Julian

Three Days on the Road

2006-06-15T07:54:14Z

When people in China asked me why I came and stayed, the first two things I always used to bring up were language and travel, and not necessarily in that order. Learning Chinese is nice, of course, but nowhere is Chinese a better tool than on a trip, particularly one that goes a little off the beaten path; I have to think that certain companions saw this as an excellent reason to let me tag along. Now I'm sidelined with this knee thing, not sure when or if I will be able to strike out for new horizons, so I hope you'll forgive me if I wax nostalgic about some travels that I've had.

Actually, when I sat down and thought about it, there was no single trip that was not in some way marred by a poor choice or an unfortunate turn of events, a bad mood or simply a lack of time to properly explore. And then sometimes everything goes right but nothing leaves an impression, a pleasant but unspectacular diversion. Travel, though always has its moments, so rather than talk about a single trip with its ups, downs, and dull flats, I thought I would choose three good days that have stuck with me over the years, and chew over them one by one. Maybe in the process, you'll get a feeling for what it is about travel, and traveling in China, that does it for me.

Here they are, in chronological order. If I had my diary from that period handy, I could pinpoint the exact date, but I don't, so I won't.

1. A day in late September, 2001:

Almost five years ago now, all that is left of the particular day in my memory is a few distorted but nonetheless brilliant fragments of time. I don't remember waking up in Jingshan (where I taught during my first year in China), nor do I recall the 5-6 hour bus ride to Yichang on the shores of the Yangtze, nor exactly how we (Kailie, an Australian teacher, and I) ended up on a bus heading deep into the first of the Three Gorges. But here are three things I do remember...

A turn in the road

The bus swerved around a bend, and the three feet separating us from the gravel drop-off suddenly became three inches. I had probably never been in such imminent physical danger, and yet I felt almost completely indifferent to it; I remember, distinctly, thinking that this not be a bad climax to one's life, becoming, forever, a part of this amazing landscape, even if only a small, bun-shaped dot rolling down the crevassed slope of the gorge, falling to the water's edge, and, perhaps, becoming a small ripple in the Yangtze. It was a long way down to the river, which, at our height, resembled a thick copper-skinned snake, coiling its way among sheer vertical peaks. The passenger ferries, one of which bring me back this way a few days later, and the river barges, filled with cargo destined for Wuhan or perhaps Shanghai, were nothing more than little toy boats in its deadly jaws. This river, more than any other in China, was a killer (I later made a friend in Yunnan whose brother had drowned in its upper reaches), and soon we would pass the dam that was being built to tame it. There was more majesty in the scene than I could possibly describe, so I simply report that I was breathless, and my eyes misted over; this is why I had come to China.

A crossing at dusk

We were surprised when the narrow half-built road we were on began to switchback its way down the mountainside, ending finally at a little dock. We were told to get out, and our bus was loaded on the shabby-looking ferryboat. Though we had left Yichang in mid-afternoon expecting only a couple of hours of bus ride, there had a variety of delays, some explained, some not, and it was already getting dark when we shoved off towards the far shore. The river, for the first time not just part of the scenery but a real presence beneath our feet, was surprisingly calm; maybe the crossing was here for that very reason. The twilight was perfect, painting the river, the mountains, the sky in a thousand different shaded hues. We stood together on the railing, facing upstream, and I suppose there might have been conversation, though what I remember are the towering shapes that stood above the river, guarding our passage.

Night in Zigui

There was a unkempt, ramshackle quality to the little town we spent that night. It was to be below the waterline, which means that now it no longer exists, except as a underwater ruin, swallowed by the Yangtze. After we had passed the dam, we had begun to see the white markers on each side that showed the height to which the river would eventually rise. But at night, in the moonlight, all we could see looking out across the river were curved outlines of the peaks and the blurred, scattered lights of small villages on the opposite shore. Though I was excited about our trip, only just begun, I was mellowed by the thought of those lights extinguished, this sad town gone, the view that I was enjoying just a watery reflection. It make the memory that I have of it more precious. I wonder what it is like now, and I hope I will have a chance to visit it again.

2. A day in April, 2003

Here is a picture of me from this day, that I refer to as the Indiana Jones photo. Not that I bear much resemblance to Harrison Ford, but I have got a hat on, and my camera case strap definitely adds something. I think its the background that really makes the comparison work. I'm going to avoid turning this entry into a photo collection, but this one I can't resist.

It was taken on the road to through the Flaming Mountains on our way to the valley of the Cresent Moon, where we were hoping to beat the Nazis to the Holy...oh, wait, no, it's actually a bunch of Buddist caves. No Nazis at all. It was the first leg in our whirlwind tour of the sights around Turpan, the hottest city in China (it apparently hits 120 degrees in the summer). Though early in the year, it was still toasty enough to make that sweater I'm wearing quickly unnecessary. This was an above average Chinese tour, which means our driver basically just drove us to each designated spot and let us spend as much time there as we liked, much to the chagrin of the thoroughly disinteresed Chinese tourists sharing the van with us. A couple of the sights were a total waste of time, but the rest were well worth it.

The Bezeklik caves themselves were dark, cramped and unfortunately desecrated (by an earlier wave of western "visitors"), but what made them cool was that they had been carved into a cliffside overlooking a fertile valley in the middle of an otherwise desolate wasteland, with an clay-colored walkway connecting the twenty some Buddist shrines. Buddism ultimately didn't make much of a splash here, the vast majority of the population is a Muslim people related to the Turks, who moved into the area about a thousand years ago. Anyway, I'd never been to a proper desert before, and this was my first sight of real dunes...mmmm...dunes.

I knew this day was going to be special when they let us loose in the ancient city of Gaochang. Though much of it had been leveled by ancient war, harsh desert winds, and the simple passage of time, most of the outer wall was standing, and there were recognizable signs of human habitation. We had a 1200 year-old city almost entirely to ourselves, and I kept expecting an off-limits to visitors sign (or, in Chinglish, "wander person hold feet" ), but it never came. We scaled the city wall for a better view, wandered among the ruins to the amazingly well-preserved monastery, and had our picture taken with a cute baby camel that had a lazy hump. I should mention that Jenny, one of my two companions, was a archeology major, and Jenna and I were easily caught up in her enthusiasm.

And it just got better with the ruins at Jiaohe. Even older than Gaochang (almost two milliniea), many of its buildings were nonetheless totally explorable. Though the entire city is basically the same faded adobe brown, the irregular patterns of the streets and avenues and the variety of the shops, homes, and temples that once lined them left me with a distinct impression of a once bustling little settlement, here on this plateau between two river valleys, on the edge of one of the biggest deserts in Asia. Now it is a ghost town, with inexplicable features like several staircases that lead you down to nothing, with a steep drop off to the valley bellow (our archeologist suggested that it might be used for some kind of burial). I could have wandered around it for another few hours, but it was getting late, and by then we were all probably suffering from heatstroke.

We ended our day with a return to Islamic territory, at an otherwise spartan mosque with a lovely little minaret, that, unfortunately, we were not allowed to climb. So much for unrestricted access. The scenery was pleasant, spreading out around us for miles were the dusty grape vineyards that make Turpan and Xinjiang the raisin capital of China, an antidote to the stark barrenness of the ruins we had left behind; we weren't back in the present, but we had jumped ahead a thousand years at least.

Travel is sometimes a journey into the past. The further back, the better.

3. A day in August, 2003

I love it when a plan comes together.

Sometimes, on the road in China, you can spend an entire day getting nowhere, your precious vacation time frittered away, usually by some unsympathetic bus driver or a piece of well-meant misinformation. And then on other days, everything works out so well that you can hardly believe what you managed to get done in a single 16 hour period.

Allison and I woke up one morning in Kaili, just two hours bus ride from where we started our trip (Guiyang in central Guizhou province), but our vacation almost over before it had properly begun. Having only two days off between marathon intensive classes, we had some vague notions of taking a boat on the Wuyang river and visiting the river town of Zhenyuan. But we weren't quite sure how we were going to accomplish this.

We got up early and found the local tourist bureau, hoping they could enlighten us. The man there wasn't sure about the boats, as I recall, but he did tell us that we could take the train back to Guiyang from Zhenyuan the following afternoon, which was a good thing to know before we got in too deep; when you're traveling, always make sure you've got an exit plan. We decided to set out directly for Zhenyuan, and hurried to the bus station. It was 9 am, give or take, and we quickly discovered that the next bus for Zhenyuan didn't leave until the afternoon, and we wouldn't be there until evening; crap, we thought, a day wasted. But our guide book mentioned that there were boats from a town called Shibing to Zhenyuan, and there was a bus living for Shibing almost right away. Never stand still when you can be moving; we took the bus.

Not all bus trips are as incredible as the one through the Three Gorges, and I often don't have very high expectations, especially given the general discomfort involved (bad seats, smoking passengers, frequent stops). In terms of scenery, though, Guizhou rarely fails to disappoint; there is a saying that there is no three "li" ( 3 li = 1 kilometer) stretch of land that is entirely flat, and no one who lives there has more than three coins to their name. The people are poor, but the landscape is richly textured, with patchwork terraced slopes and pockets of vibrant green vegetation, and the occasional river, perhaps a tributary of the Wuyang we were seeking. I snapped a photo whenever we came around a particularly spectacular corner, but mostly just lost myself in the rolling hills. Not a bad way to spend a morning.

We arrived in Shibing about lunchtime. The first thing to do was to check the board, and confirm that, yes, there were plenty of buses leaving for Zhenyuan from here. After a cheap Chinese fast food lunch, we set out for the hotel mentioned in the guide book that could arrange the river boat trip. Not easy to find, thanks to road construction, and we finally made it there just after 1pm, only to be informed that there were no river boat trips from Shibing at this time of year, the water was too shallow. But all hope was not lost: there was a Wuyang river park halfway between Zhenyuan and Shibing where you could do boat tours. The people at the hotel told us that we would have to take the bus to Zhenyuan, then tell the driver to let us off at the gate to the park. Okeeeey...

Our luck then took a turn for the better. We only had to wait a few minutes at the bus station, and they dropped us off exactly where we wanted to be. A long hike down the deserted driveway entrance made us wonder if there would even be anyone there. Just as we arrived at the ticket office, a couple of other people showed up and filled out our boat, which was to be the last of the day (it was after three by then). We walked down a pleasantly shaded path to the river dock. The sun was blazing, even in the mid- to late afternoon, but our "ship" (really a pretty dinky little boat) had a canopy, and meal-service, in the form of an old woman in the back, roasting fish kabobs.

Compared to the brown murky depths of the Yangtze, the Wuyang was a clean blue-green, giving off a clear reflection of the brush-covered hills and rocky peaks that drifted past us. The river barely moved; it was perfectly calm, so utterly peaceful that, if I hadn't been so curious to see the scenery around the next bend in the river, I could have happily laid back and taken a nap, especially when we stopped for a moment next to a pair of waterfalls, which filled the air with a refreshing spray. There was nothing particularly new here, nothing the that was the biggest or best that I had seen in China, but it was nevertheless a worthy reward for our efforts; we were very happy that we had made it.

When we arrived back up at the road, it was late afternoon; it was summer, though, so we had perhaps two or three hours before sunset. In due course, the bus came along and took us the rest of the way to Zhenyuan. The guide book had been fairly vague about the place, and I wasn't sure quite what to expect. Nestled in a shallow valley created by the Wuyang, which also divided it down the middle, Zhenyuan turned out to be, if not completely pittoresque, certainly close enough for us at the end of a long day. The main street going through the old town, where we found a slightly over-priced room with blessed air-conditioning, was bookended by two stone bridges, and curved its way in the shape of the river that ran nearby, offering occasional views of Black Dragon temple on the other side (we would visit it the following morning).

After checking in, we went looking for dinner, walking a complete circle around the town, over the two bridges, before finally settling on a place with private rooms overlooking the river. We ate slowly, and talked about our pasts and our plans. After it was dark, we moved to a open-air cafe next to the bridge. Allison ordered some beers, and I had a milkshake-like thing that left me with a little bit of a buzz. We talked philosophy until well past midnight, then made our way back to the hotel through the quiet cobblestone streets.

Other honorable mention travel days:

4. An bus ride from Anshun (in Guizhou) to Kunming (in Yunnan) in June 2002. The scenery was heartbreaking; I wanted to get off in every little town I passed. Must go back.

5. Day 1 climbing Emei mountain in Sichuan province, October 2003. Ate a vegetarian lunch at one Buddhist monastery, then hiked through monkey sanctuaries, up ancient stone steps, and across covered bridges to spend the night at another. The mountain was cloaked in fog, which mean no views, but added to the feeling of mystery.

6. An afternoon in the university town of Tongshi (also known as Wuzhishan) in central Hainan, January 2004. I thought about going straight to the university and asking for a job; everything about the place suited me. Small, well maintained riverside town, plenty of great countryside (I spent the afternoon hiking to the nearby reservoir), and 25 degrees C (80 some F) in the middle of winter.

7. A day that included my first sight of the Yellow river, from the top of the bluffs near Ruicheng, Shanxi, May 2005. We also visited a extremely tranquil Daoist temple that had been moved there piece by piece to make way for a dam.

8. Hiking on the great wall with friends from my year at Jinrijiayuan, June 2005. Not technically "on the road" (it was a day trip from Beijing), but a great experience nonetheless, we had the wall to ourselves for much of the way.

9. Touring around Gynatse in Tibet with Mom and Dad, July 2005. Gynatse is the most "Tibetian" city in Tibet (Llasa is just a Chinese city with a Tibetian quarter), and packed with sights; a fortress on a hill, a massive Buddist temple with a "shrine tower", and a nunnery hidden out behind the city. Plus it was there that I crossed paths, and later had dinner with Jinrijiayuan friends Jenny and Dennis.

10. Climbing the first mountain pass on the Great Wall near Shanghaiguan, October 2005. It was exhilarating to break away from the crowds and the reconstructed portion of the wall, and make it to the top of Jiao Mountain, where the wall is just a few shattered bricks with a view of the sea. This day is bitter, bitter sweet in my memory, because my knee problems started on that trip, and in my pessimistic moments I think that it is probably the last real hiking I might ever do.

Hospitality

2006-05-08T09:05:36Z

April 25, 10pm

I am shaking things up a bit, turning this into a real journal, at least for this entry. No central theme or philosophical musings (well, not many), just an account of my days in a Chinese hospital. Other efforts to resolve my knee problem have failed, so it's time to crack her open, take a look inside, and see what's what. My greatest fear, I suppose, is that even this will fail to give me a proper, confirmed diagnosis (never mind a cure). I hate this limbo.

So I'm writing this by pen from my hospital bed (later to be transcribed). Lights are already out, but both my roommates are awake. Unlike me, they have had their surgery, and both will probably be checking out soon. The guy on my left is an Olympic skier who competed at the most recent games in Italy (Torino?), but has been plagued by a 2-year old injury that, as I saw just before the surgery cast went on, was a pretty nasty business. It sucks to be me just now, but it must suck about 100 times more to be a world-class athlete sidelined by a lingering injury. Seems a cheerful, friendly fellow though, he has shared his mineral water with me when I first arrived.

That was about 1:30, and since I've been subjected to the full battery of pokes, prods, and small humiliations. The ultimate indignity has almost certainly been the leg-shaving; hairiness of my magnitude is rarely seen in China, and I did not envy the nurse her task. My girlfriend, otherwise supportive, has given my white pasty leg a big thumbs down, though she has offered to shave the other one for me when I move to her place for recovery. Not sure if I should take her up on that.

More tomorrow, during my fast; I'm having surgery tomorrow evening, and I'm not allowed to eat for nearly 24 hours altogether. This sounds daunting just by itself.

April 26, 9am

My other roommate is checking out, and I can't say I'm sorry to see him go. He's nice enough, but he has a dull earnestness that irritates me; last night he pelted me first with questions, and later with snores. That, combined with various other discomforts and anxieties, assured that I would get only a troubled sleep. The 7 am wake up didn't help either. And now there are people, nurses and doctors I suppose, coming in and out, an NBA game on TV, and a rumbling in my stomach, so I'm not counting on getting anymore sleep. We'll see.

My room is nice and cozy, perhaps a little too cozy (read hot) last night, but I'm able to write this is thin hospital garb, with the covers off. It's a new building, apparently they only moved in last December, and it's a world apart from the run-down, dingy part of the hospital that I had my examinations in. Our TV, for example, is a flat widescreen, an nice touch, I suppose, if I cared to watch it. Besides the odd conversation, I'm spending my time reading.

As I mentioned, I'm not allowed to eat for basically the entire day, and I'm already feeling peckish. By the time I get out of surgery, I'm certain to be famished. It's those 6 hours after surgery that I'm dreading. The Olympian had them last night, and he was obviously quite...discomforted. Besides not being able to eat, you're also not supposed to move. So I might not get in another entry until tomorrow.

April 26, 1pm

I've been put on an IV to help keep my fluids/blood sugar levels up. It took two tries. They are using the ultra-thick, multiple use needle (basically a pointy tube), and on the first try I swear they hit bone. Anyway, it hurt, a lot, and the nurse pulled it back out. We switch needles and nurses and tried again. The second time took, but all in all it was not an auspicious start to a day of many piercings.

New roommate has arrived. Shouldn't snore, but very talkative. In his 50s. Reminds me a little of an older architect I had dinner with a month ago. Interesting guy, but will not let you get an word in. I just want to sleep before the fun starts.

April 26, 11pm

Well, I made it through the day. Not sure if I have the energy to describe the surgery, maybe I'll just describe my belated dinner. Corn and pine nuts, ordered by my new roommate just in time for the end of my 21 1/2 hour fast, and ramen instant noodles, provided by the Olympian, who is recovering nicely from his own surgery yesterday. I'm very appreciative now of the Chinese hospitality (pun absolutely intended) that I disparaged in my first blog entry. I'm in pain, but not that much, I should be able to sleep. But not before I have some oatmeal, courtesy of my girlfriend, who has rearranged her class schedule for the last two days to keep me company. The only people who aren't taking good care of me seem to be the nurses.

April 27, 7pm

About half an hour ago, the nurses came by for their first temperature check of the day, it should have woken me up, but actually I was already awake; I've been up since it got light at six. Not a great night's sleep, I could have done worse. My new neighbor doesn't snore, but he does fart, repeatedly. My leg is throbbing, and I have a slight headache, but otherwise fine.

Yesterday, I was expecting to have surgery about 5 o'clock, but they surprised me by coming by around 2:30. Probably for the best, as this way I had less time to spaz. It was a quick surgery, and I was back in my room by four. I had a half-body epidermal anesthetic, which required a shot directly into my spine, probably the single most unpleasant moment of the whole process; thanks to numerous dental problems, I am no stranger to an anesthetics, but there is something truly surreal about seeing your legs but having no connection to them. My own little taste of paraplegic life. Actually, the lack of feeling was totally pleasant, except for the lower part of my stomach, which effected my breathing, and, given my general anxiety, I have to make an active effort to avoid hyperventilation. During the operation, which happened out of my sight and of which I was only aware of vague pressure and cold sensations, the anesthesiologist, bless him, engaged me in idle conversation between updates from the doctors. They did, it turns out, find a "small problem," and removed a tiny bit of tissue; it had been getting swollen inflamed and rubbing against the cartilage. There is damage to the cartilage as well, but not enough to operate on. So the symptoms that I have related to the cartilage will not improve, and the doctors are making no promises about the rest. The moral of the story? Should have had surgery earlier. My first MRI showed no cartilage damage, which means the damage has mostly happen in the last 3 months. So, no miraculous recovery in store, but hopes that things will get better, and they at least won't get worse. Looks like I'll have to make do with that.

April 27, 4pm

There's something reassuring about the rhythms of a hospital, the temperature checks every four hours, the defecation question once a day, and the surgery, also, quite by happenstance, one per day. Today it's my older roommate's turn; he's broken his Achilles, and he 'll be in the hospital recovering for weeks. I'm checking out tomorrow. Just had a conversation with my doctor, he says that although I will be able to walk within the week, it will be a month or two before can expect to see real improvement in my condition compared to how I was pre-surgery. Hmph. (transcribers note: I found out later that my doctor will be going to Germany for some kind of exchange thing in July...my paranoid side thinks that he said this as way to stop me from coming in to bother him before he left the country. Double hmph)

Been watching a lot of sports on that widescreen, not by choice of course, but both my roommates are sports people. Not being a complete sports illiterate, I can fake it, but it's really not my thing. Sort of part of a general rejection of the male stereotypes that includes beer and crude jokes about women. Under non-Chinese circumstances, I would probably be very uncomfortable in the company of sports fans, but my foreigner "difference" allows me some flexibility, I'm not afraid of being classified as a pussy just because I don't know who make it into the NBA playoffs. Chinese culture is hopelessly oppressive when it comes to personal behavior and preferences, but I am a foreigner and am forgiven for my oddness. And now, back to the World Cup.

April 28, 6pm

Stupid soccer. 90 minutes, 0-0, what was the frigging point? One thing about being in the hospital (or, for that matter, China as a whole) is it's pretty hard to feel sorry for yourself, when you're surrounded by people who are worse off then you. Like my roommate. He's in serious pain, something is blocked up in his numb lower half. He's a trooper, tougher, certainly, than I would be, but I can feel the discomfort emanating through the curtain. And the only thing I can do is write about it. The doctors and nurses have made their appearances, but only to leave some hopeless advice: give it some time, try to relax, and if it's really bad...if it gets really bad, what? Nobody is sure, so they leave it hanging. Two years ago, I didn't quite realize how limited, how helpless modern medicine is in the face of anything that's not part of the standard medical canon. We really haven't come that far from voodoo and magical herbs (which explains, to me, the attraction of Chinese medicine...if Western medicine really had it together, there would be no need for an alternative). And even when the clues are there, doctors are attracted to certain familiar, easily treatable maladies. Give them a pill, and send them home. The really annoying thing is that 9 times out of 10 the doctors are right, but there's always that 1/10 that I seem to keep falling into.

April 25, 10pm

My visit to this novel world is starting to wind down. It's tough to say that I'm sorry to go, but there is something likeable about it. There is a natural camaraderie to the whole thing, with no real pecking order except who has had more surgeries(I'm the only newbie). We share our meager resources, trade stories of pain even as we are racking up new ones, and make trusted friends in hours instead of years. It's a place of the unfortunate, and that's the beauty of it. I'm not looking forward to returning entirely to the normal, not while I'm still crippled. I've got a week R+R in my girlfriend's country apartment before I rejoin society.

April 26, 1pm

Waiting. The Olympian is waiting for his train tickets out of town. I'm waiting for the doctor to come back to change my bandage, waiting for my girlfriend to come and pick me up. The Olympian's bed will be filled by a Brit, he'll be here for much longer than me, he's broken a ligament. Doesn't seem too friendly, but that's probably just the two random foreigners in China awkwardness. We'll see.

Last night we had a political discussion. The talkative guy (he's a reporter) is relatively open-minded, and well informed, bu there's always a...gap. It's good, actually, it's too easy to be terminally critical of Chinese politics, particularly with regards to Tibet and Xinjiang. And I will admit that once something is done (say, like invading Iraq), there are often no easy answers or solutions. The reporter wants me to read some Chinese history as written by the Chinese themselves, he says he's going to recommend some.

As part of the same conversation, I asked the Olympian if he could go back to when he was 11 (the age he started training), would he still choose to be an athlete, even knowing that his Olympic dream would be only realized in a stunted fashion. He answered immediately in the affirmative, saying he was happy to "bring honor to China." It sounds kind of corny to our ears, but I believe it. Later, I noticed he had a US Olympic team hat, turns out he traded with a veteran US Olympic skier who celebrated his last Olympics by exchanging his entire uniform with people from other countries. A nice way to round out your Olympic career, non? The Olympian says that he probably won't be going back to the Olympics as a participant, but maybe as a coach. I wish him luck.

It's a nice, not too sunny day in Beijing, and I think I'm ready to go.

Lao Father Time

2006-04-16T07:51:13Z

I've been feeling old lately.

Maybe it's all the hobbling around, the numerous trips to the hospital, the medicines and therapies. Or perhaps it's the fact that my parents are retiring, my brother is in his 30s with (perhaps by the time you read this) two kids, and that in the last four years many of my older relatives have died, almost like there's been a generational shift, with everyone moving one step forward, towards the *ahem* final destination. Gee, how morbid is that? And now all of a sudden there are adults younger than me, when I had barely gotten used to the idea that I was an adult myself. When I was in my early twenties, I was fairly indifferent to my particular age, but now I'm starting to notice it. Twenty-six isn't old, but it's not exactly young, either. If it's still youth, it's late youth. Sigh...I wish I could just the whole line of thought alone, but there's something about time.

What's time? Money. No, time isn't JUST money, it's worth much more, at least to us modern, industrialized humans. And so just about everyone obsesses about time; managing it, saving it, maximizing its usage, or lamenting its loss. The surest way to attack someone else's hobby or activity is to label it a waste of time. Much of modern technology, from microwaves to telephones to hair driers, is aimed at reducing the amount of time it takes to do something. And it seems like the more time we have (because we do have more time, both lifetime and spare time, than the average human being has ever had), the MORE neurotic we get about its usage.

Anyway, if you're coming from a Western perspective, it's unlikely that I really have to convince you that your time is important. If you're Chinese, though, you maybe haven't gotten the picture. Please, please, don't sit there on your ass and delay things as much as possible just to show off your paltry little bit of authority. Don't cut in line in front of me, then spend long minutes in asking for information that you could glean just by tilting your head upwards slightly. Don't stop your car on a one line road, offload your living room set, then wait for someone to give you an offer. Don't make me wait for an hour outside a stupid jade shop on the way to some lame, built three months ago tourist attraction your over-priced tour forced upon me in the first place. And if your job consists of doing absolutely nothing all day, every day, could you at least do it without that bovine expression on your face? It's really depressing.

Speaking of depressing things, let's talk about getting older. In our youths, we are time-rich, but each day that passes means a little bit of what seems at first like a huge, Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin-size stash of time gets frittered away, mostly on trivial things like work, school, sleep, and TV. We try to make the best of things, but general confusion on what really constitutes a good use of time means that many of us, myself included, are always a little bit disappointed. There really isn't a period of my life (including, for example, last week) that I don't have some regrets about how I made use of my time.

The trade-off, of course, is time for experience. But what experience? Work experience, so that we can get a better job, with a higher salary? Social experience, so we have more close friends, or a wider circle? Romantic experience, so we are more popular with the opposite sex, or better in the sack? Study? Travel? Games? Music? Books? Working out? Parties? Blogging? Should we be doing what feels good now, what will make us successful five years from now, or what we will be happy with looking back on fifty years from now? This is very un-American of me, I know, but sometimes I wish there was someone who would just tell me, with enough authority to make me listen (hah), what I should be doing with my time. Because it's not really about what you do, it's whether you feel what you're doing is the right thing to be doing.

The Chinese, bless them, have no shortage of people telling them what to do in the form of relatives, teachers, and other authority figures reaching all the way up to Hu Jintao, who a few weeks ago made a speech exhorting the 1.3 billion Chinese to be more moral than they have been recently (I wonder how many cheating husbands, kept prostitutes, and crooked businessmen mended their ways after hearing that?). There are a lot of conflicting messages, but I think the basic idea is this: Do what you are told, make as much money as you can, and be good to your mother. In terms of brainwashing you could probably do worse. What you don't get is a sense of, ever, is sometime telling the Chinese that their lives are important, that they should make good use of the time they have.

Which explains the empty lives I see around me. Both in extreme workaholism and extreme laziness (both of which are in plain view, often at the same time) the Chinese are wasting their lives away, or so it seems to me. For example, the supermarkets and department stores of Chinese are filled with employees working all hours, for no pay, doing basically nothing. They just stand there, like the guards outside my building, except they are guarding shelves of merchandise, instead of people. I almost prefer a sweatshop where at least something is being produced. This isn't just exploitation, it's pointless. Even more gainfully employed people (including some of my co-workers, and, on occasion, myself) spend time doing things that are obviously pointless busy work, hoop jumping, or worse. And what boggles my mind is how the people in these jobs wouldn't feel like their lives are slipping away. I know I do (or haven't you guessed). Maybe I'm weird, but I hate sitting at my job, doing nothing, when I know that I could be doing something more productive, interesting, and possibly even stimulating with my time (like writing this blog, perhaps). But not the Chinese. When you've got a job, you're doing what you're told, making money (even if it's only a few dollars a day), and you aren't letting your mother down. And I guess they are content with that. If someone can convince you that digging holes and covering them back up again is a true calling, then, damn, you could probably make a really good life out of it.

I've got a couple of counterexamples, one specific, one general. The specific one is my Chinese friend Lucy, who, at present, works three half-days a week teaching English, and spends the rest of her time reading, playing chess, learning French, and studying art. She has some ideas about studying or working in Europe, but, unlike so many others, she doesn't seem motivated to sacrifice her current life for a future one. Even the lack of a boyfriend doesn't seem to really bother her. She has a sunny but subdued disposition, and might come off at first as slightly dull, but actually she's one of the brightest, most original thinkers that I've met among the Chinese. She sees through the prop pieces, the stilted dialogue that keep most of the Chinese trapped on stage, actors playing out a role written by others. She is determined to live her life on her own terms. I admire her even if I wonder if she won't someday regret the isolation that this entails.

But it is the general example that I want to explore for this rest of my essay. A few days ago, I was watching some CCTV 9 (the science and education channel, which, unlike the rest of Chinese TV, does have the odd interesting program), and there was this story about a retired couple who, having a small van left over from their business, decided to start traveling around China on their own. This is in contrast to the usual Chinese method of tourism, which is by train or plane, followed by a sightseeing bus taking you to various places your friends will have heard of so you can show them the pictures of you in front of *X* tourist attraction when you get home. By the time they were interviewed, this elderly couple had already been on several of these trips, and, like me, they had a map of China that showed all the spots they had hit. I was seriously jealous. I've been around, but most of my trips (with a couple of notable exceptions) have been all too well choreographed, almost too focused, and there are huge swaths of China I haven't even flown over, never mind seen up close. But this couple had been almost everywhere, and, what's more, they had been to the places between everywhere, those little places that nobody would ever think to go to, and therefore are probably the most interesting of all.

The hook of the story, of course, was that this couple was in their late sixties/early seventies, showing a more adventurous spirit than people of the younger generations. They are an anomaly, to be sure, but the fact that this program was on TV at all sort of demonstrates that there is a difference sense of being old here. I doubt it was always like this, but the current Western culture is, quite frankly, fairly dismissive of old people. I think Grandpa Simpson (and all of his friends down at the Springfield Retirement Castle) reflects perfectly our attitude; to be old is to be dependent, sedentary, lonely, and sad, shuffling around sterilized space, waiting to die. I have found that in my own life I have almost forced this stereotype on family members; I think of my one remaining grandmother as being much less "with it" than she usually is (even at 93), and before she died I was always leery of visiting my other grandmother, who was a good conversationalist and a mean cribbage player all the way to the end. I believe it was me, being young and associating old with all sorts of negative things, death most of all, that put up the barriers that always seemed to exist.

Why is it different in China? Let's start with language. "Lao" is the Chinese word for old, but it is a poor translation, as old has nothing but negative connotations in English, unless you are talking about antiques, at which point we would use the word antique. I would not say that "Lao" is all tulips and roses (my girlfriend shakes her head and says "lao le", i.e. I'm getting old, almost every time she passes a mirror), but when used to talk about other people it also has a strong undercurrent of respect. "Lao ma" (old mother) and "Lao ba" (old father) are politest, and at the same time most intimate way to address your parents. "Lao wai" (old foreigner) is a fairly respectful way (better than yang guizi, foreign devil) to address a foreigner of any age. The word for old people "lao ren" has none of the negative feeling that forces us to change them into the elderly.

My excursions into Chinese philosophy, literature, and history confirm that old people have usually had it pretty good in China; relieved of the day to day management of the household, they nonetheless always had the final word in any family discussion, and of course were venerated for generations after they were dead. Even women did pretty well once they outlived their husbands: In "Dream of the Red Chamber", the classic Chinese novel that I am working my way through at a ponderous pace, the matriarch of the Jia family (mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to all the major male characters) is treated like a queen, surrounded and doted upon by her reverent family. On a darker note, Cixi, the last true Empress of China, was running the Qing dynasty into the ground well into her eighties (speaking of stereotypes, what about old, female, Asian drivers?:).

Be good to your mother (and father, too, though he's probably dead from lung cancer by now) is still one of the centerpieces of Chinese morality. For a country with hundreds of millions of people over sixty, there are surprisingly few retirement homes or long-term care facilities. There's an economic reason for this, of course: many people can't afford to put their parents in a home, and those that can might as well (and generally do) just hire a girl from the countryside. But there's a social reason too, an idea that you always owe your parents a debt that can never be repaid, and you can't be so selfish to just to turn your back on them to pursue your own freedom. And that's the cultural trade-off, I suppose; we like our freedom when we are young, but the Chinese prefer to have a comfortable, secure old age.

But the most obvious difference that, I think, arises out of this respect is that old people are really visible here in China. They are out on the streets, representing, keeping it real. Go to any Chinese park at any time of day (but particularly the ungodly hours of the morning) and you will find people we would have long since shipped off to the home doing Taichi or dancing, walking with their grandchildren or feeding the birds, discussing with their friends of fifty years how this child is making something of himself but that child was a complete waste of rice. They bear a vague physical resemblance (mostly the wrinkles) to our variety of old people, but unlike ours they live in a culture that encourages an active "oldness," a life that is still purposeful well into their eighties and nineties. Walking through a Beijing hutong (alleys) on a warm evening is pleasurable first and foremost for the wide palette of life that is spread out before you, from the little two-year-old still in split pants to his great-grandfather, watching on from the opposite doorway with an expression which could be mistaken for senility, but is actually one of bemusement. The stereotype of standoffish crankiness doesn't hold up either; I still remember my first trip through the Three Gorges (just a month after I arrived in China), where we met an old farmer on a passenger ferry who had probably never seen a foreigner. Though we didn't get through the language barrier (he didn't exactly speak Mandarin, and at that time neither did I), we did manage a handshake and a few minutes of good-natured attempts. He had the nicest toothless grin I've ever seen. He got off before we did, somewhere in the middle of nowhere; I just hope he's got some children at home, looking after him.

Would I want to grow up, to grow old in China? I'm not so sure. I think I prefer neuroses to wasted time, to a wasted youth. But when I'm old, it would be nice if I could be "lao" too.

Loose Strands

2006-03-31T13:58:58Z

I'm going to write some more on the topic of Chinese dishonesty, to fill some gaps in my reasoning towards the end of my last essay. Warning: this will involve a bunch of history, and so those who can't stomach it should bail out now.

Okay, so I was trying to make the point that the lying in Chinese culture is systematic, is part of the Chinese cultural system, and was taking some stabs at why that might be. To take things off on a more historical bent, let's go back to Confucius, who definitely had a hand in all of it. Confucius lived during the Spring and Autumn period, when what we now call China was really a bunch of small kingdoms, tyrannically ruled and constantly engaged in tit-for-tat warfare. It was a chaotic time, and Confucius' teachings were a response to that, a call for a return to sanity. His solution involved "renlun," which could also be translated as human relationships, but it's a slightly different concept from "guanxi." Renlun, simply put, is a system that gives everyone a set place in the world, and at the same dictates how you should behave towards everyone else in it. It tells you exactly how you should treat your father, your wife, your king, and your slave. These roles are static, and should not be influenced by personal tendencies. When everyone acts exactly how they should, there will be of course perfect harmony; conflict is caused by willful, individual disregard of the "natural" order of things.

Not the most dynamic of ideas, one should stress that renlun was nonetheless extremely effective for its time. While European states were stagnating their way through the Dark Ages, China was becoming the biggest empire the world had ever seen. Empire is only possible with organization and bureaucracy, which renlun provided and justified. But renlun also stated that an emperor had an obligation to the common people just as strong (if not stronger) than the people to their emperor, and so those Chinese emperors that where going to use Confucius to justify their rule also had to maintain social prosperity, and not cause too much hardship among their subjects; the tyrants (or, quite commonly, their relatively ineffectual sons) were overthrown to make way for a new dynasties, having failed to maintain the renlun social contract.

Okay, so where does lying fit into all this? Well both the beauty and the tragedy of renlun lies in its rigidity. The rigidity gives stability, security, and belonging. But it also limits, constricts, and suffocates. It forces people to deny their own desires, to leave opinion unspoken. Since your real feelings do not always match up with what is expected of you in the social situation, you must lie. You must feign love for your father even if you despise him, you must be courteous to people you privately scorn, you must be the person you are expected to be rather than the person you are.

A static system can also fail to give ambitious, intelligent people a positive outlet. Innovation and creativity are discouraged, and so the only way to improve your lot is through manipulation of the situation, usually by deception. "Raise the Red Lantern," an excellent Chinese film starring Gong Li, shows this in principle in action, as four wives battle for social standing within a household. Ultimately the wife who had at first appeared to be the most likable turns out to be the most conniving, securing her position while the others meet unpleasant fates. Their husband is distant but ultimately the source of all power, a stand-in emperor.

Why was China such a successful (and by extension oppressive) feudal power, compared to European lightweights? I think the answer has to do with power distribution: Europe was extremely fragmented, starting with the basic divide between church and state. China had no such divide; outside of Tibet, the Buddhists had no real authority, ditto the Daoists. All roads of power led to the emperor. He had rivals, of course, but those rivals were trying to weaken the man who currently called himself emperor so that they could take his place, they wanted to steal the office, not undermine it. Checks and balances were not in anyone's vocabulary, and so the Chinese people were more successfully "feudalized" than their European counterparts.

And then the world changed. To some extent because of the fragmentation of power and the room for personal expression this allowed, certain Europeans started to think outside the feudal box. They started looking for new answers, for new truth. At a time when China had already settled into a nice little rut, Europe was evolving. By the time the British came knocking (well, beating) on China's door, the feudal age was over, and the scientific advances that had come with the new age allowed the British to kick some serious Chinese ass. The Chinese still don't really know what hit them. In the West, all of this change came relatively gradually, and it was integrated into the culture without too much fuss. For the Chinese, it was like driving down a dirt path in your donkey cart, and suddenly being run off the road by a Lamborghini.

In Europe, this new age created a new niche; the honest thinker. Previously, advancement came mostly through ingratiating oneself to a particular patron. The ideas and the rhetoric were all the same; in the Dark Ages, who would say anything that wasn't either Church doctrine or state policy? But Renaissance art and Enlightenment science opened up a new door, and philosophy sneaked through. Findings about the natural world that clashed with established thought led these new intellectuals to question the entire system, and to consider a new system, based on rational principles. Rule of law came into its own, and people began to expect more than arbitrary or down-right biased decisions from authority figures. Which is not to say that the Western system of government and law is perfect, just that it is at least an honest attempt.

I've wandered off the topic of personal honesty, so let me get things back on track before we continue with the history. First of all, I think that, all things being equal, most people would prefer to live honestly in an honest society. Mutual honesty allows for trust, friendship, and community; it is hard to imagine any functioning, mutually-dependent group of people where lying was totally acceptable behavior. Obviously, a certain amount of little white lying is necessary to maintain social cohesion, but too much would seem to do the opposite, undermining all group actions. And this is true, as far as small groups are concerned. But unfortunately people don't live in small groups anymore, we live in vast, exceedingly complex societies where our mutual-dependency is no longer evident.

Imagine two children who are learning about the world. Both have the potential for both honest and dishonest behavior, and both have been told that lying is wrong. But one child is growing up in a relatively well-off household, where the punishment of the no-lying rule is strictly reinforced, and the rewards of lying (personal gain) are rarely if ever worth the direct punishment and social stigma if caught. Dishonest behavior is an unnecessary risk. In the other household, a much poorer one, the lying rules are erratically enforced, and in fact lying is rewarded if the behavior is directed at others and successful in its goal. Due to circumstances, the pressure for improvement is constant, but overzealous honesty almost never brings rewards, because it often means stepping on others' toes, who are not scrupulous about plotting revenge. In short, it is dog-eat-dog out there, and lying brings home the bacon.

You probably see where I'm going with this: it's tough being Chinese. First, you're saddled with a stagnant, corrupt dictatorship, but, hey, at least it's a successful and fairly stable stagnant, corrupt dictatorship. But then your distant neighbors, who really ought to better but are still drunk on their newly discovered power, come around and start economically subjugating you (still better than what happened to Africa, but that's not saying much). You finally get rid of your dictatorship...which is replaced by a rep..er...nope, another dictatorship, except one so weak that it basically parcels out the country to little local dictators. And then things get really bad. This time it's your next-door neighbor that comes knocking, and this time it's full scale invasion. When that finally all gets sorted out, the internal balance of power has been so upset that you've got a civil war on your hands. But finally, here's a government that cares about...no, wait, looks like another dictatorship (so-called of the proletariat), albeit a fairly novel one. First they turn society on its head, punishing or even assassinating the old elite. Absurd government policies cause massive deaths. And then an attempt at cultural suicide i.e. "revolution" which, if all the rest wasn't enough, probably managed to finish off the rest of the honest Chinese population by allowing personal squabbles to end in death sentences. And, finally, this same government does a complete about-face and essentially starts telling everyone that they should forget about the rhetoric of the previous thirty years and make money, money being an end in itself.

And when in all this were the Chinese going to learn to be honest? The world they lived in was (and to a certain extent is) unpredictable and cruel. Progress, justice, equality, these are just meaningless slogans used by various people to hoodwink (now that the OED has reminded me of it, I'm determined to use hoodwink more often:) the general public. Is there any wonder that all this lead to an arms race of deception? Saying that a more honest culture would have prevented some of these tragedies (probably true, especially some of the more recent ones) is putting that cart that got run off the road before the donkey that's still lying in the ditch. Change will take time, and it will require several generations of people who are given the freedom of thought to realize that no, in the grand scheme of things, lying doesn't pay. In the meantime, I'll be forgiving, even when I'm critical.

Whew, okay, end of history lesson...there's actually lots more to say on this topic, but next time I'll write about something completely different, I promise.

Strands of a Tangled Web

2006-03-13T16:21:32Z

If the Inuit have twenty some words for snow, the Chinese ought to have about that many words to describe the act of lying. In fact they don't; ignoring a few archaic characters and some ambiguous slang, there are basically two ways. One is the compound verb "sa huang" (or "shuo huang") that is literally to spread (or speak) falsehoods. It generally refers to a specific act of lying, i.e. a particular time when you opened your mouth and untruthful words came out. The other and more common word is single character verb "pian", spoken in the fourth, or falling tone which gives the word a quick, harsh, sometimes indignant feel. Its literal translation is to deceive, but it covers a whole range of behaviors from lying to cheating to fooling, swindling, conning and even hoodwinking (as your handy Oxford Chinese-English dictionary will tell you). So it appears the English language a bit more robust when it comes to deception, though "pian" makes it up in terms of versatility, packing a whole bunch of meaning into a small, deceptively simple package.

Like "deceive", "pian" is a transitive verb, you can't just "pian", you have to "pian" someone, or, more rarely, "pian" something, where the something refers to the object that is obtained through deceit. I think it might be more than an interesting linguistic quirk that "lie", an intransitive verb, is the most common such word in English, whereas "pian" is the most common word in Chinese. Lying can happen and be judged independently of who is being lied to, but "pian"ing is, by its very nature, tied to person who is being deceived and the goal of the deception.

Okay, enough armchair linguistics. I made what would appear to be somewhat discriminatory statement at the beginning of this essay (did it get your attention?) and I need to stop and try to explain it a little. At first glance, it seems like I'm saying that all the Chinese are lying scum. Well, perhaps, if you are being a cultural fascist (see last essay), that's a fair way to put it. But in the interests of diplomacy, I'll just say that the Chinese cultural landscape includes a richer variety of false speech than any I had encountered previously. In fact, it's going to take me the rest of this essay just to describe and exemplify all the kinds of lying that I've seen here. I want to examine the Chinese web of deceit strand by strand, and see if there are any interesting conclusions to be reached (other than the angry, dismissive ones).

Let me preface this by saying that I have always considered myself to be a relatively honest person by Western standards. It doesn't mean I never lied, but it does mean that I never enjoyed it; for whatever reason, lying is psychologically and morally troubling to me, and, since I'm generally very bad at it, I always try to go out of my way to avoid lying, even when the lie itself is harmless. I also have strong negative reaction to other peoples' lies, whatever their nature, which I guess that makes me some kind of absolutist.

The Chinese are a long way from being absolutist; in fact, they are scrupulously utilitarian when it comes to deception: if a lie works better than the truth, they seem obligated to use it. I guess that's not pathological, but from a western perspective it's the next best thing. Take, for example, the so-called art students in Tiananmen Square, who yes, suckered

me into buying an overpriced reproduction back on my very first day in China. These clean-cut, twenty-something scam artists (pun not intended) tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to their "exhibit halls" and make the sale. The disturbing thing about it is that they seem like nice kids, that they probably ARE nice kids. They might even be real art students for all I know, it certainly isn't out of the question. Boldfaced lying just happens to be in their job description.

Most foreigners who come to China feel sooner or later that they are being taken advantage of by the Chinese. This is absolutely true. One of the first things you learn about Chinese culture is that how important relationships (guanxi) are. By default, foreigners occupy the very outer ring of the guanxi social intimacy sphere. Random Chinese strangers are one step in, followed by people from the same region, province, or town, and, towards the interior, co-workers, classmates, friends, and family (with parents or children the closest). People towards the exterior don't get much weight with regards to the utilitarian logic that decides who can be cheated. In other words, people are fair game if they are sufficiently distant; if cheating foreigners out of their money means that you can buy your mother a house, or your son a better education, well, that's a no brainer.

To be fair to the Chinese, this sort of thinking goes on in all human societies; evolution has ensured that we are kinder to our kin than to strangers. In the affluent West, however, we view aspects of this behavior as running counter to certain egalitarian values. As a rule, we don't like favoritism and nepotism (even if we sometimes practice it), and we don't think that you should be able to cheat someone just because you don't know them. Of course, the Chinese pay lip service to the idea of equality and justice, but they pay lip service to just about everything, including communism, even though their economy is now capitalist (albeit crony capitalist) to its core. In short, it matters who you know, and I'm sorry to report that 1.3 billion Chinese don't know you, unless of course you're frigging Dashan (professional Canadian dork, most famous foreigner in China).

However I think there's still a lot more lying going on than can be explained away by selfish genes or the party line. Next, try to wrap your brain around this one: we might be, in our ignorance, sometimes deceived by speech that is technically false but not really intended to be deceptive. A good analogy is someone who completely fails to pick up on sarcasm. Taken literally, sarcasm is lying (by definition it is saying the opposite of what you mean), but we won't normally classify it as such, because there are (usually) obvious clues in the delivery that tell the listener to believe the opposite of what is actually being said. Similarly, in China, there are many situations (universally recognized by the Chinese, though maybe not as clear to others) where the speech is clearly false, or, more commonly, the truthfulness of some particular speech is entirely irrelevant. In this case lies are being used to as a front for an entirely different kind of communication. Just as the Chinese don't seem to pick up on most of my sarcasm (unfortunately it's only irregularly a feature of Chinese humor), I sometimes often make the mistake of listening to what people are saying rather than what they are trying to tell me.

But why not just say what you mean and mean what you say? What is wrong with absolute honesty? Well, I think any parent of a young child can tell you that: sometimes the truth, even from the mouth of babes, is socially uncomfortable. Ms. Manners would put the smackdown on me, but I've always thought that all politeness, at its heart, was basically socially acceptable (indeed, socially demanded) deception, either by exaggeration (Thank you so much!), by omission (if you can't say anything nice...), or by delicate lie (What a lovely gift!). When you toss in the Asian concept of face, which needs to be attended to at all times, suddenly there is a whole range of topics that can only be suggested, insinuated, or brushed on. And sometimes a direct question can only be met with a lie, if propriety is to be maintained.

A related brand of deception is what I would term a "conflict avoiding" lie. This is classic Chinese behavior, a kind of lying that, while generally innocuous, can be infuriating to foreigners who haven't learned to recognize it. Basically, the Chinese motto is to never have a confrontation today that you could put off until tomorrow. So, if you come into the office steaming over a broken this or a forgotten that, the poor soul whose responsibility it is to deal with you will proceed to placate you with whatever empty promises seem appropriate until you have calmed down, and then, the crisis averted, will not actually do anything to solve the problem you came in with. But don't worry, they will be armed with enough good excuses to disarm you the next time as well, until the day that confrontation
can be avoided only be actually fixing the problem.

This kind of weaseling is fairly repugnant to our Western sensibility, both for its cowardliness and the deceit involved. It also seems vaguely inefficient...much time is spent placating people that could be spent doing useful work. This sycophantic quality is, if you ask me, a defining characteristic of Chinese culture, and it's why I'm not particularly concerned that the Chinese will take over the world any time soon. I think you can only go so far if your primary strategy is to "pian" (in whatever sense you require) rather than be productive. But perhaps I'm naive.

There is a upshot to all this, and it's a big one. Despite being horribly overpopulated, with huge economic disparities, intense social pressure, a corrupt and dictatorial government, and no unifying religion, Chinese society is amazingly harmonious. Why? Homogeneity plays a role, certainly, but I think deception does as well. Being able to lie to get what you need for your family, to keep the authorities off your back, to save face, to avoid confrontation and keep the peace, these are things that have held Chinese civilization (and maybe ALL civilization) together since the beginning, and through all the historical train wrecks in-between.

Honesty, then, is a modern luxury. We in the industrialized Wester are able to be honest, perhaps, because we can isolate ourselves in our homes, and immerse ourselves in our own little sub-cultures, surrounding ourselves people who think like us. We don't have to cheat, self-immolate, or pacify; we can be ourselves. But there is a selfishness in our honesty, just as there is sometimes nobility in a lie.

After I read half of the latest Mao autobiography (that's about all I could stand) during my trip back, I came back to China just hoping that someone would bring him up so I could reveal the truth of his petty, conniving nature. I had actually begun to believe certain aspects of the propaganda surrounding him (particularly concerning his youth), but now I had reliable evidence that he was not an idealist corrupted by power, but had the idealists within the Communist party killed in order to attain that power. Basically nothing that the Chinese have ever heard about Mao is accurate (he made sure of it), and the fact that they still believe anything nice about him is deeply troubling to my honest nature. But here's another truth: The Chinese will gain nothing by having Mao's reputation (as it still exists in China) destroyed. There are people still alive who venerate him, to whom he was an icon of morality and justice. What value is there in trying to kill their symbol? Would I be doing it for their sake, or for my own misguided righteousness? Truth matters to me, so I seek it, and try to live my life within its solid frame. But that's my choice, and theirs is a culture that values other things; my truth can't help them, can't change what's happened, and so I think, perhaps, that I'll stay quiet about Mao, and let them live happy in their crafted, silken web.

Knee-jerks, or in Defense of Cultural Relativism

2006-02-09T13:10:44Z

I must admit, I always thought Cultural Relativism was dogma in need of a backbone. I mean, can you be much fuzzier and wimpier than saying culture creates moral truth, and one culture's truth is just as good as another? It's an idea associated, at least in my mind, with ultra-left, unnaturally-mellow hippie intellectuals, and I'm pretty sure that I took it upon myself to ridicule it at some point during my education. It's an easy knock down, really. Caste systems. Thwap! Forced marriages. Bam! Institutionalized child abuse. Thud! And it's on the mat. Our modern respect for other cultures is mostly political rhetoric or idealized ignorance. I take it for granted that all but the most stoned Westerners would not hesitate to dish out huge heaps of steaming condemnation if they went to any significantly foreign country and actually spent some time to try and figure out how the culture really worked. In fact, this is some a large number of ex-pats here in China do in their free time, i.e. drench themselves in cheap beer and bitch about the crazy Chinese and their incomprehensible behavior. I indulge in this kind of activity myself now and again (minus the beer); it's fun and incredibility cathartic.

So it's a given that you, me, and the rest of the Western world think that we are culturally superior. Yeah, yeah, it's not politically correct, but come on. After all, we came up with lots of great stuff: reason, freedom, democracy, science, equal rights, and Tang (the drink, of course, not the above-average Chinese dynasty). We believe in truth, justice, and the middle class. And looking around the world, countries that came with or have adopted some or all of the core Western cultural values are, for the most part, prosperous, and the rest wallow in poverty (or are dependant on Western appetites). I suppose you could argue that there's a major difference between political values and cultural values, and the success of Western culture has everything to do with the former, and nothing to with the latter. Thus a country could import all the politics and become prosperous and successful without modifying the cultural values (think Bush and Iraq). But I think that's bull. Does anyone believe, for instance, that a modern democracy like Japan would be possible if the Japanese people had the same culture as they did two hundred years ago? Certainly, there is a strong relationship between the ancient and modern culture, but there has been a major adaptations to all aspects of society in response to Western influences. In order to succeed and progress, the Japanese had to leave behind some of their old cultural values and become more like us. And good for them.

Actually, even if you're not buying all this, even if you intellectually reject the superiority of one culture over another, you are probably still a fascist (sorry!). I know I am. The feeling of cultural superiority, at least when confronted with foreign behaviour, is not a matter of utilitarian arguments and anecdotal data. The above argument serves simply as a rationalization, something we in the western world like to have in order to back up our gut feelings. In another culture, it might suffice to assume a position of authority and then just tell you that our culture is superior (evidence to the contrary would be irrelevant). But even that would be unnecessary, because all of us have already been conditioned with a huge range of automatic responses that equate our particular cultural idiosyncrasies with the Good, while cultural behaviour that conflicts directly with what we see as positive behaviour is inherently, instinctively Bad. Which, I would argue, is why Cultural Relativism is such an easy target; it's a simple thing to come up with foreign behaviour that is abhorrent to us, and send us into knee-jerk condemnation.

Just to make this interesting, let's stay clear of extreme examples, and talk about a single cigarette. Say a man you've never met before comes up to you in the street, says hello, and offers you a cigarette. Assume you are a male non-smoker, and that this person has no evidence that you smoke, and has not bothered to ask. What is your kneejerk reaction? Well, I know what mine is. I've spent most of my life in California, which is probably one of the least tobacco tolerant places on the planet. I haven't checked the law recently, but I think in some cities if you are found smoking in public, they just shoot you down and let wild dogs feed on your decaying corpse. No Californian in their right mind would offer a cigarette to someone who wasn't obviously a smoker about to smoke. So my knee-jerk reaction to someone offering me a cigarette is annoyance at the presumption (and there are probably some people who would be outranged that someone was trying to hand off their cancer sticks on unsuspecting passers-by). However, I don't live in California anymore, and this is no longer the appropriate response; it certainly isn't the response the Chinese man was looking for. He was just being polite.

But perhaps you are a smoker after all, and gratefully accept the cigarette. What if then, after giving the cigarette to you, your new friend does not continue his generosity and offer a cigarette to your girlfriend, who is standing next to you and, unbeknownst to this walking tobacconist, actually smokes more than you do. What then is your reaction? Well, this man is obviously sexist. If he's going to offer cigarettes, he should offer them to everyone, regardless of gender. Is it that he doesn't think that women are worthy of his cigarettes? That women can't handle his cigarettes? Whatever the reason, his actions are offensive. But what is the reason? Actually, this time he *is* avoiding a presumptive pitfall. In China, smoking is directly linked to gender; something like two thirds of all Chinese males smoke, but less than one eighth of all Chinese women. And, what's more, there is a negative stereotype associated with women who smoke regularly; they tend to be seen as fallen women: cold, world-weary, even slutty. So offering a cigarette to a women who wasn't obviously a smoker would be inappropriate; it could be seen as a slight, whereas the reverse is true for men.

Once you understand the gender imbalance with regards to smoking, this kind of behaviour makes a certain amount of sense, and becomes a lot less sinister. In fact, I have participated in the cigarette-offering ritual from the other side; a few years ago, after receiving a free pack of cigarettes at a dinner near the end of the school year, instead of just tossing it I decided to make use of the cigarettes by offering one to every male I encountered at the school over the course of a day (well, not my students, obviously, though many of the sophomore boys already smoked). Since it was only one cigarette, on one occasion, I figured that I would not be appreciably contributing to anyone's poor health. And it actually turned out to be quite a nice little cultural experience; a few men who had treated me with indifference or suspicion throughout the year were suddenly warmed by my display of generosity and respect, and even those who declined seemed pleased that I had made the effort. I knew enough at that point not to offer cigarettes to women; I'd never even seen any of the women smoking. Still, each time the situations are reversed and I am offered a cigarette (and this has happened dozens, maybe hundreds of times), my initial reaction is a negative one, and I have to consciously repress my annoyance. Knee-jerk reactions die hard.

These reactions actually tell a lot about the culture one is coming from. During my time here, I have learned a lot about China, but in some ways I've learned just as much about North American culture, things you could never learn just by been a part of it. To be more precise, what was once unconscious, unconsidered instinct (unconsidered because there was no need to consider it; everyone back home would react the same way or be wrong), has been challenged by an social situation where, as I alluded to above, my natural tendencies are not necessarily the most appropriate ones. In short, I can't just go with my gut. If I hold too tightly to my standard way of thinking, I will be in constant conflict with the people around me, making them but mostly myself miserable in the process.

Let me set out another example, one that earns me a pun. As most people reading this would know, I injured my knee a couple of months ago (my lack of mobility inspired me to write this, in fact). While I was back in the US, Laura lent me some crutches, and afterwards I proceeded to steal them outright. From that point on I've gotten to do my own little personal social experiment: how people in each culture react to an injured individual. First of all, let me point out that before the crutches I got no special treatment in either country (except for the US customs officer calling me a gimp). This might just be attributable to lack of time (there was only a week in China and a few days in the US where my limp was extremely noticeable), and I think it might also be because a limp could be a minor, permanent condition, whereas crutches suggests a major, but probably temporary injury. Why this matters at all is left as an exercise for the reader.

Once I had crutches, I got more attention, some of it welcome, some of it not. Not surprisingly, much of the welcome assistance came on my home turf. For instance, I got to cut once in a security line at the airport, a small but pleasant reprieve. They asked me once if I needed assistance (i.e. a wheelchair) to get to the gate, and I declined. And that was basically it. I've gotten some nice treatment in China too; a couple of times on the subway people have offered their seat to me when they were about to get off. I've usually taken them up on it. Conclusion: both cultures recognize that people who have leg injuries appreciate when they don't have to stand around a bunch.

But the Chinese took it a bit farther. For instance, on an China-internal flight to Shanghai, my economy seat was way in the back, and so I was bumped up to First Class. Hey, no complaints here…except this was a completely full flight. First, they set me in someone else’s seat, a woman who was not pleased to see me when she finally showed up, and then, unbeknownst to me (they hid me in the flight attendant's niche), they asked for volunteers to be bumped down. I never actually met the poor guy to whom I owe an hour and a half of extra leg room. I suppose I was supposed to be grateful, but mostly I was just embarrassed for the fuss. Now, it should be stated that I almost certainly wouldn't have gotten this attention if I had been a young Chinese, it was a combination of being both white (and therefore a guest in the country) and having crutches. But there was definitely a discrepancy between what I would see as a sensible reaction (upgrading me if it wasn't an inconvenience), and the reaction the flight attendants thought was appropriate (kicking some nice guy out of first class). And in turn, because I didn't think their reaction was sensible, the ultimate result was not exactly what any of us intended. I almost protested, but I figured it would have been a loss of face for all concerned to make an issue of it, so I bit my tongue and settled into my comfy chair.

Let me give you another example of Chinese helpful exuberance taken to an extreme. Protecting my building from the scourge of unemployed Chinese peasants is a group of employed Chinese peasants, our guards. Whatever the weather, they wait tirelessly outside the building, occasionally opening or closing the gate, but mostly just standing there. It's an extremely boring job, and I can't blame them for wanting to spice it up a bit. In fact, when I'm struggling home with a weeks worth of groceries in one hand (a crutch under the other arm), and one of them rushes up to relieve me of my burden and escort me to my door, I'm mostly grateful. They're a nice bunch of guys. But there is a limit to how much assistance I can stand, and that limit is reached when they walk up, grab my arm, and try to support me as I walk up and down a flight of 4 steps just inside our building. The first time one of them did it, I almost smacked him with the crutch. I resisted the impulse, but my tone of voice, when I assured him it was unnecessary, was less than friendly, and I almost hurt myself in an attempt to get some distance between us. There was no malice in what he did, but to me there was something deeply humiliating about it. This happened a couple of other times, and though my visible reaction improved, I still felt embarrassed.

(Warning, bad pun alert) So are these guards knee jerks? Did they want to humiliate me? I start by assuming not, as nothing in their attitude suggests that. Well, what were they trying to do? Help me up and down the stairs? Well, yes, obviously, but it would be apparent to anyone that they did not, and could not have succeeded at that goal. I'm not so enfeebled that a small amount of lift or support is going to make much of a difference, and typically by the time they got there I was at least two steps up or down anyway. Even if I had cooperated, their actions served no real purpose. But in China as much as anywhere, it's the appearance that counts, so I have to assume that the purpose was to demonstrate something. Their muscle? Possibly, but unlikely. Their dedication to their job? Perhaps, but I've also seen them goofing off in full view. No, I'm pretty sure that they were trying to show concern for my condition. I could go further in analyzing their reasons, but I'm going to leave it there. They were simply concerned, and wanted to demonstrate it, and so if there’s a jerk here, it's me.

So what prompted my knee-jerk negative reaction? Why did my mind take what was clearly a benevolent act and turn it into an insult? There's no clear answer, but I can take a couple stabs at it. First, it was unsolicited help that involved physical contact. Basically, the guard invaded my comfort zone without permission. It's well documented that different cultures have different standards about what distances people are expected to keep. These standards are based on the relationships between individuals and are also tied to gender. In general, males in China are much more “buddy-buddy” than I'm used to; for instance, I have seen teenage boys walking down the street with arms tight each others necks. In our culture, this would be odd behavior even for a gay couple, and one wouldn't generally be that familiar with even a good friend (my theory is that the Chinese denial of homosexuality actually allows for this kind of closeness, because it has no sexual connotation). More than once I've had to tell my male, obviously heterosexual Chinese coworkers to give me a bit of room.

There's probably some truth in this explanation, but it only explains the annoyance, not the embarrassment. Why was this offer of help insulting to me? I think the answer is that I was taken aback by the unspoken assumption that I needed help for something so basic as walking up and down a few steps. Independence is very important to me. Actually, I believe it is one of the most fundamental values, perhaps the most distinctive value, of American culture. Nowhere else in the world (certainly not China, but not even Europe) are young adults expected to become so completely independent so abruptly. And if you think about it, our notions of respect are tied into degrees of independence: Why else is that 30-year-old who still lives with his mother pathetic (he wouldn't be in China)? Why else do we venerate the young rather than the old (a complete reversal of the situation for most of human history)? Why else does a culture otherwise indifferent to history hold on to the myth of the self-sufficient, solitary cowboy?

But independence is not a universal human value. Long before I hurt my knee, I leaned that here in China, I would sometimes have to fight to be allowed to do things myself. Why, the Chinese would ask, do something when if there is someone else who will do it for you? Why ride a bike if you can afford to take a taxi? Why cook at home if you can afford to eat out every night? Why climb a mountain when there are people there who can carry you up? They see value in the appearance of not doing (a show of wealth and power) but not in the doing. To them, relying on others demonstrates one’s worth, whereas for us, the opposite is true.

So what's so important about doing things yourself? Nothing, really. Our independence is an illusion; in our modern lives we are completely dependant; none of us has even the basic skills to keep ourselves alive. Being able to cook is not useful if I don't know how to grow vegetables, keep or hunter animals, or even make cookware. Even the cowboy needs a firearms company to manufacture his six-shooter. And the very notion that we should be independent, that independence was ever possible, is erroneous. Human beings have always lived in large social groups where members of the community have specialized and thus became interdependent. For most of human history, you were lucky if you made it to thirty, and doubly lucky if one or both of your parents was still living with you to help you keep on eye on the grand kids. You could not survive on your own, and indeed had nowhere to go, so independence had no meaning. Thus, in one sense, there is nothing obvious, natural, or inherently right about valuing independence. It makes sense only in cultural context.

And yet, I can't rationalize it away. The truth is, I take great satisfaction from the independence that I have, however illusory. It feels right. And I resist instinctively any erosion of it. By far the most difficult thing about my knee injury has been the loss of capability; tasks that were easy are hard, and some of my favourite activities (hiking, biking, and travelling) are, for the moment, impossible. I'm not an invalid yet, but I'm having a taste, and it's quite enough. And so, in doing what he did, I think the guard unwittingly made me feel more crippled than I am; I saw pity and even distain in the act of trying to help me with something I didn't and shouldn't have needed help with. But I can't blame him for my reaction, because it wasn't his intention, and he didn't have the information to predict it.

Let me take a step back here and wrap up. In each of these examples a difference in the interpretation of an action leads to an unintended reaction. And, no matter how well I understand Chinese culture, I have not been able to integrate myself to the point where I don't in some sense believe that their actions are (at best) misguided, and my reactions justified. I'll probably forget the English language before I unlearn my culturally dictated responses. However, I haven't presented these examples to you in the spirit of cultural frustration that I felt in the moment, and I don't believe there is ultimately any value in that kind of analysis. What is the point of living in a foreign culture if you are just going to be angry or dismissive all the time? And it seems to me the only antidote, the only alternative besides isolation, is to accept on an intellectual level some form of Cultural Relativism. As much as possible, I have to make my considered judgements of people and situations in light of their cultural context, while at the same time limiting my knee-jerk reactions by taking into account and in some cases questioning my own cultural influences. It *is* a pretty fuzzy process, and not as easy or comforting as a gut feeling of right and wrong, but I don't think I'm wimping out, because in fact it's a daily challenge. And fortunately I'm enough of a philosopher to enjoy some of the mental gymnastics involved.