Observations

The floor is dirty

During my first few weeks in Chengdu I would often put my bag on the ground at work or a restaurant, and this would immediately illicit complaints from my friends as they would run over and pick up my bag to put it on a chair. Even the surfaces of the tables that we were going to eat on were not considered clean, in fact much the opposite. When I would put a piece of paper on the table there would be a general outcry from the locals seated beside me. The reasons for these respective definitions of dirty surfaces became clear to me on several occasions. The floor is always considered dirty because it is considered completely normal to spit on the floor if you are in a restaurant or cafeteria. In addition to this, spitting small pieces of bone or spilling food on the floor is also acceptable. But what really takes the cake on this matter is that launching snot from your nose towards the ground is not a big deal. One day I was eating lunch and I saw a girl with an exceptionally long strand of snot dripping from her nose towards the floor. With a casual flick of her head she broke the strand and down onto the ground it went. My friend Yuanqiang noticed me gawking at this entire proceeding and said “ta ganmao”, meaning she has the flu or a cold. Although this was a completely satisfactory explanation of the situation for him, at the time I was still quite taken aback. The reason that the tabletops are considered unclean is quite simple and has to do with the many bones in the various meats that are eaten. Because of these small bones, you have to spit them out or else suffer dire consequences. Of course the logical place to spit them out is on the tabletops. In between meals, the pieces of food are removed by servers, but they don’t do a particularly good job, and there is no use of soap or water.

Time for a shower

Most people who work in my office are graduate students and they still live in dorms instead of apartments off campus. This is due to the usual reasons such as safety, convenience, and price. One of the results of this is that they live in a small room with four other people. They have a small balcony and a bathroom adjoining the balcony. Although there is a shower in the bathroom, there is no hot water, and with current temperatures flirting with freezing at nighttime you would have to be a hero to take a shower there. The solution to this lack of bathing equipment is twofold. The first is that every night one of the four roommates goes to retrieve hot water from outside the dormitory. This hot water is used to wash the feet. Not only do feet get pungent if you don’t wash them, but according to traditional Chinese medicine they contain an important part of the nervous system. These two reasons lead my friends to wash their feet every night. As for showers, they head to the shower house at most once a week. One of my friends was laughing about how he hadn’t gone in two weeks because he didn’t have enough time. I mentioned that maybe his girlfriend might find this to not be so funny, but he said that she controlled everything in his life, except when he took showers. I guess you have to hang on to what you can in some relationships.

Meat

Although I was raised in a family where I was routinely allowed to steal small amounts of raw beef and egg from meatballs before they became meatballs, the standards of what needs to be refrigerated and for how long are still pretty different here. Every day in the morning I walk by women with a large bowl of raw pork with some spices diligently making dumplings to be cooked later that day, the only issue is that dumplings that are going to be cooked at dinner are made early in the morning, and they aren’t refrigerated in between. Additionally, butchers leave meat out unrefrigerated all day, and I don’t know what they do with it at night. I don’t think that their practices are necessarily unsanitary; it is more that there are different standards here than in America. So far I’ve only gotten sick once. Hopefully it will stay that way.

Being an American

An obvious and interesting part of travel is the conception that other people have of your culture and how you choose to portray that culture. Being an American is like carrying the AK-47 of cultural firepower. If you bury it in the sand for 30 years it still fires. The evidence of American influence is everywhere, from the most popular sport (basketball) to the most popular clothing and accessories. That is not to say that China doesn’t have its own incredibly potent culture, but the meshing of America, globalization, and old Chinese culture is merging into an entirely different beast. Despite the great firewall of China, almost all students have found a way around this using proxy servers, and combined with access via other media avenues such as television (which, although edited, still has a lot of international content) the outside world is making its way into China.

Being an American leads to some very funny questions. Because of the sources for their conception of Americans, people often say things like “so in America, do you ever eat vegetables or only meat?” This is because in movies and television, the meat eating, beer drinking American is alive and well. The concept of a heterogeneous American culture seems completely foreign to most people here. When I try to explain that culture varies widely across the United States, despite such variations in China, people have a hard time accepting it. This is because Kobe Bryant and Michael Scofield represent America in China(the show prison break is incredibly popular over here). The same thing could be said about China and Jet Li and Jackie Chan in America, but at least they both speak English and they were both very popular in China before coming to the US. Here you have not only certain specific representation of America by stars that have acclaim in China, but you also have those stars being translated as apposed to speaking in the native tongue.

The result is a strange mix of western and eastern culture that China seems to be. Kobe Bryant, while certainly very popular in America, is not the most popular NBA player and far from the most popular athlete, but in China he is a megastar. The same thing goes for Prison Break, a show that started out with some promise, but then was less than exciting in subsequent seasons, is widely popular here. This idea penetrates to the most basic parts of daily life. Chinese fashion is an odd imitation of western fashionable dress incorporating western ideas but then giving them a strange remix. A good example of what is going on is that my good friend Liu wears shoes with an anarchy symbol on them. I asked if he knew what that meant, and he had no idea, he just liked the shoes. Basically, it seems as if the people of China have taken western culture and then completely reinterpreted it. Some parts stay the same, but some are completely changed in the translation process. I don’t know nearly enough about Chinese culture to say why they interpret things the way that they do, but it is a fascinating process to observe and be a part of.

As a tall, white man I command quite a bit of attention while walking down the street. Although at first this was overwhelming, I’ve become pretty relaxed with the idea that everybody is going to be looking at me all the time. I have to thank Ticht Nat Han for his indirect help dealing with this situation. Ticht Nat Han says, among other things, that there is a great power in smiling at people and that most often when you smile at somebody they smile back. I’ve found that this is a great way to handle people staring at me. Instead of being uncomfortable and purposefully averting my eyes, I try to look back at people and give them a friendly smile. Although I obviously don’t stop and look at every single person (I’d never make it work!), I’ve found that spreading a few smiles every day has paid off in terms of returned smiles. And frankly, it puts me a in a better mood and allows me to deal with sticking out.

English is difficult

I always was told that English was a very difficult language to master as a second language. I was certainly aware of the complexities concerning grammar and mechanics, but editing English papers written by people for whom English is a second language and trying to communicate with Chinese people in English has taken my respect for the nuance and depth of the language to a higher level. Most people in China have been studying English for upwards of 10 years, but their spoken English is usually timid at best. This has a lot to do with their education system, but I’ll address that at another time (and probably place). To summarize in brief, although most highly educated Chinese people possess an immense English vocabulary, they have very little functional English, either written or spoken, and their ear and pronunciation is untrained. This has lead to some early struggles in communication, although people usually pick things up quite quickly because their foundation is excellent. Written English is a similar story with misused vocabulary and punctuation abound. Getting people to understand basic rules is challenging, but I try to apply patience, because my grasp of the written language was slow (and still is in some ways) in developing.

As an editor, it is hard to draw a line in terms of how much I should change. I get papers from highly respected individuals and centers from across the nation that are written in a repetitive and simplistic style, and it is hard to decide how much editing I am allowed to do. Reading their paper and starting from scratch sometimes seems like it would easier (and more fun) than fixing several mistakes in every sentence. I suppose this is something that I’ll just have to keep an eye on as my editing skills improve. It is an interesting juxtaposition, because obviously these touted intellectuals don’t want their papers to be redundant and childish, but I don’t know if they want me rewriting their articles.

I hope that heat returns to those who lost it in the ice storm soon!