Cultural Shocks

Take this, America!

2009-07-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

Get this, you pathetic gutless Americans who tremble in your PJs and fake croaky voices when you want to take a sick day to get over that last beer you shouldn't have had on a Wednesday night. Stand up and fight for your wellbeing like your northern neighbors!

The Canadians have five weeks of vacation and eighteen sick days a year. Now they are fouling up the entire Lake Ontario for their unjust treatment. I saw and smelled their courage myself! And let me tell you, the city workers whipped the city like it's nothing but a sack of garbage.

Don't get me wrong. Canadians are the nicest bunch I've ever encountered. My flight from Toronto was delayed for six hours. I would have got no more than a roll of eyes from a United Airlines agent. Canadians felt so bad for me that the customs officers let me go off wherever I wanted, an Air Canada agent gave me a tour of the downtown, and another one sneaked me into the airline's gold members' club. I'm now sitting in a reclining couch surrounded by expensive business suits and sipping a glass of wine.

Just don't mess with their benefits!

A whole chunk of Lake Ontario shore has been turned into a dumping ground. Toronto's civic workers have been on strike since June 22. According to Bloomberg, "The strike closed pools, city-run child-care centers and many other municipal facilities in Canada’s biggest city. Garbage pickup for 500,000 homes and as many as 20,000 small businesses has been scrapped. Applications for city permits and licenses is suspended and Toronto’s island ferries are halted."

Here's the crux of the dispute. The city currently allows its civic workers to bank their unused sick days and cash them when they retire. The cash-strapped municipal government wants to scrap that perk, and the unions said "Hell no!"

"The city wants more than a pound of flesh," said Mark Ferguson, head of Toronto Local 416 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. "And we’re not prepared to give it to the city.”

So the union fenced up with blue tarp an area the size of a football ground. Toronto's residents are driving their garbage and disposing it into that designated area themselves. Cars are lining up obediently at the entrance. A guy wearing a baseball cap and an orange hi-vi vest with the union logo is direting them into the dumping ground. Two other guys in similar costumes sit nearby in beach chairs sipping coffee.

Lake Ontario tumbles gently beyond the piles of garbage bags. Joggers and bikers dart by the blue tarp.

"We are lucky that it's been cool and hazy lately," the Air Canada agent who's driving me said. "Imagine the hot steamy July we usually have! Wow!"

Let's just say, even with such lenient weather, the smell of thirty-three days' worth of garbage from a city of over a million is still mighty potent.

The agent, my kind volunteer tour guide honks and waves to the picketing workers. "You've got to support the union!"

Show Me Some Good News

2009-02-17T13:38:00.000-08:00

I thought I would never say this, but I miss watching a Chinese newscast. Boy, I can use a little deception these days.

A Chinese newscast opens with one of our nation's leaders shaking hands with another nation's leader. Our leader is smiling that stately, unflappable, showing-the-right-amount-of-teeth-and enthusiasm smile. The voiceover from the newscaster says "President so and so received the leader of country A today. They conducted friendly discussions. Both sides pledged to strengthen cooperation and communications between the two nations. Leader A reiterated the stance that there's only one China and that Taiwan is an inseparable part of the Chinese territory."

Then the newscast goes on to say that our nation's GDP over the last quarter has grown at the right pace following to the vision or our leaders, that a new technology is on track to cure a recalcitrant disease under the great leadership of the Party, and that the new rural policy is bringing unprecedented prosperity to farmers.

If there's any disaster, it would be "Premier so and so visits disaster victims and sends relief materials to their homes. Speedy recovery and reconstruction are underway under the great leadership of our Party and National leaders."

"Now, let's turn to international news." says the newscaster, who's also beaming a stately, showing-the-right-amount-of-teeth-and enthusiasm smile. The international news shows that the self-righteous big bully called the United States is losing it. (My mom has asked me in recent months if I'm really living in crime-ridden streets and if I were riding a horse to work because nobody in America could afford driving anymore. Now she simply turns to other channels when the news hits the "Imperial-America-is-sinking" segment, because the thought of me losing my job and begging in a violence-torn street drives her crazy.)

Sometimes, the newscast ends with a cute little Japanese robot who can clean your shoes while singing, or the release of a new Hollywood blockbuster. (It kinds of trips me here that they promote the hallmark of the capitalist culture from the crumbling imperial America.)

So, are you getting what I'm trying to say? I always emerge from the Chinese newscast with a sense that our great nation is on track to becoming greater in the steady leadership our greatest leaders. Bad things happen, but as long as you have faith in our Party, the leaders' guiding hands will steer us back to peace and prosperity.

Now my days here in the US starts with reading a Washington Post front page story that says the stock market is diving and unemployment rate is soaring. Another headline says the government is assembling a big package to jolt the economy back to life (Thank God!), but then the whole page and a half article tells me nobody knows for sure if this thing is going to work. (Are you telling me that you guys don't have leaders that can fix everything?!) Then an NPR host is interviewing a supposedly well-known economist who predicts that the recession could go on for five years. (Don't all the economists get government memo about how to talk up people's confidence and encourage everyone to buy stuff?)

Great! Now my day has been ruined before it's even started.

Maybe the newspapers wouldn't be dying in droves, had they learned how to do news like the Chinese.

Stumbling to the Unknown

2008-06-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to an older gentleman who's a retired but supposedly legendary journalist. He asked where I was from, and I said China. "Oh," he said, "When I was working for xxx News, we shared a floor with a Korean news service. Also, I hired this girl from Macau. She was just wonderful..."

"That's great!" I smiled and nodded. What I really wanted to say, however, was, "What the %^&*! So I'm supposed to feel some kinship between us, because you happen to know a couple of my yellow-skinned cousins?"

Try that to a white guy: "My college roommate was German. He loved beer."

On a second thought, the legendary journalist's statements weren't really that outrageous. It's just human nature, I figure, to ransack your knowledge for clues and references when you encounter something novel. You search your memory for things that bear some resemblance to the novelty in front. You mark down those things, like familiar landmarks on a map, and then chart a path towards the unknown. Some people just like to think aloud.

When I took Charlie—a six foot three white guy—home with me to a small town in China, he was ogled everywhere he went. People pointed him out, invited their friends to join the sightseeing, and yelled, "look, there's a foreigner!" My family embraced this foreigner, although they were still doing the charting and mapping for a path to understand the novelty. We went to a dinosaur fossil museum in the nearby city. Charlie felt rather at home among those giant dinosaur skeletons, because for the first time in days he wasn't the only big phenomenon. Suddenly, my parents pulled Charlie aside and excitedly told him: "Look, your countrymen over there." They were pointing to a white couple. When the couple walked by us, we listened. They were speaking German.

Charlie's one eighth German, so I guess my parents were not that off.

Almost There

2008-06-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

Bill, a reporter for the radio branch of my company joined me a couple of days later in Chengdu. He speaks little Chinese, so we did our reporting together and I doubled up as his interpreter.

For the entire length of my trip, I tried to avoid contact with the authority, for fear that they would ask me for my credential. Bill had no fear. He wanted voices from “the officialdom,” and I had to be there to translate. As an American citizen, he in general enjoys more protection than I do. Luckily, for the most part we were not asked to present any paperwork.

One day we tried to access Beichuan, where nearly eight thousand had died in the earthquake and thousands more were missing. After hours driving in hairpin mountain roads littered with boulders shaken down the slopes, we were, however, barred from entering. Police told us the town was sealed for fear of disease spreading. Right by the traffic check point, there was a military camp. Soldiers wearing medical masks were spraying disinfectant on vehicles and people coming back from Beichuan.

I walked out of our car and started filming the soldiers at a distance. A few minutes without being noticed, I was emboldened and walked up closer to the camp. Then one soldier, who looked senior to the rest, strode up to me and asked: “Hey, who do you work for?” His tone was casual and friendly.

“Oh, Shanghai TV.” I blurted out.

“Really?” He sounded excited, “I’m from Shanghai, too. Why don’t you stay with us!”

Several other soldiers hustled up and surrounded me. A younger one said: “Yes. Stay with us here. We have female soldiers. You can stay with them.”

“Maybe, maybe tomorrow.” I stuttered, “I have a deadline tonight and I need to get back to my colleagues.”

“What’s your phone number? Give us your phone number.” They were not ready to let me go.

“Eh, I, I don’t know. I mean, I just got this local number yesterday and I can’t remember it. How about you give me mine and I will call you.” I was thinking hard for an exit strategy.

“Who’s that?” One soldier suddenly sounded tense and alert and pointed behind me. I turned around and saw Bill.

“Oh, he? I don’t really know. He’s a hitchhiker we just picked up on the way here.”
I then whispered to Bill, “I told them I don’t know you.”

Keeping a poker face, Bill walked back towards the car.

The soldiers were quiet for a second, as if trying to figure out whether to believe me.

“I, I really need to get back.” I broke the silence, and started peddling back. “My deadline is approaching. It’s really nice to see you all. I’ll visit again tomorrow.” I backed out of the circle, waving them goodbye.

When I got into the car and drove off, they were still watching.

Aftershock

2008-06-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

As soon as I got out of the mountain range, my cell phone was flooded with text messages. My cousin, my another cousin, my parents, and some friends all had the same thing to tell me: a magnitude 6~7 aftershock was in the forecast in the next 24 hours. They all wanted me to be careful.

The night had fallen when I got back to my hotel in Chengdu. I was staying at the International Students’ Center at the Sichuan Normal University. The building was abuzz with activities. Almost every door was open. People were shuttling backpacks, suitcases, luggage, food and water downstairs. Every inch of the lobby was soon covered with bed sheets and comforters. A dozen or so were making such “floor beds” on the basketball court outside.

Seeing the hustling crowd, I felt the urgency to prepare for something major as well. I packed my valuables—computer, video camera, cables, and some money—and staked a corner in the lobby.

Slowly, people settled into their impromptu beds around me. Some were doing their bedtime reading. Some were lying on their backs staring at the ceiling, wearing bicycle helmets. Some were exchanging the latest information about the expected aftershock and complaining about the incessant anxiety they’ve been feeling. Soon all the chatters died down. I sat on the floor, hunched over my computer, which perched on top of my backpack. I had to edit the video I gathered during the day. It took me a couple of hours. Then, I had to go back to my room, which was on the third floor, to connect to the internet and transfer the video back.

I tiptoed around slumbering bodies, and went back upstairs. The upload speed was excruciatingly slow. I had no choice but to sit and wait. I kept the door open, and removed everything from the path to the door. At about 2 am, I was sitting in front of the computer screen, and nodding off. Suddenly, a tremor shot through my spine from my feet. Another one followed immediately. I jumped to my feet, and made a mad dash out of the door and downstairs. Two young men were running besides me, excitedly checking with each other: “Did you feel that? Did you feel that?”

We stopped in the lobby. Not a single one on the floor was stirring. I stood in the dark for a minute. Everything was back to absolute stillness.

I walked back into my room. The video transfer was complete. I passed out in the bed.

Into the Mountain

2008-06-18T15:57:00.001-07:00

It seemed luck was compensating me after a sleepless night stranded in Shanghai. The cab driver who picked me up at the Chengdu Shuangliu Airport told me he had been driving into earthquake stricken towns a lot and that he knew ways to by pass the government's traffic control.

We set off immediately after I dropped off my luggage.

The cabbie's name is Lai Si, and I call him uncle Lai. He told me he had been working as a volunteer, sending rescue supplies to disaster zones and shuttling victims out in the fast few days.

We drove into the mountains. The road became narrower and steeper, some portions partially blocked by boulders or giant piles of mud. The force of the quake had stripped some of the cement surface, pushed some parts up and pressed others down. A four-inch crack split the road in the middle. Uncle Lai deftly navigated on this terrain and tried to stable the vehicle to accommodate my attempt to videotape the scene.

We picked up a villager on our way. A few more miles up in the mountain, he said we had arrived in Hongbai village, or what's left of if—piles of smashed bricks, broken wood columns, pieces of clothes, dangling concrete frames. Abandoned chickens and pigs were roaming in the debris looking for food. For miles and miles, not a single building was standing. The village used to sit in a valley. The villager pointed across the valley and showed us a mountainside covered by a yellow blanket of mud and rocks. "More than a dozen families," the villager said, "were buried by the landslide over there."

Some survivors moved to government supplied tents, but there were not enough for everyone. On the roadside stood a makeshift tent haphazardly cobbled together with wood columns and tarp. A woman stooped outside of the tent, washing some odd pieces of frying pans and bowls. I walked over and said: "Hi, sorry for interrupting." She looked up, eyes swollen, and stared at me blankly.

"Could you, could you tell me what happened?" I stuttered.

"My house was here." She murmured, raised one arm slightly and gestured towards the tent. The gesture seemed to be too much for her. Her arm collapsed into her body, her head dropped, lower than before, and started to scrub a pan again and again. It was too much for me, too. I turned my video camera away and walked back to my car.

Many soldiers and volunteers had arrived. They were busy distributing food and water and spray the debris with disinfectant. No one could tell how many died in the village.

Some told me more than a thousand had perished. One villager said the death toll was much higher than that. All said that the local government tried to understate the casualties to higher ups initially. They believed it delayed rescue and relief for them as attention was turned to other hard-hit counties and villages.

Uncle Lai called me back to the car and told me that we'd better head back before it turned dark. Deeper in the mountains, there are still towns that haven't been heard since the earthquake.

On our way back, a medical team stopped us and sprayed our car and ourselves with disinfectant.

Stranded

2008-06-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

It's 10:07 pm now, and I'm sitting in a hotel room, still staring at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, which looks like a giant cocoon lit from within.

First Air China told us that the flight was delayed, arrival time unknown. Then it directed everybody on that flight to Shanghai Airlines, who agreed to take us in on its 7:30 pm flight to Chengdu. We had only thirty minutes to check-in, pass the security and board the plane. Immediately, there were people sprinting frantically all over the place. By the time my turn came, I had only twenty-two minutes. The agent took my passport, typed on the keyboard, and looked up at me blankly: "You are not in our system." "What?!!" I felt my fingers turning cold. "We don't have your record. Go back to check with Air China."

I left my luggage behind and raced to an Air China's counter.

"Yes, you are in our system. Here's your ticket number. Go back to Shanghai Airlines."

I raced back to Shanghai Airlines.

"No, we still don't have your record."

Finally, I brought an Air China agent over to a Shanghai Airlines counter. Ten minutes was left. The two spent five minutes conferencing, and they figured it out.

The Air China agent told me because I booked my flight in the US through the United Airlines, which has a "Star Alliance" agreement with Air China, I can only travel with Air China, not anyone else. The United Airlines could have cut a deal with Shanghai Airlines, but the United had closed their operation two hours ago.

All other Air China 4502 passengers successfully boarded the Shanghai Airlines flight to Chengdu, but me.

Since there's no need to hurry now, I started asking Air China agents what's happening to the delayed flight. Here's what's going on.

The Chengdu Shuangliu Airport—the only one in the city—is being used primarily for military flights for earthquake rescue efforts. All passenger flights have to wait in line for intervals between military flights, which are ten minutes openings every several hours. Right then, there was no telling when the Air China flight would be able to get an opening to fly back to Shanghai, so technically, the flight wasn't canceled, but "delayed indefinitely." In addition, two if Air China flights during the day were already taken away to transfer medical and other emergency supplies.

And because all those situations were above the control of Air China, the company would not pay for my hotel room tonight!

I started calling the headquarter and Chengdu contacts, sputtering mad. Air China's duty manager walked up to me and said: "We decided to put you on a Sichuan Airlines flight and we will work out a deal with United Airlines tomorrow. You should be able to leave at 9:30 pm." I was ecstatic. The manger took me to another terminal and handed me over to Sichuan Airlines's manager. "We are delayed indefinitely, too." She said, looking amused, "We are in the same shoes as you guys are and our flight is still stranded in Chengdu." My hope was dashed again.

So here I am, in an Airport hotel room, hoping to catch the earliest flight to Chengdu tomorrow.

The Sichuan I know

2008-06-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

At an Air China's check-in counter at Shanghai Pudong Airport, the agent took a look at me and asked: "Why? Sichuan? Now?" "Yes," I nodded, "That's home." Yet never have I had such a heavy heart on my way home.

I used to travel by train from Beijing to Sichuan for my summer breaks in college. It's a thirty-two hour ride, starting from the dry and gray industrial north and sweeping horizontally to the arid and sandy west before heading south. When the train started streaking through one after another long tunnels, I knew home was close. The air smelled damper and the sight outside of the window became greener. My heart was instantly filled with joy.

Sichuan sits in a basin, surrounded by giant mountains. The mountains are its bless and its curse. They lock in moist and give the basin abundant rain, which nurtures its rich soil. The Chengdu Plain on which the provincial capital Chengdu sits has been an important grain-producing base since ancient times. Yet the mountains, in older times, isolated Sichuan from the rest of the world. An ancient poet famously lamented: " Roads to Sichuan are harder than the path to the sky." Nowadays, Sichuan is reachable by plane, by train, and even by bus. Curvy and narrow roads are carved on the faces of the rocky mountains. However, those are treacherous rides. The wheels have to navigate between straight down cliffs on one side and occasionally falling rocks on the other, all the while responding to sharp turns. The earthquake shook loose the mountains and caused landslides. After the first wave of tremors, all roads to the epicenter were blocked off.

Despite the difficulty to climb the mountains, Sichuan people spread far and wide, some escaping abject poverty and hardship brought by isolation, others curious about the world on the other side of the mountains. Sichuanese outside of Sichuan are seen as some of the most industrious people. They bring Sichuan cuisine with them wherever they go (which does not, however, include General Zuo's Chicken). Almost all Sichuan dishes are dominated by flaming spiciness and an indescribable fragrance that causes a numbing and tingling sensation on the tongue. Sichuan chefs can blend those two strong flavors seamlessly with a variation of many other spices and bring out the natural flavors of the ingredients. Sichuan people always try to replicate the perfect Sichuan dishes they remember. Yet they are forever lamenting that nothing is as authentic as those they can have at home.

Strangely, just as Sichuanese migrants are known as a hardworking bunch, life in Sichuan is famously slow. Chengdu, with its mild weather, scenic landscape, delicious food, and leisurely pace, is one of the top cities to retire into.

So as the train rumbled through the mountain's endless tunnels, I felt stress gone and heart lighter. There at home, I would meet my childhood friends. Our days were filled with visiting our favorite restaurants and looking for new ones, strolling aimlessly through streets and alleys, tasting all kinds of fruit-flavored drinks, napping, playing poker games or trekking to the countryside. When night came, a breeze chasing away the humid and stifling heat, we would find a roadside grill stall, drink icy beer, munch spicy kabobs and chat deep into the night.

It's no longer the same. The earthquake changed everything. Luckily, family and friends are unhurt, but they are shaken. Tens of thousands have perished. The living are terrorized by aftershocks, fear of nearby dams collapsing, nuclear plants leading, diseases, and tortured by rumors of more strikes to come.

This time, I'm not going back to the Sichuan I know.

Get Out of the Way

2008-06-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

When I first moved to Washington, DC, my friend Joe had been there for six whole weeks. He was near the end of a summer internship at a Capitol Hill news shop. Joe and I went to the same college at a small town in Ohio. Seventy percent of the population in town belonged to a fraternity or sorority. Joe and I didn’t belong to any. We became friends because we had a hard time associating with others.
So as my friend, Joe felt obligated to help me navigate DC. He started with the metro. When we were standing on an escalator at the Dupont Circle station, he told me: “You don’t want to stand on the left. The left half is for people who want to walk or run.” He leaned closer and whispered to me: “People will yell at you if you stand on the left AND they think you are a tourist.” He then leaned back, nodding and looking at me from a corner of his eye with an eyebrow lifted, as if saying: “I know you think it’s ridiculous, but don’t say I didn’t tell you.” I did think it was ridiculous, so I said: “How long does it take for us to stand and ride up? Thirty seconds? How many seconds can you save by racing to the top? Ten seconds? Big deal!” I was also annoyed by his patronizing manner. He had been in DC for less than two months and he thought he knew so much better than me.
Several days later, Joe went back to Ohio to finish college. I stayed. He called me and said he missed DC. He missed the Capitol, the Krispy Kreme shop at Dupont Circle, and cab drivers who listen to C-SPAN radio and talk politics with all sorts of accents. Most of all, he missed the metro. He said he always felt lifted up in the morning riding to Union Station, when a train conductor announced: “This is the red train to Glenmont,” and dragged out the “en” so it became “GLEEEN-mont.” He wanted to leave Ohio as soon as possible.
I was sympathetic. I didn’t just leave that small town in Ohio. I fled it. It’s pretty and cozy. People were nice. But I resented been told: “You don’t look like you grew up in China. You are quite fashionable.” I also got tired of answering questions like “How did you manage to escape from China?”
In DC, nobody make any effort to welcome me to America. Almost everyone is from somewhere else. I can hear at least three languages at any random Starbucks anytime. No one seems to think they need to speak English slower to me. No one bothers to teach me how to dress American.
I’ve been in this city for more than three years now. When I ride the metro, I mostly stand on the escalators and wait for them to hoist me to the top. I’m too lazy to harvest the ten seconds I can save by walking up, even if I’m late for work. I stand strictly on the right, and I have developed an inconsolable anger at people who stand on the left, even though they are not in my way. It was just timid frustration when I was still relatively new in town, as I wasn’t sure whether I should identify with the locals or the newbies who are still learning their way around. I was also not sure whether it’s legitimate to fuss over such a trivial thing. The feeling grew steadier and stronger as I began to see myself as one of the town folks. I also understood the anger wasn’t about not being able to run and save time at all. It’s about preserving an etiquette, an etiquette agreed upon and diligently observed by all Washingtonians. It’s about protecting a norm, a norm to acknowledge that people have diverse needs and that all options should be kept open to accommodate the needs. In a city with such a fluid population, etiquette and norms can only be maintained if they are told to newcomers and visitors. The act is a little condescending but not hostile. It’s just one way to help newbies blend in.
Small town and big city America have different ways to say “Welcome to our town.” The former says: “You poor thing from a developing country, please enjoy America’s freedom and prosperity.” The latter says: “I am not in your business if you are not in my way,” as is exemplified in the metro escalator admonition. I appreciate both, but I’m more comfortable with big city’s tough love. In a small town, I am always a poor thing from a communist country. In a city like Washington DC, I have a shot at becoming a local.
Yet despite my strong feelings about enforcing law and order, I never spoke up and told the left-standers to move. I get nervous when I have to raise my voice, and my accent thickens when I’m nervous, so what should have sounded righteous and dignified would come out an unintelligible and embarrassing blur. I always feel redeemed, when someone else finally shouts: “ Could you please not stand on the left!” and watch those blocking the pathway scurry and scramble. I feel justice is upheld.
I kept my silence until most recently. One morning I emerged from the Capitol South station. The crowd split into two lines at the bottom of the escalator. People who wanted to wait to be heaved up moved the the right. Those who needed to rush charged along the left lane. I inched toward the right, getting ready to enjoy the twenty-seconds of doing-nothingness while the escalator hauled me to the top. The hustling rhythm on the left halted abruptly, when a young man in front of me stepped on to the escalator and stopped. He was in a T-shirt and blue jeans and carried a back-pack. He hang his head over a city map and was apparently unaware of his surroundings. With a surge of anger and a sense of justice, I cleared my throat, and said loudly and deliberately: “Excuse me!” Everyone around jerked their heads towards me, including the young man. I then jabbed my thumb toward the right and said: “Would you mind?” He appeared startled, and scrambled to move out of my way. I strode up wearing some remnant indignation on my face. But inside, I felt ecstatic. I felt I just completed a rite of passage. I defended the law of MY city. In a city where everyone is from somewhere else, I’m finally one of the locals.

New Hampshire Primary-Day 1

2008-01-05T23:00:00.002-08:00

Let's See It All

2007-11-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

Everyone loves the farmer’s market, right? Everything is fresh. Everyone is friendly. The atmosphere is leisurely and little...bourgeois.

That’s definitely NOT how a farmer’s market works in China!

Let me introduce you to my hometown. First of all, the town doesn’t have a grocery store so everyone has to shop in a farmer’s market. When I call it a farmer’s market, it’s just a street or several street blocks where vendors and farmers gather. Imagine a one-way only beat-up street in Manhattan, lined by dimly-lit restaurants, deli shops, and convenience stores. On the curbs in front of the shops, vendors sit by their stalls densely loaded with sacks of colorful spices and dehydrated foods such as marinated squids, smoked quails, or cured pork. Along the curbs in the street, farmers stoop over their baskets or vinyl sheets, guarding handfuls of freshly picked vegetables. The customers, also stooping over the baskets or vinyl sheets, pick through the produce and stand up from time to time to make room for bicycles, motorcycles, pedicabs and occasionally cars that are worming through the crowd.

Here in the US farmer’s market shoppers and stall owners act as if they were best friends. They exchange the latest recipes, chat about the year’s harvest, and share information about each other’s family members. They don’t haggle. People in an American farmer’s market are not there for the prices--neither the farmers nor the customers--or so they pretend. They are there because they share resentment and contempt towards grocery store products laden with chemicals and straining to appear fresh through dubious injections and frequent sprinkling. They are there because they share the belief that cooking and eating are not just necessity but an art form. They are there for a lifestyle they consider priceless. Therefore, haggling over money is forbidden.

In a Chinese farmer’s market, the typical customer and the typical farmer or vendor are enemies. They bargain, cajole, intimidate and plead to try to wrangle a few cents from each other. They are like Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong sitting at the negotiation table, each calculating his own chips and scoping out the other’s bottom line. Here’s how they talk to each other:

Customer: How much does your bean sprout sell for?

Farmer: Five Jiao (about six cents) a kilogram.

Customer: What? You’d better rob me! It’s getting dark. Your stuff is not that fresh anymore, and the market is going to close soon. You would have to take your sprouts back and let it rot if you don’t sell it to me. How about Four Jiao?

Farmer: You are kidding me! Look how crisp they are! I picked them fresh from the field this morning, and walked three hours from the Shuangxi village here. The market is just getting busy. Five Jiao!

Customer: You are from Shuangxi!? I grew up there! See, we are from the same place. You have to give me some discount.

Farmer: Then you know how tough life is there in the rural village. I work year round and can barely feed my two children. Now one of them is going to college.

Customer: Ok. How about four and a half Jiao? It’s more than fair! Farmer: No. I know the prices around, and I can’t go below five.

Customer: (Walking away tentatively) I’m sure I can find better deals from someone else.

Farmer: All right, all right! Four and a half...only because we are from the same village. Don’t tell others that you got this deal from me. What a crummy deal. My whole day’s labor won’t even pay for our dinner tonight...

Now let’s go to the meat and poultry section.

I know what you have in mind--neatly packaged meat under clear plastic wraps showing the perfect pinkish hue--deep enough to demonstrate the freshness yet light enough to avoid association with blood. So it reminds you that it’s cut from some animal that’s moving and chewing until most recently, but it doesn’t prod you to think how that animal becomes those chunks of meat stacked on the stall. Actually those packages look so innocent that you might as well think they are “harvested” somewhere like apples plucked from the tree.

Chinese meat is not packaged. Slabs of pork or beef or lamp dangle from steel hooks. They are fresh all right, because some are dripping blood. You tell the seller how much you want from which section of which slab. He or she grabs that slap, whacks a chunk off, slits a hole in that chunk, puts a straw string through that hole, ties a knot and hands you your purchase. Right besides the meat, livers and kidneys are also hanging from hooks. On the counter, it’s an assortment of pig heads, bones, and tails. So when you take your purchase into your hand, whether it’s a chunk of meat, a liver, or a pig ear, you know you are taking home a part of a recently alive animal, and the brutal evidence of the murdering and dismembering of that creature is lying right in front of your eyes.

There are chicken, ducks, and rabbits, too--carcasses hanging down from wooden stakes right besides cages of live ones waiting to become carcasses. You want your food to be fresh? Here’s the real deal. Say you are thinking of a spicy rabbit stir-fry for dinner. You stare into the cages at those long-eared creatures huddling tightly together, some still munching grass, maybe stick one of your fingers into the cage and poke at some to feel the thickness of their meat underneath their white or gray fur. You’ve made up your mind and point out your chosen one to the vendor. He lifts the hatch on the cage, grabs your choice by its ears and pulls it out, its legs kicking in the air. I won’t go into further details for the sake of the faint-hearted, but at the end of the story is your chosen rabbit slaughtered and skinned in front your eyes and you going home with a warm rabbit carcass for your rabbit stir-fry.

The thing is, I don’t feel there’s anything morbid about the whole thing. We eat meat. We crave rabbit stir-fries, steaks, and chicken soup. WE are calling for the death of all the animals we consume. We are as much their murderers as those who slit open their throats. So let’s witness the murders. Let’s see the blood. Let’s watch how lives are taken. We don’t need to be shielded from our guilt. We know what we are taking home. And we’re going to swallow our guilt along with the meat.

In Chinese, “pork” is “zhu rou,” which is literally “pig’s meat.” “Beef” is “niu rou,” which is “cow’s meat,” and so on. So it’s given to you straight: meat comes from whole animals! Don’t even try to think it’s something else.

Because we know we are taking lives away, we honor the lives by consuming almost everything from the slain creatures--meat, organs, intestines, heads, feet, ears and eyes.

But there are side effects from being life-long murder scene witnesses, too. When Americans see ducks and ducklings filing through highways, they stop and wait and say: “Look, how cute.” Chinese stop and wait (if they are in the US), and think: “Mmmm, duck soup.”

Out in the Open

2007-11-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

So I was riding in a train to a rural village in Shandong Province. I was lucky enough to get a seat. Many were standing, squatting, sitting on their luggage or floating along the narrow corridor between two columns of seats. My seat was at the end of the car besides the joint of two cars. More people were standing, squatting, or floating around on the joint. That area also hosted two bathrooms and two sinks. People were chatting loudly, but I hardly had any clue what they are talking. Yes, I am Chinese and they were too, but they were speaking a Shandong dialect to which my ears had been barely trained. The train was air-conditioned, but with so many warm bodies jammed together, I was sweating bullets. Everyone else was too. And because the train was air-conditioned, all windows were closed. Soon the air was a cocktail of sweat, smoke, all types of body scents, and wafts from the bathrooms.

I sat beside a young woman with a baby. She told me that the baby’s name was Junyan. Junyan, like any new arrival in the world, scoped everything up by grabbing, tugging, licking and biting. Soon she’s all over my backpack, my glasses, and my tank top straps. Suddenly her kicking and tugging stopped. I turned my head her way and find her serenely latched to a breast and sucking happily. I withdrew my sight in a hurry and overcompensated my visual intrusion by turning my body completely sideway to face the opposite window. I waited for ten minutes to return to my normal position but found it impossible. The guy sitting opposite to me had stretched across the aisle between us and placed his legs underneath my seat. He was sound asleep, but all of a sudden he jerked up and pulled his legs back as if his toes had been bitten by a snake. His abrupt movement was accompanied by a “shhhh” sound from my side. Junyan was held upright in the air with her legs spread out and a stream rushing out in between. (Later an attendant lectured us for dripping water all over the floor. I was shocked and felt embarrassed, but I couldn’t remember if I had always felt one should not breast-feed and let her baby go potty in the open, or I had adopted such social etiquette during my time in the US.

Later, I felt embarrassed for being embarrassed. Sure, it’s easy to tell the mom to find a room or take her baby to the bathroom, but try to do those yourself in a jammed train. We were in space where elbows were shoved into ribs. The path to the bathroom was blocked by bodies, suitcases, buckets and crates. The bathroom doors were guarded by giant sacks and men leaning besides them.

I also have to admit, though, Chinese women do these things when they can afford not to as well.

Charlie has several scenes etched in his memory from his stay in China. In Shanghai, he says, (Yes, Shanghai, the most metropolitan and most westernized city in China) people often lounge outside their apartment buildings on street curbs in the summer. They sit on stools and cool themselves with paper fans. They chat and stare and point when a six foot three white dude like Charlie passes by. And then right there, in the midst of streams of pedestrians, bicyclists, pedicabs, cars and the din of the city, a woman is suckling her baby, her shirt rolled all the way up to her collar bones.

Now let’s go to Beijing. Chang’an Jie, the street that runs by the Tian’an Men Square is the broadest and most famous street in the nation. Columns of automobiles barrel along the center artery. Knots of bicycles charge in the side lanes flanking the auto zone. Floods of pedestrians flow on the curbs--tourists pausing for pictures, locals rushing to work, college couples locking arms sauntering along. Then a woman is squatting by the flower bed, holding a baby by its buttock, a steady stream flowing between its legs and vanishing into the soil. At the same time, she may be making cajoling sounds to her baby in order to expedite the business or chatting with her companion who’s standing idly by. No ones gives her a second glance or barely the first. The universe keeps revolving.

When Charlie recounts those encounters with utter amazement, I feel stung. A thousand years ago, my ancestors called his ancestors “western barbarians.” How did we evolve into the uncivilized bunch and the former barbarians are shaking heads at our mannerism?

There must explanations. After all, we are a civilization of five thousand years.
Let’s begin with the breasts.

In Woman, An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier argues that there are two sets of breasts--the maternal breast and the aesthetic breast. “The maternal breast soothes us and invites us to rest. The aesthetic breast arouses us, grabs us by the collar or the bodice, and so it is used on billboards and magazine covers and everywhere we turn.” Because the aesthetic breast is aggressive, we demand our women to conceal them with bras of the right thickness that can oppress the protruding nipples, blunt the shape of breasts into dull curves, and restrain their movements. Yet bras, to my knowledge, are as western an invention as hamburgers. My grandmas never used a single pair of bras in their lives. So maybe the aesthetic breasts are something of a western invention as well. Angier says: “Because the display of the beckoning breast is aggressive and ubiquitous in the United States, we are said to be unusually, even pathologically, breast-obsessed. In other cultures, including parts of Africa and Asia, breasts are pedestrian.” She cites Emily Martin, a cultural historian as saying: “From my research in China, it’s very clear that the breast is much less sexualized there than it is in American culture. It’s neither hidden nor revealed in any particular way in women’s dress or undergarments. In many villages, women sit in the sun with their breasts exposed, and older women will be out washing their clothes with their breasts exposed, and it’s all completely irrelevant to erotic arousal.”

Chinese for “breast” is “rufang.” It literally means “the container of milk.” In Chinese eyes, breasts generate milk. That’s it. Plain and simple. Without the aid of a stretched imagination, the word itself hardly conjures any sexual implication. So maybe breasts are much less sexual objects in Chinese culture than in the western culture to begin with?

Angier also says: “ When we find the image of a breast-feeding mother lovely or appealing, we do so by negating the aesthetic breast in our minds and focusing on the bond between mother and infant, on the miraculous properties that we imagine human milk to have, or on thoughts of warmth, comfort, and love recalled from our childhood.” If the aesthetic breast is non-existent in the Chinese culture to begin with, no negating and focusing efforts are necessary. If a mother is using her breasts to do what breasts are supposed to do--generating milk and suckling her young, which is lovely and appealing, absent of implications added by imaginative minds, why should be embarrassed about it?

Now let’s talk about baby urine. I remember the following conversation between me and my aunt.

My aunt was holding my baby cousin in the air who was peeing on a street curb. I jumped several feet away, frowning and covering my nose with one hand.
“Ew! It’s gross.” The teenaged me said.

“What’s all the fuss? It’s just baby pee. It’s clean and smell-less.” Said my aunt.
The teenaged me remained credulous and took a big detour around the little puddle formed on the curb.

Now the adult me thinks my aunt’s argument deserves certain credibility. Here Angiers again about human milk: “ The lactose in the milk ensures that very ion of calcium will be used instead of just peed away, as is much of the calcium that you get from drinking, say, fortified orange juice. The baby digests the proteins in the milk down to the last amino acid, which is why a suckling infant’s used diapers hardly smell: there’s very little waste matter, very little excreted protein, to lend a stench.” So if baby pee is practically water, what’s all the fuss about it? And above all, if you have been in Beijing, you’ll know that a public bathroom is really hard to come by.

Deeper than Skin

2007-10-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Ohio four years ago after flying half the world from Beijing. On a bright summer afternoon, I experienced my first jet of cultural-shock. In front of my apartment building, a scantily-clad young girl spread her limbs on a patch of grass. She then relaxed in the amber sunlight as if she didn’t know it could bake her brown!

I was even more dumbfounded when I learned that she eagerly anticipated to look brown. At that time I would die to look as milky-white as she did, because where I am from, the lighter the better.

Chinese beauties are subtle and delicate. Their skins appear as pale as a snowflake. The legend goes that a real snow-white beauty could melt under the gentle touch of a warm finger tip. Therefore, Chinese ladies put on sun blocks advertised to prevent tanning, AND wear wide-brimmed hats or carry umbrellas so as to stay in the shadow on a sunny day. If God forbids, tanning happens, they would immediately apply lotions that are supposed to reverse “the darkening process.”

Unfortunately, none of those procedures could work for me. When I was born, I looked as if I came out of a furnace instead of my mother’s womb. My complexion was so aberrantly dark that my parents’ friends couldn’t even fake adoration at the sight of me. After a few seconds of silence, maybe internally reconciling being polite and being honest, the best they could produce was: “Maybe she’ll be a rugged kid.”

It turned out that I had to be rugged in order to survive numerous humiliating moments through childhood and adolescence. When boys whizzed by and yelled at me “charcoal” or “toast,” evoking roaring laughter from everyone around, I swallowed tears and looked indifferent. Trying to prop up my shrinking self-esteem, mom would say: “It’s ok, At least you are smart.” I know she meant well.

So after a lifetime bracing for the fact that all I had for me was inner beauty, I was overjoyed to discover that Americans adore tanned girls. I don’t have to hide my brown limbs in long sleeves and pants in sweltering summers, or coil in self-pity under inquisitive stares. It’s liberating!

After the initially ecstasy wore off, however, I decided my appreciation of this aesthetic difference between Chinese and Americans should not just be skin-deep. I started asking: “Why?” After months’ of observation and deliberation, I concluded that Chinese and Americans actually think the SAME.

In China, people associate suntan with outdoor labor, such as construction and peasantry. Those jobs are called “bitter labor” because they are physically demanding but produce meager rewards. Although the communist party advocates for equality among all professions and promotes slogans such as “every profession produces champions,” people look at “bitter laborers” with both pity and scorn. On the other hand, “those who work in offices” command respect and envy, because they are the decision makers and monetarily better-off. Since the office-sitters are sheltered from the sun in their daily routines, they are able to preserve lighter complexions. In a word, dark skin usually comes from bitter labor, which equals lower class, and less privilege.

In the US, people associate suntan with outdoor sports or beach vacations. A tan is only sexy when it’s displayed on well-groomed skin, and accompanied by leisurely manner and trendy attire. An often heard compliment to a tan goes: “Look like you got some sun. Back from a vacation?” Those who look pale, in contrast, often are scorned as being “office slaves.” So the poor and pale toil away in front of computers, while the wealthy and tanned sprawl on the beach and sip tropic drinks.

Therefore, my theory is that both Chinese and Americans associate beauty with privilege.
All that said, I still relish in my skin-deep pleasure when Americans adore my permanent tan. Last week, when I was lingering in front of a skin-care product counter in a Chinese store, the sales assistant touted to me all sorts of whitening lotions. I said: “I don’t want to be whitened,” and walked away. It felt GOOD.