总重红绿灯 | Stoplight in the Sky

English again! Plus: Chinese traditional vs modern music August 22, 2007

So things here at CET wrapped up last Saturday, and everybody graduated. I am busy trying to relax now, so I am staying in Hangzhou, catching up on paperwork and email and trying not to get into some vacation death march. Graduation was a bit weird, but a lot of fun. Weird because I started speaking to people in English, and listening to people in English, and you discover that language matters when it comes to assessing personality. People’s voices change when they speak Chinese, as does their inflection, but since I read a lot into people’s inflection, it’s a bit of a head snap to hear them speak English and discover a whole new facet to their personality. Most of the time that’s been a good thing, but one particular girl would have been better off sticking with Chinese.
Of course it’s even more drastic for the beginner learners, since they’ve been using a sort of kindergarten pidgin of Chinese interlaced with spelled English words (we’re allowed to spell words that we don’t know the Chinese for), which really cramps expression. I know this because I was in the beginning class last year, and so I really, really appreciate the social advantage that comes along with improved language skills in an immersion context.

Anyway, final exams ended Friday, and people began to rage, rage against the kicking of the keg, as it were; everybody went to Black and White bar, which ain’t half bad, and went bananas on the dance floor. I spent an insane amount of money this weekend and I’m not sure how but I’m confident buying rounds of drinks had a lot to do with it. Meng Xue got drunk on Long Island Iced Teas and tried to sober up on the dance floor by touching her finger to her nose with her eyes closed.

The MC, Jefferson, from Nigeria, tried to hold a sort of beauty contest, which was embarrassing since he required the men to pick out who was the best looking of the dancing women. These were our classmates, and it was awkward. But Jefferson was alright otherwise. He’s in a rap group that tours around China, he’s got a piece of the Black and White Bar (so he says), and better Hangzhou than Lagos. Robbers don’t go around breaking into houses blasting AK-47s in Hangzhou.

I like expat bars, generally, and Black and White is one of the better ones. But I don’t think I will ever get into Chinese discos. Too loud, too bad, and just . . . I dunno. Last weekend we went to SOS (which is full of “false people” as one of the Chinese roommates put it, and wasted Chinese girls who can barely walk); Babyface, which is just too loud, so loud my innards were vibrating, I felt like I was digesting the music, not listening to it; and G Plus, which was distinguished only by not being annoying. If you are into techno/trance whatever, these clubs occasionally attract famous DJs from overseas. If you don’t care, like me, they don’t offer much. Anyway, time to get back to acting my age. These clubs are expensive and dumb.

I’ve decided I’m not going to bother trying to get into modern Chinese musical culture, it just plain sucks. Which is too bad, because listening to lyrics is a great way to study a language. Chinese musical culture has a long tradition, obviously, and it’s nice to stroll around Xihu in Hangzhou and listen to people practicing singing, dancing, and playing various instruments, all without a hat out for money. But modern Chinese music is rotten, as far as I’m concerned, because it has no interest in anything apart from lyrics. Chinese people, as far as I can tell, consider the lyrics of the song to be the song itself. Instrumentation, beat, etc. are just a sort of plate on which the lyrics are served. One popular hit has been resung and reset and remixed multiple times with different singers; there’s even an English version. It’s like the entire industry made of cover bands backing up “stars” produced by the same sort of industry process that produces American Idol. Cheap, disposable talent backed up by faceless bands. It’s not that Western music doesn’t have this same problem in certain areas. It’s just that you can choose to listen to other music. But as far as I can tell, in mainland China, musical taste is a lot more homogeneous.

I talked with the Chinese roommates about this. It’s not entirely true that Chinese people have no interest in musical instruments or virtuosity, but there are no Chinese rock stars who are famous for their instrumental skill. They are all singers, as far as I can tell, and they are all beautiful and young and indistinguishable. If you want instrument virtuousity, you head towards the people who are studying Chinese traditional instruments (there was a 20 year old in Xihu who was absolutely wonderful on the arhu), or Western classical music. Which I intend to do.

“Tarzan is an expatriate”/Urinal Massage August 8, 2007

Paul Theroux, noted cynic misanthrope, used the above phrase as a title for a rather blistering assault on expat sensibilities. I won’t reproduce it here, but you can easily find it online. I mention it because there is a particular student here who reproduces the “Tarzan Syndrome” symptoms here in China to a letter. Every word that comes out of his mouth is intended to make Chinese people’s actions and opinions (in particular his teachers’ opinions) seem stupid. His apparent impression of China is that it is full of dumb, dangerous people. Why is he here then? So he can be Special! Anyway, read the article.

So before I write about some of the funnier things I’ve observed in China that I’d like to capture in print, I’d like to CYA a bit and note that I am trying to avoid a condescending attitude a la “Why on earth do Chinese people do X? Isn’t that bizarre/idiotic?”  Instead, I ask, why not?

Along those lines:

When it’s hot out, and you are sleepy, why not sleep in a friggin’ wheelbarrow? It’s got the right shape, nice neck support etc. Why not let your waitresses sleep at nearby tables while customers eat? At my midterm exam, the head teacher put her head down on the table and caught forty winks. And why the hell not? It is literally impossible to systematically cheat on Chinese tests. I also saw the entire staff of the Gong Da barbershop sacked out in a row, napping in their reclining barber chairs, towels over their eyes. Welcome to the Land of Nod! More on this later.

Why not wear a tee shirt saying: “I have a lot of milk. Would you like some?” (Note: while a lot of expats like to ridicule Chinglish tee-shirts, I’d note that as ridiculous as they are, at least the Chinese have the excuse of not actually understanding the language. Whereas the American who spends $40 to buy an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt sporting the logo of a non-existent sports team?)

Why not have a stereo at the basketball court so women can practice waltzing in the middle of the night?

Why not have an old man give neck massage to customers while they urinate at night clubs?

Why not play basketball in the dark when you can barely see the goddamn basket or any of the other players? Um, actually, when you get a basketball in your face, it becomes clear that it’s not a very good idea.

Tahiti in China: Nanji Island and Huayan Park July 31, 2007

First, this will be a lot more interesting if you look at the pictures on flickr first at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gusanocomemuerto/sets/72157600957309608/.

This last weekend was our midterm exam weekend at CET, which is a really weird mixture of stress and relaxation. I was quite happy to hear that we were going back to Nanji Island and Huayan park again, since they are rather singular locations in the polluted, crowded Chinese context: Nanji island is a small, uncrowded, unpolluted tropical island without a large building in sight; Huayan Park is a lush, waterfall-fed series of crystal-clear swimming holes. Even better, they are both (relatively) close to each other. But integrating the beach, swimming holes, and waterfalls with our midterms was, to put it mildly, a physical and psychological stretch. 

The schedule was as follows: Thursday night the entire program took a night train to Wenzhou on which much baijiu was consumed. Baijiu can be merely tough to drink or can serve as proof of the existence of pure distilled evil, some nasty absolute, beyond all conception of horrible badness . . . as Opus said; “Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but lord, it wasn’t good.” That said, the only thing that dislikes baijiu more than I do were the little stomach bacteria I acquired in Hangzhou that were rendering me unfit for travel, and so baijiu it was. The Chinese drink waxberry baijiu for diarrhea, and I gotta say, it works, if you are willing to pay the price.

Anyway, the night on the train was fun, and when the baijiu hit the stomach I went straight to bed, popped Momma’s little helper into my mouth, and sacked the hell out. I’ve discovered that my preference for 7-8 hours of sleep a night is not casual. CET’s schedule, which has reduced me to an average of 5 or 6 hours, has rendered me a miserable human being, and I was worried- as were most people who looked at me- that the combination of study-stress, stomach cramps, and train travel would reduce me to some sort of bonobo-like existence consisting of mostly of grunting and scratching. 

Waking up on a Chinese train is rarely fun, and waking up at 6am on a Chinese train after drinking baijiu even less so. Nevertheless, I’d slept solidly, so no problem, and we trucked off to the island on a bus, and then on a boat, and finally arrived at Nanji port, a small cove with some fishing boats, the modern shuttle craft  we’d arrived in, which look more like submarines than boats, and a dock for same. We debarked, mounted buses that tore through the town of Nanji to the beach side, where we all spread out over the sand, played soccer, frisbee, and swam . . . and burned. Oh man, did I burn. Then it was time for lunch, and I ate raw oysters, anemone, small blood clams, salt and pepper shrimp-beetles, lord knows what else. You can see from the pictures, eating sea food on the Chinese coast is great because you pick the thing you want to eat out of a bucket while it’s still alive and frisky. Five minutes later, it’s on your table. I’ve heard of Chinese guys in ties selecting fresh fish from the tank and beating them to death personally. Anemone tastes like . . . chicken. Not very good chicken, but it could have been the sauce. The oysters were incredible.

When we got back to the beach, people were clamming in straw hats. The staff at the rented shelter stand were surly, and would not extend our rental; for some reason, this part of Zhejiang sees little foreigners, and there were a few unpleasant episodes, albeit largely involving the students with the worst Chinese.

That night we went back to the hotel, and put on our “plays,” which are graded as oral midterms, and are annoying and fun at the same time. Anyway, ours came off fine; I did an interpretive dance while eating a dumpling at the same time.

The next day we went to Huayan park (flower color) and went splashing around in the 10 pools they have there, some of which are really deep, all of which are clean and cold and have little fish in ‘em. I needn’t go into much detail on this part as the pictures describe it better than words do. As you can see, most of the Chinese teachers and students cannot swim, and are thus required to wear lifejackets. Last year a guy tried to do without, and nearly drowned, and nearly took an American girl with him who was trying to help.

Collecting the superfines from all the world Developing the friendship with all clients July 23, 2007

This weekend I had a fantastic, if exhausting experience that combined exposure to the most traditional part of Chinese society with exposure to the overwhelming-ness of its new economy. Sound dull? I’ll list what I brought home:

1x tracksuit

1x Golden luck-pig

10 pairs of socks

50 pairs of cufflinks

2x colorful wigs

1x sprite bottle full of homemade moonshine

1x pair of handmade slippers made by a roommate’s grandmother (her son said she “wove her heart into the threads!” awww!)

Then let’s consider what I did:

Saw police arresting and “deporting” migrant workers who were living in an alley (for info on Chinese migrant worker law, look up the word hukou system).

Ate a fat home-style meal in an alley with a Chinese family, fighting off their strenuous efforts to get me drunk on aforementioned moonshine.

Spent hours and hours walking around the Yiwu international trade center, where they sell (in large batches) an amazing variety of products. I saw people selling: lightbulbs, coffee mugs, hand-powered pig-flashlights, lightning rods, fake flowers, plush toys, inflatable santa clauses, glowing bouncy thingeys, jewelry by the case, cloth by the yard, beer by the gallon, keychains, watches, tracksuits, remote-controlled toy helicopters, headlamps, and so on. The prices were incredible, and I got really excited until I realized I could only buy stuff in enormous batches. I could, for example, buy 200 headlamps at around a dollar apiece- when they get to the states they go for around $35. I think there’s a margin there, eh? I tell you, this place will enrage you when you realize how badly you are getting robbed by US retail prices (of course, their storefront rent is what you are paying for). Anyway. But unfortunately, I don’t have enough friends to justify buying so many headlamps. Might make a funny wedding present, though. Heh heh.

My host was the Chen family. Mr. Chen, a self-made man, owns a small factory (which most people would probably call a sweatshop) in which he makes multicolored hairbands. He does pretty well at this, well enough to put his daughter through college and pay whatever fine they charged him for having a second child, a son, who will also attend. The Chens are delightful. They spent most of the weekend taking us around to visit their friends’ shops, where we were given gifts, gifts, gifts, as you can see from the list above.

The Chens are also a great case study, and I hope to go back when my Chinese is better and do a more in-depth interview with Mr. Chen. Right now the family lives in a very traditional alley outside the modern city center, but they are moving into a condo complex that looks quite sophisticated, albeit with a Chinese sensibility a.k.a. what I would consider kitschy lighting, lots of white marble etc. But the apartment is huge, wired, beautiful . . . and unlike their current housing, air-conditioned.

The night after our monstrous dinner, I played basketball with the guys while the girls practiced dancing. In many places in China, you’ll find stereo’s playing waltz music and the like, and Chinese people come out to swirl around. It’s charming. At the same time, in the background was one of China’s less charming aspects; police dragging off an impoverished rural family in a van for the crime of working in the city without a residence permit.

That night we went and staying in a giant hotel. It was cute; they sent along the little brother to stay with us, and a little cousin to stay with Chen Jia Wen and Ou Yi Lian (female classmates) presumably to ensure propriety. This meant that there were three people in each room for two hard beds. Hardly mattered though; a giant thunderstorm came through and blasted us awake with the loudest lightning I have ever heard; it was so loud and destructive sounding, I had trouble believing it was lighting, it sounded like Yiwu was being bombed. The changing air-pressure caused our door to bang and rattle all night long, making it impossible to sleep, so I woke up and went out to take a look, just in time to see two consecutive lightning strikes detonate a transformer in a big green explosion, which took out the electricity for the sector . . . and our air conditioning. Not a good night’s sleep, to say the least.

Coming up: Tahiti in China: Nanji Island, and the Dragon Pools of Rui’An.

Chinese non-sexual cohabitation July 23, 2007

So this afternoon we are going to head out and pester random Chinese people on the street for their opinions on adultery, premarital sex, and cohabitation. A topic not often discussed in the popular press here or in the US.

Last week I found out that one of my Chinese friends is currently cohabiting with three females, none of whom he finds attractive (恐龙”scarey dragons” is what he calls them). Cohabitation for the purposes of facilitating premarital sex is widely considered immoral in China, but cohabitation to share the rent is incomprehensible, at least it was to my teachers when I told them about it. I admit to not understanding myself. It’s not like China is short on single guys to live with. It may be that my friend has figured out the same thing I did, that single guys make horrible roommates, particularly Chinese “little emperors” who are accustomed to being taken cleaned up after by a swarm of relatives.

In Chinese discourses on vices, such as drugs, adultery, or other questionable sorts of fun, many Chinese leap to blame foreign influence, specifically Western influence. As far as sex goes, China is conservative in the extreme, and it’s difficult for me to tell exactly where this comes from. Certainly China has always extolled itself as a virtuous society. At the same time, China has a tradition of brothels (now resurgent), courtesans, and polygamy. However, the brothels in particular became symbolic of China’s submission to colonization, and thus the Nationalist and Communist revolutions tried to do away with them, alongside eliminating opium usage. It followed that  they advocated a rather victorian sexual sensibility. 

When most Americans of a social conservative bent think of China, they think of the one-child policy, forced abortions, sterilizations and the like. The strange thing is that China’s birth control policy is not driven by a secular sexual revolution; that when it comes to sex, the Chinese have more in common with Catholic conservatives than they do with Western atheists, much less Western feminists.

So is China about to have a sexual revolution? Not my area. But given Chinese people’s reactions, I predict that coed cohabitation is going to come far later than sexual cohabitation and the like, because it actually requires a far greater degree of sexual equality. It might also require that those people cohabiting not be virgins at the time.

language immersion is hard July 20, 2007

What is Chinese immersion at CET Hangzhou like? Every week we go through three/four chapters of textbook and between 180 and 250 new words/phrases, most of which are multi-character. That’s just brutal rote learning and I’m having some trouble with it, because there’s not enough time in the day for me to perfectly memorize 50-60 new phrases front-to-back (i.e. pinyin, writing, and recognition) plus practice my pronunciation and read the 2-3 page essay thoroughly plus write a 150 character essay and do some other exercises for the other classes. Whew! So something has to give. I’ve allotted 6 hours a day for homework, but honestly if I did nothing but go to class, study, and sleep, I still wouldn’t be doing much better, because my language skills decline when I’m tired and frustrated, so R&R has to be part of the program.

Just for comparison’s sake, at the UW I would go through one chapter, maybe less, per week, with 5 hours of class per day, plus maybe 2/3 hours of homework. So over the course of an entire academic year (3 quarters) I got about 150 hours of direct instruction plus 300 hours of homework, max.  In Hangzhou, in just 6 weeks, I’m getting 120 hours of direct instruction and doing about 180 hours of homework, plus 24 hours of exposure to Chinese  (i.e. indirect instruction) and almost no English at all. Technically I’m prohibited from speaking any English to people inside China, so my English is limited to Skyping abroad.

Gifts for Jiang Cong et al July 19, 2007

So I bought Jiang Cong a UW basketball jersey and gave him my sunglasses, as noted previously. I think he looks good in the sunglasses.

First blog/explanation of the title July 19, 2007

The other day I heard the loveliest radio jingle. We were in a cab, myself and a few other students, and we were all listening to the taxi-cab radio station in Hangzhou, which offers music and information tailored, I suppose, to cabdrivers, which includes brief English lessons and the like. Anyway, the station call-sign jingle comes on: FM九三FM九三，空中红绿灯 (pinyin is FM jiu san, FM jiu san, kongzhong hongludeng). Best translated as “FM 93, FM 93, the stoplight in the sky.” Quite charming.
In other news, we went to the Xihu Tiandi Starbucks last night to do homework, and Jiang Cong, my past and present roommate in the CET program, had a cappuccino. Compared to last year, Cong has shown a willingness to stretch the envelope. He’s tried red wine, Guinness (albeit “foreign extra” i.e. barrel-scrapings), and now a cappuccino. Last year he mostly watched dating shows on his computer, but this year he’s studying for the civil service exam and didn’t even bring a computer along. Last year he was one of many Chinese roommates who barely left the dorm room, which was, for most of them, a vacation from their 8-man, sweltering, mosquito-ridden rooms into a high-bandwidth air-conditioned heaven. I suspect, without cause, that the CET program prohibited them from bringing computers along this year.
Otherwise, I should probably get back to work. 6 hours of homework a day still isn’t quite cutting the mustard. I’ll post about the language immersion experience later.