CRAZY FOODS I HAVE EATEN SO FAR...
Let’s see, so far I’ve eaten every kind of crustacean, sea snail, and
strange looking sea creature imaginable including octopi, eel and squids.
I’ve had boiled silkworm cocoons which weren’t the most disgusting
thing I’ve ever put into my mouth, but they come pretty close. Fish
eyes are not as bad as they sounds if you can get the fact that your
about to eat them out of your head. I didn’t like they pig ears since
they were mostly cartilage, but there is this strange idea in China that
if you have bad eyes you should eat some poor animals eyes, or if want
to improve your hearing then eat some unsuspecting animal’s ears. What
do you eat if you are constipated? Anyway, I finally tried dog meat.
The first bite wasn’t so bad, but after that I started noticing this
really distinct taste that I will do my best to describe to you. If
you’ve ever had a pet dog, or known someone with a dog, then you have
undoubtedly had an opportunity to see that dog in the rain, or at some
point when the dog has gotten wet. If you have experienced wet dog,
then you most certainly would have noticed the smell that is so often
associated with wet dog. This smell is exactly what the particular
dog meat that I ate tasted like. I couldn’t handle it after the 3rd
bite, I had to stop eating it. There has also been times when I have
eaten chicken feet. I’ve eaten kimchi (rotten cabbage with hot sauce
made by Koreans) quite often, and seen scorpion-on-a-stick in Beijing.
I’ve eaten duck face, brains and innards. Raw fish, sushi and sashimi,
with wassabi (a hot sauce the Japanese borrowed from Satan to spice up
their raw foods). Preserved duck eggs (the completely blackened kind also
known as thousand year old eggs because of the lengthy amount of time
they require to be preserved). It is a wonder that I come home and
happily eat a peanut butter sandwich when I could be eating foods like
these every day. Some things I have not tried yet are: donkey, cat,
snake and bear paw. The “three-cry-mouse” is something I will probably
pass on. This is a meal in southern China where you eat a live mouse.
The “three cries” come from the mouse in the process of eating him alive.
One cry comes from when he is picked up by the chop-sticks, the next one
comes from his being dipped into an uncomfortable spicy sauce, and the
third cry comes from the first bite of the last meal he has had the
pleasure of being a part of. Yuck!! Oh yeah, the bear paw meal has
been outlawed, but being familiar with how laws work over here I have
every confidence that it is still being served in certain restaurants
whose managers have paid a some of money to the local police officers.
This meal comes from the paw of a bear, and to insure freshness, they
keep the bear alive during the removal of his paw. And since every
normal bear has 4 paws, this process is repeated 4 times. The bear will
get to enjoy his wonderful life in a cage until the dreaded day comes
where his captors remove his final, beloved paw for some rich sap’s
over-priced meal upon which time he will be diced up and added as
an ingredient to other illegal and equally overpriced meals. With all
of this crazy stuff, you’d think they would have donuts over here. I
have been searching for 8 months now and cannot find a decent donut in
all of China. With China’s superhuman ability to copy anything and
everything from the west, they should have figured out by now how to make a
decent donut. I have seen plenty of pastries (I am using that word very
loosely) that have looked much like donuts, but taste nothing like real
donuts. There was even a Dunkin Donuts in Beijing for a while, but by
the time I got there they had shut down and there was a Starbucks in its
place. Starbucks was nice though. Well, I guess I shouldn’t complain too
much. At least I was able to find bacon and Fruit Loops.
DOCTORS AND BRIBES...
It is commonly reported among my Chinese friends that the government is completely
corrupt over here. Officials on every level take bribes and allow people to by-pass
laws. This is a part of Chinese culture. Confucius believed that laws were not
necessarily a good way of deterring crime. He believed in a sense of shame. If
you impart a sense of shame to a culture it would be a better way than for the
people to fear retribution by law. The loss of “face” in Chinese culture is no
more than the idea of shame. If I do something wrong and it is found out, then it
brings shame to me or my family. It will cause a loss of face, and bring
embarrassment to myself and those close to me. This idea or philosophy in itself
is not a bad one. It makes sense and sounds very reasonable. Unfortunately, there
is much more to the culture than just a sense of shame. When the idea of “shame”
and the idea of “not questioning authority” are together, they create a strange
paradox. This means, in the society which holds these two ideas as truth, a strange
new “shame-less” class of people develop. These shame-less people are known as
government officials, or authority figures of all kinds, people with power that you
cannot question. If these people did something that was considered by society as
wrong, then they would get away with it. Their subjects or subordinates could not
question them on their mistakes, and therefore even if people knew about their illegal
activities it would not bring them shame. It creates the idea of “I cannot lose face
because no one would dare confront me on this issue.” This is exactly what has
developed in China as a result of these two cultural identifying philosophies.
With that said, I can now explain further the title of my essay. In today’s China,
we see a common practice of taking bribes. This also goes for the doctors. If you
want good medical treatment, you need to pay a doctor as much money as you can (under
the table of course). We know that bribing is a common practice in China, and there
may be more reasons for it than previously discussed. There is a limit to the amount
of money a person can make, generally. This was more in the past, but still occurs
today. Anyway, if you are not able to bribe a doctor with gifts and money, you may
not get the best medical treatment. I have heard this from several Chinese friends,
and hope that nothing painful happen to me while I am here. If I am in need of any
medical attention, I will be flying home to a country that will imprison doctors for
the practice of taking bribes.
CHINA HOSTEL EXPERIENCE...
Here is an interesting travel story based in China. It's about mine and Emile's
troubles trying to get a decent place to stay while traveling around in Xian, China.
Ok, here is the background to our story. First, we decided to stay at hostels, instead
of hotels. Hostels tend to be cheaper because the tenants usually share a room with
several people. The cheapness of hostels cannot begin to compare to even the cheaper
hotels in most parts of the world. Over here they run about 3-6 dollars a night. Very
cool. The problem with hostels is you have to share a room with people you don't know,
and they sometimes have inept service. Those two problems play into my story. So,
Emile and I arrive in the Xian train station at something like 6:45am. We are
extremely tired because we didn't get any sleep on the train (14 hour night ride), and
we are met by a representative from one of the hostels we were considering staying. I
have this great guide that has lists of hostels to stay at in all major cities in China
(Lonely Planet Guides freakin’ ROCK). So we decided to go with him to check out his
place. It didn't work out. We actually bargained over the price of a 2 bedroom room
and got her down pretty cheap, but as we were sealing the deal I got some really bad
vibes about the place. I never reveal the fact that I can speak Chinese to people that
I am bargaining with until just the right time. I like to let them think they've got me,
then say something to their friends in Chinese which allows me to know how much further
I can go with them after I understand what they just said. I use that trick all the time
and avoid getting the usual “price rape” they like to perform on foreigners. So after
talking to the lady in English and hearing all of her hatefulness about me right in front
of my face (when she switched to Chinese) I decided to go somewhere else. It was kind
of funny. She would act all nice and sweet when speaking English to me, using polite
words and stuff. But when she started speaking Chinese it was a different story. Anyway,
as soon as she left to go find some more people to stay in her crummy hostel I started
speaking Chinese with the lady at the front counter who decided to be very unfriendly to
us. So we walked out. Unfortunately this caused an uproar and they followed us out of
the hostel yelling and trying to get us to come back and stay with them. They didn't
stop following us. It got really awkward when they followed us 2 blocks asking where we
were going and why. It got even more awkward when they tried to ask our taxi driver
where we were going. After that I just told the taxi driver to take off and told him
where we were going after we got a few blocks down the road. Poor guy didn't know what
was going on. So I explained to him what happened and proceeded to have an argument with
him about Bush vs. Clinton. Anyway, back to the hostel stories.
So we get to the next hostel, and were still a little freaked out by the last experience
and tired from the trip. So when we got everything taken care of they brought us to our
room. And like I said, in a hostel you share rooms with people that you don't know. So
there were 2 people that we didn't know sleeping in the room. That wasn't the strange
part. The strange part happened after I walked in first and set my stuff on one of the
empty beds. There was an odd smell in the room, so Emile kind of stopped and said "NICK."
I was curious so I turned around and saw this amazingly appalled look on Emile's face as
he pointed to the ground right in front of me. It was the biggest pile of VOMIT that I've
ever seen in my life. Needless to say, we were utterly disgusted and requested a new room.
The guy drank himself into a coma judging by all the alcohol bottles we saw. So that's the
first funny part. The next one happens 2 days later in the same hostel. I don't know how
this happened but it did. Apparently, the lady who we check in with and the ladies who
clean the 3rd floor have some communication problems. We were suppose to check out after 2
days, but decided to stay a couple of extra days to take in the sites in rest of the city
so we told the lady at the front desk we were staying for a few more days. Apparently she
did not tell the cleaning ladies we were staying for a few more days. So the cleaning ladies
thought we had checked out. I told them in Chinese that we were staying, but sometimes
Chinese people do not pay attention when white people speak because they automatically assume
that we don’t speak Chinese. I think she wasn’t paying attention to me when I told her I was
staying. We figured that if we left stuff in our room they would know we were still staying.
When we got back that night all of the stuff we left in the room was gone! Emile left medicine,
underwear and socks, pants, shirts and a towel. I just left toilet paper, soap and a towel. It
was kind of a nice towel, but just a towel. So we go about trying to find out what happened
to our stuff. The cleaning ladies are so use to travelers and backpackers leaving stuff just
to make their packs lighter that the cleaning ladies took all of our stuff. They put the large
pair of pants and shirts in the lost and found. They took my towel and for some reason they put
it on the floor by the cleaning station. They took Emile's towel and used it to clean heaven
knows what. It still stank of cleaning fluids when he got it back. I got my soap back. So
we had everything except the medicine and Emile's socks and underwear. They threw his stuff in
the dumpster. And in China a dumpster is not so much a “dumpster” as it is a pile of trash
rotting in the alley somewhere. I wish I could describe to you how horrified these girls
looked when they saw us walk back up the stairs. They were running around everywhere trying
to find everything that they took. It was so funny. They even rooted around in the dumpster
to get Emile his underwear back. Can you imagine that? I was trying not to laugh. It was
upsetting at first, but when I saw how miserable they looked and how freaked out they were
about what happened it made me feel much better. Anyway. I've got some more hostel stories,
but they will have to wait.
DIRECTNESS AND INDIRECTNESS...
One notable difference between Western Cultures and China is the level of directness
in dealing with people. Chinese people seem to be much more indirect when they want
something than we do in the West. For example: my British friend has been taken out
to dinner numerous times by a group of teachers. In China, taking one out to dinner
does not necessarily mean that they are your friends, or that they even like you.
It just means that they want something from you and are building up a situation for
you to be in in which you would feel guilty for not giving in. This is quite
typical in China. It’s called “guanxi.” Anyway, they will perform a series of acts
of kindness which will make you think, “Oh, that person has done a lot for me, I
should do something nice for them sometime (as is common in the West).” And that’s
where it comes. The point of all of their “random acts of kindness.” They will
finally mention something that they want from you. Unfortunately, it will not be
direct, and if you are not listening for it, you could very possibly miss it. This
might be considered rude to them. In the case of my British friend, they wanted
him to teach another class. He had already been teaching close to 15 a week and
did not want to take on any more at the time, but nevertheless this is what they
wanted. When he politely declined the other teachers who were consistently taking
him to dinner then responded with giving him the new responsibility to find a different
teacher to fill his “place” in this class that he had never taught and never wanted
to teach. The reason for this was that they had taken him to dinner so often they felt
it was now his turn to reciprocate the favors. This will be extremely common if you
spend any amount of time in China. The people will do many different things for you
with some purpose in mind. I have had a range of different purposes in my experience.
Some people just want to practice English with me, some have future plans to go to
America and want my help, some want me to teach their children, and some have more
devious and manipulative motives.
...CONCERNING AUTHORITY...
There is also one other notable difference in the respective levels of directness.
In the West we are taught to question authority and are semi-prepared for
inter-personal confrontation. In China, the people are taught not to question
authority. Even if a leader is wrong you cannot question them, which causes a
wide-spread lack of individual thought. This is obviously
detrimental to the progress of the Chinese people in that if they see a problem
in government, economy or society, they cannot speak out against it. So, until
there are very honest leaders who can admit fault (which is another story) things
cannot change or progress. The problem with leaders admitting fault is an even
deeper issue, entrenched in several thousand years of culture. The whole idea of
“saving face” is still very much a reality in China. If you question your leader,
he has lost face, and will most definitely seek revenge in any way possible.
Whether it means to make your life miserable through legal means, or make it
miserable through illegal means, both are fair game. In a society where you can
not question authority, you have no checks and balances. This is an idea that we
both grasp and love in the West. It seems to be an obvious necessity for a
government that wants to be respected and legitimate. Again, the idea of face
creates a near impossible situation in which to progress. If I cannot admit
that I made a mistake, I cannot learn from it. If the leaders make no mistakes,
then things must continue they way they have always been. How can a nation
progress with this mentality? I wish China luck, but don’t see much hope for
change in the next few years.
DISHONESTY AND THE CHINESE PEOPLE (CHEAT LAOWAI MENTALITY)...
There is a prevailing mentality in modern China, and that is “Cheat Laowai.”
Laowai is a term they have given to foreigners. It is not the polite term for
foreigners, but it seems to be the preferred. If they wanted to be polite then
they would say WaiGuoRen.
If there is a way they can cheat you, expect it to happen. From driving in taxis
to walking down the street trying to buy fruit, they will try to get your money.
Money is almost like a god over here. Everybody wants it, and many people do not
have it. For some reason they think all westerners have money and so they act
accordingly. Never pay for the first price quoted when purchasing something from
a street vender or tourist trap. They will more than likely be selling the same
things to Chinese people for sometimes less than 50% of the first price they
quoted to a foreigner. I have bargained people down from 40 to 12, from 600 to
120, and so on. I strongly believe that bargaining is the way to do things when
purchasing items outside of supermarkets and malls. This cheat the foreigners
mentality goes is not just in the tourist sector of China. It also happens to
businesses, foreign teachers, and more. I am a teacher in China and my school
has tried to cheat me in many ways already. Not just with my pay, but with my
apartment that they promised, my free Chinese lessons that were promised, furnishings
and much more. If they can take advantage of you, it seems to be the rule that
they will. You must play hardball with these people in business, traveling, teaching
and everything else. Not all of the people want to cheat foreigners, but it will
definitely behoove you to be on guard for those who do want your money. They do
exist, and there are many of them. Currently, there is a case going on in the Chinese
courts over Pfizer’s copyright of the drug Viagra. As soon as Viagra was released,
the Chinese got a hold of the pill and copied it as closely as they could. Viagra
is suing for the rights to this formula in China, but there is no way they will win
in Chinese courts. The same goes for the music and video industry in China. Because
they want Western things, but lack the money to purchase them legitimately, they will
make as close of a copy as possible and sell it for a tenth or twentieth of the
price. DVD’s for example, cost almost $1 US dollar over here. They are of course
pirated, but that is all a part of cheating the foreigners. I don’t believe they
think it is wrong to cheat foreigners. My American friend got cheated on an apartment
he was renting from a Chinese lady, I got cheated in taxis, at the airport, in the
shops (constantly), and by my school. Others are cheated in every way imaginable.
I personally think it is unwise to start a business in China because of the bribes,
and the certain fate of being cheated by working with these people. You will also see
counterfeit Colombia, North Face, Nike, Adidas, Jansport, and many other name brand items.