In an attempt to stave off boredom, depression, and loneliness, I hopped in a cab this afternoon and told the cabbie to take me to the front gate of Harbin Institute of Technology, where I studied Chinese a year ago. Wordless save a grunt of assent, he wheeled us up onto Dazhi Street and headed west.

As we swerved among the chaotic traffic and rumbled, horn blaring, by pedestrians, I surveyed the scenery. Before long, we had reached Hongbo Square–the approximate midway point of the 10-minute trip, and the place where the buildings around me began to become very familiar. There was the department store sidewalk I sat on for half an hour, listening to music and waiting for Lauren to meet me and explore. There was the Carrefour we went to occasionally, the cellphone superstore where Bu Aili and I muddled our way through buying our first phones. And finally, there was the front gate of H.I.T. It appeared that nothing had changed.

I didn’t have any real business to attend to there, so I just got out of the cab, put on my headphones, and started walking to places I had been before. The first stop was our old classroom building–still there, no sign of anyone I knew. Next, the dorm. Same story. Walking on these quiet, willow-draped streets, I was struck by how different this place was from my new home. Perhaps I had not realized just how insulated the university was. It seemed calmer there, gentler. I kept expecting to see people I knew walk around the corner, but no one ever did.

I felt like a ghost, so I decided to wander off campus to check and see if my favorite bar, Lijiang, was still around and be sure I remembered where it was. As it turns out, I didn’t. I turned a street too early and felt a sickening drop in my stomach–where the bar should have been, there was merely a shell. Clearly, something had been closed, and no new tenants had moved in. I wandered up to the next street, cursing the world, and suddenly there it was. Thank God. It wasn’t open, though, so I couldn’t go in and get them to write down their address. Instead, this puzzling (to me)
sign was on the door: “不对外营业.” I know all those words, but I’m still not sure what that it means–my best guess is “[We] don’t do business with outsiders”, but I really have no idea at all. I hope that isn’t what it means.

My last stop was the large DVD store in the basement of the giant electronics market across the street from the H.I.T. gate. This wasn’t for nostalgia’s sake so much as for my own sanity. I’m running out of House episodes, and I needed something new to watch. I bought four things: A Clockwork Orange, Citizen Kane, Kontroll, and a box containing every episode of 6 Feet Under ever. I also bought a new VIP card, which got me a significant discount.

Then it was back to my home on Huayuan Street, but not before stopping in the local convenience store and discovering that they do have beer, ferreted away in a dark and distant corner of the store. I bought two large bottles (each slightly smaller than a 40oz bottle in the US), for a total of about $1.47 USD.

Work starts tomorrow, but at least I’m set for tonight.

For the time being, I think we’ll just chock my most recent post up to my lovable misanthropy and leave it at that. The behind-closed-doors workings of monolingual Westerner-bilingual Chinese relationships is a question that I’m interested in, but my investigation of it couldn’t have been less thorough. To start with, I probably should talk to some of those Chinese girlfriends, too. Maybe I’ll do a video feature on it in the future.

Anyway, the past couple days I’ve been wandering around trying to amuse myself while waiting for work to start tomorrow. This mostly means going to various stores (the RT Mart down the street, Wal-Mart, etc.) and trying to get the things I need for my apartment. In the process, I have learned that stores–at least stores like those–in China no longer give you plastic bags to pack your purchases in. You must bring your own bags, or pay 1RMB/bag. This new regulation is aimed at reducing waste, and while it’s sort of a pain, it also seems to be working. Most of the people in stores that I have seen are bringing their own cloth bags, not buying new ones.

Last year, I wrote a post about the other ways China finds to reduce garbage and waste–smaller trash cans (yes, it does make a difference), power-saving automatic shutoff timers on almost every electronic device, etc. Culturally, though, it seems like not everyone is on the same page. On the drive from the airport back to my apartment a couple days ago, our driver suddenly rolled down his window and idly tossed the clutter of tickets, receipts, and other stubs of paper on his dashboard out the window.

I have long wondered how people who come to Harbin without any Chinese language skills survive. Unlike people in Beijing and Shanghai, few Harbiners speak English and those that do don’t tend to work in restaurants, shops, cabs, etc. So how do Americans who come here without any Chinese get around? How do they eat? How do they buy shampoo? These things are difficult enough for someone who does have the language skills.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a number of people (all men) who moved here to teach with little or no Chinese skill at all, and I found a common theme. It was very difficult at first, they said, but then they got Chinese girlfriends.

Asia has long been a destination for lonely Caucasian men. Standards for attractiveness are different here, and anyone who isn’t Asian seems especially exotic and enticing (to some people, anyway). Likewise, Asian women are often fetishized in the West. There is definitely a perception among some in the States (and elsewhere) that even ugly men can get laid in Asia. And at least to some extent, it’s true–I’ve never met a white guy who was actively searching for a Chinese girlfriend for long without finding one.

Practically, going out with a Chinese girl has two advantages for those who don’t speak Mandarin–your girlfriend becomes a sort of permanent translator/advocate/fixer for you, and she also offers you the opportunity to speak Chinese with her (if you want) and improve your Chinese skills.

I don’t mean to suggest that everyone with Chinese girlfriends is using them for one or both of these purposes, or even that anyone is. I don’t know anyone I spoke to well yet, nor do I know anything about their relationships. With that said, the way these women are discussed is often sort of disconcerting. Their utility seems to come up much more often than their humanity. Maybe I’m just asking the wrong questions, but I hear an awful lot about how helpful they are with language and cultural problems, and almost nothing about any other aspect of the relationship.

I guess my skepticism about the motives of many Caucasian men dating Chinese women comes from my conviction that the cultural differences between China and the West make meaningful relationships difficult–and lord knows relationships are difficult enough even when your significant other is from the same culture. I do not disapprove of cross-cultural dating in general–in fact, I think it can sometimes be useful tool for creating greater cultural understanding–but if you’ve lived in China for 3 months, and you arrived here with no knowledge of the language or culture at all, is it really possible for you to have a meaningful relationship with a Chinese woman (even if she does speak decent English)? Maybe…but part of me doubts that it happens very often.

I would love for someone to prove me wrong, though.

As those of you who know me personally may know, I was a bit apprehensive about this trip as it approached. After all, I basically left everyone I knew and moved across the world to work a job I’ve never done before. After a grueling thirteen-hour flight over the north pole; my layover in Beijing didn’t help at all. I have never liked that polluted city or its gargantuan airport; as we flew into it we passed over the sprawling desert to the west that threatens to envelop the city, and I couldn’t help thinking that I hope it does. Then, with no transition, I was dumped into a Chinese-language environment, and discovered that my skills had atrophied somewhat. Furthermore, I was tired and frustrated, and as soon as I got into the Air China domestic flights terminal, everyone was staring at me, too. (It might have been because I hadn’t showered in 24 hours or so, but I’m guessing it had more to do with my skin color).

Sitting on the Air China flight to Harbin, I was pacified somewhat by the site of the sun setting slowly over the Songhua river. Harbin itself is huge, but the surrounding countryside is remarkably pastoral, and strikingly beautiful even through the greasy window of an Air China 767.

After arriving in the city, I began to look for signs of home. I have lived here before, for a season last year, and I needed something–anything–that could tie this time to that one and thus reconnect me to what otherwise would seem a rather intimidating metropolis. Harbin is large, and very few of its inhabitants speak English. My Chinese skills give me a leg up on many of my co-workers, but I’m still not good enough to feel comfortable doing everything.

I finally found my sign this morning. After a frustrating initial experience with my apartment (which is nice, but has a leaky washing machine and a temperamental hot water heater), I was wandering the local area with a Chinese staff worker who was showing me around. As we walked down the street toward the RT Mart, a large Wal-Mart-esque market with most household items and a decent grocery store, I spotted a middle-aged man walking toward us wearing a t-shirt with gigantic English lettering, which read: “Rock my world, baby!”

OK. I know this place. I can handle this.

WELCOME TO THE NEW SUN ZOO SITE, AMERICAN EXPATRIATE. Now, what the hell is that?

What is American Expatriate?
American Expatriate is a multimedia project created by rapper/producer Sun Zoo that explores the experiences of an American Expat living in China. This blog, through text and video, chronicles Sun Zoo’s travels and experiences in China, as well as tracks his progress in creating the full-length hip-hop concept album that is to be the final product of this project.

The album American Expatriate will be a fictional account of the experiences of an expat living in China. It will explore a variety of issues from the personal to the political, and will be composed in its entirety–from writing to music–by Sun Zoo alone.

The blog and video entries are meant as supplemental offerings that will complement and enhance listeners’ understanding of the album but are in no means required for its enjoyment. Unlike the album, many blog entires will not be fictional, but rather biographical–Sun Zoo really is an English teacher living in China, and his experiences there will be recorded in this blog. There may also be some short fiction pieces posted as well; these will be noted as such.

As an aspiring (if untrained and unskilled) videographer, Sun Zoo will also attempt to capture expatriate life in China through the lens in a variety of ways, including short musical vignettes, interviews with Chinese citizens and Western expats alike about music, love, and life in the 5000-year-old Middle Kingdom.

Why this topic?
As a student of Chinese language, philosophy, and history, aspects of Sun Zoo’s academic life have always crept into his music (the very name itself was originally derived from the famous martial philosopher 孙子). After graduating from Brown University in the spring of 2008, Sun Zoo took a job teaching English in Harbin, China. Having always wanted to write a concept album anyway, this seemed the perfect opportunity to merge his passion for Chinese language and culture with his passion for creating original, creative hip-hop music. Sun Zoo is also an amateur writer and videographer, and so decided to introduce blogging and short video production to create a multimedia project that builds on itself until the eventual release of the album American Expatriate.

His hope is that this project will give fans, friends, and family reasons to keep coming back to this site as the album is being created. Those interested purely in the music are free to ignore it, but anyone wishing for a deeper immersion in the material should hopefully find some satisfaction here.

What else is Sun Zoo working on?
In addition to American Expatriate, Sun Zoo is working on the following music projects:

Untitled Solo Project - Coming TBA 2009: A full-length regular album that will be available for free on sun-zoo.com, ideally released around the same time as American Expatriate.

Untitled Project with Sarah Clark - Coming TBA: A full-length album with singer/songwriter Sarah Clark. Details on when it will be released, what label it will be released on, and how it will be available all TBA.

How can I find out more?
If you have any questions, from press inquiries to random ponderings, please address them directly to Sun Zoo at sunzoo@sun-zoo.com.

As Sun Zoo currently resides in China, we regret that Sun Zoo is not generally available for US bookings at this time. For inquiries of that nature, please contact Veggie Co Records representative Eric Jainchill. For booking inquiries in mainland China, please contact Sun Zoo directly.

Now that Roads on the Earth is out and available for purchase at a variety of locations, people may be wondering what’s coming next. While I hope you’re mostly busy listening to the new album and helping spread the word amongst your friends and family (we need you!), here’s what I’m working on.

American Expatriate - Coming TBA 2009: A full-length concept album supported by a multimedia project that includes blogging and video. The album will tell the story of an American working as an expat teacher in China, and in doing so will explore a variety of issues from the personal (life and love in a foreign country) to the political (what it means to be an American). As the album is being written, I will also be blogging about my own experiences in China (where I work as a teacher) and creating short video features on a variety of subjects relevant to the album. This website will switch to the official American Expat site in a couple days when the project begins officially, at which time more information will be available. This album will feature entirely original music, and will be available by purchase through Veggie Co Records.

Untitled Solo Project - Coming TBA 2009: A full-length regular album that will be available for free on sun-zoo.com, ideally released around the same time as American Expatriate.

Untitled Project with Sarah Clark - Coming TBA: A full-length album with singer/songwriter Sarah Clark. Details on when it will be released, what label it will be released on, and how it will be available all TBA.

So, there you have it. Keep in mind the release dates are rough estimates, especially given that I now live in China and may or may not have access to recording equipment on a regular basis. Obviously, there’s a while to wait before the next new album, but check back on this site often for updates, videos, music excerpts, exclusive downloads, and anything and everything else relevant to American Expatriate and all the rest of the Sun Zoo projects.

And, of course, keep on supporting Roads on the Earth.

The music blog Leave Your Nine at Home just posted a fresh interview, along with some streaming tracks. I think it’s interesting. Click here to check it out!

I’d recommend you check out the rest of the blog too, there’s plenty of great stuff on there if you’re into music. And since you’re apparently on this site, I assume you are.