it'll grow

ZX was invited over by the American (and Canadian) students for dinner, but I felt weird crashing the party again (even though it means third night in a row eating alone). So after a scary ride home after class in the private (read: illegal) van-taxi-bus thing and not buying fake perfume by the gate of the old campus, I ducked into the 送包子 by the school for some xifan and cold dishes. 

It was busy and they plopped my metal bowl down beside a mother (her son across the table) who had some sort of relationship with the money-collecting aiyi. There was a slight scene when mom wanted to pay that involved aiyi forcing the purse back down onto her lap and lots of discussion about who would be more embarrassed . . . In the end there was a five-yuan compromise - so she'd at least be left with enough face to come back some other time.

Meanwhile the little boy (he's in second grade) has been scooping loads of xifan into his mouth, and has emptied the mushroom plate. He's picked up the plate and looks like he might just march over to get more. Argument done. The mother fakes embarrassment but laughs affectionately, with the aiyi, who's taking the plate to get it refilled. Aren't kids great? Later he asks me how to spell his name in English and what places I've been to. I tell him Thailand (that's a country) and Beijing and when he prompts me to keep going his mother says, "She's been to lots of places that you've never heard of. Now keep eating." Earlier she'd been telling him not to lick his fingers. "This foreigner is going to see you doing that and say, 'this is what little Chinese boys are like!'"

The other day I was checking out a bakery near the center of town, one of the nice ones, and suddenly this bagged roll falls off it's plexiglass shelf and onto the floor. There was no one near it, so we all kinda laughed quietly, and the fuyuan put it back. One minute later, it falls again, and we (I, at least) laugh loudly. And this time when the fuyuan puts it back she mutters with perfect dry humor, 它不给我面子 - It won't give me face!

I've been making it my habit to stroll through every bakery I see. You know, research. Since I am newly poor (relative to before, at least, when I was a "volunteer") everything seems ridiculously expensive and I manage to restrain myself. I prefer the little misshapen cakes from ZX's market street. The ones you buy by the pound, or for one yuan, instead of five. The crispy sesame cookies that get tossed in one of those thinner-than-thin plastic bags (production of which was supposedly stopped a year ago) instead of coming all hard plastic binned or shiny plastic bagged.

On the other hand, it's encouraging to see a growing diversity of baked goods being produced (and bought) in Nanchong. When he was in high school, says ZX, there were just a few bakeries in the whole town. Now there are bakeries - and nice ones - on every corner.

And oh, Regina Spektor. Oh my, she sings pretty.

new path

An old racing bike, a destination (and a purpose) of my own, and sun after two days of none. We went to see the old bike guy on YiXueJie (though the shop is a new one I didn't know, down the road). He's worked on at least four different bikes for me, and always works for almost nothing. Raise the seat and they both think it's too high. But it's just how I like it. And there are curved handlebars and all. The hole-in-the-wall jewelry shop owner stopped me to say hello. Explained that her shop was closed for the holiday until next week but wouldn't I come by? And could she have my phone number? I told her I didn't have on yet, my first lie. "What if she asks again?" I worried for a minute. Then I realized that she won't.

In the afternoon I loaded mildew-smelling clothes into a duffel bag and headed out on the bike for Karen's apartment. She had soft cushions on the coach and stories of spring festival travel to laugh to.

just so you know

In case you aren't lucky enough to actually live here like I do, you might not know that...

Everything good in the world is orginally Chinese, everything bad Western.

For example, there's capitalism (bad) - forced on China in the Qing dynasty (1800's) by the eight foreign powers, who after using military might (or GUNS, which we must remember, were NOT invented by Chinese people though they had long before invented gunpowder) to force their way into China's market, proceeded to post signs on the land they had stolen in Shanghai that read, "No Chinese or dogs allowed". It's hard to argue that capitalism hasn't been fully embraced here, but we'll argue that we never wanted it, never chose it.

And the all-inclusive, "openness" (bad) - immodesty, loose morality, and sex on TV, in movies, in young people's lives, is learned, of course, from the West, and mainly from "America", where everyone knows people wear as few clothes as they can get away with and divorce, sleep around, and in general assert their (scarily-extreme) independence as easily as they deposit their parents in an old folk's home.

Anais Mitchell sings (I think) about being a "westerner" in a place other than the "west" in "The Belly and the Beast" and I understand the general feeling ...

I, in my longing, fly out in the night
unveiled and irreverently dressed
I'm lipstuck and liquored up, pickin' a fight
I'm the wicked, wicked witch of the west

See, I want to complain about how I'm misunderstood, but really, I work with amazingly open people who understand relatively much about where I'm coming from and the mutual misunderstandings that we're all mired in and, best of all, they like to talk about it with me. We're all thinking a bit more politically these days; even my poor, very apolitical roommate is aware that something is going on because of the unavoidable buzz about boycotting Carrefour because we've been having these hours of conversations about politics and culture. I really think I understand a lot about China. I say to my roommate, "I really think I understand a lot about China," and then add, "but not enough."

"That's right, a little humbler!" she admonishes jokingly, and I know she's right, but I also wonder if "understanding China" for her doesn't meant holding the same views that every "good girl" is supposed to, 'cause I don't think I'll ever get there. Today we conclude our lunchtime lecture saying peacework is helping people in China and the west to understand each other more. I agree, I agree.

We pick up later with why the officials can't engage in real dialogue, because they have no "culture". (A related article about why officials shouldn't read, and I read the other day that the Pope can speak ten languages, and thought, "Now that guy deserves to be a leader!") . I mentioned this article, which offers China suggestions on "Putting the PR into the PRC" .

This was sort of the author's summary advice to China on how to come across a little more positively to the rest of the world.

Be confident and honest, not defensive and secretive

The outright denials of the obvious, the virulent rhetoric, the strained historical arguments, the paranoid claims that foreigners cause your problems - all make China look bad. And China does not need to look bad. Moreover, the world needs China not to look bad. China has a great deal to be proud and confident of, with an unprecedented record of poverty alleviation, phenomenal economic growth, glittering new architecture, high-levels of education, a space programme, trillions in foreign reserves, a savings rate that is the envy of spendthrift Americans, and what is likely to be a rich harvest of Olympic gold - not to mention a long history and glorious culture.

Sure, China has problems - who doesn't? But no one is going to take Tibet or Xinjiang away from China. If you respond to disturbances in these regions with restraint, with a statesmanlike air "more in sadness than in anger", and demonstrate an interest in attempting to resolve, rather than deny, the economic, cultural and political problems underlying these disturbances, you could earn world understanding and sympathy rather than looking like a bully.

I like this article because what he's saying is true: China has a lot going for it, and if it weren't so frustratingly defensive and secretive about everything, and stopped thinking, acting, and talking as if it's AGAINST the rest of the world rather than dealing with a lot of similar issues (a giant rich-poor gap, environmental issues, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, etc), things could be so much prettier. SW agrees, but there's little chance of that happening she seems to suggest, "The problem is that the officials lack confidence to really openly engage" even this country's own intellectuals, much less the international community. They have too much pressure - they're clinging tight to their power because it's not just power, but their means for survival (they're not lawyers or businessmen that changed professions, they're peasants that fought their way into these positions). You can think of China like a person, she says. They've had all this trauma (fuedalism, invasion from the west, from Japan, the cultural revolution). What China's people need is healing, and a real understanding of all the good that China has and is ... that can slowly grow into real confidence.

Last night when I couldn't stand to look at Chinese characters any longer I went out for a walk in the misty rain. When I handed my vegetables to the malatang guy so he could stew them in the pot of savory broth, he asked what country I'm from. It's such a common question, but weightier these days, so after I'd said "US", I asked, "but if I were from France, what would you do?"

He didn't hesitate an instant. "不卖!" (he wouldn't sell me the soup!) and a big head-thrown-back laugh. I laughed with him, but couldn't resist a mini-speech about how he should know that the government isn't related to us common folk.

"Look at the American government, I said. They're bad, but I'm good!"

"I'm good too!" he said, and I said I knew. When the soup was done he brought it to my table, and welcomed me to come back again. When the girl at the table beside mine got up to leave she put the napkins from her table onto mine, and met my eyes with a smile. I was moved. Daily, I try to remember to worry less about these big things and go about the more important business of creating my own life.

My yoga instructor sweetly came to English Island on Friday night "second to practice English," she told me, and "first, to see you." She asked if I'd been busy recently, and I said I had (though not busy enough to explain why I haven't been to yoga in a good month). "I think you should practice more," she said simply, and I promised I'd be there tonight. Now that's love like it's supposed to be done.

economizing stories

When SW was young there were tall vats in which everyone in the courtyard would throw their food scraps. At primary school the teachers encouraged them to throw their leftover rice and dishes into them as well instead of into the regular trash. Peasants from the surrounding countryside would come daily to collect the scraps, dipping it up out of the vats into their barrels to take home to feed the pigs. Today they only do that for the restaurants, then it was everyone. The peasants would give the kids tickets (taomipiao 淘米票, lit. “wash rice tickets”) when they faithfully threw their scraps into the vats. The kids would then give their tickets to the teachers who would praise them; the tickets were like merits, to be collected; the more you had the better.

At the Suguo (the local convenience store chain), they are selling green light canvas bags for one kuai, which is nothing. The making of the super-thin bags has already been suspended (and factories closed, jobs lost), but the giving away of free plastic bags in the supermarkets ban doesn't start till June.

FR wonders if ALL the plastic bags in the land will be done away with. If that is the case, she thinks, then certainly there will people who will stockpile rolls of these trashcan-lining bags; they will fill rooms with them. We laugh at her.

Then they tell me something I’ve never heard before. That people had to be taught how to use plastic bags, and the change came all at once about ten years ago, as the result of extensive propaganda. At that time people just put waste straight into their small bins and then dumped them into the big bins, or trashpiles. Then someone somewhere decided that the people needed to be using plastic bags, and suddenly there was propaganda everywhere telling people to line their trashcans with plastic bags. At first everyone thought it was strange, because they were used to the old way. It took them a month or two, but after that, they all got used to the plastic bags.

The bags should be gotten rid of, SW argues. They litter the sides of the streams in the country. China has so much countryside, and so many rivers, and they’re all so dirty, she says. I want to argue that there are much worse things polluting those rivers than plastic bags, but I don’t.

We talk of how Chinese people used to (and even in Hong Kong today?) use paper to wrap meat when they bought it . . . FR says she remembers "oil paper" to wrap the noodles they bought when she was young. Chinese people truly had a good, economic way of life, now everything is “broken.”

I try to explain how I still can feel the knowledge (and the will) buried, even in the current young people. You’re closer to it than we are in the US, I wanted to communicate. My grandparents’ generation may have had it, and even some of my parents’ generation. I struggled to explain by saying, “I feel like here, at least, I can always use a “save and economize” argument and it’s somewhat effective, at the very least, understood. SW’s interpretation of what I’d said was a bit off, but interesting. She thought that I was talking about how I’m not allowed to speak into other people’s lives in the US, because of cultural norms that keep us distant from each other. Like I can’t tell someone that they should turn off the water while they’re brushing their teeth, even if I’m completely convinced that it’s the right thing to do. I’m not allowed to tell someone that George Bush is an idiot, even if my bones want to scream it. (Those are my examples, not hers). In China, she was contrasting, you can tell people to do something just because you think its right . . . (hmmm, that has implications for current political debates, doesn't it?)

It's true, and an interesting cultural difference to think about, but what I'm trying to get at, and appreciate so much about China, is the economizing mindset that the society as a whole seems to have. Obviously it comes from a mixture of culture and poverty, and obviously its slipping away, but it's also still here.

When we were listing adjectives in English Island last week for a "good" person, there was "handsome" and "reliable" and "warm-hearted" and "smiling", and those were interesting, but the one that I liked the most? "Economic" (in Chinese, lit. "saving") Yes. That's why I live here.