A New Culture, A New Year

Alright, this is going to be a long one. I've been here less than a week, and already I've seen how different living in China really is. If you've ever been stared at on a bus for 20 minutes, or while you're eating dinner, you'll have the first inkling of how it feels to live here as a tall white guy. Although there is a fairly large expat community in China (I'm using "large" here rather liberally compared to the number of Chinese), white people are still a novelty to many people. So, when you stick out as much as I do, you're bound to get some looks.

I've thus far avoided using a squatter toilet (a toilet with no seat--it's basically a hole in the ground that you squat over), but the bathrooms here are still quite different. First of all, the hot and cold water seem to be opposite what they are in the States. Next, the septic systems here aren't quite as robust as they are back home, so you're not supposed to flush your toilet paper. Instead there is a small trash can next to each toilet, and the bathrooms smell horrible.

The other morning we had an orientation activity called "Mystery Beijing", during which were put into small teams and then given the name of some location in Beijing. Our task was to get to the location (and prove we had gotten there) without using any taxis or English. Our goal was to get to "jiālèfú" (家乐福 - I've included the Chinese characters here, though many of you may not be able to see them). This task was actually much easier than expected--all of the people that we asked for help seemed to be more than willing to direct us to the correct numbered bus. We found out only once we had arrived that jiālèfú is "Carrefour", the French department store/super market. It's interesting to try to figure out how to buy things at stores in China. It's not like in the States where you see an item, pick it off the shelf, stand in line near the door, and then pay for it. Instead, with more expensive items (I bought a cell phone while I was there) you have to first pay for the item at one of many small cashier stands around the store, and then take a ticket back to the counter where you saw the item. For less expensive items, you can pull it off the shelf and pay for it, but there's a difference between standing in line like at a super market and paying for it at one of the cashiers. (I haven't exactly determined yet what that difference is.)

The water in Beijing isn't potable. This means that at restaurants you either get bottled water or hot water, which has been boiled. Few Chinese people drink cold water, especially during the Winter. I mentioned in an earlier post how cheap the beer is in Beijing. I was later told that I shouldn't be drinking beer in the Winter, since it is cold and therefore clashes with the hot water I've been drinking. Instead, I should be drinking hard alcohol to warm me up. The head of our program said in a lecture this past week, that while he's not encouraging us to drink, that you really need to do so in order to become integrated into Chinese society. The Chinese have a drinking culture. Even in business, for example, business women are respected more if they can hold their booze. A few nights ago, we went out to a dance club called "Propaganda" which had a metal detector at the door (possibly more for appearances than anything else--but I could be wrong). My friends and I were some of the only white people in the place, and we were definitely treated differently. Several shots later, a couple of the girls I had come with, followed by the rest of us, were up behind the DJ under the dim red lights taking shots with the owner of the club. While this was a Western-style club, the experience was definitely much different than at a club in America.

Yesterday was Chinese New Years Eve. I had been looking forward to this event for a long time, but I really wasn't ready for it. During the day, my friends and I split the costs of a small box of fireworks and some firecrackers. In the evening, we were fortunate enough to get to spend the holiday with local families, who were already hosting other IES students. My family, whom I visited with two other IES students, was extremely nice. They spoke no English, but their niece (who speaks slightly more English than I speak Chinese) had come for the holiday. In preparation, we helped them wrap jiǎo zi (饺子--dumplings), a task that we were quickly dismissed from when they realized how horrible of a job we were doing. ("This one has too much, this one has too little--now go hang decorations", we were told through their laughter). So, we helped them hang their decorations. Then we were asked if we like music, to which we responded that we did. (They had an old piano sitting in their family room). The father asked if any of us played the piano, to which I made the mistake of responding that I did. At which point, I was told to play, which I did. Of course, I haven't practiced in quite a while, and my repertoire of songs is really quite minimal right now. So, I played the beginning of the Tempest by Beethoven and a few sections from the third part of the moonlight sonata, and then tried to remember what else I might know how to play. Every time I tried to stop, I was eagerly encouraged to continue. Finally, I told them I couldn't remember anything else, and I thought I might be off the hook. But, the father brought out sheet music, and I had no choice but to keep playing.

As dinner was just about ready, they brought out a giant jug of homemade bái jiǔ (白酒--traditional Chinese white alcohol). Their dinner was a traditional Beijing dinner, with duck, pork, chicken, many other foods, and way to many jiǎo zi. They even had fried lotus root, which reminded me a lot of latkes. The Chinese culture really does remind me a lot of Jewish culture--the food, the festivals, the traditions, it all rings close to home. I was happy with myself that I was able to express this point in Chinese to the host family. As soon as I told them I was Jewish, they were extremely interested, and I was told that Jewish people are very smart and very respectable. (To which I was entirely sure what to respond). We got into a long discussion about Jews and Israel, and the father brought out a book in Chinese about just that topic, showing me pictures of past Israeli prime ministers and other Jews who may have had some connection with China. They even told me that Ehud Olmert had spent a short period of his childhood living in Harbin, China. (I verified that this is true). So, the evening went on, and we got nice and toasty.

The city had been host to sporadic outbursts of fireworks for the past few days, in expectation of the festival. Before we left (around 10:30pm), we went outside to light off some of our own, and already the city had begun to rumble. By the time we got to campus, the sky was constantly flashing and cracking with literally millions of fireworks and firecrackers. There are roughly 16 million registered residents in Beijing, plus another 10 million migrant workers from other parts of China (some of whom do stay in Beijing for the New Year either out of necessity or bad luck), and by midnight all of them were setting the sky ablaze. Walking through the streets, there were fireworks are firecrackers at every turn, closer and with greater power than would ever be permitted in the US. (I got hit with more than one piece of firecracker, and the fireworks were literally going off by our feet.) It really is hard to explain the magnitude of this event. It is truly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. When I woke up this morning, there were still hundreds of explosions all over the city, and my friends and I are going to go out again today to try to obtain some more munitions.

Classes start on Monday, and then things get a lot more serious, but I'll explain that in an upcoming post.

By the way, I posted photos! Go check... you can navigate with your keyboard arrows, end, home, page up/down, etc. and I've included comments in the bottom left of each photo gallery. If you can't get to any other pages on this site, let me know.