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I am back! It feels so good to be home in the Bay Area, despite the rain and the cold. I missed home so much.
Some things I have learned while in China:
1. Chinese people really, really loathe Zhang Ziyi. On a level that just goes beyond reason. Ok, I don't think she's that hot, either, but I don't have enough energy to hate her. Seriously, one of the reasons the tour guide listed for hating her was that "She tries to speak in English, and it isn't even that good."
2. Chinese people really, really like Andy Lau. I'm with them on that.
3. My sisters are the pickiest people on the planet. The pickiest one? She literally starved herself the entire time because she couldn't stand the food. She snacked on stuff she brought from the US instead. And it wasn't because the food was really, really bad - it was just mediocre. I offered her a bite of my jook (rice porridge), which is bland and has zero flavor. She tasted it and made a face. "What?" I asked. "There's no flavor to it." Her response was, and I kid you not, "It has too much of a rice taste."
4. Guangdong people are known for loving to eat. It was in Guangzhou and Hong Kong that we got the best food. (Those weren't part of the tour, though.)
5. Cool Guangzhou kids live in the eighties, and are slowly edging towards the grunge stage.
6. My dad did a lot of things in China that I didn't know about. Many of his students came up to him and still recognized him. I should mention that this is only his second time back in thirty years.
7. The villages my parents grew up in are dying out.
8. My grandpa on my mom's side had three wives. One of them ran away. We used to think that was my mom's birth mom, but then we visited her grave to pay our respects.
9. Peeing in the squatting position is very hard if you're not used to it, and requires some strategy if you don't want to pee on your pants or miss the toilet. I did not have to pee in front of anybody, thank god.
10. Our tour guide almost fell over after learning that American primary, middle and high school education were free.
11. United Airlines sucks.
12. Tour guides like to tell you how to catcall in the Suzhou dialect. If the girl's pretty, you say to her, "Ai-yoh", drawing out the "o" sound at the end. If she's really pretty, you say "Ai-yoh-yoh". If she's not pretty, you would say, "Ai-yah." Really ugly: "Ai-yah-yah!" Suzhou is known for its pretty girls, although I couldn't tell the difference.
13. I saw more black people in Beijing than I do in a day in San Francisco. (The China-Africa forum was going on at the same time we were there.)
14. Chinese people like to sleep on hard beds.
15. There is a phone and a scale in every hotel bathroom in China. I have no idea why.
16. My cousin Nina, who lives in Guangzhou, was unable to come to the US for college. Why? Because US Immigration knew that she had an aunt and a sister living in the US on green cards already, and said that she would probably try to stay if she came to the US.
17. Chinese people - at least our relatives, anyway - can't hear the word "No". It gets very irritating. "Do you want something more to eat?" "No, thank you. I'm full." "Here, have a pear." "No, thank you." "How about an apple? You should have an apple." "No, thank you." "How about some sugar cane?" "No, thank you." It got so bad my parents had to basically tell them that they should not bother asking us again after we've said no. Do people just eventually give in after saying no a million times?
18. Families really know how to push all your buttons, even when they aren't trying.
19. The place to buy fake purses is Ladies Street in Hong Kong. Just point at the Marc Jacobs or Prada knockoff you want and someone will get it for you. Don't pay more than $30.
20. Chinese people are shocked to learn that I don't understand Mandarin, or Putonghua, as they call it. Salespeople would just keep talking to me as if I understood what they were saying, and I just smiled and nodded. Also, the salespeople here are really fucking pushy. They will grab you by the hand and put stuff on you and all the while you're squirming to make a polite getaway.
21. The Chinese government must make millions off all the tour buses that show up at all these national sites and buy their government-sponsored trinkets.
That's about it for now. For the next couple of weeks I might write up the stuff I saw. I really regret not bringing a sketchbook with me, although there wasn't much time to sketch. I wish I wasn't one of those people who get carsick or airsick, but I am, and it just bugs me that all that time I could be drawing or reading I had to stare out the window or sleep. I tried listening to the histories that the tour guides told us, but my Cantonese wasn't good enough to follow, and eventually I would just fall asleep. Anyway, the most interesting stories that the tour guides weren't the histories, but rather stories about themselves, and when they veered off-track from their scripts. I felt a bit bad for the tour guides - a number of them had college degrees or were working towards them, and they were stuck with us, people who were lucky enough to have made it to America and able and willing to spend more money in two weeks than they made in two months.
I didn't feel like I reached some sort of new conclusion about my Chinese identity, which I thought might happen. I think it's part of growing up in the Bay - if I wanted to surround myself with Chinese people and talk about Chinese stuff, I had that option already. I did, however, learn exactly how much of a spoiled American brat I am, and it's not a pleasant realization to have. The trip just made a lot of things in my head make more sense - sometimes if you don't see a thing, no matter how much you know it's true, it just isn't there. My parents used to tell us all the time about how hard it was to farm land and how they had to pick up cow poop for manure and how small our house in the village was - and my sisters and I rolled our eyes and would say, "But we are living in America now. We don't have to do those things, so why bring it up?" And then I saw the village, and it was tiny - just a row of houses stacked close to each other - most not having more than two rooms. My sister, who was old enough to remember living there, said that our house was better now that it had walls. My parents pointed out where they used to carry water from the well, the mountains they had to climb to get firewood, and how they had to take the vegetables to the market, and something in my head just clicked - I had a better idea of what my parents used to have to do, and it's really nothing compared to the life they lived in America. Life in America was hard for my parents (I don't kid myself that it was hard for me), but compared to the farm life, it's not really hard at all. We had a roof over our heads, we had (some) support from relatives, if my dad lost a job he could get another one. We had days off, and we ate better than anything we would have had in China.
I'd like to go back, after the 2008 Olympics are over. It's fascinating to me how much things have changed, and in such a rapid time-span, too. I wasn't able to look at the BBC on the Internet, but every hotel had the BBC International Channel on, which I found hilarious. Our tour guides would often pepper their conversations with "Mao Zhe-dong said..." It made me think that it was the new "Confucius say..." which one of my English teachers used to do, until somebody pointedly said, "Confucius says."
Some things I have learned while in China:
1. Chinese people really, really loathe Zhang Ziyi. On a level that just goes beyond reason. Ok, I don't think she's that hot, either, but I don't have enough energy to hate her. Seriously, one of the reasons the tour guide listed for hating her was that "She tries to speak in English, and it isn't even that good."
2. Chinese people really, really like Andy Lau. I'm with them on that.
3. My sisters are the pickiest people on the planet. The pickiest one? She literally starved herself the entire time because she couldn't stand the food. She snacked on stuff she brought from the US instead. And it wasn't because the food was really, really bad - it was just mediocre. I offered her a bite of my jook (rice porridge), which is bland and has zero flavor. She tasted it and made a face. "What?" I asked. "There's no flavor to it." Her response was, and I kid you not, "It has too much of a rice taste."
4. Guangdong people are known for loving to eat. It was in Guangzhou and Hong Kong that we got the best food. (Those weren't part of the tour, though.)
5. Cool Guangzhou kids live in the eighties, and are slowly edging towards the grunge stage.
6. My dad did a lot of things in China that I didn't know about. Many of his students came up to him and still recognized him. I should mention that this is only his second time back in thirty years.
7. The villages my parents grew up in are dying out.
8. My grandpa on my mom's side had three wives. One of them ran away. We used to think that was my mom's birth mom, but then we visited her grave to pay our respects.
9. Peeing in the squatting position is very hard if you're not used to it, and requires some strategy if you don't want to pee on your pants or miss the toilet. I did not have to pee in front of anybody, thank god.
10. Our tour guide almost fell over after learning that American primary, middle and high school education were free.
11. United Airlines sucks.
12. Tour guides like to tell you how to catcall in the Suzhou dialect. If the girl's pretty, you say to her, "Ai-yoh", drawing out the "o" sound at the end. If she's really pretty, you say "Ai-yoh-yoh". If she's not pretty, you would say, "Ai-yah." Really ugly: "Ai-yah-yah!" Suzhou is known for its pretty girls, although I couldn't tell the difference.
13. I saw more black people in Beijing than I do in a day in San Francisco. (The China-Africa forum was going on at the same time we were there.)
14. Chinese people like to sleep on hard beds.
15. There is a phone and a scale in every hotel bathroom in China. I have no idea why.
16. My cousin Nina, who lives in Guangzhou, was unable to come to the US for college. Why? Because US Immigration knew that she had an aunt and a sister living in the US on green cards already, and said that she would probably try to stay if she came to the US.
17. Chinese people - at least our relatives, anyway - can't hear the word "No". It gets very irritating. "Do you want something more to eat?" "No, thank you. I'm full." "Here, have a pear." "No, thank you." "How about an apple? You should have an apple." "No, thank you." "How about some sugar cane?" "No, thank you." It got so bad my parents had to basically tell them that they should not bother asking us again after we've said no. Do people just eventually give in after saying no a million times?
18. Families really know how to push all your buttons, even when they aren't trying.
19. The place to buy fake purses is Ladies Street in Hong Kong. Just point at the Marc Jacobs or Prada knockoff you want and someone will get it for you. Don't pay more than $30.
20. Chinese people are shocked to learn that I don't understand Mandarin, or Putonghua, as they call it. Salespeople would just keep talking to me as if I understood what they were saying, and I just smiled and nodded. Also, the salespeople here are really fucking pushy. They will grab you by the hand and put stuff on you and all the while you're squirming to make a polite getaway.
21. The Chinese government must make millions off all the tour buses that show up at all these national sites and buy their government-sponsored trinkets.
That's about it for now. For the next couple of weeks I might write up the stuff I saw. I really regret not bringing a sketchbook with me, although there wasn't much time to sketch. I wish I wasn't one of those people who get carsick or airsick, but I am, and it just bugs me that all that time I could be drawing or reading I had to stare out the window or sleep. I tried listening to the histories that the tour guides told us, but my Cantonese wasn't good enough to follow, and eventually I would just fall asleep. Anyway, the most interesting stories that the tour guides weren't the histories, but rather stories about themselves, and when they veered off-track from their scripts. I felt a bit bad for the tour guides - a number of them had college degrees or were working towards them, and they were stuck with us, people who were lucky enough to have made it to America and able and willing to spend more money in two weeks than they made in two months.
I didn't feel like I reached some sort of new conclusion about my Chinese identity, which I thought might happen. I think it's part of growing up in the Bay - if I wanted to surround myself with Chinese people and talk about Chinese stuff, I had that option already. I did, however, learn exactly how much of a spoiled American brat I am, and it's not a pleasant realization to have. The trip just made a lot of things in my head make more sense - sometimes if you don't see a thing, no matter how much you know it's true, it just isn't there. My parents used to tell us all the time about how hard it was to farm land and how they had to pick up cow poop for manure and how small our house in the village was - and my sisters and I rolled our eyes and would say, "But we are living in America now. We don't have to do those things, so why bring it up?" And then I saw the village, and it was tiny - just a row of houses stacked close to each other - most not having more than two rooms. My sister, who was old enough to remember living there, said that our house was better now that it had walls. My parents pointed out where they used to carry water from the well, the mountains they had to climb to get firewood, and how they had to take the vegetables to the market, and something in my head just clicked - I had a better idea of what my parents used to have to do, and it's really nothing compared to the life they lived in America. Life in America was hard for my parents (I don't kid myself that it was hard for me), but compared to the farm life, it's not really hard at all. We had a roof over our heads, we had (some) support from relatives, if my dad lost a job he could get another one. We had days off, and we ate better than anything we would have had in China.
I'd like to go back, after the 2008 Olympics are over. It's fascinating to me how much things have changed, and in such a rapid time-span, too. I wasn't able to look at the BBC on the Internet, but every hotel had the BBC International Channel on, which I found hilarious. Our tour guides would often pepper their conversations with "Mao Zhe-dong said..." It made me think that it was the new "Confucius say..." which one of my English teachers used to do, until somebody pointedly said, "Confucius says."
