A few miscellaneous observations on life in China

I start my Chinese lessons today!  This is very exciting, because the last couple of days I've been just kind of relaxing, and after 2 days I'm about to go out of my mind.

A lot of Chinese people that I've talked to have asked me what I think about China, and what's my impression vs what I thought before I came here.  I always just say "feichang hao!" (very good!) because what do we ever hear back home?  Pollution, avian flu, tainted meat, corruption, political stuff, etc.  You never hear much of Chinese daily life.

Having been here almost 6 weeks now, I'm still continually amazed at all the little differences between daily life here and at home.  A few things I've observed:

(Ed note:  I know a few of my Beijing/Hutong School friends read my blog, so I'd welcome their thoughts in the comments (which I think should be working properly now).)

On Fashion:

For women here pretty much anything goes.  Short shorts and micro skirts are popular, as are jeans, summer dresses and pretty much anything else you can think of.  For men though - I've rarely seen any men wearing shorts here (other than tourists and the odd pair of Capri's).  However the men here like to walk around with their shirt hiked up to their armpits, with their bellies hanging out and backs exposed, especially in the evenings.  I suppose it's practical and it feels good, but next to the women (who are all stylishly dressed) it looks kind of odd.

I've seen a few girls wearing big frame glasses - big black frames, or big frames with a wild pattern - but no lenses!  I suppose this is the opposite of North America where people go to great lengths - even having lasers poked in their eyes - to avoid having to wear glasses at all.  Apparently this style is something that the young people have picked up from either South Korea or Japan, both of which are big fashion influences here (for the youngsters).  (Ed note I googled came up with a bunch of links to "Korean Big Frame Glasses".)

There's also a lot of English here on t-shirts and whatnot.  Some of it makes sense, some of it is comically misspelled, and I've seen at least one shirt that was just covered with random letters, with no attempt to spell anything at all.  I guess it's cool here, same as people who get Chinese character tattoos back home.  Do they really know what it means?  Probably not.

Also it's very popular for couples here to dress in matching outfits, or for girlfriends to dress the same.  I've even seem entire families with matching outfits!  (Or course a "whole family" here is two parents and one child.)  Apparently for couples here, with the pressures of getting hooked up, "marriage comes first and love comes later", so this is a way for couples to get in sync with each other, or something like that.

On Getting service at a restaurant:

When you go to a restaurant here, they hand you a menu (literally "a" menu no matter how big your group) and then hang over you until you order.  None of this "take a look at the menu and I'll be back in 5 minutes" stuff.  And if you *do* ask for some time to browse the menu then you've lost your fuwuyuan (server) and god help you get her/him back to try to order.  So you learn to relax and browse the menu with your fuwuyuan breathing down your neck.

At a lot of restaurants the fuwuyuan has a little electronic gizmo (kind of like a little cell phone) that he/she punches your order into, so that it instantly gets faxed to the kitchen in the back.  (A few restaurants don't do this and it feels really odd to me now when I see the fuwuyuan scratching down my order on a little pad of paper.)

Once you've eaten and you want to pay your bill (or if you need any kind of service during the meal, like more food or beer), good luck!  The protocol is to bellow "fuwuyuan!" as loud as you can and hope you catch their attention.  Even if it's not busy and everyone is just standing around texting on their phones they'll go to great lengths to ignore you until you follow this protocol.  Paying the bill is my least favourite part of the meal.  I just get up and get ready to leave and that (usually) gets their attention.  I've noticed that often Chinese guys will order a whole bunch of beers at the beginning of the meal, and I've wondered why, because they will get warm.  But now I think it's so they don't have to go through the hassle of trying to flag down the fuwuyuan.

A lot of smaller places charge for napkins (and some places even charge for chopsticks) so you learn to carry around a small pack of tissues (and possibly chopsticks as well).

(By the way at lunch today I walked into a place in 回民街 and the fuwuyuan asked me "饺子还是包子?" and I answered "要羊肉包子."  One of the rare conversations that hasn't involved "Huh?  What?"  Etc.)

On Shopping for groceries:

The other day I found a regular supermarket near my hostel, however you mostly buy fruit and veggies from street vendors or smaller produce stores.  For the smaller places the stock varies based on what is in season - in Beijing it was mostly strawberries and pineapple, here it seem like mostly cherries.  You just tell laoban how many jin (a jin is 500 gm) and they bag and weigh your stuff.  At the supermarket you bag it yourself, but there is a weigh station where they weigh and tag your stuff with a price.  They have a full range of produce (some of it imported) and it's a bit more expensive.  However I've gotten into the habit of buying my fruit peeled and chopped, ready to eat, from the local street vendors.

On the general "pushiness" around here:

I'm always the last one on the bus, and when I was trying to mail postcards the other day people were elbowing their way in front of me with no consideration whatsoever.  Does no one here know what a lineup means?  During rush hour they have "monitors" at all the bus stops, with little flags, and the people line up for the buses very nicely.  But with no "monitors" it's a mosh pit out there.

I've come to the conclusion that this isn't rudeness (because the Chinese are some of the friendliest people I've ever met) it's just efficiency.  Same as trying to get the attention of a fuwuyuan.  When you consider the fact that the are over a billion Chinese, you can understand how they've learned to operate as efficiently as possible.  When a restaurant is busy there's no time for the fuwuyuan to drop by to ask how you're doing.  If you don't need something it's a waste of their time and yours.  In a lineup it's the most urgent person that needs attention, and that person will be the most motivated to bully their way to the front of the line.  So, like everything else here, you just learn to deal with it and don't take any of it personally.

On Money:

Paper money here comes in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 RMB.  There are also bills of less than 1 RMB (0.1 and 0.5) and coins as well (up to 1 RMB).  But no one wants to deal with any of the big bills, or "ling qian" (small money), so often if you try to pay for something small with a 100 RMB note you'll get "attitude" back at you.  And then you'll have to wait while they run around to find change.  So you learn to horde your 5's, 10's and 20's so you've got something reasonable to use to pay for your taxi ride, meal or little bowl of watermelon chunks, and you use the 50 and 100 RMB notes to buy entrance tickets to the tourist attractions, where you know they will have change.  (You still get "attitude" though.  They inspect 50 and 100 RMB notes like crazy, make little tears in them and even call over their supervisor to have a look.  I've tried doing the same thing on the change they give back to me but so far no one has appreciated the humour.)

I haven't quite learned to deal with the "small change" yet (bills and coins less that 1 RMB) so mostly I give this to the beggars.

On Cleanliness and work in general:

There are people cleaning everything, all the time.  Sweeping the streets, washing floors and walls, scrubbing windows.  Every city I've visited has been the cleanest you can imagine.  Armies of people cleaning everything, all the time.

In spite of this, "standing around texting on your phone" seems to be the most common job here.  Most malls I've visited are mostly empty most of the time, and there are small armies of staff in each store, all standing around with nothing to do (except text on their phones).  Most restaurants have "greeters" - two girls standing by the front doors to open them for you and welcome you to their restaurant.  Except that other than during meal times, they are just standing by the doors chatting, or texting on their phones.  (Or giggling when they see a foreigner walk by, which I've found is also very common.  "Ni hao!"  "Tee hee hee.")

I gather that labour is very cheap here, which is the reason all the businesses can hire so many staff, and the cost of living here is very low too (as long as you stay out of the tourist zones), but I'm not sure exactly how this economy can function.  At some point someone has to pay something.  It can't all be coming from the tourists and factories ...

One custom here that I've found very interesting (that I've blogged about before) is the morning meetings that a lot of restaurants and businesses hold.  They line up their staff outside on the sidewalk, and mostly it's just a morning briefing, but I've seen exercise/tai chi sessions and even a full "gangham style" performance going on.  If you stroll around town at the right time you'll see several of these going on.  It's fascinating.  I can imagine the hubbub if you tried to do something like this back home.

Overall I think the Chinese are a very practical, pragmatic people.  A lot of these things that I've observed are just ways they've developed to deal with the sheer numbers of people they have here.  Either things get done or they don't.  People get fed or not.  There's no room to debate niceties or have philosophical discussions when there's 1.5 billion people to be fed.

Except for the big frame glasses.  Those I think they could do without!