Woman in Black: A Chinese Internet Tale
On November 16 US President Barack Obama held an American-style town hall meeting with a group of university students in Shanghai. During the event, the camera panned toward a pretty female student dressed stylishly in black who was seated near the president.
Naturally, the identity of this girl elicited the attention of the Chinese internet community, who immediately commenced a 'human flesh search'. Before long, the 'Obama girl' was identified as an MBA candidate named Wang Zifei at Shanghai's Jiaotong University. Like many of her peers she kept a blog in which he discussed her life and posted photographs of herself.
Following an intense period of attention and scrutiny Wang addressed the matter on her blog, stating that she made no special effort to attract attention during Obama's speech and that her celebrity- now international- was entirely accidental. To underscore her humble nature she highlighted a photograph of herself playing with a kangaroo. Just another pretty young Chinese woman lifted to fame, it seemed.
Or does it? Now ESWN presents information that Ms. Wang's sudden celebrity was in fact carefully premeditated. Apparently her boyfriend- a businessman- paid 100,000 RMB to a Beijing-based internet public relations firm to ensure her placement near Obama in order to jumpstart Wang's entertainment career. (link via Shanghaiist)
I'm still unconvinced. The dress Wang wore was flattering but in no way revealing or inappropriate for the occasion. She removed her coat slowly, yes, but she did not look at the camera or make any movements that could possibly be interpreted as seductive. Her denial struck me as more plausible than this incident, for example. It just seems unlikely to me that a public relations firm could have pulled that off.
We'll see how this plays out, I suppose. In the meantime I find it fascinating how quickly determined netizens uncovered her identity and how, if the ESWN-highlighted story is true, how savvy people are these days with using the internet as a self-promotion vehicle.
Perspectives of China- Podcast
I've spent part of this morning listening to a podcast lecture organized by Folger on the subject of foreign impressions of China. The three panelists are Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing and a former actress in the Chinese soap opera of the same name, Orville Schell, the distinguished China scholar and author of many books, and our man James Fallows.
The lecture is informal and funny; all three authors recount humorous stories of their experiences in the country as well as observations they've made. In particular, their account of how the world looks from the Chinese perspective is well worth listening to.
The link to the podcast is here.
(via China Digital Times)
Coffee and Toys and China
Slate's Daniel Gross has made a couple of lazy and incorrect assumptions in his recent column about real estate in China:
In Shanghai, which is China's New York, locals and expats are doing their best to foist American-style consumerism onto China's rising masses€”with mixed results. Starbucks has opened several hundred stores, even though China has no coffee-drinking culture to speak of. As it spreads into China, Toys "R" Us is trying to convince higher-income Chinese parents that toys are a part of a childhood, not a distraction from preparation for the all-important national college entrance exams.
I'm guessing Gross looked at a per capita coffee consumption chart and concluded from China's microscopic rate that there 'was no coffee culture to speak of'. Most of my Chinese friends would beg to differ; a good many of them drink coffee regularly and enjoy it; every Starbucks I've been to in China has been crowded, from Chengdu to Beijing to Qingdao to Shenzhen.
What's more interesting is the extent that coffee culture differs in China from the West. Few shops serving coffee are open very early, and for the most part Chinese people seem to enjoy their coffee during the late afternoons and evenings. The culture of jamming cups of Joe down in order to satisfy a morning caffeine fix- a culture I wholeheartedly subscribe to- doesn't really exist. But the popularity of coffee houses throughout the country attests to the rising growth of the number of coffee drinkers in China.
Gross writes as if Starbucks has embarked on a fool's errand in opening a lot of stores in China, but my sense is that they've wisely targeted a growing market with the potential to become huge. Just today I noticed an advertisement for a new Starbucks being built in north Kunming. I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised to see people flock to it when it opens.
Also his rather condescending assertion that Chinese parents don't understand that 'toys are a part of childhood' is so wildly off the mark I don't even know where to begin. As I type I can hear a group of children in the garden chasing each other on these skateboard-like objects that have become all the rage. Every time I step into an elevator in my building I see children holding balls, stuffed animals, or little cars- all under the watchful eye of mom and dad.
By the time the typical Chinese child is ready to take his college-entrance examinations they are at least 17 years old- a bit past Toys'R'us' target demographic. As someone who grew up with several Toys'R'Us in the vicinity I can confidentally assert that I didn't step foot inside one past the age of 10 or so. Do that many teenagers elsewhere play with toys? I mean, other than Mom and Dad's car of course.
My sense is that Gross took one trend- American retail brands expanding into China- and two stereotypes- the Chinese study hard! The Chinese drink tea!- and welded them together in order to craft an appropriate opening paragraph. Unfortunate his words ring very hollow to anyone who has actually spent time in this country.
Betelnut Beauties In Taiwan
Having never been to Taiwan I'm always interested in discovering ways in which the island differs from the mainland. One phenomenon that seems to exist in Taiwan but not in the rest of China is that of the "betelnut beauties", who are attractive, skimpily-attired young women selling booze, cigarattes, and betelnut from glass-enclosed booths.
Photographer Tobie Openshaw has studied the betelnut girl culture extensively and has posted several hundred shots of the girls on Flickr. These photos and Openshaw's notes are well worth checking out. There are several additional links at the bottom of this Wikipedia page.
While betelnut girls to my knowledge do not exist on the mainland, this sort of thing isn't unusual at all. Most major nightclubs in Kunming for example hire a group of pretty young women to work as "entertainers"- they dance, drink, and flirt with the male guests but are not in any way prostitutes; they simply serve as a ploy to get the men to stay longer and spend more money. It may be exploitative and sexist but nobody seems to object to it much; the one or two girls I've met who have actually had this job shrug their shoulders and say it's not a bad way to earn a living.
The Feet of the Rooster- China and National Day
I caught around a half-hour of China's National Day pagaentry from a small television set in a tiny Dai village somewhere between Baoshan and the Salween River. I only came to the village in order to re-stock on water and mooncakes*, the latter perfectly suited for bicycle energy food.
(Unfortunately I missed the exciting bits; the mini-skirted women marching in lock-step that forced old Comrade Hu Jintao to crack a smile, the display of military might, and the various other processions of attractive people moving gracefully that seems an essential part of any large public event in Asia. I caught only the banal procession of people carrying portraits of leaders past and present as well as giant characters spelling out support for 'Mao Zedong thought' and other such anachronistic slogans that nonetheless remain firmly entrenched in Chinese propaganda. )
The Chinese are fond of saying that their country is shaped like a giant rooster. If this is so, Beijing lies at the rooster's heart, while the coastal cities face farthest forward. In this analogy, the town in which I stopped- scatologically named Pu Ping （铺平) by the way- would be somewhere near the rooster's feet, being dragged along by the rest of its body.
Viewed from outside of China, the pageant seemed designed to reinforce stereotypes Westerners hold of the country. Namely, China is a rising power both economically and militarily and has leapt into modernity at a frightening pace. The China on display in Beijing that day is the China that we're told will soon dominate the world and perhaps threaten our security. This is the China that is supposed to be the bee in our bonnets.
Yet from the perspective of a small town in China's rural hinterland that image of China seemed laughably lopsided. What I saw were tiny villages without running water and scores of poor agricultural workers, many of whom were tawny-skinned and scrawny. Pu Ping is simply one community out of many scattered across China, and the villagers I spoke to were part of the country's 700 million strong peasantry- a population more than double that of the entire United States.
When viewed from the front, the Chinese rooster can appear a menacing animal. From underneath its belly, though, reveals a broader image of the country's full demographic reality.
*Mooncakes are little biscuits traditionally served around the mid-autumn festival in China, which this year fell on the 3rd of October. Their popularity is ordinarily far from universal but after strenuous exercise I gobbled them up unreservedly.
Being Gay in China
From a friend, a Chinese woman in her mid-twenties:
My best male friend is gay, and he has known this for sure since college. He first told me and a few other female friends about his sexual orientation, a difficult admission to say the least. I encouraged him to tell his parents. His father, not long after his son broke the news, committed suicide. While there were other factors at play, my friend said that his announcement devastated his father. I felt very guilty after that.
His mother refused to believe that her son was gay, and began to seek a wife for him. Meanwhile, my friend fell in love with a male classmate in college. One day, he worked up the courage to tell this classmate that he liked him. The classmate not only rejected him, but also spread word of my friend's homosexuality throughout campus. My friends and I told everyone that the story wasn't true, that our friend was just joking. But the damage was done. At graduation, I walked up to the classmate and slapped him in the face.
Now, my friend works as a policeman. Almost all of his colleagues are men, and he would not dare tell any of them that he is gay. His mother eventually found a girl for him to marry. They are engaged, and preparations are being made for the wedding. My friend confessed that he has not yet slept with his fiancee. The thought of having sex with a woman repulses him. He even finds it difficult sharing a bed with her.
When I think of my friend, I feel sad and angry. But there's nothing we can do about it.
The recent Gay Pride event in Shanghai drew a lot of attention from the Western media, whose common narrative trumpeted a new, more liberal China. Certainly, there are worse places on earth to be gay than in China. But I'm afraid that my friend's tale is not uncommon, even in reasonably large and cosmopolitan cities like Kunming.
Senior Citizen Homes In China
The New York Times discusses the growth of retirement facilities in China (link via TPD's Facebook feed), though notes with a caveat that these remain viable options only for the upper class living in or near major cities.
Over the years I've had several conversations with Chinese friends in which the subject of retirement homes comes up. Often, my friends find the idea of putting grandma or grandpa in a home to be an abhorrent violation of filial duty. One told me that her parents wouldn't allow her to date a foreigner because they were worried that the foreigner would, if married to the girl, refuse to look after her dear old parents.
It usually surprises these friends to hear that my grandparents lived with me, at least part of the year, for much of my childhood. In fact, the experience of living with grandparents and other relatives isn't all that alien to a lot of Americans, particularly in generations past.
Placing elderly relatives in retirement homes derives not from a ruthless cultural norm, but more from a value that the Chinese well recognize: pragmatism. A lot of senior citizens have medical issues that require more attention than a working adult may be able to provide. Being in a home with full-time professional care, surrounded by peers, is often a more appealing lifestyle for a senior, particularly a widow or widower.
As Chinese people grow wealthier, I would guess that more of them will reach similar conclusions to their American- or Western- counterparts.
As a corollary issue, I find it interesting how matters assumed to be largely or entirely cultural are often mostly socio-economic in nature. I do believe that the Chinese have a stronger cultural norm of involving extended family members in day-to-day affairs than do Westerners, though not to the extent typically assumed. Plus, urbanization and affluence cause lifestyle changes that override cultural considerations.
What we often believe is cultural, and thus impenetrable, is actually far more fluid and malleable that we realize.
Human Rights, Continued
This article- about increased acceptance for homosexuality in Beijing- says far more about the state of "human rights" in China than this editorial by the Washington Post.
Smoked Out
So I guess those non-smoking signs on the Beijing-Tianjin high speed trains are more than just decoration:
A man was given three days in detention for breaking a non-smoking rule on a new high-speed rail line, Chinese state media said, an unusually severe punishment in a country where smoking bans are routinely ignored.
He was caught smoking in the toilet just after the train had left Tianjin for Beijing, triggering an alarm and causing the train to stop, the official Xinhua news agency said on its website (www.xinhuanet.com).
The high-tech line connects the capital with neighboring Tianjinin. It opened in time for this year's Beijing Olympics and features carriages more luxurious than usual in China, including swivel chairs and spacious, plush interiors.
No-smoking signs and rules are generally given short shrift in China and about half of all Chinese men smoke.
"It is strictly forbidden to smoke on the Beijing-Tianjin Express, and they hope everyone respects the rules, travels in a civilized manner and ensures the train's safety and punctuality," Xinhua said.
What I find so funny about this is that the Beijing-Tianjin journey takes less than a half-hour. It's one thing to be caught smoking on a ten-hour journey, but surely the poor guy couldn't wait a half-hour?
The Maddening Chinese Holidays
In his latest Sinosplice post, John wonders whether the dread 7-day workweek will become a thing of the past as China adjusts its holiday schedule.
I arrived in Lianyungang on a Friday evening right before the October holiday. When my colleagues greeted me at the door, they said that while I didn't have to take over my classes until after the break, I should still come and observe their lessons over the weekend.
"But, isn't tomorrow Saturday?" I asked.
They murmured to one another and informed me that, while the next day was indeed Saturday, Chinese schools "make up" days lost to the holiday on the preceding (and occasionally succeeding) weekends. This means that your five-day holiday is bookended by seven-day workweeks, resulting in an odd wish that the holiday hadn't occurred at all.
Of all the little Chinese scheduling intricacies foreigners learn to deal with, the seven-day workweek is easily the worst. A colleague of mine in Fuzhou once directed a spirited tirade against our Chinese 外办, as if a tiny office in Fuzhou Senior Middle School were responsible for the national calendar. Typically, I scheduled two relaxed days over the weekend before a holiday, including a classic teacher's cop-out of screening a DVD.
Last year, those who make these decisions in China decided to phase out the two weekly holidays in May and October and scatter days off throughout the year, perhaps in an effort to avoid tourist crunches that occur when a billion people hit the road at the same time. This year, our May holiday was reduced to three days. According to John, this will be the last week-long October holiday. He's for it. So am I.
Five-day holidays are fine, but the infuriating seven-day workweeks make them almost worth not having at all. Plus, there's something wonderful about four-day workweeks, particularly when Mondays are off....long weekends followed by short weeks are great.
In any case, I shouldn't be complaining. Because my boss is English, not Chinese, I get nine days off for the holidays. Next week, I'll be off on a five-day bicycling trip around southern Yunnan, from which photos and text will follow. Life is good.