Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Guan Yu-God of Wealth 02/10

I went to bed with explosions banging outside my Beijing apartment on the fourth night of Chinese New Year.  They began again this morning around 8.  Today is the fifth day, a very important one in the 15 day celebration.  This is the day the Chinese pay tribute to the birthday of Guan Yu, the Chinese God of wealth. The fireworks, that everyone seems to have is supposed to get Guan Yu’s attention and bring prosperity. My friend said it another way, “this is the day you bomb the **** out of poverty.  This is a big one.”
I can’t imagine how this could get any bigger. I can’t believe that nobody told me what it was going to be like in Beijing during this time of year.  I don’t know what to make of the whole Spring festival celebration.  There seems to be so much more to it than ushering in the year of the Tiger.
One thing is for sure, this is the most important Chinese holiday; there can be no doubt about that.  My nerves can attest to it.  A westerner could never imagine the intensity of the first night when the Chinese welcome the deities of heaven and earth.  Beijing became a simulated war zone for incessant hours on end. These flashes of light and horrific blasts are also meant to scare away Nien, the children eating monster of Chinese mythology.  I should have suspected something when I saw fireworks tents set up on virtually every corner a week before the big night.  My ears are ringing.  And it is not over.
There is so much to know about this holiday, so many ancient stories, so many rituals.  I am sure I won’t begin to understand them this year.  I like the one about the Jade Emperor- Tian Gong-heavenly grandfather-Taoist ruler of heaven, man and hell.  On the eve of the new lunar year, the Jade Emperor comes down and assesses the deeds of men and rewards and punishes accordingly.  His birthday is the ninth day of the festival, so there is clearly more to look forward to.
What most people do know about Chinese New Year (Chun Yun) is that it is the largest yearly migration on earth when the Chinese must reunite with their families if at all possible.  The ritual cleaning of the house and red decorations help dispel evil spirits.  Ancestors are worshipped.  The food preparations begin weeks in advance to ensure large quantities for the New Year’s dinner.  After dinner the Northern Chinese make jao-zi (dumplings) together which they will eat at midnight and of course blow up state-of-the-art fireworks.
I thought maybe I should get out in the streets today and explode some poverty of my own, but given the way a number of Chinese survive here (no sanitation, no heat),  I am going to leave it to them.  I can’t help wonder how a devoutly secular state can be so superstitious.  Is this how they became a world economic power?  No doubt some Chinese would say so.  And since China’s rising world standing is based on it’s economic strength, maybe this day does have a role in Chinese optimism. How little we know about anything that happens anywhere outside our sphere.  When China does rule the world, we will know which gods are honored and what rites are performed on every day of this festival.  Until then I have learned that the fifth day is for the God of wealth.  I wonder if Washington knows this when the President meets with the Dalai Lama later today.

The Moon Festival and Mao Day 10/09

The Moon Festival this year was on the fourth day that air pollutant levels reached category 4 (unhealthy) here in Beijing. The thick grey air made the festivities look eerie like they were in fact taking place on the moon.  Decorated tables and lanterns are set up everywhere outside so families can gather to watch the full moon rise, to eat moon cakes and to sing moon poems.  This year no one could see the table on the other side of the courtyard let alone the moon.
In spite of the red eyes, aggravated sinuses and headaches, side effects of breathing “suspended particulates”, people share their moon cakes with loved ones staring up at where the moon would be in a ritual dedicated to bringing happiness.  Every one will receive a moon cake as a gift. They are wrapped in shiny paper and placed in elaborate boxes inside matching gift bags.  But the people I know who have tried them make a face so twisted in regards to the taste, that I haven’t even looked at the ones I received.  Yet I think I will keep the box.
While the Moon Festival is on the 15th of the 8th lunar month, National Day is celebrated October 1st.   Nothing is more important than National Day for the Chinese.  From the 1st to the 3rd it is illegal to work, but since the Chinese are really more capitalistic than Americans, it seems hard to imagine they’ll stop work for anything, even for the memory of Mao.
This is the 60th anniversary of the founding of The People’s Republic of China and Beijing is pulling out all the stops. The area around Tiananmen Square will virtually shut down so that one of those colossal feats that only the Chinese can pull off will take place.  Parades with supernaturally synchronized movements, red flags and the most spectacular display of fireworks make me proud and I am not even Chinese.  Security snipers have been posted around central Beijing for a month.  A friend was staying in a hotel along the square last week and happened to go by the window, only to find rifles pointing in his direction.  Offices and apartments have been taken over and searched and the owners must move out for about three days.
The city has been given an overnight facelift.  Instant gardens have sprung up along roads; green netting has been laid over dirt.  It looks almost like grass from far away.  The best thing about National Day is the fact that the Chinese authorities will surely make it rain tonight.  They have the power and the technology to do that.  And even if this means we will have a “blue sky” day tomorrow, I’ll be watching the parade on TV. 

The Puppy, the Rubble and the Guards 09/09

On the way home from work today, I remembered some details that I wanted to make sure I wrote down: The puppy, the rubble that was a village and the grey uniformed guards.  I’m not sure in what order.  The puppy- a tiny scruffy little thing about the size of two hands.  It wandered into the courtyard where we were having our expatriate drinks on a Friday afternoon. We are right on the edge of a village or Hutong.  When I say village- there is a very precise image attached.  It doesn’t matter if you are in Beijing or the environs 200 km away (I don’t know about further from Beijing because I have never been.) the materials and the structures have little variation.  Long thin single story constructions made of a weak brick and those narrow streets which look more like dirt paths.  One “house “ abutts the next, there is no space between dwellings the size of small rooms.  So here I am trying not to breath, in a dingy cafĂ© on the periphery of a Chinese village, trying to relax and blend.  And beside the fact that I can’t get the smell of human excrement out of my nose what is really killing me is the puppy who has wandered in alone and lost and obviously orphaned.  And wagging her little tail.
That small dog didn’t know it was grey when it was born white.   It didn’t even know that it was stumbling around as it advanced towards the feet of customers.  Why was it that puppy wouldn’t let me unwind?  I could forget the people I saw washing and hanging their whole lives in the dusty street, but that puppy.  It wouldn’t let me forget and it wasn’t there to make me remember either.  I can’t tell you what it was and what it meant, but I haven’t been the same since.  That was two weeks ago.  I can’t let myself think about it at all or about what has happened to it.  I just can’t.
The village rubble is a reference to seeing a village off the road from home to work disappear in the span of a few days.  All of a sudden a teacher in our shuttle bus cries out, “Hey, that was a village, wasn’t that a village?”  And we look and see debris in piles.  The feeble bricks are maybe more solid than soil, but not much.  And now they are in small clumps which amount to nothing.  Total and complete destruction and there is not even a sign of a ball.  Everyday we drive by, fewer structures remain and more piles accumulate.  And men sit around in circles in plastic chairs amidst the ruins and …talk?  Men seem to do this here in the most unlikely places.  You can look in the woods and see cinder blocks on end in a circle and bikes parked on the road nearby.  Some men, usually older, have gathered to talk.  I know, next I will have to imagine what they are saying.
Guards in grey suits stand at attention everywhere we turn.  Most are skinny, so skinny their pants would fall down if it weren’t for their belts.  Every time we come by they stand up straight with their hands firmly at their sides, when they greet each other they salute.  In the compounds where westerners live they watch the front gate, the back gate and are stationed at doors.  A little “Ni hao” here and “ni hao “ there gets the foreigners pretty far.  But between Chateau Regalia and school is Merlin Champagne, Rits Garden, Lemon Lake, Capital Paradise, Dragon Bay Villas, Yosemite Park and Beijing Riviera.  These are just a few of the compounds where foreigners live.  And I am not kidding.  All around there are guards, taking it very seriously.  As if there were any real danger.  I have never felt as safe in a US or European city.  The only incident I know the guards had to deal with was when a neighbor in the apartment building next door set off fireworks on a Saturday night.  Man, they have good fireworks here.  It was like the Fourth of July and the Battle of the Bulge all in one, except of course without the causalities.  But I was glad and went to bed that night with a smile because I thought, at least that will give them something to do.

The Village beside the Castle 09/09

I went for a walk in the village adjacent to school.  Clearly this encampment has not yet been cleared away to make room for “Modern China”.  These villages, I am learning, are much the same everywhere throughout the country.  First of all they are single storied and the roofs are low, often made of a rough scalloped terracotta. The streets are cement worn by time and the earth is showing through.  People are doing their simple washing in basins in the narrow street.  A woman picks out one crude pot and rubs her hand over it.  The dark water falls away and the misshapen container is set on the brick wall beside her.  An old man with a bundle of sticks is clearing (sweeping?) the street.  Moving dirt and debris from one place to another
I wanted to look in, to see inside the houses and imagine the life which took place there.   I wanted to take pictures of what I saw, but of course then it dawned on me that these were peoples’ homes- how would I feel if someone walking by my house took a picture of its interior?   But it was unreal, like a park for a time gone by.  I had to keep reminding myself that these were not characters in an ancient novel, but people trying to live their lives.
The rooms were very small and the windows had no screens.  Everything looked put together from something else, makeshift.  Mattresses on the floor in a room almost the same size and ceilings so low I could lift my arm to touch them.  I saw a room I would have had to bend my head to get into.  Tiny tables that looked like the kind in a forgotten preschool program and miniature chairs were lined up.  What was this? Attached was what I believe was a kitchen because there was something that looked like a stove and many of those ill-begotten pans I had seen earlier. I surmised it was a place people came to eat.  Perhaps a restaurant or was there an arrangement between families?  Would people be coming back from work tonight and relaxing and enjoying themselves in this tiny room?  I couldn’t imagine more than three people in the place that had diminutive chairs for twenty-four.
Some of the walls and brick had once been painted white, yellow, red but they had not retained the color.  Age mingled with the hues in a dingy claim that left all the walls a shade of grey.  Ragged time had grown on these walls and had infected its people.  They were propping the old village up enough to get through another lifetime.  One room through an open door stood out as it had a clean white coat of paint over a rough wood. There was one chair in the room reminiscent of a barber’s.  A mirror faced the chair, nothing else was in the room.  Such effort was made to make it clean and nice; I surmised that it was the beauty parlor. This was a business where someone was trying to make enough money to pay for that paint.
Nothing seemed real here and I turned around and looked back on our school that loomed above the village like a feudal castle of the 21st century, monolithic and huge.  It was the place children with opportunities would go everyday, but the people of this village would only go there to clean.  And still they greeted us with a smile and a wave “bye-bye”.  It was the edge of town that stayed with me through the night though.  It was the smell of the other side of China—human excrement is not to be confused with any other smell.  Human excrement, it must have been some kind of public toilet.  Human excrement, not just a waft, but an enduring, relentless reality that went on for 100 yards.  The dank stench made me want to gag.  And people walked on this end of town, coming and going to work every day.
I had to go home and take a bath.  That night it haunted me.  The smell never left me.  And that night it dawned on me why my foot massages are so cheap.  China has a huge underclass that will work for nothing, which sustain themselves in these rudimentary ways and somehow accept it and have enough energy to go on and serve me and rub my feet.  I could not separate the smell from the vision of the skinny gentle-faced girl who kindly washed my feet and applied pressure to points in my furthest most appendages. And because I was told this is not a tipping culture, I hadn’t even left a tip.

Massive, Oriental Lillies, Foot Massages 09/09

Beijing is built on a scale of greatness.  No one should ever underestimate the Chinese.  Beijing is said to be 100 miles by 112 miles.  It is massive.  I was dropped of at the Temple of Heaven which is by the Hiongchiao pearl market- and we walked what looked like a few blocks on the map which actually turned out to be miles.
We went from the Temple of Heaven through Tiananmen square and right up to the Forbidden City.  Great names huh?  Mao is everywhere-on money and billboards.  The place is enormous!  Every building is like a huge monument.  When the Chinese do something they do it BIG.  The national museum makes the Metropolitan look like a shack.  And everything is so spread out that you walk for miles.  My feet were killing me-so I did find the Dragonfly and had a two hour massage for about $60.  The session started with an hour foot massage while another rubbed my head and neck.  I am not sure if that was all reflexology or what, but I have never had those specific parts massaged and- I could feel a difference in my whole body ALL night long.  I could feel the connections to my internal organs.  I still am recovering from the foot massage.  I may never be the same again.  No, according to Chinese philosophy I am sure never to be the same again.  Everything is always changing.

The story told about why Lao tze wrote the Tao te Ching is that Lao tze was leaving the country of Chou as he was witnessing its decline and the guard at the border simply asked, “Since you are going away, Sir, could you write a book to teach me the art of living?”  And he did.  So I am going to take to heart the Tao te Ching and see if I can follow its teachings so I can live the art.  So I can allow change to happen, expect change to happen. So I can live.

After all, I am in a place where I care about different things than I had ever thought of-  a typhoon hits Taiwan, finally I care about things on the other side of the world.  Finally I care about the Eastern hemisphere, because I am here.  I am trying to learn Chinese and it is hard.  My head hurts from even trying.  There are sounds and details in tone I can’t imagine ever mastering.  Even counting to ten is an ordeal.  And I am good at languages.  How many of us have completely ignored those sounds, have never tried, have no idea?  If this is not the unknown, I don’t know what is.  When I realize where I am I can’t believe it.  So much has happened in a week.

The most amazing thing is that my favorite flowers, oriental lilies, are really inexpensive here.  For twelve stems I pay under $10- just 60 kuai.  Kuai is “bucks” for yuan.  In the states they cost 12 dollars a stem.  Perhaps when you allow the tides of time to take you, you may find what is most pleasing.  The flower lady at school comes every Monday for orders.  I am going to get a dozen oriental lilies a week.  Flowers and foot massages are my greatest indulgences.  And I save so much money in every other aspect of my living that I can really enjoy them.

The Beijing Chronicles Begin 09/09

I didn’t need to change my watch since Beijing is exactly twelve hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. One of the first insights into this new culture was noodles.  Let them eat noodles for breakfast and noodles for snack.  I like noodles and I ate all the noodle meals on the plane.  And the sun never set that night.
On my first day in China, the sky was out and even blue.  After an over-the-top buffet, (when people ask me what I am doing in China now I reply, “eating”) we went to Ikea so the new teachers could buy what they need for their apartments.  This is the only Ikea from Beijing to Shanghai.  They built it and the Chinese come in droves.  By the time we left, it was a wall-to-wall warehouse of household goods and Chinese.  The Chinese came crowding in to get a feel of the kitchen towels, to study the utensils, to inspect the hangars.  But the most interesting part of the experience were the Chinese who came to take their after lunch naps on the beds in the third floor showroom.  And they were allowed to sleep on.  Whole families come to Ikea to visit, sitting in the chairs in the display living rooms.  Or the gentleman we have seen on several rugs in the store sitting cross-legged and meditating?  He is completely undisturbed by the people rubbing by.
Bureaucracy and saving face or should it be saving face and bureaucracy?  The simple tasks like buying a cell phone can reveal so much about a country.  All the young Chinese take English in school, but all the Chinese do not learn English in school. The young cell phone salesman looks at me and I look at him both talking earnestly in our respective tongues as if one of us is going to have an epiphany and be suddenly able to speak the others’ language.  His eager, smiling face lifts the phone to explain the feature.
Ni chin fuoo shikuai yuan chong nung- that’s not real Chinese
Yes, that looks very nice.  I’ll take that one.
Shum lun taodo ni mai- that’s not real Chinese either, but he wants me to write my name on a piece of paper so he can make an invoice for me.  Once he has done that I can go with my scrap of paper to a central location where two women sit behind a desk.  No one is speaking a word of English except me and I am not at all embarrassed by my stranger status.  I can read numbers so I hand over 609 kuai for my simple Nokia which will only work in China.  What I understand is that I can buy other sim cards when I go to other countries and simply swap one out for another.  That seems like a good deal.  My friends abroad can text me on this phone, but I won’t be getting any phone calls-I will have to get Skype for that.
One of the new hires though made the mistake of asking for an iron which was in fact out of stock in the store.  The Chinese cannot tell you such a thing-“we are out of stock on that item”  because it is a matter, even this, of saving face.  They do not want to lose face by telling you that.  So a BIG problem had its origins with the out of stock iron.  It was unclear how all this got blown out of proportion, but as one of the new hires was trying to get an this alleged iron and as well as a hairdryer, the flustered young sales person gave the wrong scrap of paper to the customer who went to pay for the items and then returned to the designated salesperson with the proper documentation to be given the items of purchase.  But much to everyone’s chagrin, the sales person came back with only a hairdryer and it took almost an hour with a crew of Chinese-English translators to figure it out.  The new hire had in fact paid for merchandise that was now not being given to her because it is supposedly against the Chinese nature to admit a mistake.  The matter could not be sorted out.
“The Chinese drive like they walk, if there is a space they will take it.”  This is the first generation with cars.  There have been a lot of changes in just the last eight years.  All the farmland is being taken up and developed.  These are the neighborhood compounds built up for expatriates and the nouveau riche Chinese.  Where we live looks a little like Pleasantville or a set on the Truman show.  There are some cars parked outside, but mostly they are ghost towns.  You hardly ever see anyone.
But assume that your emails are read, your telephone calls are monitored and your whereabouts is being tracked at every minute.  If you have a bad day in a traffic jam, be careful, what you say.

American Emigration 08/09

I’m an American emigrant in China.  When a series of unfortunate events occurred last year; I ended up with no job and no income, forced to cash in on my tiny retirement fund paying a 20% penalty. I had to find work.  For the first time in my 47 years, I decided to go for the money.  I am a teacher and going for the money is not exactly a motivation I knew.
But my son was in his first year of college and given that I am still paying off my own student loans, the financial horizon was utterly grim. I got focused and applied to any job for which I could fashion my resume. I was on Monster.com, signed up with search services, awake in the middle of the night when I got another idea for whom to inundate with my cover letter and references.  I was thinking public relations, editor, non-profit organizations, and admissions at my alma maters (NYU and Dartmouth).  I got nothing, not a call.  But giving up was not an option, so I joined not one but three agencies which place teachers in schools abroad.  At this point I was ready to do anything, go anywhere for a well paying job.  I couldn’t afford (literally) to be picky.
As I did research, my sights started to narrow on China. After an interview in San Francisco, I landed a job in Beijing.  I hadn’t even watched the 2008 summer Olympics; the only pictures I had of Beijing were of smog and inordinate numbers of dark haired people.  I signed the contract anyway and here I am.
I am an immigrant in China wanting what all immigrants want, a better life, a way to provide for my child, a solid economic future free from worry.  I found it in China.  Here I have a choice of luxury apartments.  I have a comprehensive health care and dental package that covers my son and me ANYWHERE in the world and not a penny is taken out of my paycheck.  The school pays for my Chinese taxes and since I don’t break $80,000, I will be exempt in the U.S.  No, it’s true that I am still not making six figures, but do you know what it feels like to have enough to give half my salary to my son’s education and still be able to eat?
There are a few more advantages that make this sacrifice worthwhile; one is the fact that teachers are honored here.  The way we are treated with respect by the community we serve, parents, administrators, and students alike makes all the difference.  My visa says that I am a “foreign expert”; when was the last time an American teacher was seen as an “expert”?  Not only does my pay increase every year, but there are bonuses for continuing the contract because experience and age are valued as well.  I really can’t see why I would come back or how I could swing it financially.  I have to admit now that I want the American dream just like the next gal.   And I found it in China.