Type B personality stuff. I immediately realized that I had locked them in and then casually walked around the car and tried to open every door. Then I started walking home without a word or even really feeling angry. Luckily, I talked to my sister and she has a Triple A card. Also luckily, her name is not gender specific. Suckily, Triple A took twice as long as they said they would.

Less than a minute before I locked the keys in, I had given a dollar to some little girl who said she was raising money for school activities. Is that karma?! Really though, I can't understand why anyone would think the world has such order to it.

mung bean cake

2005-08-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

I ate a mung bean cake today (mostly eaten mung bean cake photo above, did you miss it??!!). It seems to be some kind of Vietnamese snack food. My friend bought it for me because she thinks I will have to get used to eating these kind of ethnic snack foods. We all know that this isn't necessarily true. Thanks to globalization I should be able to eat M&Ms every day if I feel like that. I've always been thinking globalization is pretty good. It makes it easier to go to strange places and ignore all the weird, culturey stuff that you don't like.

The mung bean cake has a floury outer part and then inside is the yellow, sugary mung bean filling. I guess it tastes sweet and vaguely like some kind of bean. It tasted pretty OK. If someone offered me another, I would consider taking it and eating it another time because I just ate one today. Especially if a Vietnamese guy offered it because then it's probably, like, his snack, you know? And if I don't take it he will lose face and start to wonder about if it really is so great as he thought and then life will be just a little bit worse and his kids will not enjoy their morning cereal with dad as much because he seems to be not as happy as he was and he breaks things and smash the kids' head with cereal bowl and even the mung bean cakes don't cheer him up anymore. He already has to deal with the death of his wife and now mung bean cakes don't even taste the same. Kids want him to feel happier so the son joins a gang to make a lot of money and help his dad out, but then he is sucked into the underground world and has to beat people with the big metal pipe and eventually has to kill some dudes with a big knifer. He is never quite the same. Will the sun just blow up and eat the planet already? A good snack for the sun on his deathbed.