The Friendship Factor

Lesson #3: Make Chinese Friends

The most important thing you can do when going to China is to come with an open mind and a positive attitude.  If you find yourself continually disillusioned about the fact that things aren’t just like they are at home, then you will have missed the whole point in coming. 

The second most important thing you need to do when coming to China is to make Chinese friends.  It’s one thing to be an outsider and make visual observations about what you see and what you think Chinese culture is.  It’s another thing entirely to live within that culture and have a personal guide to lead you through the labyrinth of traditions and cultural norms.  Though there are many reasons to become close friends with some of the locals, the three benefits that have been most significant to me are food, traveling, and love.

Food:  As in many other cultures, one way the Chinese express their gratitude or care is through food.  They will want to take you out to a nice restaurant and I guarantee they will order things you would never dream of trying on your own.  Because of this, if you are a vegetarian I suggest you adopt a very lenient policy.  I prefer not to eat meat, and my Chinese friends know this, yet even so they still cooked meat for me when they invited me to dinner.  Since being here I have sampled pig trotters, eel, a bizarre salami looking type of meat, duck, and a fish eyeball (though admittedly that was on accident and I promptly spit it out). 

One of the best things about the way Chinese eat is that it’s essentially buffet style.  You order several dishes as a group and they are placed on a spinning bit of circular glass in the middle of the table.  You are then able to serve yourself little bits of whatever you want to try.  This is a much more communal way of eating, and I know that when I head back to the states it will be frustrating to have to settle for ordering only one thing for myself at a restaurant.  Another added benefit of eating meals with your Chinese friends is they will help you learn Mandarin because most of them don’t speak English, so a large portion of the time you are simply listening and trying to pick out words here and there that you recognize. 

Traveling:  If at all possible, try to make friends with Chinese people who have a car.  The first Chinese friend I made only had a motorcycle, but he knew I wanted to see some ancient villages so he got a hold of some friends of his that had a car and arranged for them to take me and my roommates out for a day of exploring some mountains in the region.  It turns out that an entire group of them decided to come along, and the only person who could speak any English was the 15 year old daughter, Julie.  What I thought was going to be a very awkward day turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve had since coming to China.  Not only did we get to see some incredible places, but everyone in the group was so much fun and after a while I started to forget that there is even a language barrier at all.  When you’re having a good time, certain things don’t need to be translated. 

The first stop on our journey was a place called Egret Island.  This was a relatively new National Park, with a lake that is really just a man-made reservoir and where the forests are all planted in perfectly linear rows and the trees are still in their awkward gangly teenage phase.  On our way home we made an impulse stop at a Liangya mountain.  Famous poets have been coming to this site to gain inspiration for hundreds of years, and both the stones and trees in this forest proudly exhibited their scars and stood with a stooping solidarity that let you know they had been guardians here for a long, long time.  On this journey with our new friends, we saw the juxtaposition of old and new, and got treated to a day of near perfection.  Even the weather Gods seemed happy and warm, and cooperated by lifting any traces of the standard Anhui haze.  We climbed the stairway to heaven and when perched on top of the pagoda at the apex I could almost swear that we really had climbed to somewhere beyond the bounds of this heavy, gravity-ridden earth.

 When you start a friendship off with a day like that, it is very easy to maintain, and many more happy memories have since been made with my Chinese ‘family.’ 

Love: Many Chinese friends have a limited ability to speak English, so they pick only the most basic and important words.  Often times this means they say things like, “I like you”  “you have beautiful heart” “Today I am very happy with you”  “I am happy you are beautiful friend.”  You don’t need many words to express love, appreciation, happiness, care and thankfulness.  As you spend time together swapping your cultures and your languages back and forth, you start to realize that those treasured feelings of warmth and love that you left behind with your family and friends are suddenly found again amongst a group of strangers.    

Summary: If you come to China, make friends with some local Chinese people as quickly as possible.  Though the people may seem standoff-ish at first, you quickly learn that they are very giving.  Not only will they give you food, gifts and the occasional free vacation, but they will also give their hearts. 

*Extra Credit: When you go to China or anywhere with a vastly different culture, one of the values of making friends with local people is that you get to experience their culture.  An added bonus is that you have an opportunity to share special parts of your culture with them if you choose to.  In an upcoming case study we will learn how to host a Thanksgiving in Hefei!

Baby Got Back

Case Study #1: Buttless Baby Breeches

·         Day 1: Got off the airplane; it’s a stuffy, smallish airport.  Weather outside is gray, humid, and hot.  Looks similar to thick San Francisco fog, but suspect that the gray here is primarily just smog.  Since no signs are in English, I followed the herd of people that I recognized from my flight over to the baggage claim area.  There are only two belts.   Guess I’m in the right place.   Looking around I’ve noticed a few things right off the bat: I’m the only foreigner in the room, the people are much taller than I expected, and several people have luxury Versace looking luggage but instead of the traditional V emblem dappled everywhere, there are golden embroidered Mickey Mouses.  Lastly, and most alarmingly, I just spied a little boy whose pants are split completely down the back.  I wasn’t expecting to see a full moon my first day in China, but there it is.  His pants are missing the essential fabric from the top of his butt crack to practically his ankles.  He’s only a tiny little bugger so I suppose they have different standards of modesty here, but still, I can’t believe his parents haven’t fixed his pants or given him new ones.   Furthermore, he isn’t wearing any diapers.  That’s just an accident waiting to happen.

·         Day 2: The weather outside is gray, humid and hot.  Am now certain that the San Francisco-esque fog is really just smog.  Was walking on the street and saw two more children/toddlers with pants split down the backside.  Have determined that assless chaps are the common fashion trend for the youngsters here.  Cuts down on waste from diapers I suppose; but what happens when the kids have to go to the bathroom?

·         Day 3: Was walking along the busy streets of downtown Hefei and nearly stepped in a small stream of water coming from the steps outside a restaurant.  At first assumed it was just the liquid that drips from all the air conditioners everywhere.  Looked down directly to my right and saw a grandma holding a small baby out over the steps.  The baby was relieving himself almost directly onto my leg.  Grandma didn’t seem fazed.   Neither did any of the people around.  Will now be much more cautious anytime I am walking near a suspicious puddle.

·         End of week 1: Have now seen the assless chaps in action in a wide array of places.  In the middle of a crowded street, over a garbage can on the bus, on the granite steps outside of a KFC.  I guess these partial-pants are more convenient for immediate relief.  Clearly none of the locals find anything strange about youngsters’ private parts being unabashedly displayed to the public, nor are they offended by the bathroom practices, so I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it.

·         End of week 2: Was walking to the bus stop and noticed a young girl squatting by one of the nicely planted young trees that lines the road.  Squatting is normal here, people of all ages squat anytime they have a minute to rest.  I don’t mean to say they are going to the bathroom, they are merely squatting.  This little girl (not actually all that little, maybe 10 years old or so) had her pants around her ankles though, so clearly she wasn’t just squatting to take a break.  By now I had gotten used to seeing youngsters going pee whenever and wherever they needed to with little concern about being completely visible to anyone passing by.  To my utter horror, this girl was not going pee.  And her parents and lots of people were right there watching her!  My world was shaken, now not only did I have to watch out for piles of poochie poo, but I would have to look out for toddler terds as well.

·         Lessons learned: Watch your step.  Don’t freak out when you see babies that only appear to be three quarters of the way dressed.  Don’t walk to close to a grandparent that is holding a baby in sitting position.  If you are standing near a baby with buttless breaches on the bus, make sure you are out of the firing range.  Better yet, move away just to make sure.  

Supplementary reading: visit this site  and my photo gallery

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto

Lesson 2: Embrace the Chaos

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”  My advice to anyone coming to China is to make up your mind to be happy here before you leave home.  Though there will always be challenges and frustrating moments, learn to smile through them.  In the end you will be rewarded.

After the initial shock of arriving in China, I resolved to enjoy as many moments as possible, and discovered that there is plenty to love about this gritty, abrasive place.  For one, I liked that I got the master suite in the apartment.  I would be sharing the apartment with two guys, so the managers gave me the big room because it has a separate bathroom.  This is one of the few times in China that it worked to my advantage to be a girl.  Another thing I liked was my roommates themselves.  They are both from London and are complete gentlemen.  We all got along well right off the bat, and it was comforting to know that I would have some fellow-sufferers to relate with.  It didn’t take long for us to find things to lament about.

The first few days I found the moldy walls in my room and the occasional septic odors that wafted from the bathroom a bit jarring.  Though we are fortunate enough to have western style toilets, they resemble the ones you find in motorhomes in that there is no water in the bowl and the pipes aren’t bent, so there is nothing to prevent the stench from escaping.  In an effort to combat this smell, I would open all the windows in my room.  This merely served to let the dust, asbestos (I’m guessing on that one, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least), and chemical fumes in from the construction site next door.  Ultimately, time was the only solution to my problems.  The more days that passed, the more desensitized I got.  More accurately, the more days that passed, the more I encountered far more offensive odors and unpleasant issues that made my apartment woes seem fairly minor.  For example, the stench from the squat pots at the schools thoroughly permeates the halls.  Mercifully, most of the halls are just outdoor corridors; if they weren’t I swear, if someone were to light a cigarette there would be a Christmas Vacation style explosion from all the lingering gasses.  Though the random sewage smells distressed me in the beginning, I am now used to it and tend to laugh when I encounter any new attack on my poor nostrils.  I’ve stopped thinking of it as weird and wrong and merely think of it as China. 

There are other things that struck me as odd at first, but are now in the same bracket of things that merely define China.  One such thing is the fact that everything over here breaks.  I had assumed that the “made in China” moniker that is a symbol of things being cheaply made and prone to falling apart before they’re out of the box wouldn’t apply here.  I guess I thought they were hoarding all of their good, quality products for themselves.  Wrong.  The Chinese don’t seem to be phased by constantly having to fix things, or having to replace them entirely.  This applies to construction as well.  In Hefei, they are constantly tearing down new buildings to put up newer ones.  While I found this incredibly wasteful and senseless at first, I now accept it as simply being Chinese.  Over here, a lot of things don’t make sense.  The sooner you learn to accept that, the better off you’ll be.  Additionally, if you can learn to laugh about it, you’ll find yourself smiling a whole heck of a lot. 

There is an endless list of things one must learn to embrace (or at least attempt to shrug off) about China in order to enjoy and/or appreciate this place.  Some of the more entertaining ones include food, fashion (or lack thereof), life on the highway, unapologetic staring, spitting, and buttless baby breaches.  I will highlight these in case studies in the upcoming lessons. 

Until then, here is one of my thoughts on China: Though I have a love-hate relationship with China (heavily weighted on the love side), one of the things I am thankful for is that I will always have a greater appreciation for the things I left behind at home.     

September & October in review

TEN THINGS I MISS:

1.       Signs in English.  (Though admittedly Chinglish is a highly entertaining alternative)

2.       Bathrooms that have a toilet you can sit on and not just a hole or communal trough in the ground

3.       A regular working schedule and not having to make up the days off you get for national holidays

4.       Microbrews, especially IPAs; good wine, stinky cheese and specialty chocolate

5.       Blue sky, fresh air and Autumn in the Pacific Northwest

6.       Heated dryers (the dryers in China just spin your clothes so they’re merely damp; you then hang dry them.  The problem in Hefei is that although it may be 90 degrees out, it’s so humid that the clothes don’t actually dry and then you put on your ‘clean’ clothes only to discover they smell suspiciously like mildew.  As it gets colder out, there is no sun and thus no heat to dry the clothes.)

7.       I miss knowing where to go when I need to buy a specific item

8.       I miss having a sofa, coffee table and big screen TV.  And I miss Glee!

9.       I miss being able to sit down on the bus

10.   I miss my friends and family


TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT CHINA:

1.       Street vendor food and open air markets, especially the one in downtown Hefei by the old Pagoda

2.       Neon lights at night

3.       Chinglish

4.       Riding my new-old bike

5.       I love that students have to do eye exercises (Schools literally take 5 minutes several times a day for the students to massage and rest their eyes.) 

6.       Chinese fashion: this includes absurdly ornate women’s shoes, bedazzled men and women’s shirts, tacky patterns and embroidery on just about anything, name brand knock-offs, and socks: socks and sandals, socks and nice open toed shoes, layered socks.  They love their socks. 

7.       KTV (Karaoke TV, there are literally hundreds of them around town; some are very extravagant)

8.       Men rolling up their shirts to keep cool (pot bellies are not to be ashamed of here)

9.       Making Chinese friends and having them give you a taste of real Chinese culture

10.   First pay day!

Welcome to China

Unit 2: China

Lesson 1: Culture shock is a myth

If you are an American and you are going to a non-tourist infused part of China, you will not experience culture shock.  You will experience culture electrification.   I consider myself fairly well traveled, and I have a laid back character that typically allows me to adapt well to most situations.  But when I entered the land of the Dragon, I had the sinking feeling that I was going to get eaten alive.  Below is an account of my initial experience:

I departed in a whirlwind.  In the month leading up to my trip, I had more Drs. appointments than I had in the last two years combined.  For my visa requirements I had more shots and needles than I care to mention, a chest X-ray and EKG amongst other things.  Additionally, I had to visit various foot specialists because Murphy decided to throw down the law and have me severely sprain the ligaments in my left foot at the one time when I really needed both feet to work.  This meant that I had to help with the company Office Move, move out of my apartment, and run all of my errands while hobbling around on a fashionable clunky gray walking boot.  All of this chaos left very little time for me to devote any thought to what the upcoming months would bring.  I managed pack the next year of my life into my luggage the night before my flight to San Francisco, where I applied for and mercifully got my Visa a mere two days before leaving the country for Cambodia.  I left the boot and my sanity behind.  

While in Cambodia, my thoughts were generally occupied with TESOL class related material, and with the notion that, “Holy shit, I’m actually in Cambodia!”  The month with my new friends in Phnom Penh was like a chaotic dream sequence of seeing the sights, living the life and experiencing general jubilation. It was with a jolt we all woke up one day and realized we had a plane to catch to China. 

The day I got to China quickly turned into the day I wanted to leave.  My first thought upon stepping of the plane was, “Holy shit, I’m actually in China!”  My second thought was, “Why did I leave Cambodia again?  And when is the next flight back?”  I hadn’t planned on loving Cambodia so much, and I certainly hadn’t anticipated how much I would miss it and the people I had met there.  Be that as it might, I was in Hefei now, the place that would be my home for the next six months.

Hefei (Pronounced Huh – fay, and is particularly fun to say with a Borat accent) is a small Chinese city of about 3 – 5 million people.  While gazing through the windows of the roller-coaster cab ride from the airport to my apartment, I made several observations.  One: drivers are crazy in China.  Two: there is nothing charming about the Hefei skyline, partly because it’s hard to see through all the smog, and partly because all of the buildings give the same dripping gray oppressed look as though they are suffering as much from the heat and sooty humidity as the people are.  Three: there is a surprising amount of nicely landscaped, brand new shrubbery about.  Four: The people do not look happy. 

Three Chinese teachers had picked me up from the airport at 3:30; we waited about 45minutes for a cab, then finally got to the apartment at about 5pm, put my luggage in my room and promptly got back into a cab and were off to the Aston School.  They gave me a tour of the building and facilities, then we all scampered off to a restaurant for some authentic Chinese food.  We stayed there until about 8pm and finally, FINALLY I was taken back to the apartment.  I was exhausted and was really looking forward to some much needed sleep.  I figured I would spend the next day unpacking and unwinding before training and then teaching in the following days.  As I was getting out of the cab, the manager said to me, "Ok, we will pick you up at 8:00am tomorrow morning.  There are many things we need to do.  Bye bye!”

The next few days were a similar blur of frenzied activity, some of it necessary, much of it pointless.  There was never actually a day for me or my roommates to get settled in, and anytime I had a minute to pause, the only thing that kept running through my head was that I had made a huge mistake.

[To get a glimpse of my life in Hefei, please visit here: http://picasaweb.google.com/109552124545770534057/LifeInHefei?authkey=Gv1sRgCJPPrqmfqs-fzgE]