An International Affair

Dear China,

It's over.

I'm leaving you.  I'm getting back with America.  It's not you, it's me.  I don't know I guess I just sometimes feel like we're speaking totally different languages.  I mean, we've had some great times together for sure:

I'll always remember the vacant, expressionless old men with whom I engaged in staring contests bordering on Parkinson's, and the chess games where I would be dominated by such old men.  And the type A personalities that inevitably became the crossing guards.  What they lacked in authority they made up for with whistling their loud, red, whistles.

I'll soon miss the men in black suits, white socks, and brown shoes, with a belt matching anything but those three colors, holding their dirtied pants at anything but the right height; the many, many girls in tights and shorts, all of them in heels and none of them aware of how to walk.  My eyes will search in vain for the men holding purses - it isn't girly if all of you are doing it, right?

I'll miss the bones in my food, not for how they flavored meat with that gritty texture, but how they flavored life with asphyxiation.  I'll miss the convenience store where there was always 10 attendants with only one open register.  I guess the rest of you were petting the cat that belonged to no one and everyone at the same time.  I'll miss the isles and isles of fish flavored dried food and your green tea Oreos.

And who could forget Kingsley, the majestic and mysterious dog that bid us adieu and welcomed us home every day.  I'll miss you Russian, the German Shepherd.  You barked at us anytime we passed and with such ferocity that you alone could have mauled an entire middle school on your worst day.  I know it's because you cared.

I hope we meet again, Chengdu cleanup crew.  Who cares if there is trash all over the place?  You recognize that occasional leaf on the sidewalk for what it is - a threat; a top priority, to be swept away at once.  I'll miss the overnight construction projects.  Your building code may have been written on a single sheet of toilet paper but it's not about fatalities - it's about results.

I'll miss the bikers, the mopeds, the taxis and drivers.  Not one of you knows what you're doing but you all got a license for trying and that's what counts.  I'll miss the land where rite-of-way is all about guts - either they'll get you where you need to go or splatter all over the pavement.  But with enough confidence and a little luck, you might just beat that high score on Frogger.

You see?  It's not that things weren't great with us.  They were wonderful.  It's just, America understands me.  America gives me the freedoms I need.  She doesn't care what I say or what my religion is and right now, that's what matters to me.  She lets me use the internet without monitoring what sites I go to - she trusts me.  You on the other hand, just don't have that kind of faith in me.  You can be really closed-minded.  You aren't very creative, and to be honest, you smell.

But I still think you are amazing.  I know there is someone out there for you and I wish you all the best.  Maybe sometime in the future we might get together again, but I just need a break from all this for now.  I hope we can still be friends.

Sincerely,
Jake

The Epicenter

Last Friday our program went to Beichuan, the epicenter of the Earthquake that rocked the Sichuan Province in China, 2008.  I was about to type something to the effect of, "It seems like natural disasters are becoming more and more prevalent," when in reality it's probably that we have just become more aware of them in the last couple decades due to the internet.  After all, if not for the internet, I wouldn't be typing this now, would I?  But all that being said, we have seen some pretty catastrophic natural disasters in the last few years.  I'm thinking the earthquake in Haiti, the BP Oil Spill (at least as far as its environmental implications are concerned), the recent earthquake in Japan and I'll go ahead and rehash hurricane Katrina.  These aren't in order and their causes aren't all similar but the effects are unanimously negative: economies blown apart, governments shaken, cities crumbled, families displaced and many people dead or wounded.  Long story short, nobody's happy.

A ceiling

So when we were told that we were going to the museum of the ruble that was Beichuan, I couldn't help but wonder if we were treading where we weren't welcome; if people were rolling in their graves as we unwittingly walked on top of them.  This was my first experience in the scene that is the aftermath of a natural disaster and was less than inspiring.  We got off the bus and for the first time, a group of white people wasn't the thing worth taking pictures of.  All over the place were Chinese people staring at the buildings, at the debris.  Many of the structures were being supported by multiple, thick, metal beams to keep them from falling upon onlookers.  The major sites were dotted with small informative, posts to tell you initial estimates of casualties compared with actual number, as well as a little information regarding what the building was used for, and what it originally looked like.

Before

The buildings were in varying states of disrepair.  All were cracked, some with warped window and door frames.  Broken glass everywhere.  Some buildings were tilted at angles as if a giant game of dominoes had been put on hold and others had just fallen over completely.  We walked on a bridge that took us through the middle of one - to our left we could look at the floor of one story and to our right we could see the ceiling of the next. The path weaved in and out of destruction and the sidewalk had become stair-steps in some places, in light of the event.  The major highway that tunneled through a hill to connect Beichuan to ten other cities has since become a waterfall.

Finally, we got to the housing district.  You could see mattresses displaced and a desk knocked over.  Markers had collected in one corner of a house where they had rolled to.  It's one thing when you see a broken window or a door hanging off its hinges but when you can look into a bathroom and realize someone lived there... that's when it all becomes real.

I guess at first, I was a little appauled at the idea of making this city-gone-cemetery into a museum.  That it was disrespectful of the Chinese government to do such a thing.  But then I thought about the alternatives.  Obviously no one could live there.  The materials couldn't be reused because just collecting them would pose too much danger.  So maybe the best thing really was to make a museum, not to make money off misfortune, but to honor the bereaved.  At the end we saw a large memorial, honoring the departed, covered with rocks spelling out "5.12," the date of the event.

Further away was the new city, at a better location.  The original city was by many beautiful mountains, likely as a defensible position in earlier years, but the new city is by a river which will help boost it's economy.  The buildings there are comparatively well built and are painted in matching color schemes which is something that other cities in China can't stand up to.  It has some lawns and young trees - in all reality, it reminds me of a western city.  No one can deny that the earthquake was a disaster but it has allowed Beichuan to rebuild, to emerge as a newer and more sophisticated city, at least in appearance.  Hopefully other cities won't need such nature-related coercion but if China is smart, they can key in on this silver lining and look into developing their other cities in ways fitting for a developed country.

And They Shall Call Me "Captain Cross Walk"

I have a confession, America.  I am a superhero.  Shocker, I know – it was news to me too, but only by coming to China, have I uncovered my superhuman ability to jaywalk and dodge bicycles.  If you’ve seen any pictures of Chinese streets, you’ve probably noticed a sea of bikers, maybe with a few cars.  Well these days, it’s pretty much the same (the bikes have become mopeds and scooters) but there are just as many bikes with ten times as many cars.  The streets are simply unsafe and sidewalks are merely temporarily vacant parking lots.

A certain stereotype says that Chinese drivers are awful, and I’m here to sponsor that idea wholeheartedly.  I’ve witnessed several wrecks, and I myself, have partaken in a bus wreck.  When we heard the vehicles coming to jerking halt and the grinding of metal upon metal, a massive groan rang throughout the bus in such a startling synchronization that we couldn’t help but look at each other with a little bit of pride and a telepathic tossing around of the idea of starting a K-Pop boy band.  But this was not a groan of fear or bewilderment.  It was one of simple frustration; this was just some nuisance that was to be expected.  No one was surprised by a bus wreck – we were just annoyed.

But that’s just the way the roads work.  You don’t really wait your turn, or for the car in front of you to go, or even for the lights to change, in some cases.  You just go whenever you can.  It’s a dog-eat-dog world and apparently China’s the alpha and leading the pack.  I guess this comes as a shock to me because I always pinned collectivist cultures as a mutual understanding of putting the group before the self.  But when the group is in line at the supermarket, the self can get to the front if he’s quick enough and who cares if you hit that old grandma with your cart?  She’s just going to spit on you in the street tomorrow, anyways…

The difference between collectivism and individualism isn’t the goal of each particular person.  It’s how you obtain it.  In America, while we might road rage pretty heavily, we hold open doors for people, we pick up something dropped for someone with their hands full – in general, if it’s not too inconvenient we’ll help somebody.  Maybe this stems from trying to prop ourselves up as caring individuals, to begin relationships on a positive note, make good impressions, etc., but in China, it’s all about what I want, and when I want it, almost as if everyone has come to the same conclusion that there are just too many people to hold open every door, too many people to go out of your way for small acts of kindness. People disregard others not out of selfishness, but because it’s literally too exhausting to apologize for every toe stepped on and every shoulder bumped into. My first week in China saw me saying “Sorry,” more times than I can count.  And the reactions I got were the weirdest looks that I’ve received in all my experience here. So you stop trying and you let the next person catch the door; someone else can clean up your litter.  The problem is that this turns into (not so) controlled chaos in any public setting.

My favorite instance of such chaos is the immovable object-unstoppable force conundrum: just because I’m going down a one-way street and you’re going up that same one-way street, doesn’t mean either one of us should have to back up to let the other through - why would we do that when we can just honk at each other?

Perhaps I’m being unfair.  Perhaps I just don’t fully understand the rules of China.  I should probably keep an open mind, right?  Then again, an open mind isn’t the Chinese way. 

Thanks for reading. 

P.S. Dr. Seus knows his stuff: