First Impressions: Comparisons, Part II

What are you eating?

I was overjoyed- giddy- to get a gallon of milk in my hands again.  China had milk powder and individually-sized boxes of possibly tainted milk.  There was no cheese.  Their one plus in the dairy section was drinkable yogurt.  So, the simple pleasure of pouring a glass of milk or bowl of cereal became the homecoming prize I kept my eyes on.  That and pizza and Mexican food ("Look!  A Pizza Hut/Taco Bell hybrid restaurant!  I've got a deliciously sinister idea..."  (Yes, that is tongue in cheek)).  On the way back, at the Honolulu airport, I got my first whiffs of pizza, Starbucks, and Cinnabon.  Delicious smells, yes, but then I heard the people in line ordering.  "Do you have meat lover's?  What about extra cheese?  And gimme cheese sticks and Coke with that combo."  So what?  You might ask.  But this was a pattern with every customer in line, and the vendors had clearly been engineered to market the high fat, high sugar, high dollar craving food.  And judging by the bulging bodies people bought into this system whole-milk-heartedly.

I can say, contrasting China, that the people were very sensitive to sugar (they though Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were too sweet), seldom ate "very expensive" chocolate, and among the students, especially the girls, they would hound each other if a classmate became fat (according to the standards of a country that used to experience regional famines once every year).  I was let on to the diets of some girls who would routinely skip dinner or only eat an apple, saying, "I'm a little fat."  China has plenty of chubby kids, but among the young adults I counted maybe two or three girls who were what would indeed be called fat.  Really, Americans that I know would just say, "Well, she's not skinny, but she is a bigger girl."  But back to body types in a moment.

One more observation about food in China (for now, at least, I will have to write about this topic later).  A lot of the diet consisted of fruits and vegetables, and chicken and fish and ducks and whathaveyou, bought from the street markets.  These were filthy, shocking bazaars, having no health inspector to please.  Besides the obvious health dangers, there was the fright of whole animals, chopped up or cooked whole, staring at you from the dinner plate.  I could handle the adventurous eating, surprises and all, but I did wonder why I maintained my weight with all the ostensibly fresh, healthy, if not tainted, food.  I concluded that the main cause was the oil, which ran over everything and pooled in a layer at the bottom of the plate.  The Chinese may be resistant to the encroachment of processed foods, but their love of Chinese tradition means they are going to stick with the heavy oil habit.

The bodies

Lastly, I want to comment on the most glaring of the differences I noticed on American soil.  The bodies.  Now, the rest of the world all knows that Americans are fat.  This is not to say that there are no other fat countries (see Russia and the United Kingdom, among others), but America is Number One when it comes to fat culture.  I often laughed and acknowledged this to my students in China, but when I returned to America the site of all the obesity hit me hard and took away my laughter.  I was saddened and hurt by it.  Bellies and thighs with their own momentum, masses of humanity whirring along on electric scooters because they had given up standing and walking, unrecognizable deformities of the flesh made in the image of God, people, like me, who were a slave to their cravings- in this case, the food.  So it makes me heartbroken to see this pandemic.

I have also noticed that men's bodies have diverged, either into weightlifters or beer bellies, but with considerable overlap between the two groups.  The men here have huge hands, and often monstrous arms.  In China, the men looked like the standard I have seen in many life drawing manuals, and what men in America looked like before World War II.  A thin, perhaps lean upper body, straight arms that expand at the elbow and upper forearm, making the joint look much larger compared to the pipe-like upper arm, overall moderate proportions and moderate height- not often short and not often tall- and most prominently, calves.

Calves

As a visual connoisseur of good calves, I can put my authority behind the statement that the Chinese have bulbous, bulging, and even wonderfully shapely calves.  In America, sorry to say, the people are starting to resemble Gary Larson's Far Side characters.  Big galoots with round bodies and awkward limbs.  It looks like a plastic surgeon found a creative way to hide his Play-Doh.  In China, I would see skinny young men, no more than 130 pounds, no definition in their chest or arms, (weightlifting has not caught on with the typical Chinese male and they don't spend their weekends idolizing football players), and they would have veins popping out of their calves and snaking down their inner knee.  Ladies, who largely did not work out, would still have shapely lower legs and the muscle groups would be plainly visible (from knee to ankle it should look like two narrowing ellipses, stacked one on top of the other).  I know a couple families in America with good calves, but I look around now and wonder where all the good specimens have gone.  A little strange, I know.  Well, at least in car-loving, skinny-calved America, it is ultra-rare to find a woman with feint black mustache or leg hairs, or a black dish scrubber hiding under her armpit, but that not uncommon sight is a topic for another time.

-Mantis

First Impressions: Comparisons, Part I

Well, things got quite polemical in my last posting when I had originally planned to offer some light-hearted comic relief.  It seems I cannot introduce some humorous observations without first tracking down a tangent. No matter, here are some of the things that most glaringly struck me about my return to American soil, and it is quite a thing to be glaringly struck; you won't look at things the same way after that.

Cranes

My family was vacationing in Texas at the beginning of August, so I flew into Dallas-Ft. Worth.  Outside the terminal were a number of things I had not seen in twelve months.  First was the multi-story parking ramp.  I never saw a sizable parking lot in China, save those moderate parking areas attached to the Wal-Mart and Carrefour shopping complexes.  And transitioning from the parking ramp was the aerial network of modern sculpture, the interstate and its on and off ramps.  But as we made our way from the outskirts of the city, we passed a handful of cranes outside the airport complex, if it is possible to quantify something so tall and massive with a handful.  I sarcastically asked, "Is that all?"  Because every city I went to in China had dozens of cranes throughout.  Most of the construction was for apartment complexes- high-rises of nearly identical shape and architecture, distinguished by color highlights and minor architectural flairs.  And there were also many new business and commercial centers as well as hotels and hospitals being erected.  I have a Chinese friend who works as an architect in Nanjing (He told me, "You know, Nanjing is really a city built on death.  When they built my apartment, they dug up bodies in the ground first.  I didn't know until after.")  He is in the office 7 days a week (not unusual in China) and he says he know he must rest, but the orders for new buildings are nonstop.

Driving- not so bad (here)

As I mentioned before, drivers in China are so pathologically bad they deserve a diagnosis.  Or, as I agreed with a fellow expatriate overseas, they could solve society's problem by taking all the cars to the junkyard and shredding everyone's license.  Yes, it is that bad.  Being back in America, it was refreshing, on one hand, to see drivers staying in their lanes, obeying traffic signals, (usually) watching for other drivers, abiding by the laws and flow of traffic, and (mostly) following the rules.  On the other hand, I was distressed to be back in a land that placed the car above all else and built its cities and lives around it.

The streets: Where is everybody?

When I slept at my aunt's apartment in the city of Bengbu, the noise of the street market served as my alarm clock.  By 6 o'clock, there was a mass of people in the streets.  This meant people streaming every direction over street and sidewalk.  And against all common sense, they never bothered to check left or right before stepping into the street unless it was to cross a major artery.  The people would just wander aimlessly in the middle of the road, only focusing on what was immediately in front of them.  The drivers were the same, so when they approached a crowd they would start honking unceasingly (well, they honked for every other contingency, too) and start barging their way through.  As a pedestrian, you could not count on vehicles slowing down for you, so when an American driver (in Iowa) yielded in the middle of the street and waved me across, I remarked, "That would never happen in China.  Never."  In Chinese streets, there is a blatant disregard for human life that would disgust me even further if I did not come from the land of Roe v. Wade.

When my students asked me the biggest difference between life in America and China, I would tell them "the streets."  American suburbs are organized by a house or property, a lawn or edging, a sidewalk, a parking strip of grass with trees lining it, and usually a two-lane street with enough space to park on either side.  When you walk down the street, or in American English, when you drive down the street, you will hardly encounter another person unless you are downtown.  Cars, bicycles, and pedestrians each have their space (though cyclists often do not receive respect or space, at least you would not see cars and motorcycles on the sidewalks like I saw in Thailand and China).

China has a free-for-all without strong boundaries.  If I went out, I would pass by chickens, street dogs, endless amounts of people, babies without diapers who might be in the act (aided by their grandmothers, right there on the street), piles of trash, piles of paving stones and other construction materials, food carts and food vendors, cars, trucks, and waves of motor bikes, and if I were passing through an area functioning as a street market, then I would pass tables of clothes, shoes, books, vegetables, and varieties of tofu, not to mention the farmers with their chicken cages- birds bound by the ankles in, on, or outside the cage- and the fish sellers who cleaned and cut their fish on a plastic tarp lying on the ground, wet with blood, water, and street filth.

No naps!

So, the Chinese were awake and active, in large numbers (when aren't they in these?), by sun up.  This can partially be explained by the population density and the dearth of private space for relaxation and recreation. Chinese apartments were not woefully meager, but they had few amenities other than television and (usually) a computer.  Not so unlike America, but at least we have carpeting, clean and drinkable water, ovens, clothes dryers, central cooling, and central heating.  Anyway, how could a non-coffee-drinking people have such hustle and bustle so early in the morning?  By taking an afternoon nap.  Businesses shut down and schools would schedule a two-hour break to accommodate this (most of the owners and clerks "shut down" their shops by pulling out a cot or lounger to sleep in behind the counter; wake them up for service).

Taking a nap was expected.  When I had lunch at someone's home they would offer me a blanket and a couch or bed to lie down on.  Chinese friends might wish me a good sleep instead of a good day.  Countless times I asked students for their hobbies and was told, "I like sleep."

How is it to live with that kind of cultural institution?  Well, besides having that down time at lunch, I noticed that I was also sleeping better at night, and, most surprisingly, I started dreaming on a regular basis.  Before, I would dream maybe once a month.  Napping every day, I didn't dream every time I nodded off, but it was almost a daily thing.  The downside to a post-lunch nap, for me, was compelling myself to lie down and fall asleep right away (instead of internet surfing), and the sometimes overpowering drowsiness that I would have to shake off at 2:00 p.m. so I could get to class.  I have kept up the napping habit in America, and my sleep schedule has had problems, but it is better than if I didn't take a midday rest.  Try it and see.  And then when you get fired for showing up late for work in the afternoon, you can come over to my place and we will dream together.

Back to America: First Impressions

Well, it's been over a month back in the United States.  I've had enough time to get back into old habits and see most of my family and friends again, not to mention all the people I didn't have to worry I'd see while living in China.  Back in America, I may have to avoid certain people again, but for the most part they have done me the return service of refusing eye contact and avoiding me.  In China, it was a luxury- going to the grocery store, or just meandering about the city, as a complete stranger.  I go to the Hy-Vee here in town now and I have to worry about running into someone I know or scanning a familiar face and trying to remember if I ever did anything to make them hate my guts.  China was a rough and miserable place to live, but the stress of life between China and America never left, it just changed forms.

But still, one of my new phrases stateside has been "Better than China."  As in, watching my family lose their patience over bad drivers, I had to remark that, after living in China for a year, nothing less than a crash could faze me.  I had seen the world's second worst drivers in action (a well-traveled Australian couple told me Croatians were actively homicidal behind the wheel, besting the Chinese who are only absent-mindedly homicidal), so I couldn't care less about petty blunders like running red lights and turning left in and through oncoming traffic (yes, I witnessed these daily at every busy intersection).  And while lifelong Americans resort to customary road rage, I mutter, "Hey, at least it's better than China."

Which leads me back to the commonly asked question, "Are you glad to be back?"  I may say yes, but I'm not as happy to be in America as I am to be out of China.  See, I love to travel and live in the midst of a foreign culture.  Walking around city streets, immune from tiresome interactions by way of my inability to comprehend the native's language, just exploring and taking it all in- it's a great, refreshing feeling.

I also relish the opportunity to analyze firsthand the culture, state of society, level of infrastructure, and general atmosphere of a place.  I like to question what factors contributed to the current state and what were the foundational beliefs leading to the culture's development and standards.  For instance, Chinese spit wherever they feel like and speak brusquely like children fighting on the playground.  The Chinese have to explain to foreigners, "We're not really arguing, just talking."  Why is that accepted as a fact of life in China?  Why, in America, is it considered below standard or surly to bark at full volume into a cell phone while in an elevator, or pushy to cough out your words whenever a customer looks over your goods?  And the reverse of that coin: what would happen if Americans had to live without the foundation of their society, the car?  And why does all the food have to be loaded with sugar?

After living in a foreign culture, I have become much better at recognizing the culture of my native land.  The things Americans take for granted, assume are necessities, learn to live with, and love, are not the essential ingredients of a fulfilling life.  Particulars vary wildly from culture to culture, each relishes its own pastimes and comfort foods, and in answer to life's basic questions each takes its own hardline or laissez faire approach.  This is not to say that all things are equal and merely variations on the same whole.  No, my time in China has educated me firsthand to the great discrepancies that will result when you take away the Christian beliefs that flourished Western culture and, in its place, erect a modern, statist system.  China is emerging as a world power economically, and it is doing its utmost to thrust a state education on the people and develop its cities and infrastructure.  And note that word "develop."  China, I believe, is now classified as a developed nation, which might be true in Beijing and Shanghai.  Anywhere outside the mega-cities, honesty would classify it as a developing nation.  But I have become convinced that China will always be developing and never be developed.  Though China has changed significantly in 20 years, I propose that if you gave it 200 years it would never arrive at a developed stage.  Not truly.

Ask yourself: if China became the number one nation in the world (economically, militarily) then whose business would it undercut?  Who would it copy?  Whose ideas and copyrights would it steal if it were at the top?  Leaders are expected to innovate; China's power has been leeched off others.  Again, I say it all comes down to the foundational beliefs, and right now, other than Confucian ideals like respect for parents and harmony, most Chinese have little to believe in other than China.  It is narrow, it is circular, and it is a testament to nationalism that so many people are devoted to such an impoverished country.  It is not just the squalor and decay seen walking the streets, or the haze felt and seen, often smelled, in the polluted environment.  It is the moral vacuum left after Communist revolution and decades of Maoism.  So, until China takes Mao's bloated face off every bill in their currency, do not expect significant development.  But do not expect that repudiation to come quickly, either.  The Chinese government is hyper-sensitive to criticism, and it builds its powerful reputation by pretending it (i.e. socialism with Chinese characteristics, i.e. government by the Chinese Communist Party) is a great and benevolent servant of the people.

My ultimate message to Americans, concerning China, is to learn the truth about China's current state and apply those lessons fearfully to our own society.

More to come,
Mantis