Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Da Jing Xiao Guai (Much Ado About Nothing)


Whoa, it's been a while since I hit up the blog. Time to get used to doing this again. I had to take a break recently because life has gotten crazy with nothing in particular. Now, with no real aim in mind, allow me to chronicle what has been occurring in Shandong Zaozhaung recently, as it is, if nothing else, amusing.


You know alot of people might get busy with endless hours of work, or trying to care for their family. That isn't me. I am unmarried, have no children (That I know about, yeah!) and my official work hours are not excessive. Yet I still find myself racing around busy and tired most of the time. This is because of all of the different "very easy" chores that I am asked to do by co-workers, bosses, and students. (There is no more annoying phrase in the world than, "I think it is very easy for you." Even if it is easy for me, don't tell me that it is easy and make me feel guilty on the one hand, and fear failure on the other) Two random tasks are on my mind at the moment, so let me discuss those a bit:


To start, interviews: This is one of the weird things of living over here, my quasi-celebrity status that I have done absolutely nothing to deserve. Granted I do occasionally rock the stage with a stirring Chinese Pop performance or Backstreet boys song, but I think that more qualifies me for a brutal beating than celebrity. Over my years in China I have been interviewed more times than I can remember, by a number of different groups, from local television stations to school newspapers. This may seem to be an interesting experience, and it could be, if the interviews that I took part in were ever meant to be in depth, or even in the least bit different. But most of the creativity and depth of interviews can be taken out by censorship policies, along with the care that my hosts try to take to not offend me. Let me take you through a typical interview to give you an idea.

To start out the interviews people will usually get me excited, explaining that the purpose of the interview is to examine American and Chinese culture. I enjoy doing this and so I would love to have a good conversation with someone about similarities and important differences between the cultures, and perhaps even some common misunderstandings. I will usually allow myself a bit of hope, thinking that perhaps this time the interview might be different. Then after buttering me up they bring the first question:


"Do you like Chinese food?"

An awkward moment of silence follows as I try to wrap my mind around the complexity of the question. There are so many directions I could go with it, originally my inclination is to go with, "excuse me?" But at the last moment a better answer comes to me and I respond,

"Yes."

This is met with a series of nods and smiles and a follow up,

"What is your favorite Chinese food?"

"Well I'm not sure, I have been here a long time and I like a number of different things, its hard for me to pick one favorite."


This answer doesn't get the same enthusiastic response from my interviewers, they need facts, I am straddling the fence here on the issue, and they need to get to the heart of it. They try a new direction,

"What about Dumplings?"

"Yeah, I like dumplings, I don't know if they are my..." at this point my answer is already confirmed, my favorite Chinese food is dumplings. Its the funny thing about asking questions that are unimportant, the answers become unimportant also, and so none of us really care about the outcome, the important thing is that time or space is taken up in a news report somewhere.

Moving on,

"Do you like Chinese culture?" or "Do you like China?" This is such an interesting question, because it is so simple, and yet says so much. This is the million dollar question that is asked of thousands of foreigner visitors to China every year, and plastered around the CCTV networks on a weekly basis in what I can only assume is a move to boost moral. First of all, how on earth is a coherent and thoughtful person supposed to answer that question? Second, why is it necessary to constantly watch foreigners praise the country you love? China is so clearly an interesting, culturally rich, and beautiful country, it should not be necessary to look outside for fulfillment. I don't care how many Newsweek articles I see on the culture of humiliation in China, I still can't understand how watching people answer set-up puffball questions can help improve a self image. My response?

"Of course, I have been living here for a long time, met a lot of great friends, people are so friendly, it's a wonderful place!" Add me to the list of soundbites baby!


Next question: This one will usually vary depending on the reason I am being interviewed. If I am being interviewed by the school the question will undoubtedly be, "How can we students improve our English more quickly?" I won't get into the details of that answer right now but I will just say that, guaranteed, by the end of the interview everyone in the room is speaking fluent English.


If it is not the school I could be getting asked about a number of things, from my opinions of the party I just watched, to what I think about Chinese folk art. I was interviewed twice by local television stations in the preview to the Olympics as two different men's "foreign friend." (I have so many friends, isn't it great?) The only reason that I knew them is because I can speak Chinese, am foreign, and they had something to do with the organization of the Olympic games. So people were like, "well, foreigners are in the Olympics, and you know... you get it right?..." I went to a few dinner's with both of the gentlemen, even sang some songs together to consummate our friendship and have not heard from them since the Olympics ended. But really at the time we were tight! In those circumstances I was asked to describe my relationship to my close friends. Phenomenal nonsense would ensue, but it would be pleasing to the public, and thats what is important. In one interview I was told to pretend I was a student of Kung fu ( the man was one of the organizers of the Olympics Wushu events)and was literally filmed doing this move as proof of my kung fu prowess...


Don't let the video fool you, I filmed this in my apartment and thus had to give an extremely controlled and slowed down version of my move, but I can assure that if I were outdoors or in a dangerous situation the power of my scream and the force of my blow would increase dramatically. Anyone standing very still directly in front of me or anyone with very sensitive eardrums would be at my mercy.


The final question in an interview will then usually once again be a call for a soundbite praising the People's Republic. Before the Olympics it was typically, "What sort of a good wish do you have for the Olympic games?" Where the correct answer was usually, "Jia You Beijing!"(Fire it up Beijing!) Now in my most recent interview I was asked what I thought about the response of the Beijing Government in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan province. I love the way that in certain circumstances it is wrong to refer to tragedies for some sort of political or personal gain, and other times it is just so right.


So I have lost a taste for interviews as time has gone on, and in turn have become a worse interviewee. People don't like to print or film what I say anymore because I have trouble spitting out the responses everyone wants to hear. It is just so interesting that the only questions that I am asked that treat me like a full grown adult have correct answers.

Other things that have been keeping me busy in ways I have no interest in being involved in... Standardized tests!! Yippeee! I won't even get into how ridiculous I think the standardized tests are, I think there are many people who sympathize, but taking a standardized test in China has been so much more difficult than I would have imagined. There is no online paying system developed yet here, so just paying for the exam was a frustrating endeavor, where I was made to wait in endless lines at multiple banks beofre finally succeeding.



Then in order to take the exam I have to take a 4 hour bus trip to the largest city in the province and spend a night there. The four hour bus trip is a pain in itself, but the worst part is that the city I am travelling to is Jinan.



A friend of mine once compared Jinan to Detroit, and I enjoyed this comparison. Now I don't know much about the city of Detroit and so I am sorry to those who love the city if they find this comparison insulting, but I know that Detroit does have the reputation of a tough city, and I would definitely use the term "tough city" to describe Jinan. The best way I can describe my feelings about Jinan is that I feel as though it has an endless supply of broken down unused train tracks, and as I walk down the street there I feel 100% more likely to get randomly hit in the back of the head with a crowbar.




Jinan is always a trip of endless frustration, people yell at me from different directions, somtimes in order get me to be their friend, sometimes to teach in their school, sometimes to get their freidsn to chuckle. But most of the time in Jinan people are yelling at you purely because they want you endless supply of foreign money. People sell you bottles of water for double the price, you have to negotiate with cabbies in order for them to use the meeter. My blood pressure doubles when I am inside the city limits. But this time around I did see a couple of interesting things. One was upon my arrival to take the exam on Saturday morning...



While probably half of the people in this area were people 30 or older, there still was a huge number of students out there at 7:30 Am on a Saturday. There is considerably less drinking and partying that goes on among students on Chinese campuses, as their dormitories are basically on lockdown(Boys and girls live in separate dorms, and each dorm has a guard at the door). The combination of early curfews and sexual frustration must also lead to early morning hoops, or jogging, which is no doubt healthier for the body than a 12 pack of Genny Cream Ale, four slices of greasy pizza, and sexual frustration, which more characterized my college life.


I busted out of Jinan as quick as possible with only a slight pause for a short yet passionate embrace in the loving arms of Pizza Hut ( a little light on the cheese this time, but I'm still yours my lady) and took a quick detour back to my old stomping grounds, Qufu. Qufu is a very small town in Shandong province that is the hometown of Confucius. The town is interesting and maddening in many different ways, and I have a sort of love-hate relationship with it. But this weekend I was loving it since I was just blowing through town to visit friends. I was also able to hang with a group of Waiguos, which was a great release. There are times you just have to let your Waiguo hang out. Qufu has a relatively large group of foreign teachers, mostly recent grads from my alma mater, Skidmore. The teachers over there are very cool, and afforded me much hospitality in treating me to an evening in which I could actually act American. The night's festivities included drinking games, mixed drinks, a spontaneous outbreak of the Macarena (I have a video of this but in respect to the participants in said dance I will refrain from putting it on the internet) and SCORPION WINE.


This little gem is pure genius. Scorpion wine is a Chinese alcohol that is fermented with scorpions. I am not sure if you can see it in the picture but there is a small scorpion in the bottom of each bottle. So what do you get when you mix Baijiu with scorpion venom? An interesting concoction that tastes like a scorpion just stung you in the eyeball and has the properties to PREVENT CANCER. That's right, it is a cancer preventing hard alcohol. It's so simple, yet it took 5000 years of cultural history to produce. Any day now they will be coming up with vitamin filled cigarrettes. The box of this liquor is full of explanations of the health benefits of the alcohol and is interesting to read. I decided to take it at its word and drank the whole bottle, and from my scientific examination I found that the side-effects of cancer prevention feel an awful lot like a ridiculously bad hangover. Never would have known.



So now I am back in the Zhuang, with no more interviews, and no tests for another month. Thats the way I like it, giving me time to ponder the deepest questions of life, and continue to write meaningless blogs.



This weekend we have a sick Halloween party, where no doubt there will be some crazy, sexy costumes, and some vocal sweetness in the form of Mr. John's greatest hits. I can't wait.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dude, your kung-fu move made me want to watch Matrix Reloaded, and I just got done bartending the last night of parents weekend at Nichols and its 4am...good work, thanks for making me stay up even later arsehole!
love,
Freddy