The thing about living abroad, especially in a culture as different as China’s, is that it becomes very easy to blame whatever problems you have on the country/culture, when really they’re just regular problems. Because life abroad is just harder than life at home–even if you speak the language, there are cultural cues and references that all but the most experienced China vets are going to miss–it’s easy to misinterpret. When you’re living somewhere like China, where “foreigners” and “Chinese” are so easily distinguished, it becomes even easier to adopt a sort of “enemy” mentality, whereby anything bad that happens to you becomes the fault of China and/or Chinese people.

The weather here is getting colder–it’s 7 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now–and some of my colleagues appear to be falling into this trap. I like to think that for the most part I’ve avoided it this go-round, although in moments of frustration (generally, when attempting to fight my way through the armies of zombie-like old people at the grocery store) I do find myself thinking things I shouldn’t. Still, my coworkers–well, some of them–seem to be taking things a bit harder. At the moment there is a lot of anger/blame going around, much of it directed at the Chinese staff of our school. They haven’t done anything wrong in particular, but when things don’t work out the way they’re supposed to–and this happens frequently to foreigners who don’t speak the language living in China–they do seem to get blamed.

In particular, the frustration with their English abilities baffles me. Yes, it is their job to work at an English school, but the oldest students they teach are barely ten; it is not their job to comprehend slang and profanity riddled requests from foreigners. It is their job to help us, yes, but getting angry about their English level doesn’t help anyone, and seems a bit ridiculous coming from people who’ve lived in the country for over four months now and still can’t even say their own address to a cab driver.

I won’t name names, nor do I plan to say anything to any of these people, just thought it would be an interesting phenomenon to make note of. Coming soon, though, something that I think really is China’s fault.

Finally finished translating this, with a bit of help from my good friend Alice. Still not sure why I can’t get Final Cut to export widescreen videos, but this will do for the moment. Enjoy!

(The church at the very beginning of the video is Harbin’s famous St. Sophia)

Anyone remember that Harbin student who was beaten to death a while ago? I reported on it a couple times.

Anyway, the verdict is in, and the police have arrested–drumroll, please–the club owner! Yes, that’s right, in allowing 6 off duty police officers to murder a drunken idiot outside of his bar, the owner of BOX was criminally negligent! The police officers, of course, have been released. (This is all just what I’ve heard from people, haven’t actually checked into it myself yet).

This is more or less what the former-police officer friend of mine predicted, if you recall.

If you’re a fan of unbridled nostalgia, check out this video on Youku (a Chinese youtube-like website you probably are aware of if you watch TV shows online). It’s about the childhoods of the 1980s generation in China; it’s interesting to see what’s the same and what’s different. If you can put up with the sub-par music, it’s worth watching until the animated bit ends.

I might translate the Chinese in full sometime, but the general gist of it is childhood was great blah blah blah. The final sentence in Chinese is “Sometimes stopping and taking a moment to look back is also a step forward.”

Here’s the video. It will probably take a while to load in America if you’re on a slow connection.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTMzODU1NDA=.html?full=true

Those of you who have been reading this blog from the beginning are perhaps familiar with the saga of my first roommate here, the most arrogant human being I have ever encountered. He is, without a doubt, my least favorite person ever. I knew something was wrong when he murdered someone’s pet, and my suspicions were confirmed when he overheard a coworker and I discussing how frustrating lazy students can be and told me that any teacher with negative thoughts about any of their students wasn’t cut out to be a teacher and was “shit”. I countered that it can actually be helpful to vent about frustrating students outside of class because it keeps you from exploding at them in class, but he wasn’t buying it. Before he left, he also intentionally attempted to insult me in front of coworkers.

I figured he was gone from my life when he moved to another city at the end of our training, but he showed up at my apartment during the National Day holiday and was baffled as to why I wasn’t excited to see him. I showed him the door–actually, I never even let him into the apartment–and figured that was it.

Well, not quite. Yesterday I heard that he was fired from his English teaching job for–wait for it–exploding at his students. Apparently he was frustrated they weren’t working hard enough and started screaming at them that if they didn’t work harder ‘America was going to come hurt them.’ (This is especially odd considering he’s a South African, not an American). Although I feel bad for his (former) students, when I heard that I couldn’t help thinking “I love this moment so much I want to have sex with it.” (That’s something Dr. Cox once said on the TV show Scrubs).

Karma 1, Arrogant Prick 0.

The snowflake statue in the middle of Hongbo Square is a symbol of the city of Harbin. Google “Harbin” and pictures of it are bound to pop up; its central location assures that its something people pass by nearly every day. It’s one of those things that I always thought of when I thought about Harbin. Here’s a photo of the square:

So I was fairly surprised to learn today that a scant 40 years ago, it wasn’t there. What was there was a gigantic Russian-style church, even larger than Harbin’s famous (and still extant) St. Sophia. It looked like this:

So what happened to it? Anyone familiar with Chinese history can probably guess. It was completely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. There isn’t a trace of it now. I would never have known about it if my school’s driver (who is old enough to have seen it with his own eyes) hadn’t told me. I have to say I was pretty shocked. Of course, I’ve always known this sort of thing happened during the Cultural Revolution, but to learn that one of the most iconic things in the city (the snowflake statue) is actually a sort of gravestone for a part of Harbin’s older culture, well…it stopped me for a moment. It’s easy to forget that this stuff you read about in history books actually happened, to real people and places.

Sometimes, the most powerful historical spots are the ones you don’t see…

Anyone from the West who has spent any time in China has doubtless run into this phenomenon, the idea that China and Chinese people are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of the world and therefore ultimately incomprehensible to Westerners no matter how long we stay here. It’s evident everywhere, from the fairly common belief that Chinese is just too complex a language for foreigners to learn (which is and will always be a bunch of crap), to reviews of Chinese language cinema (see Ang Lee’s recent offering, Lust, Caution, which many Chinese have claimed is impossible for foreigners to understand). It’s one of the reasons that foreigners in China will always be foreigners. I could live here, become a naturalized citizen, marry a Chinese woman, raise my kids speaking only Chinese, etc., but it wouldn’t really make a difference: anyone new I met would still assume I was a tourist.

Anyway, I’m beginning to feel that this “China is Different” phenomenon is one of the main reasons there’s so little understanding between East and West. Even with my Chinese friends, whenever a discussion gets serious enough, if they don’t agree with what I’m saying they fall back on the “you’re a foreigner and you don’t understand” argument. I suppose it’s possible I don’t in many cases, but is it really impossible for foreigners to understand China or Chinese people.

I submit that it is not. Yes, China has a long history and a rich culture that it would be difficult for foreigners to understand all of, but it’s not as though many Chinese understand all of it either. For example, when discussing ancient Chinese philosophy with my students, and even May Fourth fiction, I often find that I know much more detail than they do. Of course, they have a much broader general knowledge than I do, but is it really impossible for foreigners to acquire that? No.

No, it isn’t, and the fact that many Chinese assume it is seems to be a large factor in the lack of understanding between East and West. Too often, the Chinese position on a given issue is simply stated rather than explained or discussed. Sometimes, the assumption is that foreigners couldn’t understand and sometimes the assumption is that foreigners shouldn’t care what happens in China anyway, but either way, I believe it contributes to the tension that sometimes exists between the US and China.

Many Americans, for example, believe that Taiwan and Tibet should be independent. Most Chinese do not, but they will rarely if ever actually explain their rationale or enter into a discussion of the historical reasoning with foreigners. It’s part of the reason why the Free Tibet movement–which I have already argued is counter-productive–has remained around for so long; the Chinese aren’t interested in providing their side of the story. The answer foreigners get is always just: “You don’t understand.”

It can be infuriating.

A coworker and I set out late this morning to check out Unit 731, which I mentioned in a previous post. After we found the correct bus, it was about an hourlong ride out to the suburbs, through the city outskirts and the sprawling industrial wasteland outside the city. When we finally reached 731, we were greeted by a sign that informed us the base was completely closed on Mondays. Awesome.

Having just been on a bus for an hour, we decided to wander around the area a bit before heading back. Mostly, it looked just like Harbin but with fewer cars and less people. We did get to see some parts of 731 through fences, etc., and it looks more or less how you would expect: utilitarian and evil. I took some video of it, and then suddenly my camera broke. Yup. $500, bought it specifically for videotaping things in China and it appears to be broken. I’m going to take it to a Sony kiosk later this week and see what they can do, but don’t expect any new video on here in the future if it’s dead, there is no way I can afford to buy another one right now.

I took some photos after the video camera broke, which I’ll post once I get the cord that connects my camera to the computer.

Bad day.

Overall, it seems the vast majority of Chinese people are pleased that Obama won the election. Of my university students, all but two of them said they supported him, and the dissenting two didn’t dislike him, they just wanted to see whether or not he would sell arms to Taiwan before making their decision.

If that isn’t enough for you, though, ChinaSMACK has got a good collection/translation of posts from Chinese messageboards on the internet responding to Obama’s speech. They range from what you’d expect (”amazing”, “moving”) to what you’d expect on the internet (racism, Hitler comparisons), so be warned.
Chinese reactions to Obama’s Speech

I spend about 16 hours a week with Chinese college students, mostly discussing America and American views of China. I’ve learned a lot from them, but the main things I’ve learned are that (1) Chinese people are interested in American culture and that (2) they don’t know much about how America really is.

In the interest of helping increase global understanding of America, and in the interest of improving my crap Chinese, I present: 千里迢迢, a Chinese-language blog I’ll be running about American culture/music/politics/etc. If you can read some Chinese, check it out, If you’re decent at Chinese and want to be a contributor, shoot me an email, and if you’re neither of those things you can still help me out by leaving comments telling me what you think Chinese people should know about America.