My Boss the Communist Dictator

It may seem racist or even hyperbolic to compare one's boss to dictator Kim Jong Il.  He doesn't have aspirations for world conquest (yet), and he doesn't attend colossal military parades in his honor, but there are enough similarities for me to mull and snicker to myself as he reprimands me for the third time this week.

The Personality Cult

Stalin, Mao and our buddy Kim all had or have personality cults.  If you're not abreast to totalitarian regimes, a personality cult is, to quote Wikipedia, "when a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise."

The first thing anyone notices about this institution is the boss's face in promotional posters plastered in every hall, classroom and office.  His head, which is already rather large, takes up half of each poster, the rest being Korean text which presumably exemplifies his wisdom in English education.  Beside the front desk there is a large flat panel that plays non-stop footage of the boss giving lectures.  There is no audio or subtitles; all one can perceive is the man's head contorting and wobbling passionately.

His ubiquitous presence in the school is a throwback to Mao and Kim, who in attempt to create  omnipresent, godlike status, plastered portraits of themselves in every public area, from homes to classrooms to courtyards.  Now all we need is the boss in wristwatches and we'd have a cult for sure.

Empty Rhetoric

We can't reference Mr. Kim on this one since as we know, the fellow stays pretty quiet.  Mao, on the other hand, is remembered for a slue of vague one-liners like this:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land."

We need flowers to bloom to help sciences?  I don't have my Mao book in front of me to quote more hilarious and perplexing aphorisms, but suffice it to say, Mao was no public speaker.  When he did speak, however, it was usually to remark on the obvious or irrelevant.

My boss, in turn, loves a good speech.  That's why he's featured on the front-desk monitor orating inaudibly.  At our weekly meeting, he emphasizes that we need to be more professional teachers.  He then asks each teacher their view on how to be professional, and responds to each answer by explaining how we are completely wrong.  His explanations are never clear, and specific questions directed at him result in further befuddlement.  Staff emerge from meetings more confused than when they went in, and our failure to follow his vague directions result in more meetings.

It should be said that my boss's wisdom is followed exactly and never questioned to his face.  Neither logic nor experience enter in the discussion.  The boss commands and we obey.

Hairstyle

I could continue with grim comparisons, but I'd like to end this on a more amusing note, and that's hairstyle.  Dictatorships and goofy hair go together like celery and peanut butter.  I can't post a photo of my boss and I couldn't find a photo of a Korean guy with bad hair, so their current president will have to suffice.

My boss's hair underscores the passion of his speeches.  Each time he twitches his head to make a point, his hair shakes nervously, as if to echo the man's passion.  It's kind of a like the pet of a cartoon super-villain.  It's hard to explain without an image.  You'll just have to take my word that in this manner and others, my boss really is a junior communist leader.

And now I'm fired.

Night Running in Seoul

I have this habit of intentionally getting lost while running. I've done this in every city I've lived in, from the cherry orchards of Traverse City, Michigan to the hazardous industrial complexes of Qingdao, China. I don't know what it is, I just feel that running shouldn't be done just for its own sake.

I was just twenty minutes into my run, at around 10:30pm last night when I realized I didn't know which direction my apartment was. I had followed a river several miles before veering off down random, empty alleys.   Forty minutes of aimless sprinting and gesticulating to Journey left me in a district I hadn't seen before, and my bum leg began to call.

Now, anyone who's been to Seoul can tell you that it's easy to get lost.  Seoul, like its people, is  homogeneous; nearly every square block looks like the next.  Each block invariably contains at least one or more convenient store, PC cafe, karaoke room, franchise bar, and generic Korean restaurant.  There are few landmarks and even less street signs.

So, seeing my mistake, I asked a middle-aged Korean man in Korean where is Daecheong station, which is just below my apartment.  He shouted some Korean and pointed in several directions.  I began running in the first direction the man pointed to.  I crossed several rivers before asking for directions again.  This time the man said "Let's go together" in Korean and led me a few blocks before incomprehensibly explaining the rest of the way.  Somehow I found familiar territory, and after two hours of running, I was at home.

Here's to many safe returns, I guess.

Seoul at a Glance

When I lived in Yongin two years back, Seoul was the place to be.  Now, it's the place I am.  I reside in a quieter corner on the south side of the Han River, away from the lights and noise of the main drag.  I live in an office-tel apartment building above a fitness club, the subway system, and a couple dozen Korean cafes that all serve the same dishes.  There are parks and recreation areas on every side of me.

To me, Seoul is a city of amusing contrasts.  There are mountains that rise above forests of drab high-rise apartments, and Buddhist temples tucked between Dunkin' Donuts shops.  Seoul has much to offer foreigners in the ways of food, drink and merriment, but less in the ways of cultural and historical immersion.  Seoul is obscured by the much better known metropolises of Beijing and Tokyo, and for good reasons.  Seoul lacks the amazing spectacles of Beijing, and its technological efficiency lags behind Tokyo.

The first thing anyone will tell you about Seoul is that it's huge.  Hovering somewhere between ten and fifteen million, Seoul rivals Beijing and is about half the size of Tokyo.  But Korea is a tiny country, about the geographic size of Michigan.  Just imagine Michigan with forty-five million.  Seoul comprises around a quarter of that, and its sprawl accounts for considerably more.  My former town of Yongin is at the fringes of the city and is showing signs of assimilation.  One might say that within a hundred years, Seoul and South Korea will be one of the same.  

It's difficult to give a general account of Seoul, or any city really, so for the next twelve months I'll be examining more precise aspects.  Hope to have you along.  Welcome back to Korea, everybody. 한국 아서세요.

Once you go Mac, you never go back, except when you do

So, for the last month I've been toiling with the great technological debate: PC or Mac?  This question is as hotly argued as liberal or conservative, pro-life or choice, taco or burrito.   There is little I can contribute to the table of pros and cons.  It's said that PCs are cheaper, more compatible with software, and have more memory, while Macs are better for graphic editing, are sleeker and have much haughtier clientele.  It's difficult to get an honest assessment since most folks are biased one side or the other, and they typically articulate their preference by pointing out the flaws of the other side.   What a confused purchaser needs is someone who has experience with both platforms, which as of last week, is what I've become.  I'm a Mac user.

So, why?  Well, those Apple commercials were convincing.  The last thing I want is to suddenly become obese and forgetful.   But really, the kicker for me was Apple's college promo, where college students (and their brothers?) can get a free Ipod Touch and fifty bucks off a Macbook.  I opted for the aluminum Macbook because it's shinier.  Plus, Apple first sent me a defective Macbook that I had to return for a new one.  They deducted another hundred bucks off the total.  

There is little to distinguish my Macky from my old HP lappy.  Both are solid devices, but that was before the arrival of Vista, Windows most terrifying operating system.  So, in the end, I chose one side to avoid certain pitfalls of the other, that and promos.  Delicious promos.

Top Ten Goals for Korea 2009

So it looks like I'll be returning to Korea in two or three weeks. I'm reluctant for a number of reasons; namely, I've lived there before, it's not related to my career goals, and politically, the ROK has been disappointing lately. But rather then dwelling on reasons to hesitate, I'll post some goals for Korea Part Deux.

1) Save 20k for grad school. Aw yeah.
2) Fix my knee either by therapy or surgery.
3) Study for the GRE everyday and take it this fall.
4) Create and maintain as many correspondences as possible with professionals in the information science fields. (That's what I wanna study.)
5) Get all the documents ready for my application.
6) Go to therapy / a gym five days a week.
7) Pay for Korean or Mandarin lessons at an academy.
8) Visit Jeju-Do and the DMZ.
9) Treat myself to one of the following: lasik eye surgery, a digital SLR, or another trip to Japan.
10) Oh, and run the Seoul Marathon in the spring of 2010.

Hanguk it is.

The Pull-Push Phenomenon

Toward the end of my stay in China, I recognized a trend among the expatriate crowd in Asia. Expats in Asia --for all their various nationalities, travels and experiences--can be broadly organized into two groups. Category One is characterized first by youth. These are the ambitious, adventurous lads who have recently graduated from a liberal arts college and have decided to exploit the demand for English teachers abroad. These folks, generally speaking, are interesting, perceptive, perhaps bohemian and often worldly. When stories are exchanged among foreigners, they tend to ask more questions than state opinions; they learn the local language for, if no other reason, to impress cute, submissive locals; they try to maintain respect and a healthy curiosity for the country in which they reside. In short, they are pulled from the motherland to Asia by its inherent mystery and exoticism.

And then there’s Category Two. As you might have guessed, Twosies are noticeably older than their younger counterparts, though not necessarily old or middle-aged. Since their graduation a decade ago or more, they have remained in Asia teaching English. You’ll notice immediately how knowledgeable they are as they expound stories at great length and condescension to folks in Category One. Twosies are often jaded; they criticize local customs and admonish other expats for condoning them. Their personalities range to slightly discomforting to borderline sociopathic. When you see them verbally assaulting Asians in the native tongue for some trivial misunderstanding, you all at once realize that there had to be something wrong with them to keep them here so long. It occurs to you that they may have not belonged wherever they came from, and indeed they felt pushed to Asia by some inability to function normally at home.

‘Course, there are enough expats straddling the two categories to suggest that it isn’t as clear-cut as I would make it seem. Social awkwardness and years spent working abroad, however, are correlative enough to imply that perhaps it is actually the time spent overseas that is psychologically degenerative. It’s difficult to say without taking one’s personal history into account.

So here’s mine. I spent two years living in Asia. I’m 25, passing out of the “recent college graduate” phase to “yeah, I have a degree” phase. I went to Korea back in 2006 excited as a Category One could be. I came home from China last March thinking I would find entry-level work relevant to my degree and pursue a graduate program in the following year. What I quickly understood though, is that I am not marketable to decent labor. I’ve had a vague, idealistic idea of the career I want, I’ve been living in my parents’ home in a remote village near the Canadian border, and over the last two months of job searching, all I’ve managed to secure is another teaching job in Korea.

I need money and purpose just like the next bloke, but Korea again? No other country pays nearly as well for its foreign teachers whom lack certification. Yet I am reluctant to relive an experience. I only have so much time on this earth, and I shouldn’t be doing work that isn’t what I hope to do ten years from now, right? Right. I’m 25, encroaching 26, and the threat of swirling down the quagmire of Category Two looms. The hour is late to rethink my decision. My sanity wanes. Here I go, again.

Keeping the Faith, Losing the Religion

So, lately conservative pundits have been calling Obama's faith into question, saying that he hasn't attended church often enough and that his policies go against the bible. This comes to me as a breath of fresh air; for the first time in eight years, we have a leader that's keeping his faith to himself and letting reason and justice dictate his actions. Whereas Bush was overt in his spiritual beliefs, Obama has displayed his faith occasionally and diplomatically, like when he appointed Rick Warren to give a prayer at his inauguration. He's using his faith calculatedly.

It reminded me of American Theocracy and Religulous. Both emphatically declare the real threat that religions poses.

Kevin Phillipps's American Theocracy is a meticulous description of the rise of southern Christian fundamentalism from the pre-Civil War era to the forefront of contemporary politics. Among Phillips's scathing criticisms of the Bush administration is the idea that prophetic religion, or a doomsday mentality, has become a major influence of foreign and domestic policy.

It isn't anything new of course. Bill Maher painted a very dismal and silly portrait of religion in Religulous. Maher interviews a parade of religious figures, from evangelists to rabbis, and even mentions my old buddy, Reverend Robert Tilton. For the most part, Maher simply tries to make religious people look, well, ridiculous, and to that end he succeeds. At the end of the film though, his comical jabs crystallize into a poignant denunciation and caveat against religion. My favorite part:

"Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas."

That's it, really. In the last ten years, I've gone from Methodist to lukewarm, to agnostic, to secular, to antireligion. I will always have my faith in a deity because it was ingrained into me as a boy, but my faith in religion is fading fast.

A Holiday Message from the Chairman

"We are prepared to sacrifice 300 million Chinese for the victory of the world revolution. Don't make a fuss about a world war. At most people die...Half the population wiped out--this happened quite a few times in Chinese history."

- Mao: The Unknown Story, p. 439.

These are the words of Mao Tse-Tung, chairman and dictator of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1976. This frightening statement was made during his announcement of the infamous "Great Leap Forward" to the Communist Party congress in 1958 . What followed was the worst famine in human history which left 38 million Chinese dead.

As Mao puts it here, he was willing to offer the lives of 300 million of his own people--nearly half the population at that time--for the sake of global, military domination. China lacked the finances and technology needed to develop nuclear weapons, so Mao had to forcibly take and sell vast amounts of the peasantry's food to Soviet Russia to pay for his bomb. And so it was, for three years that Mao through tyranny and coercion starved his own people to fuel a superpower dream. His dream fizzled quickly, leaving China and Russia at odds and his country a wasteland, from which it has yet to completely recover.

The Great Leap is the crowning atrocity of Mao's rule, with as many mistakes, massacres, murders, deception and terror to fill a 800-page biography that nearly killed me to read. Mao has a very impressive resume of awfulness. Here are a few things from his 27-year reign: He aimed to win a civil war against the Nationalists over fighting the nemesis Japan in WWII, leaving his people open to Japanese occupation and brutality; he terrorized his own people into becoming unquestioning, murderous zealots during the foundation of his cult personality; and then there was the Cultural Revolution, where Mao laid waste to hundreds of thousands of cultural treasures like temples and art across the country--beautiful history lost forever.

It's almost unbelievable that such a man could walk this earth, yet what is astonishing to me is that hardly anyone, probably not you, and definitely not Chinese today, think this man was bad at all. I wasn't aware myself until I went to Beijing in 2007 and saw a twenty foot tall picture of the guy's ugly mug. I mean, it's amazing that the worst dictator in history, far worse than Hitler or Stalin and possibly the chairman of KISQ, the worst man simply ever is someone few people properly hate.

I say "few" because in China, Mao is revered, revered I tell you. He is on every banknote and in most cities there's a statue of him, holding out his hand, blessing the people. In Beijing there's his mausoleum (I thought mao-soleum just now and laughed) where you can join hordes of people that silently walk past his corpse encased in formaldehyde. I went there and it was creepier than you can imagine. And then there's of course the people, as in the vacuous "People's" Republic of China, who have repeatedly told me they think of Mao as the perfect person but can't explain why. The government is mostly to blame, which bans anything that criticizes Mao or communism; I'm sure my book is at the top of the list.

To me, the tragedy isn't that 70 million people, mostly destitute and innocent, were killed as a result of one man's pursuit of global conquest. That's certainly horrible, though. Think of the Holocaust times twelve and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan times a lot more than that. The tragedy, then, is that the world, particularly the survivors who were terrorized for decades, will never be recognized. And this generation and ones to come, both in China and around the world will never see Mao for what he is, and that's evil incarnate.

During the propagation of Mao's cult personality, Mao authored a little red book with short quotations about Chinese history and politics and whatever. It's inane garbage, but one quotation suits him well. It reads "every fart has some kind of smell, and we cannot say that all farts smell sweet."

It just goes to show that deception and tyranny have their weight, but eloquence is the true criterion for dictating mass murder.

Or something.


-K

Top Six Things that Annoy Me about China (Part Deux)

Continuation from my last post:

#3 Loud Noises!!!

A near-constant bombardment of cars, crowds, and bodily noises means the Chinese are desensitized to what we in Michigan would probably split our ears. Everyone has cell phones and none of them have the volume adjusted right. The following is a sample conversation of what I often hear on the bus. Imagine that the person’s barking voice would carry 200 meters.

“Way, Knee How?? (short pause) Eh?? EH??!! EH??? (short pause) Ohh how how…EH???”

And so the conversation continues, the speaker shouting, and then grunting “eh?” or “huh?” and no one else around them blinks an eye. Chinese are shouters. Akin to German, the Chinese language just sounds angry. People could be having a very simple conversation about noodles with what sounds like scalding-hot emotion. Chinese are easily irritated, but most of the time that doesn’t account for their shrieking; they’re just very loud people.

So, when situations give way to silence it makes locals feel rather uncomfortable. One can’t escape riding a bus without enduring China’s public programming. Every bus has two monitors, which usually broadcast some inane comedy show, cooking program, or karaoke music video, invariably at a deafening volume. This is especially taxing on long, inter-city bus trips, where one must tolerate up to fourteen hours of this cacophony. What could be a relaxing trip through China’s gorgeous countryside is destroyed by cell-phone talkers and Chinese pop music, media awful in its own right.

Even the quietest, serenest places aren’t exempt. There are a handful of places in China that are as beautiful as they are barren of human activity. One such area is the small group of mountains behind my apartment. At their peak you can behold the entire city, the white sandy beaches, the famous Laoshan Mountain range and the islands in the distance, all with no else to share it with. That is, until you vaguely hear a radio barking pop music below you. And soon you’re joined by a friendly local who splits the silence with a small FM receiver, its volume at tilt. The music is muddled with static because of the altitude but that makes little difference to its listener. He smiles, nods, and says “hello” in English. A moment later, his phone rings and the man begins yelling bloody-murder into it.

#2 – Too Many $@(*#$ PEOPLE

Over the 26 years of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s reign, he starved and murdered somewhere between 60 and 70 million of his own people. It was hardly noticed. Most of us in the west attribute this colossal cover-up to the power of the Chinese Communist Party to mask and contort history, but having lived here, I think that most people honestly didn’t detect the gradual disappearance of their kin. 1.3 billion. Sweet mother of Buddha.

This presents the government with a bunch of obvious challenges: public transportation is bogged down, unemployment, depletion of resources, and inundation of sewage systems, and so forth. The Party, in its infinite understanding of its people’s needs, decided long ago that the people should have three long holidays during the year, “Golden Weeks” as the tourist industry calls it. So what happens to public transportation when 1.3 billion people get the same twenty or so days off?

I’m a traveler. I travel. So when I heard I was going to get a bunch of days off at my inane job at KISQ to frolic in the countryside I crapped my pants. I plan my trip, get out in the field, and discover that one-sixth of the world’s population had the exact same idea.

China is bloated with people. This has over-arching effects on the value of human life and dignity, the economic hierarchy, and trips to the supermarket. There are about a dozen major markets in Qingdao, and each one of them, at any given time, are crowded with as many patrons as is physically possible. I’m accustomed to warehouse-sized Wal-marts that do their best to encourage customers to stay and shop for as long as they can. Upon entering any such Chinese equivalent, though, one is immediately seized with the desire to escape by any means. One may flee to a bus only to find long queues behind each that is already brimming with bodies. Many Chinese streets are filled with bicyclers but not in Qingdao, where the dangerous practice has been outlawed, dangerous in bicycle-automobile accidents, since pedestrian safety is almost never upheld by drivers. I digress.

#1 – (In)Security

The Party’s desire for control has trickled down to every aspect of bureaucracy. Security guards are ever-present, ready to check your ID or receipt, take your money or interrogate you for inadvertently infiltrating a military base. I’ll get to that.

Within sight of my apartment balcony, there are four shacks each with two security guards pacing out front. They aren’t armed and they hardly look official. If they’re not pacing they’re sleeping, or reprimanding me for climbing over the nine-foot tall, iron gate because I forgot my ID card at the gym. On a later climb over the gate, I would find that the guards had coated every bar with engine grease, impeding my entrance.

In every supermarket, mall, university, tourist destination and Arby’s, there are statuesque guards. Sometimes they check documents, but most of the time they’re simply taking up space—what little there is left from the consumer hordes. Since they have little to do, minute tasks gain more significance. Bringing a backpack into a store, for instance, warrants a good finger-shake and a stern scolding. They have less to do, you see, because China doesn’t seem to have much theft. Pickpockets are the most common crime, though no more frequent than an American city of comparable size. Theft is as rare as burglary, neither of which are as rife as the excessive security would lead you to believe.

With more guards comes a higher demand on patrons to pay for them. It’s evident in touristy places, where ticket purchases come in succession and seeing a whole temple might mean buying five separate tickets, in part to pay for the people who are watching the transactions. One wonders then, if restaurant food would be cheaper if the staff were halved. The questions and conflicts of bureaucracy are as infinite as the potential size of bureaucracy itself. And this, my students, stems from procreation on an impermissible scale coupled with a furious desire to control the subsequent masses.

Somehow, with all this security one never feels completely secure. I can’t think of a better way to explain than to offer an anecdote. A couple of months back, I decided to take a random bus eastward along the sea its final stop, get out and take some photos. When I arrived, I found a desolate hillside. While other passengers transferred to a different bus, I walked around for a couple minutes, took some shots of a billboard with some funny propaganda on it, and started back to the bus stop. A few steps later and I was accosted by three soldiers on a motorbike. They began asking me questions that my rudimentary grasp of Mandarin couldn’t handle. They angrily gesticulated toward the facility adjacent to the bus stop that I mistook for a bus garage. I quivered as two miniature vans and a jeep pulled up, emptying fourteen soldiers, some armed and all with looks of gravity. I rang my Canadian buddy who speaks enough Chinese to be a gangster, handed the phone to the officer who looked the most serious, and hoped for the best. It turned out that all I needed to do was supply some ID from KISQ and I would be forgiven. The officer persuaded me to accept a ride to the school. I grudgingly accepted. As we pulled out onto the highway, the officer turned to me and pointed at a small sign by the road we exited. “NO ADMITTANCE” it read.

And then there was that time that I had to pay 500 USD to have guards let me leave a university, but you’ve heard that tale a dozen times already.

So that’s it, I guess. There is a slue of runner-ups for this list, including cashiers who always ask for exact or easy change, front-desk staff who wake you up in your hotel room 11pm asking if you would like a female friend, and then refusing to negotiate a price over the phone.

Haw haaa…it’s the quirky things that brought me to this country, and the same things that will send me fleeing in eleven days. Next week I’ll tell you about what I love about the flip-side of this seething chaos.

Till then,

K

Top Six Things that Annoy Me in China (Part One)

As the New Year is a time of reflection of the twelve months past, I thought I’d offer a couple lists of things that have annoyed and delighted me here in China. I’ll start with annoyances, just to get the negativity out of the way. I’ll post it in two parts because I got a little carried away.

#6 Restaurant Staff

The silverest lining of China and perhaps all of Asia is the food. (Yeah, I eat a lot, nice to meet you too.) China boats an array of consumable options, and as a large part of them are quite cheap, I eat out about four days a week. I frequent the same twenty or so joints in Qingdao, and never once have I complained about the taste of the food. The staff, however, are the worst I’ve ever seen.

Now, I’ve worked in the food industry for five years and I know bad service. I was the one who fingered your child’s chicken fingers after they made the mess on the floor, and probably the culprit behind your ill-tasting martini you repeatedly blamed the bartender for. But China’s servers operate on another kind of maltreatment, an apathy you can see everywhere you look.

People in Asia don’t tip. It simply isn’t expected. Thus, customer satisfaction doesn’t affect server wages. Moreover, Chinese eateries as well as many other industries suffer from over-hiring because of annoyance #2. The first thing one notices upon entering a restaurant, before the exotic food and décor, is the superfluous number of servers, almost all of whom are doing nothing at all. Personalized service isn’t offered either, so no one greets you at the table or comes to see if everything tastes ok, which would be fine except it falls on the customer to hail a server, a real pain. They seem not to hear you, giggling to each other at the foreigner that stepped in. When they do waddle over, they begin advertising the most expensive dishes, becoming adamant to your agreement and sometimes later bringing dishes you refused. Food arrives promptly but the bill can take ten minutes or longer. When it does come, you may find mysterious charges, like for napkins, for instance.

And the waitresses don’t shave their pubescent-like moustaches. At least I did that.

#5 Teachuh, China dirty!

This annoyance is also a delight at times, since you know I have a penchant for bathroom humor. Whenever my students and I discuss life here, this is always the first complaint: China is one filthy country. It’s not simply about the coal-burning industries that dot the landscape and other wholesale forms of pollution, whose effects are visible; it’s about pollution on a very personal level.

To begin with, like Koreans, Chinese punctuate their conversations by spitting, and spitting vociferously. The hawking and violent excretion of mucous can be heard from great distances, and from every walk of life, from toddlers to sexy femininas to (and especially) old men.

China suffers from a few lacks: lack of public resources, lack of public opinion, and a serious lack of clean, public toilets. This forces many, mostly the peasantry, to take care of their business in the streets in plain view. Worse yet, it’s common if not celebrated for toddlers to excrete on the very sidewalk, as their parents nod in approval. The government has set up some pay-as-you-go latrines. To use one of these, you must pay an attendant a 25 cent fee and a bit more for toilet paper. The attendant’s job is only to take money as the squat toilets remain, like the rest of public loos, disgusting beyond description.

The Chinese do recycle though. Peasants push wheel-carts through apartment complexes, shouting out the particular recyclable they’re collecting. Small sums of money are paid for Styrofoam and the like. Also, for every trashcan there is a peasant to shuffle through it and consolidate recyclables. When these bins aren’t emptied, however, they overflow into huge piles of rubbish that spill into the street. As Qingdao is a fishing town, loads of rotting sea-flesh are thrown in.

Considering these observations and more, it hardly comes as a surprise that many locals smell like burnt bacon wrapped in a week-old, dirty diaper, or that I have an exhaustive supply of things to giggle at.

#4 Hull – Low!

China has only been open to outside civilization for around twenty years. In the same span, China has seen the largest migration in human history as hundreds of millions of peasants have migrated to the larger cities—cities where foreigners like myself congregate to seek awful teaching jobs. Thus, we have a curious meeting of very simple folk and simple folk with laptops.

Many Chinese, regardless of background, have had minimal or no contact with foreigners. The sight of us seems to titillate them, not unlike the way black folk in Detroit look at me as I tread past them in goth makeup. That is to say, for every one Chinese that reacts to a foreigner with wholesome intentions, you have thirty others that treat foreigners with either apathy, mockery, or trickery.

The first ‘y’ is apparent when you need help. There isn’t a single reliable map in China, so asking directions is paramount. I studied Mandarin for a few months so I can ask for basic stuff and understand basic replies. Oddly, language often isn’t the problem. Busdrivers, pedestrians, even information clerks, have a certain absence of mind that prevents them from talking to you past a “mayo” (don’t have) or “boo jer dow” (don’t know) or “boo yow” (don’t care). My favorite is when they shake their heads and flap their wrists like you asked them to give you their pants. I can recall when I arrived in the city of Changsha, only I wasn’t sure it was Changsha from the terrible map I had until I asked the twelfth person.

Chinese think it’s hilarious when honkeys say “hello.” I’m not sure why. I guess when we say it they whisper to each other “Oh! Just like in the movies!” Anyway, Chinese prod foreigners to speak when there are few to be found. Go to a remote village and you’ll bombarded with cat-calls. Greet them in their language and you’ll find your mockers momentarily impressed; they’ll compliment you, and proceed to ask you ten questions in rapid-fire Chinese. This happens nearly anytime a foreigner attempts to speak the native tongue. Like Americans, Chinese expect everyone in their country to speak their language fluently. Mind you, a major difference between the English and Chinese languages is there actually is no such thing as Chinese. ‘Mandarin’ Chinese as it’s called is actually a hundred distinct dialects united by a common, absurdly difficult written language. Hence, even if a foreigner understands Mandarin, it may be difficult to understand a native if their dialect meshes with their Mandarin. If the foreigner seems confused then, Chinese snicker and remark “Low-why ting boo dong!” (the foreigner doesn’t understand). This is aggravating since even when I occasionally understand what’s being barked at me, they assume I don’t because of my whiteness. Yes, never has a race been as disparaged as we are in these situations.

White is also the color of money for people on this side of the world. And no matter who it is, a mere shopkeeper, an art salesman or a driver who sees you are stranded with no alternative, they will ream you for your last mao (the cent, not the chairman). Shopping can be taxing as Chinese don’t hide the fact that they offer their native patrons lower rates, and negotiation can be impossible. “Chinese people never tell you ‘no’” as comedian Russell Peters put it, “They give you the longest no you’ve ever heard in your life. Like ‘noooooo.’” To boot, seemingly helpful folk at times give false directions. This rang true in Beijing when Olympics help staff would give contradictory advice. I’m not sure what that has to do with honkiness but I can only speculate that it’s jealousy for my neck hair.

More tomorrow!