Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

America in the local paper

Yes, Chinese people make snowmen too. In fact, several pictures of them made the front page in a newspaper here. The newspaper very cutely picked out five, all with different faces. One was a cat, another had the face of a melted alien, and one had a mustache made out of two dried leaves.

I've been meaning to read the local papers more often, both as a way to learn more about China and improve my reading abilities. (It seems a bit ironic that I rely on The New York Times and other foreign publications to get my news on China.)

Well as I flipped through the frontpage, I instead came across a half-page article about America. The headline: "Every 31 minutes a murder occurs in America."

The article is about a report on America's human rights record the Chinese government recently published. In the center was this rather imposing picture:

The article goes on to detail all the problems in America, and does it quite negatively: "A rape happens every 5.8 minutes" , "Every year 190,000 race-related hate crimes occur." Early on, the article says while America will criticize other countries about their human rights record, it does little to fix its own problems. One subheadline reads, "America's 'Human Rights' hypocrisy."

Why such a harsh and one-sided article? Apparently America's State Department issued its report on global human rights and basically gave China a poor rating. In response, the government released its own report on America.

I can see where the Chinese government is coming from, (yes, America does have its many problems) and the facts it reported are accurate from the cursory Internet searches I did. But man, what a crappy article. (Frankly, America is way better in its human rights record than China, i.e. the right to vote and the freedom of speech).

Such a blatant piece of state-sponsored propaganda. What was strange, but a bit laughable was how the picture shown above isn't of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, but of a protester from Turkey. I suppose if you don't read the caption, one might think people in America are being tortured on the streets. It does make me wonder more about what Chinese people think of Americans and how they are covered in the press.

I only know that it sucks a little to live in a country where the government controls the information. There's been a few times where The New York Times webpage has been blocked. When Obama's inauguration speech was broadcasted on TV, the government censored small portions where Communism was negatively mentioned. They did so by not translating what the new President said. The government won't even let 'The Dark Knight' from being shown at theaters, supposedly because the evil accountant guy in the movie is Chinese. (The film, however, can be bought on bootlegs DVDs anywhere).

Just one of those things that you hope China will change one day. Like making sure you can safely drink milk here. I guess I'll have to be prepared to be slightly outraged whenever I read the local papers here.

Snow in Xi’an

I woke up this morning to see snow outside my apartment. First time I've seen snow in Xi'an. I think it suits the city quite well.

For the past few months I haven't really seen any precipitation. Still, whenever I carried my bag, I would have my umbrella packed in on the side. "Why do you bring your umbrella," someone would often ask like I was being weird. Indeed, the weather has been dry. Yet it normally snows a few times every year. I guess it just came late this time around. I wonder if Chinese people make snowmen too?

Sucks to be second

It was a bit like walking up to a Chinese haunted house.

Barren and bony trees raveled around the ancient home, while dry branches tangled in thick cobwebs on the ground. At the front entrance were a pair of expired dragon dogs; their bodies faceless, not a chiseled feature but the four legs on their stone frames. Time and neglect, it seemed, had drained the life here.

Today, I visited the tomb of the Second Emperor of China ???. This place is old,

Much has been written about the First Emperor of China, ???. But as for his son and successor, there's little. He ruled for only three years and then was forced to commit suicide.

His tomb perhaps reflects the poor stature of his legacy. The nearby fauna grows at its own leisure, forming an untamed thicket around the tourist attraction. An old Chinese traditional home surrounds the actual grave. I walked through it, finding the ceiling panels through one hall falling apart. At his tomb, three cigarette buds were tossed in front of his gravestone.

It seems few people make visits here; two young men the only other visitors while I was touring the place. An older couple take care of the tomb.

I have the feeling that many historical sites in China end up like this. But maybe that isn't all a bad thing. For a moment I felt like I had gone back in time, or to a different place.

But what's so striking about this tomb is it's location, where it sits right near the heart of Xi'an's newest development area. Rows of modern apartments are being built right nearby, while a grand lake fit for a resort sits just to north. I remember walking along the street and seeing this clean and cutting-edge neighborhood, only then to come across this brown mass of ugly forest. It is perhaps the most out of place tourist attraction I have ever encountered.

This just all goes to reflect how in China, the divide between old and new, and how it can literally just be separated by a street corner.

It brings to mind that day when I saw a woman herding several white goats across the road. Here, I was sitting in a bus, watching cars stroll by, suddenly to see a group of goats pass by.

The divide is often most evident when you leave the city. There you can see rural life, fielded with low stodgy homes built brick by brick, hand by hand. Technology seems to be almost absent except for the electrical power lines, cars, and occasional ads publicizing a cellphone provider.
When I left the Second Emperor's tomb, I saw a large green poster nearby. On it shows a plan to modernize the attraction in the coming years. I suppose it will do good in helping to preserve the tomb, but I actually hope things there will stay the way they are.

Thanks, but no thanks

Early in 2008, when I was thinking about coming to China, I wanted to go to Beijing or Shanghai.

My thought-process was that these are the two largest cities in the country, with the most opportunities, especially in terms of writing. At the same time, my mom was encouraging me to go to Taiwan. With some of my family already there, it would be more convenient and safer.

Now that I look back, I'm glad I didn't end up in any of these places.

During my time in these three cities I've felt like I completely extracted myself from a part of China I had grown used to. I saw the new China and was frankly a little bored by it, the differences with America, being minimal. Now I understand why some locals and foreigners dread this coming modernization.

It seems like a stroke of luck that I came to Xi'an of all places. The Olympics and the new policy on visas were preventing me from finding a job in the country. I posted a resume for a teaching job on a website. The school contacted me, and then things started rolling.

Lately I've been stressing about where to go after my teaching contract in Xi'an is over at the end of June. My chief goal during this long winter vacation has been to try and find the answer, thinking Beijing or Shanghai might be the right place for me. Now, I don't know. A new friend of mind recently told me, "Only idiots go to Beijing and Shanghai for vacation. They don't represent China."

She was right. I remember the train ride I took from Shanghai to get back to Xi'an. Outside in the window, I saw farm after farm, the land nearly barren, the air dry, and the trees with their bleak and vein-like branches. I wondered, what is it like here?

I want to stay in China, but other than that, I have no idea. The question seems to borderline "what should I do with my life?" sort of question. Didn't I come here to be a journalist? Often I forget.

Tired of you

The family friend I'm traveling with asked me what I thought of Shanghai. I paused, but then was blunt: “It's nothing special,” I said in Chinese.

With him, I saw some more of the city, traveling to Pu Dong, where giant skyscrapers towered over me the whole time. We went to a mall there and I saw a Best Buy and a Toys R' Us. Earlier in the day, we were at coffee shop, where they sold crepes of all things. I remember being there and seeing English, written in what I was black chalk, all across the walls. They were the menu items and specials for the day. Below was the Chinese version, written a bit smaller. Naturally, most of the customers there were foreigners.

I can see how someone would love a place like a Shanghai. It's modern, convenient, with what I hear is a great night-life. The shops are endless and it's easy to make friends from your own country. Apparently all the foreigners live in certain parts of the city depending on the nationality. If you don't know Chinese that well, then Shanghai would be much easier for you to live in and get through.

As for me, I mainly feel “meehh” about the city. I feel too much like I'm in America, which is synonymous with so many things. But to describe better, it's just nothing new to me. I didn't come to China to experience what I could back in the states.

I walked the streets today and I wondered. What did this neighborhood look like 60 years ago? Were these buildings still here? What was in them? What was life like back then?

I wish I could roll back in time, to just observe how things were. I suppose part of me just wants to escape. I think I'm tired of Shanghai. Or maybe I'm just an ass, who can't enjoy himself.

---

Me and my family friend were walking through the subway tunnels. An older couple, maybe in their forties, stopped us and asked for directions. The man spoke in a thick accent, from some province I couldn't name. They wondered which subway line to take. My friend pointed in the right direction. Incidently, it was the same way we were going.

But, they didn't follow. As we rode the escalator to the other subway line, the couple, having already seperated from us, trailed off and went some other way. There are numerous signs, both in English and Chinese, all across the tunnels to lead passengers where they need to go. My friend looked back at them, and noted they were heading the wrong direction.

"Shanghai has a lot of illterate people," he said. "A lot of migrants come to the city for work."

He guessed the couple was illterate as well.

In many of China's larger cities, migrants come to work, usually to do manual labor work. One can tell who are city folk and who are from the outside, not just through local accents, but also by what they carry. In the subways, I often saw lone people, who carried one giant sack with them, that they usually haul over their shoulders. The sacks are like a filled and plump garbage bag. My friend told me, for many of these migrants, all they have is what's in those sacks, and in the few other suitcases and backpacks they may carry.

I remember about a month ago seeing the saddest thing. I was outside, in Xi'an train station, waiting in a long-line to buy a ticket. It was cold. I pocketed my hands and stamped my feet every now and then, my teeth quaking. Then I saw a small girl, maybe 6 or 7, walking through the line alone. Suddenly she dropped down to her knees in front of man wanting in line next to me. She then grabbed the bottom of the man's pant and tugged them. She begged, asking for money. She did this for maybe a minute. All the while, the man did nothing, pratically ignoring her. The little girl, then stopped, stood up, and walked somewhere else to where I couldn't see.

???

Cloudy in Shanghai

Grandpa

Though this is my ninth time inTaiwan, this visit is a bit different because my Chinese has improved.

I had hoped this would allow me to speak more to my grandfather. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

--

Talking to my grandfather can be depressing.

It feels like whenever I speak with him he first starts off with the state of his body: old and broken down.

“I can't really walk anymore,” he says. “It's hard for me to breath, I have asthma and I wheeze.”

“I can't really take care of myself. I need to rely on your grandma, or the caretaker.”

“I can't visit China.”

“There's no way I can visit Taiyuan (where he grew us as a child).”

“I can't visit America; I can't ride a plane.”

He's old now, at 86 years of age. Five years ago, he tripped and fell, injuring his leg (The accident was indirectly my fault. He had taken me to visit a political event I wanted to see, and upon returning home he fell). His health has gone downhill ever since, even surviving a bout of cancer at one point. My dad told me once about grandfather and how he had grown depressed over the years. Now I could see it so clearly.

I think this whole time I've been here I haven't seen him laugh, not even smile. When I talk with him I instead think he's on the verge of breaking out tears, talking about his regrets and how he can't take a bath by himself anymore. The state of his body seems to be a reflection of his state of mind. His hair is all white now, I remember when I was younger he'd at least die it black.

Seeing his pessimism I asked him, tell me about the times you were most happy.

“When we were young, we were never happy,” he replied. “During the war, we especially were never happy.”

He then told me during the World War II he had to eat a certain type of food they made at the school. It was so bad that you couldn’t even shit, he said. But you had no choice but to eat it.

Later he told me about his happiest times. I had maybe expected that he'd say when children were born, or when he got married. But he told me his favorite moments were when he was far older. From when he was 70 to when he was 80. When he finally retired, he felt relieved of all the work and its pressure. He traveled the world with my grandmother, going to Florida and seeing Disney Land, to London and Vienna. He regrets not having a chance to visit Spain.

I talked to my grandfather for over an hour today. And I noticed how when I look at him, I can't see myself in him. I see so many similarities between me and my father. But I’m not sure if I see anything in my grandfather.

My grandfather lived in another time and place. He lived a difficult childhood; his father died when he was only 15 or 16. Later he was separated from his five other siblings after the communists took over the mainland. For the first decades of his life, survival was on his mind.

As for me, I muse about luxuries: about adventure, happiness and trying to write some science-fiction novel. I can only look at myself now and feel disgusted.

I'd like to just tell him to enjoy life, but then again, I have no idea what he's been through. I live in a different time, where I don't worry about getting a job, or money, or what I have to eat. I don't worry about if I can walk across the room without falling down, or if my asthma will come back.

I suppose the worst part is how my grandfather can barely hear now. He wears two hearing aids on both ears, but still, I have to literally yell at him so that he can understand. It feels impossible to have a normal conversation with him; instead I mainly listen while he lectures me. He continues to lament, about how I can't go to a steak place he likes because its on the second floor and there's no elevator to it. I tell him in Chinese “no problem, ???.” But I'm not sure he hears it. All this Chinese I know now, and he still has trouble understanding me.

--

Things were worse when I recently visited my maternal grandparents.

My maternal grandfather is old as well. His hair is almost gone; the skin on his face sags down making him seem gaunt. We just met for 30 minutes and I struggled to find things to talk about with him. At the end of our visit, I tried hugging him, but he gave me a disturbed look, like he didn't understand what I was doing to him. I've heard that hugs are a western custom.

I only saw my maternal grandmother for a moment. She was busy playing Mahjong and couldn't leave the table.

--

I guess my relationship with my grandparents is unique. Growing up, my Chinese was mediocre, if somewhat sub-par. So talking with and understanding them was always limited to what I knew in the Chinese language, a barrier I was too young to care and try to surmount.

Now I know better. But still, I'm such a different person from them; though are worlds often intersect, there are cultural and generational gaps. As my grandparents have told me before, they would like me to get married and have children, extending the family line again. Marry a Chinese girl, or at least one that can speak Mandarin. I could care less.

But it's probably no different from any other familial relationship. One day my grandparents will be gone. Despite the difficulties, I have to remind myself I need to enjoy these times as best as I can.