"You can observe a lot by watching." -Yogi Berra

Tag: The Real China (Page 1 of 5)

The Real China: Handsome Foreign Spies and Open Secrets

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Posters across Beijing are warning Chinese women to beware of handsome foreign men who might be romancing state secrets out of them. You can see the full comic-style poster and read about it here and here.

As the consensus most shuai guh (handsome guy) among the students and teachers at my university, I should state now that the only secrets I blazed abroad were the open secrets: that China is a rotten, awful country deserving of universal censure, a place of proverbial lawlessness and pollution, with foul-mouthed pushy masses of people fouling the earth with their trash, spit, and excrement, and the cars, buses, and bikes on the streets destroying any peace with their recklessness and blaring horns, and all the selfish, crowded ugliness happening under the sagging smog of the dishwater-colored sky.

But back to the story of the comic, one thing I’ve never understood is how so-called handsome foreign men are even persuading local Chinese women to date them. All my small talk fizzled out before it ever got flirtatious.

Me: So, what do you like to do?

Aggressively Introverted Chinese girl: I LIKE… WATCH TV.

Me, smiling solicitously: Okay. Do you like anything else?

Her: JUST WATCH TV.

Me, giggling nervously: Okay, that’s good. Do you like TV dramas? Prison Break?

Her: …

Me, after a deflating pause: Do you like sleeping?

Her: YES. I LIKE.

[END CONVERSATION AS BOTH LOOK AROUND FOR SOMETHING TO DISTRACT THEMSELVES WITH.]

I learned to assume that everyone in China counted sleeping or dreaming as a hobby. One girl took being a cold fish to an extreme though and told me she had no interests, nothing, even despite me pressing her if she liked the staples of sleep and TV. In a way, that’s a lot more interesting than saying “JUST WATCH TV.”

So, I have no idea how the few foreign guys I saw in China with Chinese girlfriends got that way. I assume they wore it on their sleeve that they were looking for a Chinese girlfriend and they found their inverse half in a worldly metropolis like Beijing.

And- hold everything- since when was it that foreigners were spying on China and not the other way around? Is there a single piece of military equipment, a single automobile, computer, clothing line, or Chinese toy that was not blatantly cheated and copied from foreign sources? A friend of mine works as an engineer for a car company and he’s told me how his management has issued real warnings- not simple cartoons that are getting laughed at in China and abroad- about sharing too much data with Chinese clients because of the now obvious business wisdom that China steals and spies out whatever intellectual property it can.

But this is communist tyranny. Everything corrupts from the inside, from the top down, with the stiff-browed leaders perpetually making highhanded, doublespeak excuses and laughably see-through shows of triumphal patriotism and Big Brother brainwashing. What an awful country.

In fact, at one dinner a few talented English students of mine confessed to me that they all three wanted foreign boyfriends because they found them much more handsome and appealing than Chinese men. Now, I met a lot of decent, likable guys in China, but I could see the ladies’ point. The Chinese husbands I witnessed too often showed off domineering, drinking, dismissive, pouty, entitled behavior, not caring who was watching and seeming to have no appreciation for how much more attractive and shapely their wives were compared to them.

As I’ve said before, the greatest threat from foreign guests in China, handsome or not, is when they see China for what it really is.

The Real China: Conclusion

The ultimate travel fantasy is not to any place, but to the foreign country of the past, to see the people who lived in one’s home country and culture in their shockingly ancient yet familiar form. The language could be understood and the traditions recognized, but the words used and the way people were would be the most fascinating difference.

My desire to see China was not a longing to live in another hemisphere where the people’s faces looked different and they lived in more exotic architecture. I wanted to see China because I wanted to see what it was like to be human without being a modern American. I wanted life without the restraints of American assumptions. All of our culture and language has a precedent, and I wanted to be in a society that had grown from different roots.

Would the people’s facial expressions and voices be the same as I was used to- in general- only substituting strange-sounding words? Would I feel a natural connection with people and make friends across cultural barriers? Would I feel at home away from home? Would I find my niche? How would things feel differently from the way I had always assumed the world was?

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Going to China was not just time spent abroad, a résumé highlight or adventurous gap year. It was life lived among people with completely different hearts, minds, and habits. Things overlapped, as human customs everywhere will, but in colloquial terms these people had no interest in football tailgates, processed foods, hip-hop music, or the American dream. (Well, if you want to be difficult, many Chinese families do dream of sending a child to America for college, and it seems as if as many Chinese as possibly can do emigrate out of China into whatever clean and wealthy country they can get into, with America traditionally at the top of that dream list, but that is not to say that the typical person in urban or semi-urban China conceives of life in American terms.)

In many ways, it was a relief to be there, and I savored the luxuries of Chinese life. By that I mean it was a luxury to find reprieve from the cultural nuisances I lived with in America. In China, the people might have had loud phone conversations in small, public spaces (e.g. the elevator or taxi cab) but my brain had no idea what they were saying. I did not have to involuntarily eavesdrop the way I do with all the rude, sometimes scandalous private conversations I overhear in America.

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Another great thing, I only had a guest spot in Chinese society, so it did not stress me to hear people boast about their status. I had no idea, again, what it meant when they advertised the name of their university or the corporation they worked for. “Good for you,” I would tell them without envy. No one I met in China really had what I wanted, so proclamations of personal success rolled off me like water off a…Peking duck before it was killed and roasted- when it had water-wicking feathers, that is.

My acquaintances were not pursuing the American dream- a big house in the suburbs with a big yard, big cars, big salary, and big retirement fund- they were after the Chinese dream- moving to a big, crowded city with job opportunities at mostly depressing jobs, living in a dingy apartment, having one male child, having a foreign car that was inconvenient to park and dangerous to drive, and either getting rich from a non-stop work schedule or from Communist Party funds. I did not want what the Chinese were after, so it made it easy for me to shrug off the competition.

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I also savored being around young people who tried to dress in a youthful way rather than an older, sexier way, whose appearance was modest in that they wore simple clothes that covered rather than showed off their bodies, modest in that their attitudes and actions were carefree and without worldly cynicism. The people did not often assert themselves and their identity. In China, when an authority figure or respected leader admonished the people, they listened. They may not have followed, and too often the things they did follow were the irrational words of a demagogue meant to cow the people, but as a people they felt oneness with each other and tried to band together.

That seems like ugly naivety to say that, I know, like I have come around after all my criticism to apologize for China’s brutal authoritarian state, but my meaning is the sense of place felt by the common man. Everyone in China seemed like a part of a whole, or at least the people I met uniformly expressed a strong connection to their Chinese identity. The phrase “We Chinese…” was used to begin many declarative sentences, and it was never a question if the individual saying it could speak on behalf of “we, the Chinese people.” Coming from a land of individualism, alienation, and identity politics, that seemed amazing.

And from the schools and students I saw, there were no obvious cliques of outcasts, rebels, or sharply defined popular kids. Making friends seemed so easy when every student spent their day with the same 30-50 classmates and they all saw school not as a social gaming table but as a serious work with coveted rewards of choice schools and jobs.

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I was relieved not to be around the darkness and apathy of American individualism, where not one thing can be said, not one value can be preached, without the strife of vulgar internet message boards and self-justifying arguments. In a fractured society, every piece has sharp edges; they cannot be put together with incompatible pieces. I could better tune out the hostile words in China because I could not understand more than a small fraction of what was spoken. It was up to me to search out the English language materials of my choice. I was free from the bombardment of slang terms that grow like bacteria off of the internet, pop music, and television. No one in China ever told me, out loud, “LOL,” “awesome sauce,” “that rocks my face off,” or insulted my ignorance of the newest shorthand terms for drugs and sex acts. No one, except for people in Shanghai and Hong Kong- possibly– ever judged me for my clothes, for not wearing cool jeans and shoes, or for wearing my shirt tucked into my pants “like an old man.”

China, a land or loud crowds and pollution, was in many ways my place of solitude. I escaped the tyranny of American culture that had left me a pariah in my own hometown. I knew I would not be excluded or shunned the same way in China because the people did not know how to judge me.

My essays on China were not written for personal judgment, but for comment and critique of culture. I write not so much about China as about why people do what they do, how they live, and what are the observable consequences in a people’s culture. The perspective I gained in China I apply to my view of every culture, including my own. China happened to be the place where I lived, the place I commented on, but if you have been reading closely, you will have noticed that this commentary critiqued America sharply, too, and the broader cultural forces that are universal to all societies.

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Back to the dream of traveling to the past. I would like to do this for the same reasons I went to China. All the documents and artifacts and the way the scholars, historians, journalists, filmmakers, and writers have described the past- is it true? Or more exactly, how close is it to the truth? What would the people really be like? Live like? Talk like? If they used English, how well would I understand them? Our dictionaries overlap, but from the way the people of earlier times wrote, I can tell they think, believe, and speak in fundamentally different ways than the people I live with today. I do not wish to escape to the past, but I would like to see it, be immersed in it, and let my observations and intuition shape my perspective. That is what I have done with China.

The real result is that there was much to be offended with in the country that I looked to with such airy anticipation. But if a man expects to live in any society, he either has to believe in it and be a part of it, or he has to make peace with his unhappy conscience and abide in a small niche of a corrupted whole. I could not accept the corruption of China. I could not smile and say the good outweighed the bad. I think I have long desired to depart the United States for much of the same reasons.

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I am convinced that, if Americans from before our grandparents’ generation could see their homeland today, their strongest impression would not come from our computers, our convenient home appliances, or our city infrastructure. They would not be most surprised by a child using a smart phone or families traversing interstates in a hybrid car. Instead, they would be shocked by the way children talked to their parents and the way parents talked to their children. They would be taken aback by how all the easy technology had isolated people and made their minds dependent, how it had changed basic attitudes and behavior. I am sure they would question the widespread example of parents who were modeling a conformist, materialistic lifestyle for their children. Personal music devices and DVD players would not be as amazing as the language and content of the material being played. The amazement of smart phones would sour when it was seen how much they spoiled dinners and conversations.

Americans from the past might fall prey to the quick and facile lifestyle of microwaved meals and instant entertainment- human nature dictates they would- but I imagine that the first impressions of many would mirror my observations in China. I was not so surprised at the different vehicles being driven on Chinese city streets, but in the willingness of the drivers to run me over. People mattered most, not technology.

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I was not confused by the sound of the Chinese people’s words, but by the volume and aggression they were regularly spoken with. I expected to see poverty, but what most alarmed me was how a brand new hospital building could be overwhelmed with loitering families who filled the just-opened lobbies with dirty blankets and careless trash. Foreign technology and television had made its way into China, and the ingestion of electronic media was very familiar to me. The car had made its way even to the smallest towns I visited (I was told by my two Australian friends that only about five years before our town had one traffic light and no cars). Technology in China and the outward forms of buildings and cities- while often very different- were familiar to me in their basics and not surprising at all. What shocked me about Chinese streets was not the way they looked different, but the way people spat and urinated on them. An American-born Chinese person (“ABC” in both Chinese and Chinese-American slang) can instantly be told apart from her Chinese-born peers not by her iPhone and Nike clothes, which can be bought in China, too, but by the way she wears her clothes and the way her face looks.

The point of observing culture- the point of this whole effort- is not to be found in a bloodless survey of outward modes of living. The point is to see the outworking of human thought and human hearts. My Aunt Fong would always tell me “China need time,” a strange apology from a civilization always boasting about its most ancient character, but no, I thought, China need reform- foundational reform that comes from the reform of people’s hearts

Since leaving, I have vacillated between foreswearing China forever and making a return someday to see Aunt Fong and try and find a better way of living there. I love Aunt Fong like my mother, and I talk to her every week over the computer. I also long to see all the friends and students I met in China again. I imagine being able to start new relationships with them, having my heart refined by experience and renewed hope. But I also keep in mind that China is still much the same place as I left it. I might be admired by the people there, but most of them can only giggle and gawk at me, perhaps asking me about my favorite NBA team and whether I can use chopsticks.

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I do plan on seeing Aunt Fong again- how could I not? My dilemma now is how long to stay in China and what to travel there for. A one or two-week vacation is not worth the expense or time of a twenty hour flight in my opinion. A stay longer than a month would require a visa sponsorship; I would need to have work in China. I hesitate to do that because of the misery I already experienced standing in front of a Chinese classroom. As much as I respected my elementary school music teachers and participated in their classes, that is how much my Chinese students responded to me. To my former teachers: I have done my penance. I see what I was like. I am sorry.

I was always hoping to see more of the church in China. I have asked Aunt Fong to help me find a way to observe the house churches and meet with them. She has helped me get peaks inside a few churches in what turned out to be frustrated visits. Perhaps, God willing, that hope will fully come to fruition.

For now, I am where I am. I daily dream about finding a new culture to live in and observe, or I think through how best I should get to work from my home base in Iowa writing about my experiences already. Eventually, I hope to find a place where I can be at peace and believe in what I am doing, not so much because I have found the right location, but because I have been refined and found people that I want to join together with as one culture.

Thank you for reading and commenting.

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Aunt Fong Speaks: The Hamster in the Wheel

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I drew this picture for Aunt Fong years ago and she asked me to post her reflection on it.

Aunt Fong (translated by a friend and revised by me): One of my friends drew this picture. It has puzzled me for a few years.

Whenever I saw this hamster I would feel pity for it. The hamster is always desperately running on the wheel and cannot stop. Its eyes stare longingly at the dripping water droplets. This picture became lodged in my mind. I couldn’t understand why my friend drew this kind of picture and why he drew the water tank at this location. I couldn’t understand why the hamster’s eyes looked so desperate; why could it not be satisfied?

I finally asked the maker of the drawing: why?

The maker laughed and casually said, “The wheel is just a toy. If the hamster is thirsty, it can stop at any time to drink.”

I suddenly understood: it was self-contained. He had locked himself in an imaginary cage.

[Me again]: Of course, I am “the friend” and “maker of the drawing.” Aunt Fong had piles of these blank sheets of paper with only a black circle printed on them. She encouraged or pestered her students and friends to use pastels to draw pictures or abstract color combinations in the circle as some form of therapy. After doing this once or twice to indulge my aunt, I found each drawing request thereafter to be very tedious. So, one time, instead of making a color splash, I turned the black circle into a rodent’s running wheel and drew a hamster inside.

When I showed it to her, Aunt Fong seemed very troubled. Even though she says she couldn’t understand why the hamster was trapped in the cage(she called it a mouse until I persuaded her after dozens of reminders that it was a hamster), cruelly kept from the water, I remember trying to tell her plainly many times that it was a common running wheel and there was nothing to worry about. I suppose the sad look in my quickly drawn hamster’s eye lent itself to a tragic interpretation, and honestly, when I drew it I think I was transferring my own detached sarcasm and grief over my situation in life, in China, onto the page in one forgotten, frustrated sketch. Well, I thought it would have been forgotten. Aunt Fong has remembered it ever after.

Enjoying a rest with Aunt Fong.

Enjoying a rest with Aunt Fong.

The Real China: “A Handsome American Guy Studies Kung Fu”

Television is a fun gauge of a nation’s psyche. A look into how a people entertain themselves speaks volumes about who the people are. In America, football, zombies, gritty cop dramas, and sophomoric, snarky sitcoms reign supreme. Chinese TV is dominated by historical fantasies of slaughtering Japan’s invading soldiers, romantic melodramas, singing showcases, dry news reports, and sports (basketball, volleyball, and ping pong- what else).

I didn’t watch much television in China. While it was an entertaining spectacle to flip through when I was home alone and bored, which was quite often, I instead spent most of my free time on the slow-as-molasses and “Great Firewall” blocked internet, or out exercising and exploring around my college campus. When I did watch TV, I would spend a minute on the (mostly) ping-pong and volleyball channel, then click up through several song and dance channels, some serials, and one movie channel that would occasionally play something spoken in English or subtitled. I was at times so desperate for an English-language movie that I’d stay up late to watch whatever forgotten American garbage was airing, like Cheaper by the Dozen 2 until I couldn’t take it any more and went to bed.

Mostly I turned on the television to watch the English language news channel and try to feel somewhat connected to the outside world from my surreal hinterland outpost. The news channels were state-controlled, like all the rest, so it was interesting to note the edge in Chinese reporters’ voices when discussing an issue related to U.S. actions and Chinese sovereignty (not so ironically, each channel is called “CCTV” followed by a number, which stands for China Central Television instead of closed-circuit television). On the surprising bright side, a typical newscast was a plain rundown of international headlines and summits, so the number of biased statements and gimmicks per minute was surprisingly fewer than a typical American broadcast.

Chinese newspapers were completely impenetrable by my illiterate eyes, so I never bothered with one. In my observation, daily newspaper reading was not all that common of a habit in the small (by Chinese standards) cities where I spent the majority of my time. I didn’t see anyone carrying them in hand while commuting through the subways and crowded streets of the Tier 1 cities, either. While I cannot comment on daily readership numbers, I can say from my perspective that I did not notice anyone carrying a newspaper with them, reading it over breakfast, or collecting piles of old papers in their living room or office. The first time I noticed the local newspaper was when I penetrated its sports page as a story. And as long as I am going to do a little boasting, I should add that this was after I was featured on the local television news channel.

So first: how I got on television. It began when Aunt Fong took me around to try and find a martial arts school.

Martial arts training can be very informal in China, and by that I mean I regularly saw tai chi and kung fu groups meeting in the park- perhaps as few as two or three friends practicing their techniques together, or one man sweeping a two-handed sword or pole-arm through the air. Aunt Fong introduced me to a colleague or friend of hers (someone connected to her gwan-shee network) who practiced his routines every morning in a riverside park, so I did get a taste of this do-it-yourself kung fu. About once a week during the spring, Aunt Fong would nag me to wake up extra early and take a taxi to meet “Big” Wei, or Da Wei, as we called him in Chinese, before he finished his 6 a.m. practice and headed back home. While I was thankful to Aunt Fong and Da Wei for the time he spent teaching me a lengthy kung fu routine, and I was open to learn and integrate kung fu techniques into my martial arts knowledge, my heart was just not into performing choreographed, fossilized routines. I wanted to continue the martial arts I had pursued in the United States and develop my skills to a competitive level.

There were no schools nearby for me to practice any wrestling or grappling like the Brazilian jiu-jitsu I studied back in America (those schools exist only in China’s major cities- it is still a nation obsessed with its ancient traditions over contemporary fascinations like mixed martial arts and BJJ), but Aunt Fong had a friend who practiced Sanda, or what might generically be called “kickboxing” in America. She knew I wanted to practice at a serious gym, so she took me there to meet the coach. Master Wei, not Big Wei, was a trim, middle-aged man with an army crew cut and a block-shaped head. His physique did not immediately tip me off that he was a former champion and coach, but when I felt the power of his right hook and watched as he used breath control to take my best punch to his stomach again and again without flinching, I sensed serious power in his modest size. Also, he amazing abilities like the way he could sit cross-legged and use his only his two pointer fingers and thumbs to elevate himself off the floor.

Master Wei’s school was on the second level of a small retail space, indistinct from all the other dingy, white-walled retail spaces lining the downtown city blocks. The gym upstairs was filled with weight-lifting machines, heavy punching bags, and floor mats. During class nights, young kids would come after school and horse around until Master Wei or his nephew would step in, blow the whistle, and start class. Then, all the kids and some adults would run in circles or perform the same leg-swinging exercises for what seemed like forever. Thirty minutes is a very brief time respective to most things, but it is an unendurably long time to repeat the same floor exercise or run in tight ovals without a break. Master Wei would just shout, “Come on!” or blast his whistle as we struggled. He was a strict taskmaster who had never been influenced by the American idea to keep all of the students engaged or entertained.

Sometimes, he would pair students up for sparring or a partner exercise, tell us to begin, then go downstairs to take a half-hour phone call, leaving us to continue the exercise indefinitely. Other times, he would sit and watch his nephew and I fight each other, chiming in “Very good!” if I did something right, or pulling his nephew to the side to scold and slap him with his whistle cord when he did something wrong. Not that I was the one getting the best of his nephew- more often it was just the opposite, but Master Wei wasn’t related to me so that meant I was spared these whistle cord whips.

Those punishment breaks were the only pause in the action. Normally, Master Wei’s nephew and I would fight each other until I saw parents arriving after dark to pick their children up from the gym. Then, I knew my reprieve was mercifully near. Aunt Fong would walk me home as I hobbled on ankles and shin bones that felt like crushed glass. (Here, I tell how a minor injury from fighting at the gym turned into a serious problem that made necessary my first hospital visit.)

My very minor television appearance occurred one afternoon after I finished my classes and took a taxi to meet Aunt Fong at her university before heading off to my normally scheduled Sanda practice. At her campus, I was surprised by a small group of her colleagues and student friends who were expecting me as my taxi arrived. One of her excited students told me that a television crew was coming to film me for the news. I wasn’t sure I could believe her; I did not see why they would be interested in filming me or how the local TV station would even know about me.

But in small city China, word of a young, tall foreigner gets around. Students in my English classes would tell me how their friends had seen me eating at the cafeteria, or shopping downtown- sometimes they would show me unnerving pictures that their friends had taken of me unaware in the middle of class or from across campus. Uncle Jiang (Aunt Fong’s husband) once forbid me to run outside the university campus after the school security guards (I assumed) told him or a link of the social grape vine that they saw me running along the street outside the school’s gate. So I was skeptical that I was newsworthy, but not completely surprised when I came to Aunt Fong’s office building and saw a camera crew waiting outside.

They filmed me walking around the campus, playing ping-pong with a ping-pong professor (they really have those in China) and play-fighting with another young man in front of a crowd of students. Then, the camera crew followed me to the Sanda gym and filmed me training on punching mitts with Master Wei. After the workout, one of Aunt Fong’s friends served as a translator so I could be interviewed. She relayed questions to me about my training and competition experience in America. I tried to explain to her that I had only fought a few fights, as an amateur, and my competition awards were not championships but awards for having finished two of my fights with the “Submission of the Night”. Good luck explaining what “Submission of the Night” meant to a provincial Chinese audience. I was afraid I was being set up as the great white hope of my college town, and as a foreign novelty I would be matched to fight some Chinese giant with bad intentions.

"No, no, I said I killed seven FLIES with one blow!"

“No, no, I said I killed seven FLIES with one blow!”

I never did get to see my segment on the news. It aired during a holiday week, while I was away in Shanghai, and Aunt Fong said she couldn’t record it.

Master Wei thought that I was good enough to audition, along with his nephew, for a spot on the national broadcast of kickboxing fights: Wu Lin Feng. The prospect of fighting professionally and being able to earn an income from martial arts became my incentive to return to the gym for my regular session of Thursday through Sunday beatings by the hands and feet of Master Wei’s nephew. I was always relieved when Master Wei told us to practice boxing- no knees or kicks- because it was less painful to be hit primarily in the head versus the legs and body, and I could use my long arms to outbox Master Wei’s much shorter nephew.

My newspaper appearance came a couple months later, also due to my training at Master Wei’s gym, and also reported by the same journalist who produced my TV story. In a Chinese martial arts school, students are accepted by their teacher in a formal ceremony where the student pays obeisance to the teacher, is accepted by him, and then they dine together with friends. The night of my ceremony, I knew something formal was about to take place, but I had only a foggy idea of what it was all about and could not fathom how formal and well-attended it would be.

I met two other students, also being officially accepted by Master Wei as students, in the lobby of a nice restaurant near the gym: Ma Cao, a colleague of Aunt Fong’s who taught exercise science and possessed the largest calves proportional to body mass I have ever seen on a human being, and a very skinny college student who I suspected was mostly into training Sanda so he could boast about it to girls. Ma Cao was wearing a mandarin suit; I only had on the khaki pants I wore to my classes that day and a black, wool jacket over my sweater. I felt shamefully underdressed in my normal teaching clothes and I began to get the sense that this ceremonial dinner was of much bigger import than I had assumed. I thought we would probably bow, shake hands, and sign a certificate before training at the gym, but the event at the restaurant was shaping up to become an all-night affair.

Ma Cao showing off his giant calves.

Ma Cao showing off his giant calves.

Before most of the guests arrived, we three students took out our billfolds and divided our “lucky money” into three red envelopes so we could present them as gifts to Master Wei. If you want to be someone’s student in China, you had better have a red envelope full of lucky money with their name on it. We had to count out the luckiest of numbers- 888 Chinese yuan- which had me smirking because this number in Chinese is said, “ba bai ba shi ba.” For a moment, as our small group counted and repeated the sum, we sounded like a small chorus of sheep. Then, minutes later, Master Wei, his family, and all of his old kung fu friends arrived. The journalist came with camera in hand to take pictures of our ceremony.

One after another, we three students stood in front of Master Wei and his wife, who were seated on a small couch in the dining room. Then, we poured them each a cup of tea, and bowed. My two friends did a full kowtow on a floor cushion, but Aunt Fong told me to do just a formal standing bow, hands held together. The newspaper reporter captured this scene and it ran under the headline “A Handsome American Guy/ Studies Kung Fu.” I am not making that up. The sub-heading read how I strived to conquer the competition arena “Wu Lin Feng” within one year. This translation was made for me by a Chinese friend with an English degree and excellent English skills, so skeptical, bilingual readers can check the translation for themselves. The original Chinese headlines are 美国帅小伙/ 珠城学功夫 and 力争一年内“武林风”擂台扬威.)

I'm featured in the story on the right, not the one above the women's curling team.

I’m featured in the story on the right, not the one above the women’s curling team.

After the bow, Master Wei, his kung fu colleagues, and I signed a red certificate that said something about how he would teach me and I would be a good student. I was afraid Master Wei would resent it if I ever trained at a different school and possibly track me down to challenge me to mortal combat, like in the movies, but Aunt Fong assured me our teacher-student agreement was not exclusive. I am still alive to this day, so it turns out she was right.

With the contracts signed, the kung fu teachers and students went out into the lobby to take commemorative pictures for a full hour. I stood in with every possible permutation of people involved with the ceremony. After eight o’clock, the picture-taking died down and I was able to join all the people in the dining room who had already been eating while I was in the lobby. It was typical in China to eat foods that had been sitting on the table for half an hour or longer, so coming in to find stacks of room-temperature food didn’t bother me. Master Wei’s new students footed the bill that night, so all the platters and excess amounts of rice liquor were partially funded on my honor. (More about Chinese dining and drinking customs in “Bottoms Up!”)

The wannabe heart throb on the left (I never learned his name), Master Wei sitting in front of me, and Ma Cao on the right.

The wannabe heart throb on the left (I never learned his name), Master Wei sitting in front of me, and Ma Cao on the right.

Joining the students of honor in this picture are Aunt Fong and, I think, a kung fu teacher or university professor in the red jacket.

Joining the students of honor in this picture are Aunt Fong and, I think, a kung fu teacher or university professor in the red jacket.

Master Wei's very tough nephew on the left.

Master Wei’s very tough nephew on the left.

So how did my training with Master Wei turn out? Did I realize my dream of competing as a professional martial artist? After my foot injury in the fall, I trained regularly at the (unheated) gym over the winter and got toughened up quite a bit by Master Wei’s Spartan practices. But, concurrently, China as a whole was dragging down my health and emotions. By the time the spring semester had wrapped up and I had open days to devote to training in the now sweltering gym, I felt so forlorn that I lost nearly all spirit to fight. It didn’t feel good to train anymore. Master Wei could tell that my emotions were poor and my heart was fading. He proposed that if I wanted to compete on the televised show, I would need to train full-time for two months and try out in August. I would need my visa extended for that, but I thought it might be worth it. Realizing a martial arts dream seemed worth it to try with all my might, even if that meant staying in China for another two months or a year.

Alas, I could not deny my flagging spirits and health, and at the end of June/early July I became so ill that I had to stay in the hospital for three days.
Training became unthinkable.

Looking out at the brownish-gray sky from my hospital bed, I only wanted to leave China for a clean country where I could convalesce in soul and body. At the end of July, I departed from the Hefei airport with a souvenir newspaper in my luggage.

My view from my top floor hospital window. The window pane itself was clean, it was the outside which was so dirty.

Superlatives Around the World

When tourists or expats exclaim, “Oh, the people there are so great!” it is usually subjective hype- a good Samaritan returns a lost bill, the local service workers seem exuberant, a few serendipitous encounters introduce friendly strangers, no one gets their pocket picked, and hey, why not look on the bright side of life? Only Scrooges complain about vacations and foreign travel. But the truth is not so rosy. I met many friendly individuals in South Korea, sure, but to characterize the Korean people, above other characteristics, as friendly would seem a step too far. The real question is who- what people- are friendly above all else. I suppose, as an Iowan, I always have my radar out to detect for friendliness and folksiness, so this became a real search for me. If someone visited the places I did and ranked Korea as an especially friendly place above others (it is often a very reserved and well-behaved place) I would dispute it with the argument below:

Friendliest: Thailand
Runner-up: USA (mostly in the Midwest)

Thailand is nicknamed “the Land of Smiles” for good reason. Most every place I tried out my marginal Thai speaking ability, or where I gave a polite wai (prayer hands and bowed head) greeting, I was met with a big smile and a compliment: “You SUH-PEAK Thai soo GOOOD.” I found the few beaches I saw in Thailand crowded, dirty, and touristy; the thrill for me was just trying to ask kind-looking strangers questions or order food in their language. The laid-back sa-baai (relaxed) attitude in Thailand, and their welcoming interest in foreign visitors- not just eyeing me as a walking cash cow to be milked, although that element definitely exists in Thailand’s dirty alleys and shopping arcades- was a highlight of my time there, although the openness did backfire on me.

The ubiquitous, super cheap massage parlors (legit ones; get your mind out of the gutter) were advertised by the masseuses sitting around on the porch and calling out “MASSAGE!” until they had hooked your attention. I made the most of the availability of dirt cheap massages by going almost every other day. But every time the massage lady found out I could speak a little, or nitnoi, Thai, she peppered me with a stream of questions like a chatty beautician in an American hair salon. I couldn’t answer any of them past my name, age, occupation, where I was from, and what I was doing in Thailand, so I had to constantly apologize, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” as my overeager acquaintance told me indecipherable lines in Thai and broken English how happy I would be in Thailand.

And yet, unlike in the Philippines, I never got the impression the people were trying to butter me up and work me over. Negotiating price with tuk-tuk drivers and bartering with shopkeepers was never really stressful, but straightforward. I’ve never found it to be true in America or anywhere else, but smile in Thailand, and the Thais smile with you.

Even Ronald McDonald is more friendly and polite in Thailand.

Even Ronald McDonald is more friendly and polite in Thailand.

I say the American Midwest is the second friendliest place I’ve ever been because, even among Americans, I’ve heard of people visiting my home state (Iowa) and being taken aback by store clerks greeting customers or saying “Thank you,” strangers holding the door open for each other, and drivers passively letting pedestrians and other cars cross in front of them first. It’s not quite the Garrison Keillor caricature, especially among the younger generations, and sure, the Midwest isn’t THAT much friendlier than other places in America- also, lots of other places have high standards for public manners (get over yourselves, Canadians)- but growing up here I was exposed to a lot of gentle adults who treated me with nothing but kindness. It was just expected that nice people would joke around with you or take up light teasing when they met you out in public, then depart with a smile or a pat on the back. While it seems that my unpleasant experiences close to home have more than balanced out the kind encounters, whenever I visit another place and see the people almost uniformly acting rude or stone-faced to each other, I worry about what’s wrong with them. As soon as I got back to Iowa from abroad, and an oncoming truck driver stopped well short and waved me to walk across the street, I remarked, “That would never, ever happen in China. Ever.”

Least Friendly: Korea
Runner-up: USA

Re the woman's face in this picture: restaurant advertisement or hostage video?

Re the woman’s face in this picture: restaurant advertisement or hostage video?

Sometimes it seemed like no mystery to me why the two halves of Korea are in the midst of the world’s longest ongoing war, not counting the unending hostility Israel has faced from its neighbors since day one (July 1953 marked the armistice agreement between North and South Korea, not the peace treaty). I can think of no disposition so stubborn, grief-mongering, and hostile to outsiders as what I witnessed in modern South Korea. Sure, China’s “People’s” government is also engaged in a constant push of anti-Japan, anti-foreign oppressors propaganda through school curricula, popular media, and official statements, and the present day disputes of China vs. Japan seemed just as petty as Korea’s in some cases (“These barren rocks belong to us! You can see in this mildewed, moth-eaten map that these two black blobs in the middle of the ocean must represent our ancient, irreproachable claim to this territory. Your claim is groundless and absurd!”), but I never got the feeling that everyone in China was carrying a chip on their shoulder towards the outside world, or that they defined the outside world as “everyone not directly in my relative social circle.” Chinese people, in my encounters, looked at the USA and foreign visitors as country bumpkins who didn’t quite know how to contain their curiosity and so might point and shout out “Laowai!” (“Foreigner!”), or just march right up and bombard me with questions or gawk at me. South Korea is the only country I’ve been to where I received the reaction I thought had died out in the modern world: a little girl walking towards me suddenly looked up and gasped, “Waygook-een!” (“Foreigner!”) and turned on her heel, running in panic back to her father.

In my daily experiences in Korea, I often felt like indignantly apologizing that I wasn’t the one to pickle all of my grouchy strangers’ sour kimchi, so why was I getting the mean, frowning looks and calloused treatment? I was warned by some Chinese friends who’d been there that Koreans had a holier-than-thou attitude that Korean culture was superior to all others and Korean people were the best. Still, I had a hard time handling my shock as I’d get cut in line three times in a row as I stood immediately outside a bathroom door, or pushed and scowled at on the bus or subway, or grouped in people’s minds together with every expat drunk and sexual deviant as a foreign bogeyman, or treated so explicitly and embarrassingly as a foreigner that the concept started to take on a dirty meaning, or often excluded with an icy invisible wall. I had heard from other Americans who’d been there and back that Koreans are hard to get to know personally, but once you do the friendship is binding, intimate, and lifelong. I can say that I definitely experienced the first half of that equation, but my hopes of crossing into the latter were never met.

Koreans even have a word, or cultural concept, to describe their feelings of bitterness and unrequited revenge: han (“haan”), or 한 in Korean script, or 恨 in the Chinese root. I read that han is a deep and difficult-to-understand concept, but as soon as I saw it identified in text I thought, “Yes, from every unflinching frown I seem to tangibly feel, I know exactly what they’re talking about.” According to the Wikipedia article (motto: “27 million contributors can’t be wrong”), anthropologists have even “recognized han as a culture-specific medical condition whose symptoms include dyspnea, heart palpitation, and dizziness.” (Wait, can I quote a Wikipedia article? It’s bound to change a week after I post this. I suppose I could just go and change it back, but then I might get into an editing war with a presumptuous Wikipedia editor. Ah, life can be so stressful. I think I might be developing an appreciation for han.) Han is supposed to include bottled-up feelings of sorrow, passive aggression, and an abiding thirst for vengeance against oppressors. As a side note, I can’t be the only one to have noticed that han is a perfect pun in the Korean language for the “Han” people and “Han” country, or Hangook and Hangook-een: “Korea”/”Korean”. I think that the developed han concept is all a self-important gloss for what my grandma would call bein’ ornery, i.e. people acting stubborn, grouchy, and vengeful. Like every comic book villain will teach you, nursing a grievance and spending life seeking to avenge old injustices is a recipe for evil. Not that Koreans would ever listen to a foreigner, but please, let it go. I don’t care about Dokdo Island. I don’t think anyone outside Korea does. Bury all the hatchets.

This is me on one of the two rocks of Dokdo. I'm probably one of a dozen non-Koreans to ever visit this jingoistic symbol.

This is me on one of the two rocks of Dokdo. I’m probably one of a dozen non-Koreans to ever visit this jingoistic symbol.

To be fair, and honest, I met lots of Koreans who were happy to have me around and were delighted to meet me due to my foreign-ness and “so handsome” looks, or even because they genuinely had fun with me in their group. And Koreans’ disposition wasn’t a walking cartoon of clenched teeth, sharply frowned brow lines, dark appearances, gray clouds, and grumbling- but it often seemed close.

I was sometimes asked by Korean acquaintances if I wouldn’t want to stay in their country long term, get a nice English-teaching job, find a Korean girl, have a family and settle down. The thought was tempting, truly- I think Korea is, despite the difficulties, a very comfortable and fun place for Americans to live- but I couldn’t shake the dread of living to be an old man and still having people act surprised at how well I could use chopsticks or read the Korean alphabet, still placing me not even at the bottom of the social totem pole but somewhere out of sight, or having them finding unhappy ways to blurt out “Really? But you’re a foreigner.” I have already dug myself a deep enough hole with any of my remaining Korean friends, so I think I will just quit now.

A perfect metaphor for han?

A perfect metaphor for han?

I say the USA is the next least friendly place I’ve ever been because I think that Jesus’ statement to his home synagogue in Nazareth: “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house” has always seemed to have a general application to me in the familiar places I’ve lived. In nearly every foreign setting, just being different has sparked many excited conversations that have to rely on fundamental human connections over language subtlety and status. The closer I’ve been to home, the more I had in common, the more people could assume about me, and the more it took to impress them. So, unless I’ve had a job or reputation worth boasting about, most of my conversations with neighbors have stop before they ever get started. People overseas were eager to ask me simply where I was from. Obviously, no one in America was interested in this information unless I really stood out as a tourist or something, and even then my answer wasn’t special enough to spur the conversation on. Most things could just be assumed and went without saying. I’ve also found that Americans closest to my age or social situation like to assume I share most of their same opinions, so if I ever fail to laugh at the same political jokes or fail to echo the social vibe, this puts an uncomfortable damper on the relationship. And, an axiom that people everywhere seem to say is that bad people are everywhere. The insults and cold shoulders sting that much more when I’m literate in the language and context.

Foreign exoticism cut both ways. Whenever I went to tourist spots, strangers would ask to take their picture with me, like this young man. Fun attention, at times, but also overwhelming.

Foreign exoticism cut both ways. Whenever I went to tourist spots, strangers would ask to take their picture with me, like this young man. Fun attention, at times, but also overwhelming.

Rudest: To avoid being redundant, I will just link to some stories of my rude encounters in China here and here. Or, just look up “The Real China” category link in the sidebar. Not as bad as China- not nearly- but there were nonetheless a lot of boors in South Korea, especially with the kids who fought, screaming and stomping and hitting and kicking and pushing, without ever getting an adult censure, and the older men and women who pushed and shoved to get into subway cars and elevators and tight spaces.

More of the Most -est in the World*

*i.e. places I’ve been to, according to me.

SAM_0618

Vainest: South Korea
Runner-up: Everyone else

If I had to sum up the Korean character in one word, it would be vain. They’re so vain, they probably think that “song” is about them- “Song? Hey! That’s my name, too! Whenever I got out, the people always shout…” The ubiquitous Korean smart phone was used about a third of the time for social media, a third of the time for playing games, and the rest of the time as a pocket mirror for fixing hair and make-up. This was done in subways and restaurants and cafes and pretty much every other public place you could think of. Occasionally, the phones were used for talking in loud, exaggerated, whiny voices. South Korea is also the only place I’ve seen mirrors posted in a public place (a subway corridor, for example) and seen people regularly stop in front of it and check their hair as onlookers walked past. Whatever the activity, the hair and outfit had to be just right. Even in freezing weather, people would not wear hats because that would ruin their hairdo, and I only noticed a few people who would wear gloves. Even then, the gloves had to be thin and fashionable. When hiking, a popular weekend pastime, the hikers had to have matching brand name clothes in bright colors of orange and purple over black. Make-up and hairspray were still expected. This coordinated outfit policy applied to every activity and every outing. I could go on, but a picture of vanity is worth a thousand words.

A holiday in Korea is a time to stand in front of scenery with a selfie stick. These people are lined up to take their photo in front of the angel wings mural. I think I saw more angel wings profile pictures in Korea than I saw people named Kim.

A holiday in Korea is a time to stand in front of scenery with a selfie stick. These people are lined up to take their photo in front of the angel wings mural. I think I saw more angel wings profile pictures in Korea than I saw people named Kim.

These compulsory hiking outfits are actually on the tame side. They could be spotted everywhere throughout the city, usually on the subway, not just on the mountain trails.

These compulsory hiking outfits are actually on the tame side. They could be spotted everywhere throughout the city, usually on the subway, not just on the mountain trails.

The Korean need to be seen has its charms, too. Where else could I meet a man with such a flashy blue suit?

The Korean need to be seen has its charms. Where else could I meet a man with such a flashy blue suit?

A "Where's Waldo?" of people taking pictures, cameras, and matching couples' outfits.

A “Where’s Waldo?” scene of people taking pictures, cameras, and matching couples’ outfits.

Everyone and everywhere else is vain, too (“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” says the preacher), but South Korea has made vanity a conspicuous, obvious obsession.

Prettiest Women: ?

Men love to discuss this question, and when I discussed it with my friend, James, we settled on the 2015 Miss Universe champion and runner-up, or vice versa, he saying Colombia and I saying the Philippines. I knew it was an uneasy guess when I made it, having based it on exposure to only a few Filipino beauties in person and on TV, and the consensus opinion of some fellow travelers on the best-looking women in Asia. I suppose I tested out my theory through living in China and South Korea and traveling through Japan, the Philippines, and throughout the US, but it seems like I’ve never been able to pin down a satisfying, conclusive answer to this question. In the Philippines, it seemed like most women were the size of middle school students, and their anthem was Confederate Railroad’s “Trashy Women.” Yeah, an’ I like my women just a little on the trashy side/ When they wear their clothes too tight and their hair is dyed. No, they weren’t wearing Dolly Parton wigs (those belong to the Philippine drag queens), but neither were they near as gorgeous as the fabled women from TV.

In Korea, the women were circumspect about looking fashionable, as mentioned above, and they had shapely, healthy physiques, yet it seemed that their general good looks were shared by all and few stood out from the pack. This is not at all a bad handicap, but the rub is that there are few stunning stand-outs, and the exemplars look less exemplary in comparison.

In China, the women also looked alarmingly undernourished to me, and they mostly dressed in a simple, childish way, and while China no doubt has some stunning beauties and a high standard for the average woman, I still just could not say definitively that Chinese women, or any group of women, were THE best looking. I think it’s an insoluble question that will constantly tempt and try men’s minds if they’re not careful.

Homeliest Women: USA

I’m sorry, I know that the US has all kinds of women from all over the world, and it attracts the best and brightest and most beautiful, but of all the people I’ve been exposed to, America has shown me the most out-of-control obese and slovenly women, and the women with the laziest, most careless clothing choices, and the women with the loudest mouths and ugliest attitudes. In the other countries I’ve been to, my beauty advice would be to drop the beauty products and pick up some beef and barbells; in my home country I’d say to drop the beer and beef patties and take up yoga.

From peopleofwalmart.com. Made in the USA.

From peopleofwalmart.com. Made in the USA.

Ugliest Cities: South Korea
Runner-up: China

Modern Korean architecture is the ugliest I’ve seen, which is quite a mark considering how much I hate the indistinguishable assembly line architecture of all the shoe-box lookalike, atrociously angled modern buildings in my own country. Korean infrastructure, from streets to skyscrapers, has been put up slapdash wherever it will fit in between the mountains and the existing city sprawl. The multi-story buildings are mostly of one template, with aggressive neon signage scrawled across every exterior, with each floor of a building advertising itself in a stack of monotonous eyesores. Where the buildings are meant to be on display, like a church building, the sight is offensively ugly, a cheap imitation of a style copied from overseas. I’m not the only person to have noticed the garish, shantytown structures.

The church building I frequented most often was supposed to be inspired by Noah's ark, but just looking at this "ship" I could tell it wouldn't float.

The church building I frequented most often was supposed to be inspired by Noah’s ark, but just looking at this “ship” I could tell it wouldn’t float.

"Just put that next house anywhere." Re Korean vanity, they nicknamed this area Korea's Santorini.  My thought was that it twinned Rio de Janeiro's favelas.

“Just put that next house anywhere.” Re Korean vanity, they nicknamed this area Korea’s Santorini. My thought was that it twinned Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.

Good luck ever finding the place you're looking for in Korea's urban jungle.

Good luck ever finding the place you’re looking for in Korea’s urban jungle.

China comes in at second place for building cityscapes only a communist could love. Absurdly large avenues and towers in abandoned planned cities, government buildings of hasty construction and childish sophistication, garish street lamps and accents, and obtusely abstract, gray, decaying modern compositions all around. Plus, China’s vaunted antiquities were very dingy and dusty looking, in my observation. There are way too many ancient buildings for China to restore and keep up them all, but I suppose they could attempt it as a jobs-creation program for their billion-plus population.

Shanghai's Oriental Pearl tower, which is about to the Chinese as the Eiffel Tower is to the French. This might be the ugliest landmark I've ever seen in person.

Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl tower, which is about to the Chinese as the Eiffel Tower is to the French. This might be the ugliest landmark I’ve ever seen in person.

A clothing market next to a bus station in Beijing. Who thought this looked good enough to build?

A clothing market next to a bus station in Beijing. Who thought this looked good enough to build?

Most every panorama in China is seen through a veil of pollution.

Most every panorama in China is seen through a veil of pollution.

Prettiest Cities: Japan
Runner-up: USA

This one’s a close contest, but I’ll give Japan the edge because of how uniformly clean and neat in appearance all the cities and towns were. They’re maintained to picture-perfect precision, like the backdrop of a movie shoot.

Old district in Kyoto. It's hard to even find chewing gum stains on the pavement.

Old district in Kyoto. It’s hard to even find chewing gum stains on the pavement.

I love the stately styles of American homes from centuries past. Walking through a traditional American downtown, surrounded by a neighborhood of ornately styled homes and mansions, is a refreshing dose of beauty.

From scenic Galena, Illinois. Too bad all the cars are obstructing the view.

From scenic Galena, Illinois. Too bad all the cars are obstructing the view.

A mansion in Galena.

A mansion in Galena.

An elegant old house in my neighborhood.

An elegant old house in my neighborhood.

More categories to come.

The World’s Best, Worst, Most, Least, -est, -iest, and -un’s*

This is a popular time of year for lists of all kinds, and while mine isn’t confined to the year 2015 alone, I thought it might be a fitting time to share. It’s a survey of the superlative places, or better put, the places most notable for each superlative category in the whole world*. (*that I’ve been to**.) (**not just in 2015, but in my lifetime.) While my list isn’t as timely as other common year-end lists, it more than compensates for this in originality of categories. Let’s begin with something fairly typical and move on from there. The…

Best Food: Japan
Runner-up: Thailand
Honorable Mention: New York City

Japan’s famous dishes: sushi, noodles, yakitori (barbecue), teppanyaki (the showy iron hibachi grill food) is all great, but in all my time in Japan, every single thing I tried except for the donuts and desserts was excellent. Japanese tastes are usually right on, in my book, except when it comes to sweet foods. They’d probably find a saltine cracker “too sweet. Oh, no, too sweet.” I have no idea how those seaweed-eaters stay so skinny with all that good food around. Maybe because it’s all incredibly expensive?

Thailand is the country with my second-favorite food. Its people and restaurants are close to my heart. Unlike Japan, almost every place you eat at in Thailand is inexpensive and unpretentious. And there are street food vendors galore, so you never run out of new things to try.

New York is probably the place with the best food I’ve tried in my own country, with the very large caveat that it’s all way overpriced, as if the whole city were inside an airport terminal, and way too classy for a simple Iowan like me to navigate and feel welcome in. A longtime resident there asked me my favorite food in the city, and to get out of her glaring spotlight, I replied generically, “Uh, I like the pizza.” But that wasn’t enough to get me off the hook. “Like what, you mean a pie? Or by the slice? What kind of pizza?” She grilled me so bad I wished I had told her I only ate peanut butter sandwiches, but then she probably would have interrogated me on what kind of peanut butter and bread I used and then humiliated me for using mass market name brands.

Best Meal Experience: China
Runner-up: Korea

I’ve written about how fun (and wild) Chinese dinners could be here and here. In short, Chinese dinners, in celebration with family and friends, are hours-long events with many rounds of food, drinking, toasts, and merrymaking. While the average meal was pretty dismal in China, a big dinner was filled with dozens and dozens of different dishes to choose from, and the fun atmosphere of the event filled a whole evening. The dinners really were the highlight of my time in China.

I’m not crazy about Korean food, (unlike Koreans, whom I believe are in a sense really deranged about their own food, with anecdotes of Korean airline travelers telling security guards that they need to bring their kimchi on board because Koreans can’t eat the food in other countries- look it up), but Korea is a great place to eat out with friends. For one, Korea is jam-packed with independently-owned restaurants, most of which are furnished with long tables meant for very large groups. And the up-all-night culture means there is always a place you can find to take a group of one or two dozen people at any time for barbecue or a crowd-pleaser like chicken and beer or spicy chicken stew (jjimdak). While I disagreed with all the sour pickles being served at every Korean meal, I could never turn down barbecue, a fool-proof and plentiful option in the busy streets of Korea.

Jjimdak, from http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/FOD/FO_EN_6_4_4.jsp?cid=586927

Jjimdak, from http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/FOD/FO_EN_6_4_4.jsp?cid=586927

Worst Meal Experience: USA
Runner-up: China

In America, the places available to eat at where I live mostly expect you to sit down, order, eat, pay, and go quickly, with a waitress (cue the authoritarian Millennial: “That’s SERVER.”) constantly coming up and asking you, “How’s everything for ya?” or “How’s that tastin’ for ya?” or anything else “for ya?” Then, after turning down dessert “for ya” by asking for “just the check,” you chat a little, then leave and go home and scroll through your phone. Boring. Any place in America that doesn’t follow this model, in my experience, has been a neat independent place, or more likely, an elite dining experience far out of my price range and cultural comfort zone.

Runner-up is China, because although the special dinners there were great fun, they always brought stomach pain in their wake, and the average meal there was something lousy that you would expect to find as a sight gag in a dreary scene of a movie. Limp, oil-soaked vegetables, hardly any protein, unrecognizable bland, soft-textured, gelatinous foods, stinky foods like smelly tofu, and all of it prepared below acceptable hygienic standards. Okay, maybe not ALL of it, all of it, was prepared with poor hygiene, but enough must have been that I had stomach pain on a weekly basis and spent three days in the hospital at the end of my year-long stay.

Worst Food Instincts: Korea
Runner-up: USA

I think, long ago in the time dominated by robed, funny hat-wearing Confucian scholars, the isolated peninsula of Korea considered its mountainous terrain, cold winters, and limited fruit and vegetable production potential, and began philosophically analyzing everything edible with the question, “But what if we pickle it?” As in, “These green beans would taste great if freshly picked and then boiled or grilled, but what if we pickle them?” Americans think they have a taste for the exotic when they express a fondness for kimchi, but little do they realize that Koreans eat kimchi at literally every meal. Kimchi is not just the cabbage stuff either, there are several kinds of kimchi, with the most common being the cabbage and radish kinds, and there are all kinds of pickled foods eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Being helpless to find a healthy meal anywhere in Korea of lean meats and fresh vegetables, or fresh fruits, without breaking the bank, was an aggravating experience that made me want to toss my sanity to the wind and lash out to a Korean audience, “I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU PEOPLE GOT SO BIG! ALL YOU EAT IS CARBS AND PICKLES! AND YOU TAKE THE ELEVATOR AND ESCALATOR EVERYWHERE INSTEAD OF WALKING. BUT YOU’RE THE THICKEST, HEALTHIEST-LOOKING PEOPLE IN THE ORIENT! WHAT GIVES?!” (Cue the authoritarian Millennial again: “It’s called EAST ASIA. Oriental is a rug.” Cue everyone born in East Asia who has learned English and wasn’t educated overseas: “But we say Orient.”)

America gets the shame of being runner-up in this category because of our obvious, out-of-control instincts to manufacture food with high sugar content, and to load comfort foods with craving-inducing things like bacon and melted cheese and so on. Absurd Frankenstein sandwiches like KFC’s Double Down, made out of two “buns” of fried chicken with cheese and bacon in between are a successful parody of America’s eat-whatever-looks-tasty mentality, and could possibly be a surprisingly healthy alternative, like the Double Down is, to even fattier sugar and carb-loaded cousins. (Compare the classic Burger King Whopper and the Double and Triple Whopper.) It’s a shame to have to talk about and try to explain the American diet to acquaintances overseas, and I think a very sad and shameful reality for us Americans to live with. Why do we continue to eat this way?

The Double Down sandwich, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kfcs-double-down-sandwich-smart-marketing-and-not-as-gross-as-youd-think/

The Double Down sandwich, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kfcs-double-down-sandwich-smart-marketing-and-not-as-gross-as-youd-think/

Smelliest Place: Busan, Korea
Runner-up: China
Dishonorable Mentions: Key West, Florida and New York City

When I first came to Busan, an exceptionally glib Korean man introduced himself to me and asked where I was from. When I said Iowa, he responded by telling me, garnished with an unctuous ear-to-ear grin, how he had driven through Iowa once and been bombarded by the wafting stench of manure. Yes, I replied through politely gritted teeth, there are quite a lot of farms in Iowa. I knew it was undignified at the time, but I only had a faint idea how outrageous it was for a Busan resident to be having a laugh at the unpleasant smells of any other place.

Iowa is the US’s leading producer of corn and pork, and there are many other farms producing other crops and livestock, so the farm stink settling over its lonesome highways is an unfortunate byproduct of agricultural necessity. Iowans prefer to endure it with a good-humored perspective by repeating the tongue-in-cheek line “That’s the smell of money.” But Busan’s smell? It’s not a necessary byproduct of anything. It is, as far as I could tell, the smell of incompetent plumbing and infrastructure. Every open creek winding through this otherwise picturesque city reeks like an open sewer, as do most of its busy shopping centers if the competing smells of frying oil and grilling meat aren’t enough to mask it. I’ve lived in Iowa most of my life, yet I only smell bad smells on those occasional trips through the country, and even then it’s not a guaranteed fact of every long drive. In Busan, I smelled the sewer every day. It didn’t matter how I tried to mind my own business, that sewer stink found me. No matter how posh-looking or exciting the lights, sounds, and crowds are in any district in Busan, the fumes of human waste will sneak their way in and bring everyone’s haughty upturned nose back down to ugly reality. When I took walks or runs along Busan’s riverside recreational paths, which was quite a lot since the only other place to take a long walk was up a mountain, I sometimes tried holding my breath or masking my face around open drains. The intense, vomit-inducing odor was the most powerful urban stink I had been overcome with outside of China.

China, in my nickname borrowed after Thailand’s “Land of Smiles,” was the Land of Smells. It could have been shoddy plumbing like Korea, which it partially was, but it was also plant and animal waste left after street markets, restaurant refuse rotting outside, human and animal droppings on the sidewalks and streets, and the world’s worst air pollution. I went on an unwisely long run once on a blazing hot summer day in China, traversing along a riverside road from one city to another, and on my way back, passing alongside a farmer with his small herd of cows, I doubled over from the heat, dehydration, and the burning, sulfurous smell of an adjacent glass factory. I thought I would either retch or faint, and if I fainted, I figured my unconscious body would lie baking in the blazing sun until some concerned passerby called for help. Which could have been a long time, since passersby in China aren’t often concerned (see “the Little Yue Yue event”). I soldiered on, but the rest of my stay in China was never sweet-smelling. Pretty much all of China stinks, or if not, it probably means that you’ve been there long enough to have gotten used to the smell.

Dishonorable mentions of Key West, Florida, for the smell of decomposing seaweed and sargassum around its many island beaches which smells nearly like diarrhea and can be smelled for miles around, and New York City, for the smell of ammonia in every dank corner that I assume comes from human urine.

Safest Place: South Korea
Runner-up: Iowa and Middle America

I begrudgingly award this honor to South Korea because they love bragging about themselves, and Korea’s public safety is one of their most vaunted features. Yes, to answer the question asked of every foreign guest in South Korea, I did feel safe there. I much appreciated the public trust there that made it a casual, thoughtless thing to leave one’s bag and phone unattended at a coffee shop while going to the restroom. I was at times shocked when I saw school-aged girls walking alone through unlit parks and back roads to go home after their late night tutoring and study sessions. In big city America, that would be known as “looking for trouble.” But as far as I know, these girls were rarely if ever harassed. Also, the young men in Korea seldom adopt a tough, confrontational attitude as far as I saw, and I never felt the animosity of aggressive men jockeying for social rank and strong appearance like I have in America. Mostly, people minded their own business, and accidents and slip-ups could usually be smoothed over with a meek apology. There is one glaring inconsistency in Korea’s public safety record: drivers, especially scooter and motorcycle drivers, are reckless and boorish, driving over sidewalks or driving through red lights as they please, racking up an alarming number of pedestrian injuries and deaths every year. So, to rain on Koreans’ pride parade, I would point out that I never feared for my life so much as a pedestrian or car passenger in my hometown.

Speaking of, public safety often never crosses my mind where I live. To avoid the element of danger, I just stay away from bars and crowded nightlife areas. Contrary to the world’s fears about Americans’ private gun ownership, the real danger from guns is from inner-city gangs, drug and alcohol-related crime, robberies, and suicides. If you live in Middle America, like I do, these terrible facts of life can mostly be avoided. I’ve never bought into the hysteria that the average American gun owner has a loose hand cannon just waiting to go off. I should mention though, that like Korea, I worry about traffic accidents and injuries. I’ve thought to myself many times that if I died violently, it would probably be from being crashed into by a teenager texting while driving. Big roads and cars dominate American life, and there’s no way to avoid them.

Most Dangerous: China
Runner-up: Manila, Philippines

If I had to pick a “Most Dangerous” place, I would say China because I almost died there and because many times I thought a wild taxi driver or purposeful truck driver callous to the human life of pedestrians would plow into me without a care. I thought I could have been crushed by panic spreading through one of the many crowds I was inevitably caught in, or from getting sick through poor hygienic conditions, pollution, and exposure to the cold (Chinese buildings aren’t allowed to have central heating unless they’re above the geographical mid-line set by the government, or unless they’re a big public or commercial space like a train station or mall).

I also feared for my life in the mean streets of Manila, where I was eyed as prey by nearly every onlooker, and where relatively safe transportation is hard to procure unless you tip a police officer to flag down a taxi whose driver is likewise eager to extort extra money out of you. Plus, every shopping center and public transportation hub has armed police and metal detectors, and pistol and shotgun-wielding police were a common sight outside of shops and banks. There was a worry of attacks by political groups, but even more so I was afraid that a lax officer’s casual grip on his shotgun handle would send an accidental spray into the street. Manila is also the only place I’ve been pick-pocketed, so that infamy earns it high marks of distinction on the dangerous list.

More ranks of honor and dishonor to come.

Christmas in China

December isn’t the Christmas Season in China. Well, it is in some ways, surprisingly, but the people aren’t taken with the Christmas Spirit as Americans were once upon a time.

Walking through the shopping streets in the early dark of winter, I began to notice more and more window decoupage displays of white paper snowflakes over red and green backgrounds. Next to the fashion mannequins, there might have been stacks of presents wrapped in shiny paper, and the whole scene would be advertised with text that read “Ho! Ho! Ho!” or misspelled, gibberish renderings of “Merry Christmas” and other holiday greetings. If a store had a Santa dummy (the Chinese called him Christmas Man), he would usually be dressed in gold or red, maybe silver, and he was always playing the saxophone. I asked one of my students why Santa was always playing the sax, and I received the only answer one can give to such a question: “I don’t know.”

CUH-RIS-A-MERS MAN!

CUH-RIS-A-MERS MAN!

"M-R-R-E everyone!"

“M-R-R-E everyone!”

The surprising part of Christmas in China, to me, came when I devoted lessons to Christmas, asking students what they knew about it and how people celebrated. My classes knew the melody of “Jingle Bells” and a few other classics, which seemed natural enough, and they also shared the new Chinese tradition of giving apples stamped with a Christmas pattern to their friends- stencils of a reindeer or “Christmas Man” surrounded by the Chinese characters for “Merry Christmas.” I found one of these apples in the spring, after losing it in between my refrigerator and kitchen cupboards, and it still had the same color and firmness as the day I received it. I shudder to think what they sprayed or injected their produce with; the bananas were also uniformly yellow.

All the chemicals in Chinese food made my stomach shake like a bowl full of jelly.

All the chemicals in Chinese food made my stomach shake like a bowl full of jelly.

What truly surprised me was when I asked my students as a class, “What do you do for Christmas?” and several of them replied without shyness, “Go to church.” China was still convalescing from Mao and his brand of communism, I thought, and I assumed that like the university professors and public officials who professed the faith, students in school would be hush-hush about church.

Assembling for worship in China, of course, isn’t taken for granted as it is in America, where buildings for every Christian denomination- and then some- can be found within walking distance of every residential area. The public church buildings in China (Three Self Patriotic Movement churches) were registered with the state, and people could openly attend, but state controls hamstrung evangelical efforts and what ministers could preach and teach. It is “the church” with bureaucrats of the Communist Party as head.

Those birds un-caged by state controls, the house churches, were many and various in China, and these were all treated with secrecy for fear of government action (i.e. arrest and imprisonment). So, when I had students freely tell me they were going to attend church with their grandmothers on Christmas, I was taken aback. I was stunned for a moment, and I knew to not ask them what type of church they attended in front of their classmates. Perhaps they went to one of the public churches, and they could share so without reprisal, or maybe it was that they were part of a house church, and attitudes had relaxed to the point that young students thought nothing of discussing it openly. I was left to assume the former, not able to dig into the issue in front of a class of peers, only slowly having my questions about the church in China answered in small increments as time went by. Those small peaks I did get inside church life in China were densely filtered by screens of language and culture.

When I asked my two classes of university students what they were doing on Sunday, the 25th, I heard a groan in reply: “Tests.”

“Tests on Christmas!” I exclaimed, like a claymation character from a Rankin/Bass movie, “That’s terrible.” They concurred.

Earlier that week, I spoke to a Chinese English teacher who told me that one of her fondest school memories was when her foreign English teacher threw a Christmas Party for his students. So, I decided to brighten my students’ day. After they finished their tests, they could come over to my apartment that Sunday for a Christmas Party.

Now, between my two college classes (I had 18 other classes of middle school students), I probably had 45 students, but I did the invitation math I had learned in America and expected 15 people to come, 20 tops, and then only an hour after the official start time. I figured that it would be safe to host the event in my apartment with such a modest crowd, and besides, I had no idea how to reserve a room on campus.

Six o’clock sharp came, official party time, and I had candy and a Christmas cake on the table (cake in China is just like cake in America, only it tastes bad. Imagine the quality of cake you might find in a tawdry convenience store, and that is what cake in China tastes like). I had yet to button up my shirt, but I heard a knock at my door and my phone was beeping with text messages asking me to clarify directions to my apartment. I let the first batch of students in, and from that point on there was a continual stream of new guests. I learned a valuable lesson about Chinese culture that night: if you invite people to a party, they will show up.

Maybe five to seven of my especially anti-social university students didn’t come that night, but the rest of the 45 did come, and some even brought friends. A student who never came to my class (because 10 o’clock was too early in the morning for him) even showed up. At one point, I had over thirty people in my living room. I opened every window to let in the winter wind and try and alleviate the collection of body heat. We could hardly move or hear each other speak, but everyone was in high spirits, with students taking turns to sing solos, and candy and cake being obliterated on and around the table.

A ring of people lined my living room and poured into the kitchen and study.

A ring of people lined my living room and poured into the kitchen and study.

Another thing about cake in China- it’s often double-layered with a thin spread of cream or jelly filling in between, and there is a light, fluffy frosting on the outside. Not unusual for a cake, but the tall and triangular slices, I want to note, carried messy potential inside and out. It would be tricky to eat such a big, sloppy slice as it was, but in China, people do not keep forks or dinner plates in their kitchen. And cake is one food that will cause the Chinese to relent and admit it cannot be eaten sensibly in a bowl with chopsticks, so Chinese bakeries supply cake buyers with a stack of thin, four-inch paper plates and tiny plastic forks that would be better used to spear cheese cubes.

Also, in China, people devour all of your treats. They don't pretend they're uninterested and walk away from leftovers as in American culture.

Also, in China, people devour all of your treats. They don’t pretend they’re uninterested and walk away from leftovers as in American culture.

Big, sloppy cake did not combine neatly with tiny plates and forks. Twenty different mouths slicing cake on my coffee table and struggling to cut it into bites with underpowered forks against handheld, flimsy plates turned my living room into a mess quicker than Old St. Nick could ascend a chimney. I didn’t mind so much, I was too busy trying to accept gifts and play the host by saying hello to the unmanageable mob of people. It was a fantastically big end to the holiday weekend.

The night before, Christmas Eve, I was with Aunt Fong in her hometown, a much larger city than my university town. She took me to a hotel, where a church group had rented a ballroom to put on a Christmas program. People lined the long rows of folding tables, watching the front as new groups came out to sing or speakers shared a teaching or narration. Of course, Aunt Fong had to show me off, so she brought me up front, stuck a microphone in my hand, and had me sing a Christmas song for everyone. Speaking as a man who hates approaching people and feels uncomfortable talking to cashiers at the store, I can say honestly that I was an exceptionally good sport about singing for a ballroom-full of Chinese strangers.

Aunt Fong showing me off. The hat was not my choice.

Aunt Fong showing me off. The hat was not my choice.

I'm the tall blurry one in the back. Aunt Fong is on my right.

I’m the tall blurry one in the back. Aunt Fong is on my right.

After the Christmas program ended, Aunt Fong and I headed toward the shopping district. Meanwhile, my phone received “Merry Christmas!” text messages without ceasing. We were out after ten o’clock at night, but the streets and stores were filled with people, probably more crowded than I had ever seen them in that city. That is a noteworthy event. But no one was caroling or wishing passersby “Merry Christmas!” Instead, it seemed like a tame version of a Mardi Gras festival. Children were buying balloons shaped into spirals and other creative shapes, people were wearing carnival masks, and food vendors were on every street corner. I had a hard time getting my bearings in the midst of the colors, crowd, and confusion, and it felt dreamlike as Aunt Fong pulled me through the streets and shopping malls.

IMG_1955

The next morning, I returned to my university apartment. Grant and Sue, my Australian neighbors on the fourth floor, had invited me over for Christmas dinner. Also, there was Lee Ahram, the Korean teacher, and Theresa, a Chinese student who had studied in Brisbane- Grant and Sue’s hometown. Sue, savvy shopper that she was, had managed to find a countertop toaster oven, probably the only one in the whole city, so she was able to prepare roasted chicken and potatoes for our meal. China, like many countries in Asia, only has gas burners in its residential kitchens; because the only ways people prepare food at home are by boiling or stir-frying (less commonly, foods could also be steamed over a burner, or stewed or braised).

Grant, Theresa, Sue, and Ahram.

Grant, Theresa, Sue, and Ahram.

Western meals were difficult to prepare in China. Besides the difference in produce, it was hard to come by certain ingredients and spices, and there were no ovens to bake anything. People were stuck with bad store-bought cake.

So, Sue’s Christmas dinner was a special meal for a special time for our group of assorted foreigners. We were far from our families at home, which was a daily heartache around the holidays, but we had a bond as strangers in a strange land who pined for a Christmas celebration with some solemnity and familial warmth.

At the end of the meal, Sue brought out plates of Christmas pudding, which I was as eager to see as I was to taste. Being an American, the only pudding I had ever seen was Jell-O pudding, and on rare occasion, bread pudding. I had heard talk about pudding in British media, and I had always assumed it was some formless dessert that only the English could love, and that America should probably send a delegation to tell them to start building some structure into their dishes.

Well, the Christmas pudding was formless, but it was a custard not far off from American pudding. Sue had spooned it over a slice of, I think, fruit cake. I can say for sure it was custard and a slice of dense cake. I thought it was pretty good, but Sue lamented that it didn’t turn out quite right; she had to use a can of not very good custard mix, the only kind she could find.

It was all well and good by me. My time in China was often a lonely and isolated experience; having that mid-year holiday celebration was a reviving oasis.

One of my favorite and Aunt Fong's least favorite photos. The girl on the left was a student of mine named Tiffany.

One of my favorite and Aunt Fong’s least favorite photos. The girl on the left was a student of mine named Tiffany.

Normal in China: Dancing in the Park

Women in face masks, undaunted, dancing through the smog. (Image found at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/14636767510958867/)

Women in face masks, undaunted, dancing through the smog. (Image found at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/14636767510958867/)

While Korea may be the break dancing capital of Asia, if not the world, the people of China also have dancing fever.

I didn’t know a thing about dancing in China before I saw the country firsthand; I just happened to skip over “Chinese dance” in all my Wikipedia searches. While in China, it never would have occurred to me to look for it, but dancing was everywhere. Dancing ladies were everywhere. They could be found in every park- on my campus, throughout every city I visited- arranged in an informal rank and file grid. One woman would lead from the front, playing dance songs from a portable stereo and demonstrating the dance as the lines of older ladies behind her struggled a half-beat behind to match her moves. They listened to anything with an active beat, so there were bouncy techno songs as well as easy-listening pop songs, even songs that sounded like Chinese opera overlaid with a beat that could support choreography. The dances were all free-flowing line dances where the women would step back and forth, swing their arms, and twirl. Nothing too agile or challenging.

Like clockwork, the dancing ladies could be depended on to be at the park at the same time every morning or evening. In the evenings, the largest dancing groups would gather after sunset in the plazas near the largest parks and shopping districts. Upwards of a hundred women would form their lines and move to the beat (or lag slightly behind it) as a semi-disciplined square. It was clear that some of the women near the front of the group had put in their practice hours and could hit their marks. Most, though, were playing catch-up as they rehearsed, trying to commit the dance moves to memory as they stomped in a circle and craned their necks to watch the leader from over their shoulders. I didn’t fault them for it. I admired the group spirit and the regular, dutiful exercise habit.

The dancing groups had found a way to come together for daily activity and social interaction. They were diligent, yet informal groups. They didn’t require a gym membership and no one had to register for a class or sign a waiver, as they would be expected to do in America. And yet it was organized, it was not like a game of pick-up basketball or football which lacked cohesion and broke up over a rules dispute or because of flagging participation by the players. The dancing groups became a happy, everyday sight for me, and after a while I found the familiar dance songs repeating in my head. What a wonderful thing, I thought, if only Americans would refuse to commute home by car to sit alone in front of screens and instead join up to learn to dance or exercise together.

Here are some photos of people doing kung fu and exercising in the park. Their presence was an everyday sight.

Cross beams could be found in every park. Mostly older folks would come stretch their leg up on one and hold a ballet stretch for several minutes. I saw a couple small old ladies who could stretch their foot up on a beam higher than their head.

Cross beams could be found in every park. Mostly older folks would come stretch their leg up on one and hold a ballet stretch for several minutes. I saw a couple small old ladies who could stretch their foot up on a beam higher than their head.

Outdoor badminton and basketball courts were common, as were outdoor ping-pong tables.

Outdoor badminton and basketball courts were very common, as were outdoor ping-pong tables.

You could always find men performing impressive feats of strength or acrobatics. They don't walk around with bodybuilder muscles, but you never knew which old man in China had surprising strength.

You could always find men performing impressive feats of strength or acrobatics. They don’t walk around with bodybuilder muscles, but you never knew which old man in China had surprising strength.

This man is doing some kind of kung fu routine.

This man is doing some kind of kung fu routine.

Crowds like this were very common. The city had a few modern indoor gyms, but most people were used to neighborhood outdoor facilities.

Crowds like this were very common. The city had a few modern indoor gyms, but most people were used to neighborhood outdoor facilities.

Plenty of other activities happened at the parks, too. Old men would bike their birds out for some fresh air exhibition, kids and adults would fly kites year round, at night there was sometimes outdoor karaoke, and there might be weekly outdoor flea markets on the plaza spaces.

Plenty of other activities happened at the parks, too. Old men would bike their birds out for some fresh air exhibition, kids and adults would fly kites year round, at night there was sometimes outdoor karaoke, and there might be weekly outdoor flea markets on the plaza spaces.

Probably the roughest living I saw in China were these houseboats on the riverside park.

Probably the roughest living I saw in China were these houseboats on the riverside park. Good balance required to navigate those gangplanks.

I'm not sure, but the geese might have belonged to the house boat people. There were some shoddy old farm houses in the park itself, and the geese also could have belonged to those people.

I’m not sure, but the geese might have belonged to the house boat people. There were some shoddy old farm houses in the park itself, and the geese also could have belonged to those people.

The Real China: Hospitals

Patients in the front lobby waiting for their number their number to be called.

Patients in the front lobby waiting for their number their number to be called.

Imagine taking your children here or seeking urgent help for yourself in this chaos. This was in Shanghai, a first-tier city, so keep in mind that these are much better-than-average facilities. I visited hospitals in third-tier cities that looked like they had been abandoned until recently; hallways were dark, floors were dirty, beds were messes of blankets and floor mats, and in one instance, the urinal emptied onto the floor.

Here, I squeezed into a packed elevator and rode it up to the 15th floor, with people pushing out and shoving in, hearing the weight alarm beep, and shuffling out again, for several stops on the ride up. In another stuffed elevator, a woman at the control panel screamed violently at a passenger whose bag was blocking the door. In Chinese, there are no polite words and phrases like “Please move.” In the 15th floor lobby, people with tumors and other obvious maladies were waiting shoulder to shoulder, or making room so that a physician could take pictures of a screaming little girl’s deformed hand as her parents stretched her wrist out against the wall. There was no privacy, no order, no expectation to be seen in a timely or sympathetic fashion. China, to any civilized visitor, is a nightmare experience of constant crowds, filth, noise, and stress.

Waiting in line and pushing through the masses in a modern Chinese hospital.

Waiting in line and pushing through the masses in a modern Chinese hospital.

My Hospital Experiences in Semi-Urban China

The first time I entered a Chinese hospital, I was tagging along with Aunt Fong as she visited her sister, a nurse. I wanted out.

Once we were in the exam room- a bare, concrete floor with peeling plaster walls, filled with only a clunky wooden table, and a metal cabinet with glass cupboard doors, illuminated by the dim fluorescent bulb overhead and the street lights filtered in through the barred windows- I thought this must be a place where Chinese police take suspects to confess. To get out of that hospital, I probably would have signed whatever bogus papers they put in front of me, detailing my alleged crimes against their People’s Republic.

I seriously was giving thanks to God that I did not presently need the services of the hospital. This was at night, after hours, when there were no patients in the lobby or quiet hallways, so I was spared from seeing anyone suffering. About two months later, I did need the services of the larger city hospital, badly.

At Sanda (kickboxing) practice, my instructor would always pair me up with his nephew, who was easily many levels above the rest of the class, and who never pulled his punches when it came time to pummel me. It happened that he and I were sparring in front of the older students in the class (a lot of elementary and junior high-aged students also came to practice after school, but they were usually occupied with horseplay at the other end of the gym). Whenever there is an audience, the act increases in intensity and commitment. I never set out to hurt anyone while sparring, but the goal of landing blows means pain is never completely avoidable, and the natural rhythm of two sparring partners will go back and forth and often escalate. My instructor’s nephew and I often had sustained battles that were basically real fights, only lacking a referee and a bell to separate us. I had to bring more intensity than I naturally preferred; the beatings would not soften on my account.

That night in October, when my sparring partner and I were the center of attention, he was landing shots and getting the best of me as usual. I became frustrated, but I didn’t try and rush at him in anger. Without much thought, I quickly snapped my left leg up and let a kick fly against his face. The timing for a head kick is difficult to make, but this strike landed solid. There was an audible thud, I saw my opponent’s pupils rattle, and I stepped back in shock.

I started pleading how sorry I was; my instructor applauded me and told me good job, not to worry, there would be no hard feelings. I still feared a reprisal from a young man who was very capable of dishing one out. As he went into the bathroom to wash out the blood in his mouth and check for injuries, I meekly retreated to the edge of the mat to check my foot. Meanwhile, all the older students were in an uproar, telling me enthusiastically how great the kick was and encouraging me to knock him out, pumping their fists and cheering “K.O.!” I suspected they also had received punishment from my sparring partner’s fists and shins.

On my foot, there was a small cut, right on the top of the base of my second toe, the small joint where the metatarsal meets the phalange. I wanted to wash it off and put a bandage on it, but everyone forbid me. Aunt Fong even put a plastic bag around my foot before I took a shower. The locals were more terrified of their water supply than I was. They might have been right to be so cautious, but over the next few days, things went from bad to worse. Their methods- rubbing the gash with alcohol swabs and taping a square of gauze over it- did me no good either.

The day after the incident, I was walking with a limp and feeling shameful that such a small wound would force me out of practice. I couldn’t understand why my foot was so stiff and painful from one gash. It was no matter, I consoled myself, I had no school the next week because of the National Day holiday, and I could relax and recover on my vacation in Shanghai.

Aunt Fong and I had planned the trip, but business prevented her from joining us at the last moment, so I went with Uncle Jiang by train and met his sister and her daughter in China’s largest city. They were on holiday, too, and our group met up with Uncle Jiang’s son, who lived and worked in the city, for a few days of sightseeing.

Limping my way through the Shanghai crowds.

Limping my way through the Shanghai crowds.

The first day, I soldiered on, hobbling through the shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-back street crowds. Back at the hotel, we examined my foot and saw it had bled through both the gauze and my sock. The yellow, orange, and pink discharge look awful, and my foot was swollen and painful to the touch. Removing or slipping on my shoe caused me to wince sharply in pain. I tried to convince myself that my wound would heal in a few days and I could tough out the pain, but Uncle Jiang saw things otherwise. After checking my foot and replacing the gauze, he said no more outings (no discussion), so our group spent most of the next two days in the hotel room. I did get to walk outside on occasion to get something to eat.

I at least got in one day of sightseeing in upscale Pudong, Shanghai.

I at least got in one day of sightseeing in upscale Pudong, Shanghai.

For the remaining time on our Shanghai holiday, my foot swelled more and more, and when I took off my shoe in the crowded train station as we waited for our homebound train, the wound was so infected that it oozed out pus when I touched it with an alcohol swab. It was disgusting, painful, and scary all at once. I was afraid for my foot.

After a breezy ride back from Shanghai on the G Train, Uncled Jiang and I took a taxi straight to a hotel restaurant to meet Aunt Fong some of their old medical college colleagues. After eating, she whisked me off to the medical college hospital for what would turn out to be a traumatic afternoon.

The street in front of the hospital was closed to traffic, so knickknack and toy vendors rolled out tarps to hawk their wares, and patients and their family members poured out to the lobby’s many open doors like ants out of a mound. Since Aunt Fong worked for the medical college affiliated with the hospital, she led me around as she pleased, trying to find a doctor she knew personally. We never stopped at a desk to check-in or pause at any time to sit and fill out paperwork and wait. Aunt Fong rushed through the place, with me limping behind, the scenery pouring over me and stupefying my thoughts. Aunt Fong cut through the crowd without turning her head; I oscillated left and right between patients with bandaged heads and open wounds and the huddles of country farmers on the chairs and on the floor. The atmosphere was not unlike the bedlam of the nearby street markets. Any area was fair game for sitting or lying down, the sound of people loudly talking rang through the halls, patients crowded around doctors as they filled out prescriptions one-by-one for the scattered line-up of people in the exam room, and the building interior looked as if it hadn’t been maintained in the past 30 years.

Looking at the walls with thin paint and the floors worn smooth, the old white window casings and wire grating, I was aghast how doctors could practice medicine here and how patients could convalesce while lying in a mess of blankets, for example, in a bed in the hallway. American hospitals try and remove the unpleasantness and make the painful, uncomfortable experience as tolerable as possible. Their freshly painted walls, bright lighting, area carpeting, padded chairs, wall art, informative posters, private waiting rooms, and well-ordered interchange between departments all project sterility and a soothing sense of expertise. While the fear of procedures and bad news prevents patients from relaxing, the hospitals have been designed and built to reduce as much anxiety as can be.

I don’t know what to compare the Chinese hospital environment to, except the many other dilapidated public buildings in China in need of a good janitor and maintenance team, or better yet, a wrecking crew. I will say this: whenever I’ve seen pictures of America from around the turn of the 20th century, I have always gotten a feeling that the buildings were unclean and full of cracked glass and dirty residue that gathered in the corners. I would question: is this the poor photographic quality, or was the world really so dingy back then? The people themselves looked desperate and skeletal, having grim, hollow expressions and wearing clothes that appeared tattered and dirty, as if they had been collecting dust in an attic. If the people were dressed nicely, as many were, I marvel at how dignified they looked in contrast to the casual gym shirts, sweat pants, yoga pants, jeans, and sandals of Americans today.

Skeletal, grim, tattered, dirty, dingy, cracked- that is how the Chinese hospital looked to me. It was as if I were wearing X-ray specs from an old comic book, only instead of see-through, the filter placed over my eyes made everything dirty, dim, and faded. Every square foot of building and every haggard figure combined to form a visual masterwork on the themes of urban despair and the horrors of poverty. It would be futile to try and tally all the character traits of the twelve-story building and its hundreds of inhabitants, their dusty cotton jackets and dirt-stained hands. All I can intimate about the hospital in writing (it deserved an oil treatment from a Realist painter) is the feel of my pallid complexion and stiff throat as I tried to calm myself and will my shaky body to walk smoothly through the halls of grime, injury, and disease. I was filled with disquiet and I brindled like a leashed animal being dragged forward after it smelled medicine and fear, although I had to play the part of a steady man of reserve.

Please don’t misunderstand my narrative on the hospital and its patients. I do not look down on the poor or disparage them (I’m poor by American standards, but that is a very relative standard). My terror was in the confines of a chaotic facility where poverty and pestilence joined forces to put on a show of suffering. A local friend I met, who had spent two years studying in America, told me that the government had opened up the city’s hospitals to all the surrounding country towns, so the facilities had become overrun with mobs of travelers seeking help. Relatives of the ill often did not have the money to afford a simple hotel room, so they would lay out cardboard and blankets and sleep in the elevator lobbies. In the wild mix of humanity, filling every exam room and waiting area, could be found the local city residents, in casual clothes, and the rural poor- no romantic country swains of pastoral imagery, but more like the crowds who mocked and scoffed at Don Quixote, wearing thick, all-weather coats and pants.

The different types of people were so many, and so intermixed, that I could not separate who was who or what office each area performed. I was overwhelmed. People walked into exam rooms as they pleased and watched the physician over his shoulder as he wrote a prescription for someone else. The talking never stopped. But as rude and unruly as the masses were, I could not help but feel great sorrow and pity when I saw painfully sick men on a hospital bed in the hallway (there was not enough space for every patient in the rooms) surrounded by family members who were weary from standing around all day. I felt helpless, not having a way to heal or comfort these people.

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After Aunt Fong found a couple different doctors to ask for information (she never paused to greet anyone, she would immediately start speaking at someone and they would answer right back) we got on an overcrowded elevator (the only kind of elevator in a Chinese public building), headed for the 11th floor. She walked straight past the Nurses’ Station counter and into the small doctors’ and nurses’ office. One of Aunt Fong’s friends from the luncheon, herself a medical doctor, was along with us, and she and my aunt hurriedly made conversation with the staff in the office until they found the doctor they were looking for. A faceless man wearing the uniform white lab coat and face mask sat me down on a chair and set my injured foot up on a stool. After examining the infected wound and making some remarks to Aunt Fong and her friend, he went to the cabinet and pulled out a large pair of tweezers, cotton alcohol swabs, and a metal pan.

Aunt Fong’s friend looked at me with pity and gripped my shoulder. Aunt Fong grabbed my hand and told me, “Close yo’w eyes.” I focused, trying to recite familiar psalms in my head as the doctor went to work. The acute pain of the tweezers inside my skin caused me to grit my teeth and breathe hard out my nostrils. I thought it was terrible but I could suffer through it. The doctor’s work took time, and the waves of pain soon made me start to sweat. Before long, I began to feel flushed with intense heat.

I opened my eyes just enough to see the doctor finishing. I weakly tried to wave him away. My neck could no longer keep my head erect and I knew I was about to pass out. Aunt Fong and her friend urged me to sit up, but I remained slumped over with my head between my knees. They lifted me under their shoulders, and with one Chinese woman under each of my long arms, they walked me past the Nurses’ Station and into an exam room. The sight of a six-foot tall (nearly two meters to them) limp, foreign body stumbling forward with assistance was quite a sight for them and I inspired a lot of giggles when I returned the next week for a check-up.

I stood out in China.

I stood out in China.

After lying down for a while and regaining the color in my face, we were back on the elevator, going down and turning away surplus doctors and patients who tried boarding on the floors between the eleventh and the ground.
There was still the matter of the bones in my rigid foot. Aunt Fong led me down another hallway and grabbed a radiologist who was having a smoke in the hallway, outside the X-Ray room. He held his lit cigarette with one hand as he adjusted the camera above my foot with his free hand. I quietly laughed at the scene, unthinkable now in America, and let the comic relief soothe my earlier experience.

My foot healed, slowly, and after several more doctor visits (with alcohol swabs and metal pans, but no tweezers) and a few months’ time, I was able to curl my toes again and walk without limping. I never saw a bill for any of those visits. I assumed that in China it was all about who you know (which it is) and Aunt Fong had called on her relationships to help me out. Really, I just followed her, received care, and didn’t ask questions.

At the university, I did pay once for antibiotics when I came down with bad, flu-like symptoms. Two students escorted me from room to room and helped translate for me so the doctor could write me a prescription. I learned from the students that their mandatory student health insurance cost 100 yuan per year, which is around 17 American dollars.

Yet, there was one incident that did threaten to leave me with an onerous medical bill, which brings me back to the Monday after the awful weekend bus trip. After two days sitting in pain for hours at the sales office and declining food, I lay about Aunt Fong’s apartment, reading books and not even stirring to eat. I got up several times throughout the day to use the toilet, but other than that I did not have the strength to do anything other than lie in pain. Rightfully worried, Aunt Fong took me to the hospital that night.

By luck, I was able to go to the newly built city hospital on its first day open to the public. It already had people sleeping in the elevator lobbies and lounging on the steps outside, but the equipment inside was clean and unused. Before this hospital was available, the closest “Western” hospital was a short train ride away in Nanjing. Sue, the Australian, made her husband, Grant, promise to immediately take her there if anything serious ever happened to her.

A nurse inserted an IV into my arm, and she let two bags of fluid drain into my dehydrated body. An hour later, I stood up to go back to Aunt Fong’s. Or so I thought.

I made it into the elevator with her, but as the doors started to close, I felt my body slumping to the ground. For a moment, I lost consciousness, then I struggled to blink open my eyes and watch as the elevator’s button panel tilted to an oblique angle before me. Aunt Fong was making panicked noises as she tugged on my arm and pulled me out of the elevator. The sounds were murky, but I could hear her crying out for help and running down the hall. The clamor of footsteps came rushing back to me, and I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to see the doctors or nurses, but I felt two of them pick me up and sit me in a wheelchair.

Fong bian,” I breathed out softly. I needed to use the bathroom, I told them, immediately. It must have been the IV fluids; I needed to clear out my system. They wheeled me to the bathroom quickly, then two aides cautiously watched me over the squatting toilet, and in a dire moment like that there was no thought of shame. I sat back on the wheelchair for a short ride, then they transferred me to a bed and rushed me down the hallways as fast as they could push me.

The fluorescent lights overhead blurred past my vision like dashed freeway lines. I struggled to blink my eyes open, afraid that if I closed them I would slip away and fall asleep in the biblical sense. I could hear the doctors’ urgent voices and Aunt Fong asking panicked questions as she ran alongside them. Repeating the refrain of familiar psalms in my head, I willed myself not to lose consciousness.

I was taken to the top floor and wheeled to an open stall in the Intensive Care Unit. Sometime during the rush, a nurse squeezed two tubes of glucose into my mouth as another gave me two or three injections- I’m not clear on how many I actually received. I remembered that a friend of mine who trained in emergency medicine told me that the glucose was a disgusting, gelatinous blob, but going down it tasted sweet and smooth to me. If the FDA allowed it, I’m sure companies could market it as a new snack for sugar-happy American children; many of the yogurts and puddings on store shelves are not far off.

Aunt Fong told me that she stayed with another nurse by my bedside that night. After I was started on a new IV drip she watched me drift to sleep and then worried over my heart rate on the monitor. In the morning, a doctor who spoke English told me that they were concerned about my heart rate because it was so slow. “In fact,” he said, “last night it stopped two times.” I learned that the hospital wanted me to stay for two more days as they built up my dehydrated body with IV fluids and monitored my heart.

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Most of that first morning I spent alone, then Uncle Jiang and Aunt Fong came by to visit me. Aunt Fong brought me a bowl of noodles to eat, and for the first time in a few days I was hungry. Uncle Jiang kept me company for a while when Aunt Fong had to go to her office or attend department meetings at her medical college. He and I didn’t talk much to each other. I just read from my e-book and he would look up English words in his pocket electronic translator or frequently instruct me, “Rest. Rest. You must… have a rest.” He would motion toward me as if pushing my forehead back to recline.

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When it was only Aunt Fong and me, I told her, “I thought I was going to die last night. I thought I might die here in China.” She told me she feared the same thing and said that if I had died, she would die, too.
Over the next couple days, my boredom was greatly relieved when a few friends I met through Aunt Fong came and visited me, her nephew brought me some movies to watch, and the university’s Director of Foreign Affairs, Mr. “Oliver” Zhang, stopped by to give me some chocolates and offer condolences.

By the second day, I felt decent enough to really walk out of the hospital (I was tired of having a nurse follow me into the bathroom and hold up the heart monitor attached to my body by round stickers), but the doctors still wanted to perform one more test. A man I assumed to be a senior doctor at the hospital, due to the squad of nurses and interns following him around, filled a syringe full of silver liquid and plunged it into my IV tube. My heart rate, which had recently settled into the 50’s after surging up and down the first day, zoomed up to 130 beats per minute, then plateaued and gradually slowed down. The head doctor gave me a thumbs-up, smiled, and exclaimed, “Very good!” My heart rate while asleep was below 40 beats per minute, which alarmed them, but the test proved my heart was in good condition and pumping at a healthy pace.

The silver test fluid also blurred my vision for the rest of the evening, but that was the last I had to endure. The nurses monitored me overnight again, and in the morning I was free to go. Walking out, I observed the loungers lying on the floor of the elevator lobby and the overflowing trash bins. I pointed out to Aunt Fong how disordered and slovenly things were, especially remarkable since this was the first week this hospital has been open. As I had tried pointing out to her many times before, China does not “need time.” The problem of China is not modernization, infrastructure, or money. As a trashed, brand new hospital shows, the problem is the culture of the people. They feel clean in their conscience when acting dirty. This is not to pick on poor farmers who had no change of clothing or clean beds to sleep in. Poverty doesn’t force people to throw their trash on hospital floors.

My view from my top floor hospital window. The window pane itself was clean, it was the outside which was so dirty.

My view from my top floor hospital window. The window pane itself was clean, it was the outside which was so dirty.

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Naturally, I was relieved to put the whole experience behind me. I thought it would all be over after I walked out the doors, just the same as my other escorted hospital visits. Then, I watched Aunt Fong on the phone in her dining room, pacing the wooden floor,nearly in hysterics with the person on the other end. After she hung up, she hugged me, in tears. I owed the hospital a couple thousand dollars for my stay. Aunt Fong wasn’t speaking on the phone to the hospital, though. She related to me that she was speaking to the heads of my university, and she had become so emotional because of what had happened to me. She expected my school to take responsibility, and they ended up covering my bill.

I don’t understand how it all worked out, I was simply full of thanks that I was treated and it was paid for. As part of my university teaching contract, I didn’t have health insurance, only a very small stipend for healthcare expenses. I asked about this before I signed on the dotted line, and the university said that China’s healthcare was “different.” No fuller explanation was ever given, I think mostly because the Chinese themselves don’t understand their systems.

I inferred from the way banking and other institutions were run in China that healthcare treatment (appointments, procedures, and payment) must be based on relationships and the discretion of the business. What I mean is, a person cannot go to a Chinese bank and expect the same treatment for the same services every time. The bank isn’t governed strictly by a system of policies. If the bank teller tells you she cannot make a money transfer without certain documents and several mangers’ approval, as an example, you cannot tell her that the teller you spoke with last week did it all by himself without needing any extra documents. If she says it cannot be done, then arguing about written rules or past experience is moot. Chinese culture does not place a great amount of value or authority in written policies and standards. Business relationships are extensions of personal relationships. How your individual case is handled, in law and business, is largely up to the mood of the authority figure.

A friendly mediator in this environment is likely to tell you to jump through hoops or wait until another time. Have patience, because “that’s China.” Now, I was never directly held up by this type of runaround, but I was aware of the way the system worked. At any moment, the baton of responsibility and social power might be passed. In the Chinese mentality, people did not expect to get anywhere or receive the treatment they desired unless they had personal connections to someone with power, who could pull the right levers, in which case no paperwork was needed and all problems were solved. Perhaps the Chinese are mostly right about how the world works, and they have only made an implicit social phenomenon explicit.

So those were my hospital experiences in China. There were other times I visited hospitals- I visited a major hospital in Shanghai, I briefly walked through a hallway and bathroom of a city hospital in semi-rural China, I went to a patient room in a small hospital near my university by walking up unlit stone steps in a dark alley, I visited a new mother and her infant daughter lying in a narrow room with a row of five beds and other women and their families pressed close together, and I saw a young man with a broken arm wrapped up in the sorriest looking cast and sling I have ever seen- but I mention these major episodes in the spirit of my other stories written here. I do not offer, I could not offer, a survey on the Chinese healthcare system. What I can share is my individual experience, which another foreign traveler would share much of if he ventured into the heart of China (except the 3-day stay, hopefully), and I can share my perspective on particular Chinese customs and culture.

If you ever set foot in the real China, you very likely might see things differently; I’ve met people who are both much more enthused and much more jaded on China than I am. One thing, though, you could not disagree over with me: visiting a Chinese hospital will make you count your blessings in having lived in the West.

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