What A Week

This week has been a particularly interesting week around these parts for a few reasons.

1) I got a package from my brother and sister in the US, giving me a much needed restock of North America food supplies. they are not only delicious, but also aid me in avoiding catcalls by staying in my apartment for food, help my tummy-tums from getting too gurgly-googly, and help me to maintain my westernacity, something that is key to China allowing me to stay here.

The package also contained a huge selection of promotional CD's from Paste Magazine containing new music from various artists. This was like gold as I have been here for two years with only a two week sojourn back home in between. That whole time I have only supplemented the music collection I brought over with me with a large amount of bad Chinese pop and R&B songs that I learn to sing in order to improve my Chinese and entertain my students. This situation has lead to a bit of stagnation in my brain functions. The new influx of music will undoubtedly help my mental health, and also sets me up to have a sick party with all of my Chinese friends who are into the Indie music scene. That party will amount to me alone on a Saturday night listening to the CD's in my underwear, eating a snickers bar and drinking a half liter of Immense beer(no matter what that sounds like to you, to me it sounds AWESOME). I have yet to discover many Chinese friends that have a fondness for music that doesn't contain a heavy dose of electonic synthesizer. I swear when John Tesh cracks the Chinese music scene in five years he will become a god here.

2)I was finally able to capture on film something that I have been trying to capture for months, that being a child peeing on the street. This phenomenon, though common, is remarkably hard to photograph. The reason is simply because I feel bad doing it. I know from living here how embarrassing it is to have people staring at you, and taking a picture of that action would undoubtedly make the people doing it feel awkward. My goal has been to get a picture, since it is literally something I see about ten times a day, without anyone seeing me do it. The problem is that everyone stares at me while I am out, so it is unbelievably hard. Mothers often hold their children while they pee to make sure that they don't get any urine on themselves. A husband that sees me walking down the street will not hesitate to tap his wife on the shoulder and point me out, and the two, along with their sons baby penus, will continue to stare at me until I pass them by, ruining any chance that I had at a covert photo op...

Enter my new camera phone...

Now I can pretend I am sending a text message while actually taking pictures, and so today while waiting for a friend in front of a supermarket I was able to snap this shot...

This is not the clearest shot, and so my quest will continue, but at least you can get the idea. The best part about this picture was the process of taking. The reason I was able to snap this shot is because five minutes before taking this photo there was a girl who must have been 8 or 9 who dropped trow(sp?) right in front of me and began pissing, I fumbled for my phone and by the time I had it out and converted into camera mode she was already in her dad's car and they were pulling away. I thought I could find some consolation by taking a pic of the urine on the sidewalk and explaining the situation, but right as I was walking up to take a closer look a new car pulled in, and right as they hopped out the boy started to squat down to pee. The time was mine! The mother screamed at him "If you want to pee take off your pants!!" went over to help him out, and I giggled with delight at the opportunity I had stumbled upon. I still had to play it cool though since the father of the family got out of the car and immediately began staring at me. If you look closely you can see a few feet in front of the mom and son there is a wet patch, and that is the area that the girl had just peed not five minutes before.

3) This week while walking I saw a man going down the street here who apparently had seen my blog on pollution here in Zaozhuang and decided to develop a new futuristic low exhaust vehicle to help combat the problem of air pollution:

Not the fastest of vehicles, but it does help save on fuel.

And finally 4) Something occurred in the lines of an election somewhere or something??

Yes, this week the US presidential elections took place, one of the few national elections that becomes the focus of pretty intense international scrutiny. It is always fun to watch the election festivities from a foreign country for a variety of reasons. One being the media coverage in foreign countries is, of course, decidedly different. While in the US it is easy to get caught up in the mayhem of the 24 hour news networks coverage of things, that constant droning of often useless information which creates a difficult atmosphere to see issues clearly, or even to form a personal opinion, the media coverage in China has a lot less distractions. Here the news provides a lot less superfluous information, a lot less graphics, and a lot less shouting, thus making for a more tranquil environment to get a grasp of the important issues surrounding the election. But the media coverage in China also has topics of discussion that would never be heard in the US, especially during this election.

What I was most surprised about with the news coverage of the American elections here was the sheer amount of coverage that there has been. I watch the news every morning when I wake up before I go to work, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning of this week the first ten to fifteen minutes of the national news was totally dedicated to the American election. In addition, over the past two weeks the US election has been the top news story on Baidu news (Baidu is China's equivalent to Google) as much or more than any national stories. What really blew my mind was I was reading one article that was saying that the media coverage and national vigilance of the election this year was actually less than usual, and paled in comparison to some previous elections, the 1980, 92, and 2000 elections to name a few. This has been attributed to the fact that with the rise of China's international prominence the US election won't have as great an effect on the situation here as it used to.

Imagine an equivalent in the United States. Imagine if the nightly news or the Today show gave significant amount of news coverage for a week to the political process of a foreign country. It is something that simply doesn't, and probably never will, happen. I saw a Daily Show segment a couple of weeks ago where one of the correspondents compared the US to a really hot girl that all the guy countries want to fuck and all the girl countries are jealous of. Watching the foreign media's coverage of the US election I have to say that the metaphor seems quite appropriate. The US, like a really hot girl, is on the one hand annoyingly arrogant and self centered, but on the other hand mysteriously beautiful and alluring, both in spite of and because of it's arrogance. Living in China I have discovered that most of the older citizens I meet and even many of my students dislike some parts of US culture, and especially dislike it's foreign policies, yet at the same time are strangely attracted to me, to get to know me better, to learn more about English, and to learn more about what life in the United States is like.

Though, I do have to say that given the current international climate I would compare the US more to that same hot, popular girl in high school the summer after freshman year of college. She has put on ten to fifteen pounds, is still quite arrogant, not quite as attractive as she used to be, and she has more vices, including drinking. China is like a diligent nerdy guy from that same high school that used to view the US as an attractive, yet unattainable dream, who after freshman year of college discovered that being smart and studious is actually a positive quality, has gained confidence and some much needed social skills. Now China finds itself at a party talking with the US, and the US is wrecked. China's all the sudden thinking, "hey, I've got a chance." (look at the trade deficit info below)

This election has been historic in large part due to the racial element. It has been interesting seeing Chinese reactions to the election of an African American as President. The reactions have been varied. One thing that I have noticed over my years of living abroad is how quick citizens of foreign countries are to point out the problem of racial discrimination in the United States. I agree that the United States has a terrible history of racial prejudice and it is something that is important to contemplate in order to try and help all of humanity move on in the direction of a more tolerant society. The problem is that almost every country I have been in talks about the United States as though racial prejudice is unique to that region. Citizens of a given nation always seem to be unable to admit intolerance within their own country. The United States has many grotesque and blatant examples of intolerance, but that all comes from the fact that it is a country that has mixed together in its borders a remarkably diverse population. The United States has also, unlike many other countries, made some attempts at facing up to the mistakes of its past. In doing so it has left itself open to criticism from foreign countries who have little racial diversity, but has also paved the way for a country with some of the most tolerant areas I have ever lived in, along with the ability to elect a minority to it's highest office.

China often talks about how it is a diverse nation, boasting that it has 56 ethnic groups that live peacefully together. It is true that China is diverse in it's own way, but this diversity cannot be compared with that of the Untied States. China is diverse in the way western Europe was diverse 100 years ago. Though there are many different ethnic groups living in it's border who speak distinct languages or dialects, They are lacking in general large scale racial and religious diversity. Almost every ethnic group in China, with the exceptions of the Uigur minority from Xinjiang province and Tibetans, have relatively similar physical features, including black hair, what is referred to here as "yellow" skin, and brown eyes(the features that are so common that, as I have mentioned in an earlier blog, have been lauded in a number of popular songs). This leads to a modern environment where one white man walking the streets of a smaller city can habitually cause people to point, gawk, and giggle, and even yell. I won't even mention some of the comments that I have heard about black people here. Yet I am constantly lectured about the problems that the United States has with with it's race relations.

I watched a television interview on CCTV earlier this week after Obama had won. A reporter was interviewing two professors from two of the most famous Universities in China. One of the professors was from Beijing University, the University that is generally accepted as the best in the nation. When the reporter asked this professor what he thought of the significance of the election of the US's first ever African American President, he responded (and I paraphrase) " It is historic, but really, I like to say that Obama is a black man in appearance with a white gene." The reporter stopped for a second and asked the professor to elaborate. He responded, "He has the appearance of a black man, but in his actions and political thoughts he is just like a white man. And lets not forget the fact that he is not 100% black, his mother is a white woman." This is coming from a professor at the most respected University in the nation, being broadcast on national television. I was pretty blown away, and I am not entirely sure what he was trying to prove, but I can only assume that his purpose was to downplay the importance of the American's breaking of the Presidential color barrier. I can only assume that this man has met about 0 black people in his life. Just the fact that talk like that is accepted on TV here speaks volumes, because let's not forget that CCTV is government sponsored, so the reporters and interviewees are not supposed to make asses out of themselves like people are cable networks in the United States.

I have also been intrigued with the discussion of how this race will effect Sino-American relations. In general the populace of China, or at least the students, have been overwhelmingly in support of Obama. This stems mainly from the fact that 1) he is black and they sympathize with the plight of minorities in the US (How many non-male non-Han people have been President, or any other major governmental position in China?) and 2)because the general populace here hates Bush. They see the Democratic party candidate as the "anti-bush," which remains to be seen. But that is the general populace. What has been interesting has been reading some of the op-ed articles in the Chinese newspapers, where I have been reading a few authors writing that McCain would be the better candidate because of his experience, and that the world would probably be safer with him in office. Words that strikingly echo those of the McCain campaign itself.

The truth is that the Chinese government has to be pretty sad to see Bush go. He has been like a gift from the gods for the leaders of China. Bush's foreign policy has given them plenty of fodder for criticism, and helped them to be able create a general anti-American sentiment throughout the country. The "war on terror" has given the government a premise to tranquilly go about hunting down enemies of the government. And Bush's economic policies have created such an enormous debt to China that the US's position in relation to the people's republic has suddenly become unfavorable. When reading articles that talk about the way that Obama's election will influence Sino-American relations the general thoughts are that it will have little influence in general since Obama is interested in keeping relations amiable, but that the focus of the relationship will shift away from foreign war issues and business relations to human rights and environmental issues, as well as a focus on eliminating the huge trade deficit the US currently has with China. While that might sound good to some people, not exactly what the CPC wants to hear.

Regardless of what anyone believes politically, this election has certainly been a hugely important one for the US and the world. I don't believe that Barack Obama will dramatically change the landscape of United States politics. Even if he really wanted to our political system and the 46 percent of Americans that didn't vote for him won't allow it to happen(that said, just becoming a bit more moderate and reserved than the Bush administration's policies will be a relatively great change). Yet his election has had some very positive consequences, mainly that of dramatically improving the image of the United States in the international community in just a matter of one week. Not only does it signal that the United States itself has accepted that many of the policies of the last eight years were a mistake(which is pretty important given the fact that much of the world has seen the Bush adminstration as a sort of extremist regime), but it also shown that the US has the confidence and tolerance to do something that nearly no other country in the world is capable of doing, electing a minority to lead it.

I was recently reading a friends blog where he was reflecting on the election, he mentioned how only in the wake of Obama's victory was he able to sort of reflect and realize how hard the last eight years have truly been. He had come to realize the fact that for a long time he had been living with a sort of dark cynicism that he was finally beginning to awaken from. He also mentioned how he has been somewhat hesitant to tell people that he was American due to its reputation abroad, and how maddening that is to be a bit embarrassed of where you come from. That struck a chord with me in a lot of ways. Starting in the year 2001 I have lived outside of the United States for five years, and the whole time I have been fairly uncomfortable discussing my home country. This is largely due to the fact that all that has been done by the government representing the people of the United States over that time has been very difficult for those coming from an outside perspective to understand. It does not help matters that I have found the policies utterly indefensible. I have often had to helplessly listen to groups of people around me rail on the US while I would vainly attempt to describe the parts of the United States I thought were admirable(namely the tolerance and free thought that can be found in many areas there) without having any real hard evidence to back my claims. The election of Obama is irrefutable proof that, despite all of mistakes the United States has made, despite all of the terrible injustices that citizens of the US have had to endure and still do endure, those experiences along with the remarkable diversity of the United States has helped to create an society that is becoming increasingly more progressive and tolerant(though I am still pissed about Prop 8), and in some areas already is wonderfully so. An environment where that very tolerance and diversity can produce some very beautiful things. For the first time in my adult life I have a solid, substantive reason, beyond just a feeling, to be proud to be from the United States.

But patriotism is overrated in my book anyway. Too often it is used as an excuse to be selfish. I was amazed this week to see how much coverage that the US election was getting in China. The fact is that the US is the focus of so much attention in so many countries all over the world. The reason is because of its stature and policies the US has a great influence over the whole world. The United States elections (disregarding the more serious corporeal influence our foreign policy can have in certain areas of the world)have the ability to create grudging resentment, or inspire millions. I can only hope that that might mean that the citizens of the US can take the challenge and the responsibility that that sort of position entails and step to the polls with more in mind than how much is in their wallet.