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.

New Concepty English

Prior to the Olympics, there was a massive effort to clean up bad English in Beijing. They did a good job of it, and it's kind of too bad, really, the end of an era. Fortunately, China is a big place. It will take many years to make even a small dent in the nationwide supply of Chinglish.

I did find one funny sign in Beijing while we were there.

Once in a Blue Moon, Politics...

A few weeks ago, I wrote a critical essay about the economic policies of the Obama administration. I never posted it, and I’m not sure I ever will. If anyone is really interested, I'll email it to you. This blog hasn’t been about politics, and I’ve only posted a political essay once so far. This is the second. Part of the reason that I don’t have much to say politically is that I'd rather just spend my time wondering at the strangeness of China right now. The other part is that traditional notions of political “issues” do not interest me. More on that at the end.

I’m doing a bit of not-so-light reading. I’ve finally been working my way through The Gulag Archipelago. It is a book best taken in small doses. Last week, I came across a passage that stood out. Then this week, I happened to read from a speech by Sonia Sotomayor, current nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. The back to back reading of these two things struck me forcefully. Below are two excerpts:


First, from Solzhenitsyn

It turns out that in that terrible year (1937) Andrei… Vyshinsky (prosecutor of Stalin’s show trials), availing himself of the most flexible dialectics…, pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, buy only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was always useless to seek absolute evidence—for evidence is always relative—or unchallengeable witnesses—for they can say different things and different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his party sensitivity, his “moral forces”…”and on his character”

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn – The Gulag Archipelago, Chapter 3


And now, from Sotomayor

I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives - no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging….

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences…our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases… I [am not] so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life…

I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate. There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering.

Sonia Sotomayor - University of California, Berkley – 2001

There is a definite symmetry of language between these two excerpts. First, of course, is the assertion of relativity as a legitimate standard of judicial truth. The Stalinists openly embraced the concept. Sotomayor, at least, admits that there is a danger to relative morality, but only after having rationalized judging the law by it. The parallels deepen with the emphasis on what Solzhenitsyn calls "character" and "moral forces" (expressed by Sotomayor as the experience of being a Latina woman). In both cases, these are held up as being not only sources of authority for making judgments, but as literally being determinants in the making of correct decisions by those that possess them. Relevant to this, her use of the word "aspiration" is worrisome. For her, the word does not convey that one should long for a greater truth and strive for it. Rather, she uses it as a dismissive, an expression of the futility of even trying to find that great truth. By clear implication, she then substitutes something else as a standard of truth. To paraphrase what Solzhenitsyn called "party sensitivities", she is basing her decisions on gender and cultural sensitivities.

Relative truth does have its place in this world. In our human weakness, we will sometimes rely on it because, lacking the knowledge of gods, it is the best we can do. When a relative truth is expressed in the spirit of being our best human effort to interpolate absolute truth from limited information, it becomes a form of humility, an admission of our limitations, and a guard against the hubris of misplaced certainty. However, that is not the sort of relativity that is expressed in either of these passages. For both Stalin's interrogators and Judge Sotomayor, relativive truth is treated not as a best effort to reach to a fundamental truth, but rather as a window of opportunity to rationalize a desired outcome.

I am not suggesting that Sotomayor is a malevolent person, and there is absolutely nothing in her speech that suggest an affinity for Soviet-style convicting of the innocent by purely relative standards. However, there is no denying that her way of reasoning has been used by malevolent people. The deeper these ways of thinking take root, the more subjective the law becomes, and the less protection any of us have from those who will use the law to evil purposes.

As I have said before, traditional notions of politics do not interest me. My intellectual obsessions have always been questions about truth, and how we find it. As a culture, we are losing our ability to seek truth. Good people are becoming blind to the consequences of ethical relativity. We are becoming more and more willing to invent our own truths, and we are losing both our capacity, and our will, to ask and answer difficult moral questions. Politically speaking, neither side is immune. However, let me ask, what was the wellspring of this phenomena? It came out of the Marxist conceit that truth is only the self-serving invention of the ruling classes, and the postmodern truth-is-whatever-you-want-it-to-be fantasies of modern academia. And politically speaking, which side has the fundamental ties with these philosophies? The answer to that question is why, while I may never feel myself fully at home with the political Right, I am most certainly do find myself at total alienation from the political Left.

Truth, and the constant search for what it really is, is all that matters. Truth is not an opinion, it is not a feeling, and it is not a perspective. And when we don't know it, we can’t just take its absence as license to substitute it with our own. For even when we cannot find truth, we must hold to the sure knowledge that truth is out there, and it will stay there until we find it.

And then we must seek to find it.