Jimmy, Petey, and I do Wuyishan

Now for a long overdue post on the wonders of the Wuyishan (武夷山市) city and landscape, in China's southern coastal Fujian province. See photos. My travel companions were one stout Englishman James D. Pennington (Jimmy) and one imaginary companion, Peter Hessler, a The New Yorker journalist and author of two insightful, non-fiction accounts of life in China, Rivertown and Oracle Bones. On the journey, I read the former while Jimmy read the latter, so Petey was always with us, oft-quoted, and his observations compared to ours. We love you Petey!

The trip was a tale of mistaken assumptions. Points 1 & 2 are clearly my own damn fault:

1. it is rural! (it was not)
2. the weather is warm! (it was not)
   
3. the people are warm! (unfortunately, several who we encountered were notably not)

We had one tourist trap encounter at a Wuyishan street-restaurant that served assorted vegetables and meats tossed together in a wok. For a tiny bowl that they whipped up--not nearly sufficient to feed two young strapping lads such as ourselves--we were quoted a price at least 3x too high. When we balked at the waitress, aiming to walk away without eating and without paying, we were accosted by the obstreperous manager. His swearing at us in Wuyishan dialect created quite a scene on the street, bringing “face” into play and rendering hopeless our efforts to reason through the situation. He proceeded to call the police.

“Showdown in Wuyishan” surely would have been fine drama, but I decided to cut it short at that point. We paid, and left with a few pitiful comebacks—weak because A) we didn’t understand his insults; and B) cursing is not classroom Chinese. My calculation was that Mr. Obstreperous had far better odds with the provincial police than two foreign devils, leaving us a 20% chance of paying plus a tour of the local police station, 70% of just having to pay up anyway, and a 10% chance of skipping off scot-free. In any case, there was a 100% chance of spending a minimum of 2 stressful hours sorting it out. We later found out that Wuyishan is infamous for such schemes to rip-off tourists.

Grandpa Kai also became thankful that Shanghai has reliable, required taxi meters. Bargaining fares in Wuyishan was a constant uphill battle, since we were clueless as to distances and appropriate prices. We also had the pleasure of a taxi driver who made side stops to pick up prostitutes and piss drunk girls (at midday, no less), and not-so-subtly urged us to take advantage of them. He blasted super-loud techno and was super-cool, and, to our great delight, was our driver a super-coincidental three times!

Yet Wuyishan also had its charm in people and places, lest you think it was all trouble. The highlight was a hike through the tea-cultivated mountains that serendipitously reached a picturesque monastery, where a Daoist monk offered us bitter Oolong tea (Wuyishan’s most famous product). Though this modern monk had a PDA device and a yin-yang adorned business card, the relative tranquility and stunning view made the long trek worthwhile.

Another fond memory is of a local restaurateur’s hysterics:

Jimmy: Can you catch fish in the river? (in Chinese, with English accent)
Restaurateur: [Hopping around on one leg, gesturing wildly] Ohhhh yahhh, you betcha!!! (in Chinese, with Fargo accent) They are EXTREMELY delicious!!! If you catch, we will devour them together!!! My precious... my precious… my precious is extremely delicious!!!

Unfortunately, all the fish we saw were in protected nature refuge upstream, so the only thing we came close to catching was pneumonia. I think the restaurateur had already devoured all the downstream fish.

Finally, along the lines of my last post, “Why Chinese is so Damn Hard,” we had a miscommunication over pork steak and bamboo rafts. The former is zhūpái (猪排), a term with which we were familiar. Unfamiliar, but very close in pronunciation, was the latter, zhúpái (竹排). Even worse, despite repeated requests for clarification, none of the locals explained zhūpái using the word "boat." C’mon China: "Bamboo raft" is not an everyday vocab term for us stupid foreigners! Instead, we were left wondering why everyone was encouraging us to sit on a pork steak—a fitting reflection of our misunderstood, misunderstanding visit to Wuyishan, China.

Why Chinese is So Damn Hard

I stole the title of this post from an excellent article on "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard" by David Moser. My favorite excerpt:

Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

I can confirm Moser's thesis: Chinese is damn hard. Personally, my spoken is far ahead of my written, which suits me. In business or foreign policy, I might often speak Chinese, sometimes read, but rarely type, and almost never hand-write characters. My Chinese friends likewise painstakingly learned the latter (they had class six-days-a-week from 6am-10pm during junior and high school), but they seldomly hand-write nowadays: my Luxembourgian friend Chloe corrected my Chinese language partner Anna on the character for monkey the other day.

Classroom instruction is traditionally Chinese. I lucked out and have all cheerful teachers. Duan Laoshi makes us sing if we come late; you all missed a soulful rendering of “A Whole New World,” by yours truly when I overslept one morning. Yet even my engaging teachers are constrained by the system: the teacher talks and the students cower, hoping not to be called upon. I even fell into that trap myself for a while, but snapped out of it and am now that obnoxius kid who talks all the time. Average class size is about 20 students. Desks are aligned facing the teacher, not in a circle like at Stanford. It's fine for reading and writing comprehension, but is no good for my spoken Chinese.

One textbook, used at the University of Leeds, offers an easy guide to the pronounciation of consonants:

It is an unaspirated voiceless bilabial plosive which is produced by pressing the lips together, keeping the breath in the mouth, and then opening the mouth to let the air out with a pop.

This is a voiceless labio-dental fricative which is produced by placing the lower lip against the upper teeth and releasing the breath with a friction.

Matt writes, “Simple really, even if some of these sound more complicated than yoga movements and could be mistaken for oral sex instructions.”

We all develop our coping strategies. Because of the tones, my friend Emily views it as a 3-d language when all we knew before was 2-d. At a 麻辣汤 (spicy soup) shop in Nanjing she once ordered a soup as "点点点点点 spicy," 点 being Chinese for "a little bit." In Chinese, however, this means "a little spice, a little more, a little more, a little more, and a little more... " Your mouth burns as you eat your spicy soup, you laugh it off, and try again. My friend Henrik has a rule: if it’s over 10 strokes, don’t bother. I personally, when out and about, routinely keep short lists in my mind of words to look up when I get back. One early list was "Hard Dark Guess," which is also what I will name my rock band when I’m reincarnated with rhythm one day. With English, German, Spanish, and Chinese, I don't intend to attempt anymore languages in my life. Maintenance alone will be a tall order.

A Chinese-American friend of mine jokes with her boyfriend, “If you want me to convert to Judaism, you have to learn Chinese.” That's committment--my father never even learned German.

Quirky China

The quirks that make China so frustrating at first, but endearing in the end:

Food in China
Like me, Chinese don’t eat to live; they live to eat. It’s easily the #1 topic of discussion in China.

Banquets
I was a bit fearful of the food upon first arriving, as most of my previous dining experience in China was with banquet food through FACES. I hate banquet food: you have no control over the dishes that appear and they try to impress with specialties, which are often bizarre bits of seafood or meat. One particular banquet featured ocean snails, Hakuna Matata-style grubs, roasted sparrows, tripe, and liver. Fortunately, simple food, like 鱼香茄子（fish-sauce eggplant, with ample MSG, of course) is much nicer. I still hate the breakfasts, but am contented with my daily oatmeal, yogurt, and banana.

A Personal Relationship
The Chinese are close to their food. Take this KFC ad: “Handsome Chinese youth stands in idyllic green pasture massaging a brown cow. In the next scene, he’s sitting in front of the pasture on a bale of hay, biting into a delicious beef-stuffed pancake, and grinning into the camera.” This would never fly in America! We try and distance meat as far away as possible from the animal—even our animal terms (cow, pig, etc.) are often distinct from meat terms (beef, pork, etc.), which is not the case in Chinese. A favorite Chinese eating tactic—which I have yet to become comfortable with—is to take a large piece of meat, fat, gristle, and bone into the mouth and suck the bone clean.

Chinglish
A classic Chinglish sign from my visit to Renmin University last fall: "The green grass is longing for your cherishing."

Chinese “English” Names
How on earth are they chosen? I personally know a “Yummie” and “Lucky.” My friend Wang Xiaobin from Xinjiang told me he was given the name “Randy” because it is an English name for tall, handsome people, which is news to me (I’d love to get a hold of the book used in schools for choosing English names). This video by "Sexy Beijing" sums it all up. Sexy Beijing now runs a regular feature called, “Ask Smacker.” Props to Andrew Miller for turning me on [to this].

Menus
Menus are littered with atrocious translations. The winner though? Oriental Restaurant in Hangzhou, China, which proudly promotes its delicious “Homos with meat” (see picture). I believe they were going for “Hummus with meat.” Yum.

At the Club
Nonsensical English lyrics in Chinese songs: “1, 2… fuck you… 3,4… we want more… 7,8… too late.”

Miscellaneous

Skyscrapers
Have no floor 13 (unlucky in the West) and 14 (unlucky in China because “4” sounds like death), but they do have floors 4 and 24 for some reason, which my Shanghainese friend also does not understand.

Chinese (In)directness
On some matters, the Chinese are shockingly direct. Taxi cab drivers will ask you your age, your salary, and whether you prefer Asian or Caucasian girls. You don’t have to answer, but they will ask. On other matters, they are famously indirect. Because they strive for a “harmonious society,” conflicts are kept in the closet: they will walk circles around core disagreements. I find friendships with Chinese are also difficult to gauge—do they want to hang out, discuss personal matters, etc.?

The Haier Logo
This charming interracial, boylove logo (see picture) is plastered on all sorts of electronics. Sadly, Haier Electronics, one of the first Chinese brands to make it in the West, elected not to feature the same logo there. My friend Stefan has more on the matter.

Conclusion
China (中国，zhōnggúo), literally translated, means middle kingdom and China’s historical position was “you come to us.” The first Western missions to China were frustrated when His British Majesty’s Representatives refused to kowtow (touch one’s head to the ground) to the Chinese Emperor, unless the Chinese agreed that a Chinese official of equal rank would do the same for His Majesty were they to visit Britain. So in some ways, the US and China are similar: huge, patriotic nations where few speak foreign languages.

My Life in Shanghai

Though “The Life of Kai” blog has been on hold, my life (and camera) has been busy. I'm happy in Shanghai. I elected to turn down a fellowship at the German Bundestag (Parliament) in order to stay here for the full school year. So, I will be in Shanghai through July '09 at least, which means you should all come visit (I'm looking at you Lukoff family and Mr. Josh Harder...).

Before I talk Shanghai, a short aside on the political and economic situation in the US of A: I'm greatly cheered by the political turn of events. Evan Osnos of The New Yorker commented that Obama has restored a certain nobility to political involvement, and I have many close friends who worked day and night for Obama, among them Jacob Becklund and Michael Baer. The New York Times article, "300,000 Apply for 3,300 Obama Jobs," says it all. Finally, check out the gem (below) about the departing administration, "Die Bush Krieger: Ende der Vorstellung," which translates as, "The Bush Warriors: End of the Show." It shows the cover of Der Spiegel magazine from 2002 (left), alongside the 2008 edition (right). Fitting. Credit to my friend Stefan Angrick.

The economic turn of events, however, is depressing. US consumer spending will probably not return to its pre-crash levels for another 10-20 years. Fortunately, China, with its massive rainy day fund of foreign exchange reserves, faces a much softer fall. The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts China's GDP to grow by 7.5% for the next two years, as opposed to a contraction (negative growth) for the US, EU, and Japan.

Friends
The axis and allies constitute my two primary groups of friends. My German and Japanese friends, who I know through class, are kind, genuine people. When altogether we speak mainly Chinese together, though English is often resorted to. My British friends, from Leeds University, are a fun-loving lot who have well indoctrinated me with some of their British mannerisms, which they find well amusing. I too now fancy pub quizzes and proclaiming my indignation at the unruly queuing habits of the Chinese. My language partner, Anna, aims to learn German and is wonderfully independent, direct, and well-traveled for a Chinese girl. On the whole, a lovely group of friends, though, since they are mainly foreigners, I do not practice as much Chinese as I would like.

Work
One of my objectives was to obtain business experience while in China, and on that account I have done handsomely. I'm interning at a small consulting company called China Streetsmart, founded and directed by a Canadian of Chinese descent. This small shop (5 employees total) operates primarily on the "soft" side, advising Western executives on the cultural differences and peculiarities of doing business in China. Groups of executives, such as Irish manufacturers or Danish product sourcers, come to Shanghai and we tailor a program to suit their needs.

My main project is to design, implement, and analyze a survey on the opinions Chinese middle management on issues relevant to their Western bosses. For instance: if an employee cheats on his expense account, but complains that he was unfairly fired because the system is widely abused, who is more at fault: the company or the individual? Forty percent of Chinese answer that the company is more at fault, a number that we expect to be near zero when we run the question in the West. In this case, the data should inform Western executives on the need to create non-abusable compensation systems and how to address violations should they arise. This work also serves as a crash course on Chinese culture for me.

My boss is business personified. He is warm, social fellow, but always with an eye to the bottom-line. A former marketing man, he leverages an impressive rolodex to create value for our clients, who are looking to enter the market, but new to China. He has lively stories of his days managing sales and distribution for the beer companies Beck's, Foster's, and Lion Nathan's in the early 90's, when China was still akin to the Wild West. A good portion of the work is also networking, which has allowed me to attend a spicy bachelor charity auction and to lunch with the former Ambassador to Mongolia and Consul-General of Shanghai. I'm developing that all-important 关系 (guānxi), which is the rich Chinese term for connections.

All told, the position is a great introduction to the world of business, which is actually quite foreign to my family (primarily academics and social workers). If I can secure gainful employment, I will be the first in the family to work for a living--none of this educating or helping people mumbo jumbo. Then again, I may continue to be a student indefinitely, for the life suits me just fine.

One piece of my Stanford life I do miss (in addition to my lovely friends and daily sunshine), are the intellectually titillating discussions about all [academic] topics under the sun. The matter was hammered home by the stellar FACES conference last week (as an aside, what a phenomenal organization and group of future luminaries! I was fortunate to experience it as a delegate and officer, and I only wish I had of been involved earlier on in my Stanford career). There's no lack of intelligence or interest here at JiaoTong University, it's just that there's no ready forum. To address the issue, I'm founding China EDG, the China Economics Discussion Group, which plans to hold weekly meetings. I'm counting on China EDG to reintroduce the meaty mindfood into my life.

Shanghai: Paris of the East or Whore of the Orient?

Shanghai carries two nicknames. Paris of the East for its glamor, tree-lined alleys, and image of China's Westernized future. Whore of the Orient because it was teeming with brothels under Western occupation in the 1800s and early 1900s. Today, the latter name reflects the city's insecure identity. Driven by Shanghai's nouveau riche, it tries to outwest the West—it's NY/Paris/London, “with Chinese characteristics,” which is the term the Chinese append when they borrow from the West, and then endeavor to make it theirs.

Shanghai is supersized: at 20+ million inhabitants it’s China’s largest city (no small feat). Each year, an estimated 1 million additional migrant workers arrive. The city already boasts massive Western-style shopping malls, 6 stories tall, replete with the Rolexes, Armanis, Ferraris, and, most importantly, Cold Stones. Still, construction is booming. Every hour or so you hear what sounds like distant machine-gun fire; it turns out to be collapsing bamboo scaffolding after they finish with construction, which is what they use for all but the tallest buildings. I love the fella in the photo on the top left leaning on his shovel, seemingly saying, "Yeah, I single-handedly built this city. So what?"

The unfettered expansion has some nasty side effects. Pollution creates grey skies some days (though it’s just fog if you believe the authorities). Thankfully, I don’t feel it when I breathe, as I could in Beijing last fall. I just hope it isn’t silently ravaging my lungs when I jog or play fútbol. Mercifully, the XuJiaHui campus is an oasis of tranquility amidst this bustling city.

For this California boy, the biggest concern is the cold… brrrrr. My iGoogle homepage, which lists the temperature in Shanghai and Petaluma, is depressing—there’s routinely a 20° F differential. I’ve never before endured a cold winter: if I don’t survive, tell my sister that she can keep my room in the house for good. The saving grace is that, at the peak of the freeze in mid-Jan to mid-Feb, I’m fleeing for a one-month semester-break jaunt to tropical Thailand and Laos--scuba diving, turtles, and mermaids included. Hot.

Finally, I’ll leave you with the Chinese artist Yang Liu’s work on the differences between the East and West (click for link). Cliched, yes, but largely true.