Chinese Masketeers

Mike and I hunched our shoulders and sped into the tunnel that led to the underground mall to seek refuge from the bitter Beijing cold. I reached out to lift the heavy double-layered insulating curtains that typically hung from most entrances in this city when I suddenly screamed. Something on the other side was panting unnaturally loud. The curtain lifted. Out of the dim tunnel emerged two determined eyes, a pink forehand, and a metallic contraption that shielded almost his entire face.

I was staring at a beanie-wearing Bane.

He really did look like this 

(without the overhead strap).

I think I freaked him out too. He was just another Beijing biker trying to find a warmer shortcut and wheezing heavily through his air filtration mask. He looked at us strangely, as if thinking we were crazy for not strapping on our own respiratory protection. But then again, I don't know if we would have been able to afford the several hundred USD worth of WWII-esque gas mask gear he sported. 

---

Air pollution is so bad in Beijing that BJ is experiencing somewhat of a brain drain because the smarties want to move somewhere where they can actually breathe. We Shanghai/ Suzhou-ers down south have  participated in the pollution frenzy by downloading the ubiquitous air pollution monitoring apps and comparing the daily stats officially released by the American consulate vs Chinese government. Some Chinese nationalists even made a big deal about the Americans purposefully stirring up local discontent by revealing the daily air pollution index. 

Normally it's more like "Woah - look how bad Beijing is today!" and we feel lucky. But today we Southerners are starting to feel the pain. 

We are officially in the HAZARDOUS category. Actually, correction - apparently, we overshot the upward bound and went beyond hazardous. Most apps freaked out and went blank today because they did not know how to classify 500 and above. Friends in my US college town, Provo, flipped when earlier inversion caused the air quality index to register 164 ("unhealthy") - 164 is more like a hallelujah here in Shanghai. We often reminisce about the good ol' days of 164 like that golden period of the magical beanie babies craze that nobody understood. 

The number of air quality index screen shots 

 trounced even that of self-conscious selfies today.

We typically look up at the crotch of the infamous

 "Pants Building" (aka the tallest building in our province

 upon completion) from our office. Above is taken on a

 beautiful summer day. Below is taken today.
Creds to Danica.

The ongoing air situation has bred some fascinating social phenomena. Soccer moms no longer brag all day about their children - now they engage in passive aggressive "whose air filtration mask is better?" comparisons, analyzing in excruciating detail the science behind pollution and mechanics of face masks. And instead of rare medicines or gold-plated busts, Chinese sycophants switched gears and gifted government officials with high end air filters, attached with poems about the importance of health. 

The radio is also full of jokes about the pollution. Here's one: Workers at the post office have been so desperate for clean air that they resorted to popping the bubble wraps on foreign packages and sucking in the fresh "imported" air . . .  until the postmaster sadly pointed out that the bubble wraps were made in China too.

Office portrait a while back. I think this time we were

 donning masks for the bird flu.

It's a Slaughter World After All

I have a legit neck phobia. Ever since I was a little kid, I have always been convinced that I will be murdered getting pierced through the throat with a javelin. Or hung like a limp doll off a lonely bridge. Or violently choked from behind because I beat somebody at a board game. So that one time, when a stranger kissed me on the neck in the Beijing metro, I freaked out and avoided public transportation for a week.

Ever since I started dating in college, I've gotten a lot better. As in, I don't flinch as noticeably when other people's hands hover dangerously close to my vulnerable zone. And I don't end up subconsciously slapping the boy who accidentally touched my neck because he was trying to be flirtatious.

Last weekend, I decided to overcome my fear once and for all by doing something that I had always imagined being done to me. It's sort of like getting somebody who was deathly afraid of heights to jump off an air plane. I was going to slaughter an animal by slitting its throat.

A bunch of us drove out to a turkey farm in Changshu to pick out our Thanksgiving bird. My mom asked me to bring one home so I was determined to take care of the turkey myself to feed my family. I was finally shedding my city girl skin and living a rustic vision of Little House on the Prairie.

As the cityscape faded into the lush patches of oversized leafy greens, I started feeling nauseated. I hunched my shoulders and retreated into my maroon hoodie - especially picked out to camouflage the blood I would inevitably get splashed all over myself - and fingered my swiss pocket knife. Would I be able to do a clean slit and spare unnecessary pain? Would the turkey, in its full ugliness, peck at my throat in retaliation? Can swiss army knives actually cut things other than fruit?

My first mistake was looking at him straight in the eyes. They were oddly intelligent and hauntingly dignified. Second mistake? Naming him Turk.

Getting a photoshoot with Turk.

Somehow Miles still manages to look good when

 caught mid-moment holding a turkey.

Turk

The farmer weighed our turkeys and I felt oddly proud that Turk was one of the largest at nine jing (roughly 5 pounds). He stuffed Turk and his buddies into a fertilizer bag and threw them into the back of the van. We drove to the slaughterhouse, chatting with the farmer about his new plans to start an orchard and listening to the turkeys nervously shifting in the trunk.

The lady at the slaughterhouse was really tickled to see so many foreigners. She started showing off her techniques and waved over other ladies nearby to help out with the turkeys. I clutched my pocket knife more tightly, unsure when it was my/ Turk's turn. The lady laughed and flicked her long hair back. She had another woman hold a squirming turkey, and she pressed the head down and starting snipping the throbbing neck vein with a pair of scissors. The turkey did a death thrash while its little heart beat faster and faster, pumping out the rest of its life. The lady swirled her little pinkie in the tin bowl she placed underneath the turkey to fish out any feathers in the blood (to sell for blood pudding later).

Watch this video and prepare a barf bag.

One of my friends jumped up next for an opportunity to wield the scissors. She hacked away with reckless abandon and lustful determination. She later explained to me that a boy had arranged for her to kill a duck for her birthday last year so she was experienced. Another twelve year-old little boy volunteered. By that point, the pair of dull scissors was slick with blood and didn't open and close very well so he ended up just jabbing at his turkey. The poor turkey cried.

I had come expecting to overcome my fear - but instead, I now have an additional nightmare scenario to add to my repertoire of death by throat scenes. I've never considered how scary scissors were before.

Slaughter lady at her finest. 

She had to steam it first to defeather it.

RIP Turk.

I had to snap his legs off. Utterly traumatized.

Btw - terrible blog post title, I know. I was playing a board game with the younger siblings tonight and the instruction manual came with ads for other board games. One of the advertised games had a slogan "It's a Slaughter World After All" . . . they ought to pay somebody professional to come up with a better one.

No Japanese Allowed

For a client lunch recently, I was led to a themed restaurant in a chic part of downtown Shen Zhen. The restaurant Da Lang Wo (Big Wolf Lair) was a confusing mix of neanderthal caves with animal wall etchings, displays of super-nationalism, and the occasional nod to wolves.

Outside the cave entrance hung, non-apologetically, a bold sign that read "No Japanese allowed." I was caught between feeling offended for the entire Japanese race, appalled at the blatant discrimination, ashamed at such exclusive nationalism, secretly relieved that I was welcome, and anxious that they were going to kick me out because many Chinese people thought I looked Japanese. 

I kept up a constant stream of Mandarin monologue in front of the waitress to prove that I was somehow more Chinese than I came across. I threw out as many slangs as I knew, but not too many so that I stuck out like a conspicuous Chinese-learner. 

Cave drawings and stick monuments.

"Our store does not use Japanese goods."

"No Japanese allowed."

Handwritten notices and newspapers reminding customers

of the Rape of Nanjing, when Japanese soldiers committed

an unspeakable number of crimes during a three month 

occupation of a Chinese city.

While the round moon (baked naan bread) and the wolves' prey pot (lamb stew) tasted delicious, it definitely felt weird eating at a place where others were not allowed simply because of their race or national history. It smacked of the civil rights era that I had read about in high school textbooks, where African Americans were routinely denied entrance into certain public areas. It felt wrong, but yet others around me laughed about it, took photos of it with their bejeweled Japanese phones, and pumped their fists in the air proclaiming their sudden bursts of China pride. And while I didn't join in, I certainly tried to fit in. And that's really what bothered me the most. 

Preggo Diaries (From a Non-Pregnant Girl)

I knew this day would come eventually. I just didn't expect that it would happen so soon.

Virtually within one day of finding out she was pregnant, girl 1 all of a sudden started waddling in a maddeningly slow pace, nursing her thermos of herbal tea in her hands, and painstakingly steadying every chair before lowering her imaginary weight down on it.

The day before, she was rock climbing and bouncing around with the best of us.

Then girl 2 also announced that she was pregnant by first sending a lawyer's letter invoking China's overly progressive maternity law, kindly informing us that we had to keep her on regardless of lack of performance and attendance for the next two years until her child was weaned. She also accompanied it with an immediate request for three months off work to relax during her first trimester.

I had never felt so much angst over somebody else's pregnancy.

Perhaps it's because I have never been pregnant. Or wasn't raised in a traditionally Chinese household. But either way, it is stretching my Asian imagination to fully comprehend some of the 'musts' surrounding pregnancy.

After the dual baby announcements were made, the two ladies started fussing about seat arrangement. Apparently they could no longer sit next to (aka three feet away from) the printer because the printer is a source of radiation.

Yeah. Radiation.

Girl 2 can't even work on reports from home because the laptop has too much radiation. But she can use her iPad and watch TV with reckless abandon.

Girl 1 says that she can't do conference calls because five minutes on the phone is her max. Once again, radiation.

They even wear special flimsy aprons all day around the office, which supposedly can shield their baby from radiation.

I finally put my foot down when they begin wearing pajamas to work.

I have always thought of myself as a sympathetic leader who encourages people to tend to their family/ personal needs first. When they're looking drowsy in the afternoon, I tell them to go home. When they're alone at home, I call to see if I could bring dinner over.

But I still have to insist on some work. So, I finally explained that no pregnant woman in America has ever heard of the concept of guarding against radiation in every day electronics. They looked shocked.

Really?! 

Yeah, people tend to go about their normal lives up till the last few weeks of pregnancy. 

They thought about it.

Well, Americans are naturally more built to have children. Look how big and fat they can get.

See. Can't win with logic.

A foreign colleague suggested that I talked to the HR lady to ask her how to best communicate with them about maintaining productivity during this special time. Then I realized that they got their magical radiation-proof aprons from her.

Resigned, I signed off on their requests for time off. Three months for one. One month for the other. And they both just got pregnant. After they give birth, they will each need another four months off for the recovery period. Chinese women are even more fanatical about post-birth rituals. No stepping outside of the house for both mother and child. No makeup. No cold drinks. No showers.

I suppose, in that state, I wouldn't want them to come to work any ways.

Magical Aprons.

It's quite a big industry here.

We've Got the Shakes

Back when harlem shake was all the craze, my boss thought it would be funny to make our own as an inside joke and send it to our board. 

We watched a ton of existing harlem shake videos for inspiration. 

There was the Norwegian Army one where the staff really liked the idea of zipping up a guy in a sleeping bag and making him squirm. 

Then there was the UGA Men's Swim and Dive team one, but that got vetoed as a good example because only a few people from the office could swim.

So we finally settled on doing what we do best for the video- being Chinese. 

True to my heritage, I dressed up as the Commie girl who somehow danced around with a broom. 

We crammed in as many Chinese stereotypes as we could and made this:

Despite our multi-youtube education sessions, within 5 minutes of the camera rolling it was clear that many of the team didn't fully understand the critical part about over-the-top pointless moves. They were very concerned with switching angles, panning, zooming, and creating plot development.

So, as something that cracked me up even more, I now present the bloopers. Notice at 2:41, we all got bored/ exhausted with shaking and distracted ourselves with other things. But since my boss was wearing the panda head, he kept up the wiggles since he couldn't tell that we were done.

Some say that I have too much fun at my job to really be working. I agree. It's never been work to me.

Bengali Bridesmaid

"Hi, I'm Sisi. I ate lunch every day in high school with Arusha. Congrats on marrying such a fantastic girl!"

I met the groom two minutes before he was wheeled into the conference hall on a bejeweled rickshaw, waving to the sea of Bangladeshis snapping photos of the patched-together wedding procession of foreigners from eight different countries. 

I picked up the framed wedding gifts, tugged at my sari once again, and put on my camera-ready smile.

Mike and I had flown in that morning to Dhaka and were immediately swept up in the tide of wedding preparations. The wedding celebrations spanned a week and as a bridesmaid who was totally clueless about the cultural nuances of each action, I followed meekly along, trying to reenact a National Geographic episode on Bengali weddings.

Three hours of primping/pulling/fussing/ tugging in 

a Bangladeshi beauty parlor was quite overwhelming. 

At least I wasn't the bride - she took eight hours to get ready.

The bridesmaids, decked in traditional rose red sarees, flowed in after the groom, showing off the gifts of patent leather shoes, 6 m long turban, Armani cologne, and other fancy trinkets that the bride had lovingly prepared for her husband to be. The groomsmen, looking smashing in various shades of green, strode in with their heads held high. The party dress code was set according to your relationship with the bride and groom so guests instantly knew which side of the family you represented. Since the Belgian groom did not have a lot of friends who flew out to attend, we pretended to be the groom's best friends to fill the ranks in the family photos.

The usually passionate bride entered the room

under a demure guise and a roof of stringed sparkles.

Getting bang(l)ed up. 

I nearly cried at night rubbing lotion onto my wrists

 while writhing out of these sparkly bangles.

Painted their faces with turmeric paste for good luck.

As friends, we made sure that they got majorly lucky.

Our gang. 

Eight different nationalities. 

Yet we're so good at partying together.

Quick tutorial to Bollywood dancing?
Screwing the light bulb with your right hand
while petting the dog with your left.

Occupational Hazards

The thing about being an adult is that you get to take business trips. The thing about being a kid still is that you can gush about your first business trip where you actually fly somewhere (ok Mexico City was a different type of business trip, but still). And nothing is better than flying back to your childhood home.

There are so many more friends I need to see. 

These people know all about the obnoxious seventh grade me. 

And yet, they still like me.

Skyscrapers are so cold and yet so beautiful. 

Somehow eating oysters always make me feel like a King.

And when tapas are involved, just call me Juan Carlos the First.

One of the client factories is in Shen Zhen, a neighboring city linking HK with the Mainland. Despite being so close to HK and known for best fake copies of anything in China, I've only been there once before. I was sufficiently traumatized by my five hours in SZ back in high school. HK-ers have a collective distrust/fear/loathing for SZ. Growing up, whenever I refused to eat my food, the lady taking care of me would threaten to dump me in SZ. A friend was sitting in a cab, when a wild-eyed teenager forcibly opened the door, grabbed her designer purse, and ran off. My mom even heard that someone's secretary, pretty wisp of a girl, disappeared after going into a public bathroom. 

Regardless, I needed to make the sale so I woke up super early, hopped on a train across the border, and started eyeing everybody suspiciously, ready to jab my elbows into anybody's sensitive areas if needed. I locked all my taxi doors. I clutched my ipad tightly. And I texted my boss that it had been a pleasure working with him and that he shouldn't feel too bad in the event that I was never seen alive again. 

I don't have any nice photos of SZ to share. My HK prejudice is alive and well. But I must admit that SZ has changed a lot in the last ten years. I'm almost curious to go back and explore more, which is good because it sounds like I'll be spending a lot of time there in the future. I guess that's what happens when you made the sale. Maybe I should have thought it through before I tried so hard. 

Buying Relationship Stability

Some call it spineless. Others call it whipped. Here, we just call it financial planning.

As far as I can tell, it is pretty miserable to be a man in China. Not only are you competing with a surplus of 30 million other men for a wife by the time 2030 rolls around, but you're also expected to bring to the marriage alter a house, a car, and stocks.

Now the women are laughing even more.

All over weibo, China's twitter, women are celebrating the entrenchment of the "Wife's Gospel."

China's Merchant Bank (CMB) recently released a financial product that sends user A a text with user B's account balance every day, and automatically transfers (across banks even) any amount over the determined cap to user A's account.

To illustrate the horrifying ramifications, CMB even designed a cheerful poster that describes the perfect application:



"Newlyweds Xin and Wen want to save up for a house to build the beginnings of their sweet story. So Wen wisely decides to let Xin manage all their finances. Every month, Wen's bank account will retain $300 from his income and automatically transfer the rest to his wife's account. And he doesn't even have to go through the trouble of making sure that happens every month anymore!"

What a thoughtful bank.

Well it's working. Because weibo has been overwhelmed by men's desperate cries for patriarchal financial products too.









p.s. The word domanitrix was not what I thought it meant. And um. Don't look it up on bing to figure out how to spell it.

Water Children

We hopped onto a tuk tuk and headed down a dusty road, zipping by houses on stilts, to search for the Floating Village. And after driving on a creaky boat for 20 minutes, we found it. True to its name, the people there lived on boats. It was a whole community that bobbed on the calm waters, raising pigs and ducks on buoyant pens, buying dinner ingredients from mobile supermarket canoes, passing Friday nights at the pool table hall, and going to class on school boats.

At the wheels (paddles? motor?)

Home sweet home.

Door to door supermarket. Fruits. Leafy greens. Fish of the Day.

That little boy loved his pink school bag. Flaunt the barbie pride bud.

Oh yeah. They raised crocodiles near their schools as well.

And yep. That's a python. Just playing with the baby.

Don't have a second boat at home?

 Just hop in a GIANT BOWL

 and grab a paddle (and a snake).

Contortions

"So what's the difference between Thai and Khmer (Cambodian) massage?" Pausing every two words in her pieced together English, the girl explained to me that Thai massage is strong strong, while Khmer is soft soft. I nodded, eager to see how Chinese massages compared.

I followed the girl up the creaking back stairs, past the storefront posters of ecstatic foreigners in their massage catharsis. She led me to a dimly lit room, with old mattresses lining the peeling walls and tired fans whirling above. It provided the perfect backdrop for my crazy imagination to scream THIS IS HOW TRAFFICKING HAPPENS.

I didn't get a photo of our shop, but it's similar.

Regardless, I dutifully laid face down. Rub. Rub. Rub. I definitely got the Thai right around the lower back region, but grit my teeth and prayed for more Khmer. I felt like those Japanese cows that got rub downs and beers before being sent to the slaughterhouse.

I also never realized how self-conscious I would feel when a stranger giggled and chattered in another language while touching my body. As a passive aggressive response, I mentally recorded the number of acupuncture pressure points that she did not hit. Chinese massage snobbery? Absolutely.

Then she cooed Thai time missy. She put her weight on the back of my thighs with her knees, gathered my arms straight in her hands and leaned back. My torso was hoisted up, chest puffed out, thighs pinned down, arms pulled straight back, forming an unholy triangle like the sail on a wind surf. She sent me around the world by driving my sail far right, down front, up left.

She seemed confused. No crack yet?

So she motioned for me to sit cross-legged and put my palms on the back of my head, in the standard I-just-got-arrested posture. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my bewildered eyes, I saw one of her legs shoot forward, anchoring her foot under my bowed legs, and without warning, threading her arms between mine, jerked me sharp left.

I just died and did not go to heaven. Other maneuvers followed; my back cracked for her beautifully.

On a positive note, I was glad that she did not end up standing on my back like those Thai masseuse do in the movies. I was nervous when I saw bars near the ceiling.

Definitely learned some moves I'll whip out on J the next time he asks for a massage. Can't wait to see his face when I give him the windsurf special.

Raising My Eyebrows, I Will Draw My Sword

One of the guys on my team, Sam, is a Communist Party member in excellent standing. So excellent that we've already had to give him three days off this month to receive an award for being an outstanding Communist youth and to attend a rally. He had apparently joined the Party back in college because it aligned with his "search for the moral, respect for the scientific, and love for the people."He even saved two separate strangers from drowning in a nearby lake on the same night, within 30 feet of each other. Of course, it also helps that he often pays more Party dues than required.

So today is the rally. We haven't heard from him what the distinguished Party has instructed yet, but we have received an enlightening "hand out."

Here's a closer look. I'll try to make it poetic.

Car is made in Japan;

Heart is made in China.

Support the Party;

Recover the Diaoyu Islands;

Rather be a headless ghost,

Than be a spineless man;

If war comes for China and Japan,

I will give up my own life;

My drops of blood will honor the martyrs;

Raising my eyebrows, I will draw the sword.

In case you are not aware, the Diaoyu Islands (or Senkaku Islands in Japanese) are two square miles of land that China and Japan both claim and dispute over. Patriots from both countries periodically sail near the islands and try to challenge the other's presence. The Japanese government has recently agreed to buy three small islands in the Diaoyu Island group from their Japanese owners in an attempt to block the Tokyo governor from buying them to expand nationalistic claims. So while the Japanese gov probably has good intentions, the Chinese objects furiously, saying that Japan has no right to transfer property rights on Chinese soil. The Chinese normally like the Japanese fine, but they are very sensitive to what they imagine to be slights that the Japanese "purposely commit". 

Right after our company got the photo of the handout, the discount development guy muttered three little condemning numbers: jiu yao ba, or 918.

It turned into a low rumble across the office, 9 - 1- 8!  9 - 1 - 8 ! How dare they do this right before September 18th - the shameful day in 1931 when the Japanese military occupied one of their first cities in China with the excuse that the Chinese bombed their railway?

All of a sudden, we're reliving the Japanese occupation of China and gnashing our teeth for the pain our grandparents went through. 

By the end of the working day, my colleagues are calling out for a boycott against Japanese goods. Some wonder out loud if China can single handedly collapse the Japanese economy by not buying any Honda or Sony. Another customer service rep whimpers that she will try not to get any more Hello Kitty in the next month.

I will try to demonstrate sympathetic solidarity and sneakily eat my favorite Hi Chew Japanese candy in the hallway.

Gosh, we should all get awards for being good Chinese at least.

Beijing Safari: From China with Love

Written on July 22nd, 2010. An email I wrote home while on my internship at the US Embassy in Beijing. My dating experience in China this time around has been pretty similar.

"Here's the most succinct summary of the difference between Western and Chinese dating: In the West, prior to marriage, a man may have plenty of girlfriends but after marriage, only one wife; In China, a man often struggles to find the one girlfriend before marriage but after marriage, he has many girlfriends.

Indeed, many men that I have talked to believe that it is an inherent right to have many women. One coworker even explained to me how having affairs keep the marriage fresh and interesting. To them, women are part of the trappings of power. And it seems that the younger the woman, the better. Sometimes my friends and I play the "mistress or daughter" game in restaurants. Whenever an older man with obnoxiously large rings and an over-priced suit walk in with a much younger, scantily-clad female who is wobbling on dangerously high heels, we wait to see if a wife and mother shows up. If not, then well, we know.

Perhaps it is for this reason that women in China are unusually demanding of a potential marriage partner. Apparently, they will not marry a man unless he has a (nice) car, an apartment (or two), and a sizable bank account (and stocks). As a result, the embassy is full of thirty year old single men who don't really know how to date and who still live with their mothers. My coworker dutifully hands over his paycheck to his mom (who saves it so he can get married) and then negotiates his monthly allowance.  My single coworkers’ dating lives consist of a myriad of blind dates that their second cousin twice removed have set up for them with "this really nice girl back in the ancestral village".  I once told a colleague that people should marry for love and then work together to build a life they want. Since then, I've been getting emails from thirty year old plus coworkers who randomly want to know what I'm doing after work. After figuring out that I'm Mormon ("You want so many kids and you wear too much clothes!"), some of my coworkers ask if I date people who are not Mormon. I said no. They then ask how people can join. I told them that since the Chinese government wouldn't permit proselytizing of any kind (100% true), I could not tell them. Even though I’m just following Church instructions, I feel that God is shaking his head every time I use the Church as a deterrent for dates.

It is a pity that you can't use the same excuse with the young single adults in the ward though. After an awkward date, a boy gallantly declared that he has decided to "pursue" me. When I politely said no thanks, he claimed that he would persist because it was probably divinely arranged if he randomly met somebody at the metro station in China and she turned out to be Mormon.

For those of you who are curious, so far, my dating life in Beijing mainly consists of dodging dates. Marines, thirty year-old coworkers, and overly friendly old men are very different from the average Utah boy who just wants to take you out biking and then, if he's getting fancy, ice-cream afterward. I think I figured that out a little late. But at least I now have more interesting stories to tell you!"

So Hot

My mom took me to the Chinese herbal doctor yesterday. We sat on the cold metal chairs for two hours until we realized that we could see a less popular doctor and be admitted in the next minute. Deliberately picking lower ranking doctors was probably not the best strategy, but I suppose this was at least a somewhat calculated decision as opposed to my usual practice of picking the ones with the best sounding names.

We lifted the half bed sheet curtain and peered inside. The doctor waved us in and motioned for us to sit on the rickety chairs facing her. She gestured for me to put my right arm on the arm cushion and clamped it down with her three middle fingers.

"Oh, is that a painting of the Suzhou canals?"

"Shhh."

She bent her head down a little as if to hear my pulse better.

"Does your waist feel sore?"

I shook my head emphatically.

"Do your breasts feel enlarged?"

"If only."

She shot me a look.

"Sorry."

"I know what is wrong with you. You're generally healthy but you suffer from hot blood."

I looked at my mom with a questioning look. My mom nodded studiously.

"So what does that mean? Like the weather being too hot? "

"No, it just means that your blood is too hot. Too much yang. No more mangoes, fried foods, or hot pots. Come back in two weeks."

Resigned, I grabbed the doctor's note and headed to the medicine room. I didn't bother looking at the prescription, preferring not to know what (sea horse? scorpion? dung?) would be in the bitter concoction I would have to drink twice a day for the next two weeks. I was praying for the milder roots and maybe even the occasional insect, but I had always kept my hopes conservative when it came to Chinese medicine.

Ugh. Hot blood.

Standing up

My three friends and I squeezed onto the train, waving our tickets above our heads to part the sea of sweaty bodies standing in the aisle, while trying not to trip over the checkered canvas bags that briefly summed up a migrant worker's life in the bruised thermos, love-worn girl calendars, and paint-splattered bundle of clothes.

This was the old-style train from Yang Shuo to Shanghai and we held in our hands tickets that would guarantee us four hard seats for the 22 hour ride. We had splurged on plane tickets to backpack in the lush, moutainous region of Southern China so we struck a compromise with our excel budget sheets and opted to train our way home.

The train rolled away from the station, groaning, as us girls tried to sweet talk strangers into switching seats with us so the four of us would not be separated. The father, green soccer shirt stuffed into worn suit pants held together with a fake Crocodile belt, and his son were slow to agree. The young girl, with dark liquid eyes, quickly nodded and moved to our seats on the other side. While the father was muttering and groping for his shoes under the seats, a slip of a woman, holding her sleeping baby, slid between the crowds in the aisle and sat down on the father's new seat that we promised him.

Mr. soccer shirt, ousted by the little woman and her baby, towered over them, incessantly tapping his fingers on the headrest. The mother had a standing only ticket and her arms ached from the weight of her child. So she avoided the glare of the father and let her body lean into the seat for momentary reprieve.

The father roared for justice and demanded that we give him his original seat back, which would not solve the seating problem because then one of us would be standing instead. We hesitated, torn by our instinctive Christian spirit to give up our paid seat for the mother, but not quite ready to endure the agony of standing for 22 hours, especially for a passenger who intentionally bought the standing only ticket.

By now, the whole car, for sheer lack of entertainment, turned to look at the foreigners who had caused such a scene. The amahs, the wrinkled old ladies with peppered hair and flabby mouths, pointed and passed judgment. The foreigners were clearly wrong. They forced the mother out. Their hearts were like dog liver. They always thought they could do whatever they wanted. Just like when the Western devils came with their armies and carved up China. Ayah!

We were clearly on the wrong side of history (or public relations) and in danger of being pushed out of our seats. So my friend stood up, arms spread to address the whole car, and explained the situation. Seven adults with seven paid seats. One mother with standing ticket. Would anybody, with a standing ticket but is now sitting on an unoccupied seat, please stand up?

Silence. Eyes looked away. Fingers fiddled with loose buttons.

Then, rustling. A fifteen year old girl, with clipped-up bangs and checkered shirt, stood up.

Faith in humanity restored. Or just in outsourced moral dilemmas.

----

Left to right: Good Samaritan, Madonna and child, and plenty of Pharisees

What would you have done?

Making Do for July Fourth

While J was back in the States hugging the red white and blue flag to replenish his American juices, a history major, a halfie, and an Asian American girl with a Communist family legacy got together to create our own July Fourth.


We didn't have a picnic because our fridges were empty, a parade because we couldn't book all the Primary kids from Church to march for us, or fireworks because the Chinese invented it. But we made a program that celebrated America from the patriotic to the obscure.




Here was our program:

Native American beginnings: Interpretive dancing to Colors of the Wind in Pocahontas. I was flinging my arms wildly to do Grandmother Willow justice.

Independence War:

Civil War: Ben recited the Gettysburg Address

{Super Fast Forward}

Isolationist Period: America Uun-Gah-Ha!

Depression: Everybody sucking on ice cubes (because we couldn't afford ice-cream in Hoovervilles)

WWII: Epic war scenes from Wolverine


JFK: Marilyn Monroe's Happy Birthday (I do a pretty good imitation . . . all except the sexy part)

Civil Rights: MLK's I Have a Dream


Pop: Thriller


21st Century polarized politics: West Wing clip

Sept. 11th: Share our memories of that fateful day and what it means to us to be Americans

Oddly enough, I felt more patriotic after our silly historical reenactment than after gnawing on corn on the corn at a July Fourth barbecue. Must have been all the Un-gah-has.

Commie Girl

Freshman year. First semester. PL SC 170 - Intro to International Politics.

It was our Communism unit. Somebody asked what it was. Somebody else talked about Russia. Cold War. And, inevitably, China. The general feeling was that the big bad "C" word was the short answer to China's problems.The professor smiled and let the discourse flow its increasingly hostile course.

I wore a forest green top, with a thin ribbon that tied at the back. I felt feminine. Felt like a college student. Felt the appropriately awkward freshman mix of confidence and insecurity. So I raised my hand, in hesitant increments, and got called upon.

"I am probably a little biased because my grandparents and relatives were involved with the People's Liberation Army, but as bad as Communism was, I believe that it was the best thing for China at the time." I rattled off how this ideology, although ultimately misguided and manipulated for factional power struggles, united a country that had been torn apart by wars for a whole century. I listed off a series of other justifications.

The room went quiet. The professor moved on. At the end of the class, as I picked up my lavender purple binder, I heard a psst and a whisper, "Look. There's that Commie girl."

And that was how I started getting random high fives by closet Communist sympathizers in the school food court.

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My friend Jonathan, a fellow BYU student interning at our company, doesn't quite call me Commie girl. Instead, he vigilantly catches all my absentminded references to "we" - meaning Chinese people - and schools me on being an appropriate American. If he had my US passport in hand, he would be waving it as a flag to warn me against being too cozy with my Chinese identity and too comfortable with the way of life in Communist China.

The truth is, I have loyalties everywhere, and therefore, by default, loyalties nowhere. I am, what us Hong Kongers affectionately dub, a "third culture kid" - having been born Chinese, raised American, but educated British.

In an American classroom, with classmates determined to re-win the Cold War with their textbook rhetoric on Communism, I merely tossed out another view. I was not volunteering to be a standard bearer/ martyr representing "the other side" in an ideological debate.

Communism is so much more than Marx, censorships, or good vs. evil. It has a human side, the encouraging and the horrifying.

Communism is three generations of China, juxtaposed, with the old comrades oddly accepting of the modern bourgeois which they fought against, the middle aged vocally angry about rights and corruption, and the young apathetic and distracted by marriage and financial pressures. It is honest people who bled and suffered for a cause, dispensing forgiveness with casual shrugs to the violent students who smashed up social order in their Red fervor. It is pig-faced officials who pulled strings to obtain a position where others pay them to pull strings. It is an increasingly capitalist China, allowing the dollar sign to replace the hammer and the sickle, where the farmers are shut out of the cities and its benefits because they lack the proper urban residence passports.

As for me, Communism is the backdrop of my grandparents' epic life stories ("Female comrades used cotton pieces from military coats as sanitary pads. Many men's coats were picked clean by the time they reached North Korea!"). It is the dream for which they sacrificed for, because they believed in the good of their country and their people.

So it's more out of a respect for my grandparents and their sacrifice, and a need for people to understand the rationale of the flip side, that I raised my hand that day and every day since then.

Psst. Commie girl coming through.

China doesn't breed pushovers

1 am. Doha airport. Waiting to board a flight back to Shanghai.

Around 80 travelers, mostly Chinese people who escaped obligatory family reunions during Chinese New Year by exporting themselves out of the affordable long-distance calling range, stood in a small glass room. There were two sliding doors, each on opposite ends. An airport bus pulled up on the right side, as if ready to pick up the people in the room and send them to their planes. The people hurried over, dragging carry on bags and crying children, determined to get in front. Competitive elbowing followed. After five minutes, the door still remained shut. The bus drove away, empty.

A few minutes later, another bus pulled up next to the door, but this time on the left side of the room. The crowd swarmed to the other side, showing even less restraint in their aggressive edging. Once again, the bus taunted the jet lagged bunch and drove away.

This scene happened four times, with the crowd rushing from one door to the other, all desperate to be the front of the line. 

4 observations:

1. There is no overt advantage in being in the front of the line. Instead, you get stuck at the back of the bus and end up being the last one to board.

2. There are enough buses to take everybody to the planes.

3. The travelers look well-educated, well-off, and well-coiffed. It is understandable to rush over to the door the first time, and maybe even the second. But the third and the fourth? Somebody must have seen the pattern of the faithless buses and hesitated. But instead, the people became more and more determined in vying for the first spot in front of the doors.

4. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. I was really hoping that the lady with the red sparkly boots would win.

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I see this behavior in China every day. People push, shove, elbow, bulldoze their way through everything. The concept of lining up is hazy at best. My friend, Andrew Woo, thinks that it's because the people, having lived through the Communist periods of scarcity, are conditioned to think that there is never enough supply. That's partly true. But that doesn't explain equally competitive scrambling in situations where the desired item is guaranteed and no advantage is conferred upon the most aggressive (i.e. Rushing to get through the gate first even when there is assigned seating on trains).

I think the people here are socialized to be pushers. Because the society maintains an ambivalent relationship with the rule of law, people are used to relying on themselves, and not an existing order, to obtain what they want. There is a subconscious lack of trust in rules and what adherence can deliver, so even if they know they should line up and that there is no self-interest in shoving, they do it, just because they see little merit in not pushing.

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Two summers ago, when I first arrived in China as an intern, my wai po moved in with me for a little while to teach me "how things were done here." In a suffocating metro station, with hundreds vying for standing room on the trains, my 78 year old, 4 ft 11 wai po pulled me towards the front of the line. I tugged at her shirt and motioned to the back of the line, shy about blatantly cutting in.

She jerked me forward once more and stared me down, "Don't be such a pushover, Sisi."

The Story That Didn't Make It Here

I was going to tell you a story of a battle with my mom where I had fought hard, ultimately won, and constantly regretted.

But instead, I'm going to squirrel that story away and stay up late this Christmas weekend so I can spend hours figuring out how to do justice to some hazy adolescent memory. And that will definitely be one for the private blog or future boyfriend.

One thing I will tell you is this: I think I found it tonight when I was gingerly dipping my toes (with Santa red polish) into the bath. For some reason, it finally hit me - why I had always tried to do everything Sisi-possible to try to make my parents proud (and still felt lacking) even when I had known all along that they were already proud of me simply because I was their daughter.

Too bad that there is already a Jung Chang, an Amy Tan, and now an Amy Chua*. I can definitely write volumes on Chinese American mother-daughter dynamics and spin stories so that readers will believe that I am simply 'principled' and not stubborn.

Well I guess that's what blogs are for.

* Chinese American authors who wrote about their relationships with their mothers and left children like me obsessed with how much my childhood resembled 20% of character X, 35% of Y, and 45% of Z.

Boys can skip this post

One of my colleagues who was in charge of getting deals for our online purchasing program (think groupon style shopping cart with discounted necessities for frontline workers) pulled me aside today. She was sent some samples from potential product partners and wanted me to give her the reassurance to try them.

She whispered to me that she had found a magic product. It's a type of small cylinder that women could insert into themselves during that special time of the month. It would suck all the blood out and store it until the tube was extracted. She speculated that it also had bonus contraceptive functions because people wouldn't be able to do it with that thing still in there.

I had no idea what she was talking about until she told me that the product was called "Small Auntie" (playing off "Auntie Flo"?).

Wow.

She was talking about tampons all along. And she wanted a demonstration of how it worked.

Somehow I just wasn't in the mood to give a 28 year old woman a sex talk. I did tell her that she should look up the facts on tampons again and stop waving the "Small Auntie" pamphlet around.

I can already see it. My legacy in China will be the introduction of tampons to frontline female workers. What a dream.

Celebratory Panic of the Bare Branches

The bachelors in China are panicking. By 2030, there will be at least 30 million more men than women in this country because of the female infanticides that resulted from the one child policy. Men are desperately trying to score wives. The ladies have become much more mercenary in love, taking their pick among those with the best cars, newest apartment, and biggest bank accounts. In an infamous Bachelorette spin off episode, a girl condemned her TV suitor with these cruel words: "I would rather cry at the back of a BMW than laugh at the back of a bicycle." Many men blanched. Many women nodded.

But on 11/11/11, bachelorhood was celebrated. The singles lorded over the couples, having exclusive KTV parties for the bare branches. The movie, 33 Days of Love Lost, was released on this special occasion (the anti 500 Days of Summer ?) and sold out weeks in advance. Weibo, China's twitter equivalent, even buzzed with the command for singles to buy all the odd number seats in the cinemas so couples would be forcibly separated.

Predictably, there were also a lot of brazen hookup solicitations. One leotard-wearing woman promised, on weibo, that if a man would spend bare branches day with her, then she would guarantee that he would be celebrating father's day the next year.

Hopefully the testosterone fueled suitors would cool down in time and realize that we're only 7 months till father's day.

But then again, she just might settle for a bike.

Ok, maybe an e-bike.