It's been a week or so since my last post, which even for a very sedentary lifestyle, lends itself to a bunch of interesting happenings in China, or at the very least, instances of cultural reflection. Since I am too lazy to recount these in any flowing manner, I will simply use bullet points.
- Going shopping my general manager Stephanie at NLGX, I discovered Plastered 8 (Your City, You're Plastered), a Churros fast food joint, a matchbook of "bunny suicides", and a Lady Gaga playing deck. At Plastered 8 I bought a t-shirt displaying a panda with a gun (does it eat shoots and leaves?) but the funniest thing was being in the store with the playing deck and hearing two Chinese ladies spot it and go "Lay Di Ga Ga!!"
-NLGX was a shopping street with cute stores such as this:
- At a meeting with a language partner, my partner asked me how I was so good with chopsticks. I asked her what she thought I looked like (ethnically). She said, "anything but Chinese!"
- I attempted to order watermelon juice. Interfered by the English name of this fruit, I asked for "水果汁" (shuiguo zhi) which literally means water fruit juice. 水果 actually just means fruit, but since 水 is water, I was thinking that this was the word for watermelon. The actual word is 西瓜汁 (xigua zhi), or Western fruit juice. Shuiguo zhi sounds like xigua zhi but is completely wrong.
- I iced Vivian at Kro's Nest. Icing girls aside, this turned out to be a great idea because our waitress came over and asked us what kind of drink that Smirnoff was. Vivian went on a long explanatory oration that covered the Bros Icing Bros phenomenon in its entirety. The waitress' interest was absolutely priceless, and I wish I had the ability to repeat that conversation.
- Needing some models for our shop, I accompanied my coworkers on a tour of a mannequin factory north of Beijing. Yes, this is in fact one of the strangest places I have ever been, as evidenced by the picture at the bottom of the post.
What were we doing there? Why we were looking for suitable mannequins!
- My dad came down this weekend and we went to Qianmen. Two years ago I spent a lovely Saturday traversing the shopping streets near Tiananmen Square, which held some nice high class but still local stores. Now that area has been completely bulldozed and a new, clean and touristy shopping complex has opened up. The area actually looks nice, as if it was meant to be there, but I know better. Chinese irreverence for history never ceases to amaze me.
- We found a basketball store called "QiaoDan" which is actually is Chinese for Michael Jordan's last name. The logo of the store was a cross between the NBA logo and Jordan's own Jumpman 23 logo. However there was no actual mention of Jordan and it became
apparent that the entire brand was an unauthorized rip off. See this is what LeBron wants. He wants Chinese companies ripping off his image.
- Nearby this place, I came across
a bridge that I had actually read about on Wikipedia. There were physics equations and calculus formulas written in block letters on the side of the bridge! I know, I know, control your excitement, but I was very eager to get my picture taken on this monumental landmark of nerdiness. I hope you can spot me in the photo.
- We were searching for the "Underground City," an elaborate gigantic bomb shelter that Mao ordered built when it looked like Beijing might get nuked by Soviets. True story, I read about it in Wikipedia. I neglected to read that the City had been closed for repairs since Feb 2008. Anyways we found a motorcycle taxi to take us there from the bridge to the City and discovered the place closed. Walking back, a crazy guy was clearly excited by our touristy appearance. He asked if we were Korean, to which my dad said no we were from Hong Kong. Then he invited us into his yard and brought out a shovel. I was so confused when he said, "you can dig!" Apparently he heard we were looking for an underground city and offered us an alternative route to get there (he was completely serious). He also offered us his dog. We had a tough time understanding his thick Beijing accent but it became clear that he was absolutely insane.
- At Lush (where else), I sat at one of the more international tables of my life. Brought together by Georgetown grad and Chinese law student BTB, I was sandwiched between girls from Ukraine and Thailand, as well as individuals from Germany, Switzerland and China. The Ukrainian was very cool but the interesting encounter was with the Thai, who I thought was Chinese since she spoke it so well. So when she said she was from "Tai Guo" I thought that was a city in southern China. In my mind I was thinking this place sounded a lot like the Cantonese word for Thailand. Then I realized she was actually from Thailand. Since she didn't speak any English, this was only the second encounter I can remember where I had to communicate to a non-Chinese person in Chinese, after a brief experience two summers ago with Kazakhs. So I find it pretty novel - Chinese is becoming more of an international language.
- I asked my landlord for help last week when I couldn't turn on my TV. He came here with his entire family, comprised of a wife and a 12 year old boy, and quickly pressed one button to solve the problem. So that was embarrassing. But the real reason he came was to talk, or have his son practice his English. They invited me to dinner at their place which I went to last night, and among other things, I helped his son with his English homework - cool experience. While we mostly talked in Chinese, they kept trying to spray in English whenever they knew the words - all the basic words. Since I already knew these words, this exercise was completely useless and rather hilarious.
So that's last week in highlight form.
The thing I've come to conclude, which I touched on earlier, is that no one here thinks I'm Chinese (except expats). This was a discovery I made in 2008 but something I've only come to accept this summer. In 2008, I was like Chinese people are just stupid if they can't realize I'm Chinese. Now I just say, yeah I do look really mixed.
I believe race is an issue of self-identity. I now consider myself mixed-race, because it is so relevant to my life especially here in China. However, I am the only person in my family to identify as such and the only one who indicated so on the 2010 Census. Thus I'd still like to make the distinction that scientifically I am only about 13/64 white, and the rest Chinese, and culturally I am entirely Chinese-American. Mixed culture is a real thing brought about by having parents who don't look alike, but I didn't grow up like that. Still, perhaps growing up in America has made me appear much more foreign to people in China. I think I have looked more mixed the older I have gotten, which may be a result of my majority white environment. If I had grown up in Hong Kong, like my Chinese-looking cousins, perhaps I would look different.
But enough about those little details. The macro picture is that I find myself in an absurdly unique position. I get to experience life as an Asian in the United States and life as a white guy in China (some people do think I'm white). The problem is that I'm powerless to change their beliefs, with my obviously nonfluent Mandarin - unless I get creative. In touristy areas, people inevitably come up speaking to me in English, offering me cheap wallets in awful accents. I have decided to treat this annoyance instead as an opportunity. I have a great chance here to fuck with people. I have already pulled the line, "对不起我的英语不太好" meaning "sorry my English isn't too good." If I have to, I'll bust out some French. The other alternative I've used, when faced with an offering in English, is to rebut them with a long overdone inquisition in English that would expose them. "Want T-Shirt??" "Why yes, do you perchance have anything in synthetic polyester? My cousin-in-law is getting married and I think cheap Chinese souvenirs would be a perfect gift to bequeath them." Sometimes I do this in an Irish accent.
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