China Segment

So of course I should be celebrating, and I remembered this year, but Canada Day just isn’t quite the same when you’re overseas. And few of my friends in Shanghai are Canadian. Almost all are (shivers) United States of American. They diligently poke fun of the day when we quietly walked away from Britain and achieved self-government, and save themselves up for celebrating their refusal to pay taxes and picking a fight to prove it. And, virtually every Chinese person reacts with surprise when you tell them that today is “Canada Day.” Some even ask what it is… as if “National Day” really explains anything.

Naturally being Canadian I’m used to our holiday being rather overshadowed by the hoopla from south of the 49th parallel, but in China we’re outdone by Hong Kong? Fuck that. Yes, it’s a hallowed day when the island that was ignored by China for centuries but developed into a massive port and financial hub by the British returns to the motherland. The Chinese do have a right to celebrate, though thankfully alongside the pro-Chinese celebrations there are also demonstrations and marches demanding democracy.

So I checked today (because how long ahead am I supposed to remember this thing?) for any Canada Day festivities and found that the big shindig at the Shanghai Center hosted by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce was last Saturday. F-OFF! Guess I should have read in Snowblower, Curler and Weed Smoking Guide that our celebrations would be 4 days early. Shit. Oh well, think it’s worth it to go to the Eager Beaver? It’s only a couple blocks away. Good pints and burgers.

But I’m cookin’ chili. Guess I’ll celebrate next year. But I did save this pic.

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... a young lad taking care of business

There is a shitload of public urination going on in Shanghai. (Pardon the pun that doesn’t quite work.) Children go absolutely everywhere, even to the point of being held up by their mothers and fathers to pee over sewers, garbage bins or eve just a crack in the sidewalk. I’m not quite sure if there is such a thing as toilet training for kids in China. They just go where they go, and at some point get curious as to why mommy or daddy uses a toilet and begin to copy them… or so I think.

Grown men are a different story. They seem to not really care where they whip it out. They literally just stand against a wall and piss in broad daylight, rather than go down a dark alley, search around for a public bathroom, or whatever. Ladies, thankfully, don’t usually do such things. They have the sense to go indoors. There are actually lots of public washrooms in downtown Shanghai, but then with 20 million people there can never be enough. One problem is that many restaurants and coffee shops don’t have them. So you’re chugging down beers or coffee and when nature calls there’s no where to do your business. How perfectly reasonable. That’s a crime in and of itself, but while it’s very difficult to get little mom and pop restaurants to install a bathroom in their preciously small establishments, Starbucks should certainly be required to have a pee room.

There used to be problems with businesses that had bathrooms but wouldn’t let non-paying customers use them. With many people getting refused facilities (perhaps peeing on doorsteps and thresholds in revenge), Shanghai created a law a while back that any business must let you in to use the washroom if you need it. Not that’s made a difference. The shot above is right on Nanjing East Road, Shanghai’s tourist/shopping pedestrian street - which has plenty of restrooms in the various department stores and restaurants. Junior had to go pee, and with evidently no cultural concept of ‘holding it in’, his mom pointed him in the direction of this little nook. Hundreds of people walking by, including a laowai who had to just take a picture. Despite seeing dozens, no thousands of examples over the last 5 and a half years, I have very little evidence for the urination epidemic, except for the smell of some streets during hot weather. So if you have a problem with me snapping pics of kids going to the bathroom, well, it may be illegal, but my defense is that this is the public realm and I can photograph whatever I want. It’s not a habit, I promise. Plus it’s not even frontal.

So there’s small wonder why many Chinese have a different concept of privacy than Westerners. The pee party that is public life must somehow inculcate reversal of consciousness sort of phenomenon. Victorian shame, as silly as it is, never reached China, though I’m not saying that this fairly conservative society doesn’t have its own social faux pas and limits to behavior. Just not so much over whizzing.

Have I ever done such a reprehensible thing? I’ll never tell. I’m no prude, and I know sometimes you can get caught in the wrong place and you need to go. It’s just when there’s no effort to even find a proper place to do it that gets me. People in many places of Shanghai still use chamber pots and ever morning they make the effort to dump them in the appropriate depositories near apartment buildings. The guy across the lane peeing on the wall is the one who needs a kick in the pants, or at least a nudge, pushing him against said wall and said piss.

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6:20am is the time they began. Hammering, at 6 fucking 20.

Apartments in Shanghai somehow need to be renovated every 5 years, so drilling, pounding, whacking and hammering pretty much never stop, especially in the summer. But there are rules. The city allows you to do renovations or other similarly loud work from between 8am and 8pm, and not on weekends. So 6:20 on a Saturday morning got us a little pissed. Actually I just took it as a wake-up call and got in the shower. The wife went down and asked if they could wait until 9 or so. The amazing part is, they did. No, really the amazing part is that Rachel didn’t scream at them but was nice and calm. (Did I mention the apartment in question is directly below us?) So they stopped until about 8.

I’m wondering why these guys are ready for work at 6:20. I’m pretty sure they’re not sleeping at this apartment - I don’t know too many people who’d let migrant laborers sleep over while they build, though they do that at some commercial construction sites. But therein lies a possible answer: they’re migrants from the countryside. Farmers wake up early. And these guys are obviously go-getters, let’s-get-things-done-before-noon kind of chaps. But though they’ve been at it for weeks, Rachel said that they apartment looked completely bare. So all they’ve managed to do is strip off all the old fixtures and wood baseboards and panels, etc. Fucking hell. No wonder there’s silence for 3 hours at a time during the day. Could there really be such a thing as slow, lazy workers who start work at dawn? That doesn’t seem right. I figure construction workers try to finish things as quickly as possible to get their pay and go on to the next job. But then this place I’m in now took forever to do, and I can’t really find what they did beyond the redoing the bathroom, hardwood flooring which cracked after only 2 months and paint. I mean really, what is that - 2 weeks of work? It took 3 months and was certainly sub-par.

Anyway, I’ve informed the wife they’ll be no such shenanigans in Canada. We’ve long since absorbed our farm populations (I’m pretty sure robots run farms in Canada now) and everyone likes to sleep in as long as possible, even on work days. The opposite happens: nights are longer, the owls come out to play, music never stops, parties rage on, and various ranges of pitch boom out from bedrooms. On the other hand, apartments have insulation that drowns out much of the sound (and smells) and most people live in houses, making it all so much quieter, even if your neighbor is re-shingling his roof. Things are also built to last, meaning renovations aren’t needed so often, and people don’t have hang-ups about moving into an apartment that was lived in before. The Chinese seem to really NEED to redo apartments. Some of that is from the oil that covers everything in the kitchen, making all surfaces sticky… cleaning is different here and property is not taken care of the same way it is in North America. A man’s home is not is castle in China, maybe since people are just getting used to property rights again. I’m obviously rambling here, so before I piss of some nationalists or the 3 other people who read my blog, I’ll just sign off.

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P.S. Haven’t even gotten into the whole 24-7 construction permits given to sites critical to the 2010 Expo. Subway stations all over the city are being worked on night and day. Glad I’m not beside any.

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Ok so maybe it’s because I’ve been reading the Bloggess lately or I’ve had it with being Mr. Niceguy, or I’m just feel like well thought out posts just suck to think of and write. And I’ve been having a serious problem sitting down and writing about Shanghai and living in China. It’s not for lack of topics, there are plenty of them. Sometimes it’s a lack of good pictures. I really need more time to go out and catch guys rolling up their shirts in the heat, mothers sharp-tonguing their kids, old folks spitting and young women scratching themselves… and the positive stuff like 金针菇 in hotpot, old people actually exercising instead of vegetating, curious kids who can’t help looking at laowai, etc. Pictures help a blog, that’s all there is to it.

But anyway, expect more sarcasm and fewer apologies for it. Also profanity. I love it, and it’s a part of life. This is a grown-up’s blog, so for any Chinese reading this, don’t be surprised by the word fuck. Or shit. Or any others. They don’t show up in textbooks for learning English, but they sure are a part of the language. I also will probably offend people on both sides of the ocean. As always, I’ll try to qualify myself where possible, but if I see a spade, I’d like to call it a spade. I don’t have a popular blog, and this isn’t my way of increasing readers. But I shouldn’t be worried about pissing off ultra-nationalist Chinese blog readers. I need not fear Shanghaiist type commenters nor the mobs who track people down, find out their addresses and out them as anti-Chinese… for some reason only Chinese people get this treatment. But somehow all the crap that went on during the Olympic torch run got expats in China thinking like we weren’t allowed to comment on China. Well fuck it, we can. We may be wrong, we may be ignorant, but usually I find no more so than the average local person. I did not humiliate China for a hundred years, I can say what I want.

So there.

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It seems like about 99.8% of people in Shanghai would prefer to take an escalator than the stairs. Yes, the exercise craze has not quite hit Shanghai yet. People here will go way out of their way to get on to the escalator. They’ll walk 30 paces instead of walking up 20 stairs, which doesn’t really make sense to me since they’re expending more energy to get to the escalator - and then sometimes have to push and shove to get on the escalator - then they would to just walk up the stairs. Did I mention I take the stairs whenever possible? Not really for exercise, simply because you literally have to push to get on the escalator while the stairs are relatively clear and free. Space is important for a North American in a country of 1.3 billion, especially during the sweaty, sticky summer.

And escalators in Shangers are also woefully slow! It’s obscene - I can walk at a normal pace up the stairs much faster than most of these eventual elevation assistants. Actually, I sometimes forget: some people are still on their first ride. Shanghainese, before you get defensive, it’s true. There are literally hundreds of millions of peasants in China that have never been on an escalator before, and more than a few hundred thousand of them are moving to or visiting Shanghai for the first time every year. You can see it in the way they very carefully get on and off.

Then there’s the whole health benefit of walking up stairs - people in Shanghai actually, ladies in particular - have great legs. Why, because they walk all the time and ride bicycles. Why not keep that going? Why get lazier and lazier you all become office workers, eat KFC and turn into fat asses just like North Americans. (As you can see, I have certain views on China getting fatter.)

So there are escalators everywhere now. In and out of the subways, in the shopping malls and department stores, the odd office building and even gyms where you’re supposed to be exercising. Sometimes the escalators are moving people down, but not up. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but most of the purpose of an escalator I think is to go up. Going down’s the easy part. Going down might be hard on the knees, but we’re not talking about mountains here, we’re talking about one story, one level, 15 feet down. But, obviously the good folks at Peoples’ Square subway stop (exit 5) have some clues left to find.

But then this is the country where stairs have been cut into the sides of mountains to make them easier to climb.

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Imagine preparing for the Olympics from when you were four.

Now take that Olympics, and turn it into, say, a series of tests you need to take in competition with about 10 million other high school students in order to gain entrance into university.

Add unreasonable pressure and expectations from parents and relatives who are counting on you to get accepted into the one of the best universities, land a good job four years later and support them when it’s time to retire and play mahjong in the park.

Then think about how China doesn’t have enough good universities to go around with the massive numbers of kids who are beginning their 18th year of life, despite the population controls.  Plus, only a very few Chinese universities, 北大 Beida, 清华 Qinghua, 复旦 Fudan, and a couple of others are considered ‘key’ or ‘top’ schools.  Entrance criteria is based solely on the University Entrance Exam, or Gaokao (高考), not on high school grades, extracurricular activities (what are those? some students ask), or anything else.

About a week ago, high school seniors around China spent two days taking several tests on core subjects such as English, Math and Chinese, plus a couple of electives, which include Politics (ouch!), Chemistry, and others, depending on what they plan to study in uni. The test is out of a possible score of 750, and making the cut is kind of like in golf, it depends how your competitors fair.

This is the big one, the ultimate succeed-or-fail kind of test.  It is in almost every way strikingly similar to the Civil Service tests of the old Ming and Qing Empires, when entrance into the scholar-gentry class was open to anyone if they just learned enough.  It was still out of the reach of most, and university is still out of the reach of most poor kids China.  But even rich city kids are put through the gauntlet.  Unless Daddy’s in the Politburo, you’re writing those tests and you’re going to have to do extremely well.  Lives are decided in these two days.  Get into the top schools and your life is set; it’s easy street, more or less.  University classes are a joke - getting a job after graduation is all about which school you went to, not what you studied or how well you did in class.  Cheating on tests and skipping class seem to be all too common.  Since none of it matters, not many care.  The fact that you’ve gotten yourself in to such prestigious places is enough.  And the universities actively help their students get jobs through various personal networks between professors and admin staff and the working world.

There are elaborate cheating schemes for the Gaokao, but for the most part, students go in with just pencils and whatever short-term memory knowledge their brains can hold. How much of it do they remember five years later? How much of it is useful in everyday life? China puts and emphasis on knowledge, whereas in Canada we put an emphasis on learning. Kind of like ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you can feed him for life.’ There are flaws with Western education systems as well, don’t get me wrong. But the Gaokao is the most hated thing in China. It is the tyrant of China and it is unforgiving. Witness of the stories in the New York Times the other day.

A friend of mine here is from Nanjing and he’s been working in Shanghai for about five years now. His son is about 14 or so, and he hopes to bring him and is wife here in order to take the Gaokao. Currently children must attend school and write the Gaokao where they have residency (huko 户口). My friend needs to work in Shanghai for two more years before he can get a local residence permit, which would allow his son to study in Shanghai? Why all this? One reason is that Shanghai has its own Gaokao, different from the one written in the rest of the country. Many believe it is slightly easier, though to be sure it’s still grueling. But there is another factor. Shanghai has some very good universities, which accept local students based on lower Gaokao scores than students from other parts of the country - up to 10% lower. So if my friend’s son takes the Gaokao here, he stands a better chance of getting into the top tier schools. I’m not sure if other universities around the country do the same, but China has quite a profound degree of localism, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

Another interesting thing is that immediately after the test is finished, students can get copies of the questions and answers from the local education bureau and then try to remember all the answers they gave. This is in order to estimate what their total score would be. Then students, parents and teachers begin to guess whether the scores are high enough for entrance into the top tier or second tier universities. Eventually, they find out, but it must seem an impossibly long wait. For those who don’t make it, heartbreak and loss of face for the family. A career in a factory or as a tradesman await, though a select few become self-made business people. For those who make it, the parents usually select their major, partially determining the course of their career.

I personally would have had gray hair after writing that test, and I’ve gone through the LSAT and bar exams. The Gaokao makes them seem like a cake walk. Is this the kind of thing that is supposed to build character, or is it more like grad school, which just makes assholes? I guess the kids are young enough to put it behind them, recover, and get on with their lives. The golden hoop of life either having allowed entrance to a white collar life, or having denied it.

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Just to commemorate an anniversary today. White is the color symbolizing death in China, and people often use it to remember those who meant something to them. One of the greatest shames is how quickly people forget the past. Everyone in Shanghai is too busy making money these days to give a hoot.

So wear white. They can’t censor that… much. I heard TV hosts and anchors won’t be wearing it for the next few days.

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The bugs are back. Must be time for the rainy season.

Last June I noticed something that had escaped my attention in years gone past. One night when we went out for dinner, my wife and I noticed a huge number of bugs were flying around certain trees. We came home to be greeted by massive numbers in our kitchen, though other areas of the house were clean. Unfortunately Chinese apartments have few windows, doors or vents that can seal shut, so bugs can come when they want to and the only way to keep them away is to keep food in the fridge (unlike this), and keep things clean. But this was altogether a new dimension. Literally hundreds of them.

Out came the Raid. I hate using that stuff - poison in the house is never a good thing. But there are times. They got it bad, and about an hour later there were no survivors. Cruel, but efficient. I was cleaning bugs off the floors and counter tops, and the sink for a couple of days. These bugs weren’t very large and I can’t say exactly what they were. My wife thinks they’re a kind of termite, or some sort of wood-eating bug. They’re a light red color, about a centimeter in length, and are not very fast. They struck a year ago almost exactly to the day. Tonight they came again, and I hit back with no hesitation. I sprayed the floor near the door and by the garbage can. But I went a bit overboard (something common to killers?), never something you want to do in the kitchen. I’ll be cleaning for a while in the morning to make sure all surfaces are poison-free.

I’m not sure why the pests swarm this time of year. Perhaps they only hatch at this time (though it seems a little late). Maybe it’s mating season. Or it’s something to do with the start of the rainy season, which is more or less the whole of June in Shanghai. Either way, it’s a big mess. I remember a similar event happening in Hong Kong when I lived in a dorm at HKU, but that was more like early April. Who knows?

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Marriage in China still befuddles me. It is for sons (and daughters, but preferably the former). It is for joining families. It is for the good of the bride and groom.

I witnessed today an engagement party. It was a banquet-style luncheon in what can only be described as the countryside of Shanghai, an area politically within the city’s boundaries, but that culturally and materially might as well be in neighboring Zhejiang. The groom picked up the bride, and brought her back to the family home, which more technically was his grandfather’s home. Locals had been hired to cook up the feast, and portable stoves and a huge rice steamer had been brought in order to facilitate the cooking.

First, some sweets were eaten by the fiance, fiancee and a few select people in order to symbolize a happy life together. Next, a long lunch full of many dishes was had, followed by a long rest to chat, play with the kids present, or play mahjong. Finally there was a shorter dinner (at 4:30 pm), mostly made up of dishes that had already been served for lunch. I’ve seen this before - in fact whole chickens, ducks, pig legs and fish are served after fruit (the traditional desert) at lunch that are not meant to really be eaten at that time, but are cut up and served later for supper along with the other leftovers.

I’d never heard of the gentleman who is now engaged (but read: married) having a girlfriend. True, we’re not that close; he’s one of my wife’s cousins. A woman at the banquet was introduced to me as the matchmaker, though she is also family. She introduced the two one month ago. Thus I can only assume that at that first meeting, the boy and girl had liked what they saw, spoke a few words and gotten along, so a wedding was agreed to. A month is not that long to plan this sort of event, so while I may be mistaken, a match was made fairly quickly without the soon-to-be husband and wife having gotten to know each other.

Their marriage has been arranged, and probably a token fee paid to the matchmaker. Interesting, since I thought the practice has been outlawed by the Communists. In the past few years, parents have gotten more involved in trying to find partners for their overworked heirs in the city, many of which have no time and few venues to find a date. Many young people in Shanghai marry their first girlfriend or boyfriend. Dating in college is much more common these days, but once they enter the workforce, young Shanghainese have a difficult time finding someone to be with. There are no house parties, bars are derided as seedy (indeed, many of them are!) and most have such a small circle of friends that there is little chance of meeting through people you know. Parents step in to help by introducing their kids to sons and daughters of their co-workers, or soliciting the help of professional matchmakers. But when you’re 30 and the clock is ticking, all this is understandable. The couple I saw today were 23 and 21, hardly the age for hand-wringing about the future.

The two looked great together and seemed like they knew what was expected of each other. On the other hand, my wife’s cousin is still a shy young man who has yet to experience much of the world. I suppose he understands his role, as most folk in the countryside do. They’re expected to marry young, have a child, work hard and take care of their parents, who have provided as much as they can for their kids.

It’s all rather quaint - ‘feudal’ as the Communists would have put it in the 60s - but if they have a happy life together, who am I to criticize? It was surprising nonetheless, and I find myself ever-more the anthropologist looking in on a society I find I knew nothing about before I came to this country.

China is unstoppably intriguing.

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I’ve had some locals girls and guys inform me lately that girlfriends in Shanghai expect their boyfriends to shell out spending money to them. I’ve heard of buying gifts and buying the girl the odd top when at the mall, but cash? Sounds a little like…

The wife tells me that’s bull and not many girls would ever suggest it, but it makes a bit of sense. Having a romantic relationship in China pretty much means you’re getting married. Guys make more money than women in China despite ‘official’ equality, and many women (though certainly not all) quit their jobs once securely in a relationship. If there’s no pressing need for money, they let the man take care of it. Sounds a little like what I was writing a ways back.

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