Buying milk and beer

Tonight I bought a carton of milk and a tall boy at a convenience store and as you can see, the clerk added something to the bag.  So the million dollar question is....do I drink the beer with a straw...or do I drink the whole carton of milk at once?

Back on it.... again

I sort of closed this blog down a few years ago when I left Shenzhen.  Since then, I moved to Charlotte, NC and worked for a year, moved again within Charlotte, worked for another year, learned to have some fun, said goodbye again to my girlfriend when she moved back to China, worked another year, got married, said goodbye again to my family and a new nephew, and moved back to China with my new wife.  

And so here I am again, re-starting the "living in the Middle Kingdom" blog.  I look at what my friends/acquaintances write about, and do, and I realize this blog was just sort of an afterthought most of the time anyway.  But, while Nora Pfeiffer may not realize it, I just spent an hour reading her blog about her life in Bolivia even though I haven't talked to her in years.  So maybe somebody will enjoy this blog from time to time.  Funny stuff happens to me sometimes so I might as well share it here.  It's not like I can talk to anybody in Tokyo anyway.

And yeah, so two months after arriving to my new life Shanghai in August, I got an assignment to come to Tokyo to help with our office's busy season.  So, NOW here I am, sitting in my apartment wondering how to feel a bit in control of my life again.  Maybe the first step is to be productive in my personal life.  So, the blog.  Mostly I'm unproductive in my personal life.  I've actually been the opposite of productive over the past few years, and I want to change.  I am constantly not finishing books, constantly forgetting how to play more and more music, seemingly spending more and more time on a computer but not really doing anything.  So, hopefully by putting it out there a bit I can motivate myself by feeling accountable to something other than my own standards for myself.

I also want to share my photography more.  I put stuff on Flickr, but I use it a tad more as a repository rather than a showcase for photos I really like.  Nobody wants to see 500 pictures I took in Location X.  Oh hey my friend Lizzie just IM'd me!  I have been a jerk and not gotten in touch with her in forever.  I feel like crap.  But that she IM'd me right now, while I am writing this is a perfect sign.  My life is going to change now.

. the end .

Dear reader(s):

I am sad to report (and in such an anticlimactic fashion) that this blog has met its end. Well, I guess more reached its end than met its end.

So, it is with many large gaps in time included that I present to you the finished product of my attempt to blog during my year teaching English in China.

This blog pales in comparison to some of my friends' / acquaintances' blogs, in pretty much every way but "Chinese-ness." But, I hope you still found something interesting inside.

a failed attempt at bargaining

The other day I said goodbye to my friend Dylan, who had come to visit me from the U.S. for a couple of weeks. Actually it’s probably pretty shameful that I’m blogging about watches right now instead of about my friend’s visit. But maybe a blog about the latter will come soon.

I had just ridden the KCR (Kowloon-Canton Railway for my stateside readers) from Hong Kong into China, and decided to stop at the market adjacent to the train station. In my hand, next to my metro card in the card holder, was the business card for a watch shop on the first floor of the market. Leslie-Ann’s dad had given it to me after he bought about eight watches there for a laughably low price. I was on a mission for a nice-looking watch (that usually tells the time, that would be great), for any upcoming job interviews.

I was really just going into the market on a whim. The stakes were not high. But then again, they were. I’ve been in China almost a year; surely I ought to be able to haggle a good deal myself, just like Leslie-Ann’s dad! After all, I know exactly which shop he got the watches from. I know what price he paid. Part of the hard work was done for me! I didn’t have to wade through the dozens of other shops selling “handbag-watch-DVD-just looking, ok!” I knew my target, and I knew the price for which they’d be willing to part with quite believable fake watches. The assortment of watches my temporary role model had left with several weeks earlier included a Rolex, at least one Omega, and maybe even a Mont Blanc. I can’t remember exactly. But, each for less than the price of the cheapest watch you can find from the display case at Wal-Mart.

So in I went. The truth is, my confidence dropped every second I looked at more watches….I wasn’t experienced at haggling. I’d never even made a shop-girl cry! How was I supposed to convince her to sell me this watch for less than 10 bucks? Uh oh, next she was being nice to me. Asking me where I’m from. What am I doing in China. Teaching? Oh, that’s great…in Bao’An? Cool! NO GARY -- she doesn’t want to be your friend, Gary. She wants to rip you off. She probably thinks you’re really an expat from Hong Kong, anyway. Well you’re white, Gary, so you’ve gotta be rich no matter where you’re from. Don’t be friends with this girl.

Twenty minutes later. Ok, I said. I found my watches. Two Mont Blancs and one Patek Philippe. I’ve never even heard of the latter, and I’m not sure I’m spelling his/her/its name right. But it looked nice. The Mont Blancs were identical, one with a white face and one with a black.

I snickered to myself as I prepared for the oncoming battle. “How much do you want?” I asked, the words of the question possibly coming out in such a way as to suggest to my new little Chinese enemy-friend that I actually gave a shit what she wanted for the watches. I already knew what the price was. The question was really whether she’d be selling them to me today.

Before I disclose her reply, think back to elementary school. Did you ever have one of those books read to you: How Much Is A Billion? or something like that? The one where they use different kid-tricks to try to make you comprehend how many a billion is, and maybe it made sense at the time but you could never quite wrap your brain around it again when you thought about it later? Sorry for the diversion, but me trying to remember her first price is a lot like this How Much Is A Billion problem I just described. I want to say she said more than 3000 RMB (= going on 250 bucks or so), but beyond that I really couldn’t comprehend whatever ridiculousness came out of her mouth anyway. At this moment, our enemy-friend relationship began to slide towards “enemy.”

I laughed the laugh that hagglers laugh (or that which I thought they are supposed to laugh), and grabbed the calculator to display my own generous offer to her. I gently keyed in “2-1-0” and showed it to her. I had reduced her price by over 90%, but don’t think badly of me. I know she has to sit in that little shop seven days a week for little to no pay, and probably has lots of other problems which, when compared to my life, make her case seem a bit pitiful. But I assure you that no matter how pitiful her life and/or job may be compared to mine or yours, the goal of that life/job on that fateful day was to rip me off so hard that she wouldn’t have to work for another two months if she didn’t want to. Hence I don’t feel bad, and neither should you.

Anyhow, it went something like this, 210 RMB vs. 3 bazillion RMB, for about five minutes. I name a price, she names a price, sometimes changing, sometimes not. I offered many logical reasons why she should agree to my price. The most important of those being that another person (LA’s dad) had already bought half a dozen watches (from what was probably this very same girl) several weeks earlier for less than what I was currently offering! A no-brainer!

My methods were beginning to work! Or were they? She soon offered a 50% reduction. Quite good for those accustomed to retail shopping, but in my case it only meant I was buying three pieces of crap for 1.5 bazillion RMB. I stood firm with my 210 RMB (almost ten dollars for each watch).

In the end, I was defeated. I never used the wild-card that many shoppers use: walking away and pretending not to want the item(s) anymore. You see, when a merchant wants to make the sale but you walk away from the shop, s/he will follow you down the hall screaming “OK OK LAST PRICE!” … and the bargaining will continue.

But I was defeated, and in fact I never even got the chance to use that wild card of walking away. Some would say my bargaining skills need to be refined (probably). I am not experienced enough (quite probably). I’m not hard enough on the seller (definitely). Well that’s also all in how you look at it. I prefer to think I bargained TOO hard! That’s why, after fifteen minutes of 210 RMB vs. 3/1.5 bazillion RMB, the shop girl walked out of her own store, just to get the hell away from me.

Leslie-Ann's adventures

Leslie-Ann has gone to Burma. The country used to be called Myanmar but I don't know the story behind that very well. She went alone, not knowing whether she's meet or even care to meet another foreign traveler. I didn't know much about Burma before Leslie-Ann got really interested in going (after reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning).

After she decided to go, I did a little bit of research and picked up things here and there from Leslie-Ann talking about it. Basically, if you made a short list of countries in the world whose governments were doing horrible horrible things to their people, Burma would be on the list. North Korea would too. Sometimes I complain about China, but I wouldn't put China on this list.

The government in Burma is basically the military. The country is ruled by the military. As an example of what they're capable of, consider the fact that the military at some points tried to save themselves from being blown up when traveling through areas infested with mines. How did they save themselves? Easy: they kidnapped civilians and forced them to walk in front of military vehicles to sweep for mines. If the civilians are blown up, well at least the military folks didn't get hurt...

Anyway, all that aside, Leslie-Ann was still interested in going. So she went. One important thing to note is that Burma will be safe for her. One of the military's only sources of income is tourism. In fact most every tourism dollar that is spent in Burma will go to the military. So, those in control have a vested interest in keeping tourists safe...and the common people are not interested in hurting tourists, either, because they will in turn be *severely* punished by the military...perhaps their family, too.

Now, you ask, isn't LA just giving money to the government by going in to visit? Quite likely, yes...and this is a big source of debate. One side basically says the only hope that country has to improve the lives of its people and the only way news from the inside will get out is by travelers going in, spending money, and bringing back stories or things to tell the world. The other side says that because the U.S. dollar is accepted (and highly welcomed, at that) in the country, the government simply sucks up all the tourism money and uses it to build up military strength. It is pretty certain they aren't spending a significant amount on non-government things...

So which side is right? I don't know. LA and I talked about this before she left. She said she can't really claim the first side's story in her defense, because she's not going to come back and make it her life's work to draw international attention to Burma. (Besides, other countries are not stupid. They know the situation in Burma. Travelers coming back and complaining to their government is not going to change anything, especially given how these Burmese gov't atrocities compare to other stuff like Darfur which themselves are hardly seeing any real strong action from gov'ts that could possibly help.) So, doesn't LA just fall into the second group's argument? The tourist who goes and drops money straight into the government's pockets?

What do I think? I think she falls into the 2nd group, with some exceptions. She has a Lonely Planet guide which seems to be well-written. It recommends places to stay, eat, etc. such that the money spent will not go straight to the gov't. Nice hotels, for example, are all government-run. And while I think she won't be able to help spending some money that will go into the government's hands, I say SO WHAT. Her $50 or $100 contribution is nothing compared to the heroin used everyday around the world that comes from Burma, or the furniture you buy at Ikea that was made in China from illegal timber logged in Burma (somewhere there is a post either on this blog or on my other blog about this problem).

So yeah, I think SO WHAT. Most people (including myself, still) are so unaware of the products they buy and where they come from that they have no right to criticize Leslie-Ann or others for going on trips like this.

And if you ARE the kind of person who is very conscientious about the things you buy and where they come from, then that is a good thing. But you still shouldn't criticize Leslie-Ann for going to Burma. Why not? Well, because your time is better spent in the U.S., handing out pamphlets to folks walking out of Ikea.

Beyond that, when Leslie-Ann wants to go somewhere, she goes.

And tomorrow she damn well better come back!

a Chinese teacher (and me) on tragedy

One of my (and Leslie-Ann's) best friends here in China is a certain teacher here at our school. By now, everybody at our school knows about the tragedy at Virginia Tech earlier this week.

There was a similar tragedy here in China right around the same time. Here is the short news clip from Xinhua News Agency:

****************************************************
Molten Steel Spills, Killing 32 in Liaoning (April 18, 2007, Xinhua)

At least 32 workers were confirmed dead and two others injured on Wednesday morning in a steel plant accident in northeast China's Liaoning Province, local work safety authorities said. The accident occurred at 7:45 AM in a Qinghe Special Steel Corporation workshop in Tieling City when a steel ladle -- used for pouring molten steel -- suddenly sheared off from the iron rail linking it to the blast furnace. The ladle was moving into pouring position above a worktable when it fell, spewing out white-hot molten metal at around 1,500 degrees Celsius into a room where workers had gathered as they changed shift. The liquid metal engulfed the room, bursting through the door and windows and burying the workers. Work safety officials who rushed to the site said that the bodies of 32 workers have been recovered and the injured have been taken to hospital. The cause of the accident is being investigated.
****************************************************

My friend pointed out that this story is receiving a lot of media coverage in China only because this type of tragedy has never happened in a steel plant. Because the deaths happened in a new place, it's big news. It's not the lives that matter to those who control the news.

Social Harmony matters to those in control. And when the common people hear of repeated deaths and nothing being done about it, that decreases social harmony.

CAUSE: Common people read in the news about many accidents and no action to prevent them in the future.
EFFECT: Social harmony decreases because people start to really, really get pissed off (read: "disharmonious" in Govmentspeak)

The solution to the above problem is easy. Axe the cause, and social harmony is harmoniously preserved!

You know how whenever there's any kind of mine accident in the U.S., it's huge news and everybody across the country follows it? Those accidents happen quite literally all the time in China. There is a particular province here riddled with mines, and during my weekly reading of ZGBriefs's (www.zgbriefs.com) collection of news stories, I come across a major mine accident at least once every few weeks. Major as in 20-50 dead. Sometimes these stories mention attempts by the mine operator(s) to cover up the accident by limiting the survivors' communication with the outside world! Makes you wonder how many of these accidents go completely unnoticed.

I am not posting this to try to lessen the impact of the VT shootings by implying things like that are common. I am not posting this to criticize you for not paying attention to worldwide events....there's only so much time one has or wants to spend on reading about world news. I am only posting this because people die all the time in China in accidents that are most of the time preventable and inexcusable.

Whatever group(s) controls the news and the way it affects society (in the country where I currently am...) should feel so ashamed. They ought to have a hard time doing anything normal during the day without regretting and hating their nonchalant reactions to all these mining (and other) accidents. But they don't. They don't care. At least, if they DO care, I'm not so sure anybody sees the results of their caring, so effectively they don't care. They're not doing anything real about it, this group that controls the news and the way it affects society.

It's strange that things are this way in China. This is a culture that really values saving one's face -- not being embarrassed, ashamed, or having negative attention drawn. The sad part is one day when the world tells China that it, as a whole country, is losing face (and NOT for anything the *common* people are doing) for all this ignorance toward workplace safety, human rights, etc., China will just choose not to listen.

And they will choose not to pass on news of that international loss of face to their people through the media.

for more on what's below

If you enjoyed my last post, below, see Leslie-Ann's blog here and scroll down to her April 5, 2007 post "a person I admire." for more.

an interesting thing about translation

In Chinese, there is a word called "wan." It means "to play" as in "to play games."

More generally I guess you could say it means to do anything that is fun or leisurely. However, it translates into English is "play."

So, often some Chinese people will ask me what I'm doing for the weekend, and they might ask "are you going out to play in the city?" Or some such thing like that.

The reason for this post is to try to put you in my position when I got a text message last night from an old acquaintance. He was a security guard at our school for a short time. These security guards often work more than 8 hours a day, usually just standing in one place. They likely earn less then 1000 RMB ($130) a month, but they always smile and nod when Leslie-Ann or I pass by. Actually one of them in particular, named Zhang Min, is a pretty good friend of ours by now even though he doesn't speak English.

Anyway, the security guard who's my old acquaintance is named Chen Qi. He speaks just a tad of English and I exchanged phone numbers with him a few months ago. Even though he spoke such little English, he was really excited to talk to Leslie-Ann and I, even trying to get some instant messaging names from us so he could practice his English with us on the internet. This whole conversation had to take place somewhat discreetly, I imagine, since I don't think the guards are really supposed to be talking to teachers all the time. Anyway, the next week he had moved on to another job somewhere else, another school maybe. So I had a text message from him a few days ago on my phone asking how I was, and I replied. Below, verbatim, is the text message he wrote back to me:

thank u, i'm Fine too!if u haVe chanCe,i Will take u to my hOmetOwn to pLay

Chen Qi must be between 25 and 30 years old, if not older. But you know how strange it would be to hear a grown American say something about "going to play" somewhere. Not in Chinese English, though. I hear it all the time and in a weird way it makes me feel younger, or it makes the person saying it feel soft and unthreatening, friendly.

The Chinese are so pure in their meaning when they are being hospitable or kind. First of all, as I said before this guy makes less than 1000 RMB a month, probably around 800 in fact (about $100), but I'm sure he would undoubtedly treat me to almost everything on a hypothetical trip to his hometown. Meals, staying at his parents apartment, etc. etc. He would continually insist I not pay for anything.

This is how the Chinese seem to be....endlessly hospitable and generous, even when they only have a little bit to give. And always ready to jump at the chance to get together and play.