My experiences in the last two and a half weeks in China, has blossomed into a love-hate relationship with its people and culture. I've had some interesting experiences while here so far, here are somethings that surprised me about China:
1. The massiveness of buildings. Everything here is built to super-size scale, that's the commercial buildings. Think of Las Vegas hotels and make their size the norm in Beijing. Whether it's a hotel or not, it's that big.
2. In contrast, the hutongs (cities within cities) are tiny cities with the smallest streets and some date to the 14th century. We finally toured a hutong a couple of days ago, and Mike was very offended that I still thought of them as resembling slums. That's my opinion and last time I checked I'm entitled to one since I live in the land of the FREE. I know they are ancient and therefore should be venerated, and are finally now being preserved as part of their heritage, but you can tell when you look inside the little doors going into the houses that there's dirt and lots of paper boxes organized at the entrance then lots of little things cluttered around them. The courtyard house we went to was delightful. All the rooms are completely enclosed from each other and the only access to them was through the courtyard, that included the kitchen too. But they were all suites with baths. Very interesting way of planning. Not all homes are like that, but to be fair they are not shanty towns. The government has put up Olympic graphics on walls all around the hutongs so one can barely notice them.
3. I have to figure out this one out, but they hardly have toilets in China. It's also very hard to find toilet paper, even in the Olympic venues. That I'm still not used to. If you've travelled around the world you may know that I'm talking about. I've seen a toilet like theirs once in Italy at a train station. It's a hole on the floor with an under mounted pan that simulates a toilet bowl, you squat to do your duty. Trust me for a pregnant woman it's hell. I don't know if they think that this way of relieving oneself is more hygienic because you don't have to sit where others do, because if they do I can argue the opposite. I won't go into details it's TMI. So Mike kept complaining that I was being too judgemental of the Chinese and their bathrooms until he had to go #2 at the Volleyball venue and rated his experience very low. He said: "I wish you would have warned me." What was I supposed to do? I had complained so much that I don't know what else he wanted me to tell him.
4. We've been having fun eating in China. When you ask for noodles or rice with a type of meat, you will not know what part of the specified animal you are eating. Well, you can tell for the most part. i.e.: I order chicken curry with rice and there were bones and tendons and all kinds of chicken parts that I usually don't see at Teriaki Stix. Being a picky eater already, I've had to pick even more at my food, now try picking at your food with chopsticks.. However, the food has been very tasty, the spices add so much to the flavor. When Mike wrote about his experiences he was trying to defend this very post which I had written before and have since deleted it and added to it. Maybe I haven't lived in the US long enough, but I've not even seen a whole chicken, duck or it's innards offered in the menu. They do have sweet and sour pork here, we ate it three days ago.
5. Chinese people don't understand lines. Now that's not all of them thank goodness. At any given time a Chinese will butt in line or even push you out of the way to order at a concession stand, or go into a bathroom stall. For those of you who know me well, I can't accept that. I'll do to you what you do to me. So last night a lady was trying to go in front of me into the bathroom and I got in front of her and would not let her go, and it happened again on Sunday after the Brazil x USA game. I yelled at her to go back in line. On the other hand some have actually yelled at their countrymen for being rude and told people to wait their turn. Yesterday we went to the Forbidden City and then a park up the hill across the street. On the top there was a pagoda with a Buddha statue and people were paying tribute to him. There were 4 doors, one on each side of the pagoda which overlooked the whole city. Mike was standing on this 10" metal weatherstripping of sorts at one of the doors and I had one foot leaning on it. This guy came over and asked Mike to get off and he did. Then he complained about my foot so I purposely moved one foot out so that had one foot in the room and one foot out of the pagoda. The guy told me to not do that and move both feet out, I put my foot inside so my whole body was still inside the pagoda. The guy give me a fake grin and went back to take care of his Buddha. Mike got all mad that I was giving the guy a hard time. Was I? Or was it the other way around? You can argue both ways. They do weird stuff all the time, but I'm not allowed to. hmmmmm.... We walked to the National Opera House which is one of those amazing architectural gems of the 21st century and there were a bunch of people resting on the steps inside the opera house. So I sat down too. Then a guard comes to us and tells us we cannot sit there, so we get up. Around a little hedge of plants from us there were about 10 Chinese sitting on the same steps with a guard in front of them and he said nothing. So I went right behind them and sat down. It wasn't 2 minutes later the guard told all of them to move, some did and others didn't. We moved because I was ready to kungfu them. I mumbled an expletive to myself. I'm so ready to go home where nobody seems to care where I sit.
6. Traffic laws do not apply in China. One would think they've only had roads in the past 6 months. We're getting somewhat used to it, but it's seriously ridiculous. We've heard a rumor that 85,000 die in the roads of Beijing yearly. Whether driving, biking or walking you can expect a car to turn left when the light is red and there 4 lanes of incoming traffic coming towards him; pedestrians crossing 4 lanes of traffic or just standing in the middle of the road when the pedestrian light is red. A Lexus RX350 cut off a corner and missed me by 6 inches while I was crossing the road when the pedestrian light was green and beeping for us to cross. If I had been a blind person I would have been dead.
Overall though, we've had an amazing time so far in China. I feel totally safe, the city is very clean(at least during the Olympics), the landscaping everywhere is impeccable(everywhere looks like Disney World landscaping). And Mike and I have commented plenty of times on how neat it would be to live here for a few years. Learn Chinese, learn a bit more of the culture(so I could be more forgiving of the lack of courtesy, I'm still very rough around the corners). We've met quite a few expats that live here and love it. They get paid a lot, go home 5 times a year and live like kings. I could handle that, after all that's the whole reason why we are changing our lives so drastically so we can be flexible to live wherever we want.
Mike and I have no doubt that China will be the center of the world in the next coming decades. They somewhat still lack an entrepreneurial mindset, but they've got the resources, willpower and hard work ethics to do it. Case in point, everywhere you go there are people asking you to buy something from them. They all have the same products whether at a market or just out on the street. When we climbed the steps to the little Buddha pagoda on top of the hill there were no carts selling cold drinks and there were lots of people needing a refreshment. Instead, you could take pictures in a silk dress, but there was no water. I immediately thought to myself, one guy up here and he could make pretty good money with a little cooler with water. In Brazil where I used to live there's a huge sand dune on the beach and there are always people with coconut water, or other drinks on the bottom of it because it is no longer open for the public to climb up to the summit. But in my days, when it was open there were guys selling cold coconut and water up on the top too! Now that's the spirit of making money.
Talking to a girl who sold me pearl necklaces, I found out she graduated a year ago with a degree in Accounting but she sells pearls at the silk market with her sister. I asked her why she wasn't working in accounting and she said that it was better to sell pearls. She said that foreigners are what the companies want because they know English better and because they know the world better. In essence they have a better sense of the world marketplace so both Chinese and multi-national firms prefer to hire foreigners since the Chinese have been sheltered from life in the world we know. It's sad to realize that, I'm sure even sadder for her, her country controls her news, her education, her life and then shuns them from progressing in the beginning of a marketplace revolution which is taking place in this giant country because she is not open-minded enough. I truly don't think it's her fault.
Helen coming back from a jet-ski ride in Lake St. Clair, Canada, where she spent many summers as a youth.
Isaac's last days with Grandma, and mine too. In Lake St. Clair, Canada.
Going to see the train, just like she used to do with her cousins. This last time with her grandchildren.
