Val's China 101: October 2011

Monday, October 31, 2011

October in Review

THINGS I LOVE OCTOBER

1. Visiting Dave and Oly in Beijing!

2. Wu Yuan

3. My photo studio session

4. Climbing the Wall in fall; and riding a toboggan down : D

5. Halloween (and watching all my vampire DVDs the week before!)

6. Ritter chocolate

7. Apples and sesame butter

8. Reading in bed

9. Wearing my massive fleece pajamas again

10. All the People/US Weekly/in Touch magazines and Lindtt Choc my Godparents gave me ; )

THINGS I MISS

1. Autumn in Seattle

2. Windy days in Richmond Beach

3. Halloween parties, costumes, decorations, candy, etc., etc., etc. back home

4. Tailgate season!!!!!!!!

5. EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE

6. The buildup for all the holidays in fall and winter

7. Eastern Washington

8. Hiking in the woods where there are no crowds

9. Traveling in a car

10. My friends and family

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Food is a very important part of the Chinese culture. It’s an important aspect of any culture really, but it takes time to understand the real subtleties of it. I’ve been here for more than a year and I’m still fairly ignorant. Because the cultural aspect is so huge, I’ve been too intimidated and avoided writing about food completely. That was a mistake. Food is fascinating here and is worth writing about, even if it’s only one small aspect of it. So rather than diving deep into the cultural implications I’ll merely scratch at the surface and write about what I’ve seen. Literally.

China has to feed 20 percent of the world’s population, and though it has the greatest agricultural crop output in the world, it only has seven percent of the earth’s farmland. Thus, the people here are incredibly resourceful and will grow crops on any available land. In pots on their balcony, on little plots next to the rivers or freeways, on impossibly steep hillsides, even between cracks in the pavement. Along those lines, almost nothing goes to waste here. One of the most visible ways they preserve food is by drying it. They dry vegetables, tea leaves, meat, fish, seaweed and fungus collected from wherever they could find it in nature. I once saw a woman washing what I thought was a thick down coat in a huge red basin near the river. As I got closer I realized she was scrubbing a massive section of ribs from some animal. There were already about 15 other huge squares of ribs sitting on the cement wall drying in the sun.

Perhaps the most staggering aspect of the practice of drying food here is that they will dry it anywhere. When they harvest rice, often they will use portions of roads that cars were driving on the day before. They will dry things on sidewalks, roads, draped over railings or sometimes right under their dripping AC/Heating units. They use very public places to dry their foods, and I have no idea how they ensure that nobody will steal it or contaminate it. I also don’t know if they wash the surface before they dry their things on them. I hope they do. I cringe a little knowing that this is a culture where babies wear pants with no crotches so they can just go potty on the sidewalk, or wherever they are, including inside on a grocery store or bus station floor. Similarly, I’ve never been anywhere where people spit and hock more serious loogies than in China. Thankfully, even foods that have been dried often get stir-fried up again before being consumed.

Aside from seeing things drying in interesting and questionable places, I’ve also been taken aback at the things I’ve seen hanging up to dry. Massive legs of cow and pig seem commonplace to me now, but I still get a jolt anytime I see an actual pig face or a dog carcass like it’s no big deal. But then I guess that’s the point, in China, it’s not. There is a saying about the eating habits of the people from the Canton region of China that goes, “They will eat anything with legs but a table, and anything with wings but an airplane.” I’ve seen it, and I believe it.

Summary: If you visit China, stay away from dry food that hasn’t been cooked up again. There is a reason the Chinese fry everything: you never know where it’s been before and that’s the best way to kill any lingering germs and bacteria.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Strike A Pose!

A Model Citizen

The Westerners’ fixation on the “self” and emphasis on independence of the individual is a distinct contrast to the Chinese’s focus on the family unit and on filial duty and honor. However, the more China opens up to the world, the more she embraces the culture that the world sends her way. Yet even when adopting new aspects of culture, the Chinese have a way of making sure it retains plenty of their own character. From a Westerner’s perspective this tends to translate as “Western culture on crack.” For example, the Chinese love name-brand clothing and accessories. Rather than wearing one signature piece they will often drape themselves with as many competing brands as possible. The bigger the better; the more glitter and sparkle the better. The brands don’t have to be legitimate or even spelled accurately; they just have to be visible. Though I found it odd at first, I have come to love this enthusiastic way many of the Chinese dress.

Along those same lines, when I first got to China I noticed these bizarre Wedding Photoshop studios everywhere. They are easily recognizable because they invariably have huge, frilly princess dresses on display in the front windows. These dresses are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s as if some Vegas show girl outfits had head-on collisions with the most elaborate Miss America evening gowns you can imagine and in a poof of magic, these feathery, frilly frocks emerged from the cloud of smoke.

In malls across America we have cheesy Glamour Shots and various other places to get baby pictures or family photos done. But somehow they always seem a little contrived, like everyone is trying to look natural and a camera just happens to catch the moment. The Wedding Photo Studios of China are unabashedly all about the model in the picture. They have hair and make-up gurus, and seemingly endless reserves of outfits. Sailor outfits, flower outfits, animal outfits. Anything you can imagine, they probably have. This holds true for both sexes and for every age group. The Chinese are fanatical about getting professional photos for everything. They take professional pictures when they get married, when they have a baby, when their baby turns one, when their baby turns two, when their baby graduates from school. You get the idea. The most unique and also most traditional are the wedding photos. Every couple gets them taken (if they can afford to, of course), and almost without fail, they buy a huge blow-up of their favorite picture, put it in an ornate frame and hang it directly above their bed at home. I don’t know when this photo craze began, but it is definitely here to stay.

It just so happens that a Wedding Photo studio is located upstairs from the school where I teach. One day the owner of the school informed me that the studio wanted to take pictures of me to use for their website www.sdyphoto.com and other marketing purposes. In exchange, they would give me a CD of all the pictures they would take of me for free. Typically these shoots cost several hundred RMB at the very least. The proposition sounded great to me.

I have been an avid viewer of America’s Next Top Model for several years. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine and I was ecstatic to try and put my many years of viewing to good use. I tried to remember all of the tips from Tyra (Tyra Banks, former supermodel, and the show’s creator and host). I wanted to look fierce!

Though I can’t say much for my ability as a model, I can say with confidence that the photo studio did a pretty damn good job. It was a five hour session and full of plenty of hilarious moments for me. Like when the dresses wouldn’t fit and I had to get sewn into them. Or when the swarms of employees would stand around and watch while I got my hair and make-up done and in their broken English would comment on how I had such a beautiful, big nose.

I’ve gotten used to feeling like an occasional rock-star when walking around on the streets of China. Many Chinese people have never seen a foreigner and some will openly stare at me, take pictures of me and occasionally approach me and attempt to say something. More often than not I will simply get hello sniped, and hear the chirping “hello –ooo!” after I’ve already walked by. Feeling like a rock star walking down the street is one thing, but I have to admit, at the photo studio I had a lot of fun getting to feel like a Diva!

Summary: If you are in China and have the time to stop in at one of the Wedding Photo shops, I highly recommend it. It’s incredibly fun and silly all at the same time. Because you’re a foreigner they will spend extra time on you and try to make you look exceptionally good (because they will then use your picture for all of their marketing and show future customers how international they are). Other lessons I learned from this: hair and makeup can make a big difference on appearance; good photography can go even farther; but with today’s technology any photo can be altered to make virtually anyone look like a supermodel. And though I know I shouldn’t say it, I had a blast and kind of want to go back and try on different dresses and get more pictures taken! America, why don’t we have this tradition – it’s awesome!!!!!