Election Parties

I may have been the only American in the small country hamlet of Fengyang, China (pop. 80,000, at least according to the only credible person who would give me an estimate), but I had the good fortune to be joined at the university by two other foreign English teachers from Australia, Grant and Sue Rogers.  Grant and Sue had already taught at the university (Anhui Science and Technology University) in 2005 and 2009, so they had seen the town before it had a major intersection, a traffic light, and cars.  Not that there weren't any cars then, but it was mostly the electric scooters that are still widely used throughout China.  And whenever anything is widely used throughout China, that means you would encounter hundreds of them whenever you walked out your front door.  Grant and Sue are world travelers, having been to the Andes Mountains, all across China and Tibet, and throughout Europe, even hiking the Carmino de Santiago de Compostela.  They exuded friendliness and carried a spirit of adventure that I admired and appreciated whenever we talked or went to a university event, like the English speech competitions or dinners hosted by the English department.

Besides learning from their experience as foreign teachers, and admiring their friendly relationships with nearly all the Chinese we encountered ("Hey, there's my friend!  Hello, mate!  Ni hao, ni hao!"), I took away some enlightening and entertaining stories from the land down under.  Poisonous snakes, mud crabs, vicious koalas, hazardous fishing trips, and more, yes, but Australians have pluck, so they take all that in stride and enjoy the good times driving up the beach and exploring the land and cities of their beautiful country.  About one poisonous snake encounter, Grant told me that he and Sue were in their living room one evening when he spotted something and told his wife there was a snake under her chair.  "It was an Eastern Brown," he told me, "They're not too dangerous, but I didn't want to muck around with him that night, so I went and clubbed him on the head and got rid of him."  Could you imagine that story taking place in any other country?  And the people just dealing with it coolly and the next moment back to acting cheery?  50 years ago in southern China they would have counted their blessings and ate the snake, but then they wouldn't necessarily go back to being cheery.  In America, I'm sure there are wives who would have moved out and sold the property after hysterically running out the nearest exit.

Sue and Grant

Anyway, the story I want to share today is a topical one, being that the Presidential Election finally takes place tomorrow.  Grant shared with me that, in Australia, they have Election Parties.  I gathered that, after voting, friends would get together and watch the results and generally discuss politics.  Gathering with politically-mixed company to watch election results: sounds like a great idea, right?   Americans can't even remain friends on Facebook because of political posts, but apparently the Australians can take the arguing in good humor.

Case in point: Grant was hosting an Election Party and wound up arguing with his friend Biuw (Australian for "Bill."  Just having a little fun with the Australian accent.) and it got so bad that he said, "Get out of here!" and threw him out of his house.  The next day, Bill came over to Grant's house, stood in front of the open door, and tossed his hat into the living room.  "Now," Bill asked, "am I as welcome in your house as my hat is?"  Grant waved him in with a big gesture, "Aw, Biuw, get on in 'ere."

It's a shame you couldn't hear Grant tell it.  I'll try and do his stories the best I can from here on out.

-Mantis

More on Thailand- 13 Coins Gym, Bangkok

After our weekend touring the city, Andrew and I threw our bags into another taxi and headed to the eastern outskirts of Bangkok.  We were about to meet the Man.

Our destination was 13 Coins Gym, most famous for being the training center of champion fighters Saenchai and Orono (their highlight videos are worth checking out on YouTube).  The gym itself is a hodgepodge of boxing rings, heavy bags, framed Muay Thai magazine photos, collages of the gym's fighters training and competing, portraits painted on wooden panels, flags from countries from all over the world (they even had Wales' medieval dragon flag- is that a real flag?), and tables and stools so spectators could have a drink or smoke as they watched the fighters work the Thai pads.  A wooden roof ran the entire length of the gym, and built into the underside were tiny rooms that some of the Thais accessed by ladders and slept in.  Adding to this eclectic rainbow was the pastel pink and blue hotel connected to the gym on the left side, and the lonely sculpture garden decaying on the right.


When Andrew and I walked in, the gym was practically empty (at our first practice, only a couple foreigners and a few young Thais were training, noticeably absent was Saenchai) and our eyes scrambled to scan over every picture and color covering the gym.  We noticed the pricing for training posted above the rings, but saw no one who looked like management, so we walked into the restaurant and up to the front desk.  At that moment, the owner of 13 Coins Resort/Gym came in, smiling and chattering in rapid English.  Mr. Coke strolled around in slacks, sandals, and a loose short sleeve dress shirt, usually with a drink, cigarette, or newspaper in hand.  Though his hair had thinned into wispy strands around the sides of his head and he had gone bald on top, the creases curving out from his eyes and the corner of his mouth (formed from years of speaking while smiling) gave his face a very childlike appearance.

Mr. Coke greeted us with such enthusiasm that I felt a fraction like an American infantryman in liberated Normandy.  I have never been in a situation where someone was thrilled to see me just because I was an American.  True, in China I had minor celebrity status, or at least I was a public curiosity, but that was because I was a foreigner, not because the people knew I was American.  Mr. Coke quickly settled the bills for our stay, asking us, "How many days you gonna stay?  Five?  Okay, that's 5,000 baht.  And you the same?  Twelve? Okay, that's 12,000 baht," which calculates to $33 per day for a room, two training sessions, and one meal covered at the hotel restaurant.  Not bad by American standards, but according to my friends in China, it was too expensive.  I had a big envelope of cash I had exchanged for at the airport, and so I paid him on the spot.

That first day, Mr. Coke waited for us in the gym as we dropped off our bags in our room.  We came in to find him watching some old Muay Thai fights on the TV suspended in the far corner of the gym.  One of the waitresses brought us iced tea as Andrew and I took a seat and talked to Mr. Coke about the gym and his time in America.

When Mr. Coke talked, he would repeat himself in the same narrative loops.  And he was almost always talking, like an old single stroke farm motor popping along and filling in his pauses with pidgin English phrases or tags about different groups of Thai people being good or bad monkeys.  I can't remember how many times I heard him tell it, but he spent eight years in America, mostly in Washington with a little time in Alaska, first as a student at the University of Washington, but earning his real education by working his way through every position in American restaurants.  He named his chain of 13 Coins restaurants after the owner of the American original agreed to let Mr. Coke base the name of his restaurant after it.  "Yeah I learned a lot from you I learned a lot in America," he told us (I mentioned that Mr. Coke often repeated himself, but he would sometimes speak without punctuation).  He had restaurants throughout the area, making him one of the big name businessmen in Bangkok.

His restaurant and success story were fairly well-known in Thailand.  In fact, I heard from a young Thai man living in Cedar Falls about how Mr. Coke grew up the second son of a rich father who didn't want to spend time minding to his non-eldest son, but was willing to give him the necessary start-up money for his first restaurant.  When Mr. Coke debuted American steaks, pizza, pasta, and sandwiches near Bangkok's biggest malls, the smell and spectacle of it attracted lines stretching down the block (being in Thailand, the people in line probably had to do a lot of swerving to avoid sidewalk motorbike traffic, but seriously...).  The novelty eventually wore off, but Mr. Coke built himself a small empire and his restaurants are still known for their blend of Thai and western food.

That afternoon, Mr. Coke took us to his favorite LEGIT massage parlor (I'm not saying he had other unsavory favorites, but whenever you mention Thailand and massages to a group of guys, you get a lot of filthy, cheeky jokes and ribbing, so I have to set things straight).  Andrew complained that the Thai-style massage left him sore, but I took advantage of the incredibly cheap rates (1 hour for under $10) and widespread availability of the massage parlors and just went to my mental happy place when the lady dug in her elbows.

After that, Mr. Coke treated us to dinner back at his hotel restaurant.  Andrew and I each chose something Thai; Andrew had a delicious concoction with shrimp and seafood, but we couldn't remember its name to order it again.  During and after dinner, we talked with Mr. Coke more about life in America an his time there.  Andrew and him got along really well and chatted quite a bit.  I bet Andrew could move to Thailand and Mr. Coke would take him under his wing, managing one of his restaurants.  Not such a bad idea, if you ask me.  The biggest difficulty would be learning the language.  I tried to teach Andrew how to say "thank you" and count to ten.  We reached four and he stopped me by asking, "Wait, so you just repeat it over and over?"  No, Andrew, you can write an essay about it and think it over until you get the hang of it.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to meet another American Andrew, this one a black guy from New York City, at 6 o'clock for the morning run.  Mr. Coke had told Andrew to show us the standard route up the alley, along the main drive, and to the sports stadium complex, then back to the gym.  Every day we would either take that route or run laps up and down the length of 13 Coins' incredibly long asphalt parking lot.  Side note: the restaurant was almost never busy, but on the weekends the local police officer candidates rented out the upstairs meeting hall to prepare for the qualifying exam, and the parking lot looked like a makeshift used Isuzu truck dealership.

The Mantis uses no hyperbole.

Practice was pretty sparse.  At Fairtex Gym, the square of four connecting rings was always filled with one or two trainers per ring, plus a rotating batch of professional fighters and foreign enthusiasts.  At 13 Coins, a boxing trainer coached two fighters in western boxing, a veteran Muay Thai fighter (the eccentric Mr. Long, sporting a radical Zach Morris haircut) trained two young Thai amateurs in another ring, and in the middle ring, the trainer/waiter Soren rotated between Andrew, the other Andrew, and me.  Soren didn't actually wait tables, but he worked for the hotel in between morning and afternoon practice.  There was also an American MMA fighter, who went by B.K., with a cage setup wherein he taught a couple foreigners basic grappling later on in the morning.

While we were at 13 Coins, Mr. Long showed us his downward elbow-strike technique and boasted, "I have a plan!  I will go around the world.  People want to learn technique.  I will show them.  I will make some money.  I have a plan!"  Soren would meticulously correct our technique and works us out till we about fell over and had no "POWER!  POW-AH!"  He would have me front kick him over and over, he stepping forward and me slipping backward each kick, until I lost my balance or became trapped against the ropes.  Then he would laugh at me with his metallic, wheezy laugh.  Soren and black Andrew (that's the name he uses at Starbucks, too- "Tall coffee for Black Andrew?") would go after each other verbally every morning.  Soren would tell Andrew that he was "cuh-razy, crazy" and he needed to "re-lak, re-lak" (relax) by seeing a lady boy, and also that he liked lady boys.  Andrew would respond, angrily, "Man, why you always callin' me crazy?  Why you pickin' on me?  You crazy.  You're crazy.  I don't like lady boys!  I think you do. You're crazy."  While Andrew was going on, Soren would look at me, smiling, and giggle a little.

Soren training with (just for clarification) white Andrew.

One time they were at it again, and I didn't catch what Soren said, but Andrew came back with, "You're blacker than I am!  Whatta you callin' me black for?  He's darker than me!"  Andrew wasn't light-skinned, but Soren was from the northeast region of Thailand, where the people are several shades darker than the rest of the Thai population.  Andrew Dostal and I had to walk quite a way down the alley (Thai alleys are very long side streets, not out-of-bounds zones in garage basketball) and over the canal if we wanted to buy anything, eat somewhere else, or find something to do, and the hotel TV only had one channel in English (Discovery), so watching the other Andrew and Soren tease and taunt each other was the best entertainment available.

A video of Mr. Coke giving a tour of the gym.  Looks a little like Oliver Stone's distant cousin.  A most welcoming host.  One contention: the water in the video is most definitely NOT clean.

Email I wrote to my Chinese aunt

My Chinese aunt Fang was supposed to send me my clothes, books, and souvenirs after I left China.  I didn't have enough room in my luggage, and she could do it through the China Post mail service.  She sent the packages out in August, she says, and I've been asking her for weeks now about their status.  I was about to write them off as lost, but I held my tongue because I did not want to believe in bad news and bring about the worst.  After the packages arrived this afternoon, I sent my aunt this confirmation email.  Because shipping took so long, I had to have a little fun with her.  She translates it into Chinese online.  I hope Google Translate can handle sarcasm.

"My mother had good news for me today.  My two packages came from China.  I was just thinking today about them, and I thought I might ask you again if they were coming.  I was feeling angry because they had taken so long.  But then I went out on the porch and there was a dusty old Chinese mule driver, smoking a cigarette as he looked over his wagon.  "Hello?" I asked.  He didn't respond.  "Wei?  Ni hao?" I said.  "Ni hao, ni hao," hello, he coughed back.  I used my computer and Google Translate to communicate and ask him about what he was doing on my porch and why he brought all the old mules.  He explained that he had traveled all the way from China with those mules, and they were only three-year old mules, in the prime of their physical strength.  He used the land bridge from Russia to Alaska, then traveled down to Washington state and went east over the Rocky Mountains, roughly along the same route as Lewis and Clark.  "I lost three or four good pack animals in those mountains," he said, a tear forming in his dust-caked eye.  When I saw the compassion in his weathered face, my anger melted away.  "Here," I said, handing him the money I had in my wallet, "Buy yourself some food.  You've got a long journey back."  Immediately he thrust up his hands and shook his head, "Bu Yao!  Bu Yao!"  He could not accept tips according to China Post regulations and Chinese customs.  "Well then, friend," I offered, "Enjoy your smoke and take as long as you'd like on my porch...  Or at least come on in and stay the night; get some rest."  He waved me off, explaining that he had an urgent Express Overnight Delivery due in Miami.  So as soon as he finishes his nap on my front porch, I'm sure he'll jump up and be on the road again to deliver his next package."

Thailand, Part 1

Perhaps the best part of China was that it is five hours from Thailand, or at least Hong Kong is five hours from Bangkok.  My aunt looked at flight deals for me and told me I would save money by driving a couple hours to Hefei, then flying to Hong Kong and on to Bangkok.  Wouldn't that be complicated? I asked.  "Easy, easy," she said with a smile.  Her husband, "Uncle" Jiang, told me, "Nooo...  No!  Tell her no.  Go to Shanghai."  Flying out of there would have been direct, but I was not about to tell the woman who showed me the most care, "No."  After nervously questioning her many times and receiving the same assurance, I told her to go ahead and book the ticket.  I knew it was a precarious gamble, but like I said, even if I had to suffer the consequences I would follow her instead of taking Uncle Jiang's advice and telling her no.  Her plans were so often full of childlike enthusiasm and zest; I always had to allay my apprehensions to her but nonetheless followed along.  Her plans did work when we were in town because she could just walk up to whomever she wished and talk to them and get help.  But by myself, I would have to experience the misery of being stuck in a bad situation.

That was later though.  At this point I was overjoyed to be going back to Thailand, my promised land.  It had been nearly five years since my first trip to Thailand.  I had saved some money after college to travel to a Muay Thai gym and train for four weeks.  It had been a long heartache in between, pining to return and make good on my dream of training Muay Thai.  As soon as inspiration struck to use my winter school vacation for this trip, I emailed my friend Andrew back in my hometown.  Andrew and I trained together at the same gym and had discussed making this Thai pilgrimage before.  I told him now was the opportune time, he managed to get leave time from work, and we spent the next few weeks scouring websites for travel deals, Muay Thai gym reviews, and travel guide recommendations.

We planned to meet in the Bangkok airport after midnight, the time when the international flights arrive, and take the car we reserved through Fairtex Gym to the seaside city, Pattaya.  Well, in Hong Kong they changed my departure gate three times and I didn't even board until after midnight.  Andrew told me later that, after waiting in line through the passport check and collecting his luggage, he was already running behind, and after making the driver wait even longer to see if I would arrive, he rightly decided to go ahead to Pattaya and then checked into the gym in time for the morning practice session.  Luckily, we both had cell phone service, and after I made it through airport purgatory to the exit doors, I received Andrew's text letting me know he had made it.  But my traveling ordeal wasn't finished yet.  I still needed ground transportation to Pattaya, so I waited around four hours for the bus counter to open up.  In the meantime, I had to fend off the advances of a taxi driver who said he would find me a lady as part of the deal, but I also met a gregarious college student (coincidentally studying abroad in Beijing) and her brother from the Caribbean.  We ran into each other later in the city, but never joined up with her group, which was fine by me, since she was mostly interested in partying at the most sordid nightclubs there.

Yes, although Fairtex Gym was a great facility with plenty of topnotch trainers, and there were amenities like beaches and islands, plus the friendly people and relaxed ambiance of Thailand, Pattaya was a filthy, debauched city worthy of a moral parable like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio.  Its infamous Walking Street is something I regret seeing, but only slightly worse than the rest of the bar and club-filled town.  Girls would sit at tables bordering the sidewalk in the many open-air bars, and they would either shout at you or try and grab your shirt and pinch you.  It was funny at first when I saw it happen to Andrew and a girl told him he was cute, but it was without end, and it turned severely depressing when I saw old men walking with a limp and a young Thai girl on their arm, or sitting speechless at a bar table as they "enjoyed" dinner together.  I had had enough when I saw lady-boys in miniskirts standing on the corner and trying to latch on to passersby.

I did go out with Andrew and a few Australians to have some beers at a bar where washed-up old Thai guys would stage fake fights and then walk through the crowd collecting tips.  That was fun, cheap entertainment, but I had to call it a night when the environment of Walking Street wore me out.  Andrew stayed out a while longer with the Australians, but they were eventually thrown out of the next bar for a bogus reason.  I'll let him tell the story if he cares to.

So I was ready to move on from Pattaya.  Fairtex was a good gym to train at, and I did start to bond and get into rhythm with the trainers there, but I think Andrew and I were both looking for a new place to explore.  We packed our bags and went back to Bangkok, where Andrew had reserved a hotel room for the weekend.  We toured the city went up the river, walked through the shopping streets, saw the boxing stadiums, toured the National Palace and its temple complex, and through it all baked in the sun from morning till night.  We would order drinks from shops throughout the day, and Andrew got to try his Sprite the Thai way: poured into a plastic bag with ice and a straw sticking out.

We also went to watch the fights at world famous Lumpini Stadium.  Having seen fights our first night in Pattaya, we could compare the two.  Of course the atmosphere was better at Lumpini, being the mecca of Muay Thai and a favorite destination of foreign tourists and gambling Thais, and the fights in general were of better quality, though Pattaya did have some very exciting, highly-skilled match-ups as well.  I had a nice surprise at Lumpini when I saw the trainer and owner of the gym I trained at back in 2007, Por Pramuk, and went over to greet them.  Overall, I think I did enjoy the Lumpini fights better, but this is also due to the downing effect of drowsiness at the Pattaya fights.  I was exhausted from traveling and going the previous night without sleep, so when the time neared 11 and they were still bringing pairs of boys out to the ring, I called out, "Come on, ref, this is a school night!"  I think I fell asleep twice, slumped over in one of those white plastic lawn chairs that weigh a pound and bend in the legs whenever you shift your weight.  That last fight did provide the most amusement though.  Between rounds, when the boy from the red corner went back to his trainer, instead of the trainer having him sit on a stool and stretching him out, would just pick him up by the armpits so the boy could kick and shake his little body out.

I asked Andrew what he thought of these little boys fighting, how it would fare back in the land of soccer moms, and he said he didn't think it would happen, the kids would be covered in pads or end up crying and quit.  Not that I, as my whiny child self, wouldn't have, but the super-lean boys who grew up in the gym, and looked like they hadn't been fed in a week, were clearly a special breed.

Andrew had another gem of an observation during the trip.  I was so excited to be in Thailand and so excited to talk to a friend from back home and, hey! speak fluent English!, I kept pestering him with observations and questions about Thailand, which he took graciously.  I asked him about the many soap operas on TV, or the light, airy pop music.  "What do you think?"  "I think that the country that came up with Muay Thai has a lot of lame stuff."  I laughed.  Thailand had Muay Thai, charm, craziness and trouble, and exotic environments and cities, but yes, the pop culture was well tamer than American tastes prefer.

More to come,

Mantis

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