Korea in China

Here's another attempt at using up some old pictures.

One might expect that, having moved to China, I would spend a lot of time with Chinese people. Not so. However, I spend a lot of time with Koreans. Several major Korean corporations have operations in Suzhou, and they tend to go much deeper into the rank and file when then send employees here (as opposed to the Western companies, who typically only send high-level engineers, managers, and accountants). That is apparently a sore spot with the Chinese government, which I have heard pressures the Koreans to give more of those jobs to Chinese workers.

I digress, as usual. As I said, I spend a lot of time with Koreans. I never really knew any Koreans before I came here, and I like them. The kids are, for the most part, friendly and hard-working. Too hard working, in some cases. A lot of these poor kids finish school only to go to Korean schools all over again for the evening. Many of the kids (in particular, the girls) are incredible musicians as well. I was at the elementary school talent show last year. It was pretty impressive.

And of course, let's not forget the Korean food, which I have really developed a taste for.

The Korean kids are very, very partial to all things Korean. When we take them on school trips, they always bring bundles of mom-packed food, in little nested boxes and neat packages (all to save them from having to eat anything Chinese). Sometimes, their enthusiasm is better described as nationalism. Case in point, have you ever heard of Dokdu Island? Talk to a Korean for a few minutes and you will. It is a rocky speck of an island halfway between South Korean and Japan. It is officially accepted as Korean territory (and they have two caretakers stationed on it to make sure the claim is firm).

However, occasionally, Japan makes noises that it rightfully belongs to them. There have literally been street protests in South Korea over this, including bizarro stuff like when a college student sliced his fingertips and wrote his loyalty to Dokdu in his own blood. At school, I have had to reprimand kids for starting up arguments over it. In the library, atlases and even wall maps have been hand marked to show Dokdu, and remind everyone who it belongs to. This is in addition to the fact that the same maps have often been defaced so that the "Sea of Japan" has been renamed the "Sea of Korea".

I digress again. Below are some pictures of some art from some of the Korean 4th graders from last year. They have nothing to do whatsoever with anything I said above. They just made me laugh. For this assignment, the kids were supposed to draw a picture illustrating "empathy". They had some interesting interpretations. Names have been blocked out.



This one if from a very sweet girl who was one of my favorites. If your friend will cry over your dead dog with you, she is a true friend.




I'm not sure what this kid was thinking. Perhaps he has heard the expression "walk a mile in his shoes".




This is the best one. This kid really didn't get the concept.

A quick post

Between the fact that I have no time, and we continue to dither as to the future of our blog plans (see last post), I haven't had anything to say. In the meantime, I'll through out a picture. This is an advertisement I saw in the Beijing subway that made me laugh. Hip young popstar types are routinely used to advertise all manner of products. But kitchen range hoods?

Does it come in candy iPod colors? Are the other kids jealous? Does this punk even know how to cook?

Quietly Been Back for Some Time

We've been back in China for some time now (about a month). Life is very busy now. School has been demanding for all. Lee has a supervisory position this year, and after a fun year in the wilderness teaching elementary, I'm back to teaching high school.

The past month hasn't generated any good stories or pictures, so I really don't have much to say. I do have some good pictures left over from last year, and I'll start posting some more of those.

It was really, really good to see friends and family back in the U.S.A. We are sorry for those of you that we missed. It was not so nice to spend so much money. We try to tell ourselves that we were making up for a year of no clothes shopping (in reality is was more like two years, because we kind of skated by on old clothes last year), but that doesn't really make us feel better.

One of the things that surprised me when I talked to friends back home was that, of everything I blogged about, the one subject that generated the most interest, and the most questions, were my travails as a incurable handyman trying to fix up my apartment in the hardware and building supply wasteland that is retail China. I thought I was beating a dead horse on that subject, so I actually passed on a whole lot of little stories and anecdotes that I could have told.

So, by apparent popular demand, I will expand my offerings of do-it-yourselfer nightmares in China. Obviously, I have a bit of a niche carved out for myself. Maybe I'll take up some new hobbies so I can subject myself to further hardware humiliations. Perhaps I can generate some more material from school, where I have been appointed the "master carpenter" for the high school drama program (so much less impressive than it sounds, but don't think for one minute that I won't milk it for all it's worth on my resume).

One final note. Lee and I have been discussing merging our three blogs, with the idea that the two of us together can give everyone more frequent and consistent posts. Any opinions? Give us some comments.

Reflections on nearly a year in China, Part Two

Food:
I like almost any real food. By that I mean it should be recognizable as a plant or animal product (as opposed to some industrial substance), and prepared with some skill. I’m not especially fond of most seafood, but I’m not afraid of it either.

I guess you could say I’m a picky eater, but not in the usual sense of the word. I just want food to be good. Not fancy, not a “dining experience”, just quality stuff that feels like something that a good home cook would feed the family. However, I think even people like myself who like almost everything still really get to craving “comfort foods”. Perhaps it is whatever you grew up on. I can eat a whole lot of really, really good meals, and yet never have them scratch that deep itch that only certain foods can fill. For myself, the number one thing would be a proper plate of tacos and enchiladas, or a good bowl of chili with cornbread.

For that comfort food, pickings are pretty slim. We make some good things at home, but there are still a lot of the family favorites that we didn’t ever make this year. Some of the family comfort foods we have made are pinto bean soup, split pea soup, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, pork roast, and a proper Thanksgiving dinner. There is a long list of other favorites that we haven’t yet tried to recreate here.

The local cuisine of Jiangsu Province is not to my liking. It is sweet and oily, and really doesn’t have much flavor. Fortunately, there is a great variety of other good food to be had. My favorites are the cuisines of western China, and Korean food. The western Chinese stuff is Arab/Islamic influenced. It has a lot of lamb, and good spicy flavors. I’ve written about it in detail before, so I will move on.

I had never had occasion to eat Korean food before I came here (other than Kimchi), but it really is good stuff. There are a lot of Korean companies in the area, and unlike the European and North American companies, which send few workers to China, there is a large Korean population (according to some sources, that is much to the consternation of the Chinese government, which wants those jobs for local citizens, but the Koreans keep putting them off).

Korean food emphasizes freshness, and there are a lot of good hot, spicy flavors. Barbecue is a popular favorite, but with the Korean variety, the meat is grilled in small strips, then dipped in sauces and wrapped in a piece of lettuce for eating. However, my very favorite is, in an approximate phonetic spelling, called Bi Bim Bap. It is a mix of rice, vegetables, sprouts, and sometimes meat. It comes cooked, but unmixed, in an extremely hot stone bowl. It will have a dollop of thick hot sauce, and sometimes a raw egg, on top of it. You then stir the whole concoction together yourself. The egg cooks from the heat of the bowl as you stir. A proper bowl of this stuff can literally serve as that “comfort food” that I was talking about above.

Street food is always an adventure, but you can find some real treasures. Kabobs of various sorts can be quite good, and there is a fried egg folded up into dough that isn’t too bad. There are various forms of steamed buns that are really good if you get the kinds with the right fillings (they are like chocolates that way… you never know what you are going to get, at least if you don’t speak Chinese). Dumplings can be good.

In the first weeks we were here, there was a certain smell that would assault us when we went downtown. I was convinced early on that it was a hideous smelling food of some kind. Lee, however, was convinced that no food could possibly be that rank, and she was sure that we were smelling an open sewer. We actually had arguments, although I occasionally lost the courage of my convictions and would become convinced that she must be right.

Eventually, we found out that this odor came from what was known as “stinky tofu”. It is a fermented tofu that is then deep fried and served on a stick. Given the delicate balance that this family sometimes has between adventurous and masochistic, we did finally try it. It is better than it sounds, but now by much. I was right in the end, but it was a hollow victory. Any smell that you can’t distinguish from food or offal, can’t be a good smell. Or a good food.

Most of the Western food here is pretty mediocre. There are three Mexican restaurants in town. We’ve eaten at two. They are okay, but not much more. The usual selections of Italian foods and whatnot are here, but not that exciting. There is one new European/American restaurant that is pretty good. There is some really good Western food in Shanghai, and we’d had some very proper French food there, but we really are too busy to get there very often.

As I said in the beginning, I’m not particularly snobbish. I can enjoy a typical fast food burger as much as the next guy. This winter, a new Burger King opened in town. In the U.S. probably eat at a one of those no more than once a year, and only on road trips. However, I can tell you that, if you have not experienced it for yourself, you have no concept of how good a Whopper can taste after seven months in China.

Shopping:
I don’t enjoy shopping here. At the street markets, you often feel like someone is trying to take advantage of you. Even in regular stores, it is really hard to find specific things sometimes. The largest store in town a grocery from the French chain Auchan, can get so crowded that you almost have to swim through the people.

In general, shopping is the prime example of how much China has changed. Two major shopping centers have come into Suzhou just this year, and the product variety is expanding and diversifying rapidly. One case in point, nine months ago I specifically cited one thing as being virtually un-findable in China. That was chocolate chips. Now, they are consistently stocked in all of the Western shops. There are more foreign products of other kinds as well. However, that in no way communicates the dramatic changes that have come in the past decade. For example, few people are aware that until the current generation, very few Chinese drank milk or ate dairy products. One British man living here tells that story that, a mere ten years ago, when he lived in another, somewhat less developed Chinese city, he could not purchase milk in stores at all. To keep a personal supply for his coffee and tea, he made a special deal with a local farm woman. Let me repeat… this was only ten years ago!

Nowadays, dairy products are well established. In fact, the Arizona-based and founded Cold Stone Creamery has two locations in Suzhou. The brochure, by the way, shows a picture of its original store next to Nello’s Pizza at the corner of Southern and McClintock in Tempe, less than one mile from our old house.

One more thing I thought of recently, when I was pondering exactly why I hate shopping here so badly (as opposed to all the reasons I hate shopping generally), other than things I mentioned or alluded to above, here are a few others:

Selection. This is something that the Chinese really haven’t figured out. There is usually only two or three options for any given product.

Prices. There are two kinds of prices. Super cheap (for super crap), and prices that are equal to those in U.S. department stores. There is very little middle ground. What China really, really needs is for an outfit like Target to catch on. Some retailers are figuring out that there is a market for good quality at mid-range prices. The IKEA furniture store in Shanghai, for example, does great business.

One final shopping note. We are preparing to go home, and recently I said to a Chinese person that we would be bringing a lot of things back with us (from our U.S. shopping and restocking). She asked, rather pointedly, why I wanted to do that, when it was so obvious “You can buy everything in China!”.

I realize that have let her annoy me all out of proportion (there are extenuating circumstances why I am frustrated with this person), but that comment has stuck in my craw for days now.

It is possible that virtually anything I want to buy exists somewhere in China. That is not to say that I can buy it. Sure, if I spoke and read the language, had a car, and plenty of time, I could find some of the things I’ve been looking for. However, despite the fact that seemingly everything in the world is “Made In China” these days, that doesn’t mean that those same things are For Sale in China. Many products are manufactured exclusively for the export market. If I had a contact in that specific factory, I could cut a deal (does anyone want any Dewalt tools? I do have a contact in that company).

To make a long story short, no, I can’t buy many things in China. So purely out of spite, we have now been compiling a shopping list to give to this person. We won’t ever actually do it of course, but it makes me feel better. The first item on the list is a good pair of American size 10 ½ 4E width shoes.

Reflections on nearly a year in China, Part One

I don’t know how much more I will write before we go back to the U.S. for the summer, but I’ve been thinking that I would do a bit of a roundup on impressions and experiences. Although I have a few coherent thoughts collected, this will mostly be a stream-of-consciousness. Therefore, sometimes I might have organized categories, and sometimes I probably won't. A great deal of it will doubtlessly be redundant to things I've written before.

Argument as a form of street theater:
The Chinese love to argue, although thankfully not with me (it would be rather one-sided). They must enjoy arguing in public, because there is often a great deal of theatricality, and a sense sometimes that they are playing to crowd. And there is always a crowd. Spectators gather to enjoy the show, and they react when someone gets off a good line (although I can only judge this by reactions), or when someone gets flustered. People get out of cars and shake fingers in each others’ faces. They yell and gesticulate. What they don’t seem to do is threaten (although there are exceptions, as I retold in one of my earliest blog posts). I have seen more arguments in public here in less than a year than in my entire previous lifetime.

The argument that I was closest to was also one of the strangest (and depending on your perspective, funny). I was in a line waiting to buy an inter-city bus ticket. The queues were separated by railings. Within that confined space, I got caught right behind a young couple, with other people behind me so I couldn’t escape.

It appeared that the young woman was trying to leave the young man (as in, leave, go home, and never come back). Every time she tried to buy a ticket, he would thwart her in some way, with that trying to act gentle but in reality using his superior strength sort of man behavior. She would try to put money on the counter and he would try to grab it. She would grab the money back with her other hand before he could get it. She would try again, only this time he would grab her other hand so that she couldn’t use it. She would try to talk to the ticket seller and he would put his hand over her mouth. She would stop and act defeated just long enough for him to let his guard down, and then dive for the ticket window again. He would block her path with his arms, but try to make it look like he wasn’t using force, while he had one of those but-baby-I-love-you looks on his face. She would turn her back to him and then when he got to close try to elbow him in the gut, and then make a fresh push for the counter.

It went on and on, and everyone stood by watching. Finally I just forced my way past them with a swimming motion, and then leaned in and bought my ticket while their wrestling match continued in my armpit.

At least I made it out of town and back home to Suzhou.

Public transportation:
In a nutshell, it is far to public for me. I don’t like it. I have a lot of experience with European public transportation, and I never get quite the feeling that I’m getting stared at like I do here. Actually, I don’t really mind subways. I find them easy to work with, and the passengers are varied enough that we Westerners don’t stand out so much. Beijing and Hong Kong have very nice subway systems, although Beijing could really do with filling in some of the gaps with some additional lines, as there are huge areas of the city without close access to a subway. Hong Kong’s is the best I’ve ever seen, although the accessibility is helped by the fact that the city is so linear. Shanghai’s subway is a bit shabby by comparison, but I’m sure it will be much more spiffy by the time the Shanghai Expo (World Fair) comes along next summer. Suzhou’s single subway line is slated to be completed next year as well. Also in the works is a light rail line into Shanghai, which would be so much more convenient than buying advance tickets to use the train.

Very few of the westerners drive. Cars are not really any cheaper than they are in the U.S., and parking is a nightmare. A lot of the higher-up expat corporate guys have private drivers. That might seem better, but frankly, I don’t want it. The people I know with drivers have a lot of scheduling headaches. Having a driver becomes sort of like having just one more person in your family that you have to work out your plans with. I’d really rather live without.

I really hate buses, although I do use them. Westerners rarely ride the buses, so we are really conspicuous. The drivers aren’t always that good, and are prone to really hard stops. Also, the buses can get amazingly crowded. I don’t know about you, but I think it should be one of the lesser human rights to never have to ride in a bus that is so crowded that your crotch is in contact with strangers.

Construction:
Nobody can build fast like the Chinese. Amazing what can be done when you work hard, work constantly, and cut corners. As to the stories about the workers being kept energized with rations of methamphetamines, I don’t have any way to know.

Just as important, I’m sure, is the capacity to make quick decisions. Perhaps, behind closed doors, it takes months of wrangling to make a plan. However, the state technically still owns all property, so although people are able to own pseudo-private property, there are not zoning and eminent domain issues. All that is required is one single decision.

And once the work gets started, the buildings can go up almost in front of your eyes. There is a new shopping center next to us that is nearing completion, and it looked barely started 10 months ago. There are a couple apartment towers right across from the school that are now up to about 20 stories, and they were working on the foundations when we got here. That allows for the nearly one month when everything stopped around Chinese New Year. Speaking of the school, the story is that it went up in only eight months, and was in use while still under construction. At one point, the workers were living in the gymnasiums.

Quality is what you would expect. Buildings no more than five years old look twenty. There definitely is a different standard of quality for important buildings, and I am sure that they have elite building crews for those, apart from the migrant workers who do most of the building.

English Names in China

I read this article a couple months ago and I found it interesting. It is by a man who is Chinese by birth, but raised in the U.S., who then went to live in China. In America, people had trouble with his Chinese name. When he moved to China, he expected it, quite logically, to longer be a problem. However, there (here), he found that the Chinese expected him to have an English name!

The context of the article is that most people in China (or at least most educated ones), have adopted an English name. I know from talking to people that they typically choose one in grade school. All of the secretaries at work have one, as well as anyone around town who speaks any English at all. Our Chinese tutor has one, but she does not use it (her English name is Jeannie, which in her case is quite similar to her Chinese name, although most are not). A few other names of people that I know are Judy, Christine, Caroline, Sophia, Julie, Nicky, Andy, Ken, Chris, and so on. I know more women's names than men, because most Chinese that I know are secretaries or teachers at the school. Unless there is someone I do not know, every last one of the Chinese teachers at the school are women.

One thing that interested me is that the author specifically mentions "Ivy" as being a popular name. I can confirm that, as I know three Ivys. I find that interesting in that it is a name which, although unmistakably English, is not exactly common in the U.S. Where are all the Britneys and Jennifers? The popularity of Ivy reminds me of my days on the Reservation years ago. There, the single most popular name for boys seemed to be "Ivan". I knew several Ivans, and I have no idea how it caught on. Did someone have an affectation for Russia? Other than Russians and Apaches, I have never met another Ivan in my life.

Also of interest might be this story about the names of dishes in Chinese restaurants. It bears some relation to my comment in a previous post about the gradual (and somewhat tragic) disappearance of bizarre English in China.

Hangzhou

My photographs are piling up faster than I am making blog posts. This set is from Hangzhou, which is about two hours from here. Suzhou and Hangzhou are often mentioned together, as both are famously beautiful, and both have at times in history been fabulously wealthy cities. Both are also favorite tourist destinations for the Chinese, although still a bit off the beaten path for Western tourists. That became very clear to me when we went to Beijing, where sometimes it seemed there were as many Europeans and Americans out on the street as there were Chinese.

Here are some photos:

The lake at Hangzhou (West Lake) is very famous. At one spot in the lake, there are some little spires. No one I have asked so far can tell me what they are, but I haven't tried very hard to find out either. In any case, they appear on the back of the 1 Yuan (RMB) note. In fact, the guys trying to sell you boat rides hold up the bills to advertise.

This generated a bit of a family joke that we may try to go visit the scenes on the backs of all of the banknotes. In reality, this wouldn't be to hard, except for the Llasa Palace (50 RMB note), which is in Tibet. We have already seen both West Lake at Hangzhou (1 RMB note), and the Great Hall of the People in Beijing (100 RMB note). If you want to see pictures of all of the bills, you can go to Wikipedia, or to this site.