Some Habits Best Kept, Others Maybe Not

A couple of things that stood out on the Chinese culture front last week. The first, was listening to a Chinese colleague outline her lunchtime ritual. She noted how she goes from school to her car across the road, which she pays to park, then drives straight down the street to her daughters school, also where her husband works. This whole process takes under 10 minutes. Her and her husband then have lunch with their daughter, before retiring to a school provided dormitory for a siesta. She then drives back here for afternoon classes before returning again to meet her daughter when she finishes school. They wait at the school while their daughter does her homework and plays in the pleasant surroundings of the near-by university campus. They then drive home, about 5-10 minutes by car.

Why do I note this? Maybe back in Britain or in the States this scenario seems oh so normal. But, this is a nation of cyclists, bus catchers and walkers. No longer. One of the great things about living in China, and particularly here in Xi’an, as it is less developed than Beijing for example, is that it places many of the norms of our own societies in sharp contrast. The society here maybe in the process of going down the same route we took, but by doing so from a different starting point or time period, it sharpens the focus from which we view not only the changes here, but our own norms of behaviour.

Just weeks ago this lady cycled down the road at lunch time and then home in the evening, with her daughter on the back of her bike. Now, she makes 5 journeys a day in her VW Golf. I suppose this is all-good for the economy and is being increasingly supported by many major nations, particularly here and in the United States. These are the realities of the principles that underpin our societies. It is just that they seem to me a little crazy really and that's not even taking into account the environmental costs.

Secondly, I was sitting in a small fast-food restaurant doing a bit of studying when a young lad, your average looking student, sat down at the table just across from me. He began to chomp and slurp his way through his lunch, as if oblivious to any of the evolutionary etiquette that has emerged over the last however many centuries, in various parts of our various societies.

Now, I am quite used to this really, living on the street I live, which is not inhabited by the wealthiest of people and has an abundance of hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I have also stayed a number of times in rural village communities where the old noodle suck and slurp is going strong. I can actually manage a good noodle slurp myself and even recognise the benefit when the noodles are piping hot. However, there are levels, it doesn’t matter how you cut it, listening to this guy eat was no different from listening to an animal munching, noisily at its trough, every open mouth(ful) chomped, sucked and slurped over. Quite amazing.

This, of course, may well not be a bad thing, certain levels of etiquette go far too far and I particularly enjoyed eating with my right hand in India, but…I wished this bloke would shut the _____ ___.
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Your Average Xi'an Morning!

I woke slowly and with sleep still in my eyes peered out through our new 'dust-net'. I saw that an inch-thick layer of lunar-like dust had again settled and completely covered the bedroom. I carefully rose from the bed, shaking a thin layer of dust from my hair that troublingly had managed to find a path inside the net. My girlfriend still lay sleeping peacefully.

I padded through into the living room, leaving a clearing trail of footprints behind me as I went. While quickly realizing, as I slipped headlong into a three foot high pile of dust, that I had left the window open overnight. We recently, however, installed a nifty new particle-vacuum, patented here in Xi’an’s very own High Tech Zone, which I have had positioned beneath the air-conditioner on the wall. I placed the blue mask, that came with it, over my mouth and turned it on.

It is a quite wonderful contraption, quietly going about its duties, or rather, duty: the silent and speedy removal of these pesky white particles, as I watch. I am not entirely sure how it works, though water has something to do with it, but it does manage to distinguish the dust from all the other bits and pieces scattered around the house. Within moments, it has syphoned the house clear. I had not enquired, nor had I wished to, about where all this stuff goes, but I did hear that it is trucked up to Taiyuan in Shanxi, loaded onto transporter spacecraft and, as part of China’s New Greener Earth Space Programme, exported to the moon. But, I don't really know.

I was no sooner out of the flat and off to work when I found myself falling footlong into a huge hole in the road: “That wasn’t there yesterday,” I thought to myself as I descended into the pit. Upon landing and while scrambling to my feet, I looked up, to see a couple of friendly Chinese faces peering down at me, they muttered the comforting words “Lao Wai” (foreigner), before continuing on their way.

Once I had clambered out and continued on, I happily consoled myself with the fact that this huge hole outside my home was probably part of Xi’an’s subway construction process, now, so I am also told, visible from space. I hope that in time I may well be allowed a more sedate way of descending into the same place, an electric escalator carrying me from the entrance of my apartment to the underground platform below.

This thought made me think of those moving walkway things that you get in airports, so good for a bit of "I am a world traveler with countries to go and people to see" kind of posturing. I like those things. To think we could have one here on Yang Jia Cun was quite a great thought and left me feeling rather positive about the day ahead.

When I got to the crossroads and after looking left and right, I calmly approached the mass of entwined vehicles in front of me. Nonchalantly, I clambered over the bonnet of the first car, squeezed agilely in front of a bus, stepped over the rear saddle of an electric moped, which was sandwiched between two taxis, apologizing as I did so, ducked under an open lorry door and made it to the other side of the road. I turned, momentarily, to observe again the interwoven pattern of vehicles at the junction of my street, before continuing on my way to work.

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Confucius Notations and the Slow Learning of Chinese

This extract I first discovered some time ago but rediscovered recently, it is taken from the Confucius text Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Chung- Yung (the Doctrine of the Mean) and has served me as a grounding, though motivating force in my fluctuating pursuit of mastering, to some degree or another, the Chinese language. I also find that it manifests nicely in the common Chinese phrase, 慢慢来 (man4 man4 lai2), which means slowly, slowly come; offering a usefully patient perspective to an otherwise achingly slow progression, whether in terms of Chinese language learning, or generally as a human being in life. (I found the extract again here on pages 73-74)

‘Study it [the way to be sincere] extensively, inquire into it accurately, think over it carefully, sift it clearly, and practice it earnestly. When there is anything not yet studied, or studied but not yet understood, do not give up. When there is any question not yet asked, or asked but its answer not yet known, do not give up. When there is anything not yet thought over, or thought over but not yet apprehended, do not give up. If another [person] succeeds by one effort, I will use a hundred efforts. If another [person] succeeds by ten efforts, I will use a thousand efforts. If one really follows this course, though stupid, he will surely become intelligent, and though weak, will surely become strong’. [XX: 19-21]

I once had a Sociology teacher that pointed out that about 90% of humans have about the same level of intelligence, but their social circumstance dictates to what degree they have utilised it. The final 10% are split into two groups, the ones who have finely honed mental capacities in one field of brain activity or another; and those that have identifiable learning difficulties.

Empirically, I do not know how accurate those statistics are, but from a general perspective of living in life and meeting a multitude of different people, it seems about right to me. Consequently, it appears a humbling and chastising fact to be aware of, a two fold issue, involving good and bad luck on the one hand and motivation and excuse on the other.

I am of course aware of the many factors that dictate to us our being, but it does seem positive to try to realize that we still can be what we make of ourselves. Sometimes, maybe, we just have to adapt the context from which we judge ourselves, not always that easy, but, as Kong3 Fu1 Zi3 (Confucius) may never have said, doable.

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It Is Not Just The Summer Heat That Lurks Ominously Under The Surface

Two weeks ago, we experienced temperatures touching into the 80’s and I felt the sense of foreboding, usually felt in May, that accompanies thoughts of the sweltering hot summer months here in Xi'an. Summers here are not what they are back in the lush green Isle of England and, though still a relatively young and healthy chap, I have, during them, found myself subconsciously acting as a rather efficient sweat producing machine. Here I was in March already concerned about what lay ahead.

However, only a few days later and with talk swirling around about dust clouds drifting off the Gobi desert, the skies darkened and everyone one came across had some kind of sinus problem to sneeze about. The pollution here is something, I believe, you get used to, but every now and again it comes up and hits you. Temperatures during the rest of the week steadily decreased and by the weekend, this was reminiscent of being back in Britain, it was raining.

Now, it doesn’t often rain, so it is sometimes quite pleasant to close the windows and curtains to the local street vendors cries and the murderous noise emanating from the newly fabricated building, just yards from my home, that now houses a KTV (karaoke) studio, and to retreat inside. Not to mention being happy to escape from the weekend masses that gather ten deep at bus stops and who jostle for position on street corners, hoping to stand out in some way from the crowd when the next taxi driver passes by, red light lit. There are also all the children in bookshops and the husbands joining wives in coffee shops, giving these places an unusual sense of busyness, that can be happily avoided.

However, the days of sunshine had managed to fool the poor shrubs and trees into offering us a branch or two of fresh buds and even a few light coloured petals in places. They say here in Xi’an that we really only have two seasons Winter and Summer, as Spring and Autumn are dashed through so quickly we are always seemingly being faced with the harshness of freezing winter, or baking summer temperatures.

I am not sure how true that is, as the last couple of years, we have had reasonably enjoyable autumnal evenings and a plentitude of spring mornings. However, these last few weeks the poor plants have been left confused and battered by the onset of summer and an almost immediate return to winter. We may have trouble enough dealing with this situation, the old plants, without the prize of consciousness and the consequential awareness of circumstance that it entails, must be pretty confused indeed.

However, to see the blossom on a sunny day after the bleakness of a polluted Xi’an winter is quite something, but to see the fresh growth of spring being splattered and dashed by the rain and wind is less uplifting indeed. Tomorrow, though, is another day here in Xi’an.

Finally, with reference to life on the playground this week, I have, as my Chinese has improved, begun to talk a little more with the kids at the various schools I teach at, this week a new lad came over and introduced himself to me. He was probably about grade 3 or 4, so about 10 or 11, he didn't seem a particular earnest young boy, just your average kid running about like all the others and then throwing out a couple of questions in my direction, as he passed by on the way back to class. However, his second question, after asking where I was from, was whether Britain would help China or Japan when they have a fight. I diplomatically shrugged my shoulders and replied that I was not entirely sure. In China, you quite quickly gain the sense of the loathing for Japan that exists not simply under the surface, and get used to it, but occasionally, just like the situation above, you observe the odd circumstance that concerns you.
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