Fuddland
Category: Cultural Experiences
Aspects of living in an entirely different culture from the one I'm used to.
This category is a subcategory of China.
I realise this place has built up a few cobwebs over the last six weeks or so, but I’ll be doing some dusting and hopefully back into the swing of things soon, including the return of the genuine, actually-posted-from-my-mobile Moblog, thanks to a gorgeous new phone, although it appears that sending and receiving data over the mobile network is relatively prohibitively expensive out here.
[Interesting-ish aside: I can access Wikipedia from my phone’s web browser, but it’s blocked when trying to access over a standard internet connection.]
Anyway. Anyone still listening? How’ve you been?
In: China / Cultural Experiences & Site News
2007 / 09 / 18 – 02:53 | Comment [1] | Top
You might be thinking that, when embarking on a flat-hunting mission, choosing which agents to go with is a difficult step: after all, how can you really know which one is going to try and screw you over the least? Thankfully, the short answer is that they’re all going to try squeeze as much commission out of you as they possibly can, so the decision is largely influenced by one simple question: what freebies do they give you?
Upon making your first arrangement to view a flat, you’re presented with a small goodie bag, and there’s a couple of moments of intrigue as you plunder its glossy contents. Most of the time it’ll just be full of brochures and business cards, but we did receive one gem: a 140-page booklet entitled, “Doing Business in China”.
As well as some genuinely useful information regarding setting up or engaging in businesses for the first time in China, there are also some amazing pieces of cultural advice, including:
how to distinguish between (关系), which we’re told is “not evil, or even bad, but it is selfish”, and your bog-standard corruption
a table of the differences in thinking patterns between the East and the West, which tells us that in resolving conflicts, a Western person will go for a simple win or lose, whereas someone from the Orient, if they cannot reach a win-win situation, has the mindset of “to lose is to win” or “lose in order to win”. While this might give one the emotional or moral high-ground, I think that eventually the shareholders are going to get a little tired of losing, even if it is in order to win
My personal favourite section concerns the expat life in China, specifically what the booklet refers to “trailing spouses”. The following is copied verbatim.
Some wives — especially those without accompanying dependents and/or who do not have to work because of their husband’s generous expatriate remuneration package and/or who have no particular career or skill — relish the idea of becoming a “bungalow bunny”, joining the ladies who lunch at their interminable coffee-mornings, sports activities, mahjong parties, shopping expeditions, etc. If you are one such, then you will not be disappointed!
Those blasted interminable coffee-mornings!
Other wives — even those who do not have to work because of their husband’s generous expatriate renumeration [sic] package and/or have no particular career or skill — harbor ideas of being a working wife in China as a way of killing time while hubby is at the office, rather than becoming a “bungalow bunny”. Perhaps teaching English? The fact that they are not qualified and/or not well-educated does not seem to deter them. After all: should not the Chinese be grateful for the opportunity of conversing with the English-speaking wife of a foreigner, rather than making do with a China-educated Chinese teacher of English. If you do not already have a successful career at home, you are unlikely to in China — although there are some who are the exception to the rule.
Having met a good few expatriates in my time, I can unequivably state that being born a native English speaker does not necessarily mean you’re able to use grammar or even pronounce words correctly.
Far away from life-long friends and family, a wife loses her entire natural support network at one swoop; and the older she is — just like moving to a new neighborhood in the new country — the more difficult she may find it, and the longer she may take to make new friends, for a variety of reasons (such as: difference in age, values, education), not least cliquism. No matter what the books say, or others tell you, expats can be as cliquish as they come, especially the long-term ones who tend to vote conservative with a capital C and may resent sharing their circle of friends with newcomers barging in on “their” scene.
Do I detect an ounce of bitterness? Maybe if the author didn’t generalise quite so much, he or she might get invited to a few more parties.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2007 / 07 / 14 – 10:35 | Comment [2] | Top
Find two lovely friends who want to share a flat with you for the next six months.
Contact a few estate agents and give them your specific requirements — in this case: three bedrooms [due to there being three people], two bathrooms [due to two of the three being of the female variety], convenient location, and under a certain monthly rental price.
Start viewing the possibilities offered by the agents, which will include:
- places with only two bedrooms and a sofa-bed in the living-room
- places with only one bathroom
- places with asking prices above the limit you’ve specified
Emphasise to the agents that the requirements you gave were actually requirements, as in: we require three whole bedrooms, two whole bathrooms, and we can’t pay more than the figure we gave you.
View places that satisfy all of the requirements except for the price. Discover that, like everything in China, the price can be negotiated once an interest in a particular place is expressed.
Express an interest in a particular place.
At this point one of the lovely friends who wants to share a flat with you will sadly have to pull out for various reasons, leaving the remaining lovely friend and yourself with a budget two-thirds of the original, and unable to afford the very nice place in which you’d just expressed an interest.
Explain your new requirements to the agents: all numbers are now two-thirds of the previous requirements, to the nearest whole number.
Wait a week or so, then get quite nervous because the moving date is rapidly approaching and if you’re going to have to go through the rigmarole of negotiating prices, then things need to get sorted out pretty darn quickly.
Receive a message from your most promising agent asking if you’re still interested in the three-bedroom, two-bathroom, too-expensive place you were interested in before.
Explain, again, slowly, your new requirements to the agent.
Wait a few more days.
Lose all hope when the agent tells you that, for all the suitable flats she’s found, none of the landlords is willing to let them for just six months — they all want a contract of at least a year.
Go out for a drink.
Casually mention to the owner of the bar that you frequent that you’re looking for a flat. He’ll tell you that he’s moving house this week and you’re welcome to take his old place, which just happens to tick all of the boxes in your list of requirements.
Hurrah!
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2007 / 07 / 12 – 16:43 | Comment [3] | Top
I had to buy this just to prove I didn’t make it up. I’m familiar with flypaper: the sticky sheets of paper one hangs up to trap annoying, potentially disease-spreading flies. Never used it myself, but I’ve seen it in movies and stuff.
Whilst I can’t deny it’s a fairly logical extension of the idea of trapping potentially disease-spreading things, I still feel a little uneasy that there’s such a thing as ratpaper.
The thought of coming downstairs in the morning and finding several starving-to-death rats stuck to a piece of paper isn’t a particularly pleasant one. Although the image of a too-curious cat walking around with four sheets of the stuff stuck to its paws is almost comic enough to tempt me to use it.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2007 / 06 / 11 – 14:49 | Comment [5] | Top
Walking home from teaching last night, it was already dark but a nice warm evening, and as I strolled along the road I heard faint music coming from the canalside. Looking over, I could see a lone elderly man sitting cross-legged under an illuminated tree, playing an (二胡). I stood and watched him for a minute or two, but I was too close to the road to hear him properly so, after almost carrying on my way, I decided to wander over to have a better listen.
I made sure my footfalls were loud enough so that he knew I was approaching through the trees, so he stopped as I got closer and we had a nice little chat in Chinese, except for the part when I forgot how to say the verb to smoke so had to refuse his offer of a cigarette with a mime. He kept saying he was no good at the as he’d only been playing for five years, but I said I’d like to have a listen all the same.
He was right: he was dreadful. I could have made a better sound by taking the instrument from him and smashing it against the tree [which took all of my strength to not do].
To make matters worse he kept stopping and saying how bad he was, forcing me to be all polite and tell him it was very good, all the time pondering the cultural dilemma of precisely how long I should stay and listen before making my excuses and leaving. Was two minutes long enough? An hour and a half? I hadn’t come across this piece of essential cultural know-how in my Rough Guide book, so had to go with my instincts and managed to head off after about five minutes of aural torture, telling him I was going to have something to eat — something no Chinese man would ever begrudge me.
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2007 / 05 / 11 – 09:20 | Top
Whilst the Christian world gets on with all things Easter, this weekend saw the Chinese festival of (清明节), which goes by any of the following translations:
- Clear Brightness Festival
- Festival for Tending Graves
- Grave Sweeping Day
- Memorial Day
- Tomb Sweeping Day
- Spring Rememberance
Whatever you call it, the traditions are the same: on the fifteenth day after the Spring Equinox, people honour and remember their ancestors, with a graveside clean-up and offerings of food, tea, wine and other goodies. It’s another busy time of year when train-travel isn’t recommended, as city-dwellers travel back to their hometowns to join their families in the sombre festivities.
In: China / Cultural Experiences & Indexed
2007 / 04 / 08 – 16:59 | Top
As if sensing that I’d not been inspired to post anything for ages, I’ve been gifted with a couple of interesting, “You don’t see that every day” type things. Presenting, firstly, the Men Painting a Building Hanging Precariously from Ropes and Only Using Rollers:
Detail:
And for the main event: Man Strapping a Fridge-Freezer to His Bicycle:
In: China / Cultural Experiences & Photos / Sinophotos
2007 / 04 / 01 – 10:13 | Comment [4] | Top
For the first few weeks after I arrived in China, whenever I overheard a couple of elderly gents chatting in Chinese on a park bench, I found myself assuming that they were exchanging pearls of wisdom garnered from their experiences and learned readings of the teachings of Confucius. It wasn’t until I started to get a handle on understanding Mandarin that I realised that, most of the time, they’re talking about food, or the price of food, or how long its been since breakfast time.
On the first day of a new Business English course for an insurance company, held in their office meeting room, I gave them a few minutes of conversation practice based on the dialogues we had just gone through, and as they chatted to each other I wandered over to the display cabinet to look at the various certificates, plaques and trophies it contained. Given the intense growth of China’s economy in recent years, and having met and taught more than a few business professionals out here, I was assuming that they were all very serious “Business of the Year”-type awards. Office employees can work very long and hard hours — eight in the morning until eleven or twelve at night is the norm rather than the exception — so their efforts have to be occasionally rewarded with some sort of recognition, right?
Having learned a few characters of Chinese, I was able to spend a few minutes trying to figure out exactly what each achievement was. The largest trophy — a gold cup with an engraved plaque on its base — caught my eye, and I could immediately recognise the characters for (苏州) and the industrial park area in which many new companies are based, and the date: December 2002.
“Okay,” I thought, “this is going to be something like Best New Start-up or Employer of the Year.” But then I recognised two more characters: (乒) and (乓) —
Yep: ping pong. It was a table tennis championship trophy. Disappointed, I turned back to the class to check on the progress of the business conversation exercise I had set.
They were all talking about food.
In: China / Cultural Experiences & China / Teaching in China / My second Suzhou school
2007 / 03 / 19 – 08:22 | Top
Happy Chinese New Chinese New Year! Or, as everybody is saying around here,
There’s plenty of information about the many traditions associated with New Year over at Wikipedia, including the handy tip that buying pants is considered bad luck at New Year. Unfortunately it’s not clear if these are American pants [trousers] or British pants [pants], so I’ll just have to refrain from buying both.
In: China / Cultural Experiences & Photos / Flickr & Photos / Sinophotos
2007 / 02 / 18 – 13:48 | Comment [1] | Top
I brought back some nice calming lavender-scented incense from (成都), and I’ve just noticed that on the package it says, in English,
Ingredients: lavender oil, cedar wood, etc.
“Etc.”?
In: China / Cultural Experiences
2007 / 01 / 26 – 13:56 | Comment [2] | Top
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2006 / 03 / 08 – 22:55 | Comment [6] | Top
Read the rest of “Chinese food: here it’s just called “food””…
2006 / 03 / 01 – 13:14 | Comment [4] | Top
2006 / 02 / 27 – 22:06 | Comment [3] | Top
