This is China! blog

Suzhou now has its own chapter of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) to complement the China branches in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The RAS-China was originally established in Shanghai in 1858 “for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia”, according to the Royal Charter of King George IV in 1823.

On March 6th, 2011, 4pm, plan on joining us at the Suzhou Bookworm to inaugurate the Suzhou chapter with an opening talk by popular Shanghai-based historian and writer Tess Johnson, followed by a few words from RAS officers and members who have traveled from Shanghai to inaugurate the local group.Wine, beer, nibbles and a good time to follow.

FREE. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie.

Today I had a great couple hour long lunch with Dan Harris and Steve Dickson of the China Law Blog, and Andrew Hupert, adjunct professor at New York University (Shanghai), author of the China Solved blog and a columnist for the China Economic Review. Dan had spent the last couple weeks in Southeast Asia, as had Steve. Lucky stars aligned and we all managed to get together at a pricey Japanese restaurant at the Shanghai Center on Nanjing Road West.

It was a pleasant holiday afternoon spent discussing (and solving) China’s overwhelming issues, including:

• it’s currency valuation (China’s backed itself into a corner and doesn’t know how to get out);
• escalating inflation (currency revaluation is only part of the issue);
• a highly stressed middle class (many hope to emigrate to the West before the pollution kills them);
• blog-writing techniques (Dan is the Master in  my book. LOL!);
• China’s bull market one day turning bearish (watch as the bull-writers one-by-one turn into bulls);
• China’s Peak Coal problem (Steve put his finger on the issue before most even heard of the phrase);
• China’s sinking water tables (no solutions there);
• Why Vietnam is cool and Cambodia still traumatized (can you spell Khmer?);
• Why writing books is so much more difficult than blogging (gotta draw a line in the sand with books);
• Why the cost of living in China is so much more than in other southeast Asian countries (Singapore excluded);
• Confucius as the architect of China’s current success (yeah, right);
• and more.

I’ll let each of these guys in turn blog on their respective inputs. These guys are great and stimulating thinkers, perceptive and clear-minded – and just plain good fun.

Incidentally, it’s that time of year when The China Law Blog needs your votes to be the best of the 2010 American Bar Association Journal Blawg 100. Go here to register http://lnkd.in/v_CzG3 and then go here to vote: http://lnkd.in/iE4M5E.

A Chinese neighbor recently came to our flat bearing a Christmas gift she thought was rather cute. She showed my wife and I a thick plastic bag, transparent with red markings. It was collapsed, and so wrinkled it was difficult to tell what was inside. She pushed through the front door and searched around for an electrical outlet. Satisfied she’d found one – and in a little nook next to the dining table – she drew out a chord from the plastic sack with great care, as though it was a baby’s umbilical chord. She plugged the heap into the electrical socket.

A great whir emanated from the sack, which began to twitch and shudder. A light blinked on inside the over-sized embryo. The noise set my teeth on edge and I wanted desperately to tell her to turn it off. However, she had been filled with such joy at her discovery and in the sharing I couldn’t bear to play the part of the Ugly American. Gradually, it became clear to me what mysterious seed lay inside the husk. I began laughing; at first, in a controlled way. But then, I could no longer hold back a guffaw that terrified my neighbor when released.

The gift was actually a Santa Claus standing in a wind-swept field, snow blowing – literally – around him. The Santa in the bubble stood nearly knee-high when inflated. The whirring sound was the small motor at the base of the plastic sphere sucking air to inflate the bubble and animate the plastic snow flakes. A bright light twinkled over the Santa’s head.

“Oh dear,” I stuttered through my hand. I was finding it difficult to control my laughter, and tears began to squeeze through my eyes. I turned around to compose myself. My wife and my neighbor just watched me, unsure why I was laughing.

I turned back to them. “Um, where’d you get that?” I asked, still aborting chuckles.

“At the neighborhood center – one of the shops,” the neighbor answered, mystified. She said, “But it wasn’t so loud when they plugged it in in the shop.” She studied the contraption in wonder.

I cleared my eyes of tears and said sweetly, “Actually, that’s what we Americans put in our front yards at Christmas. It’s not meant to be put indoors.”

“It’s not?” both my wife and the neighbor said. I shook my head.

“It’s an export item. They make it here in China and then ship to America. I guess this one fell off the truck on the way to the port.” Most people in China who live in cities live in high rises. “How much did you pay?” The neighbor held up five fingers.

“Five Hundred RMB?” I said, incredulous. About US$75.

“No, fifty RMB.”  A little less than US$7.50. I relaxed at the adjustment.

“Well, what do I do with it?” the neighbor asked. She unplugged the thing and the motor thankfully wound down. The apartment was quiet again.

“I guess you just wait for an American with a front yard who’s looking for an inflatable Santa,” I suggested. She didn’t look hopeful.

“Well, Merry Christmas, anyway. And thanks for the thought.”

After all, that’s what counts the most.

My wife recently told me a story she’d overheard between two Chinese at a local hairdressers in Suzhou. The first woman told her hairdresser she planned to travel to Japan soon for holiday. I’ll name the first woman Clueless. A second woman – whom I’ll call The Tourist – told Clueless she’d just returned from a Japanese excursion. The Tourist raised her voice in remembered fury. Those Japanese were so rude to us Japanese,” she told Bewildered. “Our group went to a purse store. We were looking around the shop when the Japanese attendant called for our attention.

“She held up a sign that read in Chinese, ‘No speaking loudly, please.” The listeners’ eyes grew wide in disbelief.

The Tourist continued, “She lowered that sign and held up another that read, ‘No spitting, please.’”

“Impossible!,” The Tourist’s audience remarked with indignation.

“She put that sign down and held up another sign that read, “No littering, please.”

“How rude!” Clueless said angrily.

The Tourist continued, “And do you know what? There were other customers in there at the time. Some Taiwanese people. They didn’t show those signs to the Taiwanese. And they were so much more helpful to the Taiwanese. It was just too much to accept!”

Of course, when my wife told me the story, I laughed, which didn’t help her mollify her own indignation, and managed to get me in a bit of “foreigner trouble” at home.

Still, with China’s outward bound tourist industry growing in leaps in bounds, it looks like Japan’s – and most probably other countries’ – sign businesses will see healthy growth in the years to come.

image credit: garysblog.spaces.live.com

I recently received an issue of the Economist Magazine in the mail. It was the December 4 – 10 issue, with the cover story “The Dangers of a Rising China”. The cover has a Chinese soldier dressed in camouflage, squinting through the eye piece of a rifle, taking aim.

I’m used to the issues coming a week or two late; they come by way of Singapore, after all, and have to pass through a gauntlet of Chinese institutions, I’m sure, before they arrive at my doorstep in Suzhou. I’m always excited to peek through the clear plastic covering at the next titillating topic the magazine has chosen to zero in on. My address and subscription information are printed on a piece of white paper inside the plastic envelope, covering the back page.

This issue, however, had no clear plastic covering and no address information attached to it. It lay, still pristine, at the bottom of my mail box, face down.

It was a considerate gesture, and I do appreciate receiving what is turning out to be a stimulating read. I’ll have to invite the postman out sometime and see what he thinks about the magazine’s take on China’s rise. And I’ll sometime have to thank the powers that be for passing the issue on to me, fully intact.

The days have been quite hazy of late in the Yangtze River Delta, even when the sunshine is working overtime to shine brightly. It’s the annual burning off of the fields in China, when farmers set torch to the chaff and detritus left behind after harvest. For the last month an inversion layer has pressed the smoke and ash from the burnings even closer to ground, reducing visibility to just a few meters, especially next to the lakes and rivers. It’s been near impossible to see more than a few yards round the Golden Rooster Lake (Jinji Lake) in Suzhou, across from which I live. One China veteran told me it used to be much worse ten years before, especially along the stretch of roadway joining Nanjing and Shanghai (the Huning). Fires used to burn wildly across the cropland. Now, there is less cropland, and more highway.

Still, a friend told the story of how he’d driven to Shanghai along the very same route just a few days ago. A stretch of road became thick with black, acrid, toxic smoke that poured through the vents in the car. It was impossible to see, he said, and more difficult to breathe. Now, farmers are burning their garbage along with the chaff in the fields. This means plastics and rubbers and all manner of noxious materials are going up in smoke and toxic ash, despite regulations to the contrary.

Modernization with countryside characteristics is not a healthy prospect.

image credit: all-china-agriculture.com

I recently attended the “coming out” party for a baby boy who did not attend the event. Neither did the mother. “The baby is too small,” the father told me, “only twelve days old.” The father is a tall, handsome fellow from a small town in Anhui province. He is still in the People’s Liberation Army, still barracked, separated from his wife and newborn. His wife lives and works in Suzhou.

I pushed my way through the throng of well-wishers, fanning away cigarette smoke and smiling politely at people I didn’t know. I asked my wife about the coming out party. “Why are they having a coming out party for a baby that’s only twelve days old? I thought the party in China happens when the baby is 30-days old – and then again when the baby is 100 days old.”

Coming out parties for babies in China are big deals; second only to wedding banquets. I think because in the past the mortality rate was so high in the countryside the townsfolk developed the tradition of celebrating the minor miracle of child and mother surviving childbirth – and mothers-in-law.

“That’s the custom in our town,” my wife answered matter-of-factly. “But I thought the custom was 60 days for boys in your town; not 30 days.” We celebrated our son’s coming-out on his 60th day, at the urging of my mother-in-law.

“Oh, this is another custom,” she said without irony. “Besides, the baby’s father has to return to the army camp at the end of 30 days.”

“So why not have the 30-day coming out party on the 29th day. Then, the mother and child can attend their own party. And anyway,” I said – ironically – “I thought you Chinese mothers are supposed to languish in bed – unwashed – for 30 days.”

“Well, his parents have come from the countryside to see their baby grandson. They brought chickens.”

“Chicken eggs?”

“No,” she said, her voice picking up in excitement, “chickens to eat.” We only got a lousy box of several hundred chicken eggs when my son was born. No  chickens for us. “They’re fresher in the countryside than in the city.”

“Are the chickens dead?”

“No.”

“They brought live chickens from Anhui to Suzhou? On the train? How many chickens did they bring?”

“Six, or maybe eight.”

“They gave us one,” my wife said brightly. “Tomorrow I’ll make stir fried chicken in soy sauce.” I had visions of a live chicken running round our living room, pecking out my infant son’s eyes.

“Is it still alive?” I asked half-seriously, afraid of the answer.

“No, silly,”it’s already dead and feathered.”

Which was how I felt at the end of the conversation.

—

Related posts:

Maternal Wisdom from the Chinese Countryside

Welcome Home, Son

But I don’t Want a C-section!

The Market Value of a Daughter

Technorati Tags: china, expat life

Penguin Books is doing some literary lunches based on their Penguin Classics series (Penguin Classics Lunches) to celebrate their 5th year in China. The prolific and eloquent Paul French is doing one on November 19th in Shanghai and then again on December 3rd in Beijing. He’s going to talk about Andre Malraux’s excellent novel on Shanghai in 1927,  Man’s Fate – which is a Penguin Classic. I read the novel about ten years ago, and let me tell you, it’s one that’ll grab you by the throat and not let you go until the last pages. It’s also an amazing bit of Shanghai history.

Set in Shanghai, 1927, the novel tells the story of four people whose lives are altered against the backdrop of a changing Shanghai: Kyo Gisors, one of the leaders of the Communist insurrection; Ch’en Ta Erh, an assassin and terrorist; Baron de Clappique, a French gambler, opium dealer and gun runner, and Russian revolutionary Katov.

Shanghai
Friday, November 19th, 2010
M on the Bund
RMB 188, includes a three-course lunch with coffee or tea
Reservations: 6350 9988 or through the restaurant’s reservations page

Beijing
Friday December 3rd, 2010
The Beijing Bookworm
RMB150 includes a three-course lunch with coffee or tea
Reservations: The Beijing Bookworm

I’ve posted the posters promoting the Beijing event (top) and the Shanghai event (right). Strangely, the Shanghai poster de-emphasizes the juicy, descriptive bits about the novel; ie, “the blood splattered streets” and completely leaves out “the murderous suppression” hook. Guess Beijingers need their imaginations jogged a bit.

Anyway, I’ll be at the Shanghai luncheon. Maybe I’ll see you there!

I recently had lunch with an American housewife and a bright, stylish young Chinese professional woman. The American housewife is unusual in that she finds the expat wives scene uninteresting – I don’t think just in Suzhou, either. She’s lived on her own in other countries, as well. The Chinese professional noted that the Western expat wives in the compound in which she lives in the Suzhou Industrial Park seldom say hello to her. She noted, however, that expat wives that had jobs in China seemed to have no problem saying paying her a greeting. The phenomenon genuinely baffled the young lady.

My American friend offered that the trailing spouses had no interest at all in being in China. “They didn’t want to be here; they don’t want to be here; and they’re dying to get out of here,” she added. “They want as little to do with China – or anywhere else, for that matter – as they can get away with.” She believed that the wives who had work here were more engaged – and perhaps more interested – in the local culture. I would add they were also likely to feel less threatened by the unfamiliar environment.

The observation about the insulated housewives puts me in mind of quite a few male expats who have lived for years in China who insist to me they will only eat ABC: Anything But Chinese!

Insularity is gender indifferent.

image credit: precisionnutrion.com

“He’s not feeling comfortable,” my Chinese wife insisted about our infant son. Mucous ballooned out from his nose like a blown wad of bubble gum when he exhaled, then deflated when he inhaled. The poor kid had a head cold. In the States we give them lots of rest, lots liquids, lots of cuddling, a humidifier, maybe even a salt water blow up the nostrils to clear away all that gum. In China, they stick them with long very un-acupunture-like needles.

Chinese parents and grandparents take their children to public hospitals and have nurses shave away patches of hair from the children’s tender pates and stick intravenous needles into their scalps. Most of the time the needles are at the end of a long clear plastic pipe that is the conduit for a saline solution.

Personally, I hate the idea. And I hate the practice. I protested all the way to the hospital. And couldn’t watch while the nurse over a two-day course jabbed my son in the head with a needle. “That’s supposed to make him comfortable?” I quipped at my wife, who duly ignored me.

Public hospitals in China have huge rooms equipped with high-backed chairs studded with hooks from which patients hang their bags of saline solution. More serious cases are given anti-biotics, right away, no questions asked; like buying candy from a vending machine. Parents and grandparents sit in the chairs and hold their children in their laps while the solution drip drip drips into the needle.

The children’s hospital in Suzhou even built a new facility specifically to house the Coma-victims*. They were still installing lights in the ceilings while literally hundreds of families crowded into the drip-lounges (I should copyright that one) to find an available chair. Those who could not find a chair or knew they would not be able to  find accommodation had bought stiff-plastic rods – some blue, some pink; depending on the sex of the victim – at the end of which were hooks from which they could hang the medicine bags. Some of the porta-drip families walked aimlessly around the outer lobby of the hospital, while others sat in waiting rooms, with a parent or grandparent usually holding the porta-pole.

There was one moment of clarity I had during the hours of waiting: an aspect of Western medicine has become a Rite of Autumn for Chinese in Mainland China. Though flu season is upon us, it rather seemed to me there were only a handful of children in the hundreds I saw who were actually hospital-sick. Otherwise, it all rather seemed a social event to show to other parents/grandparents you were taking care of your child; and to have a merit badge (that is, the shaved patch on the child’s head) to show to the neighbors during social time in courtyards. I realized that my wife simply would not have been comfortable taking care of our son at home for a very mild head cold. Like preparing for Spring Festival, there was an act of seeing others and being seen by others in preparing for the season to come.

Thankfully, our little one survived the ordeal. So did I. And my wife feels worlds better than she did before the marathon sessions. She also had something more to talk about with the neighbors.

I hate to see what they’re going to do to him when he gets the measles, though.

*a reference to the movie of the same name from the 1970′s.

image credit: my mobile phone – i didn’t think you would believe such a story otherwise – bd