No, it’s not the pollution, or the fact that there are so many people here. My least favorite thing about China is this lingering cultural perception that everything about China is, at some level, ultimately incomprehensible to everyone who isn’t Chinese.

This is manifested at every level, from the extremely superficial to the deeply personal. For example, China-watchers may recall the hubbub over Ang Lee’s recent film Lust, Caution, which some Chinese people claim is impossible for non-Chinese to understand. I haven’t seen the film and I’m sure it does have a lot of cultural references that make it difficult for foreigners to understand, but impossible? Really? (It should be noted that one of the two writers of Lust, Caution was a foreigner).

This phenomenon exists even in perceptions about the language. Chinese people are, by and large, deeply impressed that I can speak decent Chinese and generally shocked when I tell them that I don’t think Chinese is a difficult language to learn (at least, no more difficult than other languages). Yes, Chinese is written with characters, yes, it has tones, yes, it’s a very old language, but why does that mean it’s impossible to learn?

In those more public arenas, I’m not particularly bothered by it, to be honest. It’s fair that Chinese people expect foreigners to be ignorant about their culture; after all, the vast majority of foreigners are. What’s frustrating is when a difference of opinions with a friend who knows you aren’t ignorant still leads to what seems to be everyone’s fallback defense: “You’re a foreigner, so you don’t understand.”

Now, I’m not claiming that I know everything about China, or Chinese culture, because I don’t. But I do know a fair amount; more than the average Chinese people about some things. In my college classes, I’ve straightened out students who were confused about which ancient philosopher wrote what, and what Lu Xun’s original name was (Lu Xun is a pen name). Still, I’m pretty sure it will never be enough. If a difference of opinion runs deep enough, the eventual response I get is always “you just don’t understand.”

This phenomenon is, I think, one part of a larger issue for me: the clear delineation between “foreigner” and “Chinese person” based completely on ethnicity. Although I haven’t lived here half a year yet, among my coworkers there are people who have lived here for years, married Chinese women, had children. In America, those people would be considered American; in China, they will always be Foreign. And, by extension, it seems they will never really understand China.

Personally, I don’t think I understand China as well as Chinese people, not yet. But I believe there are foreigners who do, and there are plenty of aspects of Chinese culture I understand well enough that I should be able to discuss them without getting the old “you don’t understand” in return.

In the interest of clarity, the conversation I’m thinking of was regarding marriage/dating and a friend of mine who is being pressured by her parents to find someone. I’m of the opinion that she’s still young and can afford to wait until she runs into someone she likes. She thinks I don’t understand, but I do; I understand the extreme pressure she feels from her parents, I understand that different marriage customs mean people get married younger here, and that if she waits too long she might not be able to find anyone. I understand that she’s seeing her friends pair up and get married or move away and she feels a lot of pressure to change something. But I also understand her well enough to know that she isn’t one of those girls that can live happily as long as they have a tolerable husband and material comforts. That does work for some women, but it’s not going to work for her. She’s not mature enough for a real relationship either–she’s admitted that herself–and I don’t care what country you live in or what social pressures you face, those factors make it a bad idea to get married. That’s my opinion. Readers who understand Chinese culture better than I feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel I completely understand the social situation she’s talking about, I just feel that her own happiness is more important than conforming to social norms, even if it means making her parents angry. I KNOW that Chinese culture has different values regarding obeying your parents, it isn’t that I don’t understand, I just don’t agree.

So it hurts to hear even as close a friend as her brush of my arguments with “you don’t understand.”

That’s why I could never live here forever.

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.

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.

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.

Sometime during the midafternoon, I decided to head out in search of a coat. The weather has gotten colder here, too cold for a sweatshirt when it’s windy. In the interest of adventure, and because it’s significantly cheaper, I opted to take the bus to the market.

On the way there, the bus was surprisingly empty. It wasn’t rush hour, I suppose. Anyway, it started to drizzle a little bit, but luckily the bus stop was only one harrowing street-crossing away from the gigantic underground clothes market near the center of the city.

I headed downstairs and spent a good hour or so wandering around trying to find something suitable. Most of what I found was too thin to be of much use, or absurdly expensive. Finally I found a little stall with a bunch of fairly thick coats. I’ll still need a thicker one for the -30 degree days, I suspect, but this should last me a while I think. It was affordable too; a mere 220 RMB ($32) after a little bit of haggling. I’m sure I could have found an even cheaper one, especially if I’d had someone Chinese with me, but I’m pretty happy with how things worked out.

I reemerged from the underground and more or less accidentally came upon a bus stop that happened to be on the right line, so I hopped the next bus instead of taking a cab to the DVD store near H.I.T. By then, it was rush hour, so the buses were all packed. I’m not really claustrophobic, so it didn’t bother me, but I made a mental note not to take the buses too often in winter, because I’m pretty sure by the end of a bus ride, everyone has got everyone else’s germs.

I got off near the DVD store and spent a little while there, buying a couple movies and some Scrubs DVDs, before heading back up to catch a cab home. Or that was my plan. Unfortunately, it was raining just hard enough that everyone and their mother wanted to take a cab, which meant it was impossible to actually find an empty one. I hate standing still when I’m trying to go somewhere, so I decided to head up the road to a KFC. If I found a cab before then, I’d take it; if not, I’d have dinner.

I didn’t find a cab, which was fine. I’d been at least a couple weeks without Western food, and a steaming-hot spicy chicken sandwich is the ultimate cure for a rainy evening. I wolfed the meal and fries and headed back out into the rain.

Before I could catch a cab, I found another bus station on the line that goes near where I live, so I hopped on that. Overall, I’d say it took about an hour to get home, much of it spent crushed between masses of pushy Chinese women, but I didn’t mind. As I always do when I’m walking around alone, I had my iPod, and I’ve always thought there was something beautiful about the light reflecting off of rain-slick city streets at night. Here, even more than in Providence, the rain makes the city colorful because of the number of shops and storefronts with neon signs. By the time we reached my stop, the bus had emptied significantly, so I didn’t even have to shove anyone–I just hopped off and hoofed it back to my building and up the eight flights of stairs to my apartment.

Not a bad day.

So, those of you who follow the news might be aware there’s been something of a scandal going on in China recently. While Americans were busy weeping over the ashes of the national economy, Chinese milk companies were apparently hard at work poisoning babies.

Or so we thought. I, of course, don’t drink a lot of baby formula, so initially I wasn’t very concerned. Then they said it was in lots of milk too, including a brand of milk that my school had just given everyone large quantities of as a gift for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Having already had some of that, I became a bit more concerned.

Then they announced that the poison (melamine) was also present in chocolate that was made in China, including chocolates made by Dove and Snickers. Well, shit. I had been regularly eating Dove chocolate bars, until I decided they were too expensive and switched to Snickers. I’ve probably had at least one fun-size Snickers a day for the past month. Apparently, it’s been poisoning me? I’m not really sure.

The whole thing seems to be winding to a close. Supposedly, milk on the shelves now is safe, and some official dragged a camera crew into a grocery store the other day to film him drinking milk to prove it.

So what have we learned from the whole thing? Well, don’t eat dairy products from a country populated by people who are almost all lactose intolerant. But more importantly, I’m hoping that by ingesting small amounts of the poison, I have built up a resistance to it like that guy from The Princess Bride. So if you ever want to poison me, do it with hemlock, because Melamine isn’t going to do a damn thing.

Thanks, Snickers.

[The following is a piece of short fiction I originally wrote for a class in college. It’s based on some things that really happened the last time I was in Harbin, and I thought it might be interesting to post the occasional piece of fiction here in addition to everything else.]

I think I was leaning a little heavily on Lauren as we stumbled out the dark gates and onto the street. It was quiet now, nearly midnight and the lights were switching off one by one inside the park fences. Outside, an old man sat on a rusty folding chair by the ticket booth, smoking a cigarette and regarding us with ambivalence. Was it because we were white, or just because there was no one else on the street to watch?

The problem with Chinese streets is that they all look the same when you’re drunk and it’s dark. Lauren was of the opinion that we were fairly close to Zhongyang Dajie, but neither of us knew which direction we should start in, so we picked one at random and began to wander. The streets were lit by the KTV signs of various karaoke establishments, some flashing characters in dancing Technicolor and some buzzing “KTV” in stationary neon, and we walked slowly. It’s possible we were just enjoying the evening, and it’s possible I just couldn’t walk any faster—I must admit that I don’t entirely remember the first twenty minutes.

That was only half my fault. I do like a drink every now and then, which is the reason we went to the park in the first place, but I had not planned on running into friends, and being compelled to sit and drink with them for several hours or risk appearing rude. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but even people with a higher tolerance than I eventually reach a point where “Gan bei!” starts to sound like a curse. Anyway, I drank whatever they poured me to be polite, and I can’t be blamed for forgetting a few minutes of nighttime wandering as a result.

My memory fades back in right around the time the flashing KTV bars began to be replaced with squat, industrial apartment buildings and sprawling lines of street stands, most of which were being packed up for the night. Sparks darted out clouds of charcoal smoke and sprinted towards the sky as grills were overturned and emptied. We walked through the stalls, weaving around discarded chairs, stools, and the piles of half-eaten kebabs littered around the tables. Many of the people packing up their enterprises for the evening didn’t stop to glance at us, or if they did, they did it subtly. A few stared, but no one spoke, save the one man whose stall was still open.

To call it a “stall” is actually probably misleading. It was really just a rug, or maybe a blanket, that he had laid a number of books on top of. Whether he was selling his personal collection or whether they were pirated was unclear, but I’d guess the books were his—he looked the right age to be a college student, and many of them seemed to be math textbooks. He had been lolling against a wall in the shadows with some friends, but when we got near him he walked into the light, calling out:

“Hello!” The accent was heavy, but the word frustratingly familiar. As a general policy, we don’t respond to “hello”, and I was in the middle of a pretty impassioned speech about the effect of culture on language learning, which Lauren was listening to politely and—I imagine—bemusedly. We ignored it, but a second later he realized we were speaking Chinese to each other and tried again in his own tongue.

“美女！美女! 你来看看吧！” he called, “Beautiful girl, come look!” pointing to the books and chuckling. Lauren laughed nervously and politely declined, quickening her pace a bit. I lurched forward to keep up with her and tripped over a stool, managing to keep my balance but eliciting a laugh from the man. His laugh was echoed by an invisible chorus; his friends leaning against the darkened wall, I imagine. Perhaps spurred on by their implicit encouragement, he raised his voice and yelled “美女！” Whatever inviting or comical tone might have been there before was gone now. His friends cackled as he raised his voice, and we hustled on until his voice was a shrill scream behind us in the blackness.

Be sure to check the other video I posted today, too!

I finally got my passport back today. I was starting to get nervous…

It’s a huge pain to get a working visa/residence permit from outside the country. Technically, it’s possible–I think–but the general procedure for people working in China is to enter on a tourist visa and then have their visa switched when they get here.

I entered about a month and a half ago on a 60-day tourist visa. Then the school took my passport and began the visa-switching process, which included a trip to the hospital for testing and a trip to some visa office for some questioning (not nearly as intimidating as I was hoping for, the lady was very nice).

Then, there was the waiting. In the past, the whole thing was apparently a fairly expedient process, but ours took weeks and weeks and I was beginning to get concerned. If you’re abroad without a passport, you are essentially nationless, and my 60-day entry visa meant that if I didn’t get my passport back in the next couple weeks I stood a decent chance of being deported. So when one of my coworkers handed it to me this afternoon, I was pretty relieved. I have a country again, and what’s more, I have permission to live in this country until August 21st, 2009.

I have no idea where that date came from, but I’m not going to complain. I’ve got a passport, and the bruise on my arm from where they drew blood 4 weeks ago is finally almost gone!

(Yeah, they apparently did a horrible job drawing blood).

Well, whatever I might say about the inexperience of Chinese college students vis-a-vis romance, some of them certainly make up for it in interesting ways. Today in one of my university classes I was doing an exercise in which I asked students to list some American stereotypes and where they came from. One girl, who had been quiet the entire class, said “All American men are handsome.” I asked her, “Where did that idea come from? How did you get that impression?” expecting her to say TV, movies, Brad Pitt, etc. Her response? “You.”

Think about it. How many American college girls would be brazen enough to hit on a teacher like that in front of their entire class? Not very many, I’d venture. Given Chinese cultural attitudes about that sort of thing, I was even more surprised she’d be willing to say something like that in such a public forum. She was definitely a bit embarrassed though, she didn’t speak again and kept her eyes down for the rest of class.