A Bad China Day

Today I'm having a Bad China Day. 

Don't misunderstand, I love China. I married a Chinese girl. But in Shanghai-Expat slang, this is a common expression. It means something along the lines of, "all those little things that I can usually put up with just fine all happened at the same time today and I can't handle it anymore".

There are other expressions like it, such as "TIC" (This Is China) which means "things are different here, don't expect things to make sense like they do in your home country"; and "Only In China", meaning, "in all the world, you'll only see things as crazy as this in China".

Jeepers, why so negative? If they don't like it there, they should just go home, right? Well, a lot do. But it must be noted that most of the time, it's okay living here, especially if you can speak a little Chinese. Often times, it's freaking awesome. A Bad China Day is only one day, it is not a week or a month. They just come every now and again, and are not usually enough to send an expat packing.

Today's Mem: 我吃饱了, wo chi bao le, I'm full

I don't want to tell you anything negative, because its totally awesome here and everybody should come. It just has, how to say, some character. But that's what makes it so interesting! Shanghai expats have got to learn not to let the little things get to them.

Here is a mem I made from the famous Monty Python scene, which brings revelation to the character 饱, meaning 'full'. When you are really full, first you spew (left radical饣), then you explode (right radical包).

Culture Clash #1: The Egg McMuffin

Today's Mem: 近, Jin4, Near

My first great culture clash was on my second day in China – incidentally, it was also the day I got married. We had taken a train from Shanghai to Huaibei, my wife’s hometown in Anhui province, and my (at that time) fiancée’s mum picked us up from the train station in the morning. My dear mother-in-law-to-be wanted to look after me, so imagining that I was missing western food, she bought me an Egg McMuffin for breakfast from the golden arches (in reality, I had only spent one night in China and was eager to try some Chinese food).

I’m not a big fan of McDonalds. In fact, I don’t even like using the name here on my blog in case it inadvertently works as advertising for them. But I gratefully accepted it and thanked her.

But before I could tuck into my breakfast, a beggar came to me asking for money. I had never seen such a thing before. New Zealand doesn’t have this kind of beggar. NZ has bums, who hit the streets as a way of life after they take too much drugs. China doesn’t have bums, it has beggars. These guys bring poverty to whole new levels. If the average NZ bum came to China and saw the beggars there, they’d be ashamed of themselves for their easy living.

New Zealand Bums Have No Idea

So I gave the poor cripple my Egg McMuffin. He’d enjoy it much more than I would! But I hadn’t realized the significance of this gift to me, because my mother-in-law was so shocked that I had given it away that she snatched it out of the hands of the beggar and gave it back to me. Needless to say I was flabbergasted, and certainly not so hungry anymore.

What looked to me as shameful and cold-blooded at that time, however, was in fact her caring for me. I hadn’t seen that kind of beggar before, but she had grown up with them around her whole life, and it’s understandable to be a little de-sensitized. I have been de-sensitized too, after living here only 3 years. So I didn’t realize at that time, but she wasn’t angry at me but angry at the beggar, and was caring for me. What she did for me was in fact a very nice gesture, another thing I hadn't realised was how expensive the food actually was and how 'fancy' it was considered in China as a foreign dish. To me it was an Egg McMuffin, to her it was posh foreign haut cuisine.

It takes a little retrospect to understand some things. This was my first big culture shock in China.

小皇帝: The Little Emperors

Primary school kids can be vicious in any society. When I was in primary school in New Zealand I was teased by my classmates for all sorts of things. As I grew older, and as my classmates and I gradually learned social skills, the bullying slowly faded away.  

Primary school is more political than parliament. I considered as I was growing up, that as schoolwork starts off basic and gets harder as the years go by, social life starts off impossible and gets easier, until you get to university where the schoolwork is really advanced, but everybody is your friend. I call this the "Inverse Proportion Between Social Skills and Class Grade”.

So I thought I had graduated from being called names and being repeatedly insulted and disrespected for hours on end. Apparently not. But wait a minute, I’m the teacher. I’m the boss. 老师是老板, 对把. However as a teacher, if I so much as snapped a child's pencil in trying to scare them, I would risk losing my job. We must take it on the chin. They say we're fat, they tell us our noses are big, we just gently tell them they shouldn't be rude and continue the class. Sounds easy, but try eight hours of it every day for three years.

In China there is a one child policy, to keep the population down. Two parents and four grandparents, all putting their hope in the one child, will do anything for that one child as long as he does his study and becomes successful when he's older. There’s no retirement pension in China, the children support the parents when they get old, so they put all their efforts into that one kid to make them as successful as possible, so they can retire in peace. Now, that's reasonable, but for some reason many parents (and especially grandparents) treat their children like royalty. Thus the rise of the 小皇帝, the Little Emperor.

It is not unusual for a foreign English teacher, in trying to teach a child one-on-one, to find that the child seems to have never been disciplined in his or her life. Nor is it uncommon, say, on the subway, to see a small child yelling at his parents without being scolded.

(I just want to point out that this isn't racist, any more than saying that Beijing has a pollution problem. Its a fact, a social problem that many people already know about. There are many very well-disciplined children, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule).

Mem: "That was the last time. If you call me bread again, I'll hit you"

My name is Brad. Brad sounds exactly like bread (does it really? Perhaps if English is your second language it might). So, of course, I have countless children shouting “BREAD, I WANT TO EAT YOUU!!!” throughout the year. My workmate Ryan had it better, he was Lion :).

So who knows what this will mean for the future of China. I hope that my principle of the "Inverse Proportion Between Social Skills and Class Grade” will set things right. We were all like that to a certain degree at that age, right? Right?

I made this mem to practise use of the word 次 (ci4), meaning 'time'. 第一次 = first time; 最后次 = last time (last as in final, not previous); 再次 = again, another time. I made it a long time before I wrote this blog.

Rat Meat Shish Kebab or Chicken?

Mem: 生病, sheng1 bing4, to get sick. Don't eat street-food.

In my first few months of living in Shanghai I was warned by my wife’s local friends never to eat street food. The meat is 老鼠肉 (rat meat), they say. The oil they cook it with comes from the dirty plates of uneaten food in restaurants, they say. It was filled with cigarette butts before they filtered it, they say. But damn, that stuff tastes good. Is it really worth avoiding such delicious food just for the sake of a few wives’ tales?

Apparently, yes. Rats are a very cheap source of meat, are easy to farm and can be made to taste like other meat if marinated for long enough in the blood and fatty juices of another more appetizing animal. No joke. Especially not funny after you’ve eaten it, or when you’re in the toilet praying for flow, or when you’re in hospital squirting nothing but clear water out from both ends because you’ve flushed everything else out of your intestines by vomit and diarrorhea. Yes, my wife and I have both been there, and on separate occasions too: my wife, by eating a KFC burger, and me, by pizza bread from a bakery. Admittedly, not by rat-meat shish kebab sold on the street corner, but that only makes it scarier, because you realize you’re still not safe even if you avoid the obvious dangers. For a while it was on the news not to eat any chicken, and so people all over China were avoiding the stuff. I still do.

Now I’m not a drinker, but neither am I a fan of the dreaded laduzi, or dire horror as they say in English (diarrorhea). If it looks dodgy but you still want to risk it, have a few mouthfuls of strong liquor with your meal, and the alcohol content will kill any germs. Try 'baijiu', the drink of choice among the locals - it'll make your eyes water, but you'll have the assurance while it kills your brain cells that its also killing the parasites in your stomach. One mouthful is enough, no need to get drunk. I made a mistake when I first heard this advice, I drank the liquor a few hours after lunch when my stomach was already starting to hurt. But it was too late, you have to drink at the time of your meal. This is a matter of preparation in advance! 

All in all, this is pretty universal stuff for travelling, go anywhere overseas and you’ll have similar problems. Just remember to avoid the street food no matter how yummy it may be, and the chicken. And for the love of Mike, don’t touch street food chicken with a yard pole; it’d be safer to stick with the rat meat.

What I Love Best About China

什么路? Shen-me lu?

Perhaps one of the things I’ll miss the most about China when I’m back in New Zealand will be motorbike taxis. Just imagine walking out of the subway exit every morning to be greeted by a crew of hardened, tough-looking chaps, straddling beautiful road hog motorbikes that make you just love China. “Shen-me lu?” ("what street?") they rasp in a ‘I-smoke-too-much’ voice. You jump on the back; tell them your destination in broken Chinese, and hoon off down the street without so much as even donning a helmet. Totally dangerous, but I love it.

I love it I love it I love it.

Whenever I’m riding on one of these babies, with the wind blowing in my hair, I always remember how much I love China. They drive on the wrong side of the street, they often drive faster than cars, they weave in between cars, and they go down dodgy back-alleys that you’d never have seen otherwise – all for what would convert into a New Zealand dollar or two. Its not just fun, its spiritual: when they go too fast, it makes me pray!

Of course, my wife doesn’t approve. She says they’re all dirty thieves who would leave you to die if you fell off, who overcharge for their services, and who have been known to kidnap and rape women who just wanted a ride home. While all this is true to a certain degree, I never let that spoil my fun!

Some of the bikers I’ve had the privilege to ride with have been really decent blokes. At one point I was riding to work almost every day and I had a team of about five bikers who all knew me so well that I never had to tell them my destination, because they remembered. We all became quite good friends. One of them gave me a ride for free when I didn’t have the right change and told me I could repay her later, which I did.

Today's Mem: 动, Dong4, To Move

I had my bad experiences too of course; many bikers have taken advantage of my terrible level of Chinese by taking me the long way around and then charging me three times the normal price. Some advice for expats: never ask a biker how much money he wants! Just give him 5 yuan, and if he doesn’t like it you can haggle. I found that if I ask “duo shao qian?” ("how much?") they’ll all say 15-20 yuan without exception, but if I just give them 5 yuan without asking, they’ll smile and wish me a nice day.

So, say goodbye to everything you learned about helmets and road safety when you were a kid. TIC: This is China. Learn to love it baby.


Note: Today's mem could apply to bikes as well. The bikers are very strong people and their bikes puff clouds of smoke out the back - but they move you around. How about that, then eh?

Sith Lord Soup

Why do I keep going to dodgy restaurants again and again?

I went to a restaurant today called 'Soup King', I figured its basically Burger King but with soup. I ordered a spicy soup, but instead of saying 'la jiao' (meaning 'spicy'), I accidentally said 'la ji' (meaning 'rubbish'). I think maybe thats where I went wrong, as a few hours later I had bad 'la duzi' (meaning 'dire horror'). It looked like the dish from the alien restaurant in MIB3. Maybe the most wholesome item in the soup was the stomach lining of random animal, that was ok, the rest made me nervous (even the noodles).

It tasted much like darkness, death, and impending doom. You scoff, but if you were to sip some of it, you'd have to agree. It wasn't bad, it just tasted 'dark', like a fine delicacy of sith lords and other evil hooded figures. At any rate, I like to avoid the 'Soup King', but I always make the same mistake of venturing new and interesting looking restaurants in China (see today's Mem: 复). How many times have I done this and regretted it? When will I ever learn?

My soup looking back at me (Men In Black 3)

Xiao Xin - Don't Break My Daughter's Heart (Or You Won't Live To Regret It)

A 'Mem' from Memrise.com, first of many

Gudday guys - my name is Brad Mason. Three years ago I migrated to China to marry my

A) Hunny

B) Sweetie

C) Darling

or in Chinese, they say D) QingAiDe, but I don't call her that very often. These four titles all refer to the same person, just for the record.

Her mum imagined, when her daughter had told her she found a cute guy in New Zealand, that she had found a Chinese Kiwi. She found out on our wedding day however that her new son-in-law not only has white skin (my ancestors go right back to early NZ settlers) but also I can't speak any Chinese. So, rolling with the punch, she decided to just run with it and has spoiled me rotten ever since.

But this is not a blog about my marriage! Rather, it is a blog about my life in China as an expat and what life is like on the other side of the world.

Every post will include something called a 'mem', a helpful little picture teaching us a Chinese character. You can find such mems on www.memrise.com and can study Chinese (or any other language to that matter) for free. This particular mem, 小心 (xiaoxin) is apt for today's post, because on my wedding day my mother-in-law warned me to be careful with her daughter's heart (or she would put a bounty on my head). No, she didn't say that last part, but it was in her eyes.

Anyway enjoy my blog. I hope it'll be useful for anyone thinking about going to China in the future.