Highschool aerobics

Just behind my apartment building there is a high school. As you might expect it can be a little noisy sometimes, though not in the same way that schools are noisy 'back home'.

Gone is the noisy school bell, replaced by some rather pleasant music to mark the beginning and end of each class (think: the music that they'd play in between rounds of a weekday afternoon TV quiz show). Then in mid-morning I can hear some energetic marching-band music played at maximum volume to get the blood pumping as the students do laps of the playground. Then it all stops and the music is replaced by someone barking orders over a loudspeaker as the students do their daily aerobics routine. (Until I can figure out how to successfully embed youku videos, here is a link to a video of a particularly enthusiastic student doing his school exercise routine, which I found unreasonably amusing.)

Then there is the mysterious repetition throughout the day of someone counting up from one to eight (again, over a very loud loudspeaker). I found out sometime later that this is just to keep the rhythm going as students perform their regular eye massages, after staring at textbooks for way too long.

Christmas, China style

Christmas is almost upon us, and it is getting mighty chilly. My oil heater/air con combination is struggling pathetically to warm my apartment (after several hours of operation, it has gone from 7 degrees to 11 degrees). Worst of all, I've failed to utilise the best system of staying warm: dong zhi dumplings. It is already too late for me; had I eaten dumplings on the winter solstice day my ears would have stayed toasty-warm all winter long. (Not sure this works all over China, but it's a scientifically proven fact here in Shaanxi province.) Better crack out the ear muffs then.

Aside from the Merry Christmas signs displayed in shop windows (or, sometimes, just the word 'Merry') and the Christmas songs (like 'Ding Ding Dong', the Chinese version of Jingle Bells, or my personal favourite - 'Old Macdonald Had a Farm'... not kidding), the first real indication that the big day was imminent was the sight of the street vendors yesterday evening, selling all the festive essentials. Like 'Scream' masks. Devil horns. Witches hats. Hmm.... Do you spot something amiss here? Christmas is a time to march on the streets (leave cars at home, because you aint driving anywhere!) and chuck fireworks at each other. Christmas = Halloween. Not entirely sure why. Not entirely sure the Chinese know why either... I've asked, and there seems to be a general, vague belief that this is how it's done in Western countries, and so they're just copying 'us'. Odd? Yes. A bit wrong? Probably. Great fun? Of course it is!

I first set foot on Chinese soil in June 2007. First song I heard was Wham!: Last Christmas.

圣诞快乐 everybody.

EDIT (2nd Jan 2009): After a little further probing I've found that this method of celebrating Christmas (=Halloween) is not typical of China but is peculiar to Xi'an, where I currently live. I'm told that other Chinese cities have a more standard interpretation of the Christmas celebrations. But this begs the question: Who was it that decided Christmas in Xi'an should involve marching/devil horns/witch hats? Fairly safe to assume that it was the lets-use-up-all-the-leftover-Halloween-crap monster, but we may never know for sure.

Kai fang

Damn us dirty foreigners, polluting the fragile little minds of innocent Chinese folks with our slutty foreign behaviour.

Part of my job here in the middle kingdom involves interviewing Chinese people to test their oral communication skills. This generally involves asking some fairly standard questions about their friends and family, their work, their hobbies. But throwing in some slightly more unusual questions (that is, questions that they don't already have a well-rehearsed response to) can be a good way to test their linguistic flexibility. One of the things I sometimes ask them about are the differences between Chinese and non-Chinese people, although I am beginning to tire of the responses I get. I say responses though I shouldn't really use the plural form, since there is only one stock response: A look of slight nervousness, then a giggle (usually just the females, but sometimes the guys too), then they'll look me right in the eye and tell that foreigners are so 'open'. What that means is that they've translated directly from the Chinese kai fang. And what that means is that foreigners are basically whores that will hump anything that moves. While this might be true of some folks, I think it is really sad that TV programmes and films are believed as sources of accurate information. American Pie? Yes, that is exactly what life is like. Sex and the City? Of course, life is like that for 100% of non-Chinese people around the world.

Sadly, it seems that many Chinese people share this opinion of foreigners, and especially the ones that come to live in China. While I'm sure that this guy hasn't helped our image much (search back through his archive if you want to find the juicy stuff), I do like to ask something of the people that use the term kai fang: Can a person be kai fang (=a slut) on their own? No? So who are all these kai fang foreigners sleeping with in China? Not innocent, chaste, Chinese girls... surely... How long until the myth becomes mist? (Much) more on stereotypes another time...

Pyjamas

Just as I was composing a post on the subject of unusual on-street sartorial choices, I spotted this non-news story. It is entirely true, though the wearing of pyjamas in public is certainly not restricted to the streets of Shanghai (but I can well imagine that this most fashionable of cities is the place where Chinese peoples' eyes are most likely to be offended by this type of thing). I’ve asked locals about this habit and was given the same response that is in the “news” article: Pyjamas are just a type of clothes, so why shouldn’t people wear them outside?
But another factor is that there are many folks around China that do not have bathroom facilities in their own homes. When nature calls, then the public loo is the place to go. People also go out to bath and shower houses. These places can sometimes be rather luxurious, so people might go even if they have their own showers and baths at home. With exteriors looking not entirely unlike a swanky 5-star hotel, these are places to go for hot showers, communal baths, massages, and you can even sleep there overnight (men separated from women, of course). So it’s not too unusual to see people walking down the street in pyjamas and slippers, carrying a little bag containing all their toiletries, as they make their way to and from the bath house.
Unusual though it may be for some non-Chinese people to see this, I, for one, hope that pyjamas on the street are here to stay. If it is not a problem for the Chinese, why should it be a problem for anyone else? After all, they shouldn’t have to change what they wear for fear of looking a bit silly in the eyes of a few foreigners.

Lost in translation

While I, as an honest, upstanding British citizen, have nothing but absolute respect for international copyright law, you may be aware that some truly evil people actually copy DVDs. Disgusting, I know. But they are so readily available in China that I'm not sure I've ever seen a genuine DVD over here - I guess there isn't much of a market for them: Who would bother buying a real one when the fake is right next to it for a tenth of the price?

Anyway, I can reluctantly confirm that, on rare occasions, not-entirely-authentic DVDs have been known to accidentally enter my field of vision. Browsing the local shops and markets, it is easy to find the latest releases from around the world, often within days of the official release date. But as a general rule, the longer you are prepared to wait, the higher the quality of your viewing experience. If you buy too soon, you'll end up with one recorded from a cinema screen with a camcorder. Wait a few weeks and a much higher quality copy can often be found.

But sometimes even more entertainment can be gleaned from a DVD purchase in China, simply because the people responsible for the piracy often have a poor grasp of English. First of all, there is the fun of deciphering the film title. To produce the DVD sleeve, I assume they perform a quick internet search and use whatever they can find. Any non-Chinese that is found obviously must be perfect English, and exactly what is being searched for. This can sometimes make for an amusing description of the film on the back of the sleeve. Take this one for example:

Quickly googling some of the text reveals that it has been swiped directly from the user comments on IMDb. It seems clear that whoever did this has little or no grasp of English - though I'd like to believe that isn't true, and they just have a wicked sense of humour ^_^

But the thing that most frequently leads to various combinations of hilarity and utter confusion is the translation that comes along with the film. Again, as a general rule, waiting a few weeks will result in a higher quality viewing experience... but if you simply can't wait, you must be prepared for the consequences. English subtitles (of an English-language film) are often ridiculously bad - seemingly having been translated to Chinese and then back again (possibly several times). A string of English words will appear onscreen, but bare no relation whatsoever to what is actually being said. Switching to Chinese subtitles offers a different experience. Here, a native Chinese speaker has written the subtitles so they are at least coherent. The problem/source of amusement is that the translated dialogue may not necessarily follow what is being said onscreen. This has lead to some odd conversations regarding plot development when watching an English-language film with Chinese subtitles, with Chinese people. Entire relationships are changed (for example, husbands and wives become brothers and sisters), plotlines radically diverge, jokes become hideously inappropriate or just disappear completely.

While this can be a little frustrating, its not all bad. Perhaps a slightly different situation, but what would childhood be like with a properly translated version of The Magic Roundabout?

Rent, irrationality and beating the banks

Living in a fairly large Chinese city, I see my fair share of construction work going on. Fancy new apartment blocks, shiny new shopping malls. Nothing too strange about that, until you think about the the number of apartment blocks and shopping malls that are already lying empty. It seems logical to see something odd in the fact that people would waste an awful lot of time and money to erect a building that they arent going to make any money from.

There are a handful of such apartment blocks around the centre of the city in which I live, which appear to be completely vacant, or at most 10% occupied. I once enquired as to how much one of the apartments was, but it turned out to be rather beyond my price range. Being in China, I thought it might be worth my while haggling for a better price. After all, I argued, the apartments have been lying empty for months now, so surely accepting a lower rent from me was preferably to receiving no rent whatsoever? But it was not to be, and I gave up. Later, I was talking to some Chinese friends about this, and they told me that if I try again next month, the situation would be even worse, since the rental cost would probably be even higher than before. The argument for this is that the landlord would have to recoup the money that he'd lost on the previous months. So even though the rent was already too high for anyone to seriously consider, he'd keep rasing the price to cover his losses, thereby making the price even more outrageously high, ensuring that nobody would ever move in!

But I once read somewhere that the companies that build these things have little intention of actually selling them on and making money the conventional way. I forget the exact details of the method, but it goes something like this: The company applies for a bank loan of, for simplicity's sake, 2 million yuan to pay for the construction of a new building. They go ahead with this this 2-million-yuan building, but in fact they only spend 1 million on its construction, and the rest... disappears. When the building is complete but remains unsold/doesn't turn a profit, there is some kind of clause by which the company can default on the bank loan, and the bank simply takes back the building, which is supposedly worth 2 million yuan. The bank is reasonably happy - they've got an asset instead of their cash. But they won't be as happy as the building company owners - the fraudsters have just pocketed a cool 1 million yuan.

Multiple choice

Hurrah for multiple choice examinations - the saviour of lazy students the world over.

Chinese people often talk about 'being lucky' in life. If you are a lucky person then you'll go far. If bad things happen to you, or you are generally unsuccessful, then maybe you are simply just unlucky. Having a scientific background, I didn't consider the topic any further, since its just superstition, right?

I've recently had the misfortune of looking at some exam papers that were given to Chinese students as a means of deciding whether or not they can graduate with a degree in English. Many of the questions involved selecting a correct answer from a choice of four. Sound familiar? Fairly straightforward, you might think. But what if there is no correct answer? What if there is more than one correct answer? Unfortunately I spotted several questions like this - oh dear.

I asked a Chinese person about this. She told me that all the answers to the questions can be found in the coursebook. Study the book, answer the questions - simple. (In China, 'studying' often means 'memorising' a textbook, word for word.) As it turned out, the answers to the questions could indeed be found in the book. But, sadly, the coursebook also contained mistakes. It seems that sometimes the way to pass exams here is to memorise the correct wrong answers.

Some were wrong in an entirely different way... One question even read: 'In which year was the textbook published?' How, precisely, is that going to test a person's knowledge of a foreign language? If you consider that it only takes a single mark to determine if a borderline student is going to pass or fail... A double thumbs-aloft to whoever decided to put that on the exam.

I turned to the front of the book to find the authors' names. Chinese. 'Isn't it at least edited by a native English user?' I asked. Apparently not. The books are full of outdated words and phrases, the likes of which would puzzle most English-speaking people (though not if you were about 120 years old), and are in dire need of modernisation.

One of my personal favourites involved an excerpt from a story, followed by some multiple choice questions. The final question read: 'In your opinion, what happened next in the story?', followed by four possible answers...

Does answer C imply answer D? (Actually, that's a whole different topic, more on that another time...) Does answer B imply that time will come to a standstill? And what about secret option E, which is what actually might have been in the examinees' imaginations?

Tripartite weddings

I went to a wedding today, the fourth I've been to during my time in China. Chinese weddings share common characterstics with weddings that I've seen back home, but there are also a few big differences. To cite one of the biggest differences, the 'wedding' takes place in three stages and on different dates, which are usually combined into the same day in other countries. The first stage is officially registering your marriage at a government office. The second stage, which may be several weeks or even months later, is to get some wedding photographs taken. Not the snaps taken outside the church that the folks at home are accustomed to, but a day spent in a photographic studio (with a possible excursion to some nearby scenic spot) taking pictures in styles more often seen in glossy magazines. The photos are available about 4 weeks later, after being photoshopped-up to the desired standard. The third and final stage of the wedding (possibly another few weeks or months later) is the wedding reception where all the family and friends get together for a big celebratory meal. Festivities ensue, the father of the bride has his cheeks covered in red makeup, everybody drinks too much baijiu and then cries. Then we all go back to work.

One thing that I find a little odd about all this is that most couples do not consider themselves married until they have had a wedding feast, even though they may have been legally married several months (in extreme cases, years) previously.

The first one

There are already a fair number of China-related blogs out there. Some good, a few great. This is my attempt to join the club, hopefully offering something that is difficult to find elsewhere.

I'm a British guy, living and working in central China (usually called western China - apparently Xinjiang doesn't count). I've already been here for about a year and a half, but I have no intention to leave any time soon. While I'm here I'd like to share some aspects of life in the PRC that a lot of people might not get to see. I have no intention of spouting off with any controversial essays (what would be the point - the blog would get blocked, and that would be game over), I'd just like to write about some things that interest me, and hopefully will interest you too.

I had thought about putting the blog posts into one of just three categories: Good China, Bad China, and Ugly China, hence the blog name. But I think this is doomed to failure right from the start; clearly I'll be needing a category called Just Bloody Weird, right?